The Last of the Daedalus Hulls - The Shetland Class

[Shetlander]

Having been a great admirer of the spherical primary hull since becoming a Trek fan, I thought I'd chip in with my own vision. This is my attempt to consolidate a spherical hull with a more traditional neck and stardrive. It's a very early model so a lot of refinement, additions and revisions to come.

The neck as it connects to the primary hull will mostly stay the same as I want to show how the outer elements of ship design started to transition inwards to where we get to the Constitution where virtually all of the ship machinery in encased within a beautiful, flowing hull. There will of course be parts that are strictly on the outside. I might change my mind, we'll see how it goes. As for scale, take this as three quarters the length of the Constitution with a launch year of 2220 and was retired in 2286 without undergoing the near all-fleet refit of the 2270's, putting it firmly between the retirement of the Daedalus in 2196 and the launch of the Constitution circa 2245.

Consider this model about 25% finished and updates will follow.

 

[Sgt_G]

Looks pretty cool. The one thing I have an issue with is the width/thickness of the neck.

You said the ship is 3/4 length of the Constitution, or (288 x 3/4) about 216 meters. Just eyeballing it, the forward hull sphere is roughly 1/4 the ship's length, about 54 meters give or take. The top of neck appears to be 1/10 to 1/8 the sphere's diameter, albeit a bit wider at the base. That means it's only five to seven meters wide, which minus hull plating doesn't leave a lot of room for anything besides stairs / turbolift.

 

[Shetlander]

Yep, the neck isn't much more than the stairs, turbolift cavities, jeffries tubes and power and data conduits. I've had the neck bulked out before and it just looked too chunky and visually fought against the spherical hull. I've been thinking about the skinny pylons and necks of the TOS era and they're likely made out of extremely dense but flexible sheets and bracing with the hull plating laid on top. This ship isn't bare like the NX-01. Hull armour encloses ship-wide bracing and atmospheric sealants and then on top of all of that, a very smooth and refined light cream-gray plating that helps maintain a stable and smooth warp field and highlights it visually against the starry backdrop. The neck and pylons would likely be the last parts of the ship to crumble considering their ability to deform under stress.

I've never liked the idea of crew quarters in the engineering hull so the Shetland class is one of the last to have the crew inhabit the primary hull only and have the engineering deck for work. The neck as a result is no more than a gangway between the two hulls.

 

[Atolm]

I really dig this
Awesome work and concept

 

[Kaiser]

Cool