I found "SS Conestoga"'s 3DCG images on the Starship Modeler Site.
SS Conestoga Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :
WOW! So cool! Is that a designlineage I see in the fore of the ship? Those "sensors" sticking out, didn�t we see that in one of the freighters, y-class?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Tres cool. The front spars look a lot like those on the USS Sulaco, though... And the whole nose is kinda runabouty.
One wonders if they used it in the recent "Twilight"..?
Mark
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Well, the Conestoga was a one-time colony ship, though...
And now more than ever, the Conestoga reminds me of the old conjectural SS Valiant design. Looks nice! Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Oh.. actually, these detailed pictures remind me less of any other lineage Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
It actually reminds me of the shuttle in TAS, the one I developed into the Indigo.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Hehe...I remember mentioning that the Indigo reminded me of the Conestoga back when you first posted it... Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
As a colony ship, it's perfect. A bueatiful design.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Can anyone tell what the emblem looks like?
How does it compare with that one from Voyager season 7?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
It's the same oval mission patch that was seen in Star charts.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Anyone got a pic?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
There's a scan on Ex-Astris and I think I posted my own rendition in my logos thread, over on the created board.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Thanks
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I love that ship. UberCool.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
Sweet! How did they get their hands on these pictures?
Definitely gives the sense of scale that I think a colony ship needs. I like the off-center deflector/sensor/whatever dish up top, and the spikes on the front of the bussards. Any ideas as to what the four gold-looking things on top of the nose are? And what is that sticking up in back between the sublight engine shrouds?
B.J.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
Well, seems I answered part of my own question. I took that last image and turned up the gamma, and it turns out that thing in the back is an aft-facing dish, the same size and configuration as the one up front.
B.J.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
The Conestoga certainly is impressive. Perhaps too impressive for her own good, in at least two ways...
Would Earth really be able to field something as "purpose-built" in the late 21st century? I'd expect something that looks more cobbled together than that, on the vein of the Valiant "hobby model".
And would a colony ship really be this big? How does the monster land? She does land, doesn't she, so that the colony can be built out of her components?
The intriguing prow of the ship could have some functionality on the surface. Perhaps a crane system for offloading the cargo and for dismantling the vessel? The four "headlights" atop the bow could be the deflectors. Or then the three blue ones farther down are. But I'd have hoped for even more functionality in the looks. Say, an indication of how the ship falls apart at the seams after landing.
Don't take me wrong, though - she's a beauty. And far from an anachronism or a shoddy job. Which is weird, considering how little we saw of her in the end.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
Does anyone else think it sort of looks like the SS Valiant model... just updated for "Enterprise"?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, MinutiaeMan apparently does, considering he said, "And now more than ever, the Conestoga reminds me of the old conjectural SS Valiant design.".
Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
Oops.. heh... I guess I ought to read a little more carefully.
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
I'm getting a strong Defiant vibe off this, especially the extended rectangular nose and those curved sides of the body.
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
It does seem sort of Defiant-like in some odd way....
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I'm amazed at how much work went into this ship, especially considering it was only seen as a tiny screen graphic and further considering they've said the Intrepid and the "Iceland" were just "shapes they put together".
I'm not complaining. IT just makes you wonder sometimes.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Perhaps a flashback sequence was originally scripted, showing the Conestoga leaving Earth and/or arriving at Terra Nova? If it was cut late in the process then they might have already built the detailed mesh when the scene was cut.
Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
Or, like the Pasteur model from TNG: All Good Things... someone at the studio could've just created it for their own amusement and submitted it to Paramount when the need arose for a ship graphic.
Conversely, we COULD be looking at an early Enterprise concept based on the SS Valiant design created for the ST Encyclopedia.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
The design looks fantastic. I only wonder why it doesn't have a UESPA logo. Perhaps because it's a ship and not a probe? The name of the UESPA must have made sense when the organization was founded.
The good design doesn't change anything about the commissioning date problem though. On the contrary, if the ship is bigger than Enterprise, how the hell could they build it, even if they had the space frame already available (from a sublight ship) and in orbit?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
My default explanation for all these 'very-soon-after-first-contact' warp ships is that they're left over stuff from WWIII that was left standing when most of the government collapsed. Some could have been in orbit of Earth, Luna or Mars. Other may have been on the ground somewhere. The only real problem that I see is just how a supposedly crippled planet managed to get together enough manpower and equipment to make those extensive engine modifications.
