posted
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.)
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?
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posted
Well basically I have to ask: Why would the nacelles need to look any different externally in order for them to be newer? I mean, all you really need to change are the field coils INSIDE the nacelles.
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
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posted
Yeah - sorta like replacing the engine under the hood of a car with a newer, more powerful version. I have a brother who did exactly that with his CRX. From the outside, you can't tell that the engine was a heckuva lot more powerful. Basically, it's the same thing here.
posted
There's also a third viewpoint to consider: perhaps those older ships are in fact just as old as they look, internally as well as externally? Perhaps Starfleet has so far had no interest in upgrading them in any way?
Today, military technology needs an "edge" to compete with other military technology that also strives for the "edge". But one could basically still successfully trade wheat using 19th century sailing ships, or explore the seas using Cook's old Endeavour.
In Trek, military escalation has an added twist - your opponent may not be the child of the same escalation process you are. He may be centuries ahead of you, or millennia behind.
So there could be some logic to building a spaceworthy and long-living ship, then completely refusing to upgrade it in any manner for its century-or-so lifetime. (Oh, perhaps you could install the newest-model comm software so that the hails would get through, or a newest-fashion interior decor...) A refit would always be a compromise, and building a completely new ship might offer better tactical *and* financial gain. You don't lose an old ship when you get a new one...
Of course, this would backfire in the Dominion war where older ships would have to join the newer in battle. A Miranda of early 24th century speed standards would slow down the entire fleet to a fraction of its potential speed. But perhaps speed is not of essence as long as any ship can go from star to star in less than a week?
quote:Originally posted by The359: Well basically I have to ask: Why would the nacelles need to look any different externally in order for them to be newer? I mean, all you really need to change are the field coils INSIDE the nacelles.
True, but if you wanted to eliminate having to construct eight gajillion different versions of a warp coil, you might end up wanting to use, say, a New Orleans coil, which won't fit in a Miranda or Excelsior nacelle.
There are several presumptions in what I wrote, such as the notion that warp coil manufacture is not something you and a couple of engineers do in a weekend, and the notion that there is meaning (i.e. "it's better") to the overall pattern of wider warp nacelles and coils (leaving out, for a moment, the Sovereign family of nacelles, which includes the Nova).
After all, if there's no point whatsoever in swapping out the whole nacelle due to warp coils, why in the world don't all starship still have the round TOS (and, for that matter, ENT)nacelles?
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
Don't confuse the nacelles with the coils. A nacelle is simply a fairing, an aesthetic holding vessel. We don't know a lot of possible variables in coil design & placement to make a judgement call.
For all we know, because of the design of saucers up to & including the Excelsior-class, there may only need to be the merest fraction of a gap between coil halves; indeed, there may not even NEED to be halved coils. Maybe the idea of a halved coil came about due to the excessively large size of the Ambassador-class & so only ships of about 2.75 million metric tons & above need the halved coil. That could be why the Defiant was so powerful she almost shook herself apart & why the Intrepids can be so damn fast--they're smaller & can use "whole coils," but utilize the halved ones because it gives them a power or speed advantage.
Maybe the shape of the coil is defined by the hull planform, & thus the shape of the warp field. I think Defiant coils are shaped somewhat differently than Galaxy ones, & there's thoughts that Sovereign coils are triangular. Look at those odd rectangular ones from the Danube-class; they've hardly any bumpiness at all. Maybe the general overall design as well as the placement of the "nooks & crannies" are part of the field shaping, & older ships such as Constitutions, Constellations, & Mirandas simply can't USE more modern techniques or designs. Sure, they can benefit from them--a new set of coils with a couple extra nubs or nooks--but they'd not be substantially different than from when the class was designed. Notice that it seems that warp coil design is one of the first things worked on & finalized in any new ship project?
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Amasov Prime
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posted
The Norway-Miranda reminds me on something. A ship I've seen ages ago... hmmm...
I don't know who said this, maybe it's totally unofficial, maybe it's from a canon source, but the NX-Excelsior had large-scale warp nacelles to fit the experimantal transwarp-drive. That was at least the basic idea for the fact that Excelsior's nacelles were heavily oversized compared with other ship/nacelle-relations of that timeframe. Later, when the drive had been removed, starfleet decided to continue using the large-scale nacelles allthough the standard-drive didn't need that much space (can't remember the reason, but it sounded realistic). Maybe we have the same here: the old nacelle housings are updated with newer engines.
We're not talking abou some perfectly-fitting kitbashes here; the Galaxy-nacelles are not available in 20 different sizes for example. You have to decide which one to use, and maybe the nacelles you finally install are too powerful. Or you can't integrate them into the spaceframe because of their shape. Something like that. Of course if we look at some Wolf-kitbashes, the rule is broken several times (Niagara anyone?). But you can always try to rescale them to fit the shape. To clarify this, take the Galaxy-nacelles and add them to the Miranda (And don't change the scale). You will get some weired speedboat-mega-booster thing, but nothing that really fits the design.
