I'd love to get real orthos of both ships, but I suspect the newer (Congo) version is the only one where that would likely be possible.
USS Enterprise-J
- Thread starter All Seeing Eye
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Some people have always thought that due to the nature of Star Trek that a starship needs to be able to do dogfight-style combat that's exciting and fast. With the E-J, you can't possibly imagine the same no matter what high-tech gizmos are in there. Two MILES long! And the best part is, with those crazy nacelles it STILL looks like it's goign super fast, even in a picture.
That said, I would hardly expect this to be an Enterprise that would be designed to be involved in the constant battles that Voyager and NX-01 got into. She'd be much more akin to a warp-capable DS9, the "mobile space station" concept Sternbach wrote about for the E-D. That being, that the ship would be the nexus of multiple simulatneous operations that would involve a flotilla of smaller craft scouting ahead, studying behind and otherwise doing the "real" starship work that we'd be more familiar with. Like DS9 the E-J would be more than capable of engaging in combat for defensive or even offensive purposes, but in general would be the centre of LOTS of different Trekkish things happening all the time and would instead want to steer clear of things the "smaller" ships can take care of. Love the concept, really.
[For those of us who are fans fo the Macross anime franchise, IMO the E-J would be the equivalent of a Macross-class colonization fleet, centered on a really big ship full of military and civilians (Battle 7/25 plus the city or island blocks) and escorted by a number of warships, science cruisers and the like to do the workhorse stuff.]
Mark
That said, I would hardly expect this to be an Enterprise that would be designed to be involved in the constant battles that Voyager and NX-01 got into. She'd be much more akin to a warp-capable DS9, the "mobile space station" concept Sternbach wrote about for the E-D. That being, that the ship would be the nexus of multiple simulatneous operations that would involve a flotilla of smaller craft scouting ahead, studying behind and otherwise doing the "real" starship work that we'd be more familiar with. Like DS9 the E-J would be more than capable of engaging in combat for defensive or even offensive purposes, but in general would be the centre of LOTS of different Trekkish things happening all the time and would instead want to steer clear of things the "smaller" ships can take care of. Love the concept, really.
[For those of us who are fans fo the Macross anime franchise, IMO the E-J would be the equivalent of a Macross-class colonization fleet, centered on a really big ship full of military and civilians (Battle 7/25 plus the city or island blocks) and escorted by a number of warships, science cruisers and the like to do the workhorse stuff.]
Mark
In all due respect, Enterprise-J is terribleIt looks so... Ugh...
Oh well there's no accounting for taste.
The -J is hideous. It looks like a starship version of a skeletal fashion model. And making it so ungodly huge (2 miles long?!) is just absurd. Ugh. It's in the future so it exists about as much as that 3-Nacelled Enterprise with the phaser cannon we see in AGT. (I.E. It doesn't)
Braga or whoever can jam that thing up their ass.
Braga or whoever can jam that thing up their ass.
I agree. It was the same as the Galaxy X to me, it doesn't exist for me. It is awful ship with awful desing.
It's not my favorite shape either - and apparently there's a more traditional looking ship from the same era that I think was created in part as an attempt to redesign the J...
But I think with some work it's a salvageable design. I was disappointed to discover that there was an underside/bottom to the engineering hull - I liked the idea that the stardrive section could slide forward over the saucer section and leave it behind...(of course, there would still have to be some section projecting from the bottom to hold that room Archer & Daniels were in...but that's easy enough to create.)
So if I was gonna tweak the J design, that would be a start - get rid of the bottom half of the stardrive section, and make the ship separate.
Then, those windows/skylights have to be worked on, so that they make more sense...I would try to make the ship's saucer less flat - give is some height. Though it's possible that in a future Enterprise of that size, that most cabins would have virtual windows - as opposed to real ones. So maybe the skylights could stay...but I would still give the ship more height...somehow.
But I think with some work it's a salvageable design. I was disappointed to discover that there was an underside/bottom to the engineering hull - I liked the idea that the stardrive section could slide forward over the saucer section and leave it behind...(of course, there would still have to be some section projecting from the bottom to hold that room Archer & Daniels were in...but that's easy enough to create.)
So if I was gonna tweak the J design, that would be a start - get rid of the bottom half of the stardrive section, and make the ship separate.
Then, those windows/skylights have to be worked on, so that they make more sense...I would try to make the ship's saucer less flat - give is some height. Though it's possible that in a future Enterprise of that size, that most cabins would have virtual windows - as opposed to real ones. So maybe the skylights could stay...but I would still give the ship more height...somehow.
