The Enterprise That Wasn't

[Arpy]

After seeing the above image on another BB online, and in the wake of PIC, I find myself wondering about the ENT or just Ent that never was. @aridas sofia are you still here? I remember you had a lot of great images of the 22nd century from the fandom a while ago. Where were they from? I'l try to look for them. I grew up watching TNG and still imagine the early Trek Universe looking more sort of like that. Looking at the above image, and having just watched PIC with its richness and...dread? I guess I think of the Ringship's period being very precarious and dread-inducing, and I wish talents like Chabon and others could flesh it out. What might it been like?

I see it as a mix of TOS or Babylon 5 and NASA. We're mostly localized to the Solar System, with large corporations running the show. Humans are practically unprotected wherever they go. Warp is pretty much the only advanced tech we've just come up with. Maybe gravity plating too. Maybe. The tech being not far away from the math we did to get warp. But the rest is open to be invented or procured or acquired by federating with aliens we'll soon have first contacts with. Weapons are lasers and nukes. The super weapon photon torpedoes maybe being the current Manhattan Project, perhaps in a lopsided war against the ancient Romulans.

You know, I'm not going to imagine anything more than that right now. What do you all think about what this ship's world might have been like?

 

[F. King Daniel]

That ship was designed by Matt Jeffries for a non-Trek Gene Roddenberry series called Starship, which never came to be. The ship was to be crewed exclusively by genius scientists or somesuch. I imagine if they developed the concept, they'd go back to those 1970's origins and build from there. Lots of info and some concept art in THIS THREAD.

 

[Timo]

...It's pretty fantastic that the ENT team did go back there and decide to use the look for the Vulcans, creating a whole world of in-universe implications.

Not that the look and tech as such would carry much connotations to how the universe should feel. So the ringship carries a crew in the dozens rather than in the hundreds? The adventures could still be pretty much the same. Or starships packing 430 people could tiptoe across the neighborhood with a propulsion system that was always on the verge of failing, with shielding that couldn't stop a bad meteoroid storm, and with guns that made most bug-eyed monsters laugh so hard their bellies fell off their heads.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Arpy]

Genius scientists? That works for me. It'd be cool if we sent our legit best and brightest out there, especially if we're more on a NASA than Space Force footing. I wonder if a cool storyline might be if a rival ship is an Earth ship from the private sector with their own agenda.

 

[Forbin]

Assuming the rings are part of the drive system, and the whole crew is in that little pod up front - how many people could this thing carry comfortably? Five??

 

[Dukhat]

Assuming the rings are part of the drive system, and the whole crew is in that little pod up front - how many people could this thing carry comfortably? Five??

I don’t think the rings were ever part of the drive system. That pic the OP posted is an artistic representation of the ship. The actual artwork (which I have somewhere) shows exhaust flames coming out of the rear of the ship. So apparently whatever power source the ship uses propels the ship forward by means of combustible rocket engines. The fact the the Vulcans have a ring warp drive is just a coincidence.

 

[uniderth]

The thread I have been waiting for. The ringship Enterprise is one of my favorite ship designs and also one of my biggest pet peeves against Enterprise. So much so that I've been developing a fan alternate version of Enterprise that uses the ringship. You can find all the links to that in my signature. I haven't had a chance to update it in a while, but I'm always working on it a bit here and there.

Assuming the rings are part of the drive system, and the whole crew is in that little pod up front - how many people could this thing carry comfortably? Five??

It depends on the scale. My version has a crew of about 80. You can actually really bump up the usable area by switching the decks to be perpendicular to the center line rather than parallel.

I don’t think the rings were ever part of the drive system. That pic the OP posted is an artistic representation of the ship. The actual artwork (which I have somewhere) shows exhaust flames coming out of the rear of the ship. So apparently whatever power source the ship uses propels the ship forward by means of combustible rocket engines. The fact the the Vulcans have a ring warp drive is just a coincidence.

I don't know if it was planned on the rings being part of the drive system or not. But it is a logical choice. I've seen some designs that make the rings into passenger areas. But in that case you end up with a behemoth ship that dwarfs the NCC-1701. So it doesn't really fit a reasonable design lineage.

 

[drt]

Assuming the rings are part of the drive system, and the whole crew is in that little pod up front - how many people could this thing carry comfortably? Five??

In the original Starship concept it was supposedly to only have a crew of seven or so.

I don’t think the rings were ever part of the drive system. That pic the OP posted is an artistic representation of the ship. The actual artwork (which I have somewhere) shows exhaust flames coming out of the rear of the ship. So apparently whatever power source the ship uses propels the ship forward by means of combustible rocket engines. The fact the the Vulcans have a ring warp drive is just a coincidence.

