7
Holly had seen old Virtual Reality recordings of the Carl Sagan, the VASIMR powered spacecraft that had taken Coppélia to Proxima b, but there was no comparison to the new space-cruiser, the Stephen Hawking. Her new ship was a beautiful sight to behold. She had seen it from a distance during its construction in orbit whilst captaining the Neil Armstrong, but she had never seen it up close before. To simply say it was impressive would be to do it an injustice. It was a spectacular testament to both engineering and art.
The Carl Sagan had been a demonstration of functionality, quite an ugly spaceship really, with no redeeming aesthetic features. Being constructed in space, and travelling only in space, there was no reward in making it look ‘pretty’ – it did its job and that was all that
