Let’s jump ahead a few hundred years, after all of the great advancements in the private space industry, and head on an interstellar adventure in the RSS Pale Blue Dot and RSS Mote of Dust by Roland Peschetz. These ships look they belong in some of my favorite hard scifi movies doing impossible things. The Pale Blue Dot came first, with Mote of Dust improving on the advanced technology (and, as the builder says, improving on his build skills!).

This ship just feels heavy – the excellent sculpting and greebling with the landing gear, airlocks, and engine just add heft to this impressive ship.

The Grenadier 929 by halfbeak is the Lunar League’s primary attack/defense unit operating between the Moon and Earth. Able to vertically take off and land on most flat areas, its primary propulsion is a photovoltaic powered, hydrogen propelled magnetoplasmadynamic thruster – also known as the Lorentz Force Accelerator. Its four gimbal-mounted directional rocket thrusters and four photo voltaic panels include redundancies allowing it to still operate one as little as one of each.

Heavily armed, its main offensive weapons are four self-guided shrapnel mortars, designed to approach enemy units at high speed, then exploding to create a highly destructive cloud of shrapnel causing huge damage without the need for pinpoint accuracy.

The 929 is well defended with bow-mounted laser, reinforced titanium front shield and an EM field-generating cage to protect against EMP attack and general environmental radiation. It also features a pilot module that can separate from main propulsion unit and function as a lifeboat with its own limited propulsion and guidance systems.

The builder has also included a fantastic visual breakdown of all the components and created swaths of background information to go with it!