USS Excelsior Study Model (Named USS Xavier)
- Thread starter calamity_si
- Start date
I'm working on a nice big poster of this ship at the moment which will show some orthos and angled views. However, the process has not been without it's faults and some of the rendered images, for one reason or another, haven't made it to the final cut. One of them was still usable though, so I've added a nice background of it with a shuttlecraft and presented here.
Thanks for posting that directly here where I can see it. Blasted filter won't let me go to your page.
I especially love the dorsal back, where the bridge section flows into the rear. I also love how great a weapons arc you gave her.
Hey, your the one who gave her an unusual registry. SV-20-A? I mean what the heck is that supposed to denote?!
So maybe it was like that competition for the F-22, with Northrop's YF-23 Black Widow being the loser.
It would explain why the Xavier never got a proper registry. Either I say that she never existed, or made it out of the conceptual stage, or I speculate she made it into the construction/testing phase, but the Excelsior met the outlined specifications better, and Starfleet or whatever organization in the Federation that handles these sorts of affairs decided not to give commission her, but decided that she served better as a testbed.
Hey, your the one who gave her an unusual registry. SV-20-A? I mean what the heck is that supposed to denote?!
So maybe it was like that competition for the F-22, with Northrop's YF-23 Black Widow being the loser.
It would explain why the Xavier never got a proper registry. Either I say that she never existed, or made it out of the conceptual stage, or I speculate she made it into the construction/testing phase, but the Excelsior met the outlined specifications better, and Starfleet or whatever organization in the Federation that handles these sorts of affairs decided not to give commission her, but decided that she served better as a testbed.
Hi JES, thanks for the lovely comment mate and a very interesting question. I actually got the registry from the 'USS Ecelsior Technical Manual - Revived' thread which was a great resource posted right here on Trek BBS by Praetor:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=86430
Now this design (as you correctly postulated) was intended to be a concept only and never reach the full production stage. Hence why the SV-20-A registry. Later released concepts were the SV-20-B, C and so on. A final design was then chosen (that of the now familiar Excelsior) and that was then moved into the testing phase, for which the NX-2000 registry was given.
My bit of background apocrypha is that the hulk of this ship was left abandoned in a junk yard for a period before being later revived to test another type of transwarp engine.
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=86430
Now this design (as you correctly postulated) was intended to be a concept only and never reach the full production stage. Hence why the SV-20-A registry. Later released concepts were the SV-20-B, C and so on. A final design was then chosen (that of the now familiar Excelsior) and that was then moved into the testing phase, for which the NX-2000 registry was given.
My bit of background apocrypha is that the hulk of this ship was left abandoned in a junk yard for a period before being later revived to test another type of transwarp engine.
Great work Simon!
I´m still working on mine, but it will take some time...
You did a small mistake: your 4 naceles version is based upon the concept bellow, and not in the one you showed in the second post, right?
Looks like you also got inspiration from here, and added your personal touch in the end too. Anyway, as I told you before, your version looks great.
I´m still working on mine, but it will take some time...
You did a small mistake: your 4 naceles version is based upon the concept bellow, and not in the one you showed in the second post, right?
Looks like you also got inspiration from here, and added your personal touch in the end too. Anyway, as I told you before, your version looks great.
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Hi Starship, thanks for the kind words mate. I'm really looking forward to seeing yours! Uh, I think the picture you posted there is the same one that I showed in my second post. Either way it's the same ship and the very one I based my model on. That concept sketch you showed is interesting. I've seen it before but never actually noticed the nacelle grills before you pointed them out. Comparing them to mine, they do indeed look similar. Very keen eye you've got there!
Sorry Terror Grin. Perhaps you could click on the link to my deviant art page below and the gallery there will hopefully be of a more appropriate size?
My lame excuse was to 'parallel universe' it but if anyone else could come up with a better background story for it, I'd love to hear it.
I'd say this design, especially for the central tower, if for anti-piracy--defense against raiders, starfighters, etc.
Imagine that tower on the spine with a phaser array all 'round, and DS9 type tubes--a giant flaktower turret.
