Well, considering the shows always been mostly one big continuity error, I'm actually okay with this design. I personally see the Earth/Romulan War as being similar to the Dominion War, with Earth facing a more technically advanced enemy and having to hurriedly refit and upgrade existing ships to serve until starship production lines can get up to speed. So yes, I can see the ship being fitted with a larger power core to operate more powerful weapons and sensors, and to free up space in the saucer for a larger crew. Heck, I like it so much that I'm currently working on the model kit version. More than likely though I'll get rid of the hull mounted dish and do something along the lines of what this person did with theirs. https://www.flickr.com/photos/29607470@N08/13741771143/in/set-72157643606914624/
I don't like the refit version very much; it's a bit too bulky and not as sleek and spiffy as the original.
I'm actually a fan of the standard NX-01 design, and I felt the same way about the NX-01 refit. At first, I thought it tried too hard to make the NX-01 look like a Connie, but after a while it grew on me, and now I think it might actually have been a good upgrade for a season 5. I had thought to myself that a good explanation for the added secondary hull could have been a new, more powerful warp core that increased the speed up to Warp 6, as well as added cargo space for carrying those "primitive" thermonuclear torpedoes used during the Earth-Romulan War. But I like the idea of it being maybe a detachable landing craft for a company of MACO's!
The best angle on it is seen in Christopher's Babel Novel. A flatter saucer might go better with that secondary hull.
This one? http://www.startrek.com/uploads/assets/articles/6ac28e3a1ee830ea2d71a03bfe332f0c1b844b02.png
While I do like the Refit- I wish it had been done with some different curves and less of a fantail cut-out. The logic of upgrading an existing vessel by attaching a lower pod housing the improved equipment and tying it into the propulsion systems makes sense. It would have been nice to had a hangar deck also instead of mostly blocking the four drop doors, but you do have the remaining two stern doors which have never been seen in use. The back story from Drexler IIRC was that after it's initial missions they determined the original NX was just not strong enough to deal with the challenges out there, hence the idea of adding more power and deflector capability. Ripping out all the existing structures would take forever, but adding the pod and splicing it in allowed the Refit to be done in a short time. It would be interesting to see how later vessels being built all new would have changed. Having redundant systems might have been set aside for more labs and sensors... It does bring the NX much closer to the TOS ships we are familiar with- IMO the original NX still looked too advanced for that time period. The clunkier secondary hull fixes that somewhat.
I liked this design. Made it feel more like a starship. The backstory from what I remember is that Starfleet wanted to test a longer endurance engine that could maintain Warp 5 for longer periods of time than the one installed in Enterprise. But with war looming, they decided it would be faster to fit it to the Enterprise as a test instead of fitting it to another under construction NX-class ship or a new ship, as they could get more hulls in space quicker if they bolted on a secondary hull to Enterprise than try to work out a new system on an untested ship (seeing how many problems they had just getting the NX-02 Columbia out of dock, that might have been wise). The new secondary hull moves the main time-space warp stabilizer (or whatever it is called) into the new hull as it would be closer to the center rear of the new warp field. Inside the new hull are a new enlarged warp core and an enlarged navigation deflector to allow Enterprise to maintain Warp 5 to Warp 6 speeds for extended periods of time. There was also some additional storage. The Shuttle pods were moved to new bays beside the new dorsal connector. Originally, Enterprise's first Warp 5 core was left installed but deactivated as a safety measure. In case the new warp core failed, the Enterprise could eject the new hull and after some time, power up the old core. They'd have problems due to the loss of the time-space warp stabalizer within the secondary hull, but they could still operate at slower warp speeds. Later the old core was removed (via the doors in the rear of the saucer...that is what those are for). After that was removed, they added larger quarters for the senior officers. Possibly also expanded a lab or two for any post-war ships of this class that remained in service. The redundant navigational deflector was retained in case the prototype one failed, or in case tey had to jettison the secondary hull. After the old warp core was removed, the redundant deflector remained as a backup or supplimentary deflector. Some later starships were remain this feature, but with a greatly reduced in size secondary navigation deflector. Also added (supposedly) were an Andorian designed shield generator and Vulcan designed tractor beams. There proved difficult to get to work with Earth power systems, but they managed eventually. The outer part of the warp nacelles were also covered for added protection. The NX-01 was supposely rebuild into her original configuration for use as a museum ship. This might account for errors in the holographic record and issues with visitors not knowning about the "Columbia-class" extra features. Unless of course Memory Alpha also has one of the later Columbia-class ships as a museum ship in addition to the NX-class Enterprise.
