#Oberth-class

[chernobog13]

Okay, I'm probably over-thinking this, but there has always been something that bugged me about the design of ships like the USS Grissom and USS Cerritos: how do crew members get back and forth from the primary to secondary hulls? Is there a turboshaft that runs them past the engines? They're not using the transporters, 'cause that would be a huge waste of time and energy, right?

For all I know this has already been addressed on Star Trek: Lower Decks (which I need to sit down and watch soon), and my grumblings are moot.

(Sigh) I am over-thinking this.

[spockvarietyhour]

Alt-Cerritos "The New Next Generation"

Bonus:

[defconprime]

USS Oberth from Star Trek Legacy

[alphamecha-mkii]

USS Johnston by Chris Douglas

[startreksetplans]

A lack of Constitution class in TNG?

This is Head canon / Non Canon - These are my thoughts as to why why the Constitution class doesn't continue into TNG, but Miranda and Oberth do.

When the Excelsior broke the then maximum warp-barrier, it created the new Warp speed scale we see in TNG. This "TransWarp" would eventually become the standard default over time, leading it to be shortened to "Warp" For any starship class to remain viable in this new era of speed, it had to be on par with at least the low to medium end of the new scale.

Naturally Starfleet sought to do a fleet wide refit, but not all the ships were suitable. The stresses of the new warp speed were greater than most had been developed for.

The Miranda class was relatively recent, with a more modern and robust hull. Also its compact shape required a smaller warp bubble, allowing the new warp systems to work within the class's power limits.

It takes time to design a new type of starship - especially with such a big warp technology shift. This is why there are so many Miranda variants and off-shoot classes. It is simpler to build up the fleet from a known design as a base.

The Oberth class is a small compact ship, and so like the Miranda class, it had smaller warp bubble power requirements. It survives all the way into TNG because of its ability to be retrofitted for the new warp tech - swapped out the coils, core and control systems.

Obeths are not an ideal starship - as well as its well known lack of modern defences, its systems had a habit of burning out under strain. Almost all Oberth ships at one time or another had to be towed back to Spacedock.

Starfleet should have replaced these ships with something more robust, and maybe they tried. Its possible that the Oberth replacement was ready to go, after the usual extensive and expensive development period. But what if it was developed before the Excelsior? The replacement class may have not been compatible with TransWarp.

Starfleet would have been left with a science ship design that would have far less warp performance than its upgraded predecessor. In the end, upgrading the Oberth class was the only possible option. Also with the sunk costs into the replacement, there would be less of a desire to restart the design process for another Oberth successor. Ultimately keeping the Oberth class ships running as long as possible would be a more economic move.

The Constitution class is a very old ship by this point. It had already had been refitted to the maximum speed the space-frame could handle. It would have torn itself apart at TransWarp, which is why the "Great Experiment" opted for a new ship over the reliable Constitution.

With its duties to be assigned to faster ships, it could have still limped on working within Federation space, but it would have been well over-spec and over staffed for these lesser duties.

With the end of Klingon hostilities, Starfleet took the opportunity to decommission ships that couldn't be upgraded. It would be many years before it was possible to design Constitution style vessels that could withstand the new warp scale - culminating in the Ambassador class.

[eaurpguz]

two stories from Douglas Station

a few things i remembered from before my time on the Cerritos but after I graduated from the Academy, during about a year from late 2379 to 2380.

One is that Oberth Class starships are pretty neat overall, but they are extremely mission-specific vessels. They only have enough delta-v for their specific mission profile and as such don't have particularly strong or powerful impulse engines. But they do need a lot of servicing when they get back to spacedock to replace laboratory equipment, refuel, recalibrate, etc. The one time I got to do anything interesting with the impulse engines on one, was when we were outfitting one for a stellar survey. It needed a lot more delta-v than usual due to its target having a relatively high velocity, so I 're-geared' the impulse engine to use more of its fusion reactor power for subspace than for the main reactor, which drove up the specific impulse and reduced the thrust. As far as I know that ship ended up completing its mission just fine. That's when I learned that a lot of impulse engines, which are specified for a safety factor of 4, are actually due to an error given a safety factor of 8. (The fact that this error is pervasive in so many starship classes makes me wonder if it was intentional. Engineers DO like to push safety factors to the limit. Including me sometimes.)

