9.6 Acknowledgements

Author's Comments

Please note that starting with this volume there will be no separate Schematics section. That's because pictures and stats for all starships from the timeline are covered in the Starships section. Besides, there's SO MANY in this issue! Seems like I'm getting more and more significant starship classes the closer we get to "our" time ….

One of the first things that FSC readers will notice is that my interpretation of data from the old SFC in the Prime One timeline happens a lot faster than it does in Prime Zero (Dixon's Fandom Timeline). That's because the date's are off, and Dixon talks about this problem at length in his work. Based on what I've been able to deduce, his resynching of the SFC dates would work given an Enterprise launch date of 2245. There's just one problem with that assumption. It's wrong, and just about everyone who's reading this knows why. If you don't, go read my post in the FRS Forums about "That dratted Enterprise launch date …." I have accordingly resynched the SFC data from Prime Zero in order to adjust for a corrected "early" Enterprise launch date of 2223. If you still think I'm off my nut then you need to get the Star Trek Animated series and watch "The Counter-Clock Incident" sometime. You'll get your answers within the first five minutes of the episode.

My apologies to both Aridas Sofia and Neale Davidson for my editing efforts in combining your differing views on this key period in Federation spacecraft history. This was based solely on my interpretation of Star Fleet hull number sequences (the NCCs) given my military experience and my understanding of U.S. Navy hull number assignments over the years. The decision I had to make was to either "short" the Archon class (Sofia) by several ships per Timo's notes, thus freeing up the Republic to be a Ranger class starship per its hull number (Davidson), or eliminate the Archon class entirely. I didn't want to do that because I already owe Aridas way too much for letting me use his materials and kitbashing his schematics. Aridas is going to pretty much get his way in the next volume, though, insofar as the timeline and the development of the Class I Program starships go. Fans of Aridas might have already guessed this from the revised Baton Rouge era timeline presented here. Those of you interested in finding out exactly why should visit the Timeline Talk Forum at the Federation Reference Series Online and look for the topic, "That dratted Enterprise launch date …." Yes, I KNOW that the picture of the "prototype" Connie in drydock is actually that of the TOS-era Enterprise! To be honest, though, I couldn't find a picture of the pilot (pre-TOS) Enterprise in drydock, else I would have used that instead. If anybody knows where I can find one, I'll gladly correct this known error on my part.

My apologies to Aridas Sofia in particular for kitbashing his beautiful Horizon and Nordenskjold drawings to show the evolution of the Constellation. I had already done something similar in the FRS forums trying to see how one might arrive at Class I heavy cruiser from the Horizon. I've since revised my concepts a bit and they show in the kitbashed drawings in this volume. Hopefully I'm not too far off from the "truth" — provided he can forgive me for changing to which starship class the Republic belongs. The only reason I did this is because of the use of a Baton Rouge era Republic in a licensed work (however inaccurate the story might have been). It also gave me a chance to play a Baton Rouge derived Class I prototype (Sternbach – Republic) against a Horizon derived Class I prototype (Sofia – Constellation). Of course, we know whose design won, don't we? (grin) There are those "old school" fans who are not overly fond of the Baton Rouge, so this is my way of vicariously duking it out between the two for these folks.

I took the liberty of retconning Michael Morissette's Detroyat class heavy destroyer per the suggestions of Neale Davidson in order that it become part of the Baton Rouge generation of starships. The same goes for Dana Knutson's Anton class cruiser, again per Davidson's suggestions. I agree with Davidson in that these were both probably older designs that were upgraded once the Class I program came into being. This actually makes sense for the Detroyat given the way it was designed by Morissette. The angular lines of its secondary hull compare nicely to those of the Baton Rouge's own, and an error in Morrisette's dating obscured the fact that he intended the Detroyat to be launched during this era. That's the main reason why the adjusted build date is so late for a Baton Rouge era vessel. This way, the bulk of the class can be upgraded to Class I while they're still under construction. Including the Anton at this point also helps smooth out the development timeline of the starship Reliant (STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Khan). Paramount apparently decided to ignore FASA's Anton in authorizing a TOS-era Miranda precursor a while back, which has since popped up in several officially licensed works. I didn't want to lose the Anton because, to be honest, it was published long before they started using the term "Miranda class" on screen in TNG. This seemed as good a way of keeping the Anton in the starship development timeline as any.

