The different between Constitution and Miranda Class

[Brainsucker]

You know that in Constitution Class Starships, there is always a giant tube with something like radar at the front; while in Miranda Class there is nothing like that.

My question is what is the purpose of that giant tube and why Miranda doesn't has it? And what is the something like radar lies in front of the tube?

 

[bryce]

The "tube" is the secondary hull...why many Starfleet ships (pre-1701-D) have two hulls, I don't exactly know - but it's commonly called the "engineering section", and I think it's was originally meant to contain engineering (the engine room) and fuel storage and such -- although in the TMP (movie) refit, a lot of the main engine/matter-anti-matter reactor/"warp core" seems to be located in the neck between the two hulls...and in the TOS ship, the location of engineering is subject of much debate - and some even think it's in the *saucer* section.

In The Next Generation's time...the flattened tubey-shape section (which now *does* contain engineering and the main warp reactor) aka "star drive section" aka "battle section" can detach and function as a separate starship in a battle situation (letting the civies and families get away in the saucer section.)

That "radar dish" looking thingy is the "navigational deflector" - it's *main* function is to repel dust and even subatomic particles that could seriously damage a starship at high speeds (by virtue of their relative kinetic energy.)

Why a Miranda/Reliant-type ship does have one (aside from just being a real-life artistic decision)...was never explained on screen (as pretty much ALL other ships usually have some form of that feature)...but best guess is that it's nav deflector is internal and not visible.

Maybe it uses some other kind of deflection technology - like modified force screens/fields/shields...?

^I have noticed that on the Reliant/Miranda model, on the upper right and left (port and starboard?) of the saucer section there's the same little thingymabobs as on the side of the Enterprise's nav deflector...(I dunno what they are called - I hunt up a pic)...I guess they may be part of it deflector system...

ETA: I'm having PC problems and it would be a huge pain for me to draw little circles around the parts I mean (my software would just keep crashing)...but if you look at these two images you can see the matching features (I hope)...

 

[Brainsucker]

Oh I get it, thank you for the information.

I thought the radar disc is a long range scanner to explore the deep space, but I'm wrong.

So basically Miranda Class is just the economy version of Constitution Class, and not a starship that designated to conduct different missions and different purpose?

 

[bryce]

So basically Miranda Class is just the economy version of Constitution Class, and not a starship that designated to conduct different missions and different purpose?

^From the way the were used in TNG - it almost seems like the Miranda/Reliant type ships were an easily convertible/adaptable platform that could be converted to serve any number of different purposes...but only one at a time - cargo, science, defense - *mainly* (with probably limited capacity for other tasks - but not as much as a Constitution Class...)

...compared to the Constitution/Enterprise type, which seemed to be able to multi-task better, and serve any number of functions at once (but probably not any one of them quite as good as a dedicated to that one single task ship might have done.)

Then again...the Reliant was a science vessel *and* a formidable warship...so maybe the Reliant/Miranda was just a less complicated, easier to mass-produce mini version of the Constitution/Enterprise...?


(Please excuse me...I've been sick and on meds...my heads a little foggy and it's difficult for me to...communicfiate...afy...whatever...)

 

[JNG]

Oh I get it, thank you for the information.

I thought the radar disc is a long range scanner to explore the deep space, but I'm wrong.

So basically Miranda Class is just the economy version of Constitution Class, and not a starship that designated to conduct different missions and different purpose?

I don't think that being a little bit smaller (8% or something) and lacking a nav deflector would restrict its mission profile THAT much. If that were the case, it is hard to imagine why Starfleet would put the resources into building one when only a little more would have gotten them one of the supposedly superior movie-style Constitution-class ships. This is not to mention that we have seen Miranda-class ships on pretty much every kind of mission and in several variants, so they certainly don't seem as if their purposes are limited.

I think the navigational deflector is certainly a good thing to have, and it's probably less efficient not to have a dedicated one, but since there are a number of ships without it, it must be a tradeoff worth making sometimes and not some crippling flaw.

 

[Myasishchev]

I think the main difference is range. With their large engineering hulls, Constitutions have space for about ten times more fuel. The Miranda, I think, is a vessel with basically all the power and most of the flexibility of the Constitution (as their habitable sections are similar in size), but somewhat cheaper to produce and not designed for long-range missions outside Federation space, detached from Federation logistics.

I've never been at all comfortable with the stated endurances of starships, however, so I'll refrain from absolute numbers.

