USS Flying Dutchman

So I built the USS Flying Dutchman. I like this version pretty well, but I'm sure I'll revisit the design again in the future. In the bottom image, check out the "real" deflector array I made... don't know if I've ever made a dish per se before. I've usually just made a "bank" in the past, to keep the size down... I guess this is a precident.

USS Freedom

The USS Firebrand, which was destroyed in the famous battle at Wolf359, brought a good deal of attention to the Freedom class of Starfleet ships, particularly because of its unique single-nacelle design. Of course, anyone with even a limited idea about Star Trek warp technology would know that this design simply could not work. The fact that the craft has no deflector array whatsoever only adds to the overall problem. I've always hated the Freedom class design profile and wanted to come up with a way to use the overall shape while bringing in more accepted notions about how Star Trek's warp drive works. The following diagram shows my redesigned Freedom class (yes, another one named USS Akhenaten).





The first thing I did was to double the width of the nacelle, enough to get a second set of warp drive coils in there. Secondly, I brought the saucer section down closer to the drive nacelle. Then I added an actual engineering section along the top of the nacelle. I added a deflector array between the Buzzard collectors up front, and a square impulse set to the aft dorsal pylon. I made the above schematics from Freedom (saucer), Galaxy (nacelle), and Ambassador (engineering and saucer pylon) class hull sections.

The Freedom class has a problematic design, and the limited development that went into what is considered a canonical Star Trek class is shoddy. I can't claim to have achieved greatness in my own design but at least it's cooler than the "official" craft. Below is my Lego version.




I named this vehicle "Racinante" after Don Quixote's faithful horse and after the spaceship used to go through the black hole in Rush's classic song Cygnus X-1.

USS Challenger

Well, it's not technically a Challenger Class ship. I imagined this one as a pre-Challenger class type craft, something that would be really interesting with Ambassador Class era construction. I've given the engineering hull a larger that normal portion of the ship ( a little hard to see in these images here) because I wanted the ship to have heavy science specialization. Click here for more info on the canon USS Challenger.

USS Batlh

The USS Batlh takes its name from the Klingon word for "honor."
I envisioned this one as a new class under the moniker of USS Honor, with each subsequent craft being named after different worlds' words for "honor."

I'm a little wary of naming new classes of spacecraft - it's a problem that most fans get into. In general, I like to design spacecraft that are combinations of existing classes, which is a known design paradigm. I do, however, sometimes like to make special ships or one-of-a-kind type ships. In this case, I just go with it. In any case, you won't see a bunch of new classes from me; I like the official ones just fine.

USS Akhenaten

I've been fascinated with the great Egyptian pharoah Akhenaten for a number of years. His advocacy of a single god is the first form of monotheism known. Regarded as a heretic after his reign, his records were erased. If it wasn't for the beauty of his wife, Nefertiti, he might have been forgotten forever. His achievements - beyond the revolutions he caused in Egypt's religious, social, and economic spheres - are perhaps best seen in the amazing stylized naturalism he ushered in to Egyptian art. The Amarna period of Egyptian art brought about some of the greatest works of creative genius known to exist in any time.

Click here for an awesome site on Akhenaten.

In any case, I've been interested in using the stylized forms that appeared in the Amarna period artworks as inspiration for a Star Trek ship design. Below is one of many sketches I've made. The most important aspect of the design for me is the angled saucer and engineering sections. The sketch seen here is something I'd like to build at some point, particularly because of the design points it shares with the Galaxy and Ambassador Classes that are my favorites of the Star Trek line. I realize that a USS Akhenaten does exist in the Star Trek fan universe... I just think it should be cooler.




Below is just one of many variations I've made on this general Akhenaten theme. This particular ship, like the USS Flying Dutchman idea shown below, is meant to be a stealth craft - perhaps used by Section 31.






Update:

I've constructed a new variation of the Akhenaten based directly on the sketch seen above. Check it out.

USS Imhotep

The USS Imhotep is named after the famous Eygptian architect who built Egypt's first pyramid. Imhotep is "often recognized as the world's first doctor, a priest,. scribe, sage, poet, astrologer, and a vizier and chief minister, though this role is unclear, to Djoser (reigned 2630–2611 BC), the second king of Egypt's third dynasty."

I concieved of the USS Imhotep as an updated Mirdana Class spacecraft. I realize that the Nebula Class and its variants took up the mission of the Mirandas, but I really liked that "rollbar" look and decided to bring it back.

USS Flying Dutchman

The USS Flying Dutchman is basically just a design configuration and name idea that I've sketched out a few times. I like the name, which refers to the classic story of the doomed Dutch shiptrying to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. Click here to check out the legend.

Given the phantom nature of the legendary ship, I envisioned the USS Flying Dutchman as a covert or special operations craft, perhaps using specialized stealth technology.

In terms of the design, I wanted to incorporate aspects of Intrepid, Prometheus classes of ships, Additionally, I wanted a strange transition to Engineering and a downturned nacelle profile. I haven't built this one yet, but I've tried a few times.

USS Kuiper

This is the USS Kuiper was named after the Kuiper Belt, a "disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune extending roughly from 30 to 50 AU from the Sun containing many small icy bodies. It is considered to be the source of the short-period comets."

Meant to be a light cruiser, the semi-experimental design more fully integrates the "saucer" and "nacelle" sections of the ship in an effort to limit spatial damage caused by warp fields in susceptible regions of space. This ship's small size (51 meters), however, meant that its warp field displacement was negligible anyway.