Having three different space "objects," each of which is the Kepler/Keppler class, can be rather confusing. I know it confused some of my reviewers. In this case my sources are the guilty culprits. The Kepler class space probes come from Goldstein and Sternbach's old Space Flight Chronology. The Kepler class deep space station comes from Jaynz' Starfleet Reference Series #2. The Keppler class transport/tug (in Volume 10) comes from Franz Joseph Schnaubelt's Star Fleet Technical Manual. Confused enough? Let me assure you, based on my own personal USNA experience, that this is the sort of thing upperclassmen love to use in trying to trip up plebes as part of their training. Trust me. That's why I let it ride instead of trying to find some way to fix the names to make more sense. Kinda like naming both submarines and battleships after states in our time. We'll see this problem again with the Ranger in future volujmes.

The Drake class destroyer is the Baton Rouge equivalent of the Class I Saladin, just as Neale's Cook class scout is the predecessor of the Class I Hermes. The lead ship is named for English sea warrior Sir Francis Drake.

My apologies for still not having stats for many of the ships in the Baton Rouge generatioin. I intend to fix this in the next major revision once I find the time.

The Hercules (Swiftsure) class transport comes from the cover art of the later books in The Best of Trek paperback series by Walter Irwin and G.B. Love. The starship in question is taken from the actual cover art from TBoT #10 by Paul Alexander. The lines of the Hercules saucer both as drawn in the schematic and in the original artwork suggest a correlation to the "Mann generation" of starships. The only liberty I took with Warped9's original schematic was to "fit" it with a single "surplus" PB-17 engine. These were ostensibly left over from the later Horizon program and hopefully brings it closer to the TREK norm.

Regards,
-- Richard

Not too many in-jokes and asides this time, but here they are:

• The image of starship designer Mark Chausser is that of Professor E. J. Parsafoot (Charlie Dell) from the old Saturday morning sci-fi serial Jason of Star Command. Filmation did both Jason and the animated Star Trek, with the music of the latter being recycled for the former. Besides, as cheesy as it was it's still a personal favorite of mine … and I always did like the Starfire.
• The "Roddenberry Twin-Nacelle Rule" was cooked up by the Great Bird himself as a slap in the face to Franz Joseph Schnaubelt and the old Star Fleet Technical Manual. I never really figured out why, after its "canonization" on screen in the first three TREK feature films, the Great Bird suddenly decided it wasn't canon and that starships always had to have two engines. Probably something to do with the Star Fleet Battles license, no doubt. Of course, we know how long that imperial edict lasted (cough-Deep Space Nine-cough-cough). It's my way of poking fun at a spiteful little "rule" that never should have existed in the first place.
• Franz Joseph IV's "doodle" that leads to the development of the Class I heavy cruiser is in fact a profile view of Bernd Schneider's Asia class survey cruiser. It's one of my favorite fandom designs, and Schneider's Ex Astris Scienta website has been a big help in developing the FSC. I couldn't include the Asia outright due to class conflicts and permission issues, but I slipped this little aside in anyway as my way of saying, "Thanks."
• "Captain Maximillian Reinhardt" is a reference to the Walt Disney sci-feature film The Black Hole.
• "Dr. Fredrick Ravishol" is a rather blatant reference to Dr. Ravishol from the classic Battlestar Galactica episode, "Gun on Ice Planet Zero."

Special Thanks To:

• Jason Bogguess (Star Fleet Network)
• Stan and Fred Goldstein
• Bernard Guignard
• Neale Davidson (Pixel Sagas)
• Steve Miller
• Masao Ozazaki (Star Fleet Museum)
• Timo Saloniemi
• Aridas Sofia (Federation Reference Series Online)
• Rick Sternbach

Image Sources:

• 3D Gladiators
• Randy Asplund
• Atolm
• Steve Baron (Vintage Starships)
• Battleclinic.com
• Don Christansen
• Neale Davidson (Pixel Sagas)
• Harry Doddema (Titan Fleet Yards)
• Federation Frontiers
• Lawrence Miller
• Michael Newlyn
• Lauren Oliver (Starship Modeler)
• Bernd Schneider (Ex Astris Scienta)
• Aridas Sofia (Federation Reference Series Online)
• Starship Art
• The TrekBBS
• Wikipedia