Burning your own cargo: nuclear thermal flying on the Tempest

Every other heavy ship in Halcyon's fleet buys fuel at a port. The Tempest Ice Runner makes its own. It carries 38,000 tonnes of water ice from Enceladus to the settlements of the outer system and the Belt, and it runs a nuclear thermal drive on hydrogen cracked from that same water. On a long run, a Tempest crew is quite literally burning the cargo.

That self-sufficiency gives the Tempest a range of 160 AU and makes it the backbone of outer-system water supply. It also makes it one of the most interesting ships to fly. Pilots must understand reactor thermal management, the propellant cracking process and the constant trade-off between speed and cargo. Push the drive towards its top speed of 380 km/s and you deliver sooner, but with less ice to sell. At a cruise consumption of about 7.6 tonnes per 100 AU, the arithmetic matters.

The Outer-System Ice Runner Rating is an 18-week course at Enceladus Station. Ground school starts remotely before students arrive in the Saturn system, so they can begin flying soon after. The syllabus covers the nuclear thermal drive in depth, loading operations under the Enceladus plumes, traffic in Saturn's ring plane, and the long cruise watches that make up most of a Tempest pilot's working life.

Students fly 150 simulator hours and 120 flight hours aboard working Tempest vessels, as part of three-pilot crews. The check run is a full laden delivery from Saturn to a Belt delivery point, which takes weeks and tests stamina as much as skill.

Tuition is 176,000 credits, though ice consortia sponsor most seats. The first-time pass rate is 85 per cent, and the next intake starts on 16 February 2188.

I learned to fly on a Sparrow at Tasman Field and never imagined I would end up at Saturn. If you like quiet, careful, self-reliant flying, the ice run might suit you. And if you want to go further still, many Tempest pilots go on to Deep Explorer Command.