Altjira

The Altjira was a unique, early hyperspace-capable centrifugal gravity starship of Human design built privately funded Australian spaceflight company Argent Sky in the 2190's.

With hyperspacial travel still very new and dangerous to even bigger companies, the creation of the Altjira, named after an aborigine Sky God, was the first ever privately-funded and privately built space vessel in Human history to travel through hyperspace.

Despite being privately funded, it was by no means a small vessel and featured relatively roomy living arrangements and was powered by an archaic deuterium-tritium Internal Confinement Fusion reactor.

It was also the first and currently only spacecraft with a crew almost entirely composed of aboriginal-descended people, mainly of the Biralla family and close friends, numbering 35.

The ship's maiden voyage was relatively a success, and in early December of 2191 the ship came out of hyperspace at a research and mining colony on Proxima Centuri B where it was refuelled and repairs were made to its hull and reactor.

The trip back, however was fraught with problems, and after coming out of hyperspace some 2.4 lightyears from Earth in mid 2192, a distress signal was broadcast, the ship appeared to enter hyperspace again shortly after but the Altjira never made it to Earth.

No debris or any sign of the vessel were ever recovered.

On board was science genius Sam Biralla whose father Jace Biralla was one of the pioneering scientists who help create early hyperfusion theories with the mysterious element vennium mined on Jupiter's moons and on Venus. Stories, theories and myths behind the vessels’ disappearance often point to Sam Biralla modifying the ICF deuterium-tritium reactor to an early vennium hyperfusion reactor prototype that was so powerful that the basic, early form of tachyon field resonators could not keep up with the output from the reactor and crew lost control as the ship entered hyperspace where it either broke up or carried on until it ran out of energy, which according to some may not have been for centuries.