Yay, another project that has really nothing to do with Celestial Chaos!  This one's slightly more relevant, but I know it's not any of the starships in my profile sidebar.  With all the lore people are posting, I wanted to try my hand at an origins thing with my own twist on it.  I had a love-hate relationship with hard sci-fi starships for a while, believing them to look super cool while destroying all the handwavium-based fun of normal sci-fi, but as of late that has turned solely into a love.  There's just something about all the things to take into consideration that most sci-fi franchises gloss over at best, like heat distribution and maneuvering.  While I'll still go with the established designs for my fleet, as hard sci-fi ships of this type are brittle, not very heavily armed or capable of being armed, and they're a pain to build, I might churn out a few more like this one as time goes on.  It was fun, to say the least.

You know what time it is!

Class: Venture 
Type: Experimental Alcubierre-Johnstone-White Warp Ship 
First Flown: 8/23/15
Length: 133 m  
Width: 49 m  
Height: 51 m  
Armament:  

• None
  

Top Speed:  

• Sublight: 10,000 m/s  
  
  
• FTL: 2.743c  
  
  

Powerplant: 1 Mk. XXI(s) Fission Reactor, 2 Solar Panels  
Thrust: 1 Zephyr Industries/Lockheed Martin MagnetoPlasmaDynamic (MPD) Thruster
FTL: 2 Brony Aerospace FT1 Alcubierre-Johnstone-White Exotic Matter Rings
Shields: Electromagnetic Hull Plating (For Protection Against Solar Radiation) 
Maneuvering System: Multiple Fixed RCS Assemblies  
Displacement: 1,000 tons  
Commissioned Ships:  

• Skyship Venture (XWV-01) 
  
  

Crew: 6
Maximum Range: 4 light years without replenishment  
Cost: $250 billion Skylord Dollars ($500 billion USD) (Including Research and Development)
Auxiliary Aircraft: 

• None 
  

The Skyship Venture was a joint project between the Skylord Space Agency and NASA based on the proposed superluminal drive system of Dr. Miguel Alcubierre and refined by NASA's Dr. Harold White and UTSSA's Dr. Arrin Johnstone, who refined the ring design to greatly reduce energy requirements and developed the exotic matter necessary respectively.  The three collaborated with the United States Air Force, Skylord Air Force, UTSSA, and NASA to design a starship that could carry humans faster than light for a reasonable amount of time, as opposed to the nanosecond-length warp bubbles that existed in a few laboratories.  By changing the ring shape from a flat ring to a rounded doughnut, Dr. White reduced the energy requirement to only the mass of Voyager 1, something a Skylord Mk. XXI nuclear fission reactor could handle with ease, the conversion to negative energy taking place using the Casimir Effect in the rings.  As the UTS had never slowed their space program after the Space Race wound down, they had made additional advancements in starship construction, including SSTO spacecraft which greatly aided in construction and electromagnetic engines such as the MPD propelling Venture and the VASIMRs now so common on Skylord Space Fleet craft.  The Venture was, until recently, one of the most expensive space projects in the world, including all of the launches to build its drydock, component launches, and the components themselves.  It was recently eclipsed by the Andromeda-class fleet carrier, although that will definitely soon lose its spot as well.  Capable of carrying 6 crew 4 light-years at just under 2.75 times the speed of light, Venture's underwhelming performance compared to newer FTL ships underscored just how revolutionary this change in human space flight was.  No longer did the speed of light restrict humanity to extremely long voyages to only the nearest neighbors.  During one flight, sensors discovered that the warp field could be sustained even with power concentrated to the immediate sides of the vessel, leading to the development of Assymetric Field Warp Nacelles, which greatly reduced the space needed for FTL equipment.  The Venture, joined by the White-designed IXS Enterprise, will be conducting additional research into warp technology for a projected service life of 4 years.  Until then, as more and more vessels are constructed that are bigger, faster, and more powerful, Venture will serve as a reminder that even the biggest thing started small.