What's new - May 1999

The "Warp Drive" page in the sci-tech section has been split into two - the original page now contians all the technical nuts and bolts of how the actual drive functions, while the new "Warp Scales" page has the discussion of warp speeds under the TOS and TNG scales. To the second section I have added some discussion of the idea of "Warp Highways", a theory of mine which has been under discussion on the tech newsgroups recently. While the exact details of the theory are somewhat speculative, the fact that starship speeds can be greatly higher or lower than normal on occasion is an established canon fact.

The Nebula specifications page has been re-written to correct some of the strength indices, after Philip O'Leary pointed out some errors which had crept in. The specs table now gives strengths for the basic Nebula both with and without weapon pod, and a separate specs table for the uprated Nebula design mentioned in the DS9 Technical Manual. I've also slightly modified the Federation fleet numbers to fit in with the new specs pages.

The Constitution page has also been updated to increase the number of phasers on the refit version of the ship from 12 to 18. Thanks to Don Spradling for pointing out the locations of the other six phasers.

Rasmussens Time Pod from the episode "A Matter of Time" has been reduced to 5 metres. This size is stated by Worf when the pod first appears, and is confirmed by comparing the pod as seen in the ships cargo bay to those standing around it.

I've added a Chronology to the site. It's not intended to be anything like as comprehensive as the official Chronology, although future updates will probably introduce more detail.

There are four new images today for the episode "A Matter of Time", in the "Temporal" section.

As promised, an image of the Tarellian and Angosian freighters have been added.

Now added are specs pages for the Tarellian plague ship from TNG's "Haven", the Angosian transport ship from TNG's "The Hunted", the Romulan shuttle from "In the Pale Moonlight", the Federation class Dreadnought described in the novel "Dreadnought" and the TOS Tech Manual, and the Saladin class destroyer also described in the TOS TM. Only the Romulan shuttle has an image at the moment, but I should be able to rustle up something for the first two easily enough in the next week or so.

The Peregrine, Danube and Vulcan Lander have been moved to the Shuttles list. In future all vessels under 50 metres long will be here, all above will be on the relevant ships/stations list.

The Romulan fleet page has been updated with new numbers for the shuttle.

The fifth and sixth episodes of Voyager season 5 and Deep Space Nine season 7 have been added.

A glitch on this page regarding the strength indices has now been fixed. This has involved re-doing the figures regarding phaser and shield strengths, agility, etc.

As those few who read the site guide will know, I am a UK resident. I see the new episodes within a few days of their coming out on video - currently we are up to episode 6 of DS9 season 7. I am desperately trying to keep from finding out about the last few DS9 episodes, because just for once I want to see a big Trek extravaganza without knowing every scene in advance.

Trouble is, all you kind folks out there are trying to help me keep my site all nice and up to date by sending me massive spoilers about these episodes. Now I don't mind too much finding out about the bulk of the season - I know pretty much everything up to the destruction of the USS Defiant. But I don't know or want to know anything past that. So please don't send me e-mails with spoiler information, most especially if those spoilers are contained within the subject header!

It's hard enough participating in newsgroups without finding this stuff out; if it goes on like it is then I'll be forced to stop reading e-mail from strangers altogether until I've seen the last episode. I don't want to do that, so please don't put me in the position to have to.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Quite a few more ships enter the Size Charts section today:

1. The Tarellian ship from TNG episode 'Haven'.
2. The Tamarian ship from the TNG episode 'Darmok'.
3. The Holo Ship from Star Trek: Insurection.
4. The Antaries class from various episodes.
5. The Angosian ship from the TNG episode 'The Hunted'.
6. The Dreadnought from the Voyager episode of the same name.
7. Kassedy Yates's ship seen in various Deep Space Nine episodes.
8. Neelix's ship from the Voyager episode 'Caretaker'.
9. The Swarm ship from the Voyager episode of the same name.
10. The Type 11 shuttle from Star Trek: Insurection.
11. Rasmussen's Time pod from the TNG Episode 'A Matter of Time'.
12. The Nenebek shuttle from TNG Episode 'The Final Mission'.
13. A new, more accurate, picture for the Karamma ship.

Quite a few of these pictures where provided by Bernd Schneider from his site Ex Astris Scientia.

As mentioned above, James Fox gets onto the contributors list. So does Chris Wagner, who shouild have been there months ago but I forgot. Sorry Chris!

New today is the Dominion Battleship from "Valiant", Starfleets Shelley, Freedom and Yeager classes, and the Holoship from "Star Trek : Insurrection". These entries are rather image-light, with only one between them. Sorry about that, but we're into ships now which only appear as little smudges in the background and getting decent images isn't easy.

A fairly hefty rewrite of the Tritanium page goes up today. One change corrects an error in which I used the Celsius value for the boiling point of Aluminium and treated it like the Kelvin value. Far more importantly, James Fox was kind enough to mail me with values for the heats of fusion and vaporization of Aluminium, so I could finally include these to get a more accurate picture of the whole thing. Thanks to James for that, and his name goes onto the list of contributors on the Site Guide.

Also, a new page goes up which lists some constants, units and number prefixes. Most of the numbers there are used somewhere or other in the site, so I thought it would be nice to list them.

Quite a few changes in the size comparison section today. Clicking on the Size Charts button, in the top menu, now provides you with a list that offers the following choices: 'Federation ships', 'Other Ships', 'Shuttles' and 'All Ships'. The first three options offer a reduced selection of ships, and thus a reduction in the time to display the selection page. The last option provides the full list, as before so you can still compare any ships with any other.

The Freedom Class has been added to this section.

The size of the Warp Sled has been reduced to 33.9 metres.

Another four new additions today - new people pages for Chekov, Geordi La Forge, Odo and Harry Kim. All with the usual images.

The review for the Voyager episode "Prey" has been added - this one slipped through the cracks somehow originally.

The notes one this specs page have been re-written in order to provide an explanation for the ships mis-matched components.

The retirement date has now been changed to 2288, in line with Geordi's statement in "Cause and Effect" that the ship had been out of service for eighty years prior to the episode. This also shows up yet another error in the DS9 Technical Manual which claims that the type 11 phasers used on the station where taken from retiring Soyuz class starships.

All the new Federation classes have been integrated into the Class Lineage page. The ships are also linked to their specs pages.