Fingers crossed, it'll be joining that Eaglemoss Star Trek model with a magazine publication eventually.
Actually, I don't think they were moved at all. I'm pretty sure they just rearranged the hangar so the pods enter and exit through the otherwise never-used rear doors. Human error accounts for that nicely. Besides, the Columbia extra features were pointless and silly looking and I would very much like to pretend they weren't really there.
You mean like the pair of constantly flashing tubes on the Bridge? I could do without THOSE in my workplace, thank you! ;-)
What on Earth are those stupid things supposed to do anyway? They also had them on the NX-01 Generation Ship encountered in 'E2'. Maybe they were intended to cause epileptic seizures with the enemy when they were insulting each other Captain to Captain via the viewscreen...
Oh wow! It looks a million times better from that angle! Too bad it looks so strange in the angle of the original post.
I thought it improved a disgusting design. I really didn't like the original NX design, and thought it looked absolutely out of place in the universe. It didn't have the hero-ship feel like the TOS Enterprise or the Enterprise-D had.
I never really found the NX design to have been. Really well thought out. I mean, it's the beginning of the warp era for humanity, and the essentially stick a nuclear reactor right next to where the crew sleeps. I always figured the early Starfleet ships had been designed with a secondary hull (that was continued through the centuries) to keep the engine away from the crew so that if anything happened, there would be some time to get the saucer seperated and most of the crew away from the problem. Maybe by the time of TNG/DS9/Voyager the designers had designed something into the bulkheads, and implemented force fields,to protect the crew so they could stick the warp core next to the sleeping cabins.
The NX has doors at the back of the ship to eject the warp core. The secondary hull was probably introduced to make this even safer following actual experience with Enterprise and Columbia. The refit of Enterprise (NX-01) with a secondary hull to install a larger warp core for more sustained warp 5 (and possibly warp 6) flight would make some sense if they decided to keep Enterprise as a test bed ship, as well as their primary explorer. In theory, it would be faster to fit out an existing ship with this new hull, than build a totally new ship with it already installed. At least at the rate Starfleet seemed to be building Warp Five starships at that time. 6 months in refit beats out two or three years for a new construction. Especially if you have a need for more powerful ships due to the Romulans invading with slower ships.
I wasn't a big fan of it. I think some of the updated Daedalus Class designs were pretty good. Where they gave it a hull type that was fairly consistent with the NX-01. I think we have moved into that era anyhow. It's a bit late in the day for the NX-01. I would prefer to see Admiral Archer and the early days of the Federation at this point.
Even with doors to eject the core, how did they not know that there weren't any unknown forms of radiation emanating from the core that would affect the crew. Sure they might've been testing Warp 1, 2 and 3 starships for 90 years, but Warp 5 was, from the sounds of it, an all-new engine that was very different from any of the other Terran warp cores, or even Vulcan. I'm reminded of Trip's face in "In A Mirror Darkly" and his line about his grandkids glowing in the dark, or even back in "Broken Bow" where Hoshi asks if it is safe to be stand near the warp core! But even where I live there's a nuclear reactor about 30 minutes to the north of me. Even the town it's located "in", it is still about 15 minutes from the town center so that if anything does go wrong the main population of the town has a chance to leave (really, who puts a nuclear reactor in the middle of town?). And that's why I think the NX design was poor.
^ About that last bit, I always thought it was just a MU thing: that the Terran Empire was so gung-ho as to have very low (if any) safety standards. As long as the ship worked, they wouldn't care how or why; I doubt they had any kind of quality control. The regular universe Starfleet, not being genocidally evil and all, would certainly care a lot more about safety. The network probably made the showrunners add them, just so viewers could tell which version of the ship they were looking at.
The Mirror Universe version rushed the NX-class out without the safety checks resulting in a bunch of extra Delta radiation (like what Captain Pike would get from an accident in the normal timeline). This is why they had at least nine of them in service by 2155 while Starfleet had barely pushed out the second ship. The Prime Universe version was delayed and delayed, so it is likely they took their time with the safety of the ship and crew. Flashy tubes are a feature in some computer systems to make the user feel like it is doing something...kind of like the progress bar.