One possibility is that Cochrane and his team weren't the only people trying to develop an dual nacelle CPD. That leaves the possibility that some of the other major world powers had similar projects on the go before and/or during the war. The only difference being that Cochrane was the only one who could make it work properly. So this simplifies things a little if there is a post war stash of failed warp prototype hanging around, since all Zeph had to do was get the ones closest to good working order and make the necessary upgrades.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Perhaps they needed a quick image of a old-style ship, and some prescient member of the FX team took a chance that maybe they might need to see one in more detail one day (after all, this was only about the fourth or fifth ep, no way to know what way the show might go) and took the time to put in a little extra work on a good-looking design. Now, two years later, they're off doing 9/11-Revenge-in-Space and the chances are they'll never need this Conestoga model/mesh again, so why not let people see it who'll appreciate it?
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Defiant vibe: Yes Warp Leftovers: Doubt it
Judging by the looks of her, there isn't really that much ship involved, per se. Sure, there's the four or five deck tall spine structure, but a ship of this era making a nine year journey is mostly going to be composed of fuel and cargo for arrival. I'd like to think also that she was a sleeper ship for at least most of the colonists, but I don't think that was made clear.
In any case, I'd imagine that the spine was the main habitable volume, with the Defiant nacelles on the side being cargo or deuterium.
As for construction, I'd imagine they could've boosted the spine to orbit in completed form, and the nacelles as well. On the other hand, given Rain Robinson's DY-100 model, they could very well have boosted almost the entire ship, funky non-aerodynamic sections and all.
A fairly good median of these two ideas would be that they boosted the main section mostly complete, presumably with some sort of temporary covering to help out the aerodynamics of the Defiant pods. They fueled her in orbit, attached the warp engines (also built on the ground), and loaded the folks, cargo, and minutiae.
Alternately, she was a hydrogen-collection vessel anyway, and they simply built some warp engines and made some modifications after 2063.
Anything would be a job for Earth's crippled infrastructure, but like the 1930's WPA it might've been just a boost we needed.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Anything would be a job for Earth's crippled infrastructure, but like the 1930's WPA it might've been just a boost we needed.
Good point. I imagine that during the war itself there would have been a world wide scramble to churn out as many spacecraft as possible and that after the war's end a fairly reasonable percentage of those fabrication facilities would have been left standing. Some might even have become home to communities just like the Phoenix's missile base, I imagine they would have been fairly well protected against nuclear attack, not to mention looters and nuclear winters.
Just to clarify, the 'Warp Leftovers' I referred to earlier were just the vital engine parts that might have been very difficult to mass produce on short notice, (Warp coils, antimatter containment pods, dilithium crystals, M/AM reaction chambers etc.) not the ships themselves. While I'd like to think that the Conestoga was a retrofitted water tanker, the fact that it was said to be specifically designed to be disassembled into a colony (however unlikely that may be) leads me to think that it was a pre-existing piece of hardware, possibly meant for the Martian colonisation programs. In which case all Earth needed to do would be to install the warp drive (newly built or assembled, either way...) and associated systems.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
FC would certainly seem to imply that there was a certain degree of space based combat in WWIII; the only surprise when the borg start firing is that it's been so long since the last attack.
Out of interest, exactly what degree of space combat do people think is reasonable for WWIII: just orbital weapons platforms or were there more mobile units as well, as I think is stated in some non-canon stuff?
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
Shots comming out of the sky COULD have been taken as missiles fired from high altitude airplanes...
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Well, there supposedly were (or could have been) orbital nuke platforms in Trek's late 1960s. And there were DY ships in the late 90s. So I wouldn't be surprised if there actually were limited space battles. I could certainly see ECON pointing a Very Big Laser at an allied moonbase or something. Or at least taking out orbital sattelites and/or stations. But all this could have happened only in the early years of the war, before the apparent total atomic mayhem broke out.
Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
I figure that the weapons from First Contact were orbital missle/projectile launchers and perhaps very rudimentary particle weapons. Nothing as far as ship combat up there. If anything, air launched anti-satellite missiles and that sort of thing.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Out of interest, exactly what degree of space combat do people think is reasonable for WWIII: just orbital weapons platforms or were there more mobile units as well, as I think is stated in some non-canon stuff?
