Starship architecture, anyone?

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I just had the most fascinating discussion.

I was checking out at the local Barnes & Noble (which had, uncharacteristically, been sitting on Purgatory's Key since last weekend), and the fellow ahead of me in line was blind. After I checked out, he was having a bit of difficulty navigating to the exit. When I advised him that he was about eight feet short of the turn, he asked me if I'd mind guiding him to the place where he was scheduled to be picked up.

He asked me what I'd bought, and I explained that it was the latest ST novel, the conclusion of the 50th Anniversary trilogy, and he remarked that he was himself a long-time ST fan. This led to a conversation in which he expressed an interest in a book on starship architecture, something that, so far as either of us know, has never been published, even as a fanzine. We agreed that in real-world terms, it 's a matter of what looks good on screen, while in-universe, it's at least partially a matter of the dynamics of FTL travel, and yet different cultures' approaches to starship design produce such differences of appearance from one culture to another. He thought it would be very interesting if somebody could come up with a published in-universe reference explaining what drives the starship architecture of different cultures, and I tend to agree with him.

Consider something a bit closer to home: the differences between American and Russian manned spacecraft. The U.S. was, in the late 1950s, way ahead of Russia in terms of miniaturization, but Russia had much bigger rockets available. U.S. culture, additionally, had much greater emphasis on the individual. So Mercury ended up as a very sophisticated spacecraft that, because of the limited lifting capacity of the Redstone and the Atlas, had to have the heat-shielded pressure vessel double as nosecone. Vostok, by contrast, was a sphere and an external instrument bay, both of which were launched inside the nosecone of a significantly larger rocket. Gemini was essentially a slightly enlarged Mercury, gaining a second seat by moving everything that wasn't needed for reentry outside the pressure vessel, and the Russian Voskhod was a similarly updated (but significantly less safe) variant of Vostok. While Apollo was an entirely new design, and carried a tight-fitting "Boost Protective Cover" until the first stage and escape tower were jettisoned, it still stuck with a conical pressure vessel for the Command Module, whereas Soyuz, although clearly more advanced than Vostok and Voskhod, and designed to be part of an abortive lunar program, bears much more of a family resemblance to its predecessors than to Apollo.

 

[jgalley]

So..what's the question? Not entirely sure what you're looking for here as your post ends as a statement with no additional info or anything asked for or anything to respond to really.

 

[David cgc]

There are a fair few ideas about why specific ships are arranged in specific ways floating around, though I think it'd be viewed as too restrictive to actually put down a Grand Theory of Star Trek Ship Design Tradeoffs. It'd probably be better suited for a website that could revise it's theories as new episodes and movies came out.

Aside from stuff like the TNG Tech Manuel and Rick Sternbach's articles in Star Trek Magazine, the big example that comes to mind is from the novel "Federation," where Zephram Cochrane sees the original Enterprise and notes that its lines are consistent with his theories on warp-speed efficiency, and that a Klingon D-7 used a less-efficent design that minimized its forward profile so it would be less vulnerable to return fire while attacking.

 

[Albertese]

So..what's the question? Not entirely sure what you're looking for here as your post ends as a statement with no additional info or anything asked for or anything to respond to really.

With a little imagination it's not hard to extrapolate that he wants to discuss why starships are shaped the way they are.

Which is a fine question!

Sternbach's TNG TM does go into the theory a bit at least as regards the Galaxy-class. And as mentioned above, the novel Federation did brush on it. The book Star Fleet Dynamics also discusses this subject. In fact, seems like most the specifically "treknical" books at least acknowledge that something is going on.

SFD claims that comparing a Star Fleet ship verses a Klingon ship, the Star Fleet one can move faster, at higher speeds, but the Klingon ship, though slower, is a lot more maneuverable.

