Sketches of various types of ships and space stations in Runaway to the Stars, and some of the design aesthetics of the different space-faring species. Obviously there’s more variety than this between different manufacturers, co-ed ships, bigger/smaller/richer spacecraft and such, but this is a good overview.

All of these structures are zero-gravity, unless the spaceship is accelerating or decelerating towards a target, which only usually happens during the first and last legs of trips. The vast majority of space travel in RttS happens between Planets Of Interest and wormhole gates positioned at Lagrange points in the POI’s orbit, usually L4 or L5. Gates can also be put in high orbit of a POI, but only if no moons are present. Reaching gates takes about a week, and then another week after passing through to get to the second POI. Gates usually have a small station community attached, with live-in workers who maintain the gates and communicate with travelers.

Travel away from the POI and gate complex, deeper into a system (like going to the gas planets from Earth) can be accomplish by “throwing” a wormhole exit there, but the hole closes after the gate machine turns off, and the return trip can take months to years. Stations and planet bubbles away from gates are usually very self-sufficient and isolated communities.

Thank you to hyratel@tumblr for force-feeding me rocket science until I got better at it ;)