Station

[skyhawk223]

Thought I would dust off the old space station again and give it more detail. Needs texture work, but thought I would post the progress anyway. Threw a docked USS Renegade in for proportion. As you may notice, I used the Horatio saucer at the end of the arms. Hey, why not?
http://hometown.aol.com/~skyhawk223/station_renegade.jpg

[Masao]

Hey! Looks cool. We need some more TOS spacestations around here. I like the flat disc on top, since it gets away from the usual Spacedock giant mushroom look. those Horatio saucers might be a bit too much, though.

Renegade doesn't really help give the scale, because it's not right next to the station. It could be far away or it could be close.

By the way, the image isn't showing up in the thread because you have a curvy bracket (shifted) instead of a square bracket around the first "img"

[skyhawk223]

Actually, the Renegade is right up to the docking port or whatever you want to call those large curved sections. Bad angle on the shot I guess.

What about the Horatio saucer do you not like? I was actually toying with the idea of getting rid of them because the scale of the windows doesn't work out with the size of the station.

Should I try to simplify the station some by putting more orb-ish shapes were the Horatio saucers are now?

[Thomas P]

Nice station (I spy some Horatio's ;)). Big too.

[Masao]

Okay, you can all call me "stupid." I see now that Renegade is actually docked right up against the station. In that case, this is a really small station, not much bigger than the ship itself! I guess I couldn't imagine the station would be so small. The trouble I have with those Horatio hulls is that they seem wasteful of surface area since they enclose a relatively small volume. Unless their are like little vacation cabins that people rent for privacy, you'd be better off just increasing the size of the station itself.

Hey, now that I take a closer look, isn't that the back end of one of my starliners forming the bottom of the station?

[skyhawk223]

Umm, uhh, well, it was floating around the ether, so I claimed it. I even left the impulse engine vents on, figuring that they could be seen as the power generator vents, sort of like DS9 had. Good eye.

I am trying out some other designs to replace the Horatio hulls. However, I might just get rid of the wondows and scale the whole thing up.

[Masao]

Well, sure I'd notice parts of my own ship! Nothing wrong with using them, but you might consider either covering your tracks by varying the proportions a bit or making sure you never show a Bison starliner docking there. Actually I could see how the reactor section of a Bison could easily be used for starbases. It makes sense, in fact.

Instead of the Horatio hulls, maybe smaller versions of the station's main disc? That would be more consistent.

[Ashrak]

Looks great! Nice work of the saucer...recycling parts great idea..

[skyhawk223]

I was playing around with the station yesterday. I actually made a pentagon shape to replace the Horatio stuff. It's ok, but looks like it's from an earlier time period. Perhaps I will redo the main saucer with a simpler shape. As of right now, it looks more like a movie era station than something from the TOS era.

[skyhawk223]

Here's what I have so far. Not overly happy with it as it appears to mix old and new and not very well. Might get rid of the pentagon shaped body and just go with the Horatio hulls. Either that or replace everything with simpler shapes.
http://hometown.aol.com/~skyhawk223/station7_24.jpg

[Masao]

What time period are you aiming for exactly? Similarities to the mushroom space dock (big top, dangling cylinder with sphere) already make it look like movie/TNG era. Also, the Horatio primary hull is supposedly Pre-TOS, but is actually Pseudo-pre-TOS, seeing as it was designed as an Nx-01-style ship. So those hulls also suggest TNG/DS9 era.

The only canon TOS station we have is K-7. Elements you can use are the saucer and cone shape modules and the connecting sticks. There's also that weird shell within shell arrangement of the saucer, but I don't know if you want to use that. Other than that we have the big round Franz Joseph SFHQ.

Maybe you should look at some 1950s/60s era station ideas from the days before we actually got sent people into space. Those are mostly big rings with fat hubs which spin for gravity.

[skyhawk223]

I'm trying to keep it in the TOS period. I am totally lost with this design. Let me see what I can find as far as 60's station designs. That's a good idea.

[Masao]

Stations are tricky, since we now the Spacedock design so well. The trouble is most stations are unlikely to be like Spacedock with a large internal hanger, so shouldn't necessarily mimic its shape. Of course, the Feds seem to like saucers, but what makes sense for a starship might not for a station.

Good Luck! My usual way of working is that before I even touch my keyboard I do a lot sketching on paper. Just thumbnails, but it helps to quickly go through (and discard) a lot of design ideas before taking the time to actually prepare schematics or models.

[skyhawk223]

If I could draw worth a darn, that's what I would do. I can see how valuable sketching could be. However, the linkage between what I see in my head to what goes on paper is terrible.
I changed the main hull shape.
http://hometown.aol.com/~skyhawk223/station7_26.jpg

[Thomas P]

I wnet looking for 60's style (movie) space stations and only found the 'Von Braun Wheel'. I did find a bunch of real proposals from NASA, Lockheed and other contractors and was really surprised at some of the stuff proposed. They were not any help either but they were neat -

Stations 1 (http://www.space-frontier.org/Projects/ExternalTanks/Cserep/et_re-use.htm)
Stations 2 (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast26may_1m.htm)