In service between 1500BC and 300BC, the main vehicle for Watchers to travel within a planet’s atmosphere, or for small interplanetary flights.
Extremely popular for its high speed and range. Few vehicles of this size were available with warp capacity and good intra-atmosphere manoeuvrability. Usually there were four vehicle types, interstellar (IS), interplanetary (IP), entry and exit (EE) vehicles, and intra-atmosphere (IA). A Hornet 1020RC could handle long periods of IA, then smoothly transition out of the atmosphere to a nearby planet at L18 (18 x the speed of light), getting to Jupiter from Earth in a couple of minutes. While L18 was slow compared with the L115 of a typical commercial IS spacecraft, these were still extremely fast times for IP travel.
The warp drives, however, remained too delicate for atmosphere re-entry, so 1020’s were taken down to the surface in other vehicles with specialized hangars. IA speeds were 30km/s or 112,000km/h with incredible acceleration and manoeuvrability.
The Hornet 1020 is a two-man vehicle, with somewhat cramped quarters, crew protected from the intense Gs by the inner rings AG fields.
