So this was gonna be a ship featured in one of the illustrations for this article but I didn't end up finishing it. I don't think I had space for it in the article anyway, so it doesn't matter. Anyway, this was to be a first generation of exploration ships used by the Commonwealth to ply the depths of interstellar space utilizing the newly discovered dark matter bridges.

I was going for a fairly minimalist design. There are 4 rotating habitats at the end of hollow booms. While the ship is doing a burn, the habitats stop spinning and fold back toward the rear of the ship, thus maintaining gravity during flight. 3 spherical containers of propellant are stored behind a large radiation shield (the ship uses an anti-matter engine) and 3 large radiators dissipate the heat generated from the reaction.

Ahead of the habitat are some facilities for things like water treatment, generating power, storing food, and things like that. Finally, at the very front of the ship is an zero-g laboratory and observatory, which is really the point of the whole ship.

Anyway, I like this design and I'll probably flesh it out and use it somewhere else. Incidentally, the ship is named after this guy because I think he's cool. I figure that most of the scientific/exploration ships would be named after famous scientists of Earth.