Cleopatra's Needle - Design Proposals

[Christopher]

Yes, we're definitely getting there now. The tweaks to the nose and tail are just what I was thinking of.

Size isn't a huge issue yet. By rescaling the airlock doors, the vessel shrinks and it's now 73 meters long, 14 meters wide, and 9.5 meters high. Including nacelles. The fuselage itself is about 64 meters long and 11 meters across at the widest point. Assuming 3 meters per deck (and that's 2-2.5 meters of open space plus structure), there's one deck almost the full length of the fuselage and one ten meter long deck above that that may shorten to a crawl space under the ship's spine. Towards the back, with the narrowed hull, engineering has at most about five to six meters before it pokes out the sides. Given structural requirements like framing and the like, this thing is starting to get cramped. If necessary, we can widen it easily, but that will come at the cost of an even less obelisk-like appearance.

Hmm... I like the shape as it is, and given the more linear design, I think we could justify it being somewhat longer than Serenity, so long as its volume is similar to that ship's interior spaces minus most of the cargo bay. So maybe you could up the size a bit more. 85 meters?

On the other hand, I think a full deck/half deck arrangement could work, though it would require DEWLine to do some rethinking if he wants to combine projects with yours.

Hmm... what if you made the top slope a little more gradual in back? That is, the contour from the highest point of the ship to the rear is a little bit concave; you could make it slightly convex, or at least have the downward curve start a little further back. You could add a few meters to the upper half-deck that way.

As for "engineering," I don't know if we need a whole engine room; I'm fine with an alcove at the rear of the corridor with some basic control consoles. We don't need a visible warp reactor in the middle of the room. It could be behind the wall or under the floor. In fact, the main engine controls are probably on the bridge/cockpit; the engineering area would just be a place to monitor the engines and occasionally get in for some fine-tuning and direct maintenance. It would normally be a one-person station, if that.

 

[EmperorKalan]

After all, the Federation is a culture that values exploration highly, considering that they assign it as a primary purpose of their space navy. So I'm sure there's just as active a culture of civilian exploration. Civilian ship contractors, therefore, would probably do a lot of exploration vessels and wouldn't need to repurpose other types of craft.

Which suggests, come to think of it, that maybe this is a customized version of a standard high-speed explorer or courier design.

Just think back to "The Cage", and the SS Columbia, chartered by the American Continent Institute for civilian survey work. Such a ship would have its 24th-century counterparts.

 

[Psion]

Yes, we're definitely getting there now. The tweaks to the nose and tail are just what I was thinking of.



Hmm... I like the shape as it is, and given the more linear design, I think we could justify it being somewhat longer than Serenity, so long as its volume is similar to that ship's interior spaces minus most of the cargo bay. So maybe you could up the size a bit more. 85 meters?

On the other hand, I think a full deck/half deck arrangement could work, though it would require DEWLine to do some rethinking if he wants to combine projects with yours.

Hmm... what if you made the top slope a little more gradual in back? That is, the contour from the highest point of the ship to the rear is a little bit concave; you could make it slightly convex, or at least have the downward curve start a little further back. You could add a few meters to the upper half-deck that way.

As for "engineering," I don't know if we need a whole engine room; I'm fine with an alcove at the rear of the corridor with some basic control consoles. We don't need a visible warp reactor in the middle of the room. It could be behind the wall or under the floor. In fact, the main engine controls are probably on the bridge/cockpit; the engineering area would just be a place to monitor the engines and occasionally get in for some fine-tuning and direct maintenance. It would normally be a one-person station, if that.

By pushing the overall length to 80 meters, we get just shy of six meters from the bottom to the roof of the impulse engines without having to adjust the curves. With conservative deck heights and framing space between decks, I think we can squeeze in a full deck top and bottom with an in-between "split level" deck extending into the nose cone and above the navigational deflector that should be perfect for your cockpit/bridge. And creative use of short spaces will also enhance the submarine feel of the ship.

Now, regarding the smudge locker, your thoughts of a jettison-able antimatter pod are on the right track. Consider: Picard approached Centauri III's manufacturers with a specification for extreme-range operations. By modifying an existing design -- the courier/scout you mentioned -- an acceptable vessel was found, but the extra range at high warp required a better reactor core and a larger supply of antimatter. The upgraded reactor displaced some of the available space for antimatter containment so a pod was designed and attached to the hull. Containing most of the ship's antimatter, the pod can be jettisoned in an emergency, leaving the warp core with small, short-term supplies. The warp core itself can also be jettisoned along with the supply pod.

