The Tulip

The Tulip is central to the series design. First, it was the equivalent of the great
luxury steamships in the early 1900's designed with chandeliers, posh woodwork.
Victorian staterooms to brass rails and red velvet.
Then, it was decommissioned after 80 years of service and rotted in Jupiter orbit
for another 50 years. Too old to be stripped for valuable technology, the Tulip
was eventually acquired for scrap by Rudolpho, whose salvage crew began taking
her apart.
The crew uses only a fraction of the whole ship. Most of the ship is closed off and
abandoned. It is in a constant state of disrepair. It often has much problems but
luckily for them, Percy's ability to jerry-rig a fix to most problems allows the
intrepid crew to survive and even get the bad guys most of the time...
The Tulip has a main bank of thermonuclear rockets on one end. When they are
turned on, they propel super hot hydrogen out from huge rocket nozzles. When
the engines are turned on to full power, a shock wave rides out with the hot
hydrogen.
The crew refers to this propulsion system as the "main engines" or "the mains".
To distinguish these rockets from the interstellar system discussed below, the
crew refers to the interplanetary rockets as the "thermonuclear engines".
The Tulip's name is derived from letter stenciled on its hull decades ago. They
used to read : Transit Utopia Cruiseship Lines. These are the letters that are
still visible.