Say what you want of JJ Trek, but the _Kelvin's_ design with a long slender nacelle with a short pylon tucked close to the saucer is the best looking take on making a single nacelle ship.
Wholeheartedly agree - the Kelvin is one of my favorite designs! In that same vein, I love the Star Trek: Axanar take on the Saladin which is basically the Kelvin swapping out the upper secondary hull with a Miranda-style torpedo rollbar
@@markmarano913 Yeah, the _Saladin_ in Star Trek Fleet Command is also made like the _Kelvin_ just missing its secondary hull, with a spine on top for the shuttle bay and the deflector underneath as a chin on the saucer. I like that too.
@@enisra_bowman the problem is not that he said no, its that he doesn’t give any explanation to his opinion. A opinion that someone is completely unwilling to articulate their own reasoning is worthless…. Its the “this is truth because I say it is truth” attitude that just kills conversation
2:45 Exactly. It’s limiting and there’re only so many designs you can make with the saucer, a secondary hull, and two Nacelles. Eventually you’ll need to branch out
I guffaw'ed when you pointed out that the role of the Archer-type could be fulfilled by a Runabout, considering that I'm pretty sure the Runabout assigned to DS9 probably held a record for "number of first contact missions by a craft with one deck". Considering the ST universe's propensity for large ships to have greater power access leading to higher speeds, I wonder how civilian ships manage travel. Are there just high warp supercontainer ships transporting cargo and passengers between the planets of the inner federation? Sure, government officials can either use military ships or presumably ask/buy passage from Star Fleet vessels. But, how do you quickly and cheaply transport the megatons of non-replicatable or prestige products that are produced on various Fed planets between markets? Kik would have to really owe someone a favor in order be willing to use his Enterprise to transport a bunch of bottled wine, no matter the quality. It's not impossible for individuals to own lesser warp-craft, even in the 2200's, but we know almost nothing about most of them, other than they tended to within a few multiples of the size of a smaller shuttlecraft. (i.e. 2-3X larger at most, but still dwarfed by even Voyager or NX-01.)
In the SFU (which is based on the SFTM), the Hermes and Saladin were the same hull, the difference being that the Saladin was an all-purpose patrol ship, while the Hermes was a specialized scout with the photon torpedoes replaced by a specialized sensor suite.
I used to have the starfleet tech manual, don't know what happened to it. I still have a copy of Mr Scotts guide to the enterprise signed by the man himself at a convention I went to.
just mention in star trek lower decks They do say the cali class ships took over the job of the hermes class ship as boimler made a scornful remark about how how dated the hermes class ships where that at least the cali class out classed them.
Deep range ships and battle ships have multiple nacelles, varying from 2 to 4, I would assume based on the number of times we see it on screen that having more than one was just good planing in case one got shot up.
Call it a conspiracy theory, but I am with those who say that Gene Roddenberry was rewriting history when he wrote down the rules of starship design specifically to make sure none of the technical manual's ships could be canon (if you interpret canon to only include what Roddenberry said was canon, which makes no sense in the wake of his death). First, the rules were never followed for alien ships, which undermined his tech explanations for why the rules existed, and second, because he freely broke the rules himself when he greenlit the Stargazer having four nacelles despite his own rules against having more than two. I personally find the one nacelle ships to have a fascinating look, one that is awkward but in the same way as the Cerritos. It's not designed to be the most aesthetically pleasing ship, but to be a ship first and foremost. It clearly uses the design language of Star Trek to imply a slower ship without the audience having to ever pay attention to the tech-tech of the show. Our gut response to seeing one less engine is to think it's either slower, smaller, or both, while the three and four nacelle designs tell us faster, bigger or both, just like we would think when looking at a jumbo jet. And while it's a simplistic way of thinking, looking at many of the designs from later Trek that followed Gene's rules to the letter, it's hard to figure out what makes one ship faster or slower without spending way too much brainpower trying to wrap your head around poorly thought out technobabble; or looking at how streamlined they are, which is equally flawed when we know that was just a trend at the SFX house at the time. I like visual design that easily communicates something to me more than merely "this is supposed to look cool."
the producers of NuTrek probably went with the funny looking single nacelle types, because the models are cheaper to make, and CGI. i think it embodies everything wrong with new trek
IDK, I'm not so keen on these attempts to fit the Discoverse (or STD as I like to call it) into prime continuity. To me it's just another remake-regardless of its merits.
I always hated older, and many newer, Star Trek ship designs because I dislike how everyone either seems to lack any sense of originality or are stupidly and/or religiously determined to maintain established design aesthetic. The Hermes class is pure garbage though the Archer isn't bad and could actually make in universe sense. A smaller ship could make do with a single nacelle where a larger ship with a stupid Constitution class neck with a nacelle glued on to it which simply makes no sense like the Hermes wouldn't.
The design teams running NuTrek have a lot to answer for. What the hell is with their insistance on putting gaps in things that don't need them and, in some cases, actively destract from the structural stability? Constitution, Hermes and Kelcie Mae's nacelle pylons have gaps. Why? Discovery has a donut spinning around a goddamn ball. WHY? Nearly every UFP design in the 31st century? Donut primary hulls. Disconnected hull segments and nacelles. WHY?!?! "Because it looks cool." No. It looks like you were too lazy to draw in the pylons because you wanted to do a complete redesign but since pylons are the least diverse-designed part of Starfleet's designs you just went "Lets make them hollow." I mean, c'mon. One good shot on the Hermes's pylon would completely sever the nacelle from the rest of the ship (because structural stresses would not be tolerable with half the pylon missing). On the other hand, a similar ship on a fully blocked out pylon does a little damage but it's mostly still hanging on.
ye, such as Stupid things like "there are no zippers in Star Wars" after Carrey complained about her costume to George and now Gatekeepers use that nonsense as an "Argument" why "new bad" and what some Gatekeeper forget: it's all fictional and made up anyway, it's not that Roddenberry invented the Warp Drive or got a Vision from the Future of how FTL Speeds will be possible. People really need to relax and touch some Grass
@@enisra_bowman roddenberry himself violated those rules left right and center in TNG, and pretty much every show after he died never paid attention to them. and it isn't like you can't come up with some handwaves for some of it. a nacelle is just a housing for the warp coils, so there is no reason why a single nacelle ship couldn't just be using smaller coils and having two sets of coils side by side in that single nacelle.
