Spaceship Venture

Background

The Venture is the result of a collaboration between the United Earth Space Agency (UESA) and private aerospace firms to create a vessel capable of extended manned exploration missions outside of the Sol system. Codenamed the Venture Project, the resulting ship that resulted from this program was 50 m long and weighed 50 tons. The Venture is equipped with the first faster than light (FTL) warp drive fitted to a manned vessel. The drive (as well as the ships various auxiliary systems) is powered by energetic plasma produced by two fusion Tocomac reactors located on Deck 4. Deck 3 contains the crew quarters, a small sensor bay, and the ship’s shuttle bay. The ship is crewed by 6 officers, currently all male since there is insufficient room to provide the necessary facilities to accommodate a mixed-sex crew. The Venture herself is incapable of atmospheric flight, but a small shuttle capable of landing on Class M planets can be accommodated in the Deck 3 shuttle bay. Deck 2 contains only the Captain’s quarters, so that the Captain can be housed close to the bridge on Deck 1. The Bridge is highly automated, and when cruising in deep space it can be entirely unmanned, although at least one officer is usually present for safety reasons.

The warpdirve is capable of a maximum speed of 5c, or 5 times the speed of light. However, the maximum sustained speed is 3c. At this rate, it takes approximately 8 months to reach the nearest star. The ship’s maximum endurance is 2 years, which allows for 4 months on station at near –Earth stars with a 4 month safety window. 

Builder’s Notes

I intend this project to be a sort of ongoing process of improvement. Every so often, I will be rebuilding this ship to upgrade her capabilities. This is the largest Lego space ship I’ve built, and my goal was to try and provide all of the features a real ship would need. Dan Jassim has been a big inspiration for me on this. This ship is actually in line with other ships I have built, which I unfortunately do not have any pictures of. Key features retained are a main deck that has the crew quarters and shuttle bay with a lower deck that has all the propulsion equipment in it. The big difference is that I’ve moved the bridge from the main deck to it’s own level.