Considering the Romulan War might be gearing up around the time of a fifth season, would Starfleet bother taking Entperise out of the fight for the refit? Or would resources be better served just building a new design? They didnt go back and refit the Excelsior to match the Enterprise-B.
I think it would make much more sense for the NX-03 (presumably named Challenger) to be the first NX to get the proposed refit, since construction on it likely began either shortly before Columbia's launch or not long afterward.
A new build would take around three years, whereas that refit could be done in a matter of a couple of months, maybe even a matter of weeks, depending on the urgency and how prepared the spacedock crew is.
True. A lot of variables come into such speculation, though. Materials, battle situations, and suchnot.
Uglier starships have headlined Trek series before (Voyager, NuEnteprise, etc). They invariably grow on us once we see them in action. Hell, NX-01 itself was pretty fugly when we first got to meet her, but after a while we started to like her. If you can't have the Enterprise you love, love the Enterprise you have.
I totally agree with this. NX-01 was by far not the ugliest ship we've seen. I mean... people don't question it anymore cause we're so used to it but does anybody actually think that the Enterprise D is an elegant design? The duck in space??? The ridiculously large, odd-shaped saucer section? And still I love TNG and even the ship a lot.
The refit of the Enterprise NX-01 seeemed a bit too much overkill since the orginal design I liked better... Besides that additional mass sure would have made her ungainly to pilot with that semi-engineering hull added on for "increased deflector performance blah blah blah..." Keep with the original design more easier to upgrade all of the ship systems inside the existing space frame....* BSG-Ajax grins* So that is my opinion on the subject....
While I didn't really care for this refit ~slash~ upgrade at first, it has begun to grow on me. I wanted to ask everyone if I'm interpreting a feature correctly. In between where the engine struts join the secondary hull there is this thingy here, now the NX-01's shuttle pods are fairly small and this look like what I'll call a "heavy lander" set into a docking cradle. It looks to be about two and a half decks tall, twenty some feet wide and over forty feet long (or more tucked into that over hang). The ability to carry this might in of itself be reason enough to incorporate a secondary hull onto the NX design. Especially if the NX were to be carrying and landing groups of MACO's.
That's just the thingy that's usually between the nacelle pylons on the standard NX-01, only it's been lowered and attached to the new secondary hull.
Someone at Starfleet finally figured out that it might be a good idea to be able to get at that thingie directly, without having to deploy an inspection pod to get to it.
Gang, since this has become a quasi-picture thread, it's okay to post pics a bit larger than the guidelines (640p wide max)--and btw, try to keep it below 800p, okay? I have a widescreen computer and even I have to scroll left and right. Also, if you post more than one large image, please hit "enter" in between to stack them and avoid a major case of Page Stretchy Syndrome. Thanks.
...The fact that it's still mounted on rails would seem to suggest that it's fairly important for one's self-survival to be able to eject the damn thing in a split second. Access is probably a secondary concern. And one might think that it was originally mounted so far away from everything else exactly because nobody in his right mind would go anywhere near it, at least not before it was allowed to cool down for a decade or two. Sure, it has what looks like a docking port on it. But it's actually one of 'em circular gunports, seen firing a phase beam in S3 and S4. (Naah, it is a docking port if one looks close enough - but the onscreen use as a gunport isn't such a blatant VFX error when one squints a bit, as the two features are almost identical from a distance.) FWIW, in S3 there was a photonic torpedo launcher there, in a separate and carefully constructed location just below the round 'port; it had sliding hatches, the smooth seams of which we conveniently missed in most shots. I wonder if that feature is still supposed to be there in the refit... Timo Saloniemi
Very late to this partae: I quite like the refit NX-01. She is an ugly ship (no doubt) - but, there's something steampunkish about it, it's grown on me over the years... even the duel deflector dishes feel like an 'earlier attempt' at what became a better design (later in Trekdom's timeline) - so in that light, I like what it represents.
Watching "These are the Voyages..." recently, aside from the three Enterprises montage at the end, we don't see what the outside of the NX-01 looked like in 2161 do we? The only obstacle as far I can tell, is Reed and Trip's scene in Engineering. Although that may not have been entirely relocated to the secondary hull. With an experimental class, it's probably reasonable to have that whole section detachable and still have the primary hull as Warp 5 capable as it's always been.
In Star Trek Into Darkness, Enterprise NX-01 is seen in it's original (and IMHO, far superior) incarnation among Admiral Marcus' "History of Spaceflight" display. Has anyone mentioned yet that in the novelverse, Drexler's refit design is used for the USS Endeavour NCC-06? Despite it being the first ship to be upgraded thusly, Admiral Archer had her named the Columbia-class after the NX-02 which was presumed lost during the Romulan war. The Endeavour is featured on the cover of the second Rise of the Federation novel.
I think the refit was a neat idea and it would have been great if it had happened in S5- they never would have done it of course, as then they couldn't re-use footage from earlier seasons!