I stand corrected.
Tech nerds.
Tech nerds.
New Frontier Excalibur Question
- Thread starter Hartzilla2007
- Start date
Wasn't the new Excalbur a souped-up, "hot rod" Galaxy? I've never read the later books (and frankly, I'd have liked if they kept the Ambassador-class ship - I like 'em!) but I heard that the replacement was more advanced than your typical Galaxy.
In any case, I'm a proponent of the notion that ships with illustrious histories shouldn't get significantly smaller with future incarnations. The Prommie was a heck of a lot smaller than the Ambassador, and surely carried a lot less people; fandom usually pegs an Ambassador as carrying around 600-700 people.
Mark
In any case, I'm a proponent of the notion that ships with illustrious histories shouldn't get significantly smaller with future incarnations. The Prommie was a heck of a lot smaller than the Ambassador, and surely carried a lot less people; fandom usually pegs an Ambassador as carrying around 600-700 people.
Mark
yes, there were some variations between the Excal-A and the E-D, including a 'warp sled' on the saucer section to allow it to function more independently of the stardrive section
...Then again, the saucer was never actually used for that purpose. Except in "Encounter at Farpoint", where it seems obvious that the saucer was perfectly capable of high warp, arriving at Deneb IV only a couple of hours or at most days later than the stardrive section, even though the distance to be traveled was vast (going the other way, it had been several minutes at extreme warp for the combined ship, as she fled Q). And except in "Arsenal of Freedom", where the saucer did get away nice and clean, and was supposed to make its way to a distant starbase - quite possibly at warp speed.
The Excal-A's new drive system might have been more defensibly described as an improvement on the earlier saucer warp drive. Except that PAD explicitly says the modified saucer is only capable of less than warp two, right?
Timo Saloniemi
The Excal-A's new drive system might have been more defensibly described as an improvement on the earlier saucer warp drive. Except that PAD explicitly says the modified saucer is only capable of less than warp two, right?
Timo Saloniemi
An Akira-class ship would be smaller than an Ambassador-class ship but not by much (not as long, probably 100 less crew). It makes up for this smaller size in offensive power though (15 torpedo tubes per the designer of the ship). I think it would have been a good ship to use for Excal-A. But it's too late now, they'll make a new ship that is bigger than both the Galaxy- and Sovereign-class ships for the Excal-B, should that ever be needed.
While I like the VOY ep which featured the Promethsus, I thought that the ship itself was totally fanwanky. Then again, I think that the Galaxy class is totally boring, so maybe there's just no pleasing me.
Personally I like the theory that the sauces section is capable of sustaining warp speed if "launched" by the star drive section during separation (just like torpedoes seems to be able to sustain warp speed after being launched even if they do not have their own warp drive). Maybe there is "warp bubble sustainer field" or something like that.
Maybe the saucer can steer and slow at will, but it can't accelerate and start again after stopping (for which they need actual warp nacelles).
That's exactly the idea, according to the TNG Technical Manual.
Well, we did get seven years of a Galaxy-class starship but maybe saw less than a third of the entire ship. There's a lot that went unseen; cetacean ops, various recreation areas that are larger than Ten-Forward, the civilian population, the various science labs and the civilian population (oh, I said that already but since TNG hardly dealt with them... it bares repeating).
...Although the manual says the saucer would drop out of warp in two minutes, while in "Farpoint" it must have sustained high warp for several hours or possibly days.
We could always say that the exceptional duration of the "glide" (which would also involve a 180 degree turn, to compensate for the one Picard originally did to evade Q's chainmail) was due to the exceptional speed at which the saucer was launched. But Picard seemed to have high confidence that the saucer would make it to Deneb IV on its own, as he never attempted to go back and retrieve the other half of his ship. How could he have this confidence when supposedly nobody had flown a Galaxy at such speeds before, or done a high warp separation?
Calhoun's new ship would admittedly then be a wholly different deal, with the ability to independently accelerate to warp. The somewhat lackluster performance at warp, as compared with the E-D saucer, could perhaps be forgiven...
Plus, those ships are supposed to be highly modular within, configurable for the needs of the mission and the whims of the skipper. While Picard's vessel might have been all dull and boring inside, Calhoun's might house all sorts of story-worthy surprises, such as this saucer warp drive. A simple walk through the vast vessel could be an adventure in itself.
Timo Saloniemi
I like the idea that the Ex-A would have tiny, deployable warp nacelles, that could fit into the saucer undercut where they'd be invisible in docked configuration, much like the Prometheus class does...
Mark
Mark
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