Dominion War / TNG Movie Era Oberth class science ship

[LCARSGFX]

I thought I might as well get an oberth class MSD done. It's a funky little ship about which suprisingly little is known for sure.

This one is about 150 to 200 metres long.
Low res preview as this one is planned to be on sale as a print.
Oh, and it's still a WIP. Some little bugs to iron out too.

 

[LCARSGFX]

If anyones interested, the completed article can be found on my blog

 

[Santaman]

Nice work, I always liked the Oberth, I have my own ideas about the thing and why the design is what it is...

 

[T'Girl]

I've always liked the idea that the Oberth's weren't actual science ships but instead the small upper hull and the oversized engines were a general purpose "workhorse" starship.

In addition to the science pod, a wide variety of pods could be attached. cargo pods, weapons, passengers, hospital, tractor beams, even extra engines.

 

[Unicron]

I've always liked that idea too, and it's become one of the more popular ideas in fanon works. It seems very logical that the lower pod could easily be a modular swap out unit, and the main section could be used for a number of different functions with minimal modifications. Even with whatever advanced resources Starfleet might have available for production, they'd naturally want to get as much mileage out of a design as possible.

 

[Timo]

...It's not even impossible to think that once the original tug got outdated, some of these numerous tug-and-pod combos out there were refitted so that the modern, large warp core now resided in the pod instead (as shown e.g. above, and canonically in "Hero Worship"). The original flexibility was lost, but nobody cared because the original design couldn't meet the demands of the day any more anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I always looked at the lower pod as a giant sensor like a towfish. Later on, it was turned into more usable space as Timo suggests.

 

[Irishman]

I'm not seeing anything in this that would explain why you're assigning it to the Dominion War time period.

Help?

 

[Michael]

Also, shouldn't there be a turbolift from the saucer to the engineering section?

 

[Timo]

I'm not seeing anything in this that would explain why you're assigning it to the Dominion War time period.

Timeline-wise, it has already jumped the shark; you can observe said roadkill in the trunk.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[LCARSGFX]

I'm not seeing anything in this that would explain why you're assigning it to the Dominion War time period.
Help?

Just heading off comments like "Shouldn't it be TOS Movie style?".
Making it clear that this is from a ship supposedly still in service during that time.

Also, shouldn't there be a turbolift from the saucer to the engineering section?

Nope. Note the stairs. There is no turbolift system. The ship is too small to warrant a power hungry, space hogging turbolift system.
Crew must crawl through jefferies tubes or transport to the pod.

 

[Timo]

This ship is still larger than the Defiant, which very definitely had a turbolift system.

The lifts of that DS9 vessel were indicated in dialogue to span at least five decks, while the graphic at the back of the lift cabin described six decks in all. This Oberth here appears to have eight accessible decks, some quite distant from others vertically, and stretches quite a way horizontally as well. Plus the ship serves in a supply role in the TNG era, indicating a need for internal logistics beyond people running with their hands full.

I'd certainly give her a turbolift network, even if it only featured one horizontal shaft along the pod, one or two branches up the pylons, and a single station in the saucer. At the given dimensions, standard turbolifts could easily be used.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Michael]

Also, shouldn't there be a turbolift from the saucer to the engineering section?

Nope. Note the stairs. There is no turbolift system. The ship is too small to warrant a power hungry, space hogging turbolift system.
Crew must crawl through jefferies tubes or transport to the pod.

Stairs? Where?

 

[Timo]

Below the aft end of the bridge, we can see a multi-deck staircase. Then again, the cutaway of Kirk's TMP ship has a similar staircase, despite also featuring a turboshaft network.

No stairs are depicted as going from the saucer to the pod, and probably rightly so: stairs more than a couple of floors high are quite impractical for humans to operate.

If no turbolifts are to be provided for moving between the saucer and the pod, there should probably be a couple of slides there, one going down, one up (easily done with artificial gravity). Or if not slides, then at least a nice level corridor where there are no inconvenient steps, and the feet point steadily towards the floor that follows the curvature of the pylons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Michael]

^ Yeah, I can see these. But they're not connecting the saucer and the engineering section, are they?

 

[Santaman]

I always have speculated that there are two oldfashioned cage elevators running between the two hulls, just big enough to sit in them, probably a double cylinder with bearings between the inner and outer cage so you don't end up falling out of the elevator when you reach the secundary hull.

 

[Timo]

Sounds awfully primitive in an era that allows you to arbitrarily choose your preferred "down".

A full-sized turbolift cab would fit the pylons if the Oberth were 120 meters long as suggested by some sources - but just barely. It would fit with ease in a 150 m ship, though. There'd simply be a few twists and turns when the lift negotiated the pylons and their joints to the hulls. But there are always twists and turns in a turbolift ride, yet the occupant only feels those if the lift is malfunctioning.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

I always envisioned the Oberth to be an absolute anachroism, something that should have been replaced by newer and better ships for centuries but which for some reason never happened, i see them as the equivalent of the Antonov AN-2 which is a large byplane freighter/passenger machine which is STILL build (in China) its in production since 1946 and there were already more then 18.000 made, there have been thousands of better/faster/newer aircraft designed but that didn't stop the AN-2..

So primitive? yes for a 24th century design, for the Oberth? Nah! p e r f e c t!!

 

[David cgc]

Also, shouldn't there be a turbolift from the saucer to the engineering section?

Nope. Note the stairs. There is no turbolift system. The ship is too small to warrant a power hungry, space hogging turbolift system.
Crew must crawl through jefferies tubes or transport to the pod.

The more-efficient, less power-hungry alternative to an elevator is the transporter?

 

[DEWLine]

"Santaman" hit it on the button.

The more I think on it, the more I like the idea of the Oberths as a holdover. Probably the first of them were prototyped refits from earlier ship classes. The design worked well enough for what Starfleet needed of it, and became popular in research circles, hence explaining the civilian editions like the Vico.

FYI: I picked up the Strategic Design Publications deck plans for the Oberths a little while back. The solutions they came up with for that class...intriguing and sensible in equal measure. Well done!