Warp Drive

I added a picture of the Cosmic Lotus with warp drive modifications to the end of the "Going Home" chapter, but it's likely that some readers never saw it due to reading the story before I put the picture up. As I want EquesTRON to get full credit and thanks for supplying the art, I'm reposting the pic here.

Comments

[XanderK31]

Pretty awesome!

[harts fire]

sweet artwork.

[Alden MacManx]

If you dig way, WAY, WAY back into Star Trek Lore, (Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology, published 1980) It will show that when they tried making a three-nacelle ship (USS Tritium, after the Romulan War), the three-nacelle design just plain didn't work, setting up bad harmonics. HOWEVER, that was there, this is here, and I say it looks damn good and works BETTER!

14 light-years a day in the initial design?

Radiance, get your nose out of the drafting screen!

Shut up, Sister, I'm busy!

[Goldfur]

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Please, please, PLEASE don't refer to Star Trek technology for any of my stories. I know that I have borrowed a number of terms from the franchise for the sake of not reinventing the wheel, but this is NOT Star Trek.

[Alden MacManx]

Understood, friend. My apologies. You may deliver suitable chastisement. "bows head in penance"

[Alden MacManx]

After a long night stowing, shopping, and having my feet ache to my hips, I do get a bad case of hoof in mouth disease....

[EquesTRON]

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Well, to be fair, the fact that I used the classic "Constitution-class" design as a base for the warp nacelles probably does invite the comparison... (Although the original-series design didn't have the glowing blue "radiator grids" running down the sides; that's more of a NextGen-and-beyond kind of thing.)

The ring is based off the ring-shaped nacelles from the Vulcan ships in ST:Enterprise -- in fact, it was going to be the barge, until Goldfur specifically mentioned that he had a triple-nacelle design in mind, so I made it a combination impulse drive / deflector / tractor-beam array instead. I figure if the barge needs three nacelles to take massive and non-warp-capable loads into subspace, it probably needs an equally over-powered impulse drive to drag them around in normal space as well!

The multiple struts connecting the two vessels are deliberately a bit haphazard, since (as per the story text) this is meant to be an improvised jury-rig setup. Presumably they'll re-do it with something a bit cleaner and more aesthetically-pleasing when they have some downtime on their hooves.

[Alden MacManx]

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When I first heard the word 'barge' used in respect to the Lotus, my initial thought was that of a second unit aft of the ship, where the reaction exhaust bells were, connected via an airlock to the main ship, two nacelles running sharply forward from the barge almost the length of the Lotus. *snorts* That's what I get for being at sea. Your design, while completely unexpected, is truly wonderful. The ring design I am not familiar with, not getting to watch Enterprise fully due to nighttime work schedule and no DVR/VCR/what-have-you. Your artist skills are far better than mine, and I thank you for your contribution to the tale.

Now to have my afternoon (or is that morning) tea. I do think I should get a day job....

[Thwaitesy]

I like the combination of the more traditional Warp nacelles and the ring one.

Is that what all Stellar Federation ships are like or is it a special set up for the Lotus?

[EquesTRON]

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Well, since I designed it, I guess I should explain the thinking behind it... Unless Goldfur says differently , I'm going to say that while it's not something that was built specifically for the Cosmic Lotus, it's also not a particularly common design for Stellar Federation vessels in general. It's an Argosy-class barge (hey, I designed it, I get to name it ) which is specifically designed to grab on to massive objects that (a) have no warp capability of their own, and/or (b) have odd or irregular shapes that would be difficult to simply attach a standard warp drive onto or for a more "normal" vessel to tow into warp on its own. (Lack of suitable attachment points, excessively-convoluted shapes or mass distributions that might cause too much distortion of a "standard" vessel's warp-field geometry, etc.)

The ring-shaped central body allows you to park the barge around the thing(s) you wish to move, as close to the center of mass as possible/practical, and grab onto it with the multiple tractor emitters positioned all around the inside of the ring. The multiple emitters are designed to apply an equally-balanced force on all sides, so as to minimize the stress in any one location. The ring also houses an over-powered impulse-drive array so that the ship can move loads much more massive than itself, and an equally over-powered deflector array that can be extended around the object to be moved.

I figure it's not a common hull design otherwise, simply because all that empty space in the middle of a giant ring-shaped hull would be a highly inefficient use of space and materials for most "normal" starship purposes. In this case, form follows function; the Argosy class was designed for a specific, and somewhat specialized, set of job requirements that more general-purpose cargo and interstellar-freight haulers aren't well-suited for.

[Goldfur]

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I fully endorse this description. Interestingly, although Cosmic Lotus is relatively slow at warp speeds, it's somewhat overpowered under impulse because of the original purpose of the Argosy class. If a pirate ship tried to grapple with it, they would be in for a bit of a surprise.