Guide:Liberty

Liberty
Class Overview
Category	system defense cruiser
Operational	2058 - 2093
Constructed	51
Dimensions
Length	154.0m (radiators closed) 145.0m (radiators extended)
Beam	47.3 (radiators closed) 75.4m (radiators extended)
Mass	26,300 mt
Performance
Max Speed	0.35 c
Endurance	2 years
Complement
Officers	9
Enlisted	30
Tactical Systems
Beam Weapons	4x Sorac 1.2 Plus Class lasers
Missile Weapons	2x rocket turrets (w/300 kinetic-kill rounds) 4x nuclear missile launchers (20 missiles)
Shields	electromagnetic (18 mt)
Auxiliary Craft	3x boarding pods
Historical
Ships of Note	USS Bonhomme Richard (CDH-047)
Canonicity
Design	Spaceflight Chronology (Stan & Fred Goldstein and Rick Sternbach, Wallaby/Pocket Books, New York 1980)
Name	Spaceflight Chronology (et al)
History	Spaceflight Chronology (et al)

For the Liberty subclass medium transports, see Guide: Independence.

Background: The Hobbyist's Guide

The story of the dramatic rebirth of Earth’s spaceflight capability after WWIII typically concentrates on three near-legendary elements: the warp breakthrough of 2063, the arrival of the staggeringly advanced Vulcans and their technological assistance, and the proliferation of peaceful Earth interstellar exploration and colonization vessels through refitting of prewar designs with warp drive. In surveys made throughout the 23rd and 24th centuries, well-educated Earth citizens frequently express the belief that all military space activity around Earth came to a halt with the destruction of the last active orbital weapon platforms in WWIII, and that Earth’s defenses in the latter half of the 21st century hinged on the presence of intimidatingly powerful Vulcan voidships. However, this belief has little basis in fact. As early as 2058, the United States of America was building its first postwar transorbital warships. And even though the global collapse of infrastructure slowed down the national re-escalation, by the late 2060s the Liberty class system defense cruisers were Earth’s main line of defense against both interstellar intrusion and indigenous spatial conflict.

The Liberty ships were by most accounts very conservative vessels. These conical warships were built around fusion NTR engines with exhaust accelerators and petal-like radiator surfaces. Carrying plasma cannon, rockets and fusion-tipped missiles, they were intended to fight enemies both large and small at close, medium and long insystem ranges alike. They could in theory reach one-third lightspeed at constant acceleration but lacked the fuel reserves, protective systems and astrogation gear necessary for interstellar journeys. Yet they should not be mistaken for cheaply cobbled-together efforts by a dying civilization: the level of technology represented by the vessels is impressive by the standards of comparative interstellar history. From the very beginning, the Liberty program was intended to be the first step in Humanity’s reconquest of its native star system, and to rapidly surpass the achievements of the 2000s-2040s. Had Zephram Cochrane not succeeded in his audacious private warp experiment – or had the USAF been able to proceed with the planned 2055 launch of its own WD-1 faster-than-light test vehicle—Earth’s spaceflight history might have taken a very different form, with the Liberty class as its inspiration.

Fusion-powered NTR drive was made possible mainly through the perfection of compact reactors combining tokamak-style magnetic confinement and laser energizing. This form of fusion technology was ideal for spaceflight due to its low mass compared with reactors using combined magnetic confinement and energizing, or heavy e- or n-beam energizers. It did require large radiators to dissipate cyclically produced excess heat. In the Liberty design, the radiators were coupled with field guides for the exhaust accelerator system, forming a petal-like arrangement astern – an engineering solution peculiar to Earth, one out of many.

The rest of the defense cruiser was mundane engineering. Six biconical fuel/propellant tanks surrounded the reactor. Forward of a radiation shield, crew facilities featured standard zero-gee ccommodation with provisions for ±2.5 g acceleration in standard flight mode. In combat mode, the crew would board liquid-filled acceleration stations, to allow the cruiser to perform 80 g maneuvers that would bring to bear the four steerable bow plasma cannon, the twin rocket launchers, or the long range fusion missile racks. Alternately, the enemy could be burned to cinder with the drive plume hundreds of thousands of kilometers long.

Two sunrises on Ganymede. The drive plume of USS Liberty easily bests Sol in brightness, and nearly equals the radiation flux of Jupiter in deadliness, as the spacecraft establishes orbit around the moon and above the former mining colony. The Liberty vessels were not equipped for landing or carrying of orbit-to-surface auxiliaries, yet were elemental in re-establishing Human presence in the Jovian system and indirectly in bringing back online the mines and refineries. Bases around Saturn would have to wait a bit longer, being reactivated mainly with Vulcan help once Terran economies had stabilized in the early 22nd century.