While i understand having certain guidelines because you want to make sure the ships of the different factions within star trek easily identifiable , but that wasnt the motivation behind gene rules. Gene did this out of spite …. I much prefer the Franz Joseph’s design philosophy than the FASA ships that followed genes rules, but look like cheap paper cut out half the time. Franz Joseph took the basic design of the constitution scale it UP one level and then scaled it down about 4-5 levels , makes star fleet into an actual FLEET of starships
Single and quad nacelle ships actually do not break this rule. Mononacale ships have both warp coils in same housing, placed close together. This vastly limit efficiency of those ship. But they are far easier in maintenance, having limited working area. During TNG actually all coils were doubled, so most ships could operate only on one if needed. Those design were typically utilized for short range missions. On the other hand three and quad nacelle ships were still using pairs of nacelles. Just militarized designs sometimes have additional nacelle, what could replace damaged one. Or in case of quad nacelle ships they could swoich working pair giving them persistent during fast movement. As coils needed by switch of for cool down, if put under the stress. Deep Space Explorers (most commonly encountered with quads) sometimes even have separate warp reactor, so they would have redundancy in case of critical malfunction far from allied bases. This solution was dropped during TNG, because larger Explorers like Galaxy have industrial replicators, what could basically assembly entire warp core on they own.
Archer type having 3 crew was because of the mission it was on, they didn't want even more people knowing about the whole Red Angel/Control ordeal. I assume that the crew count is usually much higher.
not too high though. the thing is tiny, so i suspect its normal crew is more in the "roughly a dozen" range. you can get a good sense of the size from S2 E1 "broken circle", one is docked next to the Enterprise at a starbase 1 in the beginning of the Ep. its saucer isn't much wider than the engineering hull of the enterprise is.
@@aredub1847 Spore drive was actually a navigation system. It is relatively easy to actually break into subspace. NX notoriously did it, Excelsior Grand Experiment was about that (though it was deemed as failure), Paris and Janeway did it (with interesting results). Picard several times experienced that himself. Hell! Borg basically teleport around the space by default! The problem is that as result you may land in universe inhabited by X-Man and only few species can avoid angering Machine Gods.
The only other single nacelle design I can recall (in the Starfleet roster, at least) is the Freedom class, which is for all intents and purposes a TNG-ish era Hermes/Saladin which only exists in a debris field.
Yeah you're correct about the Freedom class other ones I can think of: USS Kelcie Mae on Strange New Worlds was a single nacelle ship. Star Trek 2009 movie. (Kelvin timeline) USS Kalvin was a single nacelle ship.
The archer as runabout type ship makes sense. That role still would have been needed. Also makes sense why it failed, the result was still just too big with the technology available
I imagine the Archer-type would be phased out as shuttlecraft were fitted with warp engines. It was probably a courier and transport ship, something that shuttles would be better at once they were capable of warp travel.
As far as I'm aware the shuttles do have warp drive as shown in Discovery and the TOS shuttle has small nacelles like the Phoenix. Shuttles were only capable of warp 1 and had limited range as they did not use antimatter as fuel. You are probably right about the Archers being used to ferry diplomats and medical supplies as well as small scientific missions.
the single Nacelle design makes sense if the sheer rapid expansion of volume of the early Federation . needed a ship that was able to be built fast and with as little components and material as possible until Starfleet got it's resources such as warp coil production up to speed
One of my biggest nitpicks regarding the 2009 JJ-trek film is that the Kelvin already bear likeness to the redesign Constitution class even through that single nacelle ship should have look closer of tos ships like Hermes/Saladin Class as it was created before the arrival of Nero...and thus before the divergence with the Prime timeline
The explanation for all the pre incursion changes is that the incursion resulted in ripples through time both ways. Also why Sulu is gay when he wasn't in TOS.
@@nyetloki That explanation was stupid for the Flashpoint Paradox and it's just as stupid for Star Trek. The real reason was UNcreative mandates out of universe.
@@darwinxavier3516 most negative space wedgies in Star Trek are dumb. Yet here we are. You think something powerful enough to create a black hole ripping through space time won't have more effects other than throwing a ship back in time?
@@nyetloki Considering that other similar anomalies don't do that, it was never mentioned on screen, and we know full well what was going through the empty head of the director, yes. Just like we know full well the whole reason Flashpoint happened was DC wanted to simplify their multiverse and shoehorned timey wimey ripples to make it happen.
@@darwinxavier3516 we had one that literally went backwards in time due to the future. Multiple instances of being able to change time without repercussion and changes in time where no one could tell time changed except for one alien. We had time travelers stuck for thousands of years trying to fix one colony in time by erasing things from history. The entirety of the mirror universe spawned from the guardian of time. But ripples in time you have an issue with.
Love the sleek look of the single nacelle designs, like a Katana motorcycle. Also SNW introduced another single nacelle design, apparently a diplomatic courier, in the second season episode 'Under The Cloak Of War', the USS Kelcie Mae.
The size differences have been explained by the Yeager class - industrial replicators have a size setting and when they were making some Marquis Raiders a decimal point was misplaced. Starfleet must have been pioneering using industrial replicators for Starship construction at this time and were playing around with the size settings.
Uh....what about the Kelvin Class? Yes, i am aware it's shown in a alternate universe, but the attack on the Kelvin is what gives the timeline its name and is the point of divergence from the "Prime" timeline, so we can be reasonably sure the Kelvin class existed in the "Prime" timeline,no?
I would also love to see a video where you discuss what ships can and cannot make planetary landings. And why some of them cannot in the first place but can fly through the atmosphere. One would think that if you can fly through the atmosphere then surely you can land safely even if you don't have landing gear.
