Star Trek Ship Designs

From LoveToKnow Sci-Fi

Looking for some Star Trek ship designs? Most of the books that contain the ship schematics are out of print, so if you don't have a hardcore Trekkie as a friend, then visit some of the links below to get your Star Trek fix.

Multiple Star Trek ship designs have appeared on television and in the movies.

Ship Schematics

One of the most comprehensive databases on the Internet is located at Ship Schematics. This website only has the outside designs of the ship available, but there are over 2300 ships in the collection. Besides the Federation ships, you will also find ships for other races. The Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, and the Cardassian Union are all represented. For the more obscure alien races, this site has ships of the Borg Collective, Ferengi Alliance, the Maquis, and the Gorn Defense Force. The creator of the site also has some personal designs that he created for Star Trek roleplaying games years ago. He calls the race, N'Redomm. Even though the website hasn't been updated since October 2006, you'll find searching through the database well worth it.

Star Trek Intelligence

One of the best looking websites for Star Trek ship designs is Star Trek Intelligence. The presentation of this site will prove impressive as you search for and study Star Trek ships. Each ship is categorized under what race it belongs to and then split into different classes. Unfortunately, there is no search function.

As you pull up specific ships, you get a specification sheet on the ship in that class. A nice computer rendered model greets you at the top of the page and a 3D rotating version of the ship is at the bottom. In the middle of the page is where you will find the information about a ship. Some of the things you can read about:

Category of the ship
Height, width, and length of the ship. Also, you can find out about the mass.
How many decks the ship has.
Maximum capacity of the crew and how many officers and enlisted men the ship needs.
When the ship was commissioned (in Star Trek years)
What weapons are available.
Type of Warp Reactor runs the ship.
Cruising speed (as well as maximum cruising speed) and total maximum speed, or Warp Speed.

The description of the capabilities of the ship and why the ship was created follows the specifications of the Star Trek ship.

Drawing Your Own Star Trek Ship Designs

If you wish to create your own Star Trek ship designs, then you must follow some rules. The rules are from Star Trek's creator himself, Gene Roddenberry. Visit Ex Astris Scientia to read about the design rules for Star Trek spaceships. Basically, certain functions of a ship are placed with extreme precision. For example, Rule #1 staes that "warp nacelles must be in pairs". Most of the rules come from TNG Technical Manual, but you can use the advice to build ships to work in the other series or for roleplaying games. Near the bottom of the site is a list of 12 mistakes that you should avoid as you design a Star Trek ship.

Real Life Models

Besides looking at rendered editions of starships on the Internet, you can buy model kits to live out your Star Trek fantasy. To see what was and is available, go to Starship Modeler. The big focus is the USS Enterprise models, since the show and movies revolve around the antics of the Enterprise. Delving a few pages in, you find information about the rest of the fleet. Each model has reviews from a number of people about constructing the ship and how easy the design was to use as well as final product. Reference materials are listed so you can research additional information about that particular ship. Besides ships, you can find links to pages that also build and review alien ships, Star Trek props, and in-depth websites that relay the lore of the Star Trek universe.

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