Advanced Circumferential Engine

[Darkwing]

I have some questions on this idea from Aridas Sofia. Does anyone know of a website that shows specifications for ACE? Mass, dimensions, performance, etc?
Has anyone seen nomenclature for it, like PB-XX for circumferential and LN-XX for linear? Notionally, I'm using AE-XX, with the first model being AE-33, as that was the hull number of my first ship, the USS Shasta.
In Timo's Hitchhiker's Guide, he refers to it including the deflector dish. I like this idea for single-nacelle Saladin-style ships, but wonder if there's any background or backing for it. Or was that just a cool idea Timo threw in with no outside influence?
Thanks for any help you all can provide.

 

[Timo]

The only thing I can vouch for is that I had no actual "source" for the inclusion of deflectors in this or certain other nacelle types. I sort of feel that the famed ramscoop is an endurance-extending fuel scoop only second, and a path-clearing vacuum cleaner first and foremost; the art for ACE, with the bifurcated ramscoop, suggested the possibility of a more refined and capable path-clearing device.

I've never seen a PB- or LN-style designation applied on this engine, alas. As you may have noticed, I sort of feel these two-letter designations denote a specific family of nacelles, being only loosely related to the technology behind it (Aridas/Todd themselves say that PB-51 was "linear", for example) and mostly relating to the manufacturer. AE series sounds fine!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Darkwing]

Thanks,Timo, that helps! Have you ever seen anything (preferably with Aridas/Todd input) with the speed of the ACE engines or their other specs?

 

[publiusr]

You may have to go to Aridas own federationreference site--it is back up and running

 

[aridas sofia]

The bufurcated ramscoop was never a part of the design. That was something someone else added trying to figure out what the silhouette was supposed to look like.

Here was a workup of one of the ACE nacelles. This one was for the Cygnus class:



And here was a quick workup of the refit Avenger class from the late 23rd century with ACE nacelles:







The proper designation is just "ACE-XX" where the "XX" is the last two digits of the Earthyear when the nacelle was approved for use. If more than one nacelle is approved in a year, then the "XX" is appended with an "a", "b", "c", etc.

I should also note that the way I figured it, the "ramscoop" was the "ridges" located just behind the dome. Those ridges were the edges of stacked funnels that feed the matter tanks in the nacelle. The forward dome is for microsingularity generation, containment and projection via the dome's Podkletnov lens.

 

[Ithekro]

Remind me were these drives come from. Were they suppose to be the failed path taken before moving on to the linear nacelles, or were they they step towards the Galaxy-class style nacelles later in the 23rd and early 24th centuries?

 

[Timo]

I'd wager a veritable maze of paths, including many loops and cul-de-sacs. Whatever the terminology, the TNG era nacelles come in a couple of variants: "field windows" to both sides (sometimes going around the back, too); a "field window" atop; or a combination of both.

This ACE shape is certainly more interesting than just the LN-64-with-lipstick-bow design usually associated with the Cochise or Cygnus silhouettes. And doing justice to the A in ACE, too.

Incidentally, I think I met Podkletnov, but before he started publishing about gravity masking. Haven't heard of him lately.

I should also note that the way I figured it, the "ramscoop" was the "ridges" located just behind the dome.

Sternbach seemed to go by that assumption for the similarly ridged TNG engines. I don't know if that was an original Probert concept or not...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[aridas sofia]

Remind me were these drives come from. Were they suppose to be the failed path taken before moving on to the linear nacelles, or were they they step towards the Galaxy-class style nacelles later in the 23rd and early 24th centuries?

A little background-
About six years before Todd Guenther did the Galaxy class plans with Rick Sternbach, he and I took a stab at it. The plans never went to press because frankly, we didn't get any orders. But in the process of developing them, in those very early days of TNG, we needed to figure out what came between what we'd covered in Ships of the Star Fleet and the Federation Reference Series and what we were seeing onscreen in TNG. One part of that was ACE, which was based on an illustration Andrew Probert did back in the TMP days of a Jetsons-esque Enterprise. That illustration ended up being the inspiration for what ended up being the Enterprise-D. In our little corner of fandom it ended up inspiring the ACE nacelle.

