by Ben Robinson
During planetary landings, particularly at active military staging areas, the main RCS thrusters are deactivated when the ship gets within 230 meters of the ground and the verniers take over the fine-tuning of the approach to minimize thermal effects in the touchdown area.
1 Microfusion Chamber Housing
2 Thrust Expansion Nozzle
3 Nozzle Flange Cover
4 Chamber Temperature Sensor
5 Chamber Overpressure Bleed Vent
6 Chamber Maintenance Plate
7 Computer Control/Sensor Data Conduit
8 Plasma Power Coupling
9 Thruster Structural Attachment
10 Waste Heat Radiator
11 Deuterium Feeder Conduit
NAVIGATIONAL DEFLECTOR
The most constant threat faced by a Bird-of-Prey isn’t an enemy vessel but the damage that could be inflicted by specs of dust. Like all vessels traveling at the kind of velocities needed to traverse interstellar space, if the Bird-of-Prey collided with dust, cometary emissions, micrometeroids and even gasses it would penetrate the hull causing catastrophic damage that would kill the crew in seconds.
These particles pose a continuous hazard to navigation, beginning with relative velocities as low as 20,000 kellicams per hour—some 40,000 kilometers per hour. The problem becomes even greater at warp speed. The Bird-of-Prey’s on-board navigational computers will automatically plot a course around large objects such as planets or even asteroids, but the only effective way of dealing with small particles is to clear them out of the ship’s path.
Various spacefaring cultures have used electromagnetics and radiative subspace devices to build barriers ahead of their ships, effectively driving particles away from the flight path. Some of these deflector fields have a very long range. This is necessary at warp factors as high as warp 9 where the ship is traveling many times the speed of light and yet must move particles away before the ship reaches them.
Many spacefaring cultures use multi-tonne coils and dishes to create a sweeping deflector path. The B’rel-class employs a combination of smaller fields generated by the plasma-powered warp wing, the close-in field emitted by the defensive shields, plus a more powerful central field flung ahead of the ship by the central deflector—a series of energized plates surrounding the photon torpedo launcher.
DEFENSIVE SHIELD DEFLECTOR
CENTRAL DEFLECTOR
The ship’s central computer, working with navigational sensor data, deploys the best combination of the different systems to keep the ship safe from interstellar debris in any conditions.
The warp field component generated by the Bird-of-Prey’s wings is a general exclusionary field that is naturally created by the warp engine systems. Ionized and non-ionized particles are repelled as long as the ship is at warp. The effective range for deflecting particles by the warp field alone requires a complex formula of particle mass, warp field strength, and relative velocity. To simplify, it is true to say that small particles encountered at low warp would be deflected at a moderately safe distance, while larger particles approaching at high warp would be somewhat more problematic.
The defensive shield grid—a series of energized conduits embedded in the armor and structural layers—adds an additional degree of short-range protection against physical objects at speed by intertwining field lines with the warp emissions and replaces the work done by the warp field at sublight speeds.
The central deflector, which rings the torpedo launcher, uses energy supplied by the ship’s plasma conduits, to power multiple layers of field devices. These fields are polarized, acting as a reverse—and one-way—version of a tractor beam or gravity generator, and are effectively repulsor beams. Multiple medium step-down plasma nodes service the central deflector so that if one fails, energy from adjoining conduits can take up the slack. Under computer control, a variety of graviton-related particles and fields can be produced, in waves or in bursts, for scientific or combat purposes.
During flight operations, the full system is usually energized, with the central deflector doing the heavy long-range work. At maximum power output, usually around 125,000MW and supplemented by capacitor banks on Deck 6, particles as large as 2cm can be deflected at velocities up to Warp 8 without steering the deflector field.
While the emitters cannot be physically moved, differential power flows can be used to angle the path of the deflector beam. The focus of the peak radiated power can be moved a total of 5.6 degrees off the centerline in any direction.
This offset effect can move particles up to 3.5cm in size away from the ship.
While the defensive shield grid and armor plating can tolerate occasional micrometeoroid hits at high warp, the interval between armor layer replacements will be shortened. Fortunately, the cross sectional area of the ship and thus the coefficient of interstellar ‘drag’ is relatively small in comparison to most vessels.
The combat fleets of most other cultures configure their deflectors to extend to at least 15,000,000 kellicams or 30,000,000 kilometers, at a cruising speed of Warp 6, where the fields just begin to push lightly on dust particles. Within one second, shipboard time, those particles are thrust a few thousand meters away. Klingon engineers prefer to cut the distance closer to 10,000,000 kellicams or 20,000,000 kilometers, with a higher power density, giving distant enemy forces less advanced warning during a subspace scan. This means that it takes a few seconds longer to detect a Bird-of-Prey at long range—a tiny advantage, but one the Klingons consider worthwhile.
