Oh no! I love the Atomic Rockets website. I hope it sticks around. Absolutely invaluable. I never met Chung himself, but he always struck me as a decent fellow. --Alex
Warped9, I'm not sure if you have done this before but have you experimented on TAS interiors? I would like to see a 3D rendering of the Enterprise bridge.
I am saddened by this news. He is a very decent and incredibly generous guy. I wish him well in the fight ahead.
It seems that the site will continue according to this tweet from Nyrath himself. https://twitter.com/nyrath/status/1436303576788316170
Since we were discussing phaser rifles not too long ago, this excerpt from the new Star Trek Celebration book just got published on TrekMovie.com about the process behind designing the WNMNHGB phaser rifle.
I learned stellar cartography from Winchell Chung. Had several email conversations with him. We talked about his designs for the 1970s video game Ogre. I told what I learned to Christian Rühl (we had both read the same German book about the Milky Way maps), who passed it on to the book Star Trek: Star Charts. Hope for the best.
I saw this game's art in a comic book/magazine store in 1978 when I was in college (the game was released in 1977). I don't play games, but I like art. That's what I talked about (via email) with Winchell Chung.
I bought the game in '77. It's a table top game. I do play games. Sorry, no video games in '77, unless you count pong.
I remember there were games for sale that came on a cassette tape you loaded into a computer. I thought Ogre was one of those, but I didn't play it so, I'm probably wrong.
Whoa! It’s been a two month pause since my last post so I guess I better get back onto this horse. I’m trying to decide what to tackle next. - Possible ship designs from the Earth/Romulan war. All we know is that they’re “primitive” by mid 23rd century standards. And they supposedly used atomic weapons (though not likely the only weapons). - An orbital drydock for Starbase 10. Even if it were never to be seen it’s interesting to ponder while trying not to be overly influenced by the TMP version.
Michael Jan Freidman's novel Starfleet: Year One (which was written before Star Trek: Enterprise, and was far better than the show, IMHO) described an Earth/Romulan war Earth vessel, the Christopher-class. IIRC, it was described as a descendant of the Valiant, with a hull shaped like a whiskey flask with underslung nacelles. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Christopher_class
Even as I don’t want to be influenced by anything post TOS it will be hard not to be influenced by Masao’s excellent designs on his Starfleet Museum website.
All my E-R war ships are basically the same, so please have a try on the era. We rarely get to see pre-TOS ships. My designs of that time were based on the idea that a massive amount of fuel and large nacelles and engines were needed for slow warp speed. Also that the decks were stacked horizontally to the direction of travel because gravitational effects had traditionally been achieved that way. But those are just my ideas. Anything's possible. (Just don't make the ships look like they're from that shortened TV series which I will not name.)
The one thing I can guarantee is my designs will have a TOS aesthetic and certainly not look like anything done in sci-fi and Trek post 1969. In this we are exploring something we actually would never, or highly unlikely, have seen in TOS. We are speculating what the mind of Matt Jefferies and/or Wah Chang might envision if they had cobbled something together for a glimpse on a viewscreen. Or if during TOS our heroes had come across an old derelict at some point in a story.
The Botany Bay gives us a glimpse of late 20th to early 21st century starflight in TOS’ continuity as Jefferies envisioned it. Extrapolating from there theValiant (as I envisioned it) gives us a glimpse of starflight some 200 years before TOS, and conjecturally the mid to late 21st century. So we are speculating about starflight evolution from the Valiant in mid to late 21st century to mid 22nd century. Also we are speculating on combat ships rather than ships intended primarily for exploration.
Maybe turn this into a ringship? https://fantastic-plastic.com/ProjectOrionBattleshipPage.htm https://www.reddit.com/r/StarshipPo...ct_orion_battleship_one_of_the_most_powerful/ That would have it look different from this Romulan look https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/pre-tos-romulan-ship-any-info.423271/ I'd like to see a DY-variant with nacelles....