The remastered Aurora
- Thread starter Wingsley
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Judging from the window size, I'd say somewhere between a double-decker bus and a small passenger jet.
Well, the windows do suggest a double-decker, with plenty of headroom on the upper deck and some sort of bilge bays below the lower one. And the CGI has two silhouettes of people behind the forward window, sort of - red and grey. I'd say something between 33 and 44 m myself.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
For sake of argument, let's assume 33 meters overall length.
Assuming this vessel is more self-sufficient than a shuttlecraft, what do you think its typical compliment is? I'm wondering if this kind of vessel (or ones like it) could be used for expeditions in stories. Could this be a kind of TREK cross between the Jupiter II and the PT 109?
Assuming this vessel is more self-sufficient than a shuttlecraft, what do you think its typical compliment is? I'm wondering if this kind of vessel (or ones like it) could be used for expeditions in stories. Could this be a kind of TREK cross between the Jupiter II and the PT 109?
I sort of like to associate this with one of Diane Carey's creations: the Hubble interstellar runabout from her novel Final Frontier. That is, something out of the 2210s-20s or so, with capacity for warp 3 or less, and a flight crew of pilot, copilot and flight engineer. The powerplant would seldom require the hands-on attention of the engineer, and there'd be nothing fancy there like armament or long range sensors or combat shielding.
Two decks, with spaces above and beneath them; an aft entry ramp in the stern undercut onto the lower deck (yes, she'd be landing capable); lots and lots of automation to make this thing easily operable and about as accessible to the general public as the Hippie favorite VW Kleinbus to which the design IMHO clearly alludes. She'd originally be a Starfleet design, but by the 2260s there would remain few examples in government service, mainly as low-end couriers. Civilian users could convert the spacious interiors to whatever they desired, from small transport to VIP yacht to some sort of an assault craft for pirate wannabes.
Timo Saloniemi
Two decks, with spaces above and beneath them; an aft entry ramp in the stern undercut onto the lower deck (yes, she'd be landing capable); lots and lots of automation to make this thing easily operable and about as accessible to the general public as the Hippie favorite VW Kleinbus to which the design IMHO clearly alludes. She'd originally be a Starfleet design, but by the 2260s there would remain few examples in government service, mainly as low-end couriers. Civilian users could convert the spacious interiors to whatever they desired, from small transport to VIP yacht to some sort of an assault craft for pirate wannabes.
Timo Saloniemi
Can anyone remember what it took for the Enterprise to overtake the Aurora?
Now, in "The Way to Eden", there were six people aboard the Aurora, which was called a "space cruiser". Would this mean the ship was over capacity, or maybe it was built for six (much as the Galileo was built for 7)?
I was thinking of this ship, and the similar Harry Mudd ship and Denevan ship (same image in TOS-R appearances) as being from a family of ships based on the same design, called "class J starship". I was also thinking that since the Denevan ship was termed a one-man ship, and Harry Mudd had a total of four aboard his vessel, this would seem to make it clear this class J family comes is varying sizes. If we assume this, would it be possible to have a class J variant that Starfleet would deloy with a crew of one-to-three dozen, depending on the design? If so, how large would such a ship have to be?
Now, in "The Way to Eden", there were six people aboard the Aurora, which was called a "space cruiser". Would this mean the ship was over capacity, or maybe it was built for six (much as the Galileo was built for 7)?
I was thinking of this ship, and the similar Harry Mudd ship and Denevan ship (same image in TOS-R appearances) as being from a family of ships based on the same design, called "class J starship". I was also thinking that since the Denevan ship was termed a one-man ship, and Harry Mudd had a total of four aboard his vessel, this would seem to make it clear this class J family comes is varying sizes. If we assume this, would it be possible to have a class J variant that Starfleet would deloy with a crew of one-to-three dozen, depending on the design? If so, how large would such a ship have to be?
Chakoteya's transcript site can... But there is no indication in the original episode about whether the two ships were at high warp or low impulse during the chase. The modern VFX doesn't exactly solve the issue, either, but the bright dots slowly flowing past on the background would perhaps be more compatible with the warp than the impulse interpretation.