The other thing is there was one time I was servicing an Intrepid class. These use bio-neural gel computers, and for some reason my manager brought me into the computer core to take a look at the bio-neural gel. I tried to diagnose the problem but computer science is really not my specialty. Now I realize that they were probably just laughing at me behind my back.

(The Intrepid class isn't the only class of ships that use bio-neural gel packs, but that was the only time I was ever called to look at them. The only other one I can recall off the top of my head is Sovereign class, but we never serviced a Sovereign class at Douglas Station during my time there.)

Anyway. One look at the linear array of impulse engines in the Cerritos and I was hooked. I knew I had to put in for a transfer. Most starships use impulse engine clusters but the Cerritos has SO MANY. Keeps me busy!

[alphamecha-mkiii]

USS Grissom (Oberth Class) by Diogo Vincenzi

[that-vexaholic-cryptid]

"Remote Rendezvous" by MckinneyC on DeviantArt

[mrsometimes11]

Oberth Class Appreciation

Am I the only one who loves the Oberth class?

The design is exactly what a futuristic starship should be, not despite but because of the fact it makes no sense. These people have transporters and force fields, why would they bother with physical connections to other bits of the ship, why care about how exposed literally every vital system is.

Sure they get destroyed with alarming frequency, but they are science ships, not battleships, they are what StarFleet is supposed to be. Honestly, I think they'd last a lot longer if the Admirals stopped sending them into warzones.

In fact, I love the Oberth so much I'm designing a fan-fic based on one!

USS Harmony-A.pdf

[stra-tek]

Lots and lots of random spoilerific things about Star Trek comics

Gold Key's old run was written by people who had never actually seen the show. Later they involved fans like Doug Drexler to make things a bit more authentic

This however made them, IMHO, amazing

Blond scotty. Wearing green.

Voodoo planet, with papier mache versions of Earth landmarks which, when blasted with a death ray, cause the real ones to collapse

Spock learns voodoo to combat this threat

The Enterprise completely razes a planet of hostile plant spore things. Like full on extermination of all life

There's a locked room on deck 7 full of evil Vulcan spirits. A yeoman blunders in and all hell breaks loose

Kirk doesn't know what a god damn black hole is

Spock is kidnapped by aliens, has their entire knowledge downloaded into his brain which makes him into a bobblehead for awhile

The Enterprise is briefly taken from Kirk and given to Captain Zarlo, who is a total bellend

Spock forgets to have pointed ears sometimes

The old UK newspaper comic strips were even worse. The first few issues feature "Captain Kurt" and he wears a red shirt. Bailey is also a lead character, giving away which one episode they had knowledge of

Depictions of the Enterprise in their very first strip will shock and horrify you, but after that the art becomes amazing and maintains a very high standard

Marvel did a series following The Motion Picture, and it was a vast improvement, although they technically had rights to the movie and not the series, which led to a little weirdness. Tons of references still were snuck in, though

There's a series of Book and Records, which you can listen to on YouTube and are goofy fun. The Enterprise desperately needs a meal in the art, though.

They draw Romulans as green wizards

They didn't have the rights to Nichelle Nichols or George Takei's likenesses, so get ready for White Uhura and Black Sulu!

They didn't have the rights to The Animated Series either, so M'Ress is a human with weird face paint and Arex is substituted for just some guy

There's an unlicensed Chinese adaptation of The Motion Picture's novelisation (made with zero prior knowledge of Star Trek), which features an all-star cast like O.J. Simpson as Decker and James Brolin as Kirk. It's called The Star Trek, which is a better name than The Motion Picture, IMHO.

DC comics' first run is considered some of the best Trek ever. They're made with love and a deep knowledge of the source material

You know how Star Trek III takes place right after II? WRONG. It was several months later and the crew (with Saavik taking over from Spock) had tons of adventures in the interim. It just seemed like it was right after😂

Before Worf and long long before Ash Tyler, Kirk had a Klingon on his crew

He was a cowardly Klingon named Konom who fled the Empire

He fell in love with a human woman named Bryce

They adopted an albino Klingon/human child with dwarfism which they named Bernie

Kirk has an unhinged, insubordinate crewman on board named Bearclaw and they hate each other

Tension escalates and eventually there's a stabbing

Sulu/M'Ress happens and I don't think people knew what furrys were in the 80's

You know how Spock comes back at the end of III but isn't his old self until the end of Star Trek IV? WRONG AGAIN. He came back just fine, and lost his marbles following an incident months later that just happened to line everything up to make it all seem like it was right after.

