Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki
Probert said:
Cary L. Brown said:
Andrew, a quick question... the "ribbed" area on the dorsal... what's your intention for what that is?
I'm sure it's not just for appearance,...
Uuggh,... actually, it is.
The only reason it's there, frankly, is as a carryover element from Excelsior, so you'll have to ask good old Bill George what the Hell he had in mind for those ribs, 'cause they never made
any sense to me,... along with those impulse fins.
You see, my intention here is to create a visual bridge between Enterprise-B and Enterprise-D. I didn't originate those ribs so I have
no idea what they're there for. They've been reduced in size, on Ambassador, because the following Galaxy class has no trace of that... feature.
One element unique to Ambassador will be it's vertical main impulse engine, which obviously returns to a horizontal configuration in the succeeding class of starships.
That's what happens in design lineages. New technology is implemented and if it doesn't quite work, after years of use & modifications, it's changed to a new improved version. Or reinvented from an earlier incarnation. A good example of that today is the radar system of the Aircraft Carrier Enterprise CVN-65. They employed a superior system that didn't work as expected so they went back to an earlier version.
Yes, whenever I design something myself, most, if not all, of the elements do have a purpose.
Andrew-
Well, that's fair enough. That said, however... maybe ya'oughta consider establishing (at least so far as your design goes) that these ARE radiator panels.
I'm assuming you "get" the comment I'm making, but for the sake of others here...
All vessels and equipment generate waste heat. (So do organic beings, but that's a different matter.) And part of maintaining a steady-state thermal solution for any system problem is developing a balance between thermal energy generated and thermal energy rejected.
In an atmosphere, you can feed air current over a surface... in an ocean, you can do the same with water. But you have to reject the waste heat into a medium.
In space, you don't have that... so conduction and convection as means of heat transfer are eliminated. You only have radiation as a means of heat transfer.
Heat transfer by radiation is ruled by a set of rules that you can look up easily enough... the "ideal radiator" is the so-called "Black body." A black body is a perfect radiator and a perfect receptor for radiation-based energy.
You've all seen that... black objects get much hotter in the sun than, say, white ones (which REFLECT electromagnetic energy, as opposed to black objects which absorb it). What you may not realize is that it works the other way as well... a black body radiates heat much more effectively than a lighter body does.
In space, the only way to reject heat is by radiating.
On, for instance, the ISS, you see large movable solar panel arrays that collect electromagnetic energy and convert it to electrical power. But there are other panels on the ISS that aren't solar panels... they're radiator panels. The always have the black surface facing away from the sun (the sun-side is masked by reflective coating to minimize absorption while the the radiating side faces towards deep space to maximize radiation.)
The space shuttle has radiator panels mounted on the inside of the cargo bay doors. That's why you always see the shuttle with the bay doors open anytime it's in orbit,regardless of whether or not it's actually transferring any cargo.
Well, in the Trek-i-verse, you have similar devices (though presumably somewhat more efficient and effective). On the 1701, you have an array of panels on the nacelle pylons, plus a pair of "intercoolers" which seem to serve a radiator function (both by name and by design). The 1701(r) has similar construction but has even more apparent "radiator-like" surfaces... on the outboard side of the nacelles and on both sides of the nacelle pylons. Those are ideally-placed and constructed to serve as heat-transfer-by-radiation facilities.
So... I have no idea what Bill George originally intended re: this but it seems perfectly reasonable that it would be part of that thermal management system, 'specially when you recognize that what's arguably the hottest element of the ship... the matter/antimatter reactor core... goes right down the middle of that section.
My assumption is that if you looked at an image of the Excelsior taken on infrared film, the rings surrounding the nacelles and the radiator surfaces on the neck would be the hottest "non-firing" elements of the ship. (Obviously, at least to me, the impulse engine would be hotter when actually FIRING.)
Since it SEEMS to me that your warp core is in that region on the Probert-Ambassador, and since you're clearly trying to replicate the appearance of that feature (meaning the same coloration as well as the "ribbed" appearance which is so typically indicative of the most effective radiator devices... perhaps with each rib containing a "heat pipe?"...
Well, it just seems like a no-brainer to go ahead and say that this is a radiator and establish this once and for all.
Unless Bill George chooses to step in and correct his original design-intent, I mean... if he were to do so, and were able to give a good answer besides "it looked cool and future-y".
Yea or nay?
