I find I like playing in Trek's past. This work in progress ship is a colony support/supply craft making warp 2 runs to, as the name implies, Alpha Centauri in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries. The only place it is designed to go is Alpha Centauri and back to Earth, refueling at each system. Thought I break Gene's Rules with a beefy single warp engine that provides a cruising speed close to warp 2 for the duration of its flight. I figure, like most significant inventions, research on different types of warp engines would be conducted until the twin nacelle design won out. Not to worry, this engine creates paraxial warp fields which are well suited to the cylindrical planform of the fuselage, yet are not very efficient for other designs such as Y or J class freighters. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.
The ship is divided into two main sections, each manufactured by two separate corporations working in partnership. The forward habitat and cargo modules are produced by Daedalus Flight Systems, a company that grew out of European and Russian aerospace companies after WW3, while the navigation deflector, reactor and warp engine is built by Global Atomics-Propulsion Division, whose roots are with General Atomics (I figured since they develop nuclear reactors, their successors would move on to antiproton reactors). The two companies united to form the Daedalus Global Partnership. Once the production contracts were met and expired, and the partnership resolved, DFS took ownership of the remaining DGP-120s and refitted them with typical twin nacelles from Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems.
In this image is a mobile home I started using for scale reference, and there is a 12m cargo container just to make sure my cargo pods could hold one. They can hold two with room on the sides.
As this is a ship from the 2090s, I decided use some current space station design cues for the EVA airlock, and the mating assembly. To balance the design I'm currently working on the communication modules before adding more windows and panels. My first try on cutting in the windows was a Boolean disaster that moving things around in the modifier stack did not help. The easy fix that would also work in the fictional production design was to do Boolean slices for a window segment, and give the slice mesh the difference operation. Then just array it all into place. I plan to add windows in the aft of the "golfball", and I forgot to mention that this is a sleeper ship, because even a 6 month voyage will be very boring for a craft that is not a pleasure cruiser. Hey, you're fedexed as a popsicle for your sanity and economy. The large windows are the flight deck up near the ceiling. Yes, the decks are building style. There are 8 decks in the "golfball" and about 8 or10 in the "golf-tee."
The "golf-tee" is the services and cargo module, with plenty of room inside for internal storage. The pods can be un-berthed and fitted in orbit for de-orbiting and planetary landing.
Oh yeah, and the big hexagonal dishes are the subspace radio antennas. They may be moved to a new location later.
If you are going to have plasma running through the middle of your warp engine, why not use it for impulse engine too?
Originally the deuterium tanks were going to be exposed in a truss, but I didn't feel like taxing my non-existent engineering skills to design a framework that would support the tanks for all the flight forces they would endure, so cover them up. Then I had refueling ports for each tank, until I realized it would have a fuel transfer system inside, I knocked them down to two. Silly me. Yeah, the red things are the antiproton pods.
Still a lot more details to add (all over), and dammit I love my paneling method.
Using naked spot lights for the general idea. They will be replaced by physical lamps. I just don't like phantom light sources.
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You can skirt this rule by interlacing the warp coils instead of running them "parallel" like in twin nacelle designs. This is how I justify the Saladin and Freedom class designs.
I love the thought that you're putting into this project. Looking forward to more!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqRhLEHgwgTKxsalM5YznYQ
Formerly furswift
Just some ideas here and there that stalled out that is worth it's own thread.
I'm skirting the rule be being inspired by baseball and ying-yang superconducting coils used in fusion reactor experiments. Something that isn't the normal C-shaped coils in the normal arrangement.
I haven't done any work on the modeling lately due to making a data sheet with specs and info, and having to figure out an approximate mass that sounds reasonable. But here are some images of the EVA Airlock/Docking Module before I put them in their final configuration.
It's a static model thus the hatches and doors don't open. Sure it could use some more detail, but how much are you going to see from a distance?