Re: What do your ships look like? (was: Minatures)

FieldScott@aol.com wrote:
> In most sci-fi, there seems to be two general "schools" of design. One
is the
> "saucer & boom" approach; examples include most Star Trek ships, as
well as
> many of CMD's New Anglian ships. This style looks cool, but I'm not
sure it
> makes sense in a warship; I always thought that those long booms made
very
> vulnerable targets. Some backgrounds say the reason for this is so the
crew
> compartments can survive if the engines are destroyed, although given
the
> amount of energy that would be released, this explanation seems rather
thin
> to me. 

Hmmm.  There could also be the question of trying to minimize profile
from
certain angles; or providing the required length for weapons like a 
Spinal Mount or large particle accelerator at an economical cost.  

And, depending on the engines, mounting them on booms might improve crew
survival.  If you're in a universe where people toss nuclear weapons
around
regularly in space, having your fusion reactor go BOOM 100m away might
be
survivable because you have to survive a nuclear bomb going BOOM 10m
away.

In one of my personal universes, jump engines have to be mounted in a
certain
geometrical pattern in order to form the proper balanced field; this
helps
give a further justification to "wings" and "booms".

Just some thoughts.  Personally, as long as you can justify the design, 
then I don't care if it looks like a cube or if it's something like the
Concorde.  (Though, I've always been annoyed that the Borg chose a cube
for
their "efficient" ship design, when a sphere is more economical
regarding
surface area vs volume.)  (8-)

J.

-- 
     Jerry Han - Network Engineering - UUNET Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada
	http://www.uunet.ca/~jerry -  email:jerry@uunet.ca - TBFTGOGGI
		"Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
     Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I" - Pink Floyd