Re: Update time At long last, an update! This time, it's a WIP image of the forward sensor pallet on the underside of the main hull.
Threads like this make me wonder why I stopped visiting TrekBBS as often as I used to. Continued impressive research, artistry and attention to detail for an underrecognized starship design, for which I thank you and will be again monitoring the thread closely! Is all this available in a chunk presented at one site or are the plans to gather it up as such still waiting for the future? I tried tracing some back from file names and didn't find much.
Thanks for the praise! I appreciate it a lot, you can be certain of that. So far there is no single place where all the images are collected (apart from my Photobucket account), but there will eventually be one. I just need to finish enough parts of the ship to actually have someting worth presenting. I'd say the major issue to overcome is the finalising of the ship's orthographic views. Once that's done, I'll probably put everything I have together on a website.
Thanks! It's one of those many greebled areas on the Constellation's hull, this time the forward sensor (?) pallet on the underside of the primary hull. It's true that this could be many things, but in my opinion it is a kind of specialised sensor. And that blue thingy is a small deflector. Even if Rick Sternbach came up with an explanation for the apparent lack of a navigational deflector system in that ST: The Magazine article, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to have a small one there. Don't ask me how it'll protect the entire ship just yet - I'll figure that out later, I guess ...
Re: Improvements In regarding the registries numbers, More times than not, registries numbers are chronological. The registry of the Constellation NCC-1017 was done for a matter of convienence, but there is very little background on the Constellation. The model, itself, was a combination of two different versions of the Enterprise. I believe they are the Cage Version Enterprise and the WNMHGB Verson of the Enterprise. I am in the group that goes along that the Constellation was an earlier vessel that was refitted into a more modern specification, because Starfleet needed more heavy cruisers. The novels and other works helps provide more material for the various classes and starships that we have seen. I really do not care for Roddenberry's or Arnold's version of canonicity, because it is limited. Capt Pierce, you are expanding on the Trek universe, just as much as the novels, and I hope to add your piece of the pie to the Star Trek puzzle, well rather contributions to fill out the Trek universe.
It varies. Sometimes a feather, sometimes a hard edge, but never a blur. If it's a closeup of some details, I'm more likely to use a feathered shadow than one with a hard edge.
Something different for a change ... Comparing this to my previous attempt at a cross section, I am much pleased about how it turned out. Of course, there's still room for improvement, and I'm sure I'll have to move things around quite a bit once I get started with the actual deck plans, but for the moment I'm happy.
I always enjoy seeing those sorts of images because they help bring the scale home. A Constellation-class starship is huge--slightly exceeding the Intrepid-class starship of a century later in volume and probably matching it in mass (if not in habitable space, due to the four warp nacelles)! Looking forward to more!
Thank you! There's something I've been working on recently, and it can be found in this thread - it's the cargo container first seen in TMP. I figured I'd need it eventually, so I tackled it and actually came up with something I'm very happy with.
Something new today: the previously shown Stealth Reconnaissance Vehicle's nacelle in perspective view. Not finished by a long shot, though. the line art the first coloured and shaded bits I'm learning a lot as I go along - I haven't done much perspective drawing before, and certainly not without a pencil and a ruler ...
Nice work so far! Is this actually going to be perspective, or is it an isometric or trimetric drawing?
Is it too late, or otherwise out of the question, to consider giving the "new" Constellation an NX of 1017-A? I have a weird theory (linked to Star Trek Maps and the defunct Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology) about why the Constellation-class had four engines, and how it related to the refit Enterprise (TMP). It ties in with making the Constellation part on the evolution of "linear warp drive". It's not canon and it's definitely not orthodox by anything I've seen on these boards. I can post it in this thread if its okay with the original author. Otherwise, I'll post it in a different thread.
B.J., this is a 2-point perspective drawing, although I admit it looks a bit like an isometric one. Wingsley, I'm using the previously established NX-1974. As for your theories, please feel free to post them here.
I've been slow to get around to this, but I will. The first step in this journey: I base my understanding of warp velocity on "The Introduction to Navigation: Star Fleet Command", which was a booklet included in "Star Trek Maps" (Batam, 1980). The "Federation Reference Series" web site posted scans of the "Intro" booklet here... http://www.federationreference.com/files_archive.htm I will posting more on how this relates to the Constellation when I get the chance. Thank you for being patient.
