nx class vessels

[C.E. Evans]

In my mind the new secondary hull necessitates a larger crew, say about four hundred.

That tiny pod, justifying a crew increase of a factor of five?

I suppose they could all stand sideways...

I'm embarrassed to admit that I went Trektechgeek and actually worked out the new dimensions of the ship with ye old ruler and calculator for a potential fanfic, and used Doug Drexler's dimensions of the NX-01 as a starting point. Yeah, the new secondary hull isn't very large at all compared to the rest of the vessel and it looks like it probably would only bump the crew complement up somewhere between 120-130 comfortably, IMO...

 

[F. King Daniel]

I can't keep my silence: That NX-01 refit is horrible. A sleek, lovely design has been butchered seemingly in a vain attempt to appease all those "Akiraprise" haters from 2001 (who don't even care anymore - they've got a new Enterprise to hate on now).

I'd hate to see the NX-01 ever get fuglied like that on the cover of a novel.

YMMV.

That it all.

 

[Christopher]

It wasn't about catering to anyone other than Doug Drexler himself. He (and most of his art department colleagues, I gather) wanted from the start to do a design that looked like a plausible antecedent to the Constitution class, but the execs in charge of Enterprise told them, for no clear reason, to base it on the Akira instead. In fact, so Drexler asserts, they originally wanted to use the actual Akira design with no changes at all, despite the gross anachronism of that, and the art department had to fight to get as much of a "retro" look in as they did. So this is Drexler's attempt to bring NX-01 more in line with the ideas he originally had for it at the start of the design process, and make it feel more like an ancestor of NCC-1701.

And I think it's an improvement. NX-01 is an excellent design in many ways, but it always seemed too flat to me and too asymmetrical in profile (the nacelles above with nothing to balance them below), and it didn't seem like a plausible ancestor of Kirk's ship. This conjectural refit resolves all those issues.

 

[TerraUnam]

I liked the NX design.

Why can't we just admit that there was a good amount of change when the Federation happened in 2161? Surely the new Starfleet is more than the sum of its parts? I mean the space forces of Vulcan, Andor and Tellar have to contribute something.

 

[Christopher]

^Sure, you can look at it that way. Nobody's stopping you. Drexler's design is just a conjecture, an exercise in wish fulfillment. There's no reason why differing interpretations of starship evolution during the gaps in canon can't coexist.

And who's to say that, in the conjectural reality where the Drexler refit occurs, it isn't influenced by Vulcan or Andorian or Tellarite elements? After all, they would've been in a Coalition for a little while by that point. (Though that idea would fly better if the Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite ships seen in ENT had all had bits and pieces of Jefferies's Constitution-class design ethic in their own respective designs.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

I personally don't think the NX class needs to be (or become) an exact predecessor to the TOS connie. Rather than one design lineage, there can be several concurrently, each a different "warp dynamic" shape (or whatever the technobabble for the shape is) evolving over the years. Thus we get Connie to Ambassador to Galaxy, NX to FASA's Loknar (and something almost identical in fan film Of Gods and Men) to Akira, Daedalus to Olympic, Excelsior to Sovereign and a ton of intermingled kitbashes and intermediate steps along each way.

One of the reasons I like the 2009 Enterprise is that it's weird curves and odd proportions give the impression that there's alien tech inside, that the ship really is the culmination of the entire Federation's technology (the multispecies crew helped a lot too), unlike Enterprise's "America made it" or TOS's "Earth made it" impressions (or at least, this viewer's impressions).
The NX-01.5 doesn't look like any more than an extra, redundant, ejectable warp core and engine room. IMO

 

[TerraUnam]

I prefer to think that Earth Starfleet, the Vulcan Defence Force, the Andorian Imperial Guard and the Tellarite Stellar Navy all had well-developed plans for what their fleets would look like in c. 2170. I'm sure Earth still expected to be Earth. In 2155 that would be entirely reasonable, nobody would expect what was coming down the pipe.

But wars tend to upend things. And the grand political drama of 2161 would cast all those plans into doubt, if not make them irrelevant.

