Navigational Defletor?

[James Wright]

Does anyone know where I can find picturesof the Obreth class starshipon the internet that shows forward and aft views? After finding my copy of Star Trek The Magazine with the article on the Obreth class starship I'd like to see an actual model with the deflector pointing aft!
Thanks for helping!

JDW

 

[Major Chord]

Try these. You know, Google is available for free...

 

[Unicron]

Are you referring to the Fact Files which had a version of the MSD?

 

[James Wright]

I was hoping someone had pictures of the filming model or could direct me to a web site, while looking at pictures of the Obreth over at the Daystrom Institute Of Technology I spotted something that looks like phaser turrets on the nacelles dorsal surface, (aft portion) of the Starship Grissom.(Whatever it is it looks like the ball turrets carried on larger starships of this period.)
Thanks!

JDW

 

[Unicron]

I believe those would be RCS thrusters, not phasers. You're probably thinking of these structures.

 

[Major Chord]

I remember in one discussion I was having about the Oberth, those were speculated to be Bussard collectors. Could be thrusters though, orindeed phasers, but that seems like a stupid place to put phasers, even on a non-combatant ship. If an enemy tries to disable your weapons, they're pretty likely to take off your nacelle instead.

 

[Unicron]

They're definitely RCS units on Jackill's Fisher, so that seems the most logical choice to me anyway. No mention is made of whether the Fisher has distinct Bussard collectors or not.

 

[Longinus]

That whole deflector dish issue has always bugged me. Most alien ships don't seem to have them and some Federation ships don't have them either. So why some ships have them while other, even ones based on the same technology, don't?

 

[Unicron]

The fact that the deflector might not be externally visible or identified doesn't mean it's not there.

 

[Longinus]

The fact that the deflector might not be externally visible or identified doesn't mean it's not there.

Of course. It just seems odd that some ships have these huge glowing deflectors and some don't. There must be a functional reason for the big deflectors, otherwise no ship would have one.

 

[Plecostomus]

Could have something to do with the mission profile. The larger ships with the big blue glowy thing could be expected to be in situations were a more flexible and powerful system is needed while the embedded/non-glowy version is for ships that operate close to home along established routes and don't often go where no one has gone before.

 

[Timo]

Or it might be that the glow has nothing to do with deflecting, and is merely the external element of the advanced research-oriented sensors that these certain ships have clustered around the navigational deflector.

Most ships won't need such sensors, so they make do with just the deflector, which is a really small and unassuming piece of greebling...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gepard]

Or it might be that the glow has nothing to do with deflecting, and is merely the external element of the advanced research-oriented sensors that these certain ships have clustered around the navigational deflector.

Then you would expect to see the big glowy dishes on the science craft, like the Oberth and Miranda, and not on the more general-purpose ships like the Constitution...

 

[Timo]

Only if you think Miranda is a science craft. ST2 portrays her as a battlewagon, more heavily armed than Kirk's ship, and DS9 uses her mainly as a combat fleet outrider, while TNG appears to show former warhorses demoted to science or supply roles rather than dedicated science vessels.

Personally, I'd think the forward-pointing array at the navigational deflector location would be ideal for very long range scanning: the instruments would get a boost from the FTL fields that the deflector projects ahead of the ship. Such scanning would be useful for deep space exploration starships such as the various Enterprises, but less necessary for survey vessels such as the Oberths that first putter to the survey location and settle in orbit, then spend weeks or months doing short range scans.

It may be incidental or coincidental, but ships mostly seen in combat roles (say, Akira or Defiant) seem to have somewhat smaller glowing thingamabobs than their exploration-oriented contemporaries and stablemates. And the E-E, which seems more martial than the E-D, also goes for a more compact dish...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gepard]

Only if you think Miranda is a science craft.

The Reliant's designers certainly saw her that way:

She was supposed to be a coastal and geodetic survey ship, like a buoy tender. She would be armed, perhaps, but only lightly; she wasn't a lion ship like the Enterprise. Also, remember the Enterprise was always supposed to be an exploratory vessel, where the armament was secondary. That was even more true for the Reliant; she was supposed to just stick around in the known universe and take care of things that everybody already knew about.

TWOK seemed to follow that at least somewhat by putting the Reliant on a planet survey mission, sort of like the Grissom in TSFS.

Either way, I think I like Sternbach's take on it just as well: that there is more than one way to push unwanted particles out of a ship's path, and the ships with the big dishes use one and the ships without use another. Sort of like real life, where, for example, not everything that flies uses wings and a propeller; as such, we might expect to see several different approaches to the deflector problem developed over time.