Scotty manages to beam the hippies across at chase speed, and we might argue that beaming at warp was too difficult in the 2260s. Then again, we don't have solid evidence that beaming at warp was ever any more difficult than beaming at impulse: the first time it's done in TNG ("BoBW I"), it's acknowledged with a brief line about matching velocities, something that would be trivially done anyway.
There was no mention of the hippies being particularly tightly packed, or particularly rattling within the vast volumes. It would be a bit of a coincidence if they managed to steal a vehicle that exactly met their needs, of course... And certainly the 33 m interpretation would leave room for two or three additional batches of them in there.
Such a ship would meet the needs of "Mudd's Women", too, as she could plausibly be a freighter that carries other cargo besides the three women. A crew of just two (Harry and Leo) would be plausible as well, I guess - unless some of the women were operating the ship, too.
I'd say the 33 m Aurora meets that requirement, too. Only a handful of the people would be needed to actually fly the craft, while the others would be supercargo - say, an assault platoon or a bunch of C3I specialists.
On a ship of similar size, old explorers used to jam up to a hundred sailors... And on aircraft of comparable size, similar or higher numbers of paratroopers can be stacked. Mission length would dictate how much additional room would be needed per person.
Timo Saloniemi
I see this Class J concept, as TOS-R has rendered it, as being very flexible. Ships could be built/reconfigured for different applications. I would also expect that Mudd and the suicidal Denevan would likely have "older" versions of the design, as has been suggested in this thread previously.
Aurora herself could possibly be another matter entirely. If we go off the Enterprise's familiar engine hum during the chase, it would seem that Kirk ordered the ship to overtake the Aurora at multi-warp speeds. This is strictly a gut feeling, of course, but I'd say the Aurora maxed out her engines and blew up at Warp 5 or greater. Does that mean that newer Class J variants are faster? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Dr. Severn pushed the Aurora's engines well beyond their capabilities and that's what caused the ship to explode.
The sailors-packed-like sardines argument is a very interesting line of thought. Here's how I look at it: a Class F shuttlecraft can hold seven people, but it can only hold enough fuel/energy and provisions for those seven people for limited durations. In "Metamorphosis", I got the impression that the rendezvous flight was originally expected to last a day or two, give or take half a day. Same with "The Galileo Seven". So maybe that would be the useful flight plan for a craft of that type.
A Class J, depending on the vintage and how it would be outfitted, might be a much greater-duration vehicle. For sake of argument (I know that this is a bit of a leap), let's assume that Harry Mudd's ship, the Denevan ship, the Aurora, Cyrano Jones' ship and Carter Winston's ship are all either Class J variants or somehow closely related. While these ships would all be quite spacious compared to the Galileo, they may not be "rated" for any more personnel because the internal accommodations for quarters, provisions and longer-term "quality of life" facilities would be significantly different aboard one of these ships as opposed to a Class F shuttlecraft. (NOTE: Jones', Winston's and the Denevan's ships could be somewhat smaller variants of the same design.) The bottom line I'm getting at is that the Class J could differ vastly from a shuttlecraft because the shuttle is just a limited-duration daughtercraft attached to either a mothership or a starbase. The Class J is obviously built to stay in deep space, alone, for significant periods.
Does that make sense?
I'm also wondering if a larger unseen version of the Class J (J-plus?) could conceivably exist in the TOS/TAS universe, using a more modern Starfleet design, overall length 40-60 meters (give or take) to hold, say, between ten and 30 crew for long-term deep space expeditions. The whole ship could land on a planet surface, but the forward and aft/stardrive sections could also detach and operate independently. Kirk and others in Starfleet would disapprove of such a mini-starship on the frontier, especially if commanded by a junior officer. Would this fit into that era?
Aurora herself could possibly be another matter entirely. If we go off the Enterprise's familiar engine hum during the chase, it would seem that Kirk ordered the ship to overtake the Aurora at multi-warp speeds. This is strictly a gut feeling, of course, but I'd say the Aurora maxed out her engines and blew up at Warp 5 or greater. Does that mean that newer Class J variants are faster? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Dr. Severn pushed the Aurora's engines well beyond their capabilities and that's what caused the ship to explode.