Like Ingram, I'd call it a Space Control Ship
This individual did a lot of study models--or his own take on them...as in the Liberator:
http://s149.photobucket.com/user/pauly1972_photos/library/USS%20Liberator?sort=3&page=1
http://s149.photobucket.com/user/pauly1972_photos/library/USS Azure?sort=3&page=1
Yours http://s149.photobucket.com/user/pauly1972_photos/library/USS Atlas?sort=3&page=1
Here is his planet of the Titans ship
http://s149.photobucket.com/user/pauly1972_photos/library/Apollo Class USS Gage?sort=3&page=1
More
http://s149.photobucket.com/user/pauly1972_photos/library/Medusa Class USS Hutzel?sort=2&page=1
Thanks for that publiusr. Fascinating to see what Paul Cairncross came up with there...his version of the ship I've worked on was especially cool to see. He seems to have gone for a design a bit more faithful to the original than mine. I guess from the sheer volume of ships that he's done, that he must have a 3D printer or something. I wonder if he'd do a 3D model of the Xavier?...
Your point on the ship use was also worthy of note. I can see what you mean about that dorsal blister on the photo you posted. It does indeed look like the ones used on the DS9 weapon sail upgrades. I can just see it popping upwards and rotating whilst spewing forth a volley of torpedoes!
As for the background story for the Xavier, I came up with something and posted it on Deviantart.
Here's my premise:
My research into the transwarp engine revealed that it was based on readings taken from Spock whilst the USS Defiant was trapped in a spatial interphase. I was thinking that after the initial transwarp engine failure on the Excelsior, the designers went back to a previous design and tested out a new 'spatial interphasic generator' that essentially would shift the vessel out of our 'space time' and into a alternate dimension, where it could essentially compress the distance it needed to travel and then rematerialize into our dimension. However, the generator could only be activated from within a high-energy warp field, so the ship would have to accelerate to maximum warp first and then activate the generator. Once this occurred, however, the ship msteriously disappeared. It turns out the crew were phased into various alternate and parallel dimensions and random times. Every time the generator was tried, the hapless crew would 'shift' to another dimension and even into another time (Think of a whole starship experiencing Sam Beckett's Quantum Leaps)! What they lacked was a means of pinpointing they're next shift. Each one would be totally random and the crews mission each time would be to see if there was a technology in existence that would help them target their destination.
I thought that this would be a great way of doing a 'reality crash' / crossover story where a Star Trek ship materialises in the Star Wars universe etc.
Your point on the ship use was also worthy of note. I can see what you mean about that dorsal blister on the photo you posted. It does indeed look like the ones used on the DS9 weapon sail upgrades. I can just see it popping upwards and rotating whilst spewing forth a volley of torpedoes!
As for the background story for the Xavier, I came up with something and posted it on Deviantart.
Here's my premise:
My research into the transwarp engine revealed that it was based on readings taken from Spock whilst the USS Defiant was trapped in a spatial interphase. I was thinking that after the initial transwarp engine failure on the Excelsior, the designers went back to a previous design and tested out a new 'spatial interphasic generator' that essentially would shift the vessel out of our 'space time' and into a alternate dimension, where it could essentially compress the distance it needed to travel and then rematerialize into our dimension. However, the generator could only be activated from within a high-energy warp field, so the ship would have to accelerate to maximum warp first and then activate the generator. Once this occurred, however, the ship msteriously disappeared. It turns out the crew were phased into various alternate and parallel dimensions and random times. Every time the generator was tried, the hapless crew would 'shift' to another dimension and even into another time (Think of a whole starship experiencing Sam Beckett's Quantum Leaps)! What they lacked was a means of pinpointing they're next shift. Each one would be totally random and the crews mission each time would be to see if there was a technology in existence that would help them target their destination.
I thought that this would be a great way of doing a 'reality crash' / crossover story where a Star Trek ship materialises in the Star Wars universe etc.
Neat idea! I like it!
Here's a little something I've been working on lately...
http://calamitysi.deviantart.com/art/A-Spacedock-view-489174876
http://calamitysi.deviantart.com/art/A-Spacedock-view-489174876
