So as I went through doing some rewriting, I realized that somewhere along the line the flow of things really stopped working the way I wanted them to. As such, I started rewriting the entire history section, eventually planning to move this over to the WordPress site. (For now, it remains unchanged.) I generally wanted to give a better historical flow and include a few more pieces of information that I hadn't included but wanted to weigh in on. My original approach to use established Trek history points as a jumping on point for readers resulted in me jumping around a bit in the timeline, and I think became a bit confusing, so I'm also trying to streamline the order in which I present events.
Let me know your thoughts so far. I've linked the older blog versions for your convenience if you want to compare. This is still very much a WIP. Having just re-read parts of
Mr. Scott's Guide and the TNG manual, I'm considering moving some of the design info at the end of Chapter One to the design chapter (three) and delving a bit more into the concept process there as well.
Chapter One - Background
https://starfleetheritage.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/chapter-one-background/
On the morning of April 7, 2270, the Sol System was alive with unusual activity. At 1105 hours Earth standard time, the U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701, returned home triumphantly from her fourth and most historic deployment, this time under the command of Captain James T. Kirk. Starfleet brass and civilians alike applauded as Enterprise came in under shutug power to Spacedock's Berth Two. The Federation press, always eager for a good story, had documented her exploits well, where she had been nicknamed “Lucky Little Enterprise.” (Enterprise had survived seemingly insurmountable circumstances numerous times.) During the course of the past five years, she had become the most famous member of her class and Kirk and his crew had been elevated to the status of heroes. After her arrival, a ceremony was held in Enterprise’s main recreation room. United Federation of Planets President Bormenus and Starfleet Chief-in-Command Fleet Admiral Heihachiro Nogura both spoke at length about the heroism and sacrifice of the crew and the success of the ship’s mission. Captain Kirk was promoted to Admiral and appointed as the new Chief of Starfleet Operations, and the remainder of the senior staff and many of the crew were decorated. Successful long-term missions such as that of Enterprise highlighted the strengths and advances of the ships of Starfleet, but also their shortcomings. Behind the celebration, tucked somewhere between the antimatter fireworks and Vulcan children’s choir, Starfleet’s research divisions were hard at work to keep up with the changing times.
Since almost the day of its founding, Starfleet leaders have disagreed over the agency’s primary purpose. The United Earth government founded Starfleet as an entity of its United Earth Space Probe Agency in 2135, before the founding of the Federation, as an instrument of exploration, peace, and defense organized around a loose military structure. However, it wasn’t long before defense came to the forefront of its duties. In the 2150s, with the development of the first warp five engine, humanity probed deeper into space than ever before and almost immediately came under threat by new cultures including the Klingon Empire, Suliban Cabal, Xindi, and Romulan Star Empire. The meager collection of Starfleet ships then in existence represented a wide gamut of vessels, ranging from low warp scouts to the newest warp five vessels. From 2156 to 2160, Starfleet would fight a bitter, costly war with the Romulans for the very survival of humanity. During the war, Starfleet commissioned a wide range of vessels which largely amounted to flying warp drives with weapons. Earth’s eventual victory, with the aid of its allies from many worlds, not only led to the founding of the United Federation of Planets but also solidified in many minds the need for Starfleet to be a strong, military-capable organization.
Once the Federation was founded in 2161, Starfleet Command was absorbed and transformed to provide the same role for the Federation as it had for United Earth in the years prior. As the fleet was assessed and new ships planned, the argument over Starfleet’s true role continued and if anything grew worse. With the defeated Romulans largely contained behind the newly established Neutral Zone after the war’s end, pacifistic elements argued for the disarmament of the fleet and a renewed focus on exploration and diplomacy. Militarization proponents, however, argued precisely the opposite; complacency and weakness would only allow such devastation to occur again. This philosophical “tug of war” would continue to pull in one direction and another, influencing the Admiralty’s decisions in planning their bases and ships. Any proposed new class of vessel therefore could quickly become a topic of fervent discussion; the more significant the class of vessel, the more heated the discussion. As the decades marched on, the end of the 22nd century and the dawn of the 23rd saw the Federation largely flourishing, but still finding its way. The first quarter of the 23rd century was one of unprecedented change for the Alpha and Beta Quadrants at large. Historians have often said that it was a “simpler” time and in some ways this is true. The United Federation of Planets was still in its first century of existence, being tested from within by its own growth and from without by enemies who were easily identifiable. The Klingons had long been the main concern at the Admiralty, but it would soon also face hostilities with the increasingly antagonistic Tholians, and see the Romulan Empire return to the galactic stage.
