Topic: Philosophical discussion on TOS, bring yer coffee

[Atrahasis]

What if TOS is not simply an era, from 2253 to 2270, but also an entire starship design philosophy that existed side by side with and during the TMP-era, 2271-2300, and actually became the dominant starship design philosophy in and by 2364, the time of TNG? I say this because I can make a really solid case for TNG ships having more design elements in common with TOS than with TMP ships. Consider, in no particular order, the points that TOS and TNG ships have in common that are exclusive of TMP ships:

1) TOS and TNG ships have the same duck-egg-blue-green hull color.
2) Glowing red matter intakes on the engines.
3) Warp engines are round and "circumferential".
4) Pylons have more perpendicular angles from the hull, whereas TMP pylons are oblique. The majority of TNG ships like the Galaxy, Nebula, Ambassaor, Kyushu, etc have perpendicular pylon angles, the only exceptions being Sovereign, Nova, Akira.
5) Impulse engines are more imbedded into the hull and have less exposure to the outside, and do not have external deflection crystals on them.  
6) Saucer tops are more "billowy", not caved-in like on TMP saucers.
7) Copper deflector DISHES.
8) Window that are on-off (i.e. some are lit, some are unlit and black). TMP ships have all windows lit.
9) The name on the saucer is written right across and uncurved, whereas for TMP ships the lettering is curved.
10) Glowing lower sensor dome (on the Enterprise-C at least).  
11) Turbolift shafts that you can see from the outside, beside the bridge.
12) Lack of flush vents on the pylons for some designs (the original Connie did not have them).
13) Those copper / black coils on the warp engines right behind the matter intakes.  

Now, lets' consider the points that TMP and TNG have in common, exlcusive of TOS:

1) Aztec hull plating.
2) Blue glowies on the engines an nav deflectors.
3) Bridge design.
4) registry font and pennant design.
5) Non-exposed field generators in the warp engines.
6) Sometimes the torp tubes are TMP-style on some ships.
7) Reaction control thrusters.

That's really all I can think of, if anyone thinks of more pleae bring it up.

My point is this: Considering the 100+ years of Trek that we have seen between TOS and TNG, the TOS-design philosophgy for starships seems to have become dominant, making the TMP-design philosophy seem almost like an abberation. But for that to have happened, you had to have had TOS-design ships still being designed during the TMP-era to continue the lineage. Design elements like the circumferential warp engines witt the red glowing intakes. The imbedded and non-exposed impulse engines. The copper defelctor dishes. The glowing under-saucer sensor. The perpendicular angles on the pylons.

If this is correct, then this opens up a whole new can of worms, because then you can have all those TOS-style SFB ships flying at the same time as all those snazzy TMP ships from Ships of the Starfleet and Jackill's, and being contemporaries of each other instead of being ancestor / progeny, or "old" vs "new". I might point out that FASA already had a universe where TOS-style and TMP-style ships existed side by side, whereas publications like SotSF and Jackills gave the overwhelming impression that TOS-style ships had been done away with altogether during the TMP era, at least a new-build designs.

If my idea holds water, that means you can combine the SFB / FASA / SotSF / Jackill's into one big (very big) happy family!  

[wanderer]

 

Quote:
My point is this: Considering the 100+ years of Trek that we have seen between TOS and TNG, the TOS-design philosophgy for starships seems to have become dominant, making the TMP-design philosophy seem almost like an abberation.  But for that to have happened, you had to have had TOS-design ships still being designed during the TMP-era to continue the lineage.

 Not necessarily. Say a  team of designers, sometime in the "late" TMP era, decided on using successful TOS design philosophies and applied them w/ updated technology to a new design. This design then became quite successful, spawning a whole new design philosophy w/in StarFleet and the shipbuilding industry.

A similar modern instance, although not in all details, might be the B-2 Stealth Bomber, which takes many design elements from the old "Flying Wing" design from the '50's (iirc).

At any rate, some interesting points and questions you raise....    

[I_Mudd]

I like the way you think.

