Some background...
Helix Class Generation Ship
By the mid 25th century, technology had allowed for travel acrossed much of the known milky way galaxy. With most of the galaxy now accesible, the Federation set it sights outward, towards its neighboring galaxies. It was felt that the current technological advancement would allow them to send a generation ship across the expanse with the goal of the eventual construction of transwarp gates. In order to be feasible, the expanse would need to be crossed within 100-120 years. This would require a ship to sustain at a minimum warp 9.99 or it equivalent - and thus the first criteria. Next the ship would need to be completely self sufficient - needing to be effiecient as well as hold larger reserves of raw material for the voyage, the second criteria. Finally, the ship would need to be able initiate colonization quickly and efficiently so that construction of a transwarp gate could commense - the final criteria.
The Helix class was unique among the many candidates put forth. First, it easily was the largest ship ever concieved and constructed by the Federation for purely colonial purposes. Among its peers it was the only ship capable of accomplishing all mission requirements with out the neccesity of additional support craft due mainly to its size and unique abilities. Chief among them was the unique helix shaped saucer section. Designed to seperate from the ship upon arrival at its destination it would become the foothold base from which colonization and the ultimate construction of a gate would spring from. Further supplies could be contained within the area between the saucers on exterior hardpoints allowing for increased storage with out compromising the ship internal volume. This proved essential due to the nature of the material the trans warp gates are constructed of. Prolonged, direct exposure any particulate material - such as what could be expected from the time spent on a generation ship even with the best filters, would result in many medical issues croping up. Storing the material would require sections of a ship to be completely sealed from the habital portions in order to ensure no particulates ever entered the atmosphere. By allowing for these materials to be stored in exterior sealed pods, this issue was completely circumvented. This has the benifit of ensuring the ships interior volume, argueable the most well shielded areas of the ship, would remain accecible to the crew. Further the unused volume could be utilized to hold more supplies.
However all of this would be moot if the ship could not sustain high warp velocities or its equivalent. While other ships employed more exotic methods of conveyance, from teleportation to slip stream, the Helix took a more classical approach. Each nacelle contains 4 seperate warp coils. In total, the ship would have 8 coils, running no more than 4 at any one time. The 4 coils running would run in cyclic manner, with 2 being on and 2 being off. The interval at which they cycle is dynamically adjusted to reduce degradation and to ensure effieciency of the system, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes. Further, at periodic interverals the active coil sets would be 'swaped' - A side to B side - to allow for maintenance and to reduce degradation of the engine systems. In this way the effective run time on each coil would be approximately 25 years total. To ensure continous operation at such high warp speeds, the coils were developed from a new super dense alloy and employed more radical construction methods. This allowed for 1 warp coil to be as effective as any pair utilized in the fleet today. All of this put together would allow the ship to maintain warp 9.992 for 9 weeks, with 1-2 weeks of downtime for maintenance.
With a crew compliment of just under ten thousand, three ships would be required to make the trip. While one ship would be more than capable of accomplishing the mission, this would ensure that there was a viable population to start with as well as provide redundancy and support through their voyage.
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