I like the idea that they are made for known space where subspace has been mapped out completely. So it doesn’t need redundancy to smooth out any warp “bumps”
Okay, I really like that idea. With every planetary sized object known it would allow a reliable space-time gravitational topology to be known. And it makes sense that that could make subspace far more predictable as well.
I read an idea somewhere that single nacelle designs do actually have two nacelles, just that they were stuffed side by side in one casing and shared one Bussard collector, etc.
Ive always had an alternate theory…. Consider this…. If in a standard starship with two nacelles each naccelles has Y number of warp coils, each warp coil with a radius of X , your design has each warp coil with a radius of LESS than 1/2 of X (because you have to include some distance between the coils ) My alternate theory is the warp coils remain the same but instead coils 1&2 interact with each other, 3&4, etc …. Its just that a single nacelle ship has half the coils , but they are all the same coils
I first saw this design back in 1980 or so... (the one with the big antennae dish on the deflector dish area) Now that dual nacelles have been ruled to be in pairs, the more I see this ship I imagine it jumping to warp but tragically spinning forward like a cartoon top and self destructing or something from the structural stress (like I said like a cartoon)
I think an easy way to make single nacelle ships work in canon, even without breaking Roddenberry's golden rule, is to just consider the single nacelle as just an outer body that, functionally, contains two nacelles inside of it, thus still having a pair. But since the outer nacelle is the same size theyre obviously half as wide and in a firefight one shot can cripple both nacelles.
Understanding the size discrepancies with the Constitution-class between TOS, SNW, and DSC is simple really. Stop accepting the bullshit line that SNW and DSC are in the same timeline as TOS. Treat them as separate timelines, which makes much more sense given the events of the movie First Contact.
I look at it like this. Single nacelle ships are only able reach .9 warp. A perfect in system ship. Although power from the Warp nacelle is significantly lower than a double. Well, as long as the intermix chamber is large enough to power said warp nacelles.
The more odd and 'outside of the norm' the ship is, the more I Enjoy it! Well, except for the 'triangle saucer' series… those suck! I’m a fan of the classic design language, and am curious specifically in a smaller ship class… a-la a certain millennium named examples! 🤔🤔🤔🤫😁
Looking at these, I think 'Gene's rules' are less 'what's possible/impossible' than 'best/common practice for long term use'. Single-nacelle ships and such are possible...but a pain in the aft to operate and maintain in the long-term (which is why they're used as short-range vessels...closer to starbase/space-dock). They're the mono-bikes and Reliant Robins of the Trek-verse. Possible...but kinda niche.
I believe the reason for having more than two nacelles is for sustained maximum Warp. Whenever we hear about how fast a ship can go, it's also mentioned how long they can hold that top speed. Seems logical to me that having extra in the cells would extend the amount of time you could remain at your top speed you just cycle through your nacelles, running two of them at Max letting the other two rest then you switch them.
Longer strategic endurance (holding those higher speeds, getting further than duallies) is a primary advantage of triremes, even without cycling nacelles; assuming all other aspects of the material technology are the same, by dividing the workload 3 ways instead of two (even if your max remains unchanged, because of said technology's limits) you essentially get 150% engine cooling...you will got A LOT farther at emergency flank speed than a standard engine rig will before having to check down.
I wanted to jump in and ask where the TNG Freedom-class was at? USS Firebrand? Who wouldn't want to serve on a ship called the 'Firebrand'?! Like refusing to fight on a ship called the USS Amerika Fuk Yeah (NCC-WhoGivesAShit) or it's sister ship, the prestigious USS GetOutThaWay (NCC-MOVEBITCH). But other people have already commented about it. All I can say is that these one-nacelle terrors were an absolute PITA to beat in Klingon Academy! (If you've never played Klingon Academy, I'll pray you find as much joy and wonder some other way in your lifetime) I was one of the few (but proud) to have had a ringside seat to the development of the game starting shortly after it was announced. The dev team used the Starfleet Academy engine for KA but you'd be hard pressed to find anything even remotely similar between the two, the team did the damn near impossible with what they had. In fact, even right before release, a short time after the first demo was released, the graphics designer on the team figured out a way to get higher resolutions out of the engine. If he hadn't, the game would have been capped at 640x480! Anyway, in the SKIRMISH mode you can fight a war practically by warping to various sectors and wiping out any Starfleet ships there. You had a choice of many different Klingon ships, around 8 (including the BoP that could fire while cloaked from ST-VI) but unless you picked a battleship, your butt was unceremoniously handed to you rather quickly...and you have these...these single-nacelled bastards to thank for a lot of it! They were lightly armored but fast and in decently large numbers. Oh the times I rage quit from getting blasted again and again! Kinda makes me want to install and play KA again!
I was just thinking of the Hermes and Saladin last night, for completely unrelated reasons, and a side-quest to Memory Alpha delayed my going to bed by a good 10-15 minutes. This video would have been posted by then, but I didn't go to youtube, so didn't see it until today. Quite the coincidence. I wish we could see more of the Franz Josef designs on-screen, even if they're just background ships.
In TOS the Antimatter was stored in the Engines. It was established in multiple episodes and alluded to in TMP when Decker said the phasers were powered through the engines during the wormhole scene. The invention of the Antimatter chamber was so that they could have a deadly thing on the ship to kill Spock at the end of TWOK. So the more nacelles you have, the more power was generated in TOS science. It really makes sense if you think about it. As small scout ship needs only one engine, but the clunky and huge Stargazer needed 4 to keep it flying. :)
I see a parallel with The history of commercial Aviation in the US in the 20th Century. They to had single engines for a while until told it was "Not safe" and they were semi-banned for all but the smallest vehicles.
@@yourstruly4817 No there was a bunch of small single engine planes around used for commercial travel in the early days it was eventually made illegal to operate an air route with anything less than 2 engines though in America.
@@90lancaster single-engine commercial-duty planes only existed because small engines weren't (yet) efficient enough. Once that efficiency was reached, dual- and quad-engine planes (where you could still fly with one dead engine) were mandated for commercial service. Four-engine planes went the way of the dodo when engines became powerful *and reliable* enough that long-range dual-engine planes were feasible.