I agree with JNG on the navigational deflector issue. We see a lot of alien ships with no visible deflector as well. Perhaps warp fields can be, with some extra effort, tuned to repel interstellar hydrogen and small rocks. Heck, maybe the by the late 24th century Starfleet had already cleared it all of the debris from the major shipping lanes--using Constitutions as snowplows.

 

[Nimitz CO]

The Constitution Class vessels were designed to be deep space exploration vessels with a secondary capability of performing as a battleship, as a result, the incorporated powerful snesor units in the housing that also held the navigational deflector, and mounted the primary long range sensors along the outer housing. When the Miranda Class vessels were launched, they had a mission to perform as fast frigates with a primary mission to serve as battle cruisers within Federation boarders with a secondary mission of serving as survey vessles. Hence the reduction in mass by eleiminating the secondary engineering hull alltogether and placing the engineering components as well as the shuttlebays in an expanded primary hull to give the vessel more speed and manuverability when compaired to the Constitution Class. As for the long range sensors and navigational deflector emplacements I have attached a blueprint showing there location here:

http://s699.photobucket.com/albums/vv356/nimitzco/Miranda/

 

[Brainsucker]

Well, maybe Myasishchev is right. Watching Star Trek 2, I can say that a Miranda can match a constitution class in a one on one combat.

 

[JuanBolio]

BTW, the dish was originally intended to be a long-range scanner. It became a navigational deflector somewhat later. Of course, there's no real reason to think it couldn't act as both. A dish implies some sort of reception, after all. The spine in the middle could double an an antenna and a waveguide for the the deflector fields.

 

[Nimitz CO]

Well, maybe Myasishchev is right. Watching Star Trek 2, I can say that a Miranda can match a constitution class in a one on one combat.

The Miranda Class could not only match the Constitution Class but exceed it's capabilities in combat situations. Remember that in ST II TWOK, the Reliant was hijacked by Kahn and his surviving group of "geneticaly altered supermen" after being marooned on Ceti Alpha V for some 20 odd years. This placed the Reliant at an extreme disadvantage of having an inexperienced crew as well as an inexperienced commanding officer in relation to the combat capabilities of the Miranda Class as well as Starfleet combat tactics, as evidenced by Kahn not knowing where the master override control was located on the bridge. Now if the Reliant was crewed by an experienced Starfleet CO and crew in a war game against the Enterprise I believe that the Reliant would win the day. Hence Spocks comment "She could still outrun us and out gun us." which would be true even if both Starships didn't suffer combat damage.

On the flip side of the coin, the Constitution Class vessels could run circles around the Miranda Class when it came to missions of galaxy exploration and scientific duties.

 

[Myasishchev]

And just to add a bit more weight to that argument, Mirandas were still in use 100 years later, and Constitutions weren't. It was apparently quite the robust little warfighter (although unlike some I still have severe reservations about how good it was in comparison to designs from sixty years later!).

 

[Omega_Glory]

Constitution class parts and pieces were seen at the Wolf 359 battle site. The primary reason, IMHO, the Constitution class ships were not seen in the Berman era Treks was the competition factor. Kirks Enterprise or a ship like would steal the show in TNG...they didn't want that.

The Miranda was a multi-purpose ship design. And it would be less costly to produce (time & resources). It was used for combat, transport, survey, ect; configured differently for many roles.

I'm not convinced that it would be more effective in battle than the Constitution class vessels. Firepower was very close, but the Reliant has a lot less mass to lose before critical systems are affected. If the initial battle had been conducted normally, (two ships closing on each other with the intent to attack), the Enterprise would have had her shields up before any shots were fired; and I'd bet the shields were stronger too. The Reliant would lose shields faster and then the ship itself would go down faster.

 

[Timo]

Less mass to lose? How? The saucer around the impulse engines is actually thicker in the Reliant. And apparently the main powerplant is buried deeper, too - at least there's more hull to the sides of Main Engineering than in the Enterprise, even if the topside may be equally thin.

It may be that these two classes are indeed in different categories, and the difference is in something like shield strength or phaser caliber. But we need not assume that they are in different categories, or that the Miranda has the weaker shields of the two. It's up to us to choose; the two almost identical ships might simply be two shapes for equipotent heavy cruisers, or then the Miranda is the slightly more powerful battle cruiser, or then she's the slightly less powerful light cruiser.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

I still imagine that there are deep shuttle/cargo bay hollow-volumes behind those number doors on the back of Reliant akin to what we saw inside the Enterprise in TMP.

