Imagine the Enterprise, over again!

[MadMan1701A]

Oooh yes, it works very well, I think!
And still quite unique despite looking familiar.

Very, very nice.

That looks very interesting. The only suggestion I would have is that in the event of an emergency the pod should be able to separate, but at the moment it would have to dodge the outer ring which might not always be possible.

Thanks guys!

So, the big bulb is the habitable area of the ship. Decks are oriented perpendicular to the direction of travel, as Christopher suggested.

The saucer part is actually what I'm going to call the Electromagnetic Force Field array, which acts basically like a deflector shield. No habitable area in there.

Interesting. It makes sense to have the habitable section encased within a shield array like that. It differentiates nicely between the habitat section, which needs protection, and the uninhabited engine section. Indeed, perhaps the shield would be a defense against radiation from the engines themselves as well as from cosmic radiation/debris. (Although a EM shield would only protect against particle radiation, not gamma/x-rays.)

Along those lines, how about some shielding domes on the front of the engine nacelles to protect the habitat section? Might evoke the forward domes of the classic design a bit. Also, if the gravity vector is now "rearward," then there's no real reason to have the nacelles oriented "straight up" as they are -- it's a little incongruous. How about angling them radially outward from the center line, at 120-degree angles from each other and the reactor assembly? (Although I can't help thinking it would be more symmetrical if you had three nacelles 120 degrees apart and the reactor assembly along the centerline. Certainly if you had fusion rockets, they'd need to be at the centerline or the thrust would be imbalanced.)

In this design, the habitat section seems rather small, unless it's a really huge ship. Maybe it could be a bit bigger, although I like the idea of the majority of the ship's mass/volume being uninhabited and devoted to engines and shielding.

That looks very interesting. The only suggestion I would have is that in the event of an emergency the pod should be able to separate, but at the moment it would have to dodge the outer ring which might not always be possible.

Not necessarily. If the ring is the shield that protects the crew, then it should stay with the habitat sphere when it separates from the engines. So the separation point should be just behind where the ring meets the connective strut to the engines.

Thanks, and I like that suggestion of angling the engines. I'm going to try that, for sure. I was definitely thinking for the ring to be protection from space and the engines, as well. I don't plan for it to be a big solid ring, either... It'll be kind of mesh like.

The habitat section will probably get bigger as well, but the scale of the ship is going to be huge. The ship in Avatar is about a mile long, so I was figuring on about the same for this one.

The fusion rockets won't be very big, but they are going to go right at the back of my long supporting structure, so they should be pretty centered.

More later.

-Ricky

 

[gerbil]

Hey guys,

Your comments are really got me thinking, that I need to move a lot farther out of the box.

I sketched this out tonight... I think this is what I'm going to go with.

So, the big bulb is the habitable area of the ship. Decks are oriented perpendicular to the direction of travel, as Christopher suggested.

The saucer part is actually what I'm going to call the Electromagnetic Force Field array, which acts basically like a deflector shield. No habitable area in there.

The nacelles of course, made larger, and the matter / antimatter reactors are below.

I also plan to have some fusion rockets at the rear, for backup sub-light, or maneuvering.

This is all really rough, but what do you guys think?

-Ricky

I love this through and through. I am fully of the opinion you need to complete this design.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Thanks.

Yeah, I'm going to move forward with this. I'll re-build all of it over, but the arrangement is going to stay the same.

-Ricky

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Very interesting. Very cool.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Cool as it is to actually see them, leaving fuel tanks and reactors exposed like that is just asking for trouble. That says to Klingons and their ilk "Hit Me Here."

 

[Christopher]

Cool as it is to actually see them, leaving fuel tanks and reactors exposed like that is just asking for trouble. That says to Klingons and their ilk "Hit Me Here."

Here's the thing, though, another thing that Trek tends to overlook: A warp bubble is a pretty effective deflector shield. You're bending spacetime around you, so you can send pretty much anything onto a trajectory that misses you altogether. Realistic space combat wouldn't be anything like we're used to on Earth or anything like what's portrayed in onscreen fiction. The distances and velocities would be far greater, for one thing. You wouldn't be close enough to an enemy ship to make out detail; they'd be a distant point of light. And the weapons I've generally seen used in realistic space combat in prose are pretty much all-or-nothing -- if they hit the ship at all, then the entire ship is vaporized, so it doesn't matter if there are exposed areas. In that context, armor would be a useless amount of extra mass. Except, of course, for the armor needed to protect the crew against cosmic radiation and micrometeoroids.

 

[JES]

If a non-artist may offer a thought:

Except you'd have to be careful not to be pointing at anyone you like when you come out of warp, since the accumulated particles would then shoot forward in a high-energy burst. On the other hand, that would make one heck of a surprise-attack weapon.

I can see this being used for strategies in space combat. Maybe advanced enough technology might allow for the storing of these accumulated particles, for an energy source? Or to collect them in capacitors, which can then be discharged as particle weapons in combat? Perhaps both?
We will likely need to find a way to lessen the effects of these accumulated particles, similar to how we are currently needing to lessen sonic booms resulting from going supersonic. Otherwise, the dangers would really limit where you could come out of warp.

 

[Christopher]

We will likely need to find a way to lessen the effects of these accumulated particles, similar to how we are currently needing to lessen sonic booms resulting from going supersonic. Otherwise, the dangers would really limit where you could come out of warp.

