The United Earth Ship Sojourner, second of the Voyager-class exploration vessels in service to the United Earth Defense and Exploration Force. Sojourner represents a new generation in exploration and fold drive technology, with a primary mission to seek out new life in the galaxy, expanding mankind's knowledge of the universe. Voyager-class vessels can operate for up to five years without external support. Though they are exploration vessels, Voyagers are well armed with eight dual beam cannons, twelve triple-barrel plasma turrets, and four multi-use missile launchers. Arguably, the main innovation the Voyager-class adds to star ships is the saucer-shaped habitation section, an improvement on the older-styled spherical habitation section and a warship's rectangular body: the larger habitation area allows for more comfortable quarters and more scientific equipment, while also presenting a narrower profile under combat situations.

There's a long story behind this. Basically, Sojourner started out as an idea for a Star Trek fanfic called "The Omicron Directive," involving a top-secret Federation starship built independently of Starfleet because the Federation's high command feared a possible coup de tats (which I was surprised to learn actually almost happened in DS9), and so created Project Omicron, with the prototype USS Omicron as the end result of this project, a warship armed with everything from a new more efficient warp drive to a top-secret integrated cloaking device, as well as TOS-style hand phasers and anti-phaser armor for boarding actions. The story never went anywhere as it was. However, the core concept of a "realistic" and well-designed starship stayed behind. Fast forward some years, and that idea is still hanging in the back of my mind when I start watching sfdebris' reviews of Star Trek Enterprise. The end result of some musing (actually basically over the last month): a Galaxy Quest-like homage/deconstruction/reconstruction of a series that - despite its flaws - I still do enjoy and admire.

Now, will I go anywhere with this? I honestly don't know. While this universe is slowly growing larger and more complete (just as an example: FTL tavel, teleportation, and FTL communications are all outgrowths of the same two bits of technology: wormhole generation and mass alteration), I don't know if I'm able to properly tell the story about humanity learning about extraterrestrial life and then having to work towards it while showing how Earth has changed because of this while also realistically portraying first contact with numerous species. It really is a complicated story, with the Sojourner's crew just being a small part of a much larger story where even the captain's position is a matter of politics. I would like to tell this story, I just don't know if I can. Of course, I also don't know if I can tell Mad Ventures and The Covenant Wars, but I guess I won't know until I try.

Now, because I have a feeling about certain things, allow me to explain a few things about Sojourner's design. First of all, Matt Jeffries - the designer of the USS Enterprise - was a sheer genius: the Enterprise is a masterpiece of design, and is actually fairly close to how I imagine a real interstellar ship will end up looking, even if it's because Star Trek nerds design the ships that way. The combination of engine pods, power core area, and habitation modules all separated from one another in some way is really a brilliant design (though the off-center warp nacelles bothers me, and I know that it's to improve maneuverability at warp, so don't tell me that). Anyway, on to design and history of development.

The first Earth-type FTL ship - Tsiolkovsky - used two massive rings to generate the fold effect, mounted parallel to the ship on opposite sides. This ship also had a small habitation module attached to the massive engineering and power section. The two rings were found to be necessary to stabilize the wormhole effect used by fold drives. The next improvement in design mounted these rings perpendicular to the hull The next innovation was to move these rings behind the ship and around the engineering section, stacked on top of each other, which eventually had hull-plating mounted around the rings to create a single ring. At this point, habitation modules were still big and blocky things, but a greater understanding of fold drive led to more streamlined looks: the Soyuz-class of this generation even had a spherical habitation module. Eventually, miniaturization allowed the creation of so called "fold pods," with several small paired rings mounted in sequence inside an armored tube. While this substantially reduced the size of the external fold drive, this introduced wormhole stability problems which reduced the overall "speed" of the ship. The UENA-X17 Enterprise-class was the first class to utilize two matching fold pods to solve this problem, mounted next to each other. However, this created a resonance effect between the two pods that destabilized artificial wormholes to near uselessness: the X17 class had to be completely rebuilt to move the pods as far away from each other as they possibly could. Though theoretically possible to build two fold pods right next to each other, current limitations in technology make it impossible. Sojourner's most recent innovation is the saucer-sections that grow out from the central hull: these larger areas allow for more comfortable crew quarters and more extensive equipment. Current ideas for the next generation of star ships includes variable geometry warp pods that can be retracted into the main hull when not in use: in addition to making it easier to protect the relatively fragile pods, it will also allow improvements in fold drive technology to be almost immediately implemented.

Jesus, this is getting long. Okay, some quick notes: fold technology uses mass-alteration to give the ship negative mass while also generating an artificial wormhole. The equations necessary for a fold drive to work make it almost impossible to use inside a star system: on a related note, attempting to use a wormhole for time travel causes it to collapse. Power is provided by an antimatter/matter reactor: antimatter can be generated on board the ship, but it is usually made in giant solar-powered automated factories. And… and… okay, I'm spent. Except to say that this ranking system is from this story.

Okay, questions? Comments?

Schematic concept based on concept doodle by  SiegfriedNox