The sailors-packed-like sardines argument is a very interesting line of thought. Here's how I look at it: a Class F shuttlecraft can hold seven people, but it can only hold enough fuel/energy and provisions for those seven people for limited durations. In "Metamorphosis", I got the impression that the rendezvous flight was originally expected to last a day or two, give or take half a day. Same with "The Galileo Seven". So maybe that would be the useful flight plan for a craft of that type.
A Class J, depending on the vintage and how it would be outfitted, might be a much greater-duration vehicle. For sake of argument (I know that this is a bit of a leap), let's assume that Harry Mudd's ship, the Denevan ship, the Aurora, Cyrano Jones' ship and Carter Winston's ship are all either Class J variants or somehow closely related. While these ships would all be quite spacious compared to the Galileo, they may not be "rated" for any more personnel because the internal accommodations for quarters, provisions and longer-term "quality of life" facilities would be significantly different aboard one of these ships as opposed to a Class F shuttlecraft. (NOTE: Jones', Winston's and the Denevan's ships could be somewhat smaller variants of the same design.) The bottom line I'm getting at is that the Class J could differ vastly from a shuttlecraft because the shuttle is just a limited-duration daughtercraft attached to either a mothership or a starbase. The Class J is obviously built to stay in deep space, alone, for significant periods.
Does that make sense?
I'm also wondering if a larger unseen version of the Class J (J-plus?) could conceivably exist in the TOS/TAS universe, using a more modern Starfleet design, overall length 40-60 meters (give or take) to hold, say, between ten and 30 crew for long-term deep space expeditions. The whole ship could land on a planet surface, but the forward and aft/stardrive sections could also detach and operate independently. Kirk and others in Starfleet would disapprove of such a mini-starship on the frontier, especially if commanded by a junior officer. Would this fit into that era?
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I'm not sure I see the reason or allure behind this "Class J family" idea. For all we know, only Harry Mudd's ship ever belonged to this class - and, if we ignore the redone version, we could argue that Mudd's (actually Leo Walsh's) ship was a container transport as depicted in ENT "Horizon". Indeed, the ENT ship would nicely match the VFX of the original episode, which depicted the stern of the vessel as a flat hexagon of sorts, just like the containers of the Horizon.
We have also seen Cyrano Jones' ship in DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations", sort of - Greg Jein created the micro-miniature model, even though the screenshots don't show it particularly well. No design relationship to the Aurora there. And Carter Winston's ship was also seen in some un-Auroraish detail - and we might argue we later saw the same ship in Kirk's hangar bay in "Mudd's Passion", it being a very compact, runaboutish design. None of these ever got a "Class J" designation, and I don't think they should, as there's nothing freighterish about them, either.
I wholeheartedly approve of the idea that the Aurora would be configured for just half a dozen people on long missions. The great numbers of observation windows would seem to cater for a bigger complement as a starting point, though. Or then the Catullan bigwig from whom the ship was nicked really liked to watch space when cruising around with her "personal secretary".
Starfleet Class J ships like the one that fried Captain Pike could well be identical to the Aurora, FWIW. Good for basic astronautical training, no good for any sort of actual Starfleet missions...
Timo Saloniemi
We have also seen Cyrano Jones' ship in DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations", sort of - Greg Jein created the micro-miniature model, even though the screenshots don't show it particularly well. No design relationship to the Aurora there. And Carter Winston's ship was also seen in some un-Auroraish detail - and we might argue we later saw the same ship in Kirk's hangar bay in "Mudd's Passion", it being a very compact, runaboutish design. None of these ever got a "Class J" designation, and I don't think they should, as there's nothing freighterish about them, either.
I wholeheartedly approve of the idea that the Aurora would be configured for just half a dozen people on long missions. The great numbers of observation windows would seem to cater for a bigger complement as a starting point, though. Or then the Catullan bigwig from whom the ship was nicked really liked to watch space when cruising around with her "personal secretary".
Starfleet Class J ships like the one that fried Captain Pike could well be identical to the Aurora, FWIW. Good for basic astronautical training, no good for any sort of actual Starfleet missions...
Timo Saloniemi
I suppose Harry could have been using the forward compartment of the J-class freighter. We saw that a lot in Horizon. When it flies around with none of its cargo containers attached, it looks somewhat starship-like.
Was that estimate total length including the nacelles extending past the main hull, or just the main hull itself? Just curious.
Thanks.
Mark
