Everyone remembers the Jupiter II, famously lost in space on its maiden voyage in 1997, but who remembers the Jupiter I?
The Jupiter I class spaceship was a scout built in the early 1990s to explore Earth's solar system, propelled by a first generation sublightspeed gravimetric drive.
This single deck spacecraft carried 2 crew with sufficient life support for extended missions including bunks, a small food machine, ablutions (including the kitchen sink) and two electronic suspension tubes (often referred to by the misnomer "freezers") necessary for prolonged expeditions to the outer solar system. These facilities were fitted into 4 of the 8 bays arranged radially around a central astrogator, and the remaining 4 bays also included a control station (with fold-away seating for the pilot and copilot), airlock (plus radio telescope station and armoury), avionics suite (including flight computer, inertial navigator and flight recorder) and a spacesuit locker (leading to a small hold).
Only a few were built but their construction and operation provided the Deep Thrust programme with the engineering experience necessary to develop the far superior Jupiter II.
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I had to design the Jupiter I before tackling the Jupiter II. My engineering side needed to see what was mechanically possible before the introduction of late 1990's quantum contradimensional deck compression technology.
Faux mid 90's techno music "Harmful or Fatal" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/b...