In the Starfleet Museum site before nuTrek, after the Farragut incident with the vampire energy cloud, Kirk commanded a Predator class ship(looks like the Hermes class but pre-TOS style). His actions behind the Klingons' lines as merchant raider&exposing a cabal of rogue Starfleet officers(Cartwright's group) that got him promoted to be the captain of the Enterprise.
I think the only single nacelle ship that actually did make it possible was the Kevin, as its nacelle was made to be far larger than a standard nacelle. To my understanding, this is because essentially two nacelles are inside this single nacelle. Allowing the Kelvin to travel with a much more stable warp field. This may also explain why the Kelvin was made to be a far larger ship, despite being an older vessel.
People called Franz Joseph insane for locking himself up in his palace in 1890 making sketches of "silly saucers" little did people know he was thousands of years ahead of his time Bravo Franz.
If this ship had a phasing cloaking device. For spy work. Then, small crew says 5 for spying mission. The ship would need back up retractable warp 2.9 drives in the saucer section. The secondary hole could be a burnout drive. Achive say warp12.9 old scale and warp 10 new scale. The saucer sections could detach to change put spent drives in space dock. Then attach to new drives. And the ship would need a heav duty tractor, presser beams. To move moons and large asteroids on to collision course with enemies space installations. A large mater transport. That could beam anti mater into an enemies bridge. Or amomo bunker. And fast escape would render conventional wepons unneeded. Put spys in place, and support them covertly.
I hate those things. They make no sense. The only way they could possibly work, is if they operate on a completely different principle and therefore should not look like normal nacelles in the first place. Like they're a series of smaller warp rings or something...and not the field coils of common nacelle designs. Pairs...they come in pairs. That's original canon. By this point, Star Trek may as well just fuckin be Star Wars.
The problem i always had with the Hermes/Saladin from the manual was that all you need to do was add 2 more phasers, add photon torpedo launchers, and 5 more redshirts, then the Hernes becomes a Saladin class. Having an Archer type makes more sense as a scout than the actual Hermes. Added that if we imposed the Roddenberry rules, then we wouldn't have had the USS Kelvin.
I think the starships in star trek are all the size of models. Maybe only 10 foot long max. The transpoter just shrinks people down when they are beamed aboard. Only way i can think of that allows star fleet to make ships so quickly
no reason why a nacelle is even needed, really, you just need somewhere to put the warp coils and they don't even have to be parallel to the path of travel. Klingon Birds-of-Prey are a good example of this. Same with the Defiant, with the nacelles being integrated into the hull.
Ok the second drawing is right as that is from the StarFleet technical Manuel As for that Archer class It's a shipwreck of a design. and best ignored. the original designs were a Scout class and a Destroyer class. FASA designed a Larson class Destroyer, and a Nelson class scout which did use different designs to tell the two classes apart.
Genuinely the ugliest ship designs in Trek for me. They just look unfinished, wrong, and thrown together from spare parts of whatever class the hero series in the show is
As player of the board game star fleet battles. The ship is a destroyer or the fed lollipop. Its over gunned or under powered . Never liked that version . The DDL the leader version got it better .
Those single nacelled starships remind me of a motorized unicycle. If there is such a thing as a motorized unicycle. 😂
About $1600 for a cheap one.
In real life, and 'mono-bikes' are in several places in sci-fi, particularly anime.
A guy shot by me on an electric one last week.
Seems a bit of an insult to the revered Capt. Archer to name such a pathetic little ship after him.
Probably named after Porthos Archer
The ideal ship for traveling to the… danger zone?
That'd be the USS Kenny Loggins. 😁
Seems like an insult to a useful ship to name it after that petulant, blundering fool Capt Archer
😂
Say what you want of JJ Trek, but the _Kelvin's_ design with a long slender nacelle with a short pylon tucked close to the saucer is the best looking take on making a single nacelle ship.
No.
Wholeheartedly agree - the Kelvin is one of my favorite designs! In that same vein, I love the Star Trek: Axanar take on the Saladin which is basically the Kelvin swapping out the upper secondary hull with a Miranda-style torpedo rollbar
@@markmarano913 Yeah, the _Saladin_ in Star Trek Fleet Command is also made like the _Kelvin_ just missing its secondary hull, with a spine on top for the shuttle bay and the deflector underneath as a chin on the saucer. I like that too.
@@MrRedFoxorMrelzorrorojo you Spelled Yes wrong
@@enisra_bowman the problem is not that he said no, its that he doesn’t give any explanation to his opinion.
A opinion that someone is completely unwilling to articulate their own reasoning is worthless….
Its the “this is truth because I say it is truth” attitude that just kills conversation
2:45
Exactly. It’s limiting and there’re only so many designs you can make with the saucer, a secondary hull, and two Nacelles. Eventually you’ll need to branch out
I guffaw'ed when you pointed out that the role of the Archer-type could be fulfilled by a Runabout, considering that I'm pretty sure the Runabout assigned to DS9 probably held a record for "number of first contact missions by a craft with one deck". Considering the ST universe's propensity for large ships to have greater power access leading to higher speeds, I wonder how civilian ships manage travel. Are there just high warp supercontainer ships transporting cargo and passengers between the planets of the inner federation?
Sure, government officials can either use military ships or presumably ask/buy passage from Star Fleet vessels. But, how do you quickly and cheaply transport the megatons of non-replicatable or prestige products that are produced on various Fed planets between markets? Kik would have to really owe someone a favor in order be willing to use his Enterprise to transport a bunch of bottled wine, no matter the quality.
It's not impossible for individuals to own lesser warp-craft, even in the 2200's, but we know almost nothing about most of them, other than they tended to within a few multiples of the size of a smaller shuttlecraft. (i.e. 2-3X larger at most, but still dwarfed by even Voyager or NX-01.)
Let's not forget the Apollo class which came off the basis of the Hermes and Saladin lines. Fun ships to fly in the Star Trek Legacy game
congrats sir another amaizing video !
Hi Rick, cant wait to your grandkids channel explains the 5 warp nacelle.
