posted
I'm surprised no one mentioned the Excalibur from Crusade...
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Registered: Nov 2000
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"Lexx. Now there's a spliff induced design if ever I saw one!"
I don't know that they really had to be high to design it. I mean, it's just a giant space-penis made to look kind of bug-like.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Quite a few of the ships in the various Tenchi Muyo! series and movies are particularly graceful. I'm trying to remember what the Pioneer from Buck Rogers looked like.
The long skinny design mode doesn't work well for sci-fi with a lot of conflict. That's one of the reasons the Rebel frigates stand out in our memories. Ships that fragile-looking seem like they shouldnt be in combat situations -- let alone do well in said situations. That's why they tend to show up more as set-peices, as the Discovery and Event Horizon demonstrate to good advantage.
posted
I don't quite know if the Excalibur qualifies for the same reason the D7 doesn't qualify... the forward section of the Excalibur isn't big enough, IMO.
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Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Actually, the D7 is more in keeping with the design philosophy - separating drive and control/living sections, even if parts of the rear section are in fact habitable in this case. Excalibur, however, isn't built around the same principle, since all that's at the end of the pylon/shaft are the main guns.
posted
Peregrinus, thanks for those. Just what I was looking for.
Yes, I discounted the Excalibur because the spacecraft is essentially the aft section with a large weapons platform mounted on the end of a long pylon.
On reflection, the D7 is probably a contender as Lee suggests. Perhaps it's the relative sizes of the two sections which is misleading. The "head" would actually contain a lot of volume, although some of that is sacrificed to the torpedo launcher.
quote: The long skinny design mode doesn't work well for sci-fi with a lot of conflict. That's one of the reasons the Rebel frigates stand out in our memories. Ships that fragile-looking seem like they shouldnt be in combat situations -- let alone do well in said situations. That's why they tend to show up more as set-peices, as the Discovery and Event Horizon demonstrate to good advantage.
Well, actually, it all depends on your frame of reference. I know a gentleman who is a naval architect in his day job and so is familiar with the principles of warship design and engineering generally. He once created a 3D computer model of a double ended spacecraft. Imagine a long central shaft with a centrifuge torus at the centre. Offset from that is a pod containing the command and control. At either end you have a main drive assembly which also contains the main weapons systems. The ship can thus accelerate, brake and accelerate without having to flip over to point it's engines in the right direction. It is also designed to that if one end of the ship gets shot off, the spacecraft can survive, fight and propel itself using the remaining drive section!
Of course, he designed this ship with real physics in mind. As such, his spacecraft is limited by the constraints of human biology, which prevents him accelerating much above 5g in any direction for more than 3 to 5 minutes at a time. In the Star Trek or Star Wars frames of reference this ship would be overwhelmed by spacecraft using faster than light drives, inertial dampers and unfeasibly powerful force field shields and directed energy weapons, against which his reaction drives and rail guns would be ineffective.
I will ask him for permission to post the image here. It's rather nice looking. Parts are mirrored for defence against lasers.
Also, Larry Niven imagined conflict between ramscoop ships designed as components strung along the length of miles long tethers. You can find an extract of this text at this link http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aj.html#derivatives It's the second section from the bottom of the page.
I suppose that such a distributed set of components might actually be harder to hit than a compact, voluminous hull. And cutting the tether would be extremely unlikely, just as they discovered in World War I when they tried to use artillery bombardments to cut barbeb wire. All they succeeded in doing was moving it around.
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posted
Just remembered that the ships in the Honor Harrington universe are another set of rather long, phallic-looking ships.
Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Star Trek and Star Wars ships shjould really be disqualified from such a General-Sci-Fi-oriented discussion anyway, because they operate from a different set of physical assumptions. The "reality," of combat especially, would preclude ships interacting at close visual range at near-identical relative velocities. The Discovery may look fragile and near-motionless but in fact it's moving at a great clip (I'm not sure of what speeds Clarke specifies in the book version) and - although not mentioned in the film and likely ignored by the designers, probably because the film had Jupiter as the destination, not a way-station - was intended to use the Jovian upper atmosphere for aerobraking (as Leonov did in the sequel).
posted
Actually, the D7 is more in keeping with the design philosophy - separating drive and control/living sections, even if parts of the rear section are in fact habitable in this case.
Then what about the Vorcha, the Neg'Var, the D-5(Enterprise), or the Raptor(Enterprise)?
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I suppose that four-naceled Excelsior testbed would qualify.
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Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Event Horizon is one of the most underappreciated horror movies of the 90's, it's so sad that it got fashionable to piss on it. It's the first space horror movie since "Aliens" that approached that level of creepiness, I'd say, thinking of the scene with the "lost log" found in the ship's computer. And it was the first time I ever saw believable explosive decompression (compared to the PG'd flashfreeze in "Mission To Mars"). As for the ship, isn't it like the largest ship miniature ever used for a movie?
Does anyone have a screenshot of that later, Romulan Warbird-looking ship-class we see in the very end of the movie, when the infomercial shows the humans having developed better rifles, ships and anti-meteor defenses? I don't have the DVD.
Those ships looked cool, like a cross between a Warbird, the Rodger Young and a WH40K-ship.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
I don't remember a Pioneer in Buck rogers. Do you mean the Searcher?
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Registered: Jun 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Nim: Event Horizon is one of the most underappreciated horror movies of the 90's, it's so sad that it got fashionable to piss on it.
Fashionable, my ass. My wife and I both independently thought it was a piece of crap. The reasoning is mostly because it fooled us into thinking that it was a sci-fi movie. Instead, we got a horror movie, and neither of us are into horror at all.
Registered: Jul 2002
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