Never looked practical to me. The force of the engines would tear them right off those silly struts they were placed on.
I never liked the look of the Enterprise B, the main one from the Next Generation. It looks way too curved and tapered to be practical for making flat decks on the inside, especially the connection between the primary and secondary hulls.
And it reminds me of a mad goose.
It’s a fictional world that has faster-than-light speed that doesn’t create relativity-based anomalies, like changes in perception of time. It has spacecraft with earth-like gravity.
I don’t think the laws of physics apply as we know it.
I’m not even sure that warp drive is supposed to work like force-propulsion (the “impulse” engines are attached to the back of the saucer section).
D.
I had to guess on that. I built a few other plastic models, that’s the one I really liked.
I’d rather live on the D than any of the others, but I think the A is prettier.
I liked this one, because it actually worked.
Ye canna change the laws of physics!
CV-6
As noted elsewhere, the warp engines do not provide thrust. They create a warp field that propels the ship through space like a fly trapped in amber.
The only criticism I have about the impulse engines is that they wouldn’t be of much help out in deep space, since they provide sublight propulsion only. One of the **dumbest **things about ***TNG *** was having the saucer act as a lifeboat for all the nonessential personnel (i.e., children) in the event of a battle. Unless there’s another allied vessel very close by to come to their aid, they’re either gonna be sitting ducks for the hostile spacecraft, or they’re going to spend one helluva long time trying to get back to safety.
Aw, come on Scotty! You can do it for me!
That was the -D, and it was indeed an ugly design. :mad:
Which arguably is a better option than having them all automatically go down with the ship in case of a battle or non-combat disaster. Supposedly though, one of the advantages of the saucer separation was that by relieving the stardrive section of the mass of the saucer, you could greatly improve it’s tactical effectiveness. If that was true though then while Starfleet had huge fleets set up for the Dominion War, why did they often show whole Galaxy class vessels with saucer intact as part of the fleet? That would seem to be the perfect time to ditch the saucer, leave it at the starbase, and just send the warp capable stardrive section into the fray.
TV writers, who can figure them?
Better to not have them on board AT ALL.
I can see using the saucer as a lifeboat in a non-combat emergency, but if there are hostiles around, they’re gonna go for the saucer first and either blow it to smithereens or capture and enslave everyone on board.
If the standard configuration of a starship is so ineffectual in battle, why have they been building them that way for more than a century? Kirk never had any problems fighting hostiles—except, of course, circuits would blow and the shields would go down after three or four phaser/disruptor hits. (I suspect all of Starfleet’s vessels were built by the lowest bidder.)
With all of the problems it has, I call Voyager ‘United Federation Starship Rickety Raft’.
.
but this one flew first.
The whole “saucer separation” thing was a cute idea that grew out of one line of dialogue in the original series (“The Apple”: " Discard the warp drive nacelles if you have to, and crack out of there with the main section, but get that ship out of there!").* There are, as noted, issues with the idea (basically, it just becomes a huge floating target), but if it were truly to result in increased maneuverability of the remaining portion of the ship, it might have value.
What I objected to was that episodes after the pilot actually had the saucer section fly at warp speeds, which made absolutely zero sense, given that the warp nacelles were no longer anywhere around it. I think the fact that the separated saucer section never became a real focus of any episode after the pilot showed that later writers understood the inherent limitations in the concept.
- Yes, I know similar dialogue exists in “The Savage Curtain”.
But, I’ve got to have thirty minutes!
Try shoving a weenie up my warp drive!
.
This. I still have my original blueprints.
The Enterprise is not primarily a military vessel. It is primarily a scientific, research, diplomatic, and cultural vessel. Removing the civilians would make it useless for the purpose they built it for 99 percent of the time.
So certain compromises have to be made for that last 1 percent.