I'd also enjoy seeing such a thing gone into in more depth. What are the tradeoffs between the various classes of starship? How about that compared to ships of other cultures? Cardassian ships looks vaguely like backwards Klingon ships. Why? Why is the Romulan Warbird shaped with a huge hollow in the middle? Must be a reason. What are the advantages of Borg ships being just huge geometric forms? Why can't other technical approaches accomplish the same feat on a similar scale? What's going on with other huge ships like the Fesarius or the Planet Killer? Perhaps a huge enough ships benefit form simpler forms? (cube/sphere/cone) Why might that be?

If I didn't already have way too many projects going, I might seriously dive into this myself. Instead, let's crowd source and see what everyone has to contribute.

--Alex

 

[Arpy]

Bigger ships are simpler shapes because the technology is more advanced. They don't need individual nacelles and hull sections that can separate in case of emergency. They are objects with tasks to perform and the tech will go wherever it is positioned.

The D-7 only had windows in the fore section, and some fans believe because that's where the officers were, while the cannon fodder got irradiated in the aft core. Maybe that's why Starfleet ships are in sections also. That is, so that if they had to jettison the nacelles or the stardrive, they could. As the tech's gotten more sophisticated, the need for separate sections has dwindled: Voyager has no neck or separation ability. The Sovereign no neck.

Also, stardrive sections and nacelles have gotten smaller. Voyager's nacelles are tiny. The Galaxy's stardrive is smaller than the saucer as the tech's outstretched the need for larger ones. The Daedalus stardrive was huge in relation to its primary hull and the parts farther apart and able to jettison. The Galaxy is also more of a mobile starbase, given all the room in the saucer, able to be at sea for years and defend itself against most things in its path.

With the war, cough, cheese, cough, the Sovereign increased it's speed and maneuverability ability's and the new nacelle tech is again larger, for the time being.

The Cardassians favor integrated nacelles as they fear vulnerability of exposed, if more efficient, ones.

Navigational deflectors are more efficient but not absolutely necessary. Slow, sturdy, frigates like the Miranda get by without them (or use integrated ones), whereas fast, maneuverable cruisers like the Constitution have large ones. Especially given their usefulness in exploration (didn't Geordie say individual departments wanted more time with the D's deflector to run scans or experiments?).

 

[SicOne]

I've always been of the theory that the Romulan D'Deridex-class warbird's vast open midsection contains the "artificial quantum singularity" they power their ship with. I wouldn't have the slightest idea how they'd tap something like that for power or keep it in place, only that they'd have it in the center cavity so it doesn't spaghettify the ship.

But that also poses a few interesting questions, no matter where the AQS is kept...

(1) If the ship loses containment for whatever reason, does the AQS (which is essentially a mini black-hole, AFAIK) devour the ship?

(2) If the ship is destroyed or spaghettified while in orbit of a moon or planet, does the gravity of that body attract the AQS into it, thereby dooming that celestial body?

 

[zDarby]

SicOne

To answer some of the questions you have about Romulan AQSs, look up information on the idea of the Kugelblitz.

Here are three interesting videos that include info on them:

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Strictly about kugelblitzen. (One kugelbitz, two kugelblitzen.)

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Explores the different engines currently theoretically plausible for interstellar travel. It's all newtonian drives, including kugelblitzen.

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Starts talking about dyson swarms but concludes with kugelblitzen. Note: "Industry standard 600 million kg kugelblitz."

There was a TNG episode --whose name I don't remember-- where an alien race was breeding within the Romulan AQS's gravity field. I'm pretty sure this showed the AQS was in Engineering and not outside the ship.

Furthermore, an AQS would very likely put out a huge amount of radiation, making it *VERY* bright. You'd see it if it were between the wings.

That same episode established that there was a major difference between an AQS and a standard black hole: the black-hole-alien children had problems around an AQS they would not have had when around a normal black hole. I have my own speculations as to what this means.

My own speculation about the wing space is that the D'deridex houses an industrial replicator array along the inside of the wings. IE, the D'deridex is a warp capable shipyard able to replicate anything that can fit between the wings. As such, I suspect that the head and neck and pivot right or left to allow large objects or vessels to escape.