The earliest members of the Constitution class were first commissioned in 2245, before the latest generation of officer to serve on them had even been born as of the 2260s. Their design had roots dating back to the 2220s, when many Starfleet commanders grew frustrated by perceived inadequacies in Starfleet’s frontline starships. The vessels of the era were less assembled than they were handcrafted; though strict performance standards were maintained each ship could vary significantly based on its construction location and service history. Onboard repair facilities were also rather limited. Simple repairs often required a return to a starbase to be completed, which in turn kept many ships closer to home base and hampered various deep space initiatives. To counter this, engineers proposed the introduction of a new family of starship that employed standardized components, such as primary hulls, bridge modules, and warp nacelles, that would make repairs easier and grant the ships greater independence. The lead class ship of this family would be bigger, faster, and more capable than any before it, designed to last for forty years or more. That ship design would come to be known as the Constitution class.
After the first ships left dock in the late 2240s, the Constitution class became more successful than most dared dream possible. The ships quickly became prestigious postings for Starfleet officers, as they assumed the most challenging and daring missions Starfleet had in its docket. With a highly effective balance of scientific and defensive capability, Captain Robert April, first commanding officer of Enterprise and a key figure in the development of the class, once famously commented “a Constitution class starship can do anything!” Historians tend to agree. The ships’ successes triggered engineers to design refits for existing vessels to bring them as in-line as possible with new component standards. Related designs of scout, destroyer, tug, frigate and more types were soon designed using the same standard components. Additional blocks of Constitution class ships, built to upgraded specifications, were soon ordered. Starfleet ships would no longer be the custom, occasionally cantankerous one-off builds that they had previously been. The threat of war from the Klingons loomed large throughout the first two quarters of the century, having briefly come to fruition in the mid 2250s before settling back into an uneasy cold war between the two governments as the Federation celebrated its centennial in 2261.
Historians have observed that conflict frequently leads to technological innovation, and for all of its peaceful and exploratory accomplishments, Starfleet has been no exception to this rule. As the decades passed, Starfleet researchers made numerous technological innovations. Despite a series of refits that kept them apace with newest technology, including a relatively major one in the early 2260s, even the members of the Constitution class began to show their limits. The Federation’s neighbors were by all reports advancing their technologies and building fleets at a feverish pace and Starfleet struggled to keep up. Projections indicated that the Constitution class and other vessels of her generation were becoming outdated faster than originally predicted. High profile confrontations between Federation and Threat forces caused public confidence in Starfleet’s ability to defend the Federation to begin to waver, and funding for several key programs came under threat by political machinations within the Federation Council when Starfleet could least afford to lose it. The spectre of war with the Klingons again came to the fore during a few tense minutes in 2268, before the threat was neutralized by the highly advanced Organians. Their forced treaty established a Neutral Zone between the Federation and Klingon Empire similar to the one between the Federation and Romulans, and set forth a means for peaceably claiming territory. But by 2269, the Klingons and Romulans had formed an alliance and were exchanging technology. Starfleet feared a war by proxy.
For these and other reasons, Starfleet could not afford to summarily abandon the Constitution class. The design remained a proven one, the achievements of the members of the class easily quantifiable. Constitution class ships had increased the volume of known space by millions of cubic light years, adding detailed maps of hundreds of sectors to Federation star charts. At the ceremony aboard Enterprise in 2270, Admiral Nogura announced the implementation of a fleet-wide modernization program, beginning with the two-and-a-half year upgrade of the Enterprise herself. Nogura and the rest of the Admiralty knew that this would likely only extend the lifespan of the Constitution class by three more decades at most. A totally new from the keel up heavy cruiser design was still needed to replace the Constitution class. Ironically, while the creation of a true multi-mission explorer starship was still decades away, even as Nogura spoke aboard the Enterprise the seeds that would lead to its creation were already being sown.
When Starfleet began discussing a replacement for the Constitution class in the early 2260s, the argument over Starfleet’s primary role flared anew. The Admiralty deliberated in committee for some time on the size and armament of the new class. Many argued for a near-copy of the Constitution class, merely employing new design practices and technology. Others cited this as an opportunity for greater innovation, and a substantially larger ship over 300% the size of her predecessor. Still others argued for a size in between, no more than 200% the size of the Constitution class. Given the context of the era, most agreed that the ship should be more well armed than her predecessor, although they disagreed on the extent..