Warp drive and the Constellation My theory, which I'll call WDE ("Warp Drive Evolution") is based on a logical progression of warp speed through increasingly sophisticated technology. Different spacefaring civilizations may arrive at these technological milestones in different ways, but just as TNG and VOY pointed to "transwarp" or "quantum slipstream" as the ultimate means of transgalactic (or, presumably, inter-galactic) travel, so the evolution of any warp technology would be much like scaling a ladder. Each rung is a new milestone in speed and technical achievment. ENT's notion of a "warp five engine" falls in line with this. In Star Trek, faster-than-light speeds have been expressed in terms of "warp factors". During TOS, Scotty repeatedly made it clear that the NCC-1701 Enterprise could travel as fast as Warp 8 for brief periods with risk. The ship cruised best at Warp 6 or less. Over a century later, Picard's NCC-1701-D Enterprise and Janeway's Voyager seemed to cover more territory at the same or lower warp factors. In TMP3, Capt. Stiles bragged that the Excelsior was going to "break the Enterprise's speed records". Since the experimental TransWarp drive was never used, a conventional warp system would have to be capable of that. I also noticed that in TOS "Elaan of Troyius" Spock noted of the Klingon vessel "their speed is better than Warp 6." The fundamental visual difference between the warp engines used by Federation starships and those used by the Klingons seemed to be their shape. The eventual appearance of the Constellation-class Stargazer seemed to open the door to a technological answer. Note the four engines used by the Constellation-class of starships. Note the new shape and bifurcated nature of the Excelsior's nacelles. Here lies the answer: After the NCC-1017 Constellation was destroyed in 2267, Starfleet lent its name to a new concept: what would eventually become the Constellation-class. Rather than the traditional two "circumfirential" tubular warp nacelles, these new ships would use four engines to create a warp-within-a-warp effect. In the "Introduction to Navigation: Star Fleet Command", pages 5 and 6, a basis is given for how warp drive and warp speed/warp factors work. To quote from "1.2 Warp Drive" on page 5: "Basically, warp drive consists of the generation of a field about a spacecraft which bends or warps space in the direction of travel. A reaction to the bending propels the ship forward. Since space is being moved relative to itself in a smoothly increasing rate as the center of the field is approached, no neighboring regions exceed the speed of light. However, the total effect on the ship of these incremental speed differences is multi-light velcoities." [NOTE: this falls in line with NASA expert Jesco von Putkammer's remarks in Gene Roddenberry & Susan Sackett's "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture".] The new concept used in four-nacelle prototypes (which became the Constellation-class) was called LINEAR warp drive. Whereas the most recent subclasses of the Constitution-class could redline at Warp 8 and even briefly acheive double-digit warp factors, these linear-warp driven ships achieved much greater multi-light velocities at lower warp factors. The two converging warp fields accentuated the velocity effect, creating FOURTH POWER warp speeds. The earliest Constellation-class prototypes could only achive Warp 6, but Linear Warp 6 would be faster than Circumfirential Warp 10.9. This technology fell in line with what the Klingons had already been doing for years; thier S-2 Graph Units, which integrated a TWO sets of warp coils into each rectangular unit, were capable of Linear Warp 4, which translated into Circumfirential Warp 6.349: "better than Warp 6". By the time the Constitution-class was due for a major design overhaul in the late 2270's, Starfleet had followed the Klingon design more closely, integrating both sets of coils into a single, more rectangular Linear Warp Drive housing. [NOTE: during TMP1, the newly refit Enterprise is never said to exceed Warp 7. If Linear Warp 7 is the ship's new top speed, this would roughly equate to Circumfirential Warp 13.39. Also note that in TMP2, Kirk orders Sulu to take the ship to Warp 5 when first headed for Regula; this could be the ship's new cruising speed, roughly equal to Circumfirential Warp 8.55.] If the new NX-2000 Excelsior could achieve Linear Warp 8, this would be equal to Circumfirential Warp 16, which would give Capt. Stiles' remarks to Scotty some weight. The evolution of linear warp technology continued throughout the rest of the 23rd and 24th centuries, even while the original four-nacelle Constellation-class vessels soldiered on with their unorthodox design. Later encounters with the Romulans and Dominion reaffirmed the viability of this technology. It wasn't until the Borg surfaced as a threat that a major spacefaring power was seen with something advanced beyond linear (fourth-power) warp drive. The notion of quantum slipstream, aka transcendent warp drive (transwarp), used by the Borg and Voth, introduced the notion of fifth-power warp speeds. Each layer of warp adds disproportionately greater complexity to the drive system because the converging fields must be balanced correctly. (This is why the matter-antimatter intermix malfunction resulted in TMP's wormhole.)