Enterprise-D Captain's Yacht Concept Design - Calypso

[GalaxyClassProject]

The Tech Manual states that it is sublight, but the tech manual also gets the yacht's size completely wrong. When we scale the yacht off of the 1701-D model/blueprints and compare the yacht to other known shuttle or aux craft types, it just doesn't make any sense for it to not have warp capability at that scale (nor do I personally like the storytelling restrictions of sublight only, but YMMV):

Also here are those establishing shot tests since GIFs don't play nice:

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Sizes being wrong? Who'd have thought. haha. You know I jest. The reality is there is so much space to in the ship I think often the issue is that fan art doesn't know what to do with it. Certainly I have noticed that the miles of samey same corridors needs things to break them up or make decks unique. As ever, thank you for your advice and art work!

 

[timmyjack!]

Wanted to share some quick updates on this! Would have shared yesterday but I was at this party in Montana... Some drunk old guy kept trying to play Roy Orbison on his jukebox for his weird friends with pointy ears...

Haven't gotten to work on this much recently but here's some progress I've made over the past year or so...

Calypso Exterior V3

Here are some updated progress shots of the current design. Still a lot of exterior detailing work to do but I'm hoping to get to it soon. Really wanted to streamline this from the big superstructure I had on the previous designs.

Have to redo a lot of the interior design with the change in the exterior hull, but it should be similar to what I've shown previously when it's all done.

Cetacean Ops / Captain's Yacht Dock Sketches

Here are a few VERY early studies of the cetacean ops / captain's yacht quarterdeck concept I've talked about before. Goal here is to fully model both and do a video showing the yacht undocking and flying away... Someday...

3D Print Study Models
I've made a few 3D prints of these designs along the way just to get a sense for how the light hits them and the design proportions a little more intuitively. Here's a 'sketch model' of the V3 design with some custom decals I made:

I'd like to do a large version of this once I'm done with all of the detail design and try and light and shoot it like an old school production model - maybe on a motion control setup if I feel ambitious! We'll see...

Here are some 3D prints of the older designs:

Flight Tests / Weapon Tests

Last are a few videos of it flying around and doing stuff. I've really enjoyed playing around with it as a flight simulator in Unreal Engine and the weapons stuff has been really, really fun. I'd like to make a sort of CS or Battlefield style little game out of it where you can be on foot or in the ship doing stuff. Maybe if I get $10,000,000 to start a game studio...

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LLAP!

-Jack

 

[publiusr]

Elegance embodied

 

[Admiral Danev]

"Wanted to share some quick updates on this! Would have shared yesterday but I was at this party in Montana... Some drunk old guy kept trying to play Roy Orbison on his jukebox for his weird friends with pointy ears..."

Did you travel 38 years into the future?? Cool project btw.

 

[Mytran]

Lovely design, it echos the mothership really well.

 

[knightgrace]

In truth, there is a major problem with Shuttlecraft and Captain's Yachts.

The idea that they would be low warp.

This is totally ridiculous. Why? TNG episode 'The Battle '. To evacuate the Stargazer from that distance and at low warp means in essence Picard and his crew DID NOT survive !...

So the real purpose of the Captain's Yacht is to greatly enhance survivability of as much of the crew as possible. So, high warp. Long duration.

So High capacity warp/ replicators a must.

Now my deeper thoughts on the Captain's Yacht. I realized a few weeks ago a work around for a Galaxy class ship. In the FASA supplement; Star Trek the Next Generation: Officer's Manual, the idea put forward that the Primary hull. Has a warp drive FWH-2b, I think, could be very workable. The two primary hull Computer Cores have warp coils surrounding them. This is the Primary Hull's out. The Sam idea can be applied to the Captain's Yacht. Its two Computer Cores could handle the warp needs of the Yacht.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

In truth, there is a major problem with Shuttlecraft and Captain's Yachts.

The idea that they would be low warp.