In the SFU (which is based on the SFTM), the Hermes and Saladin were the same hull, the difference being that the Saladin was an all-purpose patrol ship, while the Hermes was a specialized scout with the photon torpedoes replaced by a specialized sensor suite.
I used to have the starfleet tech manual, don't know what happened to it. I still have a copy of Mr Scotts guide to the enterprise signed by the man himself at a convention I went to.
just mention in star trek lower decks
They do say the cali class ships took over the job of the hermes class ship as boimler made a scornful remark about how how dated the hermes class ships where that at least the cali class out classed them.
The Economy Car of Star Trek!
I personally like the “two nacelle” rule, or rather “nacelles work in pairs”.
"First on screen" Did yall forget about the USS Kelvin which is cannon albeit in the Kelvinverse?
I always found the single and quad nacelle ships to look kinda derpy.
Deep range ships and battle ships have multiple nacelles, varying from 2 to 4, I would assume based on the number of times we see it on screen that having more than one was just good planing in case one got shot up.
But we always see them dead in the water if a single warp nacelle is taken out
@@nyetloki True, but even with one nacelle blown off they usually "repair it" and get warp drive back on line.
Could you cover some of the Jackill's designs like the kodiak?
The design makes sense, Its more for system defense and screening. Most missions would be where resupply would be easy.
One nacelle starships look like a hand phaser balancing a plater on top.
🖖
did it manage to delivery its torpedos on time ？
Pretty small ship
Call it a conspiracy theory, but I am with those who say that Gene Roddenberry was rewriting history when he wrote down the rules of starship design specifically to make sure none of the technical manual's ships could be canon (if you interpret canon to only include what Roddenberry said was canon, which makes no sense in the wake of his death). First, the rules were never followed for alien ships, which undermined his tech explanations for why the rules existed, and second, because he freely broke the rules himself when he greenlit the Stargazer having four nacelles despite his own rules against having more than two. I personally find the one nacelle ships to have a fascinating look, one that is awkward but in the same way as the Cerritos. It's not designed to be the most aesthetically pleasing ship, but to be a ship first and foremost. It clearly uses the design language of Star Trek to imply a slower ship without the audience having to ever pay attention to the tech-tech of the show. Our gut response to seeing one less engine is to think it's either slower, smaller, or both, while the three and four nacelle designs tell us faster, bigger or both, just like we would think when looking at a jumbo jet. And while it's a simplistic way of thinking, looking at many of the designs from later Trek that followed Gene's rules to the letter, it's hard to figure out what makes one ship faster or slower without spending way too much brainpower trying to wrap your head around poorly thought out technobabble; or looking at how streamlined they are, which is equally flawed when we know that was just a trend at the SFX house at the time. I like visual design that easily communicates something to me more than merely "this is supposed to look cool."
the producers of NuTrek probably went with the funny looking single nacelle types, because the models are cheaper to make, and CGI. i think it embodies everything wrong with new trek
I fart in JARS and send them to my boss he thinks it's Jimmy from the Tech department 😉
IDK, I'm not so keen on these attempts to fit the Discoverse (or STD as I like to call it) into prime continuity. To me it's just another remake-regardless of its merits.
I always hated older, and many newer, Star Trek ship designs because I dislike how everyone either seems to lack any sense of originality or are stupidly and/or religiously determined to maintain established design aesthetic. The Hermes class is pure garbage though the Archer isn't bad and could actually make in universe sense. A smaller ship could make do with a single nacelle where a larger ship with a stupid Constitution class neck with a nacelle glued on to it which simply makes no sense like the Hermes wouldn't.
The design teams running NuTrek have a lot to answer for. What the hell is with their insistance on putting gaps in things that don't need them and, in some cases, actively destract from the structural stability?
Constitution, Hermes and Kelcie Mae's nacelle pylons have gaps. Why?
Discovery has a donut spinning around a goddamn ball. WHY?
Nearly every UFP design in the 31st century? Donut primary hulls. Disconnected hull segments and nacelles. WHY?!?!
"Because it looks cool." No. It looks like you were too lazy to draw in the pylons because you wanted to do a complete redesign but since pylons are the least diverse-designed part of Starfleet's designs you just went "Lets make them hollow."
I mean, c'mon. One good shot on the Hermes's pylon would completely sever the nacelle from the rest of the ship (because structural stresses would not be tolerable with half the pylon missing). On the other hand, a similar ship on a fully blocked out pylon does a little damage but it's mostly still hanging on.
Cheap to build
I hate this design its sooo lazy
One nacelle = ugly, low/no effort kit bashes.
More effort in this video than in the kit bash?
Gene Roddenberry's rules are a limiting factor in ship design in Star Trek.
Plus didn't he make the rules after a bad argument with Franz Joseph?
ye, such as Stupid things like "there are no zippers in Star Wars" after Carrey complained about her costume to George and now Gatekeepers use that nonsense as an "Argument" why "new bad"
and what some Gatekeeper forget: it's all fictional and made up anyway, it's not that Roddenberry invented the Warp Drive or got a Vision from the Future of how FTL Speeds will be possible.
People really need to relax and touch some Grass
@@enisra_bowman roddenberry himself violated those rules left right and center in TNG, and pretty much every show after he died never paid attention to them. and it isn't like you can't come up with some handwaves for some of it. a nacelle is just a housing for the warp coils, so there is no reason why a single nacelle ship couldn't just be using smaller coils and having two sets of coils side by side in that single nacelle.
While i understand having certain guidelines because you want to make sure the ships of the different factions within star trek easily identifiable , but that wasnt the motivation behind gene rules. Gene did this out of spite ….
I much prefer the Franz Joseph’s design philosophy than the FASA ships that followed genes rules, but look like cheap paper cut out half the time. Franz Joseph took the basic design of the constitution scale it UP one level and then scaled it down about 4-5 levels , makes star fleet into an actual FLEET of starships
My thoughts exactly. I was ready to fish out my copy of the technical manual.