Yeah, it's sort of a two-fold retcon, one with the Vulcans and two with the Alcubierre warp drive hypothesizing a ring based system. Although, I'm not sure if the Vulcan system was based on the concept art.

 

[Dukhat]

Although, I'm not sure if the Vulcan system was based on the concept art.

I think Brannon Braga said it was, but I don’t believe him.

 

[Arpy]

I think Brannon Braga said it was, but I don’t believe him.

The Vulcan D'Kyr kind of looks a lot like the Tarellian ship a lot. The earlier Surak Class designed by Doug Drexler, I don't know its inspiration. Maybe it was the Ringship, but I'd rather think it was the IDIC symbol.

 

[Imaus]

Assuming the rings are part of the drive system, and the whole crew is in that little pod up front - how many people could this thing carry comfortably? Five??

Nowadays we chalk it up to being part of the drive system. Maybe back in the 70s they were jumping off 2001: A Space Odyssey and so those two rings would be crewed. Modern depictions make them far too thin for that, however.

I think if you scale it up, you can fit a few dozen people in there. Honestly the XCV-330 is one of the more 'realistic' star trek designs due to a stroke of luck in design (a few other ships count, mostly because they have big fins you can write off as radiators).

Imagine this: The big pylon can be a deck by itself - engineering is that rectangular space right below the rings; then far below it is the impulse deck right below the Pylon, full of fusion thrusters and reactors. The pylon itself is crammed full of fuel and power lines, radiators, and the like. The neck is there for added distance, maybe around 10m in diameter, which helps mitigate radiation exposure, and holds water/fuel.

Then the crew is in those cylinders up front. The lower Cylinder is the 'support' module; lots of life support, cargo, the proto-deflector there. The higher cylinder is the 'crew' module - ten, fifteen decks (arranged vertically than horizontally) with, say, a diameter in the 20-25 m range is more than sufficient. Then the big sphere in the back is the Aux craft bay, holding a VTVL shuttle, either conical or 'winged', or two, along with the main cargo bay. You can shove in some small weapons behind ports, as seen in ENT on the, well, ENT or in the ECS.

 

[Arpy]

In the original Starship concept it was supposedly to only have a crew of seven or so.

I can see that. A smaller crew...

1. Captain
2. First Officer
3. Medical Officer
4. Engineer
5. Science
6. Security
7. Computers/Engineering/Security/Fill in the Blank

I'd think maybe a dozen (more science-y) or two dozen (more fleet-y) people tops might be interesting. This is an early exploration vessel.

I imagine this period
having
very
different
looking
space
ships
than
we're
used
to
in
Trek.

Just after do we start to get ships like the Conestoga, then Daedalus, then Reeses-Class, then Constitution.

(Moderator: should I post the images here or link them as I have? I don't know what the board rules are these days about posting a lot of images.)

 

[Arpy]

I see most ships being impulse and/or other sublight only. This is their first foray into warp coils. They’ll get smaller with time, as on the testbed Bonaventure linked above.

Full body radiation suits are necessary in engineering and different sections of ships are usually kept far apart for jettison ability.

 

[aridas sofia]

After seeing the above image on another BB online, and in the wake of PIC, I find myself wondering about the ENT or just Ent that never was. @aridas sofia are you still here? I remember you had a lot of great images of the 22nd century from the fandom a while ago. Where were they from? I'l try to look for them.

Those 22nd century ships were all my designs. They precede ENT for the most part, when I was trying to work out a "Ships of the Star Fleet" game and wanted to get an idea of the Treknical past before I fleshed out what an operational, "ships of the line", Star Fleet might look like. I went back to this Jefferies design as the touchstone to base everything on. I took the two big rings as primitive warp coils - negative energy induction rings. As warp drive evolved, more and smaller rings were employed until the main breakthrough during the Earth Roman War - twin sets of rings encased in nacelle outriggers, interacting.

That was what all that stuff was about.

 

[Arpy]

The moment I saw the first Tellarite ship on ENT I though how much I preferred your arc.

 

[Dukhat]

The moment I saw the first Tellarite ship on ENT I though how much I preferred your arc.

Unlike the Vulcan and Andorian ships, the Tellarite ship from ENT was just a reuse of another generic alien ship from a previous episode.

 

[NCC-73515]

I've always liked the xcv 330. Wish I had a small model, the eaglemoss thing is too big.

