Part of the great fun of Star Trek today is that it is rich enough for fans to be able to customize and design his/her own ship and make it feel like it is really part of the Federation. I imagine that this is the large appeal of the new Star Trek Online, which enables you to customize your ship and crew in a variety of ways, and then go out and bust some Klingon heads for honor and glory.
I certainly had a lot of fun coming up with a completely new ship and design. I have no problem giving out some information before the novel is released because: 1) many of the fine details of the ship are not directly relevant to the story; 2) it helps some of you fans get a sense of where my ship fits in the Federation fleet; and 3) well, I’m not revealing everything about it just yet. The ship may seem fairly standard right now (given that it’s supposed a ship from the future); some of its more specialized abilities will be revealed when the novel is released. If you’ve forgotten what the ship looks like, click here.
Aegis-class
Vehicle Type: Heavy cruiser (specialized)
Normal cruise: Warp 6.0
Maximum speed: Warp 9.97 for two hours
Maximum cruising speed: Warp 9.5
Dimensions:
- Length: 489 m
- Beam: 302 m
- Height: 68 m
Mass: 1,845,000 metric tons
Crew: 450 (3000 evacuation limit)
For most of you, that information was probably totally meaningless. But I wanted to give everyone a sense of scale of the ship. I thought that I’d include images of ships that were familiar to everyone, like the Galaxy-class starship (ST:TNG), the Excelsior-class (as seen in films and ST:TNG and DS9), and the Intrepid-class (ST:VOY).
The Aegis-class starship that I’ve designed will be much smaller than the Enterprise-D. I had specific reasons for not going for an über-sized pumped up ship. Instead it will be roughly comparable to the size of the Akira-class or Excelsior-class, but slightly longer and thinner (and occupies far less mass). I am personally a big fan of the Akira-class ships because they’re big enough to have a sense of power, but small enough to be nimble in battle. The Aegis-class will be nimbler still.
More sketches of the ship coming soon!
Note: The images of these starships were taken with permission from www.ex-astris-scientia.org. For anyone who is curious about Federation ships in general, I recommend this site for information.
