Great IDEA

Yeah, and designing a piddling personal automobile takes a whole five years between the word 'go' and the first sale! What kind of planet are we on?

You do realize that the Aurora has been gone six months or so, and only 30 people from Earth survived the trip, right? And the only officers (i.e. advanced education) were young and inexperienced?

Of course, hamsters learn all they need to live on their own in six weeks, but this series isn't about space-faring hamsters. That's CVL-01 Mesocricitus Auratus. Common mistake.

PS-This is a candidate for "The Black Hole" topic.

Your issue is a lack of patience. A lot of possibilities are likely simply waiting for the right time to be introduced.

They already have linear FTL missiles based on modified comm drones. It seemed like an FTL comm drone had a similar mass to the Falcon, so I don't see them getting much smaller due to power and resource requirements. Although, perhaps the Takarans are working on that.

As for Jump missiles, I outlined in another post what I called a jump bomb that could be dang near impossible to intercept without massive resources dedicated to doing so. The simple fact of the matter is that any ship without jump drives or heavy specialized anti-jump missile/bomb defenses would get hit by every jump missile aimed at them. The reason? A jump missile powered by a nuclear reactor (without it, a jump missile is rather limited in the number of tries it gets to hit the target) can chase a ship until it either the ship or missile is destroyed or until the ship jumps far enough away for the missile to lose lock. I don't think there was a jump drive that had effective FTL speeds (based on max jump distance and recharge time to jump that far again) of less than a few thousand times light. That is enough to catch up to any linear FTL ship fairly quickly, even the best comm drones, with an effective search algorithm.

Also lets weaken the overall hull by narrowing and curving in the center between the aft and head of the ship AwsomeSaus!<br>

You do realize that the aft is pretty much all engines and by doing so it probably removes a third of the mass, allowing the ship to accelerate faster, which is part of it's design specifications. The Aurora was never intended to be a front-line warship, but rather something of a scout. I'd highly doubt the original designers were told it would be fitted with a jump drive either.

I'd have to agree with the rail gun position choice though, but again, it's likely another example of the Aurora not being a front-line warship, like the Defender class, and it was designed to be good enough for the purpose.

I'm going to address some of the OP's statements just to point out an obvious fact. When one doesn't have all the information, one also doesn't have all the answers. The OP's complaints are logical observations, no doubt, but they fail to take other parameters into consideration. (Many of which were covered by the other two posts.)

First, the basic structural design of the Aurora is a long rectangular box. Same dimensions, from stem to stern. That box IS the structural strength of the vessel, not the outer hull itself. The outer hull is merely a skin, angled to provide low angle of incidence so that all the little stuff floating around in space will not damage her. (Even a grain of sand has considerable kinetic energy at 75% the speed of light.) It is also several layers deep, with each layer designed to absorb a percentage of an impacting objects kinetic energy so as to reduce the chance of inner hull penetration. And, of course, there is a layer designed to provide some level of protection against cosmic radiation. The long rectangular box that provides the ship's structural strength has its own inner and outer hull, and ALL pressurized spaces normally occupied by her crew are within that rectangular box.

Although it was not mentioned in the OP's complaints, (other's have mentioned it) her boat-like underside is to provide the ability to aero-brake. Since she was going to be far from home in unknown situations, they thought it best to give her a method to reduce propellant consumption. Since deceleration and abrupt course changes are the biggest users of propellant, giving her this ability might possible get her home when propellant is low. (See episodes 8 & 9)

So, you see, all the 'stuff' that makes her go, makes her maneuver, makes her shoot, makes her see, etc..., is contained within the space between the main hull's inner surface, and the interior hull's outer surface. Propellant, ammunition bays, water storage, oxygen storage, maneuvering systems, main propulsion, comm arrays, weapons bays, explosive ordnance, all that stuff is in there.

As to the torpedo tube placement, they are located on the lateral aspects, and the torpedo storage is designed to blow outward away from main propulsion should they be hit. Would you prefer that I store them deep inside so that an errant explosion would cause more additional damage, perhaps killing everyone?

The purpose of the narrowed section is to create a clean waked area (no, space is not empty) for safe operations of smaller spacecraft coming and going. It provides an area clear of direct line of fire, should the Aurora be pointed directly at her attacker.