Single and quad nacelle ships actually do not break this rule. Mononacale ships have both warp coils in same housing, placed close together. This vastly limit efficiency of those ship. But they are far easier in maintenance, having limited working area. During TNG actually all coils were doubled, so most ships could operate only on one if needed. Those design were typically utilized for short range missions. On the other hand three and quad nacelle ships were still using pairs of nacelles. Just militarized designs sometimes have additional nacelle, what could replace damaged one. Or in case of quad nacelle ships they could swoich working pair giving them persistent during fast movement. As coils needed by switch of for cool down, if put under the stress. Deep Space Explorers (most commonly encountered with quads) sometimes even have separate warp reactor, so they would have redundancy in case of critical malfunction far from allied bases. This solution was dropped during TNG, because larger Explorers like Galaxy have industrial replicators, what could basically assembly entire warp core on they own.
Archer type having 3 crew was because of the mission it was on, they didn't want even more people knowing about the whole Red Angel/Control ordeal. I assume that the crew count is usually much higher.
not too high though. the thing is tiny, so i suspect its normal crew is more in the "roughly a dozen" range. you can get a good sense of the size from S2 E1 "broken circle", one is docked next to the Enterprise at a starbase 1 in the beginning of the Ep. its saucer isn't much wider than the engineering hull of the enterprise is.
the less people that know about that nonsense, the better.
@@aredub1847 Well, you clearly do not know much about Star Trek. Spore Drive is fully in canon to how subspace work.
@@TheRezro bro, dont even.
@@aredub1847 Spore drive was actually a navigation system. It is relatively easy to actually break into subspace. NX notoriously did it, Excelsior Grand Experiment was about that (though it was deemed as failure), Paris and Janeway did it (with interesting results). Picard several times experienced that himself. Hell! Borg basically teleport around the space by default! The problem is that as result you may land in universe inhabited by X-Man and only few species can avoid angering Machine Gods.
The only other single nacelle design I can recall (in the Starfleet roster, at least) is the Freedom class, which is for all intents and purposes a TNG-ish era Hermes/Saladin which only exists in a debris field.
Yeah you're correct about the Freedom class other ones I can think of:
USS Kelcie Mae on Strange New Worlds was a single nacelle ship.
Star Trek 2009 movie. (Kelvin timeline) USS Kalvin was a single nacelle ship.
There's a whole bunch of Starfleet ships that are only seen as debris. Fun, but sad. o7
@@IndustrialFaith Yeah TNG Best of Both Worlds has debris and TNG unification has disused ships.
There is actually a lot of single nacelle ships (both coils were actually in same housing).
The phaser cannon was introduced to the freedom class as a backup against larger cruisers
The archer as runabout type ship makes sense. That role still would have been needed. Also makes sense why it failed, the result was still just too big with the technology available
It bizarre that the first warp 5 captain and the founding president of the UFP would be honored by a single nacelle runabout.
@@gabelogan5877They named more than a roundabout sized ship after him too lol
I imagine the Archer-type would be phased out as shuttlecraft were fitted with warp engines. It was probably a courier and transport ship, something that shuttles would be better at once they were capable of warp travel.
As far as I'm aware the shuttles do have warp drive as shown in Discovery and the TOS shuttle has small nacelles like the Phoenix. Shuttles were only capable of warp 1 and had limited range as they did not use antimatter as fuel. You are probably right about the Archers being used to ferry diplomats and medical supplies as well as small scientific missions.
Hard to beat on the ugly scale
Hermes class Starfleet’s worse delivery service.
the single Nacelle design makes sense if the sheer rapid expansion of volume of the early Federation . needed a ship that was able to be built fast and with as little components and material as possible until Starfleet got it's resources such as warp coil production up to speed
One of my biggest nitpicks regarding the 2009 JJ-trek film is that the Kelvin already bear likeness to the redesign Constitution class even through that single nacelle ship should have look closer of tos ships like Hermes/Saladin Class as it was created before the arrival of Nero...and thus before the divergence with the Prime timeline
The explanation for all the pre incursion changes is that the incursion resulted in ripples through time both ways. Also why Sulu is gay when he wasn't in TOS.
@@nyetloki That explanation was stupid for the Flashpoint Paradox and it's just as stupid for Star Trek. The real reason was UNcreative mandates out of universe.
@@darwinxavier3516 most negative space wedgies in Star Trek are dumb. Yet here we are. You think something powerful enough to create a black hole ripping through space time won't have more effects other than throwing a ship back in time?
@@nyetloki Considering that other similar anomalies don't do that, it was never mentioned on screen, and we know full well what was going through the empty head of the director, yes. Just like we know full well the whole reason Flashpoint happened was DC wanted to simplify their multiverse and shoehorned timey wimey ripples to make it happen.
@@darwinxavier3516 we had one that literally went backwards in time due to the future. Multiple instances of being able to change time without repercussion and changes in time where no one could tell time changed except for one alien. We had time travelers stuck for thousands of years trying to fix one colony in time by erasing things from history. The entirety of the mirror universe spawned from the guardian of time. But ripples in time you have an issue with.
lol can we add peanut hampers little warp ship to the single nacelle list
I always liked the Hermes and Saladin class ships.
Same. Like I always wanted to work on a lowly support ship. Was probably the equivalent of working in Alaska during the Vietnam war.
I love your username !
I’d like it to look like my ship is always about to fall over, please and thank you.
Love the sleek look of the single nacelle designs, like a Katana motorcycle.
Also SNW introduced another single nacelle design, apparently a diplomatic courier, in the second season episode 'Under The Cloak Of War', the USS Kelcie Mae.
I can't stop thinking of them as spatulas
The size differences have been explained by the Yeager class - industrial replicators have a size setting and when they were making some Marquis Raiders a decimal point was misplaced.
Starfleet must have been pioneering using industrial replicators for Starship construction at this time and were playing around with the size settings.
or just lazy writing, maybe even legal reasons. people forget that there are 2 trek Ips in existence.
Ship size discrepancies are easily explained. It’s Q playing with his tape measure.
I choose the mind!
Uh....what about the Kelvin Class?