After STIII, Kirk becomes captain of the U.S.S. Excelsior NX-2000 and Spock becomes captain of the U.S.S. Surak. We get a few issues exclusively focusing on Spock's ship and his band of merry weirdos.

The U.S.S. Surak keeps changing design, starting off as a sort of Oberth-class ship, then randomly becoming an Excelsior-class ship and finally ending as the warp sled shuttlecraft from The Motion Picture

The Surak's crew include a giant chicken man, a Vulcan hating racist lady and a balding man with a bicycle

They all die horribly and a massive reset button is pressed so everyone is exactly where they were at the end of Star Trek III

In order to make that work they had to bs that the Klingon Bird of Prey was hidden in Excelsior's shuttlebay all this time despite it being way, way too big for that

There's a full on mirror universe invasion

Kirk becomes a celebrity from saving the galaxy all the time

Mr. Arex comes back and becomes chief of security but doesn't really do much

HORTA CREWMEMBER. It's as amazing as it sounds

The first Next Generation comic miniseries was made with knowledge of the first 2 or 3 TNG episodes and nothing else

Everyone is hench as fuck. Picard has washboard abs and bulging muscles

Data is emotional and Troi feels the emotions she senses a la "Encounter at Farpoint"

Wesley is drawn as if he's 10

The B-shift con and ops team are a husband and wife who wear caped superhero versions of Starfleet uniforms with bare legs.

They argue. A lot.

The crew meet an alien Santa Claus and Q loses his powers years before "Deja Q"

The whole Q Continuum visits the Enterprise and they're all John De Lancie but in Starfleet uniforms of every colour under the sun.

After that initial miniseries, the Next Gen crew lose a lot of their muscle mass and start resembling their on screen counterparts a lot better

Picard had a brother who fell down a hole and died as a child. Q offers to rewrite history so he doesn't die. Claude Picard grew up to be Space Superhitler and turns Starfleet and the Federation fascist.

Before all this Q turned Jean-Luc into a goat for the lolz

Marvel's The Early Voyages was very literally Strange New Worlds before Strange New Worlds.

They have a pyrokinetic security officer named Nano and he's awesome

Marvel lost the Trek license quite suddenly, and so the series ends on a cliffhanger where Admiral April is up to something iffy.

Marvel did a Starfleet Academy series featuring Nog and its utterly fantastic

A female Andorian cadet tries to make Nog feel at ease by greeting him in the nude, but Nog fails to take it as an innocent gesture and she immediately sends him flying across the room

Romulan agents with split personalities in Starfleet Academy!

They visit Talos IV and get help from Captain Pike, who's still alive

IDW comics did a prequel to the 2009 reboot where Picard is an ambassador, Data is captain of the Enterprise-E and Nero has hair. It was co-written by the movie writers and was considered sort of vaguely semi canon ish for a time

They originally wanted the Romulan supernova to destroy a lot more, including Earth and have Nero kill the TNG crew. It was the Star Trek Online devs that got them to scale things back because they'd have no universe left to set their game in.

Nero's ship looks like it does because after Romulus was destroyed he took it to a secret Romulan base and had it equipped with reverse-engineered Borg technology

You thought DC struggled to keep ship designs correct? IDW's comics keep using traced fan art from Google Images, and fan art (sometimes with unique ship designs) has shown up on multiple occasions as the Kelvinverse U.S.S. Enterprise

In one IDW TOS comic, the bridge is totally covered with TNG LCARS graphics.

In another, an Orion ship is a gigantic Stargate sticking out of the middle part of Battlestar Galactica.

Wanna see Kelvinverse versions of TOS episodes? That was their first comics run, picking up after the 2009 reboot movie. They start off very faithful and as the series goes on things diverge more and more

To the extent some stories have very different backstories and outcomes

We visit 2 Kelvin mirror universes and a genderswapped universe too. No, Kirk doesn't do what you're thinking.

Q visits the Kelvin Universe and brings the crew forward in time to their version of Deep Space Nine

Nero's time in Klingon prison (from the Star Trek 2009 deleted scenes) and escape is fleshed out

Nero meets V'ger.

Nero mind melds with V'ger.

V'ger turns away due to the sheer force of Nero's hatred.

I wish I was making that up.

