Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
phavoc said:I suspect the early explorers would not have an air/raft. They are exploring space and if they find something interesting it would be followed up by a properly equipped ship with the right personnel. The onboard scientist and lab would be oriented towards collecting system and planetary data. To properly explore a planet or even an orbital body would require a much larger ship and a more robust crew complement. The early jump ships might even sacrifice an ability to land on planets to save power/space.
As for armaments, I would think the first ships would have no weapons at all. In theory they haven't found out just how crowded the universe is! Plus there would be no extrasolar pirates. Even intrasystem piracy may be a relatively minor thing. After all, where are you going to go and sell the cargo/ships without eventually having them return to the inhabited areas and getting caught?
You have to remember Prometheus was settled by slower than light spaceships, if a Jump Drive ship is going to go there, there is a possibility of violence, so minimum armaments is recommended if only to prevent the Jump Drive from being stolen. I would think the first jump drives would be unique and one of a kind, so the first jump ships would tend to be large, probably from 1000 to 10,000 dtons, depending on the budget of the country of company which builds it, that way a lot of colonists can be transported at once, and the early fusion reactors would tend to be huge as well, smaller ships would rely on more compact fission drives.
I think Proxima b might also be a colony world. Since the ESA seems to be developing Prometheus, I think NASA would send a colony to develop Proxima b.