Fusion Drive

Completed 2018-02-15. Available releases:

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A fusion drive. It was originally intended to be a depiction of the drive for the "Discovery II" ship, from a 2005 NASA concept, but it turns out the Discovery II is not a pure-fusion drive, as this depiction is.

Note triangular radiators (they are slanted to avoid the intense radiation. This also explains the hexagonal elements; they are less wasteful of space than square ones. The fusion reaction is deuterium-tritium, and as-such produces mostly Helium as the product, hence the red-orange color.

I'm experimenting here with drawing lens flares by hand. The key fact to know is that lens flares go through the center of the image. Also there's tons of diffraction, as you would expect from the massive glare of staring into a nuclear explosion. (You're also being bombarded by, like, an assload of invisible neutrons and ionizing radiation, but the magic of this being merely a colored-pencil drawing prevents you from dying horribly.)

The whole image looks orange because the orange light hitting the sensor of the camera is bright enough that some would reflect back onto the primary lens, and then reflect again onto other parts of the sensor, coating it in an even wash.

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