I'm looking at the Altair-class wing ship on Drex's site, coming across it because it was potentially a design for the Enterprise-J. I like how it looks somewhat unorthodox for a Trek ship but still retains the Starfleet look, and the front of the vessel (particularly the bridge and wings) seems inspired by Cardassian vessels. To me this implies that Cardassia in some way joins the Federation, or at least they trade technologies and designs, but either way the Altair seems to say that the future of Federation/Cardassian relations are rather hopeful and peaceful. I wouldn't mind it if it the Altair was symbolic of the pain and reconciliation of the catastrophic Dominion War.
^Yeah, I've seem that...and then I've also seen something that looks just like a (much larger?) Altair Class...but with a J-style saucer on top...in fact, I thought THAT *was* the Altair Class...*confused*...)
Is the Altair supposed to be a J-era ship...? I have seen that wing-ship in Drex's site in a video *in front* of a Galaxy Class...and it's much smaller than the Galaxy...I had assumed it was another huge 26th Century ship...
(Where is the confused smiley...?)
ETA: Yeah...after seeing the interior of the J - which to me looks very Cardassian (probably because they used some recycled DS9 set pieces) I'd assumed that maybe - at least in that timeline - the Cardy's had joined the Federation.
Seems highly probable, in fact, now that I think about it...in their weakened state perhaps the appealed to the Federation for some sort of protection from the Romulans & Klingons...and then in time they eventually full-on joined the Federation...
I wonder how the Federation in the Prime timeline looks in the 26th Century...Romulus is gone...Cardassia might be part of the Federation...I'd assume the Klingons were still allies maybe even members themselves)...even the Xindi have apparently joined the Federation (at least in one version of the timeline)...and probably even the Suliban too (if they are still around)...
I imagine the Federation is much larger...and the Alpha Quadrant is pretty secure...but I also assume by then that they have used slipstream - and the Bajoran wormhole if they still even *need* it maybe as a short-cut) - to expand their exploration into the Gamma & Delta quadrants proper...so they probably have found new enemies there*...
And there are still the Borg (unless you go by the books...)
*(That was one thing I disliked about that episode where the copy of the EMH Doctor was awoken in the future on that planet in the Delta Q - and then we had an epilogue even later in that future - by the time of the epilogue at least I would have assumed that the Federation would have expanded out into the Delta Quadrant...)
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Well, one thing that's not changed is that the Galaxy is always going to be really, really big. Even if by that time every star and planet in the Alpha Quadrant had been charted, there would STILL be plenty of stuff to run into on a daily basis. Ditto for the Delta - Voyager carved one ship's beeline (or close enough) back home, and they will have passed tens of millions of stars and planets by that they simply will know nothing about, as it was far beyond their sensor range.
Who knows? The original TNG bible said that the Federation had charted only 11% of the galaxy since its beginning, and that's up from 4% in the eighty years between TOS and TNG. And that's CHARTED, not fully explored or incorporated into the Federation (which isn't an expansionist organization anyway). In five more centuries, even if ships are that much faster and more capable, would the Federation be able to have hundreds more starships out there exploring? I'd think that even with the latest tech and speed capacity, there would be literally MILLIONS of adventures to work through closer to home for each of several thousand starships before getting even halfway to where the backup Doctor had fun.
That Milky Way has over 100,000,000 stars in it, most of which will have planets around it. Plenty of work to do!
Mark
Who knows? The original TNG bible said that the Federation had charted only 11% of the galaxy since its beginning, and that's up from 4% in the eighty years between TOS and TNG. And that's CHARTED, not fully explored or incorporated into the Federation (which isn't an expansionist organization anyway). In five more centuries, even if ships are that much faster and more capable, would the Federation be able to have hundreds more starships out there exploring? I'd think that even with the latest tech and speed capacity, there would be literally MILLIONS of adventures to work through closer to home for each of several thousand starships before getting even halfway to where the backup Doctor had fun.
That Milky Way has over 100,000,000 stars in it, most of which will have planets around it. Plenty of work to do!
Mark
Wassail Drunk said:
It exists in a future that won't come to pass... exactly the same as the TOS Enterprise and the Enterprise's -A though -E after STXI shifted Trek into a different timeline
That's true...sometimes even I, an astronomy geek, tend to forget just how BIG the galaxy is - and just how much space & stars it contains...the Federation could even have territory in the Delta Q by then...but the backup Doctor's adopted planet could still be lost in a see of stars that are charted but due to be explored...sometime...
(I suppose it's possible that world still doesn't have warp technology - for some reason...and the Federation *is* aware of them, but has chosen not to contact them...)
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