Roland Borst’s Pegasus

In designing and building this model, a great deal of research and trial and error was involved. Once I had an idea in my head of what I wanted, like the reduction in size and height of the saucer/engineering interconnect, and configuration of four nacelles, I went to the Next Generation Technical Manual to read up on the Enterprise-D and how it was supposed to work.

It took two attempts, and finally I arrived at what you see here. Two Enterprise-D kits were required. From the Engineering Hull, I cut nacelle mounts just before the curve, and from the interconnect, I wanted the photon launcher and just a little more, so only the bottom four decks were used, the ones with the photon launcher, and the main impulse engine. For aesthetics, I added a tractor emitter on this portion of the dorsal that was exposed.

Connecting the two sections, I took the remainder of the interconnect and cut out the flat parts from the ventral section, and underneath, and the flat tail section from the aft portion of the engineering hull to have some texture and feel to that area. It isn’t great but it did it well enough, that was closing to the finish and was getting tired of not being done.

The entire model is hand painted, I know most model makers tape off and spray, but I’ve never been especially good at that and decided to just do it the hard way. After everything was done, I was originally going to submit it to trekships.org, so I wrote up a pretty extensive paper on it. Included from that paper is the design specifications and a portion of the overview from the proposal.

The basic design elements of the Pegasus Class were borrowed from the Galaxy Class Development Project. Hull design and shape is virtually identical, The Saucer and Engineering Hull differ only in arrangement. The Saucer Module retains a 55 degree elliptical hull planform. However, unlike the Galaxy Class, the Saucer Module in a Pegasus Class does not separate from the Engineering Hull in emergency situations. Lifeboats, Shuttlecraft, and Transporters are the only forms of evacuation for the ship in a catastrophic emergency situation.

The Engineering Hull is the same in size, except for the absence of a connecting interhull, and incorporating a Quad Nacelle Configuration. These minor changes make the Pegasus Class a sister ship to the Galaxy and Nebula Class Starships.

The addition of another pair of warp nacelles would normally create a loss of efficiency while making Yaw maneuvers. However with a reduction of the y-axis profile, a smoother slippage into warp is affected with no loss to X and Z maneuvers, while also allowing for a reduction in tortional field stresses created at sublight and warp speeds, and isopiestic lines running virtually straight through the hull. The incorporation of two pairs of warp nacelles is necessary to meet the Propulsion requirements of the Mission Objectives for this class.

To accomplish these enormous tasks, the matter/antimatter reactor would have to sustain at least and output of 3053 cochranes to reach the required velocities and still provide power to other systems. While one reactor could achieve this task, the power loss to other systems would be critical in emergency situations, and only one reactor would burn itself out at an unacceptable rate. Creating these enormous energy requirements was finally deemed impossible from only one reactor, so a twin M/ARA was incorporated into the design.

With two reactors the Pegasus Class has the ability to produce enough power to accelerate the ship at speeds exceeding 400 times the speed of light. However, the spaceframe could never survive at such speeds. The computer controlling the reactors locks out power to the warp field coils past 3200 cochranes. The excess energies created, are utilized through EPS power taps and fed to other systems at various power levels.

It should be noted, that just as propulsion, weapons, defenses, and other systems are revolutionary, the Pegasus Class Starship was not created for exploration and first Contact scenarios as traditionally defined.

The Pegasus Class Starship is classified as a Battleship. It was created to protect the Federation from superior threat forces with ship to ship ratios of 20 to 1 for small ships, such as scouts and freighters. 5 to 1 for medium ships, such as the Klingon K’t’inga Battle Cruiser and K’Vort and B’rel Birds of Prey. 2 to 1 for large ships, such as the Cardassian Galor and Klingon Vor’cha Attack Cruiser, and 1 to 1 for Capital Class ships such as Negh’Var Class Warship, Romulan D’deridex Warbird, Jem’Hadar Battleship and Borg Cubes.

Roland Borst