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Description
From the sketchbook, ink and mixed coloured pecils.

Besides occasional aesthetic updates, laboratory ships have not changed much from the early Twelve Planets era up to the Great Compass millennia later. For sake of economy ships that are not constructed around a specific experiment tend to be built around cylindrical or spherical hulls to allow experiments under different degrees of pseudogravity - and in the case of spherical hulls, reduce the risk of containment breach in case of accident.

Just as in our own time, popular media in the Great Compass era greatly exaggerates the risks associated with research. Overall accidents on laboratory ships are rare, and accidents resulting in death or disfiguration statistically nearly unheard of. It is not unusual for generalized ships to be hundreds of years old, as the groups that commissioned them will have frequently grown so much by the time an experiment is completed that just keeping it running permanently extended is no longer a significant expense.
Of course, there is also the issue that buying a used laboratory ship is always a rather poor idea, since the previous owner has good reason not to document exactly what it was used for...

The laboratory ships shown here are not starships but just bound to the system they were constructed in unless ferried. When keeping dangerous or secret experiments at a distance and out of public view, hiding them in an isolated system tends to be counterproductive as fast response becomes impossible in case of attack - or worse, anybody could just stumble in thinking nothing is there.

Description
From the sketchbook, ink and mixed coloured pecils.

Besides occasional aesthetic updates, laboratory ships have not changed much from the early Twelve Planets era up to the Great Compass millennia later. For sake of economy ships that are not constructed around a specific experiment tend to be built around cylindrical or spherical hulls to allow experiments under different degrees of pseudogravity - and in the case of spherical hulls, reduce the risk of containment breach in case of accident.

Just as in our own time, popular media in the Great Compass era greatly exaggerates the risks associated with research. Overall accidents on laboratory ships are rare, and accidents resulting in death or disfiguration statistically nearly unheard of. It is not unusual for generalized ships to be hundreds of years old, as the groups that commissioned them will have frequently grown so much by the time an experiment is completed that just keeping it running permanently extended is no longer a significant expense.
Of course, there is also the issue that buying a used laboratory ship is always a rather poor idea, since the previous owner has good reason not to document exactly what it was used for...

The laboratory ships shown here are not starships but just bound to the system they were constructed in unless ferried. When keeping dangerous or secret experiments at a distance and out of public view, hiding them in an isolated system tends to be counterproductive as fast response becomes impossible in case of attack - or worse, anybody could just stumble in thinking nothing is there.