As I stated before, TOS is a state of mind. I found many of the same similarities as you mentioned above when I set out to design the Columbia. I had a hard time being 'pigeon holed' into pre-TOS box ( clunky-looking /retro '60s special effects, although I found ways to incorperate a few aspects...) especially knowing the examples of design I've seen from Enterprise to Voyager.

I mean, what defines a starship as looking old? Must it look like the space shuttle or a NASA design? Some of the designs on the drawing board are pretty hep, these days; which would be old - hell -  ancient  in 2253.

And what defines an old alien design. Does Atra's philosophy apply here, as well? I would think so. Creativity is a by product of intelligence.

Prehaps the 'Phase 2' project ( TMP ) was a look to the future in transwarp technology; baby steps, if you will.

Or ... maybe it just comes down to costs. What if the TOS designs are just easier on resources than the TMP designs. I never thought of the Excelsior class as an SUV or the Galaxy class as a mini-van before, but maybe you see where I'm going.

Could be as simple as who had the contract to build a given starship for Starfleet. Chevy vs. Ford.

In some FASA references, 'Andorian' design is quoted. What if TOS is a human design and TMP is, oh I don't know - Alpha Centaurian? The Constitution2/Enterprise class does have a feminine grace with  beauty in strength to her design, that would reflect the amazons of spaces ideals ( SFB/Prime Directive-GURPS reference ).

I agree whole heartedly with the concept Atrahasis presents and I think it is one the entire schizomed (TOS/TMP/TNG in whatever combination you favor for whatever reason ...) community should look at.

Even if only because there's just too much good stuff out there.

I_Mudd.





 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Atrahasis,

Star Trek is a TV show,
its entertainment,

the "prop-design" changes with the technolgy available,
to the Graphic Artists of the time,

in the 1960s'
Ole' Matt Jefferies did an excellent job,
with the tools at hand,

now today, the new generation working on the TV show,
are doing the best with the tools they have around,
like CGI (Computer Generation I ,what is the I anyways?),

Bottom-line,
your looking for some "deep-meaning" where NONE exists,

Please limit your grand-standing, baseless, generalisations,
to comparative-religion,

where most people have just learned to instinctively dismiss you,

and just lets make 3d models, each in our own way?
Things we like?

What a concept eh,

Geeezz,


Agent Sloan

[Silverstone]

Quote:
Atrahasis,

Star Trek is a TV show,
its entertainment,

the "prop-design" changes with the technolgy available,
to the Graphic Artists of the time,

in the 1960s'
Ole' Matt Jefferies did an excellent job,
with the tools at hand,

now today, the new generation working on the TV show,
are doing the best with the tools they have around,
like CGI (Computer Generation I ,what is the I anyways?),

Bottom-line,
your looking for some "deep-meaning" where NONE exists,

Please limit your grand-standing, baseless, generalisations,
to comparative-religion,

where most people have just learned to instinctively dismiss you,

and just lets make 3d models, each in our own way?
Things we like?

What a concept eh,

Geeezz,


Agent Sloan

Two words: Completely unnecessary.    

[Mackie]

Quote:
Atrahasis,

Star Trek is a TV show,
its entertainment,

the "prop-design" changes with the technolgy available,
to the Graphic Artists of the time,

in the 1960s'
Ole' Matt Jefferies did an excellent job,
with the tools at hand,

now today, the new generation working on the TV show,
are doing the best with the tools they have around,
like CGI (Computer Generation I ,what is the I anyways?),

Bottom-line,
your looking for some "deep-meaning" where NONE exists,

Please limit your grand-standing, baseless, generalisations,
to comparative-religion,

where most people have just learned to instinctively dismiss you,

and just lets make 3d models, each in our own way?
Things we like?

What a concept eh,

Geeezz,


Agent Sloan  

hey we like philosophin on about designs its fun  

[Fire Blade]

Agent Sloan get a life !

[InterMech]

I would think that the design styles are linear.  I am a big fan of following automobile design. Take for example the Ford Thunderbird. Look at the original design and the new design. They look very similar. However, each iteration in between would not lead you to the present design.  Another example is the Volks Wagon. If you look at the models that came between the original and the modern beatle, you get a similar situation, a reversion to a retro look, but all new technology. This is not to say that you would not see a TOS ship next to TMP ships. Another consideration is that in "The Motion Picture," the TOS Enterprise had been refitted into a TMP ship. To me this would be an indication that TMP was more advanced.  

