Deck Plans VI: The Undiscovered Bowling Alley

[Captain Robert April]

Lessee....just a little thinking out loud for a bit...

One possibility is that the glowy bits and fanblades under the translucent dome are part of the plasma injector mechanism, or some sort of impellor setup to get the warp drive working. Maybe some new tech development, or at least improvement, over what they had back in Archer's day.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Lessee....just a little thinking out loud for a bit...

One possibility is that the glowy bits and fanblades under the translucent dome are part of the plasma injector mechanism, or some sort of impellor setup to get the warp drive working. Maybe some new tech development, or at least improvement, over what they had back in Archer's day.

Well, in my view, the idea of physical "moving parts" there is something I really want to avoid. The "fan blades" aren't really moving parts, but rather "interference patterns" in some sort of energy field. and the "glowy bits" are something similar.

Regardless of whether the thing is a "gas intake" or part of the warp drive itself, it is going to be a field generator of SOME sort, isn't it? No matter how you look at it, it's generating a high-power energy field.

I envision it as almost like a tesla coil in there... "lighting" and so forth... but in a controlled, directed (and semi-uniform) arrangement.

I've always noted that the colors we see are really the primary colors of the hydrogen spectrum, which has always been central to my belief that, yes, this was the "hydrogen collector." But the fact that the thing is filled with hydrogen doesn't mean that it has to be the "collector" for that hydrogen, does it? It's clear that there is hydrogen in there... that's all we know for certain.

(Apparently, JJ Abrams' version of the ship has some other gas in there... I keep thinking that it's argon which fluoresces in "pale blue" but I might be mistaken. Apparently his Enterprise uses those things to collect argon, rather than hydrogen???)

 

[Captain Robert April]

I'm not so sure JJ's team can even spell "Bussard", let alone be familiar with the concept, so any technical information from that POS design would be only slightly less useful than what could be gleaned from a typical episode of "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger".

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I'm not so sure JJ's team can even spell "Bussard", let alone be familiar with the concept, so any technical information from that POS design would be only slightly less useful than what could be gleaned from a typical episode of "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger".

Hey, now... that's not fair... "Rocky Jones" had plenty of things going for it!

 

[Captain Robert April]

"Jason of Star Command" then?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

"Jason of Star Command" then?

Ummmm... I think you'll have to reach lower, still...

What was that cheesy movie that reused TOS BSG FX shots?

That's more like it, isn't it?

 

[Captain Robert April]

I don't know about that one, but I do recall some cheesy flick, the title of which escapes me, that reused, start to finish, the effects shots from "Battle Beyond the Stars".

 

[Captain Robert April]

Did anybody ever do a schematic of the NX class nacelles? It might be useful in figuring out the midpoint between Archer's time and TMP, i.e., TOS.

 

[Mytran]

There's a couple on the STAR TREK LCARS BLUEPRINT site, but they look kinda TNG to me:
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/enterprise-nx-01-deckplans.php

 

[Captain Robert April]

I guess I could bug either Drexler or Eaves...

 

[therealfoxbat]

Maybe this will help...

http://s256.photobucket.com/albums/hh176/therealfoxbat/?action=view&current=nx-01_01.jpg

http://s256.photobucket.com/albums/hh176/therealfoxbat/?action=view&current=nx-01_02.jpg

http://s256.photobucket.com/albums/hh176/therealfoxbat/?action=view&current=nx-01_03.jpg

http://s256.photobucket.com/albums/hh176/therealfoxbat/?action=view&current=nx-01_04.jpg

http://s256.photobucket.com/albums/hh176/therealfoxbat/?action=view&current=nx-01_05.jpg

Caution...

Images are HUGE...

 

[Captain Robert April]

I've got those, and nice as they are, I need some internal layouts of the nacelles from something resembling an official source.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I've got those, and nice as they are, I need some internal layouts of the nacelles from something resembling an official source.

Well, there are none... the closest you're going to find is the on-screen "diagrams" seen on a few control consoles, but they're symbolic, not mechanically-accurate, and (as said before) are very TNG-ish.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Ya mean I gotta go back and watch Enterprise?

Aw, man...

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Ya mean I gotta go back and watch Enterprise?

Aw, man...

Well, only if you want to be consistent with "ENTERPRISE."

I've pretty much decided that "ENTERPRISE" occurred in the Abrams-verse, not the TOS-verse. In the TOS-verse, there were some similar events, but they were not identical.

The NX-01 nacelles would lead you to the ST-09 nacelles, not to the TOS nacelles, in other words...

 

[therealfoxbat]

I've got those, and nice as they are, I need some internal layouts of the nacelles from something resembling an official source.

Internal? The only internal schematics I've seen are the two sets of blueprints over at Star Trek LCARS...

I agree that they're not that official looking...

Well, only if you want to be consistent with "ENTERPRISE."

I've pretty much decided that "ENTERPRISE" occurred in the Abrams-verse, not the TOS-verse. In the TOS-verse, there were some similar events, but they were not identical.

The NX-01 nacelles would lead you to the ST-09 nacelles, not to the TOS nacelles, in other words...

