more blend painting yes yes

the Kobolds are a species bound to their world by high gravity and a thick atmosphere, so slipping the surly bonds of earth required them to assemble a three-part system for transporting live kobolds and big cargos into orbit: an airship, a rocket, and a skyhook: an orbiting elevator cable dangling into the mesosphere, never touching the ground.

first, a rocket fitted with transport modules is loaded into the payload bay of a high-altitude airship and towed above the clouds. then, the bay doors open and the rocket is dropped, tumbles onto its backside for a few seconds, and then ignites its circular, slit-shaped aerospike engine to accelerate into the upper atmosphere, where it burns out and slowly waits to catch up to the skyhook, where its cargo of high-tech and/or people are offloaded and returning astronauts board the rocket for landing.

while its autopilot makes final intercept corrections, the rocket's shiny torso alights with neon-orange artistic patterns, fluorescing from electrical currents flowing over a sheet of bacteria-derived LEDs.

in the far distance, the Milky Way glows in spectacular glory through kobold eyes, which can see much more light than our human ones.