Of course, it could also be the wing openings are very deliberately sized as the replicator's limit. After all, a 630m Excelcior (as stipulated elsewhere on this forum) could fit through the openings of a 1044m D'deridex. Indeed, if you're a careful pilot and went out the back, you might even get an Ambassador out. Even so, a Nebula class would fit in the empty space but could not exit without something getting out of the way.

...Anyway. That's my own interpretation of the D'deridex architecture.

EDIT:
The episode was called "Timescape". Season 6, Episode 25, according to Memory Alpha.

Also, we see what happens to a Warbird when it loses AQS containment: It explodes violently. My guess: extreme Hawkings Radiation.

 

[Go-Captain]

I used to think the hull shape determines the warp field geometry, but I currently hold the reverse opinion that the hull shape fits into the field geometry. I think that fits better with how the field geometry can be shaped regardless of the hull, and how field geometry shaping was tried for making more efficient warp travel, regardless of hull.

I believe it is worth fitting the hull into the geometry because warp fields could probably cause hull stress, so fancy hull shaping is more about allowing for greater hull life due to reduced strain and a reduced maintenance cycle when combined with a fast or efficient warp field geometry. That could mean the way around that is to make a flying space brick, brace the heck out of the hull, and use a basic warp geometry. That might explain the boring cargo ships we see and the Defiant which is notably capable of shaking itself apart early on in its career.

What the geometries mean I don't really know, but I have the impression that long pointy ships should be faster, which fits with Voyager and Prometheus being the fastest ships we know of when they are revealed. We also get the reverse in that the Defiant is notably slow despite its power supply. The one major oddity is how the Enterprise-D is faster than the D'Deridex class, but in Voyager, 7 of 9 states greater mass slows ships at warp. We also know that shuttles, despite being very light, are very slow in comparison to ships like the Enterprise-D, so mass isn't everything, power supply must factor in. The D'Deridex may simply have a lower power to mass ratio than the Galaxy class, or mass drag on warp speed is non-linear.

There is another factor in hull design we know for sure, warp feilds exert forces on the warp engines which can rip them from a ship's hull. This occurred in simulations attempting to break the warp 10 barrier in Voyager's admittedly horrible episode "Threshold."

 

[TommyR01D]

It's probably a stylistic thing on the whole - the Klingons and Romulans want to look menacing, while the Borg want to scare opponents with their sheer size. The cubes and spheres might be deliberately chosen to show the monotony and uniformity of the collective.

 

[zDarby]

I'd like to pose several questions to which I do not have adequate answers but which, I think, have relevance to warp physics and, therefore, ship architecture.

1) Why do Borg cubes go to warp with an edge facing forward and not a face or vertex facing forward?

2) Why are smaller Borg vessels in the shape of a sphere and not a cube?

In both cases, I speculate that it costs less energy. But why? Clearly, it would all come down to a complex engineering compromise. But what is that compromise?

3) What the blue blazes is up with the Borg Queen's diamond?

It's such a strange shape. Why?

I have no speculation on this one.

4) Why are Vulcan ships use ring nacelles?

It seems to me that the ring nacelles of the Vulcans are fundamentally the same as the cylindrical nacelles of the Federation; except instead of being long and thin, they're short and wide. In other words, a Federation cylindrical nacelle can be thought of as being made up of many small diameter ring nacelles, in a line.

But why this disparity? What is the advantage of a large ring over several small rings? And vice versa? Perhaps the larger ring is more power efficient but the nacelle is easier to plumb? Perhaps the a single ring is easier to model but a series of rings is easier to manufacture? Or maybe the other way around?

5) What is the advantage of a long neck?

Klingons do it. Romulans do it. Ringed Vulcan ship do it. And newer Federation ships, with arrow-head main hulls are goin in that direction, too. What's with the long forward hull? Is it connected to the answer of why nacelles are almost always set considerably behind the center of mass?

Furthermore....

6) Why do Romulan ships have their nacelles so far outside their center of gravity? Remember that placing something that heavy that far outboard would greatly increase their rotational momentum and make them much less maneuverable. So, why?

