Very neat, and I love the plane designs! So it's Single-Stage-To-Orbit capable, albeit needs to be launched from a mother-aircraft?

Ah and just noticed the cannon, so it's a military plane?

It's a long mission, so the air-launch was done to save on fuel and to look cool for the picture. Mostly to look cool.

The plane has an impossible hybrid turbo-ramjet/scramjet engine and is effective in all speed regimes, so long as the pilot believes it works. That's why the space center chose Space Fox to be the pilot - she has one brain cell and is not worried.

As for the "cannon," that's just an RCS port. I had to have a few small thrusters to make maneuvering in space at least seem feasible.

I agree with Alex - way cool!

Vix

heh I see, thanks! And that's a bit harsh on poor Space Fox but at least she's content ;) Ah OK, yes I was a bit surprised as it looks like a civilian plane...well spacecraft! Is the star above the moon meant to be anything in particular?

That red star is there to provide some more complex lighting in a later picture in the series. It's a binary system with planets in orbit of a distant red dwarf as well, so there'll be a picture where the ship is lit by a red star from the front and by the larger blue star from the back.

Ah OK, thanks, interesting, that should be rather striking!

Wow. Everything about this is awesome but that background really shines!

Thanks! I was a bit worried about the background to be honest. Since everything is so far away, I couldn't do my usual thing of adding way too much detail to everything.