I've got a rather intense project coming up at work the following few weeks, so I wanted to tie up the loose ends of both the Ptolemy-class and the Saladin-class, and take showcase screenshots tonight before I potentially get swamped.
I'll start with my take on the Ptolemy-class U.S.S.
Cassini, based on the design by Franz Joseph. As stated before, I always though this lady looked funny on paper, but after fleshing her out in 3D and giving it a proper texture and lighting treatment, I rather like her
very much. It was also a lot of fun bringing the standard cargo containers to life, adding details and decals to Joseph's otherwise featureless containers. Forgive the volume of pics that follows, as I wanted to provide many angles
with cargo containers and
without.
I wanted to keep the details of the towing pad simple and try to come up with something that Matt Jefferies would. Following Joseph's ideas of turboshafts that would connect to the ship via the dorsal, I have a simple two-turboshaft docking port just forward of center of the pad that meets a similar port on the container. In between the two turboshaft ports (yellow), I imagine that red rectangle to be the primary power hookup that also interfaces with it's counterpart on the cargo container. Flanking each side of the turboshaft port and running from bow to stern are structures with inset metal pads that slide into the notches on top of the container. I imagine these structures grip the pod via electromagnetic charge, backed up by battery in case of power failure. I know that with electromagnets I could've just used a flat tow pad that adhered to a similarly flat surface of a container, but I wanted to provide some sort of physical bond as well.
Here are some shots of the container by itself. You'll noticed that I settled on using a "TC-xxxxx" registry number (TC = Transport Container, and I've added an extra digit) instead of FJ's "NCC-xxxx", and the first number of the registry represents the class of container it is, as follows:
Mark I Containers (Liquids) start at TC-10000
Mark II Containers (Dry Bulk) start at TC-20000
Mark III Containers (Refrigerated Goods) start at TC-30000
Mark IV Containers (People) start at TC-40000
and Mark V Containers (Products) start at TC-50000
I imagine that the containers could be set up to attach to each other so that the Ptolemy could carry up to 4 at a time. Again, I wanted to feature some sort of physical bond. I imagine rods that are stored within the walls of the contianer that slide aft to meet the next pod, where they are securely fastened in some automatic fashion once received.
@Bill Thompson, rest assured that my next task is to create the Starliner pod, as promised.
I'll have to correct that this weekend.
