Age of the Federation....

[Timo]

I don't mind the "balance" of NX-01 - after all, Kirk's ship had nothing above the saucer to balance out the secondary hull... But the design does appear both too ungainly to be either "sleek" or "flimsy", whichever quality would better fit the ship of our early heroes. It's not "stocky" enough to create the impression of old-fashioned engineering, either. Something more distinct from TOS and TNG might have been better...

But we can easily argue that humans only get to play space exploration after inventing the Starship, after which there is no real evolution of said invention for a couple of centuries: it's a quantum leap thing. No Star Trek until you have phasers and transporters and (after a very slight delay) shields and tractor beams - but when you have those, and discover that everybody else has those as well, and has for centuries, the incentive to do significantly better evaporates.

Once the time comes to invent something truly new, it's the end of Star Trek, and a fundamentally different fiction takes its place. Conversely, before the invention is made, it's not Star Trek yet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

Honestly, I think NX-01's shape is more ungainly. I like its details, but it's basically a Constitution-class shape without a secondary hull, and I've always found that to be out of proportion. The nacelles go upward from the center plane, but there's nothing going downward to balance them visually. So it feels like there's a piece missing. And the ship is just too flat overall. I suspect Doug Drexler may have felt the same, which was why he did his conjectural NX-refit design with a secondary hull (a design I've incorporated into my novels as the Columbia class).

I completely disagree. Drexler ruined his beautiful ship with that refit, and I'm glad that it never made on screen.

Or, heck, they could've still called it the NX class but used a sphere-hull design that would presumably be the forerunner of the Daedalus. That might've made more sense, given that the Essex from "Power Play" dated from the 2160s, more than a decade after ENT. (Although the ENT novels before mine established the Daedalus class as an older one predating the NX class, for some reason.)

I don't think there's a way to make the spherical hull look good. Let's just forget Sisko's unfortunate arts and crafts project. It is something he put together from a water bottle and a ball, there's no reason to assume it represents a real ship.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think there's a way to make the spherical hull look good.

http://2001.wikia.com/wiki/File:A_space_odyssey_discovery.jpg
http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/File:Starbug3.gif
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/File:Heartofgold_exterior1.jpg
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Fesarius,_remastered.jpg
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/File:USS_Pasteur.jpg
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:DeathStar1-SWE.png


Of course, a spherical hull makes more physical sense than a saucer. The three shapes that work best as pressure vessels in vacuum, without any edges or discontinuities of curvature where pressure might concentrate and cause a rupture, are a sphere, a torus, and a cylinder with hemispheric endcaps. So really, it makes sense that a more basic ship, made of less advanced materials, would need to be based on shapes like spheres and cylinders. Also, a sphere is the most compact shape, requiring the least surface area to contain a given volume, and thus requiring the least excess hull mass, making it a more efficient design. You're talking about aesthetics, but a more primitive ship should prioritize function over form.

 

[Longinus]

@Christopher, those ships don't look good. (Except the Death Star, but it's a space station.)

 

[Christopher]

@Christopher, those ships don't look good.

You may not think so, but taste is subjective. I happen to like spheres. I think they're an underutilized design element in SF ships.

(Except the Death Star, but it's a space station.)

No, it isn't. Obi-Wan thought it was when he said his famous line, but he didn't know its capabilities at the time. Per Wikipedia, a space station is "distinguished from other spacecraft... by lack of major propulsion or landing systems." The Death Star has major propulsion systems, hyperspace engines that let it move freely around the galaxy. So it should properly be considered a starship, not a space station.

 

[J.T.B.]

(Except the Death Star, but it's a space station.)

Yeah, that's just a holdover from the earlier drafts where the prison/fortress was separate from the Death Star, a mobile super-weapon. As Christoper points out, traveling freely from star system to star system pretty much makes it an enormous spaceship.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Except that it was also referred to as a "station" in omniscient scrolling narration and by the Imperials who were running it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So a mobile station

 

[The Old Mixer]

But from the 1970s, so no pay-at-the-pump self-serve.

 

[Christopher]

Except that it was also referred to as a "station" in omniscient scrolling narration and by the Imperials who were running it.

Which is still a factual error in the work itself. Hardly the only one in Star Wars.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Or it's just SW-verse terminology...the same sort of terminology that describes R2-D2 as a "droid" instead of a robot.

 

[Ithekro]

I like Drexler's refit. Feels more complete with a secondary hull. Even if it seems tacted on in some ways.

As for the Daedalus, I am of the mindset that the version we see on Sisko's desk is a late model or refit of the original design. The original designs looking close to the NX-01 era style designs. The later refits starting to look more like the much later Constitution-class in its utilitarian design. The more modern ship is simpler in some ways than the older NX-style. Also there was a suggestion from a discussion on the USS Pacific (NCC-201) from "Pacific 201", that the nacelle style of the Daedalus, and Constiitution (as well as Pacific) are a result of the Romulan War design needs. Armored nacelle exteriors rather than exposed like on the NX and much later Galaxy-class starships. The Constituion refit style ships and Excelsior design start to get over the Romulan War nacelle armoring style for some reason. Perhaps dealing with a need for an exposed structure to generate a more effective warp bubble for either higher speeds, or longer sustained high speeds Starfleet needed against the Klingons or other threats when the aging Constitutions were starting to lose their edge in their Cold War with the Klingons.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Which is still a factual error in the work itself. Hardly the only one in Star Wars.

How can you say that about Star Wars? It's the movie that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs!

 

[Ithekro]

Well you can do that, if less parsecs flown equals faster time by cutting corners.

 

[johnnybear]

Why didn't the producers of Enterprise use the look that was demonstrated in the Okuda books from the 90s? You know the long tube with the sphere at the front rather than make a ship which looked more advanced than Kirk's Enterprise? Another bit of evidence that the makers wanted to ignore TOS IMO!
JB

 

[Ithekro]

I think they did. They didn't like it as a hero ship.

 

[Timo]

It's not a "look" thing anyway: if anything, TOS established that Trek spacecraft have no particular look to adhere to as such, while TOS movies started the tradition that starships come in "families" where the ordering of certain components can be endlessly varied and any single one ditched or added.

Well you can do that, if less parsecs flown equals faster time by cutting corners.

Is the jury really still out on whether that particular piece of technobabble was supposed to be "in-universe serious" or "character-establishing obvious bullshit"?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

I like this version of NX (from Pacific 201 thread.) It maintains the beautiful basic design but loses most of those organic shapes that feel too TNGish. (I couldn't find more pics of this design. I'd love to see other angles and closeups.)

 

[Timo]

There is something to be said for the "NASA White" color alone. True, it smacks of steampunkish backwardness rather than merely adorable primitiveness - starships really shouldn't need to worry about thermal control. But it is also a nice link to the immediate fictional past, and all that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Why didn't the producers of Enterprise use the look that was demonstrated in the Okuda books from the 90s? You know the long tube with the sphere at the front rather than make a ship which looked more advanced than Kirk's Enterprise?

We've already covered this. Berman & Braga wanted something that looked like the Akira for some reason, though Doug Drexler and the other artists worked in as many TOS-like elements as they could.

Another bit of evidence that the makers wanted to ignore TOS IMO!

Oh, come on, I debunked that four days ago. It's one thing to be honestly misinformed, but there's no excuse for perpetuating a false belief once you know better. When the facts conflict with an opinion, you're supposed to discard the opinion, not the facts.