Gagarin-class

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Spacecraft Registry
Special Project 1
Gagarin-class explorer
NX-100.jpg
Spacecraft Characteristics
Base HullCustom hull
Length133.01m / 436.4 ft.
Width228.3m / 749.1 ft. (wingspan)
Height20.7m / 67.85 ft.
Mass558,000 kg / 1,230,179 lbs.
Drive Type2x impulse engines
1x warp drive
Drive RatingPeak velocity 0.041c
Armament2x point-defence laser array
2x multi-mission launchers
Primary ManufacturerUtopia Planitia Shipyards (under license)
OwnerVVS EXFOR
Starfleet Command
FactionSoviet Air Force
United Federation of Planets
Registry NumberVariable
Launched30 July 2013
PurposeMulti-mission cruiser
Primary Crew40 (standard operating)
10 (minimum req.)
350 (emergency evacuation)
Auxillary Vehicles4 iPods (Soviet)
2 shuttlepods (Starfleet)
1 Type-7 shuttle (Starfleet)
Operational StatusIn Production
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The Gagarin-class explorer (also known as VVS Special Project 1) is a deep-space vessel designed by the Soviet Air Force and built by the United Federation of Planets.

History

Special Project 1 was designed during a general bull session following the VVS expedition to Epsilon Indi. While the expedition had succeeded well beyond expectations, the limitations in Ptichka as a long-distance explorer were clear. The Central Committee spent several long nights working out what was best about Ptichka (maneuverability, landing capability, high-resolution sensors), what they needed (better capacity for survey gear/sample return) and what they wanted (enough room so nobody was walking over others when trying to get from the bunkroom to the head), crunched the numbers and put together a basic hull that fit those criteria. Then, realizing that a) they didn't have the manufacturing capability needed to build the hull, and b) contracting out to a 'Danelaw firm would easily run in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Central Committee stuffed the plans into the big folder marked “Someday.”

Someday arrived in mid-2012, when the Committee approached Utopia Planitia Shipyard with an eye towards licensing Special Project 1 or selling the design outright. The Trekkies at the time were expanding their shipbuilding facilities as a forerunner to building the Archer-class – the design originally known as the NX-class, which was (at the time) stuck in development hell. Special Project 1 was similar to the Archers if not quite as massive or as capable. Starfleet Command decided that, if nothing else, the Soviet design would make for good practice in large-vehicle construction and operation while the engineers continued working out the problems with the Archer. Starfleet licensed Special Project 1 from the VVS shortly after SOS-Con. The Soviets would get the first prototype and a discounted (to the point of symbolic) price for any cruisers built afterwards.

Despite the Boskone conflict putting a dent in construction schedules, the first Special Project 1 (now renamed the Gagarin-class) left the Utopia Planitia slipways on 30 July 2013. The prototype ship GCU Yuri Gagarin was accepted into the Soviet Deep Space Exploration Forces and flew on the 2013 Delta Pavonis expedition. The second ship off the line, USS Alan Shepard launched on 28 August 2013, and was assigned to extended duty in the Alpha Centauri A system.

Gagarin-class starships are currently under construction at Utopia Planitia. The production line is expected to continue running until 2030 at the earliest.

Design

The original Soviet design for Special Project 1 was a blended-wing body aircraft 85 m long with a wingspan of 160 m. This design incorporated two decks, one outfitted with living quarters and one built for cargo or other mission-specific operations space. Utopia engineers refined the Special Project 1 design, extending the main hull length to 100 m and wingspan to 228 m, increasing the overall height of the hull to 20.7 m and adding three more decks through the centerline.

The most visible Trekkie design element on the Gagarin-class is of course the warp drive. The warp nacelle sits on a pylon on the aft fuselage directly above the main impulse engines. The nacelle extends 33 m past the aft fuselage, bringing the ship's total length to 133 m.

In a departure from Federation designs the Gagarin-class main bridge is smaller than usual, with only four stations - captain, helm, sensors/communications and engineering. This “mini-bridge” allows for both the traditional Starfleet bridge crew as well as the more abbreviated flight-deck crews common on Soviet ships.