Klingons get their hands on Narada's technology and go to war

We get a Khan backstory where the Eugenics Wars are a full on nuclear conflict and "Khan" is the title that little Noon Sing adopts when he takes power

After being revived in the 23rd century, Admiral Marcus has Khan surgically altered to look like Benedict Cumberbatch as part of his John Harrison cover identity

They did a series of shorts called Waypoint, and in the first one Geordi is captain of a future Enterprise and his crew is made up of holographic versions of Data and it's a really sweet concept (this was several years before before ST: Picard brought Data back twice)

There's a prequel series centred around Number One where nobody manages to say her name before being interrupted. If you put the bits together it seems her name was Eureka Robbins. Of course, this is long before novels and SNW made her Una Chin-Riley.

[morns-fevered-dream]

Here to live blog the series finale for Star Trek Lower Decks I can't believe this is the final episode of the show I don't know how to feel that this is the end but due to the current boycott of Paramount+ I'm watching from a pirate cove and spoilers for Star Trek Lower Decks finale

Season 5 Episode 10

First off only 33 minutes?!!?! For a series finale?

Ma'am being in the flashback I wonder if he'll appear this episode

Ah Klingon running into a universal threat and having a ship basically evaporated this has happened a few times huh

DIS Klingons?! Oh my god if any show would be brave enough to do that it'd be LD

Them bring surprised by the captain believing them is funny

Hey Freeman mentioned the T'Pol and multiple Kims as being weird but no Garak and Bashir being married maybe because that's in the main universe too 😉

That new Klingon ship is interesting I love a good kit bash fun seeing a Klingon equivalent

I love the main crew trying to not deal with it

Malor loving human food is top tier

I love a good evil Klingon family I'm afraid

SINGLE NACELLE CALIFORNIA CLASS?!

Awwwwww but I wanted to hear Tendi nerd out :(

Sailing barge in space sweet Kahless

This is so un-Rutherford like

Not the Beluga calling Ma'ah hot

Yipee the power of friendship!

Ransom goated with the sauce?

Did a demi god just use lightning powers to hit another ship? In star trek? I love this show so much

It turned them into that thing Worf turned into in that TNG episode I think

Sovereign, Oberth, Galaxy, Miranda then back to California in like 5 seconds

Splitting in two wow

Malor advice saved the day? Awww hugs

A whole new frontier? Hell yeah

Garak and Bashir spotted!

The meow and Shax tear touched my heart

Starfleet fanny pack?

Captain Ransom...not bad

A very fun episode but I was hoping for a bit more if I'm honest it was the perfect season finale but maybe not the perfect series finale but still fun nonetheless

[chernobog13]

Cutaway diagram of an Oberth-class starship.

[spockvarietyhour]

For reference:

[defconprime]

USS Mary

[alphamecha-mkii]

[startreksetplans]

Olympic Class idea

Had a (non-canon) idea about the Olympic class - what if it could saucer separate...

The two parts of the ship

Sphere - holds the warp core & associated systems, nacelles, general engineering, bridge, crew quarters, and crew facilities

Module - Hospital that can be sealed off from the main ship (in case of contagions). It has a shuttlebay to receive medical shuttles, docking ports for ships. Also probably a lot of transporters.

Why separate? Sometimes a hospital must remain in orbit of a planet for quite a long time. Why not have the drive do something else in the mean time.

The Sphere could dock with other modules

Colony Module - carries all the colonists, supplies, construction material etc. When delivered to site, the module becomes an orbiting space station, providing docking and transporter systems for supply ships.

Cargo Module - either bulk freight, or specialised hazardous material such as Neutronic Fuel. Ships going "where no one has gone before" need resupply now and again in the field rather than turn around and head back home for supplies.

Science Stations - manned or unmanned, easier to build at a construction facility than on-site near that black hole you want to study

Sensor Pods - the Olympic sphere could accompany science ships with large mission specific sensor pods. Planet scanning MRI machines for example. [side note: this is what I think the Oberth has - a large uninhabited sensor pod. Held away from the ship due to dangerous emissions. It was meant to be scanning the entire planet, not just surface scans.]

With separation, the Olympic goes from a single purpose to a flexible multi-purpose support ship.

In these pictures, it looks as if the mount for the nacelles struts is resting on top of the long body module.

The original model blueprints for the ship model had different nacelles - perhaps the sphere section had an in-universe refit.

If you wanted to modernise / refit an Olympic ship, taking out the one ship does not prevent the modules beings used by another Olympic in the meantime.