Sojourner's Myriad Unfinished Works

[sojourner]

Well, thought I'd post some other designs I have worked on (tho never finish ) all in one thread.  So as not to mess the place up with a bunch of threads.

The old fan design of the Capella:




A design that did not work out:


An original design for my own personal setting (non-trek):


Re-using some parts from the design that didn't work to develop a Heavy Cruiser.  Roughly TNG time period:





First ship I ever tried in 3-D and coincidentally, the closest one I came to finishing:




Cheers!

[lt ponytail]

For your desgin that did not work out: maybe try moving the nacelles forward of the saucer and attaching them to the stardrive section

For the first ship you made, try making the bussards less flat in shading

[Juvat]

You've got some interesting designs here.  I really like the "one that didn't work out" and feel like you should finish it up.  It's unique layout is very, very cool.  Don't change a thing about it...especially the nacelles.  Dunno what it is about them...

[Makaveli]

Yea gotta agree, that ship that you said wouldnt work out just looks like an awesome concept idea... you should expand upon it... if you dont I might just have to base a design off of it lol.

[sojourner]

thanks for the comments on the failed design. I may get back to it at some point.  As you can probably tell I generally loose interest after I get the major layout worked out.  I suck at the details and "greebles".  Everytime I look at Vektor's work I want to cry. I have been doing some work on the Heavy Cruiser right now.  I am currently trying to decide on a layout for the shuttlebay(s).  This ship is a TNG era Heavy Cruiser, somewhere around the size of the Ambassador Class.  Here are the two designs I have fleshed out.  Ignore that cutout at the back of the engineering hull. It's going away.

[BorgMan]

With those big 'ole bays, it slips directly into carrier territory, which I dig a lot. Perhaps you can look into giving it more usable space for fighters?

[Cleetus]

I love the Capella, "the design that didn't work out", and the Heavy Cruiser.

[sojourner]

With those big 'ole bays, it slips directly into carrier territory, which I dig a lot. Perhaps you can look into giving it more usable space for fighters?

If I was going to do a dedicated carrier I would use a different layout.  Something more like this:
(a very quick sketch)

[BorgMan]

That won't work out as you've got no space left for equipment, personell and fuel. You just need space for 12 or 24 fighters, any more would require you to make your ship way bigger...

[Makaveli]

Ok a suggestion for the shuttlebay layouts, I would go with the single bay but dont have it stretch the entire way across the ship... I would actually go with the size of the space between the two separate shuttlebays... so maybe a little over half the width is it right now. As for the other cutout, I would keep it in too, could even change it over to the secondary shuttlebay. Pretty sure one of the Ambassador or Excelsior models had a bay in that location. Even if you make it two smaller doors and say its an secondary bay intended for shuttle pods and workbees....

Just a suggestion....

[Bernd]

The Capella is a very nice design (it reminds me a lot of the Antares though www.trekships.org/antares.htm).
The design that doesn't work out isn't all that bad. I would only move the pod back, so it would be much like on the Springfield class.
The heavy cruiser is a nice concept. The impulse engine detail is great. I would only move the parts slightly. I don't really like if the nacelles and the saucer form a long straight line in the side view.
The "first ship" is a USS Centaur as it should have been.

[sojourner]

Well, still not in the mood after the holidays to pickup any existing projects, so I decided to practice some detail work.  What we have here is a fusion rocket engine using the Polywell method of attaining fusion.  This will probably show itself again if I ever get around to doing a ship based in my own little fictional universe.

[lt ponytail]

realistic design, nice details.
is the "Polywell method" a real world method of fusion, or is it just in your universe?

[sojourner]

^Real world.  And the cool part is it was initially developed by Bussard before he recently passed away..  yes, that Bussard.

[caisson2delta]

I like everything that you've posted so far, especially the carrier design. The engine model is sweet and detailed rather nicely.

[sojourner]

Ok, I went back to my personal fiction setting and worked on this today:

This ship is the first cruiser commissioned by the United Earth Government.  This ship was rushed into service in response to piracy attacks on the first colony ships sent out.  Interstellar travel is in it's infancy at this stage with few ships capable of making the months long voyages to the nearest stars.

