The USS ROBERT LEE SCOTT. NCC-81500
Every once in a while, I like to take a break and work a project where I am bound by nothing other than what I want to do. While not a huge fan of Star Trek shows and movies, they’re enjoyable enough, I LOVE the design and production of the series. I eat up all the behind the scenes production, designs and FX, especially the starship designs. I buy Star Trek design, production and concept art books. So one day I had an idea of a Federation Starship design pop in my head and I decided to start a model.

Now, there are rules I did want to follow. The design rules set by Matt Jefferies’s original design concepts; a saucer connected to an engineering hull, and 2 warp engines. This is such a basic recipe that there’s been so many variants of these established design concepts that similar designs are inevitable. It’s how one slightly changes this recipe to be as unique as possible – but staying within the Start Trek universe.

Now, I grew up mostly with the TOS era shows and movies. I remember watching TOS as reruns growing up, but I was blown away when I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, not necessarily by the movie, but by the Enterprise herself.  So you can say I’m an “old-school” Star Trek design guy.

Then, I saw the USS Kelvin and was equally drawn to the old-school, nuts and bolts look of that ship in the JJ Abrams reboot. Unfortunately, the rest of the film continued after the Kelvin scenes to make it seem that Apple designed Starfleet.

So,. . . my design. My ship, the USS Robert Lee Scott ( a World War II general) follows more of the old school nuts and bolts look. I like hard edges, right angles and flat surfaces.  Notice, along the spine of the main extrusion from the saucer, are very greebley, exposed technology. This follows my love of exposed technology, like a how a hot rod engine is exposed from under the hood. This design philosophy follows my concept that the tech is still large and instead of squeezing the tech inside the ship, it’s simply applied along the spine. Think of it as modern cell phones, once large and unattractive bricks, they are now slick button-less tech. Technology gets smaller and more powerful. So my idea of this ship is that this class of Starship is 20-30 years older than the Constitution Class Starship.

It’s also a VERY large ship compared to the Constitution class Starship. Some would say this shouldn’t be the case as some attribute size to power. Nope, the Constitution class is a more powerful, more advanced ship. Think of it as a 21^st century navy vessel, like a battleship or cruiser, being more powerful than a World War II aircraft carrier.

“The General” as it’s crew calls it, is a large multi-mission vessel that is modular. The current configuration you see in the work-in-progress renders has a Tactical Fighter and support section. This is a hull that supports a Tactical Fighter wing, support craft and a small, but powerful, cruiser vessel. It houses the fighters, technology, crew and shuttle-bays to support the mission. It also is newer technology, so it’s a system supported by an older system. You can compare the sleaker, more rounded design versus the straight, hard-edge design of The General’s main engineering hull. I like how this shows that Tech Design is continuously evolving in the Trek universe.

This is an ongoing project that will take a while, I will update and continue progress as I have time, so check back often for updates.