Vespucci

Project home: Vespucci D at OrbitHangar
Author: Omegaspace, John McCain and Nectioch.

The Vespucci is a deep-space ship designed for long-range travel through the solar system. It is not capable of planetary landing. There are five major variants, each building on the work of the previous authors:

• Vespucci Explorer (also known as Vespucci A): by OmegaSpace, released on approximately 2001-11-29 for Orbiter version 10910. This predates vessel-vessel docking capability, so the ship carried no auxiliary craft. Its dry mass was 400 kilotons and it carried 65 kilotons of fuel with a specific impulse of 50 km/s, giving a delta-v budget of 7,530 m/s.

• Vespucci B: tweaked by John McCain and released on 2003-12-27 for Orbiter version 031217 to add four docking ports for auxiliary craft (typically Delta-gliders). This was still a basic ship with no DLL. Performance was identical to the original Vespucci Explorer.

• Vespucci C: a further development by John McCain released on 2004-04-06, the ship now used Radu's spsdk package, with RCS thruster modelling, a new main engine exhaust visual effect, and a panel. IDS was removed from the docking ports. The vessel's dry mass was now 520 kilotons, still with 65 kilotons of fuel, thus dropping the delta-v budget to 5,890 m/s.

• Vespucci mesh update: this was a tweak to the mesh model by OmegaSpace, released on 2004-06-06. It required the Vespucci C DLL to operate, with no change in performance from that ship. This mesh is also usable with the Vespucci D.

• Vespucci D: an update by Nectioch, released on 2004-06-24. The ship now had a custom-built DLL and modelling of its drive system reactor, as well as a modified mesh, OrbiterSound support, restoration of IDS for subcraft docking ports, and many other changes. The ship now carries only 15 kilotons of fuel and its dry mass is back to 400 kilotons; however, since the specific impulse of its drive is now 1 Mm/s, it has a delta-v budget of 36,810 m/s, easily enough to get anywhere in the solar system without having to wait for Hohmann transfer opportunities. Acceleration is about 1 m/s/s fully loaded, though for short periods a plasma vent system may be employed to triple available thrust. A ramscoop system is available, which allows replenishment of the fuel supply during the coast phase of long journeys at a slight drag penalty. On an interplanetary mission, it is entirely practicable to begin orbital insertion at the destination with full tanks.

Although the Vespucci D was released for Orbiter version 031217, it remains fully usable in version 050216. It is believed that all Vespucci DLL source code has been lost; further development is unlikely.