 

[Timo]

The Reliant's designers certainly saw her that way

That's a bit odd, as the ship's mission in the movie was to plausibly outgun Kirk's ship. After a sneaky first strike anyway. It almost sounds as if Jennings didn't read the script!

Also, if the designers really attempted what they said, why did they give the Reliant so many guns? If anything, by design she was the most militantly aggressive ship design in Star Trek history until, dunno, the Stargazer (again bristling with identifiable weapons) or perhaps even the Defiant.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gagarin]

Personally, I'd think the forward-pointing array at the navigational deflector location would be ideal for very long range scanning: the instruments would get a boost from the FTL fields that the deflector projects ahead of the ship. Such scanning would be useful for deep space exploration starships such as the various Enterprises, but less necessary for survey vessels such as the Oberths that first putter to the survey location and settle in orbit, then spend weeks or months doing short range scans.

It may be incidental or coincidental, but ships mostly seen in combat roles (say, Akira or Defiant) seem to have somewhat smaller glowing thingamabobs than their exploration-oriented contemporaries and stablemates. And the E-E, which seems more martial than the E-D, also goes for a more compact dish...

Timo Saloniemi

That's very interesting, Timo, about FTL-field assisted scans.

Would also the crusiers (larger ships with secondary hulls, bigger, wider spread engines and struts), present a bigger surface area to 'deflect' objects from? There may be multiple ways of clearing debris from space, but there's probably a 'best way' when a ship presents that big of a cross section as the Enterprise or other ships with secondary hulls. 'Big' is relative of course, to the era.

 

[Deks]

Personally, I'd think the forward-pointing array at the navigational deflector location would be ideal for very long range scanning: the instruments would get a boost from the FTL fields that the deflector projects ahead of the ship. Such scanning would be useful for deep space exploration starships such as the various Enterprises, but less necessary for survey vessels such as the Oberths that first putter to the survey location and settle in orbit, then spend weeks or months doing short range scans.

It may be incidental or coincidental, but ships mostly seen in combat roles (say, Akira or Defiant) seem to have somewhat smaller glowing thingamabobs than their exploration-oriented contemporaries and stablemates. And the E-E, which seems more martial than the E-D, also goes for a more compact dish...

Timo Saloniemi

That's very interesting, Timo, about FTL-field assisted scans.

Would also the crusiers (larger ships with secondary hulls, bigger, wider spread engines and struts), present a bigger surface area to 'deflect' objects from? There may be multiple ways of clearing debris from space, but there's probably a 'best way' when a ship presents that big of a cross section as the Enterprise or other ships with secondary hulls. 'Big' is relative of course, to the era.

They have used the main deflector dish to boost sensor range on-screen.
Voyager used such a technique on at least 2 occasions if I'm not mistaken.

 

[prometheuspan]

I believe its stated that there are smaller deflectors placed all over the ships.

I don't know why you must have a navigational deflector, you guys are thinking federation ships. Think non fed ships. oooommmmuuuuuhhhhh....

Right. So obviously it can be done in the trek universe, its just not the federation way to do it. The obvious answer is that it all depends on the
holographics of the warp engines. The warp engines are creating that bubble fore and aft, so if its a bubble like bubble, you'd have to worry about objects.
But if its a needle nose pointed bubble and has some strength for integrity,
it could just resolve the whole issue by cross modulation of the engine streams in very very large and long triangles.

Not that either way is better or worse, but to some degree smaller or larger deflector grids mean that the job is being shared by those systems in slightly different ratios and the corresponding warpfeilds are thus either bubblisher or pointyisher.

Caveat. I'm a vulcan. I think star trek is great, but cannon to me is entertainment; not science.

 

[prometheuspan]

The Reliant's designers certainly saw her that way

That's a bit odd, as the ship's mission in the movie was to plausibly outgun Kirk's ship. After a sneaky first strike anyway. It almost sounds as if Jennings didn't read the script!

Also, if the designers really attempted what they said, why did they give the Reliant so many guns? If anything, by design she was the most militantly aggressive ship design in Star Trek history until, dunno, the Stargazer (again bristling with identifiable weapons) or perhaps even the Defiant.

Timo Saloniemi

i believe that the solution to this is that the constellation and other similar ships have their weapons hull embedded, and the reliant having no large secondary hull distributes the difference some by externalizing the weapons systems. I think it was even stated that under normal conditions the enterprise would outgun the reliant; it was the sneak attack that did them in.

but... i could be wrong...?