I reckon after doing that chart that these DY ships could end up morphing toward the Conestoga and the Valiant. Sorta like they've added the phoenix cockpit and nacelles to the body (and removed the coning tower). Works especially for the Conestoga which seems to have those cargo pods below it (which dropped to Terra Nova as their housing or something).
Andrew
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Do i even need to inflate your ego still furthur by heaping yet more praise on your work?
Oh, i do... fantastic as ever
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That's another great design, Kris! I like how you're filling these old hulks in -- these days it's so common to get the usual saucer-and-nacelles designs. Though the really early spaceflight era isn't really too exciting, it's still fun to see these more original configurations.
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It's an early eighties publication that draws a lineage of Earth ship designs from the late 1900s to the 2200s. A chronology based on TOS and TAS, and riding on the publicity of TMP. The text is by two people whose names are more often forgotten than not, but the art is by one Rick Sternbach...
There are graphic timelines there, with 2D b&w images of ships placed on key points. And short articles on "topics of interest" (usually fictional events, but sometimes commentaries on things that were mentioned in TOS or TAS). And then spec pages on important ships, with a color painting of the ship plus technical statistics. The Wheeler is from one such page, IIRC.
Generally, the ships bear virtually no resemblance to anything we saw later on in Trek - it is assumed that early Earth ships did NOT look like clumsier versions of the NCC-1701, but were fundamentally different in shape. And the 2D drawings are often so vague that they don't translate into 3D ships at all, not without a vivid imagination anyway. Rick got quite a bit better in his later years...
Timo in of course correct, it is an old publication which is quite out of date in may repects which is half the reason I have chosen to incorperate the two DY ships featured within. If you're interestd, someone has been kind enough to dedicat a section of their website to the diagrams and artwork of the chronology, here's the link.
quote: I reckon after doing that chart that these DY ships could end up morphing toward the Conestoga and the Valiant. Sorta like they've added the phoenix cockpit and nacelles to the body (and removed the coning tower). Works especially for the Conestoga which seems to have those cargo pods below it (which dropped to Terra Nova as their housing or something).
That would be quite difficult considering that the Conestoga and the Valiant predatemost of these ships (eveything from DY-500 onwards by my reckoning). I generally consider the DY family to be seperate from most of the better known design lineages, however I have actually decided to go back and flesh out the Valiant Conestoga line sometime down the road.
quote: That's another great design, Kris! I like how you're filling these old hulks in -- these days it's so common to get the usual saucer-and-nacelles designs. Though the really early spaceflight era isn't really too exciting, it's still fun to see these more original configurations.
Ta very much. This is indeed an obscure and often neglected period in trek ship designs but it's something that I've always had a curiosity for. Perhaps it's because these kinds of early ships are more closely tied in with real science and real physics than say a 23rd or 24th Century starship. Also I kind of like the idea that these vessels are quite primitive and not entirely safe which to me gives them far more character and shows just how dangerous space travel can be.
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