Yes, i am aware it's shown in a alternate universe, but the attack on the Kelvin is what gives the timeline its name and is the point of divergence from the "Prime" timeline, so we can be reasonably sure the Kelvin class existed in the "Prime" timeline,no?
The Hermes and Freedom classes I would put akin to a one legged man trying to kick you. It just plan looks wrong and shouldn't work.
The Saladin was woefully under powered and over gunned
Certainly is in StarFleetBattles. The term I've seen used now and then is that it's a ship that 'Can't walk and chew gum at the same time'.
720th
I would also love to see a video where you discuss what ships can and cannot make planetary landings. And why some of them cannot in the first place but can fly through the atmosphere. One would think that if you can fly through the atmosphere then surely you can land safely even if you don't have landing gear.
I like the idea that they are made for known space where subspace has been mapped out completely. So it doesn’t need redundancy to smooth out any warp “bumps”
Okay, I really like that idea. With every planetary sized object known it would allow a reliable space-time gravitational topology to be known. And it makes sense that that could make subspace far more predictable as well.
I read an idea somewhere that single nacelle designs do actually have two nacelles, just that they were stuffed side by side in one casing and shared one Bussard collector, etc.
Ive always had an alternate theory….
Consider this…. If in a standard starship with two nacelles each naccelles has Y number of warp coils, each warp coil with a radius of X , your design has each warp coil with a radius of LESS than 1/2 of X (because you have to include some distance between the coils )
My alternate theory is the warp coils remain the same but instead coils 1&2 interact with each other, 3&4, etc …. Its just that a single nacelle ship has half the coils , but they are all the same coils
I first saw this design back in 1980 or so... (the one with the big antennae dish on the deflector dish area) Now that dual nacelles have been ruled to be in pairs, the more I see this ship I imagine it jumping to warp but tragically spinning forward like a cartoon top and self destructing or something from the structural stress (like I said like a cartoon)
It's technically symmetrical but boy do I not like it.
I've always liked the look of the single nacelle ships
I think an easy way to make single nacelle ships work in canon, even without breaking Roddenberry's golden rule, is to just consider the single nacelle as just an outer body that, functionally, contains two nacelles inside of it, thus still having a pair. But since the outer nacelle is the same size theyre obviously half as wide and in a firefight one shot can cripple both nacelles.
I think some of the technical manuals have gone down exactly that route 👍
USS Pizza cutter. Maybe Starfleet thinks space pizzas are a thing.
They are. But don’t worry, the evil pizzas are no match for a simple stoplight
Understanding the size discrepancies with the Constitution-class between TOS, SNW, and DSC is simple really. Stop accepting the bullshit line that SNW and DSC are in the same timeline as TOS. Treat them as separate timelines, which makes much more sense given the events of the movie First Contact.
I look at it like this. Single nacelle ships are only able reach .9 warp. A perfect in system ship. Although power from the Warp nacelle is significantly lower than a double. Well, as long as the intermix chamber is large enough to power said warp nacelles.
The Homies class?! LOL
The more odd and 'outside of the norm' the ship is, the more I Enjoy it!
Well, except for the 'triangle saucer' series… those suck!
I’m a fan of the classic design language, and am curious specifically in a smaller ship class… a-la a certain millennium named examples! 🤔🤔🤔🤫😁
Looking at these, I think 'Gene's rules' are less 'what's possible/impossible' than 'best/common practice for long term use'. Single-nacelle ships and such are possible...but a pain in the aft to operate and maintain in the long-term (which is why they're used as short-range vessels...closer to starbase/space-dock). They're the mono-bikes and Reliant Robins of the Trek-verse. Possible...but kinda niche.
I believe the reason for having more than two nacelles is for sustained maximum Warp. Whenever we hear about how fast a ship can go, it's also mentioned how long they can hold that top speed. Seems logical to me that having extra in the cells would extend the amount of time you could remain at your top speed you just cycle through your nacelles, running two of them at Max letting the other two rest then you switch them.
Longer strategic endurance (holding those higher speeds, getting further than duallies) is a primary advantage of triremes, even without cycling nacelles; assuming all other aspects of the material technology are the same, by dividing the workload 3 ways instead of two (even if your max remains unchanged, because of said technology's limits) you essentially get 150% engine cooling...you will got A LOT farther at emergency flank speed than a standard engine rig will before having to check down.
I wanted to jump in and ask where the TNG Freedom-class was at? USS Firebrand? Who wouldn't want to serve on a ship called the 'Firebrand'?! Like refusing to fight on a ship called the USS Amerika Fuk Yeah (NCC-WhoGivesAShit) or it's sister ship, the prestigious USS GetOutThaWay (NCC-MOVEBITCH). But other people have already commented about it.
All I can say is that these one-nacelle terrors were an absolute PITA to beat in Klingon Academy! (If you've never played Klingon Academy, I'll pray you find as much joy and wonder some other way in your lifetime) I was one of the few (but proud) to have had a ringside seat to the development of the game starting shortly after it was announced. The dev team used the Starfleet Academy engine for KA but you'd be hard pressed to find anything even remotely similar between the two, the team did the damn near impossible with what they had. In fact, even right before release, a short time after the first demo was released, the graphics designer on the team figured out a way to get higher resolutions out of the engine. If he hadn't, the game would have been capped at 640x480! Anyway, in the SKIRMISH mode you can fight a war practically by warping to various sectors and wiping out any Starfleet ships there. You had a choice of many different Klingon ships, around 8 (including the BoP that could fire while cloaked from ST-VI) but unless you picked a battleship, your butt was unceremoniously handed to you rather quickly...and you have these...these single-nacelled bastards to thank for a lot of it! They were lightly armored but fast and in decently large numbers. Oh the times I rage quit from getting blasted again and again! Kinda makes me want to install and play KA again!
I was just thinking of the Hermes and Saladin last night, for completely unrelated reasons, and a side-quest to Memory Alpha delayed my going to bed by a good 10-15 minutes. This video would have been posted by then, but I didn't go to youtube, so didn't see it until today. Quite the coincidence.
I wish we could see more of the Franz Josef designs on-screen, even if they're just background ships.
