Welcome to the new year all! As my first and second post for 08 I thought I would show you a little of my scifi world.

This little do-dad is a navigation beacon. Think of it like a buoy in space that marks out the place that you can activate a device on your ship that sends your ship to another solar system. Most of these devices are quite old and rather rusty as all they have to do is stay in one place and transmit a number and flash a light.

The beacons are powered by a very small nuclear reactor. When the need to adjust their position a little bit they use a simple ion pulse that radiates in the appropriate direction. On the top of the beacons under the lexon dome is the navigational and sensor package. It uses a very simple computer hooked to a scanning sensor that spins around to triangulate itself.

The red rods you see around the device below the instrument package is part of the thruster system. The bulk of the thing is the reactor, not because it has to be powerful or anything, but because they are cheaply built using old technology and mostly spent fuel. The blocks you see on lower half that give it a grenade like appearance are actually just cooling fins for the reactor.

The blinky on the bottom is just for visibility so you don't ram you ship into the thing! };8>

When a ship is trying to jump to another star system they would want to get within 50000 meters of this thing before they activated the jump drive other wise they may not end up where they wanted to be. Ships always check with their own internal navigational systems to make sure their in the right spot before a jump. The beacons are simply used to help guide ships to the area as they send out a signal that ships can use to lock in on.