Deep Space Station K-11

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Graham Kennedy
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Deep Space Station K-11

Post by Graham Kennedy »

A Federation space station. Essentially the concept for this was to take the Deep Space K-7 from "The Trouble With Tribbles" and envisage something built in the same era, on the same basic pattern, but considerably larger and more capable.

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The main hub and satellite arms are all the same as the K-7 design. But of course, instead of three arms here we have six.

I've also included the storage compartment K-7 had for the quadrotriticale. Only here there are six bins instead of one. I would presume they can be used for bulk storage of many different materials, not just quadrotriticale!

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Another difference is a much larger hangar pod on the bottom of the station. Far greater in diameter, and multiple levels instead of one. I've put a few shuttles inside, which are my own take on the classic Trek model. You can't see much detail here, but they have little weapon pods under the nose for phasers and mini torpedoes.
The station core is also larger, since with a much larger population I assume that there would need to be several times the number of turbolift shafts to carry people around.

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Probably the biggest visual difference between K-7 and K-11; the hangar pod is moved down a couple of hundred feet to allow extra units to be inserted. There are six of them spaced every sixty degrees around the core. Three are storage units - large tanks to hold various chemicals, bulk matter, etc. The other three are personnel units - each essentially a skyscraper in space.

Each personnel unit is 160 feet in diameter and has 23 decks, allowing 460,000 square feet of space. More than enough for hundreds of comfortable apartments, for a maximum population of around 1,000 per unit. I'd envisage a mix of smaller apartments for transient visitors, and larger quarters for permanent residents.

These units would also hold a number of shops, restaurants, bars, theatres, gymnasiums, etc.

The top of each personnel unit is a park which takes up a whole deck, with a high domed ceiling and huge windows. A place where you can go and feel like you're on a planet, in the fresh air. At least a little. The bottom is filled with support equipment, life support, gravity generators, etc.

Each unit is connected to the station core by three turbolift shafts and six pedestrian corridors.

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K-11 playing host to a squadron of ships. We all know the Constitution, of course. In the background is a Saladin class destroyer. On the left are a pair of ships of my own design, the Cerberus class patrol ships. K-11 would be quite crowded playing host to hundreds and hundreds of crew from these ships!

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Re: Deep Space Station K-11

Post by McAvoy »

Looks cluttered but it makes sense to me. Not everything has to be elogent.
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Re: Deep Space Station K-11

Post by Mikey »

I think it's a pretty good extrapolation for the period, though I don't recall seeing anything like that sort of living space, even scaled down relatively to the smaller crews of a K-7 (e.g.)
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Re: Deep Space Station K-11

Post by Graham Kennedy »

My thought is that it is cluttered - it's the K-7 design pretty much stretched to breaking point. If the area got any busier you'd have to come up with a new much larger design.
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Re: Deep Space Station K-11

Post by Bryan Moore »

It is cluttered, and yet I don't really mind. I had always envisioned (especially in the first 100 years of the Federation) the necessity for compartmentalized and easily expandable bases. I get why it may not be practical in starships (though we've seen mission pods, etc.), but for a stationary base, I like the idea of pre-fab units being patched together to grow as need. I'm not saying infinite expansion is visually pleasing or even practical, but I like this design, however cluttered.
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Re: Deep Space Station K-11

Post by Mikey »

I don't see it so much cluttered as utilitarian; it just seems to me that the ratio of people space:overall station is MUCH higher for this K-11 than for the K-7 on which it is based. Obviously the larger station would have more people and more space for people... but the ratio should be similar. Unless, GK, assignments to a station such as this are longer-term than to a typical (for the time) station?
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Re: Deep Space Station K-11

Post by Graham Kennedy »

There is certainly a lot more space for people, but I have tried to bulk up the support infrastructure too - the central core is 2-3 times thicker than in the original station, to allow many times the number of turbolifts, power conduits, water and sewage pipes, etc. The lower hangar is many times larger to allow for much shuttle traffic. The top section is the same size, except for having more storage compartments and twice the number of arms. The idea of that was that K-7 has a good deal of "spare" infrastructure space, so lots of extra space for a larger reactor, larger shield generator, gravity generator, etc.

In this station all of that spare capacity is used up supporting the extra additions. So you literally couldn't expand this any more than it already is - the basic design has been pushed as far as it can go at this point, like a truck that's towing the maximum safe load. Add any more to it, and the whole thing would break down.
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