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Mid 24th Century Federation Freighter
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Reverend: [QB] I don't think it'd be particularly smart to have you lifeboats in constant use and exposed to wear and tear. I'd rather have them safe and sound and largely untouched in the shuttle bay and subject to regular safety inspections. Having the travel pod there was just an idea I had to make the ship visually interesting. It would also give the aft section - from which most of the docking and cargo operations are managed and which would double as Aux control - a degree on independence. For example, during a busy cargo operation, if someone in the aft section needs to disembark, it would be more practical for them to take the pod from the aft airlock than to traipse through to the shuttle bay or take the transporter (the transporter requiring another person to run it.) The pod would also be useful if they need to make an exterior inspection of the hull in deep space (like the inspection pods the NX-01 carried). While a Work bee could certainly do it, they're a little cramped and can only hold one person, so a pod is better. There's also the possibility that the walkways between the fore and aft section become impassable due to an accident/leak/hull breach/whatever. Remember that this is from a time before site-to-site transports were common place and there was still much more reliance on physical transportation. As for the size/landing issues, nine modules is the MAXIMUM, but by no means common or even optimum configuration. You're right, landing a ship of that length in a 1G atmospheric environment would certainly be challenging, though with anti-grav thrusters and a robust SIF generators by no means impossible. Landing sites would have to be carefully chosen; an old seabed like the Arizona salt flats or the arid plateaus in Peru should suffice. Of course a 0.1G, class-D planetoid shouldn't pose any problem at all, nor should a station like Starbase 74. [QUOTE]However I think there would be enough commonality of parts and engines that a fully enclosed version could easily be built, one that didn't carry those modules but was a complete, one-piece starship with good hold-space rather than modules.[/QUOTE]I'm not opposed to that, though the idea of modules is to allow for greater versatility in the types of cargo it can carry. An empty cargo bay is great for storing boxes of self sealing stem bolts, spare tricorders and jars of Ne'sKaf'ehh brand instant Raktajino, but if you need to transport Quadrotriticale in bulk, a bulk storage silo would be more useful. Likewise if you needed to transport liqids, compressed gases or the like, a dedicated and specially designed pod is more efficient than stacking up a bunch of smaller canisters and barrels. [QUOTE]Incidentally, with just one or two container sections, this Deneva would look quite a lot like the "Merchantman" at a distance - which would be nice if we ever got a HDTV version of the visual effects that showed that this was used for the nondescript blip that precedes the explosion. But perhaps you had this in mind already?[/QUOTE]As I recall from the screen caps there were 2 candidates for what they actually used. One was the old Merchantman, the other was the [URL=http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/alphabeta_ships3.htm]Lysian sentry pod[/URL]. As you say, it is passably of a similar shape to the merchantman and as for the other design, I ahve planned for that too. I you look at the dorsal view there are a set of 3 comb like hingey looking details. These are hatches that cover some very hefty docking latches, to which can be attached a heavy duty harness which enables the ship to support a very large pair of cargo containers (or a size that I think Kenny would approve) that are proportionally equivalent to the engine pods on that generic miniature. I've just never gotten around to designing it, though the intention has always been there. ;) [/QB][/QUOTE]
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