ACE was meant to be the bridge between linear and what we saw as the TNG nacelle technology - circumlinear. In effect, both were attempts to merge the best of the TOS coil-based technology and the TMP linear tech which per our thinking used virtual coils. ACE muscles its way to warp using coils and glides its way up the warp factors using virtual coils. Then we saw circumlinear as overlapping the two throughout the acceleration.

So if those early Enterprise-D plans had been printed, ACE would have been the intermediary technology between TMP and TNG.

 

[Ithekro]

That would explain why that piece on knowledge was lacking on my part. Thank you.

 

[Darkwing]

The proper designation is just "ACE-XX" where the "XX" is the last two digits of the Earthyear when the nacelle was approved for use. If more than one nacelle is approved in a year, then the "XX" is appended with an "a", "b", "c", etc.

Thanks for all of that info - I assume the same doctrine applied to PB and LN series engines as well? So a PB-47 engine came out in 2247? I had always wondered where the digits came from, but kinda assumed they were model numbers, with PB-1 being the first production PB series, and PB-31 being the 31st, etc.
And is there any source for mass of the ACE engines, what their cruising and flank speeds are, power generation, etc?
For my personal use, I'm writing up the evolution of the Saladin / Hermes series in the style of SOTSF, and I figure, because we saw so many Jenghiz drawings, that there must be some practical use for a single LN-64 equipped DD/ST, even if the technology really doesn't come into it's own unless you use two nacelles. Otherwise, Jenghiz would just use the LN-52 SCNN, and call it good, or the whole class would have been refit to look like the DD-2901 Scimitar when upgrading from PB-tech. But once ACE is applied to Cygnus / Amerind / Cochise, why wouldn't all Saladin / Hermes series be refit to use ACE? Not knowing the performance of ACE makes it hard to decide an answer to that.

 

[Ithekro]

What about something far older? Would the old nacelles on the NX-class are other ships around its period be PB as well? Would their number cross over or be higher due to being from the previous century?

 

[Darkwing]

I see Enterprise as a new universe, and besides that, PB tech had the reactor in the nacelle. NX-01 had a warp core two centuries before the term warp core was invented in the universe of Those New Guys. So even if you thought they were the same universe, they aren't the same tech - think of it like this: real world ships went from sail to coal boilers to oil boilers to diesel boilers to now gas turbines.

 

[Ithekro]

Even withon one of these power providing methods there were many ways of appling said power. Coil boilers powered paddle wheels, screws. The screws can be moved by compound engines, triple expansion engines, steam turbines, and others.

Warp drives could have all sorts of variations that more or less do the same thing, make a warp field to move a starship FTL.

 

[Darkwing]

Yep, but each different method will have it's own designation. So NX-01 shouldn't be PB-XX, LN-XX, or ACE-XX. Maybe CF-49 or -51?

 

[Mytran]

I see Enterprise as a new universe, and besides that, PB tech had the reactor in the nacelle. NX-01 had a warp core two centuries before the term warp core was invented in the universe of Those New Guys.

Nah, that "warp core" we saw every week on ENT was just the auxiliary reactor, which provided independent power to regulate the main reactors in the nacelles.

 

[Darkwing]

I see Enterprise as a new universe, and besides that, PB tech had the reactor in the nacelle. NX-01 had a warp core two centuries before the term warp core was invented in the universe of Those New Guys.

Nah, that "warp core" we saw every week on ENT was just the auxiliary reactor, which provided independent power to regulate the main reactors in the nacelles.

 

[publiusr]

I'd love to see those ACE nacelles on stretched Belknap type secondary hull but with an Ariel saucer.

A refit era Galaxy class.

 

[Darkwing]

I'd love to see those ACE nacelles on stretched Belknap type secondary hull but with an Ariel saucer.

A refit era Galaxy class.

So build it. With Vance's toolkit, it's easy enough. Take a scan of the Heavy Cruiser Evolution chart, and resize it so the Ariel's engines are exactly as many pixels long as Vance's LN-64 (~446, IIRC). Then you can paste in the Ariel saucer onto the Belknap, paste in the ACE, and see how much you need to stretch that Belknap secondary hull.

 

[aridas sofia]

It's been awhile but IIRC Ariel's nacelles are actually a little bit longer and bigger overall than Enterprise's LNs.

 

[Darkwing]

If so, then pick some other feature, such as the bridge. Samll as it is, I'd compare length and width to derive a resizing factor.