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A little bit of conjecture I've been working on as a side project to my Antares and Kobayashi Maru plans. Supposedly the standard Starfleet escape pod of the mid 23rd century, with some stylistic links with the Travel Pod from TMP.
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I would only need one pilot's station. The rest of that area could be devoted to seating and/or emergency equipment. The pilot would need to have visual contact with whatever he was aiming at. Noone else really would.
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It's cool but the window shape and overall curved design makes ot look more like a TNG era travelpod than a TOS escape pod. Your pod makes the Galielo shuttlecraft look too primitave (to me at least). You could just give it a hard angled front with one cwntered window (both in the TOS shuttle style) to make it a perfect period piece. The rear is flawless IMHO.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Aban Rune: I would only need one pilot's station. The rest of that area could be devoted to seating and/or emergency equipment. The pilot would need to have visual contact with whatever he was aiming at. Noone else really would.
Absolutely correct.
quote: It's cool but the window shape and overall curved design makes ot look more like a TNG era travelpod than a TOS escape pod. Your pod makes the Galielo shuttlecraft look too primitave (to me at least). You could just give it a hard angled front with one cwntered window (both in the TOS shuttle style) to make it a perfect period piece. The rear is flawless IMHO.
I tried the vintage angled approach but it just looked like a malformed shuttlecraft with no nacelles. I've since developed it into a mass evacuation life boat, like those onboard the Saratoga at W359.
As for the shape of the window... I thought it best to have a relatively wide view forward with a smaller slit trailing off to the left to save on valuable internal space. Form follows function.
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Great job Reverend. What would be cool to see is a comparison of the Enterprise Inspection Pod vs. the TOS era Escape Pod vs. the Travel Pod from ST:TMP.
Reverend, your design does make sense. It follows a lineage and does it quite well.
Registered: Oct 2002
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Actually flipping through the TNG movie sketch book - I'm wondering if the front part of the Phoenix is anything like the Enterprise inspection pod?
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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What I find unsatisfactory in this pod is not the TNG feeling it evokes (it does, since that window shape is so characteristic). It's the lack of functionality in the intended role.
The "First Contact" pods were full of things an orbit-to-surface evacuation pod from the 21st century would have - heat shields, retro-rockets, parachute compartments. The Saratoga pod was big and complex and had lots of greeblies that could be mistaken for these vital functions. OTOH, the ST:TMP travel pod and the ENT inspection pod clearly look like orbital craft that cannot make a controlled reentry and would be next to useless for evacuation. And this pod evokes all the wrong associations with the latter and not with the former.
Sure, one could evacuate from a dying starship to open space, and not aim for a planet at all. But carrying special pods for space-only evac would be silly when the same pods could carry the more useful planetfall gear, too.
Add a parachute compartment with a painfully obvious hinged or blowaway cover. And/or add retro-rockets for touchdown. Add legs or other protrusions (fixed, preferably) that will hold the thing upright after planetfall (the current pod would just roll to the nearest lake!) Add high-visibility markings (like, a dayglo "5" five times bigger than the current one) and big blinking beacons. Paint part of the hull differently, to make it look like a heat shield.
Most importantly, make the thing *ugly*. All scifi evac pods look ugly. Presumably, they aren't intended to operate long enough to require aesthetics.
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First off the resemblance to the TMP Travel Pod was not my original intention, it only occurred to me much later when I started on the detailing.
Secondly if I had bestowed upon this pod a large amount of ugly surface detailing then I believe that it would be much harder for people to accept it as a TOS-era design. Rest assured that all the features you have listed (with the possible exception of landing gear) would be present but for the most part hidden behind the type of invisible panels that is typical of all TOS era designs.
If you actually look at the plans you should be able to spot little groups of strategically placed rectangles, these are meant to be RCS thrusters and landing jets. As for retro rockets; it should be noted that both the NX-01 shuttle pods and the later Galileo Shuttle seamed to be perfectly capable of vertical take off and landing without them so I don't see any real need for them here.
If there were an instance when a rapid deceleration were required immediately before touchdown then I think the best solution would be to turn the pod around in mid flight (presumably using the same shield system that makes the boxy Galileo aero-dynamic) and use the impulse thrusters to slow the craft and make touch down with the pod's nose pointing skywards.
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I just don't feel that impulse engines, antigrav landing systems and such would be viable technologies for an evacuation vehicle. I mean, an ejection seat does not have a jet engine, a pair of wings, and a tricycle landing gear, even though its "mothership" does, and the seat itself theoretically could. Instead, it has less service-intensive, more reliable and affordable alternatives: a rocket, a parachute, and the pilot's own two (hopefully!) feet.
Furthermore, if you can afford to make an evacuation pod that in practice is a shuttlecraft, then it certainly makes no sense to carry shuttlecraft. An evacuation pod should be something the ship is *ashamed* to even possess, something that should never see use. You don't install your latest supertech on something that you hope to be useless.
Basically, I feel era-specific escape pods are impossible anyway. This technology should be so rugged that it was perfected in the early 21st century already, and will not change for the next thousand years - much as is the case with lifeboats at sea.
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I hope you don't mind my hijacking this thread, but I have my own interpretation of a TOS era lifeboat. You got my mind working on this and not on what I was supposed to be doing at work! I originally did this in Powerpoint, and just redid it in CorelDRAW when I got home. My version is more of a blend of the travel pod and the Galileo type shuttle. However, I couldn't decide between the "standard" paint job and the present day-glow orange, so I did both: TOS Lifeboat 1 TOS Lifeboat 2
Timo: Present-day ships carry both lifeboats and various launches. I'm sure you could use a lifeboat as a launch if you wanted to, but there are many reasons I can think of why you don't.
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My argument was more on the lines that if you build lifeboats that are like launches, then you either are breaking some rules of common sense, or have an infinite budget. In either case, launches and lifeboats then become redundant as separate concepts, and should be considered "lifelaunches" instead.
Current ships carry separate lifeboats/rafts and launches for the very reason that the former are not versatile enough to do the job of the latter, while the latter are too expensive to do the job of the former. To be believable, Trek auxiliaries should reflect the same economics. To be futuristic, they should be bold enough to ignore the economic rules altogether and go to the logical conclusion of "lifelaunches".
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Just a question about lifeboats/escape pods. If you're in them for several days/weeks a la "Year of Hell" - what do you do about ablutions?? "Can everyone just move 10 cm to port - I've REALLY gotta go!"
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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I originally did this in Powerpoint, and just redid it in CorelDRAW when I got home. My version is more of a blend of the travel pod and the Galileo type shuttle. However, I couldn't decide between the "standard" paint job and the present day-glow orange, so I did both:
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