In TOS the Antimatter was stored in the Engines. It was established in multiple episodes and alluded to in TMP when Decker said the phasers were powered through the engines during the wormhole scene. The invention of the Antimatter chamber was so that they could have a deadly thing on the ship to kill Spock at the end of TWOK. So the more nacelles you have, the more power was generated in TOS science. It really makes sense if you think about it. As small scout ship needs only one engine, but the clunky and huge Stargazer needed 4 to keep it flying. :)
I see a parallel with The history of commercial Aviation in the US in the 20th Century.
They to had single engines for a while until told it was "Not safe" and they were semi-banned for all but the smallest vehicles.
Don't you mean 4 vs 2 engines? There used to be a lot more of the former decades ago because of safety reasons during transatlantic flights
@@yourstruly4817 No there was a bunch of small single engine planes around used for commercial travel in the early days it was eventually made illegal to operate an air route with anything less than 2 engines though in America.
@@90lancaster single-engine commercial-duty planes only existed because small engines weren't (yet) efficient enough. Once that efficiency was reached, dual- and quad-engine planes (where you could still fly with one dead engine) were mandated for commercial service.
Four-engine planes went the way of the dodo when engines became powerful *and reliable* enough that long-range dual-engine planes were feasible.
In the Starfleet Museum site before nuTrek, after the Farragut incident with the vampire energy cloud, Kirk commanded a Predator class ship(looks like the Hermes class but pre-TOS style). His actions behind the Klingons' lines as merchant raider&exposing a cabal of rogue Starfleet officers(Cartwright's group) that got him promoted to be the captain of the Enterprise.
I think the only single nacelle ship that actually did make it possible was the Kevin, as its nacelle was made to be far larger than a standard nacelle. To my understanding, this is because essentially two nacelles are inside this single nacelle. Allowing the Kelvin to travel with a much more stable warp field. This may also explain why the Kelvin was made to be a far larger ship, despite being an older vessel.
The first single nacelle ship I remember seeing was the Larson-class destroyer in FASA's UFP Starship Recognition Guide from the mid-80s.
So what purpose did 3 nacelles serve on the "All Good Things..." Enterprise-D?
People called Franz Joseph insane for locking himself up in his palace in 1890 making sketches of "silly saucers" little did people know he was thousands of years ahead of his time Bravo Franz.
If this ship had a phasing cloaking device. For spy work. Then, small crew says 5 for spying mission. The ship would need back up retractable warp 2.9 drives in the saucer section. The secondary hole could be a burnout drive. Achive say warp12.9 old scale and warp 10 new scale. The saucer sections could detach to change put spent drives in space dock. Then attach to new drives. And the ship would need a heav duty tractor, presser beams. To move moons and large asteroids on to collision course with enemies space installations. A large mater transport. That could beam anti mater into an enemies bridge. Or amomo bunker. And fast escape would render conventional wepons unneeded. Put spys in place, and support them covertly.
I hate those things. They make no sense.
The only way they could possibly work, is if they operate on a completely different principle and therefore should not look like normal nacelles in the first place. Like they're a series of smaller warp rings or something...and not the field coils of common nacelle designs.
Pairs...they come in pairs. That's original canon. By this point, Star Trek may as well just fuckin be Star Wars.
My club's ship was the USS HANNIBAL NCC-512 Saladin Class Destroyer.
I never wanted an Oberth class so badly.
Everything's relative...
The problem i always had with the Hermes/Saladin from the manual was that all you need to do was add 2 more phasers, add photon torpedo launchers, and 5 more redshirts, then the Hernes becomes a Saladin class.
Having an Archer type makes more sense as a scout than the actual Hermes.
Added that if we imposed the Roddenberry rules, then we wouldn't have had the USS Kelvin.
I think the starships in star trek are all the size of models. Maybe only 10 foot long max. The transpoter just shrinks people down when they are beamed aboard. Only way i can think of that allows star fleet to make ships so quickly
168
I always figured single nacelle ship simply couldn’t maneuver at warp, they’d have to drop out of warp to change course.
no reason why a nacelle is even needed, really, you just need somewhere to put the warp coils and they don't even have to be parallel to the path of travel. Klingon Birds-of-Prey are a good example of this. Same with the Defiant, with the nacelles being integrated into the hull.
Didn't the Kelvin Class only have 1 as well?
Ok the second drawing is right as that is from the StarFleet technical Manuel As for that Archer class It's a shipwreck of a design. and best ignored. the original designs were a Scout class and a Destroyer class. FASA designed a Larson class Destroyer, and a Nelson class scout which did use different designs to tell the two classes apart.
Surely it would fall over. How would one park it?
Genuinely the ugliest ship designs in Trek for me. They just look unfinished, wrong, and thrown together from spare parts of whatever class the hero series in the show is
I could never get behind the single nacelle design. I'm sorry, but I'm a "nacelles need to be in pairs" purist.
As player of the board game star fleet battles. The ship is a destroyer or the fed lollipop. Its over gunned or under powered
. Never liked that version . The DDL the leader version got it better .
Also, why don't they just use an industrial sized replicator to make ships?
Made a model of a Saladen out of a broken amt enterprises kit put on a stand gave to someone they still have
For some reason it made me happy to like the video and increase from 999 to 1k. Simple pleasures for simple minds.
Nice video, but I hate these and completely reject them from my headcanon. #TeamPairedNacelles
GODS i love your class presentations, Rick. Keep em coming! Every class you can do! These are spectacular!!!
love this class, wishing they had used the archer class from the books, hoping that we see a federation class in snw.
I would also see them as perfect Training Vessels for Academy Cadets.
It's like someone intentionally set out to design the most pathetic-looking Starship class ever.
"We can see the scale when its docked beside the constitution class" - then proceeds to show a blurred picture in which nothing can be made out.
Question for you commenters. Any canon instances where a 2 nacelle ship lost one of its nacelle but was still able to travel at warp.
6:22 I’m sorry refuse to believe the archer type has 15 decks 5 maybe 15 no way
I'm glad more and more people are realizing how dumb the paired nacelle rule was and are ignoring it.