I disagree on that point. Star Trek Enterprise could easily be the common past that both timelines evolved from. (The point of divergence would have occurred somewhere between 2161 and 2233, probably closer to 2161.) The historical inconsistencies between ST-E and TOS are not nearly as big as the ones that happened within TOS. (For example, the first indication of calendar date in TOS was The Squire Of Gothos, where it was supposed to be 900 years after the Napoleonic Wars, which adds up to the early 28th Century...) I could see the NX-01 nacelles evolving into the TOS nacelles more easily than into the ST-09 nacelles, at least from the external similarities...

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I've got those, and nice as they are, I need some internal layouts of the nacelles from something resembling an official source.

Internal? The only internal schematics I've seen are the two sets of blueprints over at Star Trek LCARS...

I agree that they're not that official looking...

Well, only if you want to be consistent with "ENTERPRISE."

I've pretty much decided that "ENTERPRISE" occurred in the Abrams-verse, not the TOS-verse. In the TOS-verse, there were some similar events, but they were not identical.

The NX-01 nacelles would lead you to the ST-09 nacelles, not to the TOS nacelles, in other words...

I disagree on that point. Star Trek Enterprise could easily be the common past that both timelines evolved from. (The point of divergence would have occurred somewhere between 2161 and 2233, probably closer to 2161.) The historical inconsistencies between ST-E and TOS are not nearly as big as the ones that happened within TOS. (For example, the first indication of calendar date in TOS was The Squire Of Gothos, where it was supposed to be 900 years after the Napoleonic Wars, which adds up to the early 28th Century...) I could see the NX-01 nacelles evolving into the TOS nacelles more easily than into the ST-09 nacelles, at least from the external similarities...

Well, remember, one of the big issues people had with "Enterprise" was that it was "too advanced." It used the same gizmos used on every prior Trek series, albeit occasionally given a slightly modified name.

Well, we know that Archer (and his dog) were big in the nuTrek universe... but as for the TOS universe, well, we don't really know anything, except that at one point a TOS ship crossed into a variation of the "ENT" universe.

If you assume that somehow "ENTERPRISE" got a scientific "leg up" which caused them to be more advanced sooner, well... that could explain the Kelvin being at TOS technology long before TOS (well, except for their shoddy autopilot systems!), And the Kelvin looks quite a bit like it's of the same general lineage as the NX-01. It doesn't, however, look very much like it's of the same lineage as the TOS Enterprise.

That's why I'm thinking in these terms. There WAS an NX-01 in the TOS universe, but it wasn't the same ship we saw in "ENTERPRISE." Similar, perhaps, but not the same ship. Was that ship even "Enterprise?" Perhaps in the TOS timeline it was named something else entirely (Horizon, for instance)?

 

[therealfoxbat]

Well, remember, one of the big issues people had with "Enterprise" was that it was "too advanced." It used the same gizmos used on every prior Trek series, albeit occasionally given a slightly modified name.

I thought that was a little hinky myself, but I could deal with the idea that the tech from ST-E was newly invented and the tech from TOS had been around for over a hundred years. (Some of the equipment on modern naval ships are improved versions of stuff from naval ships during the Spanish-American War...)

Well, we know that Archer (and his dog) were big in the nuTrek universe... but as for the TOS universe, well, we don't really know anything, except that at one point a TOS ship crossed into a variation of the "ENT" universe.

In TNG, there was a planet called Archer 4...

If you assume that somehow "ENTERPRISE" got a scientific "leg up" which caused them to be more advanced sooner, well... that could explain the Kelvin being at TOS technology long before TOS (well, except for their shoddy autopilot systems!), And the Kelvin looks quite a bit like it's of the same general lineage as the NX-01. It doesn't, however, look very much like it's of the same lineage as the TOS Enterprise.

It wouldn't be. By my theory, ST-E would have diverged into two timelines decades before the Kelvin...

That's why I'm thinking in these terms. There WAS an NX-01 in the TOS universe, but it wasn't the same ship we saw in "ENTERPRISE." Similar, perhaps, but not the same ship. Was that ship even "Enterprise?" Perhaps in the TOS timeline it was named something else entirely (Horizon, for instance)?

In ST-E, ships of the NX class was named after 20th Century space shuttles. I believe it would be Enterprise because in the TOS-TNG-DS9-VOY timeline, the second vessel of each new exploration starship class was consistently named Enterprise...

 

[Albertese]

Let's not forget (though I wish I could) the "temporal cold war" nonsense. Who can possibly know how many goofy timelines sprung out of that crap!

--Alex

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think the temporal cold war is the point of divergence. The JJverse is where the reset button isn't pushed at the beginning of the fourth season, whereas what we saw is where things start to realign back to where they're supposed to be, with the Romulan War finally, and brutally, kicking the train back on the tracks and things proceed normally from there. Without the reset, the tech advances waaay too fast, the Romulans are probably squashed in the war, and by the time bad boy Jimmy Kirk comes along, Romulan is taught in high school alongside Spanish, German, and Vulcan. The ships grow to downright ludicrous dimensions, and Starfleet personnel get so cocky they start getting into barroom brawls with civilians with little to no provocation.

Something that was sifted into the background information in the last Shatner Trek novel is how the more exotic tech from Archer's time, like phase pistols and photonic torpedoes, was abandoned when the Romulan War hit, in favor of easier to produce weaponry like lasers and nukes. By the 2240's, the threats got bigger and a backward glance noticed that there were some pretty nifty whizbangs back then, and that maybe now their time had come, so in pretty short order we went from hand lasers to phaser rifles to phaser pistols, and ship's phasers launching delayed detonation bursts to full on photon torpedoes.