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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [QB] Has anyone ever fielded any theories as to why old Excelsiors and Mirandas still use their same old nacelles? I thought of this after looking at Kyle's rendition of a Niagara with Ambassador-type nacelles, and it just struck me funny. I would assume, of course, that there's no difficulty in ripping out the old coils and replacing them with newer and/or more advanced ones. It simply strikes me as odd, though, that in the 24th Century, when the fleet's engine nacelle (and presumably coil) designs seemed to be driving toward being wider and flatter, they were still squeezing thin coils into those nacelles . . . not to mention how they apparently didn't update the Bussard collectors to the red glowy ones preferred on later starship types. Granted, totally switching out the nacelles on the apparently huge number of Mirandas and Excelsiors which were constructed would be a massive undertaking. I can't imagine, though, that the incredible multiplication of parts required to service all the different warp nacelle configurations of starships is all that cheap and easy, either. We see a needless multiplicity of designs all around us, of course. Every car, even from the same company, has a completely different engine these days (though Ford did recently start using a modular engine in Mustangs and Thunderbirds). The United States Air Force operates several classes of fighter, each in various versions, and no parts can be shared between them (though there is the new JSF, designed to be a common planform between aircraft of various roles). Granted, interchangeable parts often aren't, but it seems more expensive not to even try. ******* I've borrowed a bit from the Ex Astris Scientia fleet chart to show the Excelsior and Miranda with newer engines off of other ship classes. I've tried to use engines off of vessels with similar volume, where possible, under the presumption that the mass might be somewhat similar. (I thought about the possibility that the old engine configurations might be required to push older vessels of greater mass per volume (suggesting the peculiar notion that newer engines might be weaker somehow, but perhaps far more efficient), but then it occurred to me that with the newer-build Mirandas and Excelsiors, that ought not be a problem.) The engines are placed in about the same location as the old engines, and with the same connection hardpoints as on the newer starships, just for the sake of keeping the transition as easy and painless as possible, without too much redesign of ship or engine. (I assume warp cores and plasma conduits might need to be changed, but I assume this has to happen on starships at some point anyway.) You can see it here: http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~randers2/funnyexcel.jpg Once you get past the aesthetic peculiarities of the picture itself, you can see the aesthetic peculiarities of the retrofitted ships. Yeah, the Excelsior just doesn't look right at all with New Orleans nacelles . . . but on the other hand, the ship would have a much smaller shield envelope once you've snipped 60 meters off the back . . . and once you look at it long enough (as I've been doing while making it and writing this), you get used to it. I also stuck New Orleans nacelles on a Miranda, even though the rest of the New Orleans spaceframe is much larger than a Miranda. You can see that the length of the engines fits a bit better to our normal conception of a Miranda, though there's no savings in shield envelope unless you scoot the engines to the forwardmost position where you can still have the connection pylons similarly located. I then noticed the Norway, with her more similarly-sized spaceframe to the Miranda, so I slapped her engines on. This one looks funny, and given how far away the Norway keeps her engines from the rest of the ship, might not be safe. The most interesting one is the Yeager-engined Miranda . . . I was thinking of the Intrepid engines, but the Yeager ones were easier to cut and paste. Sure, they probably couldn't get Intrepid speeds out of them on a Miranda spaceframe, but I can't imagine these would be worse than what's on there now. Anyway, just a thought. Ideas? [/QB][/QUOTE]
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