[**DONOTDELETE**]

TOS,
TMP,
TNG,
DS9,
VOY,


Whats the problem?

[Rogue]

Quote:
hey we like philosophin on about designs its fun    

This is the correct answer in my humble opinion.

A good part of the charm that is Star Trek is that it captures the imagination. Like those that waxed poetic about aviation and the charm of the 'classic automobile ' it has struck a chord about the design elements of fantasy starships. I've never flown an aircraft but woud be inclined to hang a picture of a F104 Shooting Star, SR71 Black Bird or P51 Mustang. The same could be said of a 57 Thunderbird or a Fender Stratocaster. All for the same reason. Where they may not be sculptures from the hands of Michael Angelo (?) or Gogan they are in their own right the sculptures of technology. Not tributes of nature but tributes to physics and the ingenuity of men to build sculptures that exploit the laws of physics.

If I were to guess, I would say Atrahasis is wrestling taking directions in his starship designs. Likely his heart is more in TOS designs than TMP or TNG. That and it is fun to discourse over the logical form that would follow their function. Why do warp nacelles have to be so big and why do they stick them on the end of struts? How would a deflector system work? What distinguishes a phaser from a laser? Stuff like that.

In my own fuzzy little mind I have rationalized the following...

1. Starships are not painted but are the color of their hull material. Like the SR71 they had to develop a paint that wouldn't burn off in the enviroment that they operate in. The markings on starships is such pigmentation.
2. Warp nacelles are big because of the wave lengths associated with 'plasma coils'. The coils are long to allow different tunings of the warp standing wave. Different tunings are needed to vary the geometry of the warp field. It is necessary to transition through different tunings to progress through increased warp speeds. You can make a small warp coil but it would be limited to a specific warp speed.
3. The deflector system is integral with the warp field. (as are cloaking systems). Warp fields are massively induced magnetic fields that have the charactoristic of distorting the space they envelop. And that for the purpose of reducing the mass of that which it contains. Therefor mass and energy that crosses the boundry of a warp field would be strongly influenced and can be deflected to suit ones needs. Same idea with a cloaking system. I think of it as not making a ship invisable but the field would look like an inmaterial lense moving through space. It isn't that the ship is invisable but the apparent size has been reduced so greatly that it is like trying to spot a pea in a star system. And yes you can see the cloaking field but you only see the distortion. With a little itty bitty starship in the middle.

You see... this is the kind of stuff that goes through the minds of some Starfllet Command addicts. Like me, I must say.

In answer more directly to Atra's observations. It is tough to make sense of quite often. My personal preference is for TMP. Nothing like the first impression of the Enterprise in The Motion Picture after all those years. She was beautiful! The redisign of the Enterprise for TNG was almost a complete miss. All of those windows and the warps made it look like a CGI model rather than a starship. I just think that TMP is the most elegant of the lot. But I will conceed that they got rather good after a while when they moved a little more toward the TMP style, it seemed to me anyway. I don't have a strong opinion about the similarity of form or style among the three. One thing that hampers the TOS is there weren't that many Federation starships one can think of. In fact I can't think another that wasn't a Constitution. This excludes your occasional ore freighter or civilian transport but they weren't labeled as starships.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Rogue,

Yep,
I agree, it all comes down to personal preferences,
Every 3d modder has "their own preference"


Agent Sloan

Quote:

<snip>
My personal preference is for TMP. Nothing like the first impression of the Enterprise in The Motion Picture after all those years. She was beautiful! The redisign of the Enterprise for TNG was almost a complete miss. All of those windows and the warps made it look like a model rather than a starship. I just think that TMP is the most elegant of the lot.
<snip>

[Mainwaring]

Starship design's like any other sort of design. And it's very much like what's been said already-- often things don't progress quite linearly. I'd guess that it's entirely likely that between TOS and TNG, advances in technology and so on gave rise to different needs in design, and a new aesthetic (the TMP look) arrived. then, around TNG, we have a new set of technology again, and a more TOS style makes more sense and is more appealing due to nostalgia or whatever.