The Gagarin-class is capable of landing on the surface and taking off again. However, the ship is so large that only a very small number of airfields on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system can accommodate one even in the short term. Crew and cargo transfers are usually handled via docking with a facility (using the Fenspace-standard docking collar) or through smallcraft. The Gagarin smallcraft bay can handle four Soviet iPods, two Starfleet shuttlepods or one Type-7 shuttle depending on service or mission requirements.

Designed as a research craft first and a warship second (or fifth, depending), the Gagarin-class is not heavily armed. The class has a laser point-defense system based off a similar system used by USSR Ptichka during the Boskone war. Gagarins also have two missile launchers which can fire the Starfleet standard torpedo or NOMAD survey probes.

Class Quirks

  • We Are The Trek Collective: The computer-generated voice synthesizer on all Gagarin-class ships uses the distinctive tones of Majel Barrett. This applies to ships that ought to have a different voice as well as any (non-AI) computer hooked into the ship intranet for longer than 12 hours.
  • Slit-Screen Power (part 1): In FTL flight, the view outside the windows, external cameras, etc. is a shifting two-dimensional light show very similar to that seen in the last half-hour of "2001: A Space Odyssey."
  • Slit-Screen Power (part 2): Related to the first, engine performance can be improved by playing Pink Floyd's "Echoes" for the first twenty minutes of any flight. (The original track off "Meddle," not the short version from the "Best Of" album.)

Variations

The main Gagarin model is the Block I, which is as described above. The Block Ia model is a design change requested by the Soviet Air Force in order to use the vehicle as a mothership for the VVS flagship Ptichka and the MCU Columbia. The distinctive warp nacelle is replaced by two smaller nacelles integrated into the hull at the wingroots. Where the original support pylon was located, a cradle and umbilical rig designed for space shuttles is integrated into the airframe.

Block II vehicles are expected to come into service in 2016-18, as Utopia Planitia absorbs and improves upon the technology in the Whole Fenspace Catalog. The Block IIs are expected to be faster, more reliably quirk-free and easier to maintain than the Block Is. Starfleet may or may not authorize building a Block IIa variant for their own flagship, USS Enterprise (OV-201).

Vehicles of Note

GCU Yuri Gagarin

Spacecraft Registry
GCU Yuri Gagarin
Spacecraft Characteristics
OwnerVVS EXFOR
FactionSoviet Air Force
Registry NumberNX-100
Launched30 July 2013
PurposeDeep space exploration
Primary CrewMaj. Elena van Oorebeek (CDR)
4 operations
35 mission specialists
Other CrewYuri (NAV)
Kei (ENG1)
Mughi (SYSOP)
Operational StatusActive
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The Yuri Gagarin was the first Gagarin-class to be contracted and built. The ship was formally delivered to the Soviet Air Force on 1 August 2013 (it had been launched with great ceremony two days earlier). Yuri Gagarin underwent shakedown with a short circum-Uranian flight, then was remanded to the VVS staging area at L2 for outfitting for the 2013 Delta Pavonis mission.

On the Pavonis expedition Yuri Gagarin performed according to expectations. The ship acted as mothership for the expedition proper and as such did not undertake any planetfall operations. The science team onboard Yuri Gagarin was responsible for charting twenty small bodies in the outer system and producing high-resolution photographic maps of the major planetary bodies.

GCU Yuri Gagarin has undertaken solo missions to Proxima Centauri, Barnard's Star and Alpha Centauri B in the interim. Plans are currently underway for a survey of the Sirius system.

Known Vehicle Quirks

  • A House Divided: When the Gagarin was constructed, the expected AI ship avatar (a highly exuberant Russian man named Yuri) sparked in the navigation mainframe. However, not long after another AI sparked in the engineering mainframe. This AI, avataring as the infamous Kei from "Dirty Pair," took an immediate dislike to her companion in the navigation system, and vice versa. Planitia engineers were almost ready to scrap the Gagarin and start again when a third AI sparked, this time in the interwave router. The router AI called itself Mughi and devoted most of its time to making sure Yuri and Kei kept to their jobs and didn't try to kill each other (and by extension, the crew). The balance of power is uneasy, but stands.

