Your favourite TrekLit ships?

[Christopher]

Thank you for the additional information Christopher!
It would be quite a challenge to fit that kind of design into the 2360's.

We're actually talking 2358 here.

If you did try to do a design for Cleopatra's Needle, I'd certainly be interested to see it. It'd be nice to see what the state of the art for civilian Federation ship design might be like in the mid-24th century. It would probably have some design similarities to Starfleet vessels, given a common culture and technology, but with a fair number of differences too, since it wouldn't be designed for combat. An interesting challenge, to come up with something that looks Federationish without being Starfleetish.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Another shout out for Aventine here.

 

[CaptainDonovin]

Love the Titan & Aventine, but have always wondered about the U.S.S. Verdun from The Forgotten War. Was said to have a crew of 900 & be from the 2160's. At first I pictured a Daedalus-class ship but I just read the book again a few months back & pictured a different ship.

Have to also give a shout out to the Excalibur from New Frontier. I've always had a soft spot for the Ambassador-class.

 

[TerriO]

I've always been partial to the U.S.S. Manning, myself. But we never got a chance to get her on camera. Just historical reference.

 

[DEWLine]

Starts fiddling in CorelDraw...

 

[DEWLine]

Those Defender-class ships - like the Inaieu from Diane Duane's novels were as species-tailorable as the rest of her version of Starfleet's order of exploration, weren't they, right?

 

[DEWLine]

Strikes me that whatever Cleopatra's Needle ends up looking like, it'll be a design fairly easily encountered in Federation-charted space. No?

 

[DEWLine]

Would the Needle's crew likely be double- or triple-bunking? (IE: two or three bunk beds to a vertical stack to make room for the lab gear and cargo stowage)

 

[Stevil2001]

I'm quite fond of the Challenger from Diane Carey's Challenger books. She looked beautiful in Greg Bridges's cover paintings (if not quite like as described in the books).

I also have a soft spot for the goofy SS Banana Republic from Battlestations! Oh, and the Combat Support Tender from Red Sector. Apparently Carey could invent cool ships!

 

[DEWLine]

There are days when I would pay in blood for the designs to go with those ship names from The Great Starship Race and Wagon Train to the Stars.

Bluenose IV in particular...

 

[Christopher]

Strikes me that whatever Cleopatra's Needle ends up looking like, it'll be a design fairly easily encountered in Federation-charted space. No?

Not really; as the excerpt says, it was a custom design, specifically built to fit the parameters of a long-distance, high-speed research expedition. So well-charted space is probably the last place you'd expect to find it. However, it's probable that it would have some design elements in common with other types of ship from "Centauri III’s leading civilian spacecraft firm."

Would the Needle's crew likely be double- or triple-bunking? (IE: two or three bunk beds to a vertical stack to make room for the lab gear and cargo stowage)

The text implies there would typically be two people per room. Let's see, Picard and Langford shared quarters, and the Janasz family (Stefcia, Jameela, and their son Bazyli) would probably share another room. The rest of the crew included Xian Chuanli, his daughter Yanmei (who initially had a separate room), Doctors Ruyao and Allis, and the grad students Rosa Payne and Sorma, who implicitly shared a room at least part of the time. I think that's everyone I mentioned by name. I implied that Chuanli had his quarters to himself; maybe Ruyao did as well, being a big fellow. Which would leave Yanmei and Allis to bunk together for six rooms in all. But then Coray and her aide come aboard, Yanmei moves back in with her father to make room, and I don't know what Allis does -- maybe she triples up with the Xians, maybe sleeping on separate shifts. And on the trip back, Picard and Ariel are rooming together, so Langford would have to be somewhere else. (I wish I'd thought this through more carefully at the time; I'm not sure it's all entirely consistent.)

 

[EmperorKalan]

The ship has a "compact bridge -- little more than a cockpit, really." The bridge has a door that can be locked from the inside. There is a "compact science lab" and a "compact lounge" (I sense a theme). I refer to a transporter stage but not a transporter room; given that the transporter gets a good deal of use as an archaeological tool, the transporter stage might be part of the lab facilities. The ceilings aren't especially high, adequate for humans but too low for the taller Caldonian member of the crew.

How big was Cousteau's Calypso? That might be a good analogy. Hmm, Wikipedia puts it at 42 meters long, 3 decks, with a crew capacity of 27. I don't think Cleo's Needle needs to be that large, since the crew is half that.

Hmm, thinking it over, I'd guess the Needle might have two decks -- assuming something roughly cylindrical with room for chambers on either side of a narrow central corridor, two decks seems right for giving it a height comparable to its width. Since it's pretty narrow, a length around 40-45 meters might be about right -- that's a little over twice the length of a runabout, but a runabout's only got one deck (plus the warp core on top).

