NuTrek's Starfleet

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Crazy Eddie, Nov 20, 2013.

  1. shipfisher

    shipfisher Commander Red Shirt

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    Great stuff here Crazy Eddie. The most enjoyable trek posts I've seen in a long time - probably ever. :techman:
     
  2. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Actually the TOS Constitution would be about the same size of the Bonaventure, but making better use of its internal volume to fit a larger crew and better equipment. But yes, it would have filled more or less the same role: Between Earth and, say, New Eden colony, is severa, thousand cubic lightyears of space containing several thousand stars and planets that have never been charted in any detail. Aside from the need to explore those uncharted worlds in the Federation's back yard, there's also the fact that some of the charted worlds have political/military problems of their own and Starfleet sometimes has to step in and diffuse conflicts before they erupt into interstellar war.

    And no, the TOS Enterprise would not have been trans-warp capable. The "false continuum" warp drive planned for it -- sometimes called the "time warp engine" -- provides some pretty impressive performance, but has the downside that it can sometimes cause unpredictable time dilation effects in the presence of strong gravitational fields (and with a high enough warp factor, can actually reverse time altogether).

    Spot-on. With the caveat that "transwarp" is generally considered a subset of warp drive (one of four types used by Federation starships) and there isn't usually a need to mention it separately.
     
  3. The_Beef

    The_Beef Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Gotcha. If the time-warp approach can reach pretty substantial speeds too, I assume Starfleet keeps investing in transwarp flagships as much because of the immense energy demands of their combat systems as for speed.

    Four types of warp drive? I can think of three you've mentioned: conventional warp (I can't recall the exact term you used), transwarp, and time warp (nice touch). What's the fourth?
     
  4. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    "New Eden"?

    (Galactic/stellar cartography is increasingly on my mind of late. This morning, I stumbled onto a reminder that ESA's Gaia astrometry satellite is less than five days away from launching. This on top of the new Stellar Cartography book/maps package...)
     
  5. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well, the main offensive weapons of Starships are their photon torpedoes, with phasers being a dual-use offensive/defensive weapon. The advantage of the flagships is that they are large enough and have sufficient sensors to carry HUGE payloads of photon torpedoes; a ship the size of Enterprise could carry around 200 photons while something the size of a Bonaventure would only have room for 40 to 60.

    More importantly, the bigger ships have heavier forcefields that can hold off a much greater amount of firepower even for their larger size. Their deflectors are also more powerful; where the TOS Enterprise burned out its entire drive core extending its deflectors to protect Mudd's cruiser, the Flagship Enterprise would be able to do that for an hour before their engines even noticed the strain.

    So it's a combination of things. Starfleet invests in the flagships mainly because the transwarp drives let them cover huge distances in a very short amount of time (Earth to Vulcan inside of an hour, Earth to Qo'nos in less than a day), and also because the huge powerplants required for transwarp flight also come in handy for defensive systems; plus, the ships are just way BIGGER (they have to be, what with those enormous warp cores and nacelles) which means they can carry large attachments of shuttles, torpedoes, and all kinds of other interesting payloads that wouldn't even fit on smaller ships.

    Whatever it is the Vulcans were using when Henry Archer's engine designs were first tested on NX-Alpha. I would also suggest that the Klingons use an entirely different drive system altogether that is equivalent to but not totally identical to Federation warp drives.
     
  6. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Thought I'd start the next round of updates with something (relatively) small. We don't see much of the shuttles in the new universe, but it goes without saying that Starfleet uses them ALOT more in the Abramsverse than they ever did in the primeline. They deserve a little bit of attention, IMO.

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    I'm working on writeups for personal equipment (phasers, tricorders, sensors, field gear, etc) but I am once again hindered by the fact that virtually none of the Abramsverse counterparts of familiar TOS tech has gotten any screen time. Unless my google-fu strikes a major blow against the Lord of Obscurity and turns up some more interesting screencaps or concept sketches, I'll probably end up doing a more generalized "essay" format like I did for the intro chapters. Stay tuned...
     
  7. B.J.

    B.J. Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    "CRM-114"? :lol:
     
  8. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Was the one they used in the opening act of ST XII on Nibiru an example of what you're calling an "F7"?
     
  9. starburst

    starburst Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I think the one during the opening was his F5, Im sure the first photo of it is one of the shuttle in the volcano.

    Wish TrekCore would get round to doing screencaps from the BluRay from this film already! I get that they didnt particular like the film but its a gap in their when they have done all the rest
     
  10. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Point taken re: F5 vs. F7.
     
  11. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Crazy Eddie I was wondering if you've ever seen this, I came across it a while back, it's a "space emergency escape capsule."

    http://www.pinterest.com/pin/561472278514957830/

    It was design by Dr. Werner Von Braun (America's pet Nazi) in 1953. Your design looks a lot more comfortable.


    :)
     
  12. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I hadn't seen that before, but it's an interesting one to be sure ;)

    It's not my design, though. This is based on some of the leftover concept art from the movie itself and the "escape pod" that was used to maroon Kirk on Delta-Vega. My interpretation is that this pod has multiple uses; like the transporter, it can be used to quickly evacuate personnel in the event of a shipwide disaster, or it can be used to drop away teams into areas too dangerous for shuttles but with too much radiation/shielding/scrambling for transporters.

    IOW, sort of like the ODST drop pods from the Haloverse. Except this being Starfleet, they just as often use them to drop in anthropologists as shock troopers.
     
  13. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Correct, and correct. The idea being the F5 is a sturdy workhorse that's been in service for a couple of decades and Starfleet finds it easier to upgrade it with new technology than replace it with a totally new model. Even the F7, which we saw in the Academy scenes, is basically a stripped-down F5 with bigger warp engines.

    I know, right? STID had its flaws, but it wasn't "These Are the Voyages" or something.
     
  14. aalenfae

    aalenfae Commander Red Shirt

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    I think the "F5" is a good deal longer than the "F1". Not just 2 meters longer. We see people next to the thing, and it would appear nearly twice as long as the TOS shuttles.
     
  15. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You would think so, but actually the TOS shuttlecraft is significantly bigger on the inside than out. The exterior model used on the set was only 24 feet long while the interior would fit for a craft 30 feet long. I figure the interior should be interpretted as more cramped than the camera lets on, especially since the window placement doesn't make a lot of sense at that scale (you'd have to stand up to see what's in front of you).

    The main reason the STID shuttles look bigger is because their exteriors match their interiors: they're a bit over 30 feet inside AND out.

    Thus the TOS shuttle would be about the size of a Bradley IFV while the STID shuttles are a bit larger still. Both of them are basically flying APCs with warp engines instead of tracks.
     
  16. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Big update today, this time focusing on fleet operations.

    Enjoy!

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  17. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    261,000+ personnel?

    Low figure, no? Granted that we're talking about the 2259 UFP Starfleet here...
     
  18. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Exactly. They'll be close to a million in the 24th century, while in the 22nd they'd have numbered numbered between three and four thousand officers.
     
  19. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It still seems more than a tad on the low side, although I can't marshall more than a gut response based on "space is BIG, also 3-D in volume, not merely acreage".

    Also, there's the issue of logistics. However many capital ships you've got in active service on defensive, peacekeeping, research and exploration duties (and that last is what's really going to complicate the picture in a way our present-day navies can only begin to imagine since it's been a century or two since the last bit of ocean was properly mapped), you've got to keep the support network behind them firmly in place.
     
  20. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    One thing that really entertained me?

    That paragraph on Andorian filmmakers. Definitely funny, in context.