Long Shot

-Attention! This entry is incomplete, since I have yet to finish reading all the books and stories describing the ship. However, it still contains a great deal of spoilers for various books (including the new Ringworld's Children), so you have been warned.

INTRODUCTION

The Long Shot is the only known spaceship to mount an experimental Quantum II hyperdrive - an FTL engine more than 3000 times faster than a normal Hyperdrive, it can open new realms and possibilities in space exploration. The Quantum II Hyperdrive involves very advanced technology, what was the reason of the Human and Kzinti repeated failures to replicate the technology (even though they had the Long Shot to study).

HISTORY

The Long Shot was originally constructed by the Puppeteers for experimental purposes. It had cost them 7 billion stars ('star' is a form of interstellar currency. 1 star roughly equals to 20 credits), a pretty steep price for a starship. Since such an expensive spacecraft that is also useless for most purposes (see 'capabilities' below) would be almost impossible to sell, General Products (a Puppeteer owned company) decided to make a 'commercial' of sorts.

General Products hired one human, Beowulf Shaeffer, to take the Long Shot to the galactic core in a trip lasting several months. The Puppeteers hoped that such a journey could help the publicity of the Long Shot, and create a profitable market for the extremely fast, yet cumbersome, Quantum II Hyperdrive.

Instead, Shaeffer discovered upon reaching his destination, that the core of our galaxy is exploding in a chain-reaction of nova's. This discovery would change the face of Known Space forever - as the Puppeteers, fearing the wave of lethal radiation that would sweep their corner of space more than 20,000 years in the future, packed up and left in a long journey towards the fringes of our galaxy (or even beyond it), causing a huge economic crisis in their wake. The reason for their sudden departure won't be revealed to the public for a long time afterwards.

The fate of the Long Shot after that is not entirely clear. It is known that it ended up in the Sol system, hidden safely on the largest of Neptun's moons, 200 years after Shaeffer's journey. At that point it was used by Nessus, an insane Puppeteer, and his crew of two humans and a Kzin, to investigate the Ringworld for the first time. After completing the journey to and back from the Ringworld, the Puppeteers, as payment to the crew of the ship, apparently gave the Long Shot to the humans and the Kzin Patriarchy for study. During the next several decades, the Kzinti will somehow manage to wrestle out control of the ship from the humans, and gain exclusive access to it. That's how during the Fringe War the Kzinti were using Long Shot as a courier vessel between the Ringworld system and the Patriarchy, more than 200 light years away.

During the Fringe War, a Protector native to the Ringworld, named Tunesmith, managed to board the Long Shot and steal it with help from his crew of a Human, a Kzin and a Puppeteer.


APPEARANCE

Long Shot consists of a GP #4 hull, a lot of machinery cramped inside it, and fusion drives sticking out of the hull itself at an angle. A #4 hull is a transparent sphere of approximately 300 meters (1000 feet) in diameter, and it's considered a very large hull by Known Space standards, possibly the largest ever built. However, Ringworld's Children describes Long Shot as 1 mile wide, suggesting a completely unique hull design for the ship (other characters supposedly mistake it for a #4 due to its look). Through its transparent material, a large amount of machinery can be seen, cramping the interior and leaving only several cubic meters of free space for the pilot, consisting of two chambers - a cockpit, and a rec room directly above it. These chambers are located right at the bottom of the ship, next to the hull itself.

CAPABILITIES

Long Shot is equipped with a Quantum II Hyperdrive, capable of travelling at one light year per 75 seconds, or more than 420,000 times the speed of light. Unfortunately, that is the only bright side (actually, the purpose) of the vessel. The experimental machinery cramping the interior not only means very little space for the pilot, but also zero place for cargo, weapons, or even trivial equipment such as artificial gravity generators. As such, the only use for the vessel can be as a courier, and that is indeed how it was used by the Kzinti during the Fringe War, right up to the point it was highjacked by Tunesmith.

The Kzinti discovered, however, that a large part of the machinery is recording devices or simply dummies. The Puppeteers placed them on purpose, they wanted other races to think the ship is unfit for war, thus preventing them from exploiting the ship as such. Nevertheless, it seems that there's still too little room for any serious weapons or crew space. The Kzinti did manage to squeeze in an artificial gravity generator though.

Record 119 - ship - Last update 28 Mar 2007, 23:10:25

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