They are on the Gallery page.
Design Influences
Original Enterprise
The obvious influence is the Matt Jefferies designed: TOS, Constitution class, Enterprise. I love that ship. I could wax lyrical on Matt Jefferies’ iconic design but I will leave that for another post. I think it’s the most beautiful Star Trek ship, except, perhaps, for Matt Whiley’s poster. I just love what you did there Matt.
The registry number and name are references to the Forbidden Planet film. Apparently Gene Roddenberry screened Forbidden Planet for his production team during preproduction of the first pilot. Maybe Forbidden Planet’s C-57D cruiser is the reason why the Enterprise has a saucer section.
Radial Engine Cowl
Several decades ago I helped out making a science fiction fan film. We were filming in the cockpit of the Concorde in a transport museum in Bristol. Between takes I had a look at some rotary and radial aircraft engines that were on display near the Concorde and I was impressed by how they seemed to be in motion even when standing still. They seemed to crackle with power and I could see the cooling vaned cylinders as being part of some amazing warp engine. I’ve always been a fan of WW2 radial engined airplanes. I like the look of the cowls at the front of the fighters and I think that the radial engined, American, bombers look amazing.
So the front of the secondary hull resembles the front of a WW2 radial engined fighter.
Vacuum Tubes
When I was six we moved from Northern Ireland to a house in Glasgow. The previous owner left behind a collection of (radios?) with vacuum tubes in them. Vacuum tubes are very beautiful and look a mixture of mysterious/advanced and primitive/low-tech. I didn’t know how they worked but I knew that they, somehow, did electronics.
The nacelles are some hybrid amalgam of a beam tetrode and a klystron. “Every” gadget in Forbidden Planet was a klystron.
how to short-circuit the continuum on a five or six parsec level
Design Goals
Retro Look
I wanted something from shortly before the TOS connie (constitution class Enterprise). Maybe about 30 years prior to the original Constitution class or something roughly contemporary to the connie but using a technology that wasn’t carried forward.
Airplane Design Language
It’s well known that Matt Jefferies was a pilot and I think that he used his aeronautical experience to inform his design choices when he created the original Enterprise. I wanted to design an “Enterprise” that used 1930s/1940s radial engined fighter motifs. In particular I wanted to include the look of a radial engine cowl in the front of the secondary hull where the navigational dish would be.
The cowl front is also determined by my ideas for the layout and contents of the engine room. Maybe I will talk about this later. There are things that I’d like to have in place before I talk about it.
The rest of the secondary hull has a blended, streamlined, shape evocative of sub-sonic, WW2 aircraft designs.
Look Different From Every Angle
One of the many things I like about the Jefferies connie is that it looks very different depending on which angle you view from. I wanted to preserve this feature in my take on his classic design.