Well I have my own set of ideas about that. The way I see it, WWIII started in space. I had the idea that it was largly fought over what was left of earth's resouces, mainly fossil fuels. When these ran dry I imagine there would have been a new space race between the new superpowers and global corperations, in which the goal was to stake a claim on the rich off world mineral deposites and perhaps even a petrolium deposite discovered on Mars and/or Europa. Eventually things get desperate and fights break out over just who gets the choice goodies. This might have lead to acts of sabotage and terrorism back on Earth as everyone tries to undermine their competitors until inevitably outright nuclear war breaks out.
This is the best reason I can think of why mid-21st century earth would have such a large standing fleet of robust spaceships. No dedicated warships, but I imagine that most large freighters, tankers and mining vessels would be armed against possible acts of piracy.
Also remember that war is always an effective way of advancing technology and a space war is precisely what is needed to developed things like cold fusion, M/AM reactors, inertial dampeners, cryogenics (I assume Khan was just way ahead of his time) and of course weapons systems like effective lasers, mass-drivers/rail guns and primitive particle emitters.
quote:Shots comming out of the sky COULD have been taken as missiles fired from high altitude airplanes...
Airplanes at high altitudes don't tend to reflect so much light in the night sky (anyone with experience in astronomy will know the difference between a passing satellite and a passing airplane - planes are much harder to see save for their strobes), fire missiles sideways instead of forwards to say nothing about just how fast they'd have to be travelling to reach the surface so fast.
What we saw was consistant with exactly what it was; an orbiting satelite firing highly accelerated projectiles at the surface.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
About pre WWIII Earth and it's space capabilities, I've said a long time ago here, somewhere that I think Earth has at least travelled to Alpha Centuri at sublight speeds - hence Zephram Cochrane being from there... and he got trapped on Earth during WWIII.
What year was the Mars colinisation?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Given the time it takes to travel between earth and A-Cent at even half the speed of light, (8.79 years) I think it would probably take several centuries to establish any sort of generational presence in that system, to say nothing of the relitivistic effects of traveling at that speed.
Just for starter we know that the earliest sucessful trip to A-Cent can be no earlier than 2037 since that is the launch date of the Charybdis the third (or 2nd?) failed attempt at leaving our own system. Not enought time to travel there, come back, (17.58 year round trip) return with settlers, (another 8.79 yrs) raise children and travel back to earth in time for WWIII. Assuming that the Jacob, the very next ship to go out after the Charybdis (remembering that the Charybdis's mission was only to get out into the heliopause, not visit Alpha Centauri) left earth around 2040 and the subsequent visits followed the pattern I just described. Then if my math is correct then cochrane makes it back to Earth in 2075 aged 8 years old. Not counting the time dialation of course. (my calculator isn't that clever) To sum it up in three words, not bloody likely.
More likely that Cochrane settled on A-Cent later on with the first wave of settlers from Earth using his Warp Drive and from there went off into deep space.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
And "Twilight" (ENT) recently said AC was in fact an Earth colony. This would mean that it must have been colonized before 2119, since at that time, Cochrane supposedly lived there. You'd have to ignore the Terra Nova colony as being the first extrasolar one (that's the second time that claim is proven to be utter nonsense).
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Why would pre-2119 establishing of Alpha Centauri conflict in any way with the establishing of Terra Nova more than 70 years prior to 2151? There's no timeline problem there.
The problem only lies in the definition of "inhabitable": the nearby AC must have been considered "uninhabitable" when the more distant TN was founded, and then something must have changed. Or then AC remains "uninhabitable", but is colonized nevertheless.
In any case, ENT has given us *some* new data. It is now highly unlikely for AC to have been a haven of transplanted Earth humans, like fanon often suggests. Otherwise, the transplanted society in "North Star" wouldn't have come as such a shock to our heroes.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: What we saw was consistant with exactly what it was; an orbiting satelite firing highly accelerated projectiles at the surface.
Saying that your opinion is correct does not actually make it so.
Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
Isn't the Connestoga a pretty cool looking ship?
Posted by Sarvek (Member # 910) on :
The Conestoga does look pretty cool. If the Valiant is based on this what would it look like??
Cheers,
Sarvek Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
I would imagine pretty much the same. Different interior layout... ship's stores and science labs instead of dormitories. Perhaps some armor plating over those windows out front. A few missile launchers and pulse weapon emplacements. Ultimately, however, the same hull.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Saying that your opinion is correct does not actually make it so.