The first Liberty ship gradually attained nominal drive capacity by 2062, but the USAF could not afford to perform an immediate test run due to the 2060 closing of the surviving White Sands spaceport and loss of heavy spacebus launch capacity. Construction crews did not finish orbital installation of armament until early 2064. By that time, though, six new Liberty hulls had been launched to orbit for installation of systems, in a desperate bid to show teeth in front of the Vulcan expeditions. And by 2070, there were no fewer than 51 of these ‘baby teeth’ in operation—but not in USAF hands. Vulcans had stepped in during the 2065 diplomatic expedition, and the Sparon-DeSoto treaty that was forced upon the national militaries now dictated international crewing of all armed spacecraft within 5,000 AUs of Sol.

The humblest of the visiting Vulcan vessels could naturally have blown the entire Liberty fleet out of the sky with minimal risk, had such an act of violence become necessary. But Vulcans insisted that the chances of a military confrontation within the Sol Transient Social Acclimatization Zone (far too intransient to the tastes of many a bitter Human) were less than 2.3% unless the Humans themselves provoked a crisis. Yet the Vulcans with their characteristic equanimity also insisted that there was no Vulcan blockade of the Sol system, and that visitors from the outside would be just as welcome to Sol as the Humans were free to leave the system.

True enough, the remains of the pre-war defense net of Earth eventually detected an intruder: a small vessel of unknown configuration entered a Neptunian approach corridor claimed by both Texan and Central African gas mining corporations in 2073. A task force of ten ships led by the profilic Nigerian Adm. Abel Niwen, UEDP, aboard USS Bonhomme Richard of Liberty class intercepted the craft without waiting for orders from United Earth Space Central, and enraging several nations. The remaining nuclear and biological missiles in their silos were readied, and for the last time in mankind’s history, the defense net stood by to explode unto itself, as soon as it was ascertained which nation was responsible for the intrusion. But to the astonishment of everybody, the ship turned out to be a somewhat lost alien explorer-merchantman carrying a crew of Tellarites, a race contacted at their homeworld 61 Cygni V by warp surveyor SS Leif Eirickson only days before. As Earth studied the captured Tellarite ship, the radio transmissions of the Eirickson sped towards home to relay the news of the discovery, of the worldwide panic the ‘sneak attack’ of the Eirickson had caused on Tellar, and of the peaceful solution to that panic by the hand-and-hoofshake of Captain Anders and monarch Gartov. But the transmissions would not arrive for another eleven years, and the public was far more inclined to believe the rumors that hideous aliens were preparing for an invasion of Earth.

Despite the best efforts of doomsayers, no invasion force followed in the footsteps of the Tellarites. Nor did the Vulcans intervene in any manner military or diplomatic—an amazing degree of restraint that convinced most UE Defense Pact members that Earth still retained sovereign control of its star system and foreign relations. Disarmament of national militias, effectively stalled as a counter-reaction to the Sparon-DeSoto treaty, now proceeded with vehemence and sincerity unimaginable back in the 2060s or early 2070s. In the end, the de-escalation also spelled the end of Liberty operations, and the large family of planned successor designs failed to materialize. A warp-powered successor did emerge, in the form of USS Jules Verne and her seventeen sisters, but this path proved a dead end as well.

By 2087, the UEDP was disbanded and most of its space assets given over to a truly unified United Earth Stellar Navy. The remaining Liberty vessels, now refitted with proper inertial damping, mainly saw training use in the colors of UESN Academy, instated in 2091. Built to enact a bygone doctrine, though, the ships proved of scant significance and were retired by 2093.

Ships

• Some commissioned ship names attributed to the Liberty class are:

USS Liberty

USS Bonhomme Richard (CDH-047)

Notes

• In order to not have the Columbus series craft as too fast (arriving at destinations pre-First Contact), all max speeds have been drastically reduced, (except for the DY-50).

• Timo's updated Guide replaced the Liberty's lasers with plasma cannon. However, the Construction Rules introduce those cannons in 2106, well past the class' operational period, so I'm leaving it with the lasers.

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• Appendix A: Of Ship Statistics
• Appendix B: Glossary
• Appendix C: Star Fleet Organization - General Outline
• Appendix D: Abbreviations From Outside