In 2266, Starfleet ordered its Advanced Starship Design Bureau (ASDB) to begin work on a Constitution replacement. The general design brief (labeled SV-20) called for a ship capable of fulfilling the duties of the Constitution class, but exceeding their capacity to do so:
- Provide a mobile platform for Starfleet exploration projects, border patrol, and defense
- Perform starbase resupply and defense of regional interests
- Supervise and fully execute Federation policy in outlying frontier territories
- Service life of 40-60 years with refits
- Maximum speed warp factor 12, sustainable cruising speed warp factor 10
The design team was convened under the supervision of Doctor Josef Thorndyke of the ASDB, an accomplished engineer who assisted on the original Constitution class project and was a supervisor on the new modernization effort. The team convened by Thorndyke included an impressive range of the best of the old and young that the ASDB had to offer, fully confident of their ability to meet Starfleet’s challenge. By 2271, another design requirement would be added: incorporate advances of the new prototypical propulsion form called transwarp drive.
Chapter Two - Transwarp
https://starfleetheritage.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/chapter-two-transwarp/
For the past five centuries “warp drive” (or more properly, the “fluctuation super-impeller”) has been the main method of faster-than-light propulsion in known space. Various cultures have independently developed similar versions of the same technology, to date the most viable solution for the problem of general relativity. The development of the technology is so significant to a culture’s emergence into the galactic stage that the Federation Council created Starfleet General Order One around it. As part of this so-called Prime Directive, Federation citizens and Starfleet officers alike are forbidden from revealing themselves to a civilization that has not yet achieved warp flight. After Earth’s first warp flight in 2063, the war-devastated planet was transformed in ways not thought possible, unifying humanity within a half-century and virtually eliminating poverty and disease a half-century after that. The friendship of the Vulcan people and other races that humans encountered as they ventured out in the galaxy helped shape what humanity was to become, and had a profound influence on the flow of galactic events. Human explorers found that other races had developed very similar technology, with numerous variations on it. Most were powered by some version of a matter/antimatter annihilation reactor, but actual engine designs varied significantly. The Vulcans, for example, employed a single giant warp coil “ring” (known as an annular warp drive) instead of a series of smaller coils arranged in nacelles. Humans and their allies slowly learned from one another, infusing their own particular style of propulsion with some techniques from the others.
When Zefram Cochrane and his team developed Earth's first warp drive, scientists had little grasp on whether there were any mathematical limits on how fast a warp engine could be. As humanity expanded into space, they found that most of their neighbors were just as uncertain on the topic. Initially, speed was limited by practical limits such as power generation and structural integrity. Throughout the early twenty-third century, engineers made great advances in multi-stage and interlinked warp reactors, all the while refining the reaction process itself. Most of the earliest human warp reactors were little more than antimatter-enhanced fusion reactors. These reactors were crude, with a matter/antimatter intermix of 40:1 or more. Ideally, for maximum speeds, a 1:1 ratio was needed, but reactions at a higher intermix formula proved difficult to mediate and contain; indeed, even cold starting a warp reactor at a ratio higher than 30:1 threatened implosion and typical top-of-the-line reactors of the era required nearly an hour to bring up to an operational status from a cold state. Eventually, these obstacles would be overcome, and even supposed velocity limits like the so-called "Time Barrier" were broken. Engineers sought to create ever-faster engines, and thus the idea for transwarp was born.
While conventional warp drive generates and manipulates a subspace field to distort local space around the ship, defying the laws of physics to travel faster than light, a conceptual transwarp drive would entirely throw the laws of physics out the airlock. Though now a catchall term for any drive system faster than conventional warp, as originally used the term "transwarp" referred specifically to a drive designed to utilize the basic coils-and-nacelles format to push a starship entirely out of normal space, into a theoretical subspace dimension termed "transwarp space." Precedent existed for such a technology in the hands of the Xindi, who made use of naturally occurring phenomena to create subspace portals for rapid transit. Full subspace immersion would allow a starship to seem to traverse great distances in a fraction of the time it would take at conventional warp speeds in normal space. An early illustrative analogy compared a person travelling across the curvature of a world (conventional warp) to a person travelling a straight line tunnel through the planet itself (transwarp.) If powerful enough, it was thought that a transwarp drive could offer near-instantaneous transport from one point in the galaxy to another, acting as a kind of “jump drive.” Unfortunately, for years transwarp remained almost entirely theoretical. Generations of engineers and researchers at the ASDB invented, designed, reinvented, and redesigned iterations of transwarp drive in the computer, almost as a sort of rite of passage.