I actually don't recall the nacelle caps being Bussard collectors in TOS. I.. augh. I can't find my TOS technical manual *or* my Enterprise Schmatics, but I think they were something else in the TOS era. So TNG rolls around, and now we have bussard scoops mounted standard on ships. Well, the scoops have to be these big red things.. so... hey! let's bring back the old nacelle caps. They were these big red things... Not necessarily the case within the setting, but it could be.

I'd add one more era to the list. Post-TNG's Advanced Starship Design Initiative. because while we had the Defiant as a part of that and the Defiant appeared in TNG, it was a very TNG-style ship when you compare it to other ADI ships, like the Prometheus, or the Sovriegn, and suchlike. And most of those were seen in Voyager's timeframe or outside of the show entirely. (The movies with the 1701E, as I recall, were either late or post-DS9 in respect to the timeframe, or thereabouts) And in the ADI phase, we see the same thing happen. The Chabot, despite being only semi-canon, is a good example. It's an Excelsior with ADI styling. We also get a lot of really weird stuff out of the ADI. So i view the TMP era like that. A lot of new things being tried, and some of it was kept later, but other parts were found to work better the way things were done before.

[Mainwaring]

Quote:

Quote:
hey we like philosophin on about designs its fun    

This is the correct answer in my humble opinion.

A good part of the charm that is Star Trek is that it captures the imagination. Like those that waxed poetic about aviation and the charm of the 'classic automobile ' it has struck a chord about the design elements of fantasy starships. I've never flown an aircraft but woud be inclined to hang a picture of a F104 Shooting Star, SR71 Black Bird or P51 Mustang. The same could be said of a 57 Thunderbird or a Fender Stratocaster. All for the same reason. Where they may not be sculptures from the hands of Michael Angelo (?) or Gogan they are in their own right the sculptures of technology. Not tributes of nature but tributes to physics and the ingenuity of men to build sculptures that exploit the laws of physics.

If I were to guess, I would say Atrahasis is wrestling taking directions in his starship designs. Likely his heart is more in TOS designs than TMP or TNG. That and it is fun to discourse over the logical form that would follow their function. Why do warp nacelles have to be so big and why do they stick them on the end of struts? How would a deflector system work? What distinguishes a phaser from a laser? Stuff like that.

In my own fuzzy little mind I have rationalized the following...

1. Starships are not painted but are the color of their hull material. Like the SR71 they had to develop a paint that wouldn't burn off in the enviroment that they operate in. The markings on starships is such pigmentation.
2. Warp nacelles are big because of the wave lengths associated with 'plasma coils'. The coils are long to allow different tunings of the warp standing wave. Different tunings are needed to vary the geometry of the warp field. It is necessary to transition through different tunings to progress through increased warp speeds. You can make a small warp coil but it would be limited to a specific warp speed.
3. The deflector system is integral with the warp field. (as are cloaking systems). Warp fields are massively induced magnetic fields that have the charactoristic of distorting the space they envelop. And that for the purpose of reducing the mass of that which it contains. Therefor mass and energy that crosses the boundry of a warp field would be strongly influenced and can be deflected to suit ones needs. Same idea with a cloaking system. I think of it as not making a ship invisable but the field would look like an inmaterial lense moving through space. It isn't that the ship is invisable but the apparent size has been reduced so greatly that it is like trying to spot a pea in a star system. And yes you can see the cloaking field but you only see the distortion. With a little itty bitty starship in the middle.

You see... this is the kind of stuff that goes through the minds of some Starfllet Command addicts. Like me, I must say.

In answer more directly to Atra's observations. It is tough to make sense of quite often. My personal preference is for TMP. Nothing like the first impression of the Enterprise in The Motion Picture after all those years. She was beautiful! The redisign of the Enterprise for TNG was almost a complete miss. All of those windows and the warps made it look like a CGI model rather than a starship. I just think that TMP is the most elegant of the lot. But I will conceed that they got rather good after a while when they moved a little more toward the TMP style, it seemed to me anyway. I don't have a strong opinion about the similarity of form or style among the three. One thing that hampers the TOS is there weren't that many Federation starships one can think of. In fact I can't think another that wasn't a Constitution. This excludes your occasional ore freighter or civilian transport but they weren't labeled as starships.

