I was wondering if anyone had seen or done any artwork for a Star Trek colony ship. We know there are Earth colonies out there, but the ships they take are never seen. How big would they be? Spacious or cramped? Cargo? Animals? I was looking into designing my own colony ship, but if you had any info or input, I'd appreciate it.
The 2D artist known as Reverend did a design based on a small colony ship only partly seen landed and overgrown with vegetation in the DS9 2nd season episode "Paradise". Not sure if those images are still out there, but I have some saved. Give me a shout if you want em. Also, back in 2001, physical modeler Michael Bower Putman, aka Feyman Shipyards, kitbashed a cool 3-stage colony ship from assorted parts. His site is here.
Kahn's DY-100 from Space Seed as well as the DY-500 from Ultimate Computer were used as colony ships. Also, the Spaceflight Chronology talks about some colony ships. CCC.
There was a no-name brand NOVA starship chart way back. http://www.feymanshipyards.com/CruiserStarship.html Feyman's best http://www.feymanshipyards.com/CruiserStarship.html
I built one for the Battlestar Galactica universe many years ago - Star Kobol class - used by the original 12 tribes to Colonize the Cyrannus system. I suppose it could be used in any universe the way it's designed:
The Reverend's Santa Maria exterior view can be found by googling: http://fsd.trekships.org/starships/images/erewhon_1.jpg Did Kris ever do an interior? I'd very much like to see that. The design is rather limiting, cobbled together as it was from runabout set and prop elements; just thinking about packing a colonyful of people and their vital supplies in there gives me claustrophobia. Timo Saloniemi
The Ariel-class shuttlecarriers in the Ships of the Star Fleet books were used, among other things, to establish military colonies along the frontier. These colonies would form the nucleus for later colonial expansion and themselves be intended to develop into starbases. The ships were huge and while they didn't carry animals for agriculture, they did carry a great deal of cargo. http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/shuttlecarrier_ariel.jpg http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/9679/ariel12jul20111.jpg
My take on the Edward Class Colony Ship, as used in "Star Fleet Battles" (tabletop game), and "The Birth of the Federation" (video game)... http://captshade.deviantart.com/art/USS-Edward-Multi-View-82454680 And I designed a Miranda style answer to the Ariel Class Shuttlecarrier... http://captshade.deviantart.com/art/USS-Kaiser-Multi-View-423869087
And my library filter nixes that one too... Glad to see you back. Who did that second image--was that the one Corey Brown was working on?
Wow, both of those are really nice designs! Good job! The first one feels like it's part of the pioneer era of space exploration before TOS.
This BSG ship, with only a few modifications could very well serve in a Trek universe capacity! I guess I viewed a colony ship having large detaching side modules with shuttle bays that would dock along a spine, and detach, maybe even by the ship in one or more locations on the colony world, and then the people in each module would shuttle their supplies out the bottom on ramps and one or two bays up the side, building out their colony in multiple sites. Each of these designs everyone's put here are really well done!
The marvelous colony ship designs (Reference DS9 2nd season episode "Paradise") by Reverend for the Erewhon Ship Reconstruction can be found at http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=36766