Hi ho Hi ho..

The crew of the Devil Ray were essential miners, but they had designed their ship to make their life as easy as possible. One of the many dangers of mining in space was accidentally tearing open your suit. The tools, rocks and space junk that would be floating around a mining operation were common causes of casualties. In fact most large mining ships would carry extra crew because injuries and fatalities were so common. Matthias Lelange had been worried about this when he went into the mining business as his ship was crewed by family. Not just some nameless employees. He'd started the mining business after he had originally found a solid asteroid of Tungsten. It was a rare element these days and especially valuable for when it was used to craft the superalloys that went into a spacecraft's hull. There were few places to collect Tungsten on planets these days so it had become rather valuable.

Essentially it allowed Matthias enough capital and enough raw material to have his own vessel built. So he took some and designed the Devil Ray. Shaped like a manta ray it was able to glide through space or atmosphere with ease. The tail helped with gliding through atmosphere by stabilising the craft. On the front where the manta has it's two 'horns', he placed two industrial strength lasers. Strong enough to blast through an asteroid the size of the earth's moon they were both a working tool and a defensive weapon. After the ship had blasted an asteroid into more manageable sized chunks the 'mouth' would open and the 'Ray would glide through the debris of the rock inhaling it into the inside of the ship where there was machinery and furnaces set up to sort through the debris and shift junk from valuable metals and minerals. Once it had finished seperating the worthless from the valuable a hatch near the rear of the ship would open up and the 'Ray would dump the worthless rock back into space. Then the ship would glide on to find more asteroids to dismantle and eat. The process allowed the crew a luxury that no other mining ship in the galaxy could claim as they were on the initial flight and test run. Matthias wanted to make sure it was all working before selling the design to the big mining companies. The sale of the plans would make him enough so that his children's children would never have to work in their lives and spend their entire time exploring the oddities of the galaxy.