The main propulsion in this setting is through the use of gravity well generators.  This particular ship has a gravwell drive fore and aft (the big ring assembles). it uses these with the front creating a standard gravity well infront of the ship, In essence pulling the ship, while the second unit at the aft produces a "negative" gravity well to push the ship along.  You may be wondering why the ship would need units fore and aft for this travel mode? Well, it doesn't.  The real need for two gravwell units is to achieve FTL travel.  When a ship reaches the outer reaches of a solar system far enough from any natural gravity wells, two drive units can be used in concert to "drop" the ship into a type of "hyperspace".  The more power that can be thrown at the engines to make the transition, the faster the travel speed of the ship.  This makes for the largest ships being the fastest between stars.

The UNS Federation (name subject to change) pictured here was a rush development as stated.  A colony supply ship under construction was modified by removing most of it's cargo space, shortening the space frame to improve spin radius, adding more power plants, manuevering tankage, and of course, weapons systems.

The resulting ship is the fastest FTL ship of her time with 8 Polywell fusion reactors (4 per grav engine).  The armament includes long range lasers, point defense rapid fire railguns, and intermediate range missiles.

What I have completed so far in the images is the main space frame, the grav engines, the polywell fusion engines (they are also used as heavy manuevering thrusters in combat) fuel tankage, and the centrifugal gravity living quarters.  Yes, although artificial gravity wells are used for propulsion, the technology as yet in the setting does not allow for artificial gravity "deckplating".  Thus this ship has the living quarters mounted on booms that spin for gravity when the ship is not underway.  (the 2 sets of booms counter rotate) When underway the typical policy is to run the grav drives at 1g acceleration at all times to provide gravity. The living quarters are then rotated out so that the "floor" is perpendicular to the direction of travel.

Yet to be added to the ship: weapons systems, heat radiators, communications, Hanger facilities.

To get an idea of the size, in the close up image, you can see the pod style habitat units on the booms. There are 3 levels of pods with each pod being one deck high.

All images are clay model.  The first image I added a background image and glow to the grav engine, just for fun.

[caisson2delta]

Wow, impressive. It's off to a great start and is highly detailed. Your write up is good as well, can't wait to see this one as it progresses.

[sojourner]

Working on the radiators.  Also reduced the centrifugal grav decks from 3 to 1 which also reduced the scale of the ship.  It's now about 1000' instead of about 4000'.

[Juvat]

Very cool.  Love the update and I'm looking forward to more.  Original universe stuff is always great to see.

[sojourner]

OK, some more work here. I re-did the radiators. Took half of them out and added a more structural look to the ones remaining. The weapons module is now on. armament consists of 8 infra-red lasers for close in support and 16 missile/drone launchers. Most of the volume of the weapons module is taken up by the lasing tubes and missile reloads. The bottom two images are close ups of the the missile tubes and the laser heads respectively. As you can see, close up they are not very detailed. Props to the U.S. Airforce for the inspiration for the laser design.

These are clickable links. Click through twice to see very large close ups.

[sojourner]

Well, haven't done much work lately, but today I got inspired by this:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/photo/HL-10/Medium/E-14969.jpg

And decided to make a shuttle for the SS Federation based on the shape of the HL-10.  This is what I have so far:

(sorry for the raw image from Sketchup, but I didn't bother to try any renders yet)

[ecduggan]

Don't ask me to explain it in depth but I've got a second cusien in CA that know the pilot to that lifting body aircraft.

[sojourner]

Well the body is finished. It was damn hard.  It's still not entirely accurate at the rear, but considering I "eyeballed" the whole ship instead of importing the orthos, it's good enough for my purposes.

[ecduggan]

Still look pretty accurate for just eyeing it, nice work.

[orostar]

Oooh this is impressive. I like the shape and the use of grav-well generators for propulsion to FTL speeds is quite novel (staying away from the whole Event Horizon artifiical singularity generator and the nastiness that ensued there!). However I have a quibble concerning the fusion generators; I take it those are exhaust nacelles we can see behind the grav engine? If so for maneuvering there well positioned but for negotiating distances in system I dont see how they would work as inside a solar system your gravity well engines would be coming up against titanic natural forces which could cause extreme structural streses.

Now assuming your Polywell fusion reactors produce a heck of alot of power there still going to be insignificant compared to naturally occuring stellar phenomena and what i can see happening is your ship becoming becalmed as, at best its engines balance against natural gravitic forces and, at worst, it being reduced to small wildly spinning pieces.

Hmmm I may have just realised a way around this problem but I still think you need to position fusion engines in such a place that they can accelerate your ship to a fraction of c speed before the gravity drive engages. Oooh this is really sparking my brain there is a hell of alot of design potential in this tech!!