I imagine this period
having
very
different
looking
space
ships
than
we're
used
to
in
Trek.

That's kinda annoying...

I don’t think the rings were ever part of the drive system. That pic the OP posted is an artistic representation of the ship. The actual artwork (which I have somewhere) shows exhaust flames coming out of the rear of the ship. So apparently whatever power source the ship uses propels the ship forward by means of combustible rocket engines. The fact the the Vulcans have a ring warp drive is just a coincidence.

warp and impulse.

 

[FederationHistorian]

The design itself seems Vulcan influenced. And seems like you could make a larger version of it to be a space liner of sorts for commercial purposes.

I don’t see this ship having weapons of any sort. There’s an innocence to this ship, and arguably is designed to be pacifist in nature. However, I imagine that this vessel would be quite dependant on security from either United Earth forces (like a Stellar Navy) or the Vulcan High Command for protection from marauder species like the Kzin and assorted random pirates.

Its crew complement would be small, with essential personnel only, many with overlapping responsibilities.

- Commander (I’m not sure that the position would be called captain in this instance)
- Helmsman/Ops
- Engineer
- Computer Technician
- Medical Officer
- Science Officer
- Astrophysicist/Stellar Cartographer
- Morale Officer (comprised of multiple roles, including chef, barber, counselor, and being in charge of hydroponics)

There wouldn’t be a need for a comms. officer (in the sense of Uhura or Sato to translate languages), or a tactical officer, or a security officer; they would not be needed on a vessel like this. As this ship only goes to warp 2 at best, it won’t be doing any major deep space exploration, and as a result, may not require Vulcan crewmember to provide oversight of a crew presumably made up solely of humans. But would make up for its inability to be a deep space exploration vessel by being a morale boost of sorts in a post-WW3 Earth. I imagine that this USS Enterprise is a United States Ship, and not a United Star Ship.

On a slightly unrelated note, I’ve always though that the Enterprise XCV-330 would make for a great Short Trek.

 

[Arpy]

That's kinda annoying...

I did it that way so it would be less annoying than if the words were closer to one another and were harder to click or keep track of. I find it kind of annoying still. That’s why I asked the moderator what picture policy is these days

@FederationHistorian, I do see this armed and actually think it closer to what warships of the period should look like. I don’t care how mean you look, if you don’t have a warp drive. Sailing vessels with dozens of cannons and skeleton carvings had a bunch of pretty, delicate, sails just above them.

I imagine this ship having maybe one big laser canon it would need to turn the ship around to get full targeting area and nuclear missiles with AI and remote targeting ability.

I don’t know that in my alternative universe first contact is with the Vulcans (it was pretty late before of one them joined the fleet) and my Federation Starfleet is packed with aliens. But I’m okay with Vulcans being our first contact too. “Future hazy; ask again later.”

 

[FederationHistorian]

@Arpy, I understand what you are saying. But the ship seems lax on security. Even in the context of the Earth-Kzin Wars and the subsequent Treaty of Sirius happening in the late 21st century, there may be a perception that since an Earth Stellar Navy was created to defeat them/protect Earth, and Earth also having the protection of the Vulcans, all they have to do his call for help if they are in trouble. The XCV crew would still be in charge of personal security, meaning they would still need to carry plasma weapons, have knowledge of self defense, and would be reliant on cameras and lasers to trip an alarm if an intruder boarded. And there may be some countermeasures such as a couple of shuttlepods that double as space fighters for defence of the ship, and deployment of mines from their aft if they are being pursued. But this design does not strike me as anticipating ship to ship battles or even being captured and abducted by another ship. Yes, it’s a naïve thought, especially if the Vulcan ships it may be modeled off of have weapons of their own, but it’s a possibility nonetheless.

You have to consider what would be the realistic threats at this time, circa 2120s-2140s, when the ship would likely be in service.

Kzinti, who may have illegally procured arms despite being reduced to police vessels, and will board the ship to feed on humans.

Nausican pirates, who will board the ship to raid for supplies.

Rigellian pirates, who will board the ship to raid for supplies.

The occasional Orion pirate, who will board the ship to raid for supplies and people to sell into slavery.

Human pirates, that will board the ship and want to steal recently recovered artifacts for the purpose of selling them on the black market.

And fugitives, that will want safe passage through a sector.

Otherwise, it's just the friendly faces of Vulcans, Denobulans, Deltans, and United Earth/Starfleet.

Even though your suggestion makes sense, including how they fight space battles, I do not know if that would be the mindset of a vessel that’s oriented to science and may not travel farther than Alpha Centauri.