Starship Specification: Heart of GoldCopy Anchor Link

"Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty metres long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mindbogglingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which carried within it the most brain-wrenching device ever conceived, a device which made this starship unique in the history of the galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named — the Heart of Gold."

— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 4

The Heart of Gold is a revolutionary starship one hundred and fifty metres long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white, and mindbogglingly beautiful. Built in top secrecy by the Imperial Galactic Government on the island of France on the remote oceanic planet Damogran, it was designed by a team of humanoid engineers, reptiloid atomineers, green sylph-like maximegalaticians, octopodic physucturalists, and a Hooloovoo who went beyond the furthest limits of physical laws and restructured the fundamental fabric of matter.

The Small Gold Box & The Infinite Improbability DriveCopy Anchor Link

At the unseen heart of the starship lies a small gold box housing the most brain-wrenching device ever conceived—after which the Heart of Gold is named:

• Discovery Out of Thin Air: While respectable physicists had long understood how to generate small amounts of finite improbability by hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (such as a nice hot cup of tea—frequently used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy), they perpetually failed to build a machine capable of generating an infinite improbability field and grumpily declared it virtually impossible. Left to sweep up a lab after a particularly unsuccessful party, a student reasoned that if such a machine was a virtual impossibility, it must logically be a finite improbability: working out the exact improbability figure, feeding it into the finite improbability generator with a fresh cup of really hot tea, and turning it on, he created the long-sought-after golden Infinite Improbability Generator out of thin air (and was promptly lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists just after receiving the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness).
• Infinite Improbability Generation: Developed into a governable form of propulsion by the Galactic Government's research team on Damogran, the Infinite Improbability Drive crosses vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace, passing through every point in every universe simultaneously and straining, twisting, and breaking the laws of possibility and impossibility.
• Meaningless Coincidences: Even during the ship's construction on Damogran, a side effect of work on the Heart of Gold was a whole string of pretty meaningless coincidences—such as Damogran's spaceport island being named Easter Island (meaning "small, flat, and light brown" in Galacticspeke), the research island being named France, and the unveiling falling on Zaphod Beeblebrox's two hundredth birthday.

Unveiling and Theft on DamogranCopy Anchor Link

During the grand unveiling ceremony on Damogran, an irritable party official tired of waiting for Zaphod Beeblebrox to read his prepared speech flipped a switch on a remote-control device in his pocket, causing the huge white dome bulging against the sky to crack down the middle, split, and slowly fold itself down into the ground. Moments after saying "Wow" twice and remarking that the ship was "so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it," Zaphod threw a Paralyso-Matic bomb to freeze the reception committee and stole the Heart of Gold alongside Trillian.

The $2^{276,709}$ to 1 Rescue & The Hole in the GalaxyCopy Anchor Link

Twenty-nine seconds after Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent were ejected into the vacuum of space from Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz's flagship, the Heart of Gold's shipboard computer chattered to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason (because Reason was in fact out to lunch):

1. The Hole in the Galaxy: A hole appeared in the Galaxy that was a nothingth of a second long, a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of millions of light-years from end to end.
2. Collateral Fallout & The Extinction of the Poghril: As the hole closed up, lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of it and drifted off through the universe; a team of seven three-foot-high market analysts fell out of it and died, partly of asphyxiation and partly of surprise; and two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it too, materializing in a large wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system—where the entire Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man, who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
3. The Origin of Life in the Universe: Reverberating backwards and forwards through time in a most improbable fashion, the nothingth of a second for which the hole existed seriously traumatized a small random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility of space in the deeply remote past, making them cling together in extraordinarily unlikely patterns that quickly learnt to copy themselves and went on to cause massive trouble on every planet they drifted on to—which is how life began in the Universe.
4. Normality Countdown & The Infinite Monkeys: As five wild Event Maelstroms spewed up a pavement in the Third Reach of the Unknown and subjected Ford and Arthur to a melting hallucination of the seafront at Southend, a million-gallon vat of custard, temporary limb loss, and Ford's transformation into a furious penguin, a pleasant, sensible girl's voice on the shipboard PA (sounding like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines, one of which is on fire) welcomed them to the Starship Heart of Gold and counted down the improbability levels from $2^{276,000}$ to 1 against (possibly much higher) through $2^{100,000}:1$, $2^{75,000}:1$, $2^{50,000}:1$, $2^{25,000}:1$, and $2^{20,000}:1$ against and falling, promising to restore normality just as soon as they were sure what was normal anyway. Materializing inside a small luminous pink cubicle, Arthur had to jam himself against its ill-fitting door as tiny furry inkstained hands squeezed through the cracks and an infinite number of monkeys outside chattered insanely, wanting to talk to them about a script for Hamlet they had worked out.

