Grinder is an unusual, almost
tank-like in appearance, gunship. Its story of appearance is absurd - in
the best Russian traditions.
The Russian Mars Polar Contingent
issued a requirement for a hovercraft gunship that could be used to
escort convoys and assist in the making of tunnels or clearing avalanches.
Such a hovercraft was built and its serial production started; the geoplanetological
expeditions were perfectly satisfied, until it turned out that the hovercraft
was nearly useless and very vulnerable in desert storms. The vessels depended
on air for their movement, and had difficulty advancing in the high-speed
winds of the Mars' North Pole. Sands, moving at incredible speeds, blasted
the craft's shields until they were gone, and then bombarded the hull,
causing immense damage and sometimes taking out the main reactor of a hovercraft.
The bad thing, once a desert storm began, there was little a hovercraft
could do except shut down its engines and wait for assistance.
Thus, a prototype 0-G ship
with better shielding was built, but armament carrying capacity was far
from impressive. The heavy shield system accounted for most of the ship's
mass, making it ponderous. Such a monster couldn't be used in canyons during
geological reconnaissance operations, because it wasn't agile enough to
get out of its own way, yet alone an avalanche. What to do?
Here's where a designer
called Igor' Prihodov helped out. He simply took the armament base of the
hovercraft and put it over the 0-G ship prototype, at the same time adding
two external auxiliary ion engines to assist with manoeuvring. The ship
was still powered by the very same fusion reactor, but now it had two engines
dedicated to turning the heavy "tank" around. Problem solved. The resulting
ship, Il'yushin-42M, is heavy and not very agile, but it fulfils its role
perfectly. |