I like to think that I speak from a position of some experience. While of course I've never seen a satellite fire projectiles at the surface (and I hope I never do) because known one has. However, I live and have lived on a very active military training area for several decades and I've probably seen just about every type of aircraft you care to name, buzzing my house on a daily basis. I've seen them landing, taking off, at night, in broad daylight, flying at high altitudes and coming unnervingly close to swiping my TV antenna off the top of my roof. I've also had a little background in amateur astronomy and I can tell you that there is no mistaking a passing satellite for an aircraft. For a start satellites are very bright, very easy to spot and go like stink in the night. While your average aircraft is just a slow moving, very dark silhouette which you probably wouldn't see at all if it weren't for the red beacons and flashing strobes. Even then you almost always hear them long before you can see them.
As for the missiles, my house is also just a few miles away from a large artillery range and have the shaky windows to prove it. Again I've seen all sorts of ordinance fired off, shells, missiles, mortars etc. and I have some sense at just how fast these things can go. Also the concept of sideways firing missiles on an air plane is unheard of in my experience and I imagine that such a thing would be a little destabilizing which is probably why all the craft that I'm aware of tend to fire along their flight path. If that is not the case then I stand corrected, it's just speculation on my part. And Liam, at no point did I decree my opinion to be unquestionable, I merely expressed that opinion. If you don't agree then you're more than welcome to offer any counter arguments that you might have.
Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
Yikes! Sideways firing missiles? Not only would the mounting of such a thing really screw up the aerodynamics, the launching of such a thing at speed would throw the weapon off course as it passed through the plane's "wake."
Good grief... the only way that MIGHT work is if you fired it from a helicopter or at best a low powered propeller plane. Certainly not a turboprop or jet propelled airplane.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Exactly. What we saw was firing from the side and if Lilly was any kind of experienced aviator (one of them had to have significant flight experience and Cochrane was apparently phobic) then she would certainly recognise that fact.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Transversely-firing weapons have their distinct advantages in situations where maneuvering alone isn't the answer ("Schr�ge Musik", anyone?). Aircraft-to-aircraft battles used to be very different when the vehicles had off-boresight weapons such as machine gun turrets or rocket cassettes, and moved more slowly.
The high-speed equivalent, the off-boresight missile, has not yet reached maturity or seen combat use, but when it does, it *should* look much like "firing from the side". The missile would necessarily separate from the vehicle pointing forward, but would veer off *very* rapidly.
And target-overflying bombers always "fire transversely", even though the initial release appears tangentical. While one may wonder why anybody would use target-overflying bombers in 2063, what we saw is just as representative of dropping retarded free-fall bombs as of "firing from the side". Except that these bombs glowed green, which is a funny thing for a bomb to do but by no means forbidden.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by japol (Member # 1149) on :
Aircraft flying at transonic and supersonic speeds have little to no use for broadside shooting. The reaction time would have to be inhuman for anyone to hit anything.
A bomber does essentially fire out of its flightpath as a rule.
Off-boresite weapons exist in the form of laser and satellite guided missiles. Once they separate from the aircraft, they target independantly based on a laser reflected off of the target from the aircraft that fired it or a forward observer on the ground; or a set of GPS coordinates fed to the weapon via satellite. They are currently only useful in hitting stationary or slow-moving targets on the ground or at sea (laser-guided) or stationary ground targets (GPS). Against a high-speed target these weapons would be completely useless, however.
This doesn't mean that the weapon we saw in First Contact couldn't be such a weapon. But I imagine they thought it was a high-yield particle weapon from an orbiting satellite.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I'm not getting into an argument over it, but:
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: And Liam, at no point did I decree my opinion to be unquestionable, I merely expressed that opinion.
Saying "This is exactly what is was" isn't expressing an opinion. It's saying that you are correct. Saying "This is what I think we saw" would be expressing an opinion.
I really should watch FC again. But that would involve buying it. Argh.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Ah, I see. Well what I meant was that it really was an orbiting satellite (ok borg sphere, but for all intents and purposes) firing at the surface. I didn't mean that Lilly MUST have thought it was a satellite, which is really crux of the argument. "What did Lilly think it was?"
My argument is simply that because it really was an object in orbit that Lilly should have recognised that fact, assuming of course she knew anything about air/space craft. Given what her role was supposed to be in the launch I'd say it's very probable that she did.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Ahh! You are right. I apologise.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
That's ok, I'm such a bad typist I'm surprised anyone can understand a word I'm saying, never mind misinterpreting it.
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