Kestrel Mk. III

Spacecraft Registry

Kestrel Mk. III
Spacecraft Characteristics
Base Hull	Scratch-built diamond-fiber composite
Drive Type	Hybrid thruster
Drive Rating	Very very fast
Owner	KJ DuPree
Flag of Record	Soviet Air Force
Faction	Soviet Air Force
Registry Number	Unregistered
Launched	n/a
Purpose	Racer; propulsion testbed
Primary Crew	KJ (PLT)
Other Crew	none
Operational Status	In storage pending repair.

(Created by KJ)

A hobby project started by the Ptichka's original chief engineer, the Kestrel series is an attempt to find a balance between minimum mass for best speed-drive performance and maximum possible acceleration drive thrust. Looks like nothing so much as an elongated ovoid for the central hull, two stubby wings at the front end, leading to two quite large engine pods. Powerplant and drive specs change whenever he has a chance to work on it, but the hull is a hard/wave hybrid. Diamond fiber being easy to handwave, but composites being a well understood science.

And of course it's painted red. Even though the central hull is barely big enough for a person, there’s not really room on the Ptichka for it, so it's in storage...

Known Vehicle Quirks

• Millenium Falcon Syndrome: The Kestrel series have very little in redundant systems, or space, or spare mass. As such, they tend to become horrible maintenance pigs, and various systems stop working. This is usually more annoying than life-threatening, and often can be fixed with percussive maintenance.
• Explosive Overclocking! The reaction engines on the Mk3 aren't quite pure wavetech; the Mk2 used almost purely hardtech reaction engines, but was completely destroyed in remote control testing. The Mk3 version sometimes has things fail catastrophically enough to look like explosions or gouts of flame coming out of the wrong place in the engine nacelles. This tends to be very exciting, especially for the pilot.
• Completely Impractical: The design of the ship has two massive engine pods on either side, connected via a short wing, with a small ovoid center hull with a canopy slung behind the wing. Because the center hull is only slightly larger than a coffin, KJ tends to leave it in storage and just stay on the Ptichka.

Trivia

• Constructed by the Ptichka's original chief engineer during his free time, long before racing around the solar system had caught on. As yet, one of the few craft solely built for it.
• Has yet to actually successfully complete a race, due to the nature of the design.
• Bright red. Obviously.