As to the quad rail gun placement, they are fine where they are. When topside they have a considerable range of fire, and are located perfectly to protect the flight deck and main hangar entrance. If the need to have a more open line of fire, any one (or all) of them can be lowered through their transit tunnels to relocate to the ventral (bottom side) firing position. Also, take into consideration that a spaceship does not need to be pointed in the direction of travel at all times. Unless she is accelerating/decelerating, the Aurora can change her attitude in relation to the target to give her a clean line of fire on any target in relation to her. Furthermore, the quad rail guns are meant for long-range engagement, which means they would not normally require such a wide sweep of firing angles.

Lastly, the Explorer class ships were designed to be ships of exploration, and diplomacy. They were to be the first full-sized FTL ships of the post-BD plague Earth, and hence they did not want them to appear threatening. The Explorer classes overall design was a compromise between a non-threatening appearance, and a ship that could still hold her own in battle, for a world that could not afford to build ships that could not defend themselves.

As to why some other items suggested have not yet been developed, there are far more factors involved than just 'they could do it'. We 'could' have gone to Mars and beyond by now, but we haven't. The Aurora has been 'behind the curve' in almost every sense of the word since the beginning, making whatever she could use into the best that she could. It would be nice to be able to just pull any weapon out of my ass that I wanted, but that wouldn't be very believable. (Think Star Trek, where one minute, it's 'against the laws of physics' and the next minute they've used a tacheon pulse to do exactly what they said they couldn't do. Them tacheons are amazing!)

These are all the little things that one must think about when designing a ship, designing a world, or developing a story. It's all quite detailed, and if I were to explain ALL of it in the books, you'd all be fast asleep long before you reached the end of the book. (Like with Asimov, who I still loved, by the way.)

I hope this helps.

Ryk

Ok so I suppose I should have thought more about my complaints/rant's, I get the points about the quads position and the removal of the material in the center section for better maneuverability. I just kept thinking as I was looking at the drawings of the ship that all those curved surfaces have got to be a bitch to repair and visually it looks like it's nothing but an inviting target to break the ship in half.
After not even finishing the 1st half of the 1st book I kept thinking where are the ftl missles/torp's ? I have read up to expanse and am about to start cv-02 celestia.
Another thing that has kinda bothered be with the karazari(sp) freedom fighter folks, the were always trying to hijack larger and larger ships when they had no need for them. All they needed was any ftl capable ship. The freedom fighters were in a war to the knife with the empire and the empire had at max some 20 ships. So tiny ftl ship with small crew could simply ftl ram there ships. Sure it sux for both ships but it would work and would save billions of lives and end remove the teeth from the empire. It was shown in the first book that these freedom fighter folks were pretty fanatical about there cause getting volunteers I don't think would have been a problem.

Steve, it would be hard to find a ship while you are in FTL and park next to it when you came out of FTL, let allow attempt to hit them, when they in turn will be maneuvering the entire time. It worked for the Aurora because they used themselves as a guidance beacon. The same signal that was used to tell the com drone to drop out of FTL, was being used to steer the com drone towards the ship it was going to destroy.

You could in turn attempt to go to FTL through a ship, but with their shields, I'm pretty sure the smaller ships would just be vaporized instead of doing any damage. This is why they outfitted their ships with explosives instead. They were willing to die for their cause, but only if doing so ensured the destruction of their enemies.

steve, you sir have awful grammar. and spelling.

I do have some good ideas. At least I think so.

Install safety belts on the bridge. Just how many more times does it take for Nathan and his bridge crew to stumble around or fall out of their seats during combat to figure out that seat belts are life savers? It doesn't look too good when the Captain lands with his rear end on the floor.

Talking about life savers... Get the consoles installed on the ground. How many officers have died due to a console falling onto them?

Add some extra layer of bulletproof glass to all consoles - ideally a layer that also works as a touch pad. Yeah, right. I mean, these consoles are known to explode during combat time and again.

Build the bridge better. No more I-beams killing the bridge crew, please![

Most SF that I read, space ships have safety systems in place and they wear space suits so that after the battle, you can go get the survivors that got blown out of the ship. Some even have a treaty in place to retrieve enemy combatants well. This is one area where every single TV space opera where combat happens, they BLOW IT BIG TIME.

