| rdfs:comment | - When asked to come up with a new design for a new small science vessel, Sternbach first considered doing a refit of the Oberth-class, but dismissed the idea since that design was over eighty years old. He then recalled the design he had done for the Manual a year earlier, "The Nova class USS Equinox began as a small pencil drawing of a ship that was to have been the space-going equivalent of a PT boat in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant theaters. In the fictional history of the USS Defiant, as recorded in the DS9 Technical Manual, a fast and heavily armed "Borg Buster" with multiple torpedo launchers was modified with tucked-in engines and new ablative armor to fight the Cardassians, the Jem'Hadar, and the Dominion, among various other Alpha Quadrant baddies. The pathfinder form of that fast at
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| abstract | - When asked to come up with a new design for a new small science vessel, Sternbach first considered doing a refit of the Oberth-class, but dismissed the idea since that design was over eighty years old. He then recalled the design he had done for the Manual a year earlier, "The Nova class USS Equinox began as a small pencil drawing of a ship that was to have been the space-going equivalent of a PT boat in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant theaters. In the fictional history of the USS Defiant, as recorded in the DS9 Technical Manual, a fast and heavily armed "Borg Buster" with multiple torpedo launchers was modified with tucked-in engines and new ablative armor to fight the Cardassians, the Jem'Hadar, and the Dominion, among various other Alpha Quadrant baddies. The pathfinder form of that fast attack ship existed as a single top view until one day when the Voyager script "Equinox" appeared. It called for a new science vessel that had also been unceremoniously yanked into the Delta Quadrant by – guess who – the Caretaker." [1](X) Sternbach devised a background story elaborating on the history he had done for the Manual where the shelved Pathfinder hull design was re-appraised by the ASDB (Advanced Starship Design Bureau, the name Sternbach came up with to signify the research and development arm of Starfleet) for it to become the Nova-class. He submitted the idea and a copy of the Pathfinder drawing to supervising producer Peter Lauritson, who gave his approval thereby affirming that "the Defiant pathfinder was definitely the origin of the Equinox, in production as well as in non-canon backstory." [2](X) On fine-tuning the design, Sternbach remarked: "The design followed the basic Starfleet plan of a forward hull, engineering hull, and nacelles on pylons, though most of the shapes were given sharper edges and angles. I incorporated some stylistic elements from John Eaves' Enterprise-E as a possible ASDB "sibling", particularly in the pylon plasma flush vents and Bussard collectors. I also gave a tip o' the hat to Todd Guenther with the notching of the forward hull, a feature he employed in his home grown volumes Ships of the Star Fleet. The design cycle was almost as complex as that for Voyager herself, with ortho preliminaries and final blueprints, and perspective line art and detail sketches. The phaser strips were redesigned. I continued the trend of giving some Starfleet ships a large shuttle-like embedded craft, as Andy Probert did with the captain's yacht on the Enterprise-D, John Eaves did on Enterprise-E, and I did with the Aeroshuttle on Voyager. "The arrow-shaped craft on the Equinox underside is a hypersonic "waverider" shuttle, a highly fuel-efficient vehicle at Mach 5 and above. Tim Earls, a set designer on Voyager and a veteran of Babylon 5 and later Serenity, contributed a preliminary set of elevation views that helped nail the overall mass of the vessel and the creation of the cutaway graphic." [3](X) More windows were added to the Pathfinder design, along with a new exterior bridge design. The Pathfinder design featured two forward-facing torpedo tubes where the auxiliary deflector was to be located and were moved beside the deflector in Sternback's Nova. (Although Star Trek: Starship Spotter lists the Nova as having only two torpedo launchers, the design probably has at least three because the Equinox fired an aft torpedo in "Equinox, Part II".} Sternbach also envisioned the Equinox of having landing capabilities akin to the Intrepid-class, "The three door-like things are retracted landing feet, yep. The other objects are RCS, as you surmised. On the CG render there seems to be a half-round V-shaped dimensional "fence" on the waverider belly, which is probably just an interpretation of a soft break in the belly shape in the blueprint. Not my doing, but I'll accept it as some type of structural reinforcement or active boundary layer controller." [4](X)
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