AMP Surveyship

These were Twenty-second Century spacecraft designed to transport a crew of thirty-three scientists, engineers, and support technicians under the command of a five person spacecraft staff. The surveyship’s mission was to perform a fly-by survey of a colony-world’s star system, and land on the candidate planet and perform a comprehensive inventory of all aspects of the planet. The objective of the survey was to determine if the planet was habitable and if it had sufficient resources to support a colony and ultimately support trade. The first AMP Surveyship was the Beagle commissioned on June 25, 2130 CE and launched toward Procyon in 2131 CE.

The early Beagle-class Surveyship were notable for the four booms with crew quarters and radiation shields. This configuration was abandoned in subsequent classes of surveyships as unnecessary because the crew remained in hibernation for more than 90% of the voyage.

The propulsion system of the surveyships was a two-stage AMP drive. The first stage used the matter-antimatter reaction to heat a tungsten reactor core. Hydrogen was cycled through the heated core to create a hydrogen reaction mass that was expelled through a traditional rocket nozzle. This produced a 1G acceleration that produced a terminal velocity of .23c or 69,000kps. The second stage of the AMP drive employed the proton-antiproton reaction directly to produce continuous acceleration for the first half of the journey. This produced an average velocity of .64c or 192,000kps.