ChESS Blog

A fusion-powered fleet carrier and conventional NTR fast attack craft wrap up a plane change maneuver during a military exercise in a contested white dwarf system.

A massive orbital city in the L5 point of Luyten b featuring four connected O'Neill Cylinders and a central microgravity hub.

A standard short-range orbital transport in use in the relatively urbanized Luyten's Star system.

The "Gatecrasher" interceptor is a common fixture of anti-piracy operations in the edges of many star systems.

An incredibly massive interstellar ship built around a metallic asteroid.

Now with previously-unpublished renders from different camera angles! 

This work was part of a small series that represented my abortive early attempts to inject plot into my setting. This asteroid orbits a planet in the (deep breath) PSO J207.7496+29.4240 brown dwarf system and serves as the regional headquarters for the Astro-Metro Interstellar Logistics Corporation.

A pair of oxygen-rich gas planets orbit each other in a distant star system, potentially concealing exotic aerial life forms beneath their clouds.

This Blender project was one of my earliest attempts at creating a full scene, as opposed to just having a single spacecraft in the middle of nowhere. It also represents a departure from the usual setting, as this image takes place in the late 21st Century, as opposed to the rest of my setting, which occurs in the early 2600s.

Yet another departure from my normal work, this time an experiment in aerodynamic shapes: the Ku-197 "Samoyed" SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit). I first conceptualized this idea after hearing about the Ion Wing experiments done by hobbyists at small scales. The basic concept is that of a standard ion engine using a thin cathode and anode to create a flow of particles to produce thrust, but flattened and shaped over the wing of an aircraft.

This project was an early foray into radial symmetry, and was done before I had the proper addons in Blender to carry out the process automatically. It was also an experiment in unusual shapes, as the ring architecture, especially lacking any sort of core, is somewhat uncommon in plausible science fiction spacecraft. 

An experiment in both more complex materials (the asteroid surface shader), as well as station design. This also remains a canon element in my setting.