Interior Architecture & The Improbability-Proof Control CabinCopy Anchor Link

As the pink probability cubicle dissolved and the monkeys vanished into a better dimension, Ford and Arthur entered the ship's operational interior:

• Number Two Entry Bay (Embarkation Area): A pristine embarkation chamber where Ford discovered a discarded sales brochure touting Infinite Improbability Physics and Sirius Cybernetics' Genuine People Personalities (GPP). Along an incomprehensible computer bank, an invitingly large red button illuminated when Arthur touched it with the message: Please do not press this button again.
• The Improbability-Proof Control Cabin: The bridge is mostly white, oblong, and about the size of a smallish restaurant. The two long walls are raked in a gentle parallel curve with angles contoured into excitingly chunky shapes (built that way solely so the ship's designers wouldn't get miserable). The concave wall holds large video screens over guidance systems, while the convex wall houses banks of computers. Control seats still retain their original protective plastic wrapping.
• Touch-Free Sub-Etha Controls & Radio Waves: In keeping with cutting-edge astrotechnology, the shipboard sub-etha radio has dispensed with buttons and dials in favor of touch-free airspace controls—requiring crew members to merely wave a hand in the general direction of the components and hope (and sit infuriatingly still to maintain a frequency).
• The Sirius Cybernetics Shipboard Computer (Eddie): Permeating every particle of the ship, the main computer possesses a relentlessly upbeat, detergent-ad personality, spewing ticker tape greetings ("Hi there!") and calculating improbability flight path data.
• Improbability Flight Path & The Horsehead Nebula Deviation: Rather than emerging in the Horsehead Nebula as Zaphod plotted, the drive brought the ship into Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. Analyzing the flight path, the computer reconciled the constant rescue odds of $2^{276,709} : 1$ against the ship's relative factor of $2^{\infty - 1} : 1$—an irrational balance sheet linked directly to Earth telephone numbers.
• Sirius Cybernetics GPP Cybernetics: Every sliding door on the vessel possesses a cheerful, sunny disposition that sighs with immense satisfaction ("Hummmmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!") upon closing, driving the manic-depressive prototype android Marvin into cold despair.
• Orbiting Magrathea & Impending Missile Barrage (Chapter 16): Traversing the night side into the daylight terminator at an altitude of three hundred miles above Magrathea, the ship's consoles and main screens captured the dazzling binary sunrise of Soulianis and Rahm. The chapter concludes with the reassuring foreknowledge that the impending attack by Magrathea's ancient automated missile defence network would result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a mousecage, the bruising of somebody's upper arm, and the improbable, sudden creation of a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias.
• Emergency Manual Flight Consoles & Air Cushions (Chapter 17): When Magrathea's guided nuclear missiles jammed Eddie's guidance systems, Zaphod demanded full manual control:
  • Unboxing the Controls: Desk panels slid open and pristine control consoles sprang up, showering the bridge in expanded polystyrene packaging and cellophane balls, having never been touched since leaving the shipyard on Damogran.
  • Guidance Rocket Jets: Activating manual steering levers caused guidance rockets to screech and shudder, throwing the ship into radical arcs.
  • Pneumatic Air Cushions: Giant safety air cushions ballooned instantly from the bridge bulkheads as extreme G-forces pinned the squirming crew against the walls.
  • The Snapped Guidance Lever: Attempting to regain control, Zaphod savagely kicked a guidance lever, snapping it off and sending the ship into a vertical climb followed by a sickening dead-weight plunge out of the sky.
  • Upside-Down Flattening & Ceiling Stranding: The ship leveled out completely upside-down; the crew lay pinned against the ceiling bulkheads, entirely unable to reach the flight controls while Eddie nasally serenaded them with "You'll Never Walk Alone".
  • Emergency Unprogrammed Improbability Jump: Scrambling along the chunky moulded contours where wall met ceiling, Arthur Dent manually engaged the unprogrammed Infinite Improbability Drive at impact minus five seconds—triggering a mind-mangling explosion of noise and light.

The Conservatory Bridge Redesign (Chapter 18)Copy Anchor Link

When the Heart of Gold emerged from the unshielded Improbability burst, the ship was continuing on its path perfectly normally, but its interior had undergone a sensational aesthetic reconfiguration:

• Dimensions & Color Palette: The bridge became noticeably larger and was done out in delicate pastel shades of green and blue.
• The Garden Illusion: Cunningly deployed lighting and mirrors created the convincing illusion of standing inside an airy Victorian conservatory overlooking a wide stretch of exquisitely manicured garden.
• The Spiral Staircase & Sundial Console: At the center of the bridge, a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading nowhere in particular stood in a lush spray of ferns and yellow flowers. Beside it, a carved stone sundial pedestal housed Eddie's main computer terminal.
• Marble-Topped Sensor Tables: Around the periphery stood marble-topped tables on intricately wrought-iron legs. When gazed upon, vague silhouettes of flight instruments appeared in the polished stone; touching the marble caused the physical instruments to materialize instantly under the crew's fingertips.
• Reflective Mirror Telemetry: When viewed from the correct angles, the conservatory's decorative mirrors reflected all required astrogation readouts—including orbital scans of Magrathea and external footage of incoming threats.
• Domestic Amenities: The unshielded probability field replaced the emergency drive switch with a peaceful potted plant, added a small fish pool where Arthur lounged, placed Zaphod into a wickerwork sun chair, and provided Ford Prefect with a chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
• Proofing Screens Mechanism: Zaphod deduced that this miraculous transmutation was caused by Arthur firing the Improbability Drive without first activating the ship's proofing screens—causing localized probability distortions to reshape the ship's interior while turning the incoming nuclear missiles into a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale.