Maersk Line Orbital freighter in Neptune orbit. Powered by eight VASIMR plasma driven engines (variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket), the freighter moves bulk cargo from low orbit to high orbit where itA’s transferred to larger interplanetary freighters.
The VASIMR engine is highly efficient compared to a traditional chemical engine able to move 34 metric tons of cargo to a higher orbit for only 8 tons of expended fuel. However the trade off is that itA’s incredibly slow taking months to achieve this rather than days.
Therefore crews in the haulage business will typically sign up for a 12 month round trip tour. Although this type of work does not pay very well compared to the 10+ year interstellar tours, the trade off is that you always get a good view and are no more than eight hours from a conversation with home.
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Some design questions, if You don`t mind. Those foldables "bellow" the ship, are they low-temperature radiators, or solar photovoltaic panels? If they are solar panels, they seems to be redundant, due nuclear reactor, allready working for VASIMR thrusters. Also, further than Mars orbit, solar pannels are really inefficient...
Still, very cool ship, congratz!
Yep still here, back where it all started! Good to see the site back up and running.
To answer your questions no they are just redundancy radiators for the crew module.