This came through while I was typing...

A large amount of the three points you mention are actually covered in remarkable detail by the guys that designed the Enterprise-D in the TNG technical manual. Insignia and markings are apparently painted onto plain durasteel with molecularly-bonded paint or soemthing like that, but most of the hull is, indeed, bare because the surface area is too large to paint anyway. According to said manual, the mechanics of warp propulsion actually lies in the layering of several warp feilds which dissipate, and the interaction as they vanish is where propulsion actually comes from... so you need several warp coils to create the layers, and you alter the frequency they fire at to vary your speed. The deflector system's primary use is to knock micrometeorites and other particles out of the path of the ship to avoid damage, but the dish also mounts a lot of sensors and so forth because it's a good place to put it all.

The technical manual is really a terribly interesting read, as it's basically Sternbach and Okuda's design notes for the TNG ships fleshed out with a lot of detail, and all of the fanciful notions sound reasonable enough, so it's a really kind of nice reference to trek technology in general. it pulls some inteesting other data out of the ST archives as well, like th history of warp propulsion and all sorts of odds and ends. I highly recommend it if you're into all the technical details.

[starforce2]

Also, paint has mass. Tove cover that much serface area would add several (thousand?) ton to a ship. That is what I heard for the reasons ships are no longer completely painted.

[Mainwaring]

Also true. And why paint them? to prevent rust? Space is oh-so-humid...

I skipped one thing. The nacelle pylons have been counted necessary since TOS because the warp nacelles are necessarily a heavy radiation area. You want to keep that sort of thing away from the inhabited portions of your ship if possible. The Impulse engines are apparently well-sheilded, but warp coils are too strongly emissive to make that practical on full-scale ships or something. We sort of have to assume that smaller ships like the Delta Flyer or Defiant have small enough coil assemblies that they are much easier to sheild adequately through conventional means.

[Rogue]

Hmmm, I like the explainations. I kinda thought it would be futile to paint a starship. Except for the registry, a few warning placards "You touch, you die!" or even better "Dang! Don't look at the laser with remaining good eye!" We actualy keep the later around as our equipment has laser exposure stuff in them. But you have to guess the Romulans expended a great deal of effort putting the obligatory bird of prey on their hulls. That probably set them back a decade right there.

I'll have to seek out an explaination of warp theory propulsion sometime. I kind of suspect warp engines don't produce thrust. That would be the job of reaction thrusters and impulse engines. But what would I know. This is all an exorcise in theory.

Something I have considered is if there was an annoncement tomorrow that MIT had developed an anti-mattter reactor that was completely practical... what would we use it for? To boil water, to make steam, to turm steam turbine generators. And then there is the problem of broad spectrum radiation produced from such a reaction. Total mass to energy conversion... hmmm. I tend to think that fusion would be the power plant on a starship. Until you get into the physics of warp fields. Which I would not have the first clue as to how to go about that. But fun to turn over in your mind never the less.      

[Mainwaring]

Quote:
Hmmm, I like the explainations. I kinda thought it would be futile to paint a starship. Except for the registry, a few warning placards "You touch, you die!" or even better "Dang! Don't look at the laser with remaining good eye!" We actualy keep the later around as our equipment has laser exposure stuff in them. But you have to guess the Romulans expended a great deal of effort putting the obligatory bird of prey on their hulls. That probably set them back a decade right there.

I'll have to seek out an explaination of warp theory propulsion sometime. I kind of suspect warp engines don't produce thrust. That would be the job of reaction thrusters and impulse engines. But what would I know. This is all an exorcise in theory.

Something I have considered is if there was an annoncement tomorrow that MIT had developed an anti-mattter reactor that was completely practical... what would we use it for? To boil water, to make steam, to turm steam turbine generators. And then there is the problem of broad spectrum radiation produced from such a reaction. Total mass to energy conversion... hmmm. I tend to think that fusion would be the power plant on a starship. Until you get into the physics of warp fields. Which I would not have the first clue as to how to go about that. But fun to turn over in your mind never the less.        