The Fleet

Name Hull Number Service Type Ordered Delivered
Yuri Gagarin NX-100 VVS EXFOR Block I 2012 2013
Alan Shepard NCC-101 Starfleet Block I 2012 2013
Yang Liwei NCC-102 Starfleet Block I 2012 2014
Neil Armstrong NCC-103 Starfleet Block I 2012 2014
John Glenn NCC-106 Starfleet Block I 2013 2014
Valentina Tereshkova NCC-107 Starfleet Block I 2013 2014
Sally Ride NCC-108 Starfleet Block I 2013 2014
Laika NCC-104 VVS EXFOR Block Ia 2013 2015
Alexei Leonov NCC-111 Starfleet Block I 2014 2015
Michael Melvill NCC-112 Starfleet Block I 2014 2015
Anousheh Ansari NCC-114 Starfleet Block I 2014 2015
Edwin Aldrin NCC-115 Starfleet Block I 2014 2015
Arbitrary NCC-105 VVS EXFOR Block I 2013 2016
Gherman Titov NCC-116 Starfleet Block I 2014 2016
Virgil Grissom NCC-117 Starfleet Block I 2015 2016
James Lovell NCC-118 Starfleet Block I 2015 2016
Christa McAuliffe NCC-119 Starfleet Block I 2015 2016
Undocumented Feature NCC-109 VVS EXFOR Block I 2013 2017
It Was Like That When I Got Here NCC-110 VVS EXFOR Block II 2013 2017
Eugene Cernan NCC-120 Starfleet Block I 2015 2017
Shannon Lucid NCC-121 Starfleet Block II 2015 2017
John Young NCC-122 Starfleet Block IIa 2016 2017
Vladimir Komarov NCC-124 Starfleet Block II 2016 2018
Frank Borman NCC-125 Starfleet Block II 2016 2018
David Scott NCC-127 Starfleet Block II 2016 2018
Takao Doi NCC-128 Starfleet Block II 2016 2018
Marc Garneau NCC-129 Starfleet Block II 2017 2018
Rolled A Twenty On The Random Encounter Table NCC-123 VVS EXFOR Block II 2016 2019
Eileen Collins NCC-130 Starfleet Block II 2017 2019
NCC-134 Starfleet Block II 2017 2019
NCC-135 Starfleet Block II 2017 2019
Roger Chaffee NCC-137 Starfleet Block II 2018 2019
Cultural Imperialism Is Better Than The Other Kind NCC-126 VVS EXFOR Block II 2016 2020
Edward White NCC-138 Starfleet Block II 2018 2020
Ronald McNair NCC-139 Starfleet Block II 2018 2020
Judith Resnik NCC-140 Starfleet Block II 2018 2020
Ellison Onizuka NCC-141 Starfleet Block II 2018 2020
Just Passing Through NCC-136 VVS EXFOR Block II 2017 2021
NCC-142 Starfleet Block II 2019 2021
NCC-143 Starfleet Block II 2019 2021
Fibonacci NCC-144 Starfleet Block II 2019 2021
NCC-145 Starfleet Block II 2019 2021
Rinna Kazamatsuri NCC-113 Stellvia Corp. Block II 2014 2022
Ludicrous Mandelbrot NCC-131 RR HARDIE Block IIa 2017 2022
Remarkable Fractal NCC-132 RR HARDIE Block II 2017 2022
NCC-146 Starfleet Block II 2019 2022
NCC-147 Starfleet Block II 2020 2022
Singular Anomaly NCC-133 RR HARDIE Block II 2017 2023
NCC-148 Starfleet Block II 2020 2023
NCC-149 Starfleet Block II 2020 2023
NCC-150 Starfleet Block II 2020 2023

Stories

The Gagarin-class starships have appeared in the following stories:


Related Images

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