Not really, because most of space is empty, well, space. That's why it's called that. Fiction portrays it as being cluttered on a scale that reflects our Earthbound experiences, but that's absolute malarkey. In reality, it's immensely empty beyond our ability to comprehend. The only way you're likely to hit anything in space is if you're deliberately aiming at it. If you come out of warp inside a populated star system, then, okay, there is a small but nonzero chance of hitting an inhabited planet, space station, or something, but then the best option is to come out of warp at an angle to it, or pointing away from the orbital plane where most of its objects would be found. So it's a manageable risk, as much as any collision risk in space is manageable.

 

[T'Girl]

Shuttlecraft? Either have the "garage" enclosure we saw in the show, or have the craft docked directly to the hull and you would enter through an airlock.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Thanks guys.

Cool as it is to actually see them, leaving fuel tanks and reactors exposed like that is just asking for trouble. That says to Klingons and their ilk "Hit Me Here."

Here's the thing, though, another thing that Trek tends to overlook: A warp bubble is a pretty effective deflector shield. You're bending spacetime around you, so you can send pretty much anything onto a trajectory that misses you altogether. Realistic space combat wouldn't be anything like we're used to on Earth or anything like what's portrayed in onscreen fiction. The distances and velocities would be far greater, for one thing. You wouldn't be close enough to an enemy ship to make out detail; they'd be a distant point of light. And the weapons I've generally seen used in realistic space combat in prose are pretty much all-or-nothing -- if they hit the ship at all, then the entire ship is vaporized, so it doesn't matter if there are exposed areas. In that context, armor would be a useless amount of extra mass. Except, of course, for the armor needed to protect the crew against cosmic radiation and micrometeoroids.

The tanks and stuff there are really just a placeholder for now, I'll be building new ones. I'll put some covers over sensitive parts, but I think I'll leave them mostly exposed.

Haven't really thought of combat much yet, but I figure any part of the ship that gets hit with any kind of large weapon is going to destroy the whole thing. Lasers, might be pretty survivable though.

All I was going to equip the ship with was some high powered lasers, anyway. Maybe a railgun? I really didn't want to have missiles on here anywhere.

Shuttlecraft? Either have the "garage" enclosure we saw in the show, or have the craft docked directly to the hull and you would enter through an airlock.

I've been thinking about that... I like the idea of the shuttles being docked outside, and not inside. I'm trying to think of a good place to stick them.

-Ricky

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, the hangar deck was a cool model and all, but such a vast pressurized area basically taking up space doesn't seem like such a great idea. It would take ridiculously long to depressurize and repressurize. I guess it fit into Jefferies's philosophy that everything, including shuttles, should be accessible for maintenance and repair from inside the ship, but there's got to be some other way of going about that. Maybe something more like DS9's runabout bays, a small pressurized "pocket" for each shuttle. Or maybe an interior hangar from which the ships would be loaded into a smaller airlock for launch -- kind of like the Galactica's Viper launching system, but with airlocks instead of launch tubes.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Thinking about it, I like the small airlock idea better than having them exposed on the outside.

I was thinking about have the large docking ports for connecting to a starbase on top and bottom of the habitation sphere... maybe there could be smaller ones on either side for shuttles?

-Ricky

 

[Christopher]

Err, how are we defining "top" and "bottom"? I thought the plan was for the sphere's gravity vector to be toward the aft of the ship, so the "top" would be the front, and the deflector ring would get in the way there, while the whole engine assembly would be on the "bottom." (Maybe you should say "dorsal" and "ventral" to avoid confusion.)

 

[MadMan1701A]

Yeah, you're right.

I meant the two sides of the sphere not obstructed by the ring.

Dorsal, and ventral, then.

-Ricky

 

[Albertese]

I think the one real advantage to have the traditional Trek style shuttlebay is that you can bet that alien spacecraft won't have a universal collar that can mate up to yours. So, bringing in the whole craft makes the facility more versatile since literally anything small enough to fit in the doors is now possible to link to.

If, on the other hand, nothing in your mission specs assume you'll never be mating to any but the craft assigned to your ship in the first place (or others equipped with compatible hardware) then a system of external airlocks should do nicely.

--Alex

 

[largo]

i'll throw in a vote for the re-oriented saucer, if for no other reason than it looks like it'd be a good parallel development to the starfleet museum lineage.

liking the big bulb design too, though.

 

[Warped9]

For what it's worth both TNG and even Star Wars had an interesting idea: you use a force field that doesn't require you to depressurize the entire bay. We already have something like that today called a plasma window that's used for soldering or welding things in a vacuum I believe. So the fundamental idea is already established and in practice.

So you open your bay doors with the force field activated and you auxiliary craft just slides in and out through the field without having to depressurize the entire bay. Then you close and seal your bay doors and turn off the force field.

Just a thought.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, the "pressure curtain" force field thing is old hat in sci-fi by this point, but that's exactly why I don't like it. Even if you buy it as something that could work in principle, it's problematical for holding in as large a volume of pressurized gas as in the Enterprise's hangar bay, because that would be exerting a pretty significant amount of force. And you'd still have some air molecules leaking out when ships passed through the field. It still seems to me that it'd be simpler to shunt a craft into a small launch airlock that could be quickly depressurized and then release it into space.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Yeah, this makes sense to me, also. Once it's in the airlock, they can then bring it all the way inside, to the larger shuttle bay.

They could also let alien craft in that way, too, if necessary. Assuming they were small enough.

-Ricky

 

[Warped9]

Some years ago I already had the idea that you've been discussing: that of having a smaller airlock just large enough to hold the launching/arriving vehicle.

Another variation of this is having the auxiliary craft docking into a small holding bay and connecting (from mothership to auxiliary) via a telescoping airlock. That makes for the smallest required space needing to be pressurized.