Design and Specifications
HMS Adventure was an early voidship operated by the United Kingdom. Launched on May 16th, 1876, Adventure was the first voidship to be launched by humanity. Adventure completed two Lunar voyages, proving the capabilities of early gravolytic engines before being lost in late 1876 due to a life support failure, shortly before the completion of the first Illustrious Class class.
Adventure was a relatively small ship, measuring in at just 90 feet in length. The bulk of the ship was made up by the ship's pressure vessel, a cylindrical capsule 10 feet in diameter and 50 feet long. External structures made up the rest of the ship's size, with a streamlined nose and tail and various mounting points for experimental payloads. The ship was equipped with a Project 95 Gravolytic Engine, which served double duty as the ship's propulsion and power generation for its primitive life support systems, rough copies of those found on the Astral Horizon.
Having already successfully completed two Lunar voyages, Adventure left port on October 18th, 1876. She spent two days in Earth orbit, carrying out various experiments, before departing for Luna in the morning of the 19th. According to the ship's log, recovered at the crash site, the ship was having issues with her life support system throughout the transit, but was able to fix them. On October 22nd, the ship finished Lunar operations and began its return to Earth. The ship's log reported that life support was acting up again, and that the crew was reporting mysterious headaches. The last entry in the ship's log was made early in the morning of the 23rd, and was illegible. Earth based telescopes noted the ship had stopped moving and was slowly drifting towards Earth. On October 25th, the ship crashed into a field in Oklahoma.
The cause of the ship's loss was later determined to be a partial failure of her life support system, which resulted in the crew succumbing to carbon dioxide poisoning. The loss of Adventure resulted in a number of changes to the nearly finished Illustrious's life support system, delaying her launch by several months.
Adventure's crash site, and what remains of the wreckage, are maintained as part of a museum and memorial of early human space flight. Parts of the wreckage, including the ship's bell, were returned to the UK and reside in its own spaceflight museum.
The wreckage of Adventure was used by the Americans to reverse engineer their own voidship, VS Savanah, which would launch in May of the next year.