The Enterprise going to red alert should mean everyone jumps into their space suites. And I am not kidding about jump. That might be the fastest way.

It is very strange to me that the Celestia only had 2 space suits on it and that they were bulky. It should be standard practice that there are 2 space suits per person on any space craft.

I think that in any future with interstellar space flight that the basic space suit would be like an overalls that seal to standard wear space boots. Gloves would be skin tight to not interfere with touch screens. The suit would have a hood and an attachable face screen and backpack re-breather with additional O2 bottles and changeable CO2 scrubbers for 24hr+ life support.

Just because Astronauts today have bulky suits doesn't mean they will always be so. but for armored space suits designed for re-entry I am totally ok with the suits described for those functions.

I'd like to preface my comments with a statement. I'm not trying to argue anything. I'm just trying to share my line of thinking with everyone. Right or wrong, I've done what I've done, and that's okay in my mind, as long as I have a logical reason for doing so. (Logical in my twisted mind, anyway!)

Does a submarine have dive gear for every sailor?

Anyway, the Celestia was not a stocked and ready ship at the time of her launch. Hell, she was only half completed. The suits that were on board were bulky because they were worker suits, meant to be outside for long periods of time. You also have to remember that at this point in the story, Earth space-tech is a mixture of 21st century and 24th century, as they couldn't just start off building 24th century tech, as they didn't have the infrastructure and manufacturing techniques in place. You have to walk before you can run. In order to get to "running" more quickly, they didn't waste time developing the lower priority items.

As for treaties to recover the dead? I have always hated the idea of treaties to govern warfare. War is war. If you try to humanize it, make it more livable and less traumatic, then it will happen more often. In a REAL war, one between enemies that are hell bent on destroying one another, there would be no treaties. Whatever you have to do is what you do.

It makes more sense to me to build spaceships (at least ones the size of the Aurora) in such a way that there is no need to wear garments that can instantly become spacesuits. That way, the amount of force required to destroy a ship so quickly that its occupants could not get to escape pods would mean that they would not survive the initial destruction even if they were wearing spacesuits.

As for seat belts, an argument could be made either way. I figured that the Aurora was designed to fight a specific enemy, with known capabilities. Now, what they knew of those capabilities might have been incorrect. They probably expected the inertial dampening systems to be enough to keep the crew from being tossed from their seats. (And in their defense, it isn't that often that they've been tossed.) Would seat belts be a good idea? Probably, but they were also racing against time and budget constraints. Granted, seat belts are pretty darn cheap in comparison though.

I have always pictured the EDF technology to be 'babies with blasters'. They don't really know what they're doing with daddy's big guns.

It wouldn't make sense to have repair crews wear seat belts during any fire fight, & having to cut a dead crewman out of a seat in order to continue the fight doesn't make sense either, & if the Aurora was finished finished, then it would have shield to go along with the inertial dampeners... so I guess less need again for seat belts. (but I would probably put in one or two for those non named red shirt characters)

Oh and the light weight space suits would I agree be totally useless if there were any sharp edges around, they would be purely for that "oh shit we're venting atmosphere get to the airlock now" situation where you run/float to a real space suit and put that on. If the ship was hit hard enough to spring a leak chances are people in armored space suits wouldn't live anyway. but for those one or two people not insta-killed when the vacuum hits, its a life saver.

I question why when the Aurora hit the Campella why didn't all the atmosphere vent from both ships when they crashed? Do the takaran's have shields on there airlocks? If not how can two incompatible ships crash together in such a way that it is possible to walk from one ship to the other, yet not vent any noticeable amount of atmosphere? If yes, why does the Karuzara not have that tech?

Below are the Not so Great Ideas:

In Real all out war, you take prisoners to learn what the enemy knows. In all out war you use Biological & Chemical agents on the enemy to kill and to damage moral. In real all out war you use deception, infiltrate and attempt to incite unrest. You use blanket broadcast video of prisoners being tortured, or just popping them out of airlocks. You bombard planets to the point of killing almost all life to tie up resources of the enemy, or just crack the planet like at Kent. I look forward to the fleet conference for when they (alliance or Jung) decide to use Ebola and HIV on heavily populated planets. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for Nanites ^^,