![]() The Miranda class (USS Reliant) as the first canon Starfleet design apart from the original and refitted Constitution class appeared in "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" in 1982. Since the 1990s, the internet has become the by far most productive platform, and thousands of websites show tens of thousands of fan-designed starships besides the canon classes.Ĭreating new designs since "Star Trek II" 1) 2290-2291, first published in 1987, continues with this concept. This book became the first incentive for fans to create new starships by rearranging familiar starship components, long before the official Star Trek production discovered this possibility. The first prominent publication featuring starships other than the Constitution class was the Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph Schnaubelt in 1975 (reissued 1991). All these designs have evolved from Matt Jefferies's original Starship Enterprise and its distinctive saucer/engineering/stardrive configuration. The Star Trek Art Department as well as various fans continually come up with new starship designs, predominantly Federation ships. Please consider this before you file a complaint. It is not meant to be an assessment of whether these designs are realistic, or of how to design a realistic starship with present-day knowledge. Important notice This article focuses on design aesthetics and on the assumption that these aesthetics reflect engineering principles of Starfleet of the 23rd/24th century. The rules are not meant as directives, but may provide an idea what a "technically correct" ship could look like, which would most likely be a beautiful ship in my opinion. This is one reason why I have compiled possible guidelines for myself and for other fans interested in starship design, in order to improve our work. ![]() All of them show us certain requirements, which may be without a foundation in real physics and engineering, but which make up the distinctive "Treknological" rules of the Star Trek Universe.Īlas, Star Trek websites and communities show lots of insufficiently considered starship designs, often cut-and-paste work combining components of different ships that are scaled up and down at whim. In addition we have guidelines in the form of the design history and the aesthetics and lineage of starships, of Gene Roddenberry's design rules and of secondary literature such as the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. First of all, they should comply with real-world engineering principles wherever possible, at least as far as physical dimensions and basic mechanical properties are concerned. Nevertheless, the design of Star Trek ships, official and fan-designed, should not be haphazard. Star Trek is only a show, and there is no way we could explain or understand how starships work, let alone build them and test them in space. Strictly speaking, such questions can only be answered by a 23rd/24th century starship engineer. Why do Star Trek's starships look the way they look? Is the ship I sketched up well-designed? "I wouldn't want to be a third nacelle." (Barclay, VOY: "Inside Man") "There's no rule that says the bridge has to be on top of the ship." (Reed, ENT: "Babel One")
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