Ascent An Orion’s Arm future history image. Sinclair Re-Usable Nuclear Gas-Core (Closed-Cycle Nuclear Light-Bulb) Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle-Single Stage to Orbit (HLLV-SSTO). Under cover of Sinclair’s hoax, fifty some years after Contact, Martian and Moonite mine and forest Earth; and engineers of the Sinclair clan began to design heavy launch vehicles to loft raw materials payloads for transfer (via an OTV system to be depicted in a later post) to staging area’s on Earth’s moon. These vehicles provide the means of Clan Sinclair’s exodus to the Moon. This would fall around the + 255 year mark on my Orion’s Arm future history timeline. The Sinclair Nuclear HLLV-SSTO marks the beginning of what becomes, over the course of time, a legacy of spacecraft design. See Future History Timeline chart “After the Leaving” for required context. Link: Orion’s Arm Future History Timeline. Several sources inspired this design, Anthony Tate’s Liberty Ship, the Convair Super Nexus, and the TSTO HHLV – links provided below. Sinclair’s re-usable nuclear SSTO is seen here with radiator panels deployed, the sixteen closed cycle nuclear light-bulb style engines are arranged around a truncated-plug. Ports for chemical terminal descent/braking thrusters are closed in this image. The vehicle is composed of two re-useable sections, the powered ascent/descent stage and a command module with a fifty passenger capability which performs the role of tug on orbit, extracting the payload carrier from its throw-away aero-shell. Upcoming posts will detail payload extraction and descent configuration. Design Reference Links: Convair Super Nexus. My original Liberty Ship post along with Winchell Chung’s commentary on the topic can be viewed on the Atomic Rockets website at the link below. If you scroll down from the Liberty Ship on the Atomic Rockets site you will find Winchell’s post on the Convair Nexus designs, as well as links to Scott Lowther’s Unwanted blog posts on the subject. GCNR Liberty Ship. TSTO HHLV Background image courtesy of NASA/JPL. All models are my own Bryce creations, constructed in Bryce 6.3 and rendered in Bryce 7 Pro. As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.