The antimatter pod's shape is defined by the vessel's standard warp field and it looks like an afterthought because that's precisely what it is. Obviously this is a bit of a tactical weakness, but the ship isn't intended for combat, and just because the tank is exposed, doesn't mean it isn't heavily armored in case it gets shot while the Cleo is fleeing. We'll paint it a different color and possibly rib it externally to suggest excessive reinforcement.

I don't want to add any further details to the hull or make any more tweaks until we know for sure this shape can accommodate your mission requirements. I'll mess around with cross sections and see if I can come up with suggested use of the available interior. Maybe before we're done, we'll have an interior set to go with the exterior model ... but I don't want to get too ambitious.

 

[DEWLine]

Hmmm. So this was based on mission specs as projected by Picard. See what happens when you try to come up with a design based on a half-remembered reading of a given novel?

Okay, next revision of the drawings after the ones I'm about to post had best reflect that fact about Picard's role.

Moving along...I want to see competing designs here. I'm under no illusions as to whether or not I've still got a few tonnes of stuff to learn for this particular skill set. The competition will therefore be good for me.

Deck 2's taking shape, Deck 1's just about nailed down, although the "engineering alcove" idea ought to be reflected properly in the drawing for that. I've moved from CorelDraw to Adobe Illustrator for this, plus the exterior drawings, although some hand-drawn line art is going to come into play as well. Very rough pencil line art, most likely.

Cargo bays: I'm unconvinced of the lack of need for such aboard Cleo just at the moment. Murphy's Laws as applied to space exploration being a heavy influence on my thinking.

 

[Psion]

I have to agree with DEWLine on the cargo holds. What if you want to bring specimens back with you? What about emergency rations and spare parts? Sure, you can make those things with replicators, if you have them, but what happens if they fail? At least have lots of little storage lockers squirreled away in leftover spaces with one large closet for bigger stuff.

 

[DEWLine]

And I'll get to that in a moment. Meantime, here's the beginning of my sense of overall structure for the ship, with a bit of cross-sectioning. Very rough, and I apologize for that.



As for a more detailed deck 2...

 

[Christopher]

By pushing the overall length to 80 meters, we get just shy of six meters from the bottom to the roof of the impulse engines without having to adjust the curves. With conservative deck heights and framing space between decks, I think we can squeeze in a full deck top and bottom with an in-between "split level" deck extending into the nose cone and above the navigational deflector that should be perfect for your cockpit/bridge. And creative use of short spaces will also enhance the submarine feel of the ship.

Makes sense. I like the idea of the bridge being equally close to both decks. Keep in mind: the text indicates that the bridge has a hatch with sufficient room outside it for a person (or at least a toddler) to occupy. I was assuming that was a corridor space, but there's nothing in the text to preclude it being a stairwell landing, say.

Now, regarding the smudge locker, your thoughts of a jettison-able antimatter pod are on the right track. Consider: Picard approached Centauri III's manufacturers with a specification for extreme-range operations. By modifying an existing design -- the courier/scout you mentioned -- an acceptable vessel was found, but the extra range at high warp required a better reactor core and a larger supply of antimatter. The upgraded reactor displaced some of the available space for antimatter containment so a pod was designed and attached to the hull. Containing most of the ship's antimatter, the pod can be jettisoned in an emergency, leaving the warp core with small, short-term supplies. The warp core itself can also be jettisoned along with the supply pod.

Sounds good.

I don't want to add any further details to the hull or make any more tweaks until we know for sure this shape can accommodate your mission requirements. I'll mess around with cross sections and see if I can come up with suggested use of the available interior.

Understood. I think we're pretty much on the same page now about the ship's parameters.

Cargo bays: I'm unconvinced of the lack of need for such aboard Cleo just at the moment. Murphy's Laws as applied to space exploration being a heavy influence on my thinking.

Well, I never said there shouldn't be any cargo space, just that it wouldn't have the same kind of huge cargo space as a ship like Serenity, which is specifically intended for cargo hauling.

An interesting alternate take. More workmanlike and functional, but with a clean Federation sort of aesthetic. If Psion's design is a '50s rocketship, yours is more like a modern monorail train.

The nacelle pylons are longer than I had in mind, but the width may be aesthetically necessary to offset the extreme length and narrowness of the hull. The nacelles seem way too Starfleety, though.

As for a more detailed deck 2...

Is that the transporter stage in front? I think it would make more sense at the rear of the lab -- maybe widen the corridor just behind the lab and have the transporter as an alcove in the side of the corridor, right next to the lab. I think it should be something that's an adjunct to the lab, since the book specifies that the transporter is used as an archaeological tool (great for excavating and sorting out the interesting bits from the dirt), but it would also need to be used by the crew for transportation, and it seems it would be wiser not to have to go through the lab to get to and from the transporter. I mean, if you beam up covered in alien dirt, you might not want to track it through your experimental space.