This is totally ridiculous. Why? TNG episode 'The Battle '. To evacuate the Stargazer from that distance and at low warp means in essence Picard and his crew DID NOT survive !...

So the real purpose of the Captain's Yacht is to greatly enhance survivability of as much of the crew as possible. So, high warp. Long duration.

So High capacity warp/ replicators a must.

Now my deeper thoughts on the Captain's Yacht. I realized a few weeks ago a work around for a Galaxy class ship. In the FASA supplement; Star Trek the Next Generation: Officer's Manual, the idea put forward that the Primary hull. Has a warp drive FWH-2b, I think, could be very workable. The two primary hull Computer Cores have warp coils surrounding them. This is the Primary Hull's out. The Sam idea can be applied to the Captain's Yacht. Its two Computer Cores could handle the warp needs of the Yacht.

What? That's like "the problem with limos and taxis is that they aren't supersonic jets" or "the problem with conference rooms and convention centers is that they aren't nuclear bunkers". They categorically are not escape or safety vehicles, even if they occasionally are used in emergencies as (attempts at) such.

 

[knightgrace]

Taxis and limos don't have to cross interstellar distances at a moments notice.

In 'The Battle', how did the older Shuttlecraft get anywhere near help, if all they were capable of, was less than warp factor two? And they used all their fuel up, in two days?

Why older Shuttlecraft? Because of the fact that Picard commanded the Stargazer for twenty-two years, and had to evacuate her at the end of that, out in the middle of nowhere.

Go for worst case scenario. Plan for it, because it will happen to someone. And they deserve a good chance to survive...

This doesn't assume that the Shuttlecraft weren't towing the majority of the Stargazer's crew in inflatable lifeboats. Which can found in fan work Line Officers Manual. Each could hold sixty crew. Powered by Dilithium crystals.

Bernard was thinking.

 

[Macintosh]

The two primary hull Computer Cores have warp coils surrounding them. This is the Primary Hull's out.

The computer cores use "miniature subspace field generators, which create a symmetrical (nonpropulsive) field distortion of 3350 milicochranes". Even if these were propulsive fields, that's warp 1.4... and the generators are tiny compared to the size of a Galaxy-class saucer. You'd be better off handwaving something with the impulse engine driver coils.

 

[knightgrace]

That's standard rating. Overload ratings may be different.

Also something 100 feet tall, and sixty feet in diameter, isn't 'small'.

The real trick is protecting the function of the primary computers.

But you have to stick warp drives someplace, just to explain the performance issues.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

How big is this thing?

It seems larger than the original Calypso specs.

 

[knightgrace]

Forty-two meters in beam. It was designed as basically a party boat. Capable of entertaining upwards of 35 people.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Forty-two meters in beam. It was designed as basically a party boat. Capable of entertaining upwards of 35 people.

Don't you mean "Party Yacht"?

If 42 m is it's Beam (Width), then what's it's Length?

 

[blssdwlf]

@timmyjack! can confirm if he stuck to the measurements below, but you can look at his earlier post where he measured the yacht (quoted below for you).

His measurements are 44m beam, 25.5m length.

Don't you mean "Party Yacht"?

If 42 m is it's Beam (Width), then what's it's Length?

The Tech Manual states that it is sublight, but the tech manual also gets the yacht's size completely wrong. When we scale the yacht off of the 1701-D model/blueprints and compare the yacht to other known shuttle or aux craft types, it just doesn't make any sense for it to not have warp capability at that scale (nor do I personally like the storytelling restrictions of sublight only, but YMMV):

 

[knightgrace]

I was being tongue-in-cheek...

In an emergency evacuation, a sick bay would be on the Yacht, obviously. Also it would be used to give people a break from the confined space aboard Shuttlecraft.

The main computers, aboard the Yacht plus the replicators, could refit any Shuttlecraft...

In Star Trek Generations, I would have jettisoned the Yacht, with a crew of two - just in case.

 

[korblborp]

it's very open. i love the conference room, it feels like a proper place for a diplomatic or strategic talk, with space for aides and guests to sit waiting for the principals to call them up. but i am not so sure about being open to the upper deck, which is then open into the cockpit...

sadly the twinmotion thing doesn't seem to work for me. or i'm doing something wrong.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

Taxis and limos don't have to cross interstellar distances at a moments notice.

Unlike shuttles, the captain's yacht is ostensibly a mobile conference room, and it is in no sense an emergency vehicle except in the sense that in emergencies, all vehicles are emergency vehicles. There's not really any close real life parallel. But if you're going for the "interstellar distances at a moment's notice" angle that shuttles and more importantly, escape pods would often need to do but can't, I offer you the comparison of... life rafts, which by your logic should have jet engines to get out of the way of a sinking boat or torpedos or Scylla or Charybdis.

All any of these vehicles need to do is get crew off the main ship. Sometimes for conferences, sometimes for emergencies, sometimes for science, sometimes because the captain needs to get busy. And like the reality of spaceflight now, really if something goes wrong with an anomalous hull breach (let alone a warp core or torpedo situation), everything is fubar and no amount of emergency escape will do all that much, even ones that went warp 10, as no one would get to them in time anyways.

Shuttles make sense to have warp capabilities. The captain's yacht, which only needs to essentially float away from the saucer section and look pretty categorically does not need its own warp speed anymore than the holodeck needs its own warp systems.

 

[knightgrace]

"Be prepared. " boy scout matto.

Real world life rafts don't work very well. Especially during ww ii. My who stationed up Adak Island in the Aleutian Islands, told me several times about a B-24 Liberator that went out, and couldn't complete the mission, because the crew had to drop the bombs off before reaching the target due massive icing of the wings and fuselage. Then they jettisoned the guns and their ammo.

One man was in one man life raft. Frozen to death. The North Pacific is dangerous.

You don't scimp on nessicities.

As to the lifeboats on the Enterprise-D as described, there is no way that at forty meters per second, that they could clear the radiation blast zone.

This is one of the places in the Star Trek the Next Generation Technical Manual really falls apart.

Another is the use of the International Space Station's life support system being only 82 percent efficient...

Realistically?

One hundred percent recycling.

It takes 32.5 kilograms per person per day, to supply the food, water, and air...

And that is not one of the Killer Whales. Burrr...

 

[Riley]

This is excellent work that makes me simultaneously joyful and sad; joyful because of how great it is and sad that we didn't get to see something like this on the series.

I had an idea that may or may not be useful. Instead of curved and retractable nacelles, perhaps the Defiant Class's embedded nacelles were a concept that originated on the Galaxy Class captain yachts? The Bussard collectors would be slightly visible from the front where you currently have UFP logos on the physical model. It's just an idea that occurred to me while viewing your amazing work. Thank you for sharing with us!

 

[korblborp]

This is excellent work that makes me simultaneously joyful and sad; joyful because of how great it is and sad that we didn't get to see something like this on the series.

I had an idea that may or may not be useful. Instead of curved and retractable nacelles, perhaps the Defiant Class's embedded nacelles were a concept that originated on the Galaxy Class captain yachts? The Bussard collectors would be slightly visible from the front where you currently have UFP logos on the physical model. It's just an idea that occurred to me while viewing your amazing work. Thank you for sharing with us!

if the nacelles were located where i think you're implying, they'd cut right through where the living quarters are. that said, though, there's no reason to think that the beans are the location of the warp nacelles, or that if they are, that they have to extend. they could be access hatches and the nacelles stay put, with enough of a gap or internal radiation that the supspace radiation or whatever that makes mounting them close supposedly dangerous gets soaked up. which then put in my mind that there is clearly enough space for a lower deck, and i wonder what, if any, plans timmyjack has for that...