Revised Botany Bay Concept

Still a work in progress. CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM GREATLY DESIRED.

Made from kitbashing Flanker's Enterprise Era ships from Scifi-meshes.com
Once I finalize my design shape using his stuff, I'm going to redraw it.
I was aiming for a more rugged, Pre-ENT design. In all likelihood it would be more NASA like, but seeing as how they were kinda slow and were on their own in space for a great deal of time, I pictured them to be a little more battle-ready. I'm hoping my Halo influences are obvious but not TOO obvious.


She has 3 plasma cannons, primarily used for shooting away asteroids and on occasion unwelcome guests. They may only be cargo ships, but it's a dangerous place out there.

Unlike the original version, I doubt she would have been built on Earth and sent up with 4-6 rocket boosters. (Doesn't seem practical to me)
With that in mind, I figured she could be a bit bigger than the classic one since they don't have to deal with getting into Earth orbit, her approximate length is 114 meters from the top of her front antennae to her stern. Also, I was trying to design something I thought could look good against the JJPrise so she kinda HAD to be at least a little bit bigger.

What I'm thinking, keep in mind, this is an alternate history:
During the early 1970's, when Richard Nixon was approached by NASA for funding, they proposed several concepts (which IRL happened, he said that they could only afford the space shuttle). Nixon chose 3 projects, a reliable/reusable low orbit spacecraft (the shuttle), a moderately large, low/mid orbit orbital station with small shuttles for higher orbit travel, and a small moon base which could be access from the station's shuttles.
During the 80's, Regan expanded the moon base to serve as his base of operations for the Star Wars program. During which factories were built to mine material from the moon.
After the Cold War, President Bush repurposed the lunar factories (by this time there are up to 20) to build exploration vehicles. Which eventually evolved into the DY series during the late 90's.
Her initial design was an all purpose craft, no variation between military and civilian variants, aside from slightly less powerful weapons.

Personnel for these vehicles would take a spaceplane (like the Spaceship One design on steroids) which would then dock at the newly created ISS, then take another transport to the fleet yards above Lunar 1 and board their ship.