Just as an aid to visualization, compare equivalent spaces (bridge/flight deck, quarters, infirmary, galley, common areas, etc.) of Cleo's Needle and Firefly's Serenity: the spaces on CN seem like they'd be 50-60% of the size of the same sort of spaces on Serenity (always easier when you don't have to account for cameras ). Does that sound about right?

Would the Needle's crew likely be double- or triple-bunking? (IE: two or three bunk beds to a vertical stack to make room for the lab gear and cargo stowage)

I would guess that many (maybe not all, but most) would bear a resemblance to current day boats and yachts that are intended for anything longer than day-trips (in keeping with the Calypso analogy above): storage spaces everywhere, many fixtures that are fold-away or dual- or multi-purpose. (Not to mention a custom-starship mght have even more exotic space-saving solutions, like zero-g hammocks for when extra people on board make sleeping space even more scarce.) Nothing like the various Starfleet quarters we've seen in various shows.

 

[Christopher]

I had been thinking of an arrangement with two decks, one with the bridge/cockpit and two rows of crew quarters on either side of a corridor, the other with the lounge and lab described in the book. But now that I think about it, maybe it makes more sense for the quarters and lounge to be together on the lower deck and the bridge, lab facilities, transporter, and engineering to be on the upper deck. Probably not a full-on engine room, though, just maybe a space at the rear that contains engine control consoles and maintenance access, perhaps with the transporter stage occupying an alcove between that space and the lab area.

 

[DEWLine]

I have the script books for Firefly and Serenity, with those roughed out deck plans and cross-sections of the titular cargo freighter, so the suggestions for deck space arrangements make some degree of sense. Your comment about not needing to allow for 21st Century-tech cameras is as likely true as it is devilish!

As to the engineering spaces...you could probably put those on either deck, although a shipwright might be inclined to have as short a distance as possible for travel between the engine "room" and the cockpit/bridge.

(Need to allow for reactant tankage, storage for crew-consumables, spaces for RCS thrusters, and so forth as well...and you said this baby's expected to be away from the core systems - and anywhere else that's considered "known" - for extended stretches. Up to a year or two? I have got to re-read Buried Age myself. Soon.)

 

[Christopher]

As to the engineering spaces...you could probably put those on either deck, although a shipwright might be inclined to have as short a distance as possible for travel between the engine "room" and the cockpit/bridge.

I was thinking more along the lines that it would make sense for the lounge (which is presumably also the mess area) to be adjacent to the crew quarters.

And oh, speaking of Serenity, I realize there'd have to be a medical bay too. Not sure where that would go. Maybe close to the labs and engine compartment in case of accidents. And next to the transporter stage, in case someone gets hurt on a dig and needs to be beamed up and tended to quickly. (A small civilian ship might not have the fancy "Beam directly to sickbay" setup that a Starfleet vessel would have.)

(Need to allow for reactant tankage, storage for crew-consumables, spaces for RCS thrusters, and so forth as well...and you said this baby's expected to be away from the core systems - and anywhere else that's considered "known" - for extended stretches. Up to a year or two? I have got to re-read Buried Age myself. Soon.)

The expedition takes just under one year, round trip.

 

[DEWLine]

Note to self based on that "one year round trip" remark: leave lots of room for bulk storage. Even with onboard recycling and compressed storage of raw materials as good as it is in the 2350's, a crew of twelve to twenty can go through tonnes of stuff.

Also wondering: should I post links to the design sketchwork here, on the Trek Tech boards also hereabouts, or e-mail'em to Christopher?

 

[Christopher]

^Trek Art would be the forum for ship designs.

The crew is between 11-13 people, and I'd assume replicator technology would reduce the raw materials requirements. Also, they would presumably make some stops along the way at friendly-seeming civilized worlds or uninhabited M-class planets for resupply. Indeed, with replicator tech, all you'd need to do is beam aboard some comet chunks and you'd have all the C, H, O, N, and trace elements you'd need for replicating foodstuffs.

 

[Rush Limborg]

^Y'know, Chris...they say a picture's worth 1,000 words....

Would you be interested, then, in providing an image or two?

A sketch, at the very least....

 

[Christopher]

^It sounds like DEWLine's going to be doing his own sketches, and he may not be the only one. Clawhammer has expressed an interest too, and we've been discussing some ideas, though he may not get around to it for a while. I'm content to leave the sketchery to those with more artistic talent than myself. It's been a long time since I tried drawing a spaceship.

 

[DEWLine]

The thread is begun.

We may now return to the overall debate that got this thread rolling.