Star Ship Polaris

[FrontLine]

Very nice. Thanks for the keel shots. You did what I was hoping wouldnt happen. You made the cowling that is on the dorsal symmetrical all around. I was hoping that on ventral side it would curve forward to the bow to completely encompass the engines. That extra space could also be used for cargo storage besides looking cool IMO. But then again, that probably wouldn't match the aesthetics that you are going for. Just my two cents.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Thanks for the suggestions.

A small update:

Just modifications to the undersaucer detail, a new version of the "rollbar" and some placeholders indicating where I think the missiles/weapons will be mounted.

 

[therealfoxbat]

Wait a minute...

Could that be...?

Is that what I think it is...?

YES!

YES! OH YES!! OH YES!!!

GUNS!

WE GOT GUNS!!

HAIL HAIL ROCK AND ROLL...
LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL...
WE GOT GUNS!!!

Any vessel that wants to call itself a starship absolutely NEEDS to carry some ass-kicking weaponry. Without it, you might as well be flying a dress...

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

And yet, remarkably, the original Enterprise on TOS had no visible weapons emplacements on the hull.

The larger a ship is, I guess, the smaller the weapons details visible on the outside may be. A modern submarine is pretty smooth-looking - everything's protected behind hatches. So are most renderings I've seen of the Honorverse ships.

Our ship is a little smaller - a patrol boat, say, as against a carrier - so the guns will be a little more obvious. They'll also be fewer and less powerful, but such ships aren't designed to fight capital vessels.

 

[therealfoxbat]

As long as the ass-kicking weaponry is there, I guess it's okay to hide it...

 

[FalTorPan]

And here are some of aridas refinements:

This remains my favorite version of the design thus far. It looks like something that might appear in a Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serial.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Actually, if we were making a "Flash Gordon" serial I'd make the fins a little bigger, add a lightning bolt emblem on the side and go with it.

 

[Jimmy_C]

Looks good. I have a few questions, though. What are in the "wings" if all of the habitation is located in the central structure? Fuel? Supplies? Also, how do those "landing boats" get back to the ship (they look like just capsules to me)? Finally, would it make sense to reverse the orientation of decks 14-25 to maximize space usage (their ceilings are bigger than their floors, while the opposite it true of decks 1-12)?

 

[aridas sofia]

The wings would contain inorganic stores, the landers, and the business part of the FTL drive. The rings forge the warp, and the wings accelerate it. When the warp is in place, the wings are uninhabitable.

The landers have legs that fold out from the "heat shield".

http://home.comcast.net/~aridas/lander1.jpg

As for the lower decks, you are right about the inefficiencies. But the layout is governed by the way the ship creates gravity. It accelerates in real space at one gee, and the acceleration creates an artificial gravity pushing against the direction of motion. If you reversed the decks, the people would be walking on the ceiling.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The modeling's not nearly done, but I've been doing some test animations and thought I'd post a few frames:

 

[Kaiser]

WOAH!!

Awsome job there

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

 

[Shatna]

Well aren't you a talented young man.

 

[Philo]

More like talented old codger but I agree. I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more responses. Those are some beautifully cinematic renders, Dennis. I wonder if you'd think about using a more vibrant and colourful starfield more akin to TOS. I'm really quite tired of these ubiquitous grey blobs you see everywhere nowadays. It would certainly suit your more scientifically grounded retro style better, as well as help to distinguish it from all the other contemporary riffraff.

 

[FalTorPan]

I find myself wanting to like this design more than I actually do. I guess I became overly fixated on the design that looked like it flew out of the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s.

I really don't like the wraparound roll bar. The design wouldn't look complete without something more than what it would consist of if the rollbar were to be removed, but I can't put a finger on what might better complete the design (in my never-so-humble opinion, anyway).

Obviously the design needs to appeal only to Starship Polaris and aridas, so my opinions and a quarter are worth at most twenty-five cents.

 

[Mr. Fergy]

That is one, fine, ship!

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

"Flash Gordon" is good, I like "Flash Gordon," but we're not doing "Flash Gordon."

I don't know what the alternative to the rollbar would be, either. I've thought of towers of some kind, possibly growing out of some kind of ridge or fin structure on the dorsal and ventral, but I can't come up with anything I really like in that regard. Of course, I tried that cowling and didn't really like that either.

It'll be a very long time before every detail of this has to be immutably fixed, so maybe something will occur.

There are quite a few colors in the starfield but the stars are small and motion-blurred in these pics - I don't think we're anywhere near set on just how space will appear in this thing. I don't think we'll see any dayglo CG nebulae, though. I like space empty and dark, like...you know, like outer space.

 

[FalTorPan]

Obviously the design decisions are yours and aridas' to make, so anyone else's opinion -- even mine -- are secondary, if important at all.

I like the "core" of the current design -- basically everything except the wraparound rollbar, which looks as if it were slapped on rather than an integral design component.

All in all, I like how the design is progressing. Keep up the good work!

EDIT: The rollbar doesn't look slapped on from the aft ventral views. The sloped, connecting neck helps to make the rollbar look integrated into the design, as does how the front edge of the rollbar meets the ventral disc at the same radius as the radial fins just outboard of the rollbar/disc intersection. In the views that I've seen, the rollbar only seems slapped on from the front. The rollbar has that snubbed point that looks as if it's floating above the cylindrical hull for no apparent reason. Maybe the rollbar and main body would look more integrated from the front if the interconnecting strut were extended forward so that it's visible from the front. Just a thought.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I don't dispute that the rollbar has its problems; several posters on different boards have brought it up. It's my only significant addition to the basic design, and I don't think aridas is in love with it either. I just haven't come up with a better solution so far to what you noted as the "incompleteness" of the core - and I don't think it's a matter of incompleteness at all, just that the ship needs something to build it up vertically so that it isn't diminished from so many angles over than above/below.

Vertical towers or fins are the only other idea I can think of. There was a variant by another poster using a broken ring which I kind of liked, except that to maintain the visual balance of the design the ring pretty much had to rise from the centerline of the engines and I couldn't make design sense of that to my satisfaction.

 

[FrontLine]

I gotta say that those frames look good. The ship screams that its fast, nimble, and not huge, which I believe was the look you were going for. Now that I think about it, I think that my uber cool idea about the ventral side would make the ship look unbalanced and possibly ungainly. Shows what I know. I think its gonna work out quite well in the end.

Well aren't you a talented young man.

FREEZE. Dont go anywhere. Put your hand up in the air and dont move. We've been looking for you for quite a while.