In the 2250s, Doctor Eugene Wesley rose to prominence as a gifted warp theorist and engineer at the ASDB, and was soon named Director of the Propulsion Research Department. Ambitious and talented, Doctor Wesley began to consider transwarp as a real possibility. While many in Starfleet remained skeptical, Captain Randolph Harrison “Harry” Morrow emerged as transwarp’s champion. The young, charismatic Morrow had long held a fascination with engine development, which had grown since he began service as a supervisor at the ASDB. Becoming friends, Wesley and Morrow spent many hours discussing transwarp concepts, and Morrow in turn helped convinced Wesley to go to the Admiralty to support his initiative. In 2261, Doctor Wesley presented his transwarp development proposal to Starfleet Command, which asserted that thanks to recent technological advances with proper resources and focus a team could develop a prototype design for a transwarp drive within six years. With the approval of the Admiralty, Doctor Wesley convened what was enigmatically dubbed the Excelsior Group. The team commenced a thorough study of all aspects of warp mechanics, from power generation to field coil design to subspace field theory. Dr. Wesley was keenly aware that he had acceded to what had been long deemed an impossible task, but remained steadfast to generate results. As power requirements and structural integrity innovations began to fall into place, the team found themselves limited by their inability to generate sustained high-level subspace fields even in simulation. Practical tests in controlled environments were nearly impossible. Dr. Wesley concluded that a great deal more research into subspace field manipulation was required as their deadline rapidly approached. By this time, Captain Morrow had been promoted and now-Admiral Morrow used his influence to persuade the Admiralty to grant an extension.
The Excelsior Group's fortunes finally changed in 2268. On Stardate 5693, the Starship Enterprise discovered the missing U.S.S. Defiant, NCC-1764, near Tholian space. Defiant was trapped in a subspace rift, its crew having murdered one another due to madness caused by prolonged subspace exposure. The phenomenon was termed “spatial interphase” by Enterprise science officer Spock. Spatial interphase was described as a temporary overlap of two dimensions, specifically space and subspace, which resulted in a type of trans-dimensional rift. The interphase produced a level of subspace distortion heretofore unencountered by Federation science. While the Defiant herself was ultimately lost, apparently trapped in limbo between dimensions, sensor readings accumulated by Enterprise proved invaluable to the Group’s work. These logs helped Dr. Wesley and his fellow scientists understand why the previous efforts to create a high-energy warp field using available power sources had failed.
The Admiralty’s extension had proven fortuitous. The sad fate of Defiant gave Wesley and his colleagues what they needed to make a breakthrough. With the Defiant data provided by the Enterprise, the Excelsior Group made astounding progress. Simulations were far more successful and a prototypical engine design was soon complete. A linear intermix chamber, specced to run at a faster reaction rate than was typical, would power twin nacelles to achieve both conventional and transwarp speeds. The ship's more energetic transwarp field could more deeply embed the vessel within subspace and more efficiently provide all conventional warp velocities through the transwarp drive. The team was able to mitigate the intermix formula issue and raise the reaction ratio by essentially cheating. This would be affected by positioning a secondary "supercharger" reaction assembly just ahead of the power transfer lines to the nacelles, wherein additional antimatter would be fed into the main plasma manifold, essentially double-reacting the drive plasma to avoid a single, difficult-to-contain high ratio reaction, a concept not dissimilar to the plasma accelerators of earlier Earth starships. Coordinated with a tunneling tachyon beam emitted from the main deflector dish, as well as an increase in the vessel's structural integrity and inertial damping fields, the ship would generate a transwarp corridor ahead of it and continue to accelerate into full subspace immersion. The vessel's crew would theoretically experience a brief state of disorientation as the transwarp threshold was crossed, and this would render precise computer control of the transwarp drive system essential. The team was confident that proper shielding could prevent any psychological effects on the crew, ruling out any disaster like that which befell Defiant.
The Excelsior Group completed its design and presented its full findings in 2270. Many were concerned that the project was beyond the reach of current technology. Others worried that the team had not yet thoroughly researched potential physiological effects on a crew employing transwarp drive, citing the fate of the Defiant as a likely outcome. Admiral Morrow worked his growing influence to bring around enough of his fellows in the Admiralty to approve the project. Starfleet finally ordered transwarp included as part of the SV-20 project in 2271. The Transwarp Development Project was officially born. The program soon came to be known among inner Starfleet circles as “The Great Experiment,” which would eventually be made a household phrase by Federation news outlets.