Although the forward deflector array is not a long-range sensor in the usual sense, the central computer and the navigation subprocessors do reconstruct useable flight and tactical information by measuring the subspace energy that hits the emitter plates. Results from the forward deflector are routinely compared with data coming from numerous other sensors peppering the vessel, including leading-edge wing sensors, combat-sensing devices on the wingtip disruptors, and a trio of front-facing sensors on the hull just aft of the ship’s structural neck. Real-time cruise and combat maneuver data derived from the deflector and the other sources is presented on various bridge displays, particularly those of the helm and tactical officers.
The main deflector around the torpedo launcher projects an invisible beam that clears a path in front of the ship.
SHIP’S SYSTEMS
Klingon ships may be designed for fighting, but it takes a lot more than disruptors and photon torpedoes to put them in space and keep them there. The ship’s support systems may not excite the typical Klingon warrior, but without them a Bird-of-Prey would not be able to leave spacedock let alone enter combat. Without life support the crew would not be able to breathe. Moving around the ship would be almost impossible without the gravity generators that are built into the deck plating. Sensors are essential for plotting the ship’s course and detecting her enemies. Communications allow the Bird-of-Prey to receive and give commands and allow the commander to stay in touch with any crew members that have beamed down to a planet surface using the ship’s transporters. The landing gear allows it to set down on a planet, while the docking equipment in the nose allows it to connect to other starships and space stations. Without the power of computers the ship would simply drift in space. As with almost everything else on a Bird-of-Prey, the systems are designed with multiple redundancies that ensure that they can still function even after the ship has sustained significant damage. Even the power distribution network is designed to re-route electroplasma around damaged areas to maintain power at all times. And, if everything fails, the ship has a built in autodestruct system that can blow it to pieces, allowing the crew to survive in escape pods ready to fight another day.
LANDING
The evolution of the modern Bird-of-Prey can be traced back to early vessels that operated only within a planetary atmosphere and were incapable of interstellar flight. Klingon starship builders have never lost sight of that original design and it is a given that every incarnation of the Bird-of-Prey will
be able to maneuver in an atmosphere and land on the surface.
Nevertheless setting a starship down on a planet and lifting off again has never been an easy task for the engineers of the Klingon Empire, especially since Klingon impulse engines exhibit more brute force than finesse. 22nd-century Birds-of-Prey, going back as far as one engineering testbed of 2147, relied on an overly large proportion of pure fusion thrust over mass lightening. This meant that the ground crew couldn’t get within four kilometers of the ship once the engines were active.
Fortunately, improvements in impulse reaction chambers and driver-coil technology all but eliminated the lethal thermal blast zone and the radius for high-velocity ground debris. Design engineers struggled with ship masses, sizes and masses of landing gear, and propulsion systems until they finally arrived at a combination that worked for routine surface operations.
Operating in a planet’s atmosphere proved much less of a challenge than actually supporting the ship once it was on the ground. Since the impulse engines of the day could not lighten the vessel mass as much as the engineers would have liked, the landing pads and their support struts needed to be large and heavy and as a result the earlier Bird-of-Prey required two large open bays to house the folded support struts and landing pads. These bays were so large that the engineers had to cut upward into certain sections of warp engineering in order to accommodate them. Add to the structural parts all of the electrohydraulic conduits, sensor data lines, and plasma power couplings, and Decks 6 and 7 became very cramped spaces.
In the 2280s the landing gear was designed to hold up 236,000 metric tonnes, 110,000 metric tonnes of which is dead weight, at least as far as what the landing legs can ‘feel’ with the impulse driver coils running at idle. Though the landing gear operates most effectively with the driver coils running, any interruption in impulse power would cause the supports to lock with a local structural integrity field. The struts could support the entire mass, but just barely.
The Bird-of-Prey has always been designed to land on a planet’s surface, although this presents her designers with some serious challenges.
The current B’rel-class vessel has smaller support struts and surface pads. While the construction techniques and resulting strength are generally the same, the impulse driver coils bear more of the load against a planet’s gravity. A Bird-of-Prey with a mass of 208,900 metric tonnes requires the landing gear to accept only 74,000 metric tonnes of force. This essentially alters the job of the landing pads more to that of placeholders to keep the ship from shifting. As with the previous models, the struts can lock to support the full mass, but even today this is not a recommended operation.
1 Gear Bay Structural Mount
2 Transverse Rotational Joint
3 Upper Extensor Strut
4 Lower Extensor Strut
5 Main Footpad Hinge
6 Footpad Box Structure
7 Forward Debris Mitigation Field Emitter
8 Forward Hazard Sensors
9 Structural Integrity Field Radiator
10 Electrohydraulic Capacitor
11 Lateral Debris Mitigation Field Emitter
12 Electrohydraulic System Relief Port
13 Structural Integrity Field