Ye Olde Rocket Forum - Jay's "Tau Zero"

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackshire

Given your YORF "handle," a Concept Scale model rocket kit of *this* [SNIP] famous starship, the Leonora Christine, might interest you. Semroc, Sirius Rocketry, Rocketarium, Morerockets.com, or another manufacturer (even Estes or Quest, if they fancy her as a Concept Scale subject) could produce a good-looking (and flying) Leonora Christine kit.

My question is would those versions even resemble the description in the book? I defer to my compatriot Dean Fox:

Quote:

Originally Posted by DeanHFox

You got me thinking about Poul Anderson's Tau Zero again with that post, and I just wanted to share with the other forum members his description of the starship from that book:

From Chapter 2:

Seen from one of the shuttles that brought her crew to her, Leonora Christine resembled a dagger pointing at the stars.

Her hull was a conoid, tapering toward the bow. Its burnished smoothness seemed ornamented rather than broken by the exterior fittings. These were locks and hatches; sensors for instruments; housings for the two boats that would make the planetfalls for which she herself was not designed; and the web of the Bussard ramjet, now folded flat. The base of the conoid was quite broad, since it contained the reaction mass among other things; but the length was too great for this to be particularly noticeable.

At the top of the dagger blade, a structure fanned out which you might have imagined to be the guard of a basket hilt. Its rim supported eight skeletal cylinders pointing aft. These were the thrust tubes, that accelerated the reaction mass backward when the ship moved at merely interplanetary speeds. The "basket" enclosed their controls and power plant.

Beyond this, darker in hue, extended the haft of the dagger, ending finally in an intricate pommel. The latter was the Bussard engine, the rest was shielding against its radiation when it should be activated.

Thus Leonora Christine, seventh and youngest of her class.

I've never been able to get that imagery out of my head. :)