Battlefleet Gothic notes that an Emperor-class Battleship "the Divine Right" was retrieved from a space hulk, the ship in question becoming the flagship of Battlefleet Gothic no less. And there are bits of background about the value of materials and ships retrieved from space hulks, making them worth the risk of sending troops in.

My question is whether there are any more details in background about *how* starships are retrieved from space hulks?

I've a few theories about methods that could be used seperately or in concert:

* Seismic or huge melta charges detonated to break up the hulk in a coordinated manner, freeing the valuable hulls from xenofilth and tainted rubbish. Or at least break off the useful parts.

* Precision strikes (relatively speaking) from lances and macrobatteries to break up the hulk.

* Somehow force a relatively intact craft with repairable gellar fields to make a warp jump by itself, leaving behind the rest of the hulk. Perhaps with the presence of a skilled navigator.

More ideas and comments would be appreciated.

Go hire a few thousand void-workers and mono-tasked servitors, and a few thousand more armsmen to make sure they don't get eaten, and pray to the Emperor that the Hulk doesn't slip back into the Warp before you're done doing it the long, tedious way.

After that, it only takes a few hundred men to bring the ship back to civilisation, assuming you can get the vital systems running.