Ask and ye shall recieve. but first...

Fusion's GREAT. In fact, i believe the Impulse engines are fusion drives, and they have a power tap to keep things running when the warp core is down/ejected/etc. BUT.

Problem is, warp drives take a lot of juice, and fusion can't provide enough power easily. M/AM, despite the problems, yeilds huge output-- several orders of magnitude more than a fusion reactor of the same mass and feul consumption, according to some stuff I read by a physicist earlier today. He was speculating about Battlestar Galactica's Tylium plants, but M/AM factored into it. So, better output to run the drive and ship with, but much greater complexity and danger as the tradeoff. considering that the warp drive power demands are measured on a logrithmic scale in 10^nth mega-joules per Cochrane, and warp factors can take over 1500 cochranes to establish... power demands are high.

That said, this is from the TNG Tech manual's section on warp propulsion:

"the key to the creation of subsequent non-Newtonian mehtods, ie, propulsion not dependant upon exhaustingreaction products, lay in the concept of nesting many layer of warp feild energy, each layer exerting a controlled amount of force against its outermost neighbor. The cululative effect of the force applied drives the vehicle forward and is known as asymmetrical peristaltic feild manipulation (APFM). Warp feild coils in the engine nacelles are energized in sequential order, fore to aft. the firing frequency determines the number of feild layers, a greater number of layers per unit time being required at higher warp factors. each new feild layer expands outward from the nacelles, experiences a rapid force coupling and decoupling at variable distances from the nacelles, simultaneously transferring energy and seperating from the previous layer at velocities between .5c and .9c. This is well within the bounds of traditional physics, effectively circumventing the limits of General, Special, and Transformational Relativity. During force coupling the radiated energy makes the necessary transition into subspace, applying an apparent mass reduction to the spacecraft. this facilitates the slippage of the spacecraft through the sequencing layers of warp feild energy."

It goes on to detail some odds and ends about the Warp 10 limitation (You can't actually reach Warp 10 on the current revised scale; they reworked the warp curve to account for TOS-era velocities and transwarp breaking the 10 limit), and some details on the systems themselves. And while there are holes in the warp theory, I'm sure... heck, it sounds good. warp feild layers interact, and squeeze the ship through space at an apparent FTL speed by deforming the space-time continuum to some degree. there's a mention somewhere that early warp drives actually had a tendency to slightly damage subspace in the process, too, I think.

incidentally, flipping a few pages later, the Impulse Engines are, indeed, fusion-based, and are the ship's secondary power plant. Also, thinking about it, I presume that the warp radiation problems stem from the necessity of allowing the coils to form the feild, so you have to be more conservative about sheilding them than you can be with the warp core or impulse engines, so as not to screw up warp efficiency.

PS: It's occured to me that maybe the Romulans don't paint those patterns at all, but use colored materials in those areas to get the same effect. Either that, or their racial makup makes them inclined to expend the cost, but that doesn't seem right. But working some sort of pigmenting to hull plates before they're attached, or using similar but differently-colored materials seems likely. there's got to be some variation of durasteel armor that's brown or bronze or black instead of grey or green, right?

[Atrahasis]

My problem is that Starfleet Battles has really great TOS-style designs, but they exist in the timeline right up until the 24th century. Whereas you have the various manuals and publications basically implying there was a complete TMP make-over for all ships during the TMP years. However, when you think of TOS' relationshiop with the future, and we know what the future is, then the idea of having TOS-style ships being produced at and during the TMP era not only makes sense but is entirely believable. The main difference between TOS and TMP design is the warp engines, the first being "circumferential" but the latter being "linear"........since "circumferential" seems to become the norm in the future, you can and should have this style of warp engines existing on new-build-designs during the TMP era.  Which means you can get away with combining the SFB shiplist with other shiplists.  

[Mainwaring]

Well, ultimately, you can justify doing things whatever the heck way you want. You just need to be clever enough (or know someone clever enough) to work up a plausible justification. I can think of ways to insert a TNG-styled ship into the middle of TOS without it being too much of a rationalization-hack-job, and if that's possible, just about anything is.