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Heart, short for The Heart of Planet Earth, was a human colony ship which, in 2070, set out to colonise Centauri-Beta. The mission was doomed to failure.
Description
Despite only housing four astronauts, Heart was many miles in length. It had a thick titanium hull which rotated, producing centrifugal gravity. The ship was equipped with yellow stabiliser rockets and solar sails, designed to help it complete a slingshot orbit of the moon. Heart also had ion engines to adjust velocity, which were built in China. Giant white lettering along the ship's exterior spelled out the word ‘HEART’. (PROSE: Total Eclipse of the Heart)
History
While reeling from a great war and looking for a beacon of hope, all 197 nations of the Unified Earth contributed some components to the building of a new human colony ship. Danielle called Heart “the reason the war is over”, stating that Heart became a symbol of humanity’s shared future, and a great unifier of human people during the Unified Earth era.
Because of the large-scale co-ordination of the build, some countries' contributions cut corners on quality, or did not operate well in tandem with components developed elsewhere. This meant that the ship was doomed to have major technical flaws, and the mission could not succeed. However, since the hopes of humanity were resting on the success of Heart's mission, it was decided that the mission should continue. Without the crew's knowledge, the "hyperdrive" of the ship was in fact a firework designed to destroy the vehicle and its inhabitants entirely, while giving the appearance of successfuk hyperspace travel to all onlookers on Earth.
Heart's engineer, Arnold, realised this before takeoff, but didn't raise the alarm because an unsuccessful launch might jeopardise the precarious peace recently reached on planet Earth. Instead, he sabotaged the ship's engine rooms, creating a pretext to eventually bring the ship down to land after it had taken off. However, his plan backfired when Captain Jacobs and crewmate Elena died while carrying out repairs. The Tenth Doctor eventually offered to rescue Arnold and Danielle from the Heart before it detonated, but Arnold refused to leave, intending to turn the ship in the opposite direction so that onlookers on Earth would realise the mission had not been as successful as all major news outlets were claiming. (PROSE: Total Eclipse of the Heart)