Unofficial art challenge for DS9! (SPOILERS FOR TP: RAISE THE DAWN!)

[fleetcaptain]

I'm wondering myself if the new DS9 novel coming out next year will even feature the new station on the cover or what. I'm curious as to what the station looks like too. Maybe like the one seen in Earth orbit in the recent TNG Hive mini series.

[Mojomoe]

Sure thing, Vektor!

This is the description from Raise The Dawn

Despite the radical design, it shared many characteristics with other Starfleet facilities: the gray-white surface of its hull, the curves and proportions of its components, the familiar lettering along one arc that read UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS. The overall, esentially spherical shape of the station, though, reminded Ro of it's predecessor. The new facility would ultimately comprise three rings, oriented at right angles to one another. They would all surround an inner sphere, connecting to it via a half-dozen crossover bridges. The rings would provide docking and cargo services, while the sphere would house work, commercial and residential sections.

[sojourner]

^That reads like a christmas ornament.

[Vektor]

Hmm... that description really doesn't fit with what I had in mind. I might go ahead and throw something together anyway, just for fun.

[Mojomoe]

Exactly, that's what I thought as well. The actual description sounds like someone describing something without visualizing it first. "It's got a lot of lines. People like lines? Ok, good. It'll have... fifteen converging lines. That sounds like it'll look good."

I basically ignored the guidelines as well... that central sphere really bugs me.

Also bear in mind that the design was overseen by Miles O'Brien, so I took the angle that the Chief basically redesigned DS9 after years of dealing with faulty systems and architecture, so he likely fixed a lot of things only9 he'd be familiar with.

Mostly, I just wanted something that wouldn't look like... a sphere with a bunch of gray rings wrapped around it.

[largo]

sojourner wrote:

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^That reads like a christmas ornament.

it's clearly designed to appease hallmark.

[BillJ]

sojourner wrote:

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^That reads like a christmas ornament.

Yup.

[SonicRanger]

Sounds similar to some of the pre-production designs:

http://www.starshipdatalink.net/art/images/dds9-7.gif

[Patrickivan]

It's funny- at first, I read this and thought, meh- I never really liked the station design for DS9. And that's fine- it was supposed to be alien anyway.

But then I couldn't stop thinking about the description. I thought how the hell would this work... Now I need to make it after throwing down some sketches.



And what I'm thinking is a radical departure from the single axis levels for the sphere. I'm thinking each deck is like a layer of an onion, encompasing the whole of the sphere to the core.

The 6 arms leading the rings each have levels that rotate to orientate themselves to the axis of the give ring.

And each ring can accomodate 8 galaxy class ships on the outside parimeter, and smaller ships and on the inside.

The more I think of it, the more I believe this can make a damned cool looking station! I'm excited about it. And it's different! Can't wait to get home!

[Patrickivan]

Okay- I've whipped something up. This is about 560 metres across. The ship is a placeholder from my builds- it's about 300 metres long. I think that I would double the size of this base to make it work.



I really like where this is going. Any thoughts about this? I guess it's a love it or hate it concept.

I guess since it's not my idea, it's just someone elses concept.

[Dac]

I'm probably leaning too heavily on the original DS9 with this, but here's what I've whipped up.

Essentially capping off the pylons with another ring at the top and the bottom, and replaced the middle with the aforementioned "sphere" and the habitat ring with a federation mushroom.





I see the red bulb below more as an impulse engine than a fusion reactor - in case she needs to move in Emergencies or some such (hey - there's a precedent for it at least ).

[SonicRanger]

Patrickivan wrote:

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Okay- I've whipped something up. This is about 560 metres across. The ship is a placeholder from my builds- it's about 300 metres long. I think that I would double the size of this base to make it work.

That's pretty small compared to the original station:

Rick Sternbach blueprinted the visual effects miniature with a conceptual diameter of approximately 3,600 feet (1,100 meters), but the visual effects department later increased it to 5,280 feet (precisely one mile or 1,609.344 meters). In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, Sternbach compromised at 1,451.82 meters (4,763.19 feet), although the new size matches only Doug Drexler's images of the exterior in the book, not his cutaways which depict a smaller station.

[sojourner]

If the original is 1 mile across, than those windows on the central hub must be HUGE.

[bullethead]

Dac wrote:

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I'm probably leaning too heavily on the original DS9 with this, but here's what I've whipped up.

Essentially capping off the pylons with another ring at the top and the bottom, and replaced the middle with the aforementioned "sphere" and the habitat ring with a federation mushroom.





I see the red bulb below more as an impulse engine than a fusion reactor - in case she needs to move in Emergencies or some such (hey - there's a precedent for it at least ).

That actually looks way more practical than the designs based strictly on the description from the book. The only problem I have with it is the fact that the impulse engine looks pretty wimpy. It's practically begging a bad guy to shoot it off

[Patrickivan]

SonicRanger wrote:

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That's pretty small compared to the original station:

So my intent to double the size should work out well. Espcially given the volume of the sphere, we'll be looking at a HUGE base relative to DS9. The rings alone will be massive in volume.

sojourner wrote:

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If the original is 1 mile across, than those windows on the central hub must be HUGE.

I've always had issues with the scale of that station. But- scale is relative to the story line in a lot of Trek, both old and new, eh?

________

I was thinking of putting some kind of communications arrays on the ends of each Ring but don't want to over do it. Maybe just the north/south points? And some control structures along hard docking points?

I also want to put some shuttle docking bays on the sphere, but don't want it to look like the death star.

The main thing is to keep it looking nothing like a Cardassian design. From what I'm gathering from the simple description I read, it's a Federation design.