And I'm not clear on why you have engineering space on both decks.

 

[DEWLine]

If we keep the "t-stage" and the lab separate, then a decon facility...? No. Forcefield capability and standard biofilter protocols in the transporter itself make a separate decon compartment redundant.

That aft space currently set as an engineering placemarker (life support was initially my thought, but not any longer) will likely get set aside for something else. Seeing as I've allowed for the option of the cargo holds opening to either ground or vacuum as needed, though, a gangway/airlock would seem redundant now...?

 

[BolianAuthor]

I like the Runabout-ish qualities of your design, DEWLine.

 

[DEWLine]

Thank you kindly!

 

[DEWLine]

Trying to get a better sense of the internal structure here in the forward spaces.


I figure on the cargo bays aftward being high-ceiling beasts, the lab in the forward compartment, not so much. And yeah, the cockpit will end up looking more like a Danube-style runabout or the Aeroshuttles on the Intrepids when I'm done.

Wondering if I should port some of stuff drawn up in AI so far back into CorelDraw where I started...

 

[Christopher]

And yeah, the cockpit will end up looking more like a Danube-style runabout or the Aeroshuttles on the Intrepids when I'm done.

Just try not to make it too Starfleet-like. Maybe you're going for form following function, which I suppose makes sense, but I'd like it to be clear from looking at it that it's something other than a Starfleet ship.

 

[Psion]

I can't rest while DEWLine's on the case! I too like the long, monorail-runabout look, and the exterior better suits the Next Generation era than mine so far.

But I'm not giving up. I've started working on the internal arrangement of my Cleo as well. I've tweaked the hull just very slightly for more uniform deck heights and began roughing out the interior.

Presently there are three habitable volumes shown. I keep thinking of deck one as the bottom deck, and here I've shown it in a gold color. Deck two, in blue is above it, with an internal hood that gives me an idea of headroom. The sloping ceiling drops down to the floor when it hits 1.5 meters, and the exposed blue deck outside of that "wall" is reserved for utilities and consumables storage.

The bridge/cockpit is the forward most box and it sits roughly halfway between either deck and between frames 1 and 2. I haven't worked out the gangway arrangement yet, but I believe stairs on deck one go up to deck two on either side of the navigational deflector components. A central gangway then drops down half a flight to a landing outside the bridge. The gap in decks between frames 2 and 3 will have a small landing outside of the bridge, and equipment for the reaction control thrusters on either side of that. Space in front of frame 1 is reserved for avionics.

There's a lot of space above deck two, and that's for water storage and sensors.

 

[DEWLine]

You know what that 3D arrangement reminds me of?

A shark. All you need are fins and the teeth where the deflector dish is.

 

[Psion]

Hey ... are you implying there's something fishy about my work?

 

[therealfoxbat]

With the transparent outer hull and the opaque inner compartments, it reminds me of something designed by Larry Niven's Puppeteers...

 

[Christopher]

I'd like to think of it more as a dolphin than a shark. This is a civilian research vessel -- we're not going for "predatory."

Then again, dolphins are pretty dangerous predators themselves, so maybe that's not much better. Well, they're intelligent and curious too.

 

[DEWLine]

Needs a little widening in mid-fuselage if we're going for "dolphin"...and a slimmer "snout".

 

[DEWLine]

Doing some rethinking, although it feels like I could be falling into the "made for Starfleet" trap we've been worrying about here.



The more I think it over, the more tempted I am to put the gangway off to port or starboard for safety reasons. A toddler could hurt himself on that! (And how to secure those ladderways, while we're at it?)

Deck two's starting to take shape...



And that was the point where I reached the conclusion about that ladder/stair/gangway. At least the transporter stage is closer to a good place now.



Starting to get a sense of the engineer's alcove as well...

 

[Patrickivan]

This is a nifty little ship. I like seeing non-Starfleet ships. We need more civilian, research, and para-military (i.e. police, coast guard) type ships here.

^
Personally, I prefer to think that the name "Borg" was Magnus Hansen's own coinage -- because what are the odds that an alien race of cyborgs would give themselves a name based on the faux-Greek portmanteau word "cyborg"? QUOTE]

"Portmanteau"... That's not a bombastic way to say that borg is a word derived from the blending of the two words cybernetic organism .

Unless I misuderstood, and you were talking about the Borg's large suitcase!

Though the Borg actually did refer to themselves just that, the Borg, Star Trek is ripe with alien races that have names derived from Earth cultures.

Sure- maybe it's the result of translators attributing the terran equivalent to the alien word, but it's really just something we have to take with a grain of salt.