7) What use are Bussard collectors to a ship whose main matter fuel is deuterium when deuterium represents a very, very small portion of the interstellar medium?

Deuterium/protium is about 10^-15 on average. IE, out of every quadrillion [1 with 15 zeros after it] hydrogen atoms, 1 is deuterium, on average, in the interstellar medium. Though this number fluctuates wildly depending on where you are --some molecular clouds have ratios of 1 in ten thousand-- current measurements indicate the one-part-in-a-quadrillion deuterium ratio is a good average.

So, if your main fuel storage is deuterium, as seems to be the case with the Federation, what good is collecting the interstellar medium? Clearly, collecting a quadrillion grams of interstellar dust in order to extract one gram of deuterium would be absurd. Does this mean the Federation can convert two protium-hydrogen nuclei into one deuterium-hydrogen nucleus? Seems like a good bet to me.

 

[David cgc]

2) Why are smaller Borg vessels in the shape of a sphere and not a cube?

In both cases, I speculate that it costs less energy. But why? Clearly, it would all come down to a complex engineering compromise. But what is that compromise?

Not necessarily. The smallest Borg ship we saw, the shuttle-sized one in "I, Borg" was a cube, and the second-smallest, the Borg Probe from "Dark Frontier" was peanut-shaped.

In the novels, it was suggested that cube is a philosophical statement by the Borg (possibly a subconscious one), and that all of their larger ships are actually spheres with a cubical superstructure outside the main hull (something consistent with the torus-shaped interior we saw at the beginning of First Contact). That brings up another point about the larger question of starship architecture. While aesthetics are paramount from a Doylist perspective, they also have input in the Watsonian world. The answers to some of these questions could just be "Someone really wanted a ship that was a cube/had big wings/looked pointy."

4) Why are Vulcan ships use ring nacelles?

It seems to me that the ring nacelles of the Vulcans are fundamentally the same as the cylindrical nacelles of the Federation; except instead of being long and thin, they're short and wide. In other words, a Federation cylindrical nacelle can be thought of as being made up of many small diameter ring nacelles, in a line.

But why this disparity? What is the advantage of a large ring over several small rings? And vice versa? Perhaps the larger ring is more power efficient but the nacelle is easier to plumb? Perhaps the a single ring is easier to model but a series of rings is easier to manufacture? Or maybe the other way around?

The 2011 edition of the Ships of the Line calendar had a section on the ring-ship Enterprise that included some technical background. The upshot was that while a ring-shaped nacelle was more efficient for cruising, it eliminated the ability to maneuver at warp, which human starship designers thought was too high a price for the power gains. I suppose this also implies that transitioning in and out of warp involves extra power cost that's worth avoiding, otherwise the problem could be circumvented by just dropping out of warp, turning to a new heading at sublight, then going back to warp speed.

 

[zDarby]

Cool!!

I always wondered if it were possible to charge a warp coil with a particle accelerator! It seems the answer is: YES!!

Of course, the image claims to use a "cyclotron", which is a completely different design and would be useless because of its exceedingly low power.... But so what! I understand what they really wanted to say (linear particle accelerator) and think it's really bloody cool! :-)

As to Watsonian vs Doylist, when it comes to starship architecture, the Doyalist perspective isn't very fun. IE, every question boils down to the answer: Because someone liked the looks. Therefore, I concentrate on Watsonian arguments. I don't disregard Doyalist arguments, I just use them sparingly.

 

[David cgc]

As to Watsonian vs Doylist, when it comes to starship architecture, the Doyalist perspective isn't very fun. IE, every question boils down to the answer: Because someone liked the looks. Therefore, I concentrate on Watsonian arguments. I don't disregard Doyalist arguments, I just use them sparingly.

I agree completely. I just wanted to ensure we didn't write off aesthetics as being solely an out-of-universe concern. Considering the "technology unchained" direction that Probert got before designing the Enterprise-D, for instance, it could be that "because it's pretty" (or threatening, or demonstrates contempt for the natural world) has more input into ship-design in-universe as civilizations become more technologically advanced.