In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, the first colony ships are built from shuttle tanks given an extra kick of delta vee to put them in LEO. Then they stitc

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, the first colony ships are built from shuttle tanks given an extra kick of delta vee to put them in LEO. Then they stitch them together into all sorts of Lincoln Log things. Seems like a neat idea except for the tyranny of the rocket equation . . although, well, the final configuration of the SST sort of spat in the face of the rocket equation.