Cosmic Explorer 1

Appearance

The Cosmic Explorer was one of the first megascale ships built in the Cosmic Era, and it was a spectacular failure. The ship was built from the hollowed out husk of a mined out asteroid. Extensive but spartan living facilities were built into the front, and the rear of the asteroid was reshaped into a blast shield for the five orion engines that would provide thrust for the ship. At close to four kilometers long, the unprecedented use of orion engines, let alone five, was planned to provide the behemoth with the same speed an acceleration as a normal cruiser.

Crew: 6000, max occupancy 30,000, skeleton 350

Offensive Capability: 20 medium naval lasers, 5 heavy naval lasers, 16 anti-ship torpedo launchers. Fighter bays capable of holding and supporting an aerospace wing. Numerous anti-fighter and point defense weapons. This seems like a large amount, but the Cosmic Explorer was enormous and the weaponry was intended to provide basic deterrent and not to act as a military force.

Defensive Capability: Heavy armor

The Folly

The Cosmic Explorer was equipped with a minimal crew and a handful of craft for its shakedown cruise. It was planned that the Cosmic Explorer would leave its Lunar orbit at low speed. Once it was clear of the Earth Zone, the ship would fire its orion engines and make a super cruiser to the Jovian moons, rendezvous with the fleet tender ship AFS Aeolia Schenberg, and after inspection, return to the Moon in what would be record time.

The ship left lunar orbit under power from just a single engine. Once it was in position to fire all five of the engines, the crew did a countdown, and then fired. The Cosmic Explorer began to accelerate as expected but less than a minute at power, engine 3 suffered critical failure. This cascaded over to the other engines, and the cooling and control systems went offline and then all five engines detonated. The damage to Cosmic Explorer was catastrophic, 80% of the crew was killed, and the entire hull of the ship was compromised. The entire aft section of the ship was horrifically irradiated.

The Wreck of the Cosmic Explorer

Cosmic Explorer 1 is still on a tumbling orbit around the sun. The ship was abandoned, and reaching it is only of modest difficulty. Boarding it is challenging as the life support systems are completely destroyed. In addition to no atmosphere, and no thermal moderation, there is a dangerous amount of radiation throughout the entire ship.

Why explore the wreck? it is a well known wreck, it is relatively easy to reach. It wasn't attached to any military or intelligence ops, and there aren't any bleak or terrible secrets inside of it, other than hubris.

In game, a ship making any sort of run between Earth and Jupiter that is stricken and needs to find supplies like water or food can find itself in proximity to the hulk of the Cosmic Explorer. They can mount a resupply mission to the ship to bring back food and other non-valuable supplies, daring the rads and rotation of the hulk.