Image: Starboard side

Image: Top/left

Image:Front view

Image: Port side

Image: Overhead view

By 2101 Colonies were well established on the Moon, Mars and Mercury. Large Stations were being built in orbit around Venus and Jupiter. The farther planets remained out of reach and travel between colonies was far from convienant with round trips taking years.

In 2113 a competition was started to spur development of faster more effecient means of transportation between colonies. The vehicles were to go from Earth orbit to Jupiter Station 1 (then the farthest colony established from Earth) refuel refresh and run back.

There were 11 entrants, 10 from the government-run companies of the established colonies. These consisted of rehashes of established designs with a few upgrades of technology or supplemental power sources such as solar sails. The 11th entrant, came from the breakaway colonies that existed in the asteroid belt that formed under the name of the Morgan Corporate Authority, named after the founding sponser of the original colonies.

The Morgan entry was the X-01 "Boudicea" (The Morgan Board of Directors definately felt they were the underdogs, Boudicea being the Icini Queen who took on the Roman Empire over two thousand years ago). The Boudicea was radically different, a "muscle car" to the planets. Instead of being launched from orbit it was designed to take off from a planetary surface suck in the nessesary fuel for its three engines (Turbofan Jet, Impulse, Ion)recharging itself and then thrusting at high velocity to its destination.

The Boudicea arrived at Jupiter Station 1 in the record time of 42 days. The nearest competer arrived 10 months later.

The Design

My design came from my belief that the only really practical way to colonize the solar system is to make it economical and swift. I wanted a muscle car. I built the Boudicea from the fuselages of the SeaQuest DSV, a Romulan Warbird and a 1/32 Scale F-104. Other bits included drop tanks from 1/32 scale jets a Saturn IB fin unit and tons of bits and sheet styrene.The decals were designed and printed by myself. The model is 18" long.

There are some things that I want to point out in particular to my design strategy. First of all the cockpit windows are white, I don't believe that glass would be used in construction of a spacecraft. Instead, I think a "virtual cockpit" would be used the white here would be a preference of the builders to achieve a visual balance and provide a reference for would be rescuers such as the "chop out" areas you see marked on large aircraft today signifying the best access to passenger compartments. Secondly, the engine assembly, many years ago McDonnell Douglas before being absorbed by Boeing researched a turbofan engine that had its blades mounted on the outside of the engine. I felt that this could lead to a combination fanjet/impulse/ion system where all three were mounted together. The fan jet and a quasi/lifting body shape could get the Boudicea airborne, then the impulse engine would take over as the ship got higher and the fan jet lost effectiveness. Before leaving the atmosphere the ram scoops would suck in air purging the Empty tanks of the impulse fuel and refilling them with gases and water vapor to run the ion engine.

The ship was designed with a massive heat shield on the bottom which would allow it to skim the upper atmosphere of terestrial or gas giant type planets skim in the nessesary fuel then blast off again using the planets gravity to sling shot away. It was this philosophy I used in giving the ship the overall design. The tall tail, not nessesarily there for aerodynamic stability is a good platform for instrumentation such as astrogation and assorted instrument packages. This prevents taking up valuable cargo space or interferance from the Ion Drive....Plus it looks cool. An aside, many of the ships I build under my Morgan Corporate Authority Guise have T-Tails. I have looked at aircraft companies for a long time and I believe that some have distinguishable traits. This goes with another philosophy of mine that any company would use a competition to showcase its technology and show its practical applications such as potential military use.

Finally, the overall black scheme I thought was a nice change from the bright colors of most racers. Besides being more intimidating I felt the "Stealthy" quality would prevent competitors from monitoring its progress.