Sketch idea for a small colony ship. The idea is the ship enters the atmosphere, discards its detachable heat shield (which lands a reasonable distance away with a controlled parachute fall, so its material can be recovered later). The ship lands and the ring on it becomes a premade perimeter wall. The variable arms holding the rest of the ship adjust and lower until the bottom of the center is on the ground. Heavy cargo and prefabs get moved out. On top, the large space engines detach and are briefly piloted as independent vehicles, and landed next to the colony to be repurposed. The flight pad on top of the structure is extended and supported with an additional strut. This initial colony is a little cramped, but a good foundation that is built to be secure, able to support air traffic, and able to support basic agriculture. I'm picturing it being several families worth of people.
Just something that came to me last night while trying to think up unique ships and tech.
Looks reasonable enough! A couple thoughts:
This was definitely a spur of the moment sketch to get the idea on paper, and as such I'm already looking at making changes.
The biggest change is removing those main thrusters entirely. Those were meant to maneuver in space, but with the colony being slaved to an FTL ship, they are unneeded. This leans the colony as being less of a spaceship and more of a space capable building.
Removing those main thrusters from the colony ship itself means I have to think about how to get it to descend. I'm considering some kind of array of thrusters outside the wall which can be recovered after landing (I want every piece of the design to either be used by the colony or recovered for reuse by the transit company.) Combined with some kind of anti-gravity tech which can kick in once the colony is descending slowly enough and is near enough to the ground. I'll keep workshopping that.
For the quarters, I envision the ones on the main structure to be duty quarters that may also double as emergency quarters during some extreme emergency. Day to day, they'd be where the people most expected to work in the structure would live. I picture this colony ship as supporting 20-50 people rather than a huge population, at least at the beginning.