In my own little imagination, the UFP of the original series is the next evolution of the United Planets organization in the film Forbidden Planet. C-57-D, hero ship of that film, was a flying saucer that used a “quanto-gravetic-hyperdrive” FTL propulsion system. It took that ship a little over a year to make the trip of 16 light years from Earth to Altair. Nothing to sniff at in terms of a top speed, but not fast enough to patrol a federation on the scale we saw in TOS.
It all comes back to José Tyler’s line in The Cage: “And you won’t believe how fast you can get there. Why, the time barrier’s been broken! Our new ships can…”
Slower-than-light (impulse) propulsion as portrayed in Star Trek still requires something to counteract time dilation. Any drive system that is able to counter those relativistic effects ought to work as an FTL drive. I like to think that the QGH and Impulse drives are actually one and the same, and that they require very specific hull geometry to work effectively (the saucer).
Saucers as the primary hulls of starships don’t really make a whole lot of sense. If all it takes for warp speed is strapping nacelles onto the back of a M-AM reactor, the shape of the Enterprise doesn’t make sense. But that shape starts to make more sense if the “new ships” that Tyler mentioned are modifications of old “Simple Impulse”/QGH saucer ships. Why waste the hulls when you can modify them?
This is all just my own head canon to fill in the backstory of the model I wanted to build, which is the United Planets cruiser C-514-V, aka the USS Kelvin. I’m going for a pseudo-ceramic, highly reflective finish on the saucer hull, with a bit of a contrasting appearance on the nacelle and engineering section. The intent is to convey the idea of a United Planets saucer with newer “warp drive” elements that allow it to break the time barrier.
Originally posted about this build in a different thread, but didn’t want to monopolize a general model building conversation with my project.
It all comes back to José Tyler’s line in The Cage: “And you won’t believe how fast you can get there. Why, the time barrier’s been broken! Our new ships can…”
Slower-than-light (impulse) propulsion as portrayed in Star Trek still requires something to counteract time dilation. Any drive system that is able to counter those relativistic effects ought to work as an FTL drive. I like to think that the QGH and Impulse drives are actually one and the same, and that they require very specific hull geometry to work effectively (the saucer).
Saucers as the primary hulls of starships don’t really make a whole lot of sense. If all it takes for warp speed is strapping nacelles onto the back of a M-AM reactor, the shape of the Enterprise doesn’t make sense. But that shape starts to make more sense if the “new ships” that Tyler mentioned are modifications of old “Simple Impulse”/QGH saucer ships. Why waste the hulls when you can modify them?
This is all just my own head canon to fill in the backstory of the model I wanted to build, which is the United Planets cruiser C-514-V, aka the USS Kelvin. I’m going for a pseudo-ceramic, highly reflective finish on the saucer hull, with a bit of a contrasting appearance on the nacelle and engineering section. The intent is to convey the idea of a United Planets saucer with newer “warp drive” elements that allow it to break the time barrier.
Originally posted about this build in a different thread, but didn’t want to monopolize a general model building conversation with my project.
