Lunarian Dragonfly

The Dragonfly, or Boeing L250, is the most common flight transport on Luna, the workhorse of the 21st century, the backbone of the Republic’s transportation industry with a history spanning decades. Designed by Lunarians to haul people or light cargo from place to place, it is not intended for deep space long hauls but can easily go anywhere in the Earth/Luna system and back again, navigating Earth’s atmosphere just as easily as the vacuum of space. It is the latest in a long line of vehicles designed by a people born in space.

There is no mistaking a Dragonfly as anything but Lunarian, full of curves without a single window breaking the smooth surface. Sandwiched between the inner and outer hull is closed-cell foamed titanium designed to maximize strength and thermal isolation while minimizing mass. This exoskeleton insulates from the wild temperature swings of space while resisting the forces of spaceflight.  Its thickness varies from point to point allowing additional structure where strength is needed. The geometrical mathematics of its shape and the engineering mechanics of its materials form a major part of the flight calculations the AI routinely performs to keep this bird flying straight and true.

While Lunarians highly value beauty for its own sake, they are intensely practical when it comes to their engineering. Just ask any aerospace designer which is more important and they will undoubtedly inform you that minimizing mass is much more important than a sweet set of curves. If you point out the graceful curves of a Dragonfly, they will assure you that its form is mandated by purely physical considerations, that its contours are the result of going to great lengths to eliminate all extraneous mass from the design. Thus, the shape of a Dragonfly directly reflects the forces at work on it. Its beauty is purely coincidental.

The size of a large city bus, it has two massive outriggers, like Jurassic shoulder blades, bulging under the skin across its back, one set angled forward and the other towards the rear of the craft, the foreword span smaller than the aft. They sweep over the top of the ship in a graceful arc, thick and massive in the middle and narrowing significantly towards the end where the thrusters are mounted.

The overall shape of the fuselage, with outriggers removed, has a thick hump running the length of the forward section like a spine, blending smoothly into the top. It is flat on the bottom where it rests on the ground. The extended aft section has a large door that hinges at the bottom and serves as the main ramp into the ship. A Boeing L250 has an organic quality reminiscent of her namesake, Dragonfly.

A Dragonfly is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW2065’s magnetoplasma thrusters. A microwave plasma generator caps one end with the electromagnetic nozzle extending from it, narrowing to a point rather like an ice cream cone. The only moving parts on the thruster are small needle valves metering the hypergolic fuel flowing into the plasma generator.

It is the electromagnetic nozzle that is the star of the show, designed for the sole purpose of accelerating tiny bits of plasma to velocities approaching half the speed of light in just a few feet. It is constructed one atom at a time, layer upon layer, in a solid matrix containing the equivalent of over one hundred and sixteen million linear feet of Calconn superconductive cable in a complex arrangement that maximizes the electromagnetic fields generated inside the device. It is Newton’s Law incarnate where exceedingly small masses undergo extremely high accelerations resulting in extraordinarily large forces.

Molded into the plasma generator is a massive electromagnetic hub that connects the thruster to the outrigger allowing it to be vectored anywhere within a full hemisphere. With each thruster controlled independently, flying a DC250 is like balancing an elephant on the head of a pin.

Because of specific stipulations within the Treaty of Independence, a major element missing in a Dragonfly is shielding. According to the Treaty, no Lunarian spacecraft can be fitted with either offensive or defensive armament including electromagnetic shielding. Thus, a Dragonfly has no real defense against bullets, missiles, or energy beams other than speed, quickness and the cunning of her pilots.