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Akira-Class Carrier? It's More Likely Than You Think

Herkimer Jitty

Herkimer Jitty

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Akira Class as a carrier... more likely than you think? Maybe. Pardon my incomplete ideas and poor wording as I proceed.

So, as a lot of you probably know, when he designed the Akira, Alex Jaeger intended for it to be a carrier of sorts. There's a number of problems with this, which have been hashed out rather extensively, so I'll not recap that old chestnut.

But...

It can still be a carrier.

Let's forget about fighters and shuttles.

I got to thinking recently about drones in the Star Trek universe. Yeah, Starships have always had probes, but they always seemed like dumb devices. Not dumb as in "a terrible idea", mind, but the way they were portrayed was "fire and forget at a single target, and you'll never see it again." Why not have them sweep around a whole system? Launch them as you arrive, "throwing a net" over the whole area. It'd extend your sensor range, and give you multiple angles of view on pretty much everything. And then when they've done their job, the mothership can pick them back up again, refurbish and refuel them, and whammo! No need to fabricate replacement probes. And hey, it explains the multitude of torpedo tubes (or torpedo-tube-like apertures) festooning the ship. Rapidly throw these bad boys out, then pick em up in the shuttlebays when you're done.

Throwing a sensor net with drones would probably allow the Akira-class to do a lot of nifty stuff; reconaissance/scouting, AWACS, hunting for cloaked ships, rapid surveys, search and rescue. A veritable multi-role ship, with useful peacetime and wartime applications, for that certain je ne sais quoi that Starfleet seems to desire.

So, carrier. And it gets its own niche role instead of being a fanboy battlewagon or a redundant "general frigate/cruiser design or whatever" of which there are already 80 billion in Starfleet.

Food for thought.
 
Herkimer Jitty said:
Akira Class as a carrier... more likely than you think? Maybe. Pardon my incomplete ideas and poor wording as I proceed.

So, as a lot of you probably know, when he designed the Akira, Alex Jaeger intended for it to be a carrier of sorts. There's a number of problems with this, which have been hashed out rather extensively, so I'll not recap that old chestnut.

But...

It can still be a carrier.

Let's forget about fighters and shuttles.

I got to thinking recently about drones in the Star Trek universe. Yeah, Starships have always had probes, but they always seemed like dumb devices. Not dumb as in "a terrible idea", mind, but the way they were portrayed was "fire and forget at a single target, and you'll never see it again." Why not have them sweep around a whole system? Launch them as you arrive, "throwing a net" over the whole area. It'd extend your sensor range, and give you multiple angles of view on pretty much everything. And then when they've done their job, the mothership can pick them back up again, refurbish and refuel them, and whammo! No need to fabricate replacement probes. And hey, it explains the multitude of torpedo tubes (or torpedo-tube-like apertures) festooning the ship. Rapidly throw these bad boys out, then pick em up in the shuttlebays when you're done.

Throwing a sensor net with drones would probably allow the Akira-class to do a lot of nifty stuff; reconaissance/scouting, AWACS, hunting for cloaked ships, rapid surveys, search and rescue. A veritable multi-role ship, with useful peacetime and wartime applications, for that certain je ne sais quoi that Starfleet seems to desire.

So, carrier. And it gets its own niche role instead of being a fanboy battlewagon or a redundant "general frigate/cruiser design or whatever" of which there are already 80 billion in Starfleet.

Food for thought.
Click to expand...

The problem with that is that it seems like their sensors are powerful enough to scan the whole system without probes. They always detect all sort of stuff very fast, and use the probes for long range recon....

I don't mind it being a torpedo platform of some kind. It's redundant in most cases, but it could be built for a very specialized function:

destroying fixed weapon emplacements such as ketracel white facilities.
 
Yeah, sector-level, that sounds good, thanks. I'll just go ahead and act like that was my original idea in the first place.
 
I... actually really like this idea! Reminds me of the terapedoes in Schlock Mercenary (if you read that webcomic). They use theirs like a sensor net that also destroys targets when needed.
 
Works for me. Also as a minelayer. Would have made the whole minefield thing in DS9 academic if they'd had an Akira flinging them out.

Mark
 
I like your idea, I think Seaquest had a similar concept back in the day. From the Seaquest wikipedia page... "The ship is also equipped with a series of WSKRS (pronounced "whiskers"; Wireless Sea Knowledge Retrieval Satellites): small sensor probes that are remotely controlled by the ship's sensor chief." Basically they did in a underwater median want you propose for the akira class in space.
 
EmperorTiberius said:
The problem with that is that it seems like their sensors are powerful enough to scan the whole system without probes. They always detect all sort of stuff very fast, and use the probes for long range recon....
Click to expand...

Although, the drone-net idea would be ideal for all those times when space anomalies/sensor-inhibiting elements/pesky planets & stars get in the way of normal sensor scans.

I like this idea. A lot!
 
In other ideas....I think the Akira would make a great Cargo ship. With all the shuttle bays it could carry all sorts of goods down to a planet and back up to it. I suppose it's a multipurpose vessel.
 
I like your suggestions about using drones for up-close reconnaissance and mines, also for sending into anomalies, where a larger probe or craft might be destroyed.

The Akira-class (and any of its updated versions, as time passes) would be the good basic carrier-type of Starfleet ship, useful for military/black ops situations, exploration and escort duties. It could serve as the basic design for this type of vessel, which would free their designers to work on other types of starships.

Don't let your deep-space fleet leave home without one!
 
I wanna know where the right-most and left-most double doors *go* when they are open....!?!?!?



^Well, they right-most and left-most pat of the doors could just slide towards the outer portion on the ship...there is room on there for them.

[U]ETA[/U]: But the interior-most portion of the doors have nowhere to go...do then? Not up....down....sideways...?
 
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I think it's pretty obvious where they go, but just make sure you're not standing in the observation deck when they open up!!!
 
There would seem to be little problem as such if we don't assume the innermost panels become completely invisible. The observation deck obscures our view of the starboard entryway, now doesn't it? The innermost panel might slide in only the length of its visible lower edge, without obscuring the observation deck or the third doorway beneath it; this would leave the upper corner visible but still create a doorway large enough for shuttles to enter and for it to match the starboard view. Note that the outboard upper corner of the bay(s?) is slanted or truncated - if the inboard upper corner is the same, then a door that doesn't retract all the way makes sense.

The simpler solution, though, is for the whole kit and kaboodle to slide outwards, away from the ship centerline. The seeming "split line" marked in red could be mere decoration.

If that fails, we can always go back to plain old hinges...

Timo Saloniemi
 
As mentioned above, those doors could slide sideways. However, could they also perhaps slide upward, like a garage door?
 
That would be much easier if the upper edge of the (pair of) doors were nicely horizontal. With that funny kink in it, it's mechanically more challenging to do the garage door thing. But by no means impossible: the outer door might slide away from centerline, after which the inner one would have a straight upper edge and could slide up.

But the mechanism for the inner door would be much simpler if it merely was hinged at the inner edge. Then again, lots of movement = visually interesting, according to conventional VFX wisdom: quite possibly the doors do a very complex clickety-clack dance, with lots of shooshing and grinding noises, every time a shuttle needs to depart or return.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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