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Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
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posted
I am willing to bet that the nacelles are part new technology and part old technology. If you look at naval ships, most speifically the Iowa class battleships, their entire propulsion package is basically unchanged. Its because basically there is no reason why they should change it due to that the ships still have the same range, the same speed, the upkeep is the same. You don't fix something that is not broken.
Only when the ships are extremely out of date such as sail power vs. nuclear power, when you replace the engine or replace the ship.
Th is type of feeling is always felt through the naval industry because it is quite expensive to build a ship. If you look at it, perhaps the reason why Mirandas are in ad Constitution Type 2s are out because Mirandas are easier to build, fix, and cheaper to keep. The Excelsiors are just large in numbers and besides their combat abilities I can imagine these ships having semi-state of the art sensor equipment.
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posted
As someone who works in electronics I can tell you that, my company at least, will do whatever it can to not change the structure of a piece of equipment but will upgrade the hardware and software inside first. Only if the basic stucture has to change for safety reasons do they change the structure. Normally the new parts are made to fit inside of the old housings. It is usually a lot more cost effective to do things this way as electronics are cheap to change as compare to redesigning the whole outer structure.
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posted
Hey, we still use the same Pratt & Whitney TF-33-P-7 axial flow turbofan engines on the C-141 that they designed back in the 50's. They are powerful engines on a great plane, and there is no need to upgrade them. They suck down a little more gas that the modern equivilant, but they aren't broken, so why fix them?
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posted
Starships aren't planes, or casings for electronics, or WW2 battleships. They are starships.
First, all a C-141B need do is fly the cargo it can carry, which is the exact same mission it originally had (unlike, say, the A-10, whose TF34 engines are driven much harder than originally intended due to the modern preference for lower-altitude, higher speed operations). It need not outpace other aircraft such as a starship might need to outpace another starship. The only way the C-141 might need more power is if it could carry more cargo . . . but then, it would be a C-5 or C-17 anyway. Second, turbofan engine design hasn't changed all that much since the 60s (when titanium became a common engine material), much less since the early 80's when the modern C-141 fleet (B-type) was constructed, and earlier models were converted. Also, there's economics involved . . . replacement of an engine, if required, would be expensive with a brand spankin' new ubertech engine, but much less expensive if you keep making the same parts for the same engine.
Casings for electronics? That's fine. Computer casings haven't changed all that much in the past couple of decades. However, a warp nacelle is hardly a computer casing. A better analogy might be mobile data storage device . . . we've gone from huge floppy disks holding 360kb, to 5.25 disks holding 720kb, to 3.5 disks holding 1.44mb . . . until a friend of mine recently showed me his digital camera, with a tiny memory stick the size of an isolinear chip holding 64mb.
Now, I suppose that if they'd really wanted to, they could have put the memory stick inside the casing for a 3.5 floppy, but I really don't see why one would bother.
As for WW2 battleships . . . well, the Iowa Class (such as the USS New Jersey) did undergo a major internal refit to her engines, switching them from burning black oil to Navy distillate fuel in the early 80's. This was rather like the refit of the Texas (BB 35) which was switched from coal to oil in the 20's. In both cases, major modifications were made to the ships internally . . . all the pumps, half the valves, and most of the foundations for these were rebuilt from scratch on the New Jersey. Sure, the screws were still there just like on any other ship, but short of going MHD on it, there's not much you can do with a propeller.
The difference there is that, with the exception of the screws, the propulsion of a battleship is all internal. The warp nacelles are outboard equipment, and we know that these can be switched in their entirety when the technology is updated (ST:TMP).
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posted
I believe the properties of a nacelle influences the warp field it generates which interacts with the subspace geometry of a vessel.
So if Excelsior and Miranda's nacelles are designed for them, why change them, when it could necessitate an extensive change to the hull?
You keep saying that newer nacelles are better, but I really don't think it matters. Starfleet designs ships with long service lives, so they have to keep the middle-aged effectiveness of ships well in mind. And there's really no reason why internal improvements can't suffice. After all, if Chief O'Brian believes that an old Excelsior like the Lakota can be "tinkered" to a point where she could possibily overtake a Defiant at warp, it's good enough for me. We really don't know how "slow" the Excelsiors and Mirandas were to begin with anyways, the gap could be much smaller than we thought.
And why is a starship or different from a car, a WWII battleship, or a computer? They all share a certain sense of logic in design and use. We know enough about starships to know that they are worked and maintained like machines today.
Warp nacelles are like propellers on a ship today, which are also "outboard", all they do is to take the power provided and make it move the ship. There's only so much you can change.
I love the nacelles on the Excelsiors, and I think it'd be absolutely horrid if someone swap them for a TNG-era nacelle. It's worst than trying to fix something not broken, it's trying to fix something that works wonderfully.
[ March 04, 2002, 19:36: Message edited by: David Templar ]
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