abstract
| - The General Products Hull is a basic spacecraft body, impervious to all forms of matter and electromagnetic energy (except visible light). After the dissolution of General Products, the limited number of GP Hulls remain the safest transport bodies in the Known Space. There are four types of Hull and can be further customized by the user.
* The No. 1 hull is a sphere about the size of a basketball, used for automated spacecraft.
* The No. 2 hull is "a cylinder three hundred feet long and twenty feet through, pointed at both ends and with a slight wasp-waist constriction near the tail". Louis Wu's Lying Bastard and Beowulf Schaeffer's Skydiver were based on No. 2 hulls.
* The No. 3 hull is a cylinder with rounded ends and a flattened belly about 110 feet across. The Hot Needle of Inquiry, used for the second Ringworld expedition, was based on a No. 3 hull.
* The No. 4 hull is "a transparent sphere a thousand-odd feet in diameter". According to Beowulf Schaeffer, "no bigger ship has been built anywhere in the known galaxy". They are so expensive that only governmental colonization projects use them, with the exception of the Long Shot, which was mostly filled with the experimental Quantum II Hyperdrive.
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