Spoiler seeing not one but two on screen again in LD reminded me what a cool ship this is for reasons cited above I had this ship on my mind again, and looked back at the last ships of the line calender it was featured in. It has an ugly-but functionaly pretty look akin to something like the B-17 bomber, to me. Subjective of course. But to stay on topic, as this is Trek Tech: I was thinking that going off the model in Deep Space 9, this is one of the most functional looking ships in Star Trek. It's an early ship, predating the NX according to the calendar (not canon, I know, but very little about these ships is) . The Nacelles look very much like smaller segments bolted together. For that matter so does the cylinder neck and the secondary hull. I would like to see a version of the NX Refit with a Daedalus secondary hull and not the more Connie looking hull given to it. The nacelles of the Pre-NX intrepid look similar to the Daedalus models, again suggesting the ships were made at multiple small facilities, and either brought to orbit for assembly or else assembled at multiple smaller orbital yards, reflecting the early nature of starship building and/or the needs of construction during the Romulan War. The most noticeable feature of the Daedalous though is the spherical hull. Starfleet has used them since, but sparingly, Why then would they have been used initially? Spherical hulls are good pressure vessles. The Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft used them for reentry vehicles, for instance. But Enterprise the series showed no spherical hulls on other ships. clearly they always tended to favor saucers and deltas. Myy suggestion is that, like the nacelles, they were easy to make. Daedalus was always an economy model, the Liberty Ship of its era, then imagine the hulls formed explosively, then fitted out in orbit
The fan community either shares your enthusiasm, or then hates this clunker passionately - meaning there exists a staggering number of "corrected" or "improved" reimaginings of the design, bringing it in line with the "looks" the artist in question prefers. ENT metal plating, TOS smoothness, undercut secondary hull, DSC glowy bits... It's all out there. And there's probably room for it all in the Trek universe, too. Could be an initial design was reworked a dozen times, this being cheaper to do on a ship that was cheap to begin with than on NX hulls. Might be the design outlived NX for the very reason, too. This is one case where I can go full James Dixon and embrace every single depiction out there, beginning with this being the "CID" high warp testbed of Dave Stern's books, proceeding to its mass production for the Romulan War, passing through the phase where the old warhorse is considered for exploration in the Starfleet: Year One books, and culminating in retirement but then reactivation for Corps of Engineers use... The spoiler mentioned sorta nails down certain things for the very first time. It doesn't exclude or preclude much, though. Timo Saloniemi
While I always liked the Daedalus-class as a pre-TOS ship, I really didn't like the design until I got my hands on an Eaglemoss miniature and could see the ship from every angle. Utilitarian, no-frills, and seriously lacking today's kewl factor, I definitely think it was an economical workhorse that likely could have been built quickly and in very large numbers. The NX-class may have been state-of-the-art during its day, but the Daedalus-class might have been the reliable old wagon of early Starfleet, IMO. I really like this fanmade take on the Daedalus-class.
Never understood the hate for that shape either. I was thrilled when the Pasteur showed up in AGT. Seems a sphere is a good way to add space, and there are certainty more ugly designs that are even less utilitarian.
From my understanding, the most popular Treknical hypothesis postulates that while spheres are indeed good pressure vessels and efficient in terms of internal volume, saucers are a more ideal shape for warp-dynamic reasons. Otherwise agreed with the previous comments. It's a good and plausible shape for an early-Fed starship. The mid- to late-22nd century seems like an appropriate period for Earth starship designers to still be experimenting with different shapes as their understanding of warp theory evolves, and trade-offs are being made between practicality as a spacecraft, and warp performance. The arrangement at least seems simple enough that it could be cranked out in decent numbers at a lower tech level and resource availability. I do believe that the model as depicted in the Chronology and Encyclopedia, and as a desktop model on DS9 is an oversimplification, lacking many details. Sisko may have built his model himself, using whatever materials he had on hand.
Cannon wise, not much known. It was retired in 2196, crew of 229. The crew complement thing is I believe WAY to many. The ship is Small, smaller than the NX and that ship only had 80 or so. Hell Pike's enterprise had 200 or so on his ship. Now, no known date for it to be introduced, most think it was in the romulan war or shortly after. The Essex was of this class and went down in 2167. So it was one of the first Federation ships. Star fleet Museum has a blurb of how a good number weren't making it back, and the new "block" had upgrades. Also on the site that it was based on an Earlier ship the Comet class ( really like that ship) and it was a ship that was built for the federation, as a "Civilian ship" not a war ship. A good chance of it being built in "Blocks" like today's fighters and ships and maybe some of the "Fan" designs were of a latter block of ships that were upgraded, but by 2196 the class was showing its age, although 30 years old or so. Was like the early jet fighters, where they were maybe in service for 10-20 years before they were superseded by better craft. The ship was probably to small, to slow, having to be "fueled" often due to the small size. Made a decent near earth explorer, but as the distances began to grow larger, the ship showed its weaknesses. Love this ship. built it in 3d, have a kit of it ( though it needs to be bigger!)
I think a fundamental issue with the sphere is from a tactical perspective, it creates a silhouette that doesn't offer any advantages from any angles, just a consistent target for the area known as the "Saucer Section". While a Saucer can have Good/Bad targeting angles for Silhouette's by the enemy. Also with a saucer, you need to traverse the decks more often due to less internal surface area per deck, that creates unnecessary demand for the TurboLift. With larger/wider decks, you wouldn't need to traverse vertically to another deck in most cases. I think that's because of the twin Warp Nacelle design lends credence to a more elliptical pancake warp field where a Saucer is a better fit. If you were using Coleopteric Warp Drives / Vulcan Ring-Style Warp Drives, than a sphere would be a optimum design choice due to the Spike/Cone like shape of it's warp Field
I think a clever enough artist could massage the sphere into something better without loosing the ball aesthetic. After all, the Klingon D7's forward hull is roughly a ball.
And, based on the idea that we had a Daedalus-class ship in operation in the 2260s (thanks to STE) and there are active ships of this class in 2381, ships of this class seem to fulfill whatever function Starfleet has in mind for it very well indeed.
Or then the Federation gave them a fat lip. Having the design hang around in active service all the way to LDS might suggest it was always designed for a role that places few requirements on it. If it's just a floating barracks for MACOs or scientists or space engineers, with the ability to warp-relocate at a modest pace, and always was, the "unrefined" hull shapes make maximal sense. Could even be those sections are modular enough that a standard way to utilize these clunkers is to bolt a number of them together for bigger barracks, with the easily removable warp engines stowed away elsewhere in a big bundle. The early Federation might be starved of ships once the Romulan War era ones become obsolete at one stroke (shoddy wartime construction, antiquated pre-enlightenment Earth design, narrow military role, and the rest is alien junk that turns out not to be interoperable). Taking a floating barracks to a distant star system for doing a survey might sound attractive, then. And the repeated failures would then put a halt to exploration, allowing Kirk to still score on that front a century later. Timo Saloniemi
SRB bits Now that is something worth looking at. A metal rich asteroid pushed to go near the Sun, and "inflated" with a blast when molton just before it passes into the shadow of Mercury to cool off. The very large metal spheres you see for storage tanks was once looked at for a very large HLLV named Euclid: http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=6358 Figure 12 here looks Starfleet: https://www.aiaa.org/docs/default-s...ttlevariationsfinalaiaa.pdf?sfvrsn=b8875e90_0 I could see that as an early competitor to Daedalus...with the TAS Bonaventure a hybrid showing how things were flattening out. What stands out in my mind is the very first rejected sketch we saw in THE MAKING OF STAR TREK...and how very like Musk's Starship it now seems...
According to Berman, Braga and Drexler, this was the network's pressure on them: they had considered the appropriate, canon use of the Daedalus for the prequel series, but had been told by the network something like "Star Trek ships use saucers, as supposed to spheres," or something like that, and were told to change it. Since the goal was that the new ship be clearly an older approach to a Star Trek ship, but obviously not Kirk's Enterprise, the Daedalus would have been a good choice, but the network wrecked it for us fans who knew about the Daedalus-class already. Jefferies started with a sphere for the pressure reasons but changed it. To Drexler, it was older than the NX-01. Hilarious. That would be cool to see. This is the third time today someone has said something that makes me want to compare it to the Kelvin!
https://www.starfleet-museum.org/fireball.htm Ya'll probably seen this. According to his website, it was a precurser to the Daedalus class, kind of like a "Civilianized" version. I've built both in 3d, and even set out the decks ( I was bored one day) and there is plenty of room for around 60 or so, with there own room, or doubling up bunk beds like shown in the show.Actually the Comet would be better because there would be room in the Neck for quarters. in the Daedalus there's not much room in the neck. Do wish that some manufacturer like polar lights would do a good kit of the daedalus, but that is quite the pipe dream. a 1/350 scale ship would be AWESOME!
huge fan of Masao's work. I co-ran an rp on Second Life that was set between FC and ENT, and I did make a couple of spherical ships that were solar-system only warp 1 ships. Warp Soyuz.3 seat Soyuz craft, the model-t follow on to the Phoenix. UENS Titov. Anti-pirate gunboat. served (poorly) in First Kzinti War.
I will need to look up a deckplan to see if the sphere really makes sense. To me, growing up with the Enterprise, the shift to the sphere was just a look to go "Hey, look, it's different!" and didn't make a lot of sense from a technical perspective. Now, I'll freely admit having a huge bias against the Daedalus because it seems like an unnecessary design, as well as functionally ugly. However, I do recall liking the Olympic class so perhaps I will soften in my old age.