EITVWayfinder
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The Wayfinder
The colony ship for Embers in the Void
The Ship's Layout
The main section of the Wayfinder is dominated by the colony modules. The modules themselves are roughly squashed oblate spheres, lumpy with interior living spaces, machinery, and the transparent hemispheres of gardens and "open spaces". Since the acceleration of the ramjet is undetectable, there is no gravitational or centripetal "up" direction, but all of the transparent hemipsheres face opposite the direction of travel, back toward Earth.
On the side facing the direction of travel is a huge foam shield like a convex lens or a dinner plate, shielding the entire living section of the ship from any interstellar debris. Even hydrogen atoms can be lethal projectiles when traveling at 0.5 light speed. The shield is constructed of rigid foam, easily repaired, and covered with millions of individual tiles which are designed to deteriorate over the course of the journey without needing to be replaced.
The colony modules are grouped into six sets of five. Every five modules are laid out at the five points of a star, connected by a superstructure to a central node full of equipment such as backup life support, central science and social areas, as well as the TaSC Force stations.
The rosettes of five modules are themselves set in a super-rosette of six, with each rosette at the points of a hexagon. The rosettes are connected on their own superstructure to the Central Core modules in the middle.
The Central Core is another rosette of six, though the modules are all continuously linked one to the next rather than through a central hub. Each of the colony rosettes is linked by a tube to the middle of one of the connecting tubes. The Core consists of the Control module, two Engineering modules, two Science modules, and one Community module.
The Ship's Mission
Known only to TaSC Force members and a few engineers on board is the fact that the ship has been given a mission as well -- ensure the safety and integrity of the colony as it travels. The ship's core systems monitor all activity and can report incidents and oddities to the Taskers. Colonists should keep believing that the Taskers alone monitor them constantly, for it keeps the colonists more likely to behave if they believe the Taskers are in charge. The ship may be able to take some preventative steps itself via automated systems if the Taskers are unavailable or if the effect is too minor to disturb a Tasker team.
The Ship's Technology
The Wayfinder employs a Bussard ramjet as its mode of interstellar propulsion. An "engine" module leads ahead of the main body of the ship on six sets of tethers that go through the shield and attach to the main ring. This module generates a huge net of magnetic energy which it casts out around the ship in a five-mile-wide cone. The conical field gathers interstellar hydrogen, solar wind, and other particle debris. Far behind the ship, the cone narrows into a point less than a molecule wide. This squeezes the hydrogen into such a small area that it heats and compresses its density by a million times, igniting nuclear fusion that pushes the magnetic field, which pushes the drive unit, which pulls the main body of the ship along behind it.
The main body of the ship also has several systems of chemical propellant and ion thrusters, for emergency maneuvering but mainly for use upon reaching Barnard's Star.
The Ship's Occupants
The Wayfinder's 30 colony modules have been loaded with 100 families each, at an average of about 400 people per colony module. One-third of the colonists in each module are put into cold sleep at launch, to be revived upon reaching the destination. They are designated to be the first on the ground at each habitable world. The other two-thirds will live through the journey in space, growing the gardens and learning how to live in space. Upon reaching the destination, they will maintain the Wayfinder as a permanent space station, to be the main supply depot for food and equipment while the colonies are established. Some will then be homesteaders on the colony worlds, but most of them will never set foot on ground again.
The colonists include everything from manual laborers to doctors and scientists to police.
At launch, there are a total of 12,191 adults and children in the colony modules.
In addition to the colonists, there are 10 TaSC Force teams on board. Each team was trained on the ground and in space, then hand-picked and grouped into teams for a diversity of problem-solving and troubleshooting skills. Thus, each team's makeup is unique. There are a total of 61 Taskers on board.
The crew is comprised of five ten-person Engineering teams, five ten-person Science teams, and five ten-person Crew teams, all brought in and out of cold sleep on rotating schedules, one year per team. All occupy the central core of the ship but mostly stay to their individual sections, particularly the Science teams. It's their job to maintain all the functions of the Wayfinder as it travels. There are a total of 150 crew members on board.
Artist's Rendering
This is a close approximation of the Wayfinder in the planning stages (when it was still called the Wayfarer). In the final design, the colony pods were much larger and the core pods much smaller, and the strutwork was strengthened. And of course the meteor shield is not depicted here.