 

[MarianLH]

That "radar dish" looking thingy is the "navigational deflector" - it's *main* function is to repel dust and even subatomic particles that could seriously damage a starship at high speeds (by virtue of their relative kinetic energy.)

I believe the TMP blueprints were the first published material to label that thing a "navigational deflector". From some comments I've seen from Trekkies who were around back then, I gather there was some debate in the 70s between advocates of the deflector and sensor interpretations, before TMP settled it. In the actual film, the dish first lights up when the ship leaves dock, and is lit a couple different ways that seem to correspond with how fast the ship is moving.

Why a Miranda/Reliant-type ship does have one (aside from just being a real-life artistic decision)...was never explained on screen (as pretty much ALL other ships usually have some form of that feature)...but best guess is that it's nav deflector is internal and not visible.

Reliant is hardly unique in not having an obvious deflector, especially among older designs before the tech details were carved in stone.

I suppose--but this is only an supposition--that the smaller cross section and/or different mission profile make a large dedicated deflector unnecessary. Other people have other interpretations, and one modelmaker has even retconned the design to add a small deflector.

Maybe it uses some other kind of deflection technology - like modified force screens/fields/shields...?

That's exactly what I suppose. The existing shield system is used in a low-power "navigational" setting.

I have noticed that on the Reliant/Miranda model, on the upper right and left (port and starboard?) of the saucer section there's the same little thingymabobs as on the side of the Enterprise's nav deflector...(I dunno what they are called - I hunt up a pic)...I guess they may be part of it deflector system...

The TMP blueprints refer to them as "space/energy field sensors". So far as I know, there is no published info on their function. Reliant actually has a third one, like Enterprise. It's on top of the torpedo pod.


Marian

 

[Timo]

The "field sensors" would be excellent as deflectors, though. Perhaps placing them close to a sensor dish is good for the sensors, because nav deflectors need to generate FTL fields in order to protect the ship at warp, and sensor beams need FTL fields in order to provide realtime info across long distances.

This particular "field sensor" design is only present on those two canon starships (plus a couple of fan ones), but the Constellation has similar if larger grey domes and seems to lack a dish. So we could say that this generation of vessels indeed had these small deflectors, sometimes accompanied by the big sensor dish and sometimes not, while later designs would integrate the deflector better with the dish along with the sensors.

Of course, the Excelsior has the dish of the TMP Constitution but not the "field sensors"... But perhaps she's the first to integrate the deflectors into the dish?

(Also, the Constellation may in fact have a big badass deflector dish. There's this giant square at the very bow, and we have never been explicitly told that it's a shuttle hangar. It could just as well be a square deflector array, in TMP style being relatively dark when the ships are sublight or happen to be near-inert wrecks, and only glowing bright blue at warp when no camera is there to witness it.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MarianLH]

I had completely forgotten about the Constellation, Timo. Thanks for reminding me.


Marian

 

[Omega_Glory]

TMP blueprints are just one author's interpetation...even if he did work on the film. I wonder if any canon material exists that define the various aspects of the ships.

 

[Neopeius]

Well, maybe Myasishchev is right. Watching Star Trek 2, I can say that a Miranda can match a constitution class in a one on one combat.

Can it really? Setting aside the silly slingshot-ranges and drive-by-shooting speeds, the Reliant got the first shot in on an unshielded Enterprise...

...and hurt it a bit.

 

[BenRoethig]

So basically Miranda Class is just the economy version of Constitution Class, and not a starship that designated to conduct different missions and different purpose?

^From the way the were used in TNG - it almost seems like the Miranda/Reliant type ships were an easily convertible/adaptable platform that could be converted to serve any number of different purposes...but only one at a time - cargo, science, defense - *mainly* (with probably limited capacity for other tasks - but not as much as a Constitution Class...)

...compared to the Constitution/Enterprise type, which seemed to be able to multi-task better, and serve any number of functions at once (but probably not any one of them quite as good as a dedicated to that one single task ship might have done.)

Then again...the Reliant was a science vessel *and* a formidable warship...so maybe the Reliant/Miranda was just a less complicated, easier to mass-produce mini version of the Constitution/Enterprise...?


(Please excuse me...I've been sick and on meds...my heads a little foggy and it's difficult for me to...communicfiate...afy...whatever...)

I would like to add that the Miranda class was a nearly 100 year old design by the time of TNG. Its mission and usuage could have changed a lot.