Heart of Gold

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The starship Heart of Gold was the first space craft to contain the Infinite Improbability Drive. It was stolen by then President Zaphod Beeblebrox at the official launch of the ship, which he was supposed to be launching. Zaphod then used the Heart of Gold to literally pick up Trillian from ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. Later, during the use of the Infinite Improbablity Drive the ship picked up Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect who were floating unprotected in deep space.

[edit] Design Crew

The design crew had worked for quite a while on the Heart of Gold secretively on Damogran. The engineers and researcher who built were mostly humanoid, however there were also involved a few reptiloid atomineers, two or three green sylphlike maximegalaticians, or or two octopodic psysucturalists and a Hooloovoo.

[edit] Ship Design & Appearance

The Heart of Gold as seen in the television programme.

As the ship is powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, it would be statistically impossible for the ship not to change appearance at least as frequently as the whim of a Hollywood director changes.

The cabin is mostly white, oblong and about the size of a smallish restaurant. It is not, however, perfectly oblong. Two long walls have been raked round in a slight parallel curve. All of the angles and corners of the cabin are contoured in excitingly chunky shapes. The truth of the matter is that it would have been a great deal simpler and more practical to build the cabin as an ordinary three-dimensional oblong room, but then the designers would have got miserable. The cabin looks excitingly purposeful. There are large video screens ranging over control and guidance system panels on the concave wall, and long banks of computers set into the convex wall.

The entire ship is outfitted with the latest GPP (Genuine People Personalities) utilising technology. All the doors in the spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close with the knowledge of a job well done. For better or for worse, Marvin the Paranoid Android, who came with the ship, has a very depressing GPP prototype.

The entire ship is outfitted with a tannoy system, which allows for announcements to be made across the entire ship at once.

[edit] Propulsion System

The unique think about the Heart of Gold is that it is powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, which is a small golden box at the heart of the ship (hence its name). This is of course powered by an infinite improbability generator. As soon as the ship's drive reaches infinite improbability, it passes through every point in the Universe, thus allowing the ship to go anywhere without all of that mucking about with hyperspace and what not.