Well I hope no one ever posts a picture of a commercial airliner. All those flying cock jokes... But seriously. We do know where this went. The nacelles were moved to the cylinder and we essentially got the daedelus class...
I'm really wondering, where all those bad jokes come from. Over in the schematics thread many ships inspired by this design were posted, and not one joke of that kind was cracked.
Maybe they're used to flying genital designs? I know the Starship Schematics website has some of the most horrendous bodges around, maybe schematics designers are inured to it after looking at such things for long enough? Just because it's a doodle that Matt Jeffries did while trying out ideas does not make it an unassailable work of genius, even he didn't hit a home run every time. It's a flying knob gag.
People see what they want to see... Well let's be clear, I, nor anyone else here has stated that this concept was a work of genius... It's a sphere and a cylinder- Two very viably simple shapes. If he were truly make a schlong joke, he more then likely would have added a second ball. That said, this would have made a great ship in Space Balls! But really, my take is simple a means to expand on the universe that these people created. Doing so simply adds a continuity that fan design sometimes steers away from. There's another one of his designs I'm quite interested in doing, but there are a lot of complex shapes. Hell, I still haven't been able to make my delta shaped Titan contest design... Any thoughts about the viability of this ship? What this simple design would be good for? Other then ship to port docking
My thoughts are not too many with the exception of the Enterprise proper. The tapers rim of the sauce, convexed top part of the saucer, concaved underside, tapered engineering with that odd missing bit under the shuttle deck door. All in all the departure from his original ball and pipe ideas. Sorry- my answer seems disjoined. I'm exhausted from no sleep last night, and today as I get ready for work. Can't think straight.
The 'ball & pipe' design only really works if you run them in-line, like the Discovery from 2001. You could go weird and build them into a shape more like a revolving space station, but it wont look ship-like. I'm not a fan of the Deadalus design either, the too large ball on the too thin neck and body just looks weak. If you're going to use a ball shape it's because you want the maximum volume for the minimum surface area, which makes a lot of sense in spacecraft. Why you'd then stick a long, thin body out the end is beyond me, a slight increase in size of the ball would give you that volume. I can only think it's done because a simple ball is not visually interesting or cool looking. The only spherical ship I can think of that was well done would be the Ares moon shuttle in 2001. We should have that as a design challenge, come up with a spheroid ship that doesn't look tacky. Not an easy one.
I like it a lot better upside down. I think the downward nacelles don't help it at all. Jeffries wasn't above flipping a design if it looked better.
I think a Trek ship would be well nigh impossible as a sphere, but Star Wars and 2001 showed it was possible elsewhere. If you've seen Pumaman you'll also know just how badly they can turn out. I might have a little sketch myself to see if I could come up with something, but I have no clue where to start.
Wellllllll...... I would suggest that the "phallus" issue is directly tied to proportions. Consider the Pioneer and Farragut class Earth Starships featured on Masao's Starfleet Museum. Granted, the arrangement isn't the same as the ship featured in this thread, but it indicates to me that the sphere-into-tube-hull arrangement doesn't have to be a joke.
Funny, I always thought that the Discovery had a long boom out the back of the habitation module because the engines were rather dangerous....
For a slightly less comical example... doesn't Mal's boat bear a passing resemblance to that Jefferies design? http://www.wallpaperbase.com/wallpapers/movie/firefly/firefly_1.jpg
Well after receiving 7 hours notice of what time I'm working and getting up at 3am yesterday AND working until 5pm, of course I get to work Saturday too... So you folk gave me a few ideas to modify this ship into something a little less ballsy... But it'll have to wait until I get back. <sigh>