"Enterprise" too advanced for 22nd Century
- Thread starter CaptainSpirk
- Start date
Nice.
My head canon has the Dae being created for the Romulan wars, it has the NX01's reactor and warp nacelles, but is otherwise smaller, more compact, so more acceleration and maneuverability. And (unlike the NX01) was designed for rapid mass production.
Trade off is long range. The drive is the same, but they're uncomfortable, machinery came first, crew spaces are fitted in any odd areas possible. Living supplies (consumables like food, etc.) are good for only 6 months or so.
The novels did something similar. Oddly, they had the Daedalus class existing as low-warp vessels before NX-01, but they posited that they were put into mass production during the war (with further construction of more advanced classes like NX and Intrepid put on hold) because they were relatively simple and quick to build.
Except isn't the Daedalus class bigger than NX-01? TNG: "Power Play" said the Essex had a crew complement of 229, while Enterprise only had a complement of 83. Some of that could be explained if the Ds had more compact, submarine-like accommodations, but it does suggest a larger size. It makes sense that the prototype ship for a new generation of warp engine (like the Warp 5 engine) would be comparatively small, with larger ships coming along once the engine had proven itself.
If you take a image of the NX01 and the most common image of the Dae, and adjust so the engines are the same size, the Dae is noticeably smaller.
Not just the length (Dae is 2/3 of NX01), the Dae also has a smaller apparent volume.
As for the 229 member crew, I wouldn't think that inappropriate for a dedicated warship.
There's no onscreen connection between the name and the ship design usually named Daedalus. I use that name for the ball and tube ship out of convenience.
You had a different ship design in mind for the name?
Why would the engines be the same size, though? There are lots of reasons why engines of different design and specifications would be different in size. I'd think that window size or deck height would be a more reliable indicator.
Something saucerlike
You'd be correct that they wouldn't have to be.
It the head canon thing. I see whoever decides to go ahead with the construction of the Dae (Starfleet, Earth-gov, another organization) wanting to equip the ship with a proven design, rather than a variation of it, that would have to be designed, tested, bugs worked out. The NX01's power and drive systems have already gone through that.
It's a easy and quick decision to use the same reactor combined with the same nacelles.
They need to build up a fleet for a war that is either imminent, or perhaps already started. So build what they already have in large numbers, everything off the shelf, nothing they will have to fiddle with.
Bonaventure?
It was the name of the episode.
Hard pass. Though the bulbous nature of it's primary hull is a bit NX like.
And it wasn't referring to the ship, it was a metaphorical comparison of Emory Erickson and his son to the mythical Greek inventor Daedalus and his son Icarus.
There was an earlier pair of Enterprise novels (non-canonical, of course) called Daedalus and Daedalus's Children, which seem to be the source of the novels' idea that the Daedalus class predated NX-01, because they were about a prototype ship of that name that was catastrophically lost prior to the launch of NX-01. However, I don't think the books ever explicitly described their version of the Daedalus as being the design seen in the ST Chronology and elsewhere.
Wouldn't have to be either. There could be explaind two Bonaventures.. they really early wierd one and the lumpy-Enterprise-ish TAS one. And of course there's the whole XCV-330 a few years before or after NX-01 thing, too.
I really liked the resulting implication that the Daedalus class we all know was an Excelsior-style failed great experiment.
I would like to have seen more older Earth designs of the 22nd century. A mix of Daedalus style ships and Vulcan ring based ships as Earth tests various ideas on how to do warp travel themselves post-Cochrane. Later they settle on the Archer Warp Five Engine based on Cochrane style nacelles for the NX-01. Just to see all those older Vulcan style and non-saucer style ships flying around would have been interesting.
Actually, I find the NX-01 too under-advanced for the 22nd century.
Trek is supposed to be modeled after real life progression of science more or less.
The amount of technological breakthroughs that should have happened by the time NX-01 was commissioned should have dwarfed anything we accomplished by a lot thanks to exponential progression of science and technology.
Ray Kurzweill said we will have biological immortality by 2030 thanks to exponential returns, and even today we could use stem-cells in regenerative medicine if we chose to... why Trek humans never developed it is quite honestly ridiculous.
Sure, WWIII happened, but humanity recovered with most of their technology intact, and I doubt it would have taken 90 years to recover (though the Vulcans might have played a part in preventing humanity from venturing too far from SOL in those 90 years - which is fine, they still could have evolved massively within SOL in that time period).
We have the tech and resources to clean up our act in less than 10 years... Trek Humans could have likely done the same.
Education would take maybe a decade, but probably less if you used every means at your disposal to expose the general population relevant general education, critical thinking and problem solving.
I can see the transporter being developed much earlier than the NX-01 for example, use of AI, creation of a Dyson Swarm in SOL and creating another one via drone ship in a neighbouring star system that would deliver needed technology (like nanomachines, automated construction bots, etc. at say Warp 2)... humongous emphasis on automation for ship design and construction with nanotechnology playing a part and minimum manual labor (space is dangerous after all, and machines are far more precise and faster).
If anything, Trek should have been rebooted with NX-01 to follow a bit more realistic progression of technology in a society like Trek Humans (no money - aka Resource Based Economy), etc.
Trek is supposed to be modeled after real life progression of science more or less.
The amount of technological breakthroughs that should have happened by the time NX-01 was commissioned should have dwarfed anything we accomplished by a lot thanks to exponential progression of science and technology.
Ray Kurzweill said we will have biological immortality by 2030 thanks to exponential returns, and even today we could use stem-cells in regenerative medicine if we chose to... why Trek humans never developed it is quite honestly ridiculous.
Sure, WWIII happened, but humanity recovered with most of their technology intact, and I doubt it would have taken 90 years to recover (though the Vulcans might have played a part in preventing humanity from venturing too far from SOL in those 90 years - which is fine, they still could have evolved massively within SOL in that time period).
We have the tech and resources to clean up our act in less than 10 years... Trek Humans could have likely done the same.
Education would take maybe a decade, but probably less if you used every means at your disposal to expose the general population relevant general education, critical thinking and problem solving.
I can see the transporter being developed much earlier than the NX-01 for example, use of AI, creation of a Dyson Swarm in SOL and creating another one via drone ship in a neighbouring star system that would deliver needed technology (like nanomachines, automated construction bots, etc. at say Warp 2)... humongous emphasis on automation for ship design and construction with nanotechnology playing a part and minimum manual labor (space is dangerous after all, and machines are far more precise and faster).
If anything, Trek should have been rebooted with NX-01 to follow a bit more realistic progression of technology in a society like Trek Humans (no money - aka Resource Based Economy), etc.
I've been saying that for years. Eventually, Trek needs to be rebooted to free itself from the increasingly outdated futurism of the original continuity (not to mention the calendar catching up more and more -- this was supposed to be the year that interplanetary sleeper ships were rendered obsolete by a faster drive technology).