To put a real-world counterpart on it, the US had planned to build the Montana-class battleships with 18-inch guns in the late 1930's. They also started to upgrade the Panama Canal to handle these ships as they would be too big for the locks. The US at the time still only had one fleet, and the Panama Canal was what made it able to work both coasts.

WWII put and end to battleships and gave the US more ships then it knew what to do with. The Montana class was abandoned as was the Canal upgrade. The lock project is only now being revived by Panama to increase the Canal's commercial tonnage capacity.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I never liked the idea of canceling the NX program (why cancel your heavy cruiser class during the middle of a war?)

Spoiler: Beneath the Raptor's Wing

It was because the NX class was vulnerable to the Romulans' new weapon which allowed them to take control of enemy vessels by remote. The Romulans destroyed three NX'es due to this very reason.

Spoiler: Beneath the Raptor's Wing

That and the fact that 3 Daedalus-class ships can be built in the same time it takes to build 1 NX.

 

[Timo]

But will the latter do the job of the former, even in that numerical ratio? I mean, the latter don't even appear armed when we see them elsewhere in the less-than-canon material...

I think the writers do a disservice to us starship fans in promoting the idea that the class mentioned in the above spoilers would be an important ship class, let alone an important combat vessel class, in the mid-22nd century. That means they are forgoing the chance to invent new and perhaps more appropriate classes for this era!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Birdog]

But will the latter do the job of the former, even in that numerical ratio? I mean, the latter don't even appear armed when we see them elsewhere in the less-than-canon material...

Timo Saloniemi

The TOS Enterprise doesn't appear armed either. Nor does the NX until you get close.

 

[Kemaiku]

^ What have the Russian shuttles been named?

Buran was the first, there was a second mostly complete one and several frames.

 

[SPCTRE]

[...] the execs in charge of Enterprise told them, for no clear reason, to base it on the Akira instead. In fact, so Drexler asserts, they originally wanted to use the actual Akira design with no changes at all, despite the gross anachronism of that, and the art department had to fight to get as much of a "retro" look in as they did.

I didn't know that. They wanted to use the Akira design, unchanged? Ok, wow. Just... wow.

 

[David cgc]

I've heard that so much, and from reliable sources, but I still can't believe it. I mean, it's not even practical. They'd have to make a new model, at least, to be detailed enough to be the main ship.

(I'm not saying anyone's lying or wrong or anything. I'm just incredulous)

 

[Dayton Ward]

^ Sure, they would've rendered a much more detailed model if an Akira design was to be used. Given that they did even more work in order to create the NX-01 that shows an obvious "design lineage," it's not beyond the realm of practicality.

 

[F. King Daniel]

One of the early John Eaves NX01 concept pics I saw years ago had ultra-fugly and very obviously 24th century warp nacelles (lifted from the Klingon Vor'cha attack cruiser!)

Now I'm not one to get annoyed by nacelles (not even Voyager's meek little atrophied ones), but even I would have said "Nu-uh!" at that. At least until the rest of the internet went overboard buying me a little perspective.

IIRC Eaves' other design was a streamlined modernized connie (with more reasonable engines )

 

[Christopher]

I always wished Archer's Enterprise had been a Daedalus-class ship. I really liked the Pasteur in "All Good Things...", and it would've been cool to see a sphere-hulled ship on a regular basis.

 

[JD]

Did we ever actually see an active Daedalus class in any of the shows or movies?

 

[Thrawn]

One of the early John Eaves NX01 concept pics I saw years ago had ultra-fugly and very obviously 24th century warp nacelles (lifted from the Klingon Vor'cha attack cruiser!)

Now I'm not one to get annoyed by nacelles (not even Voyager's meek little atrophied ones), but even I would have said "Nu-uh!" at that. At least until the rest of the internet went overboard buying me a little perspective.

IIRC Eaves' other design was a streamlined modernized connie (with more reasonable engines )

That sounds interesting. Any idea where you say that pic?

 

[F. King Daniel]

^^
johneaves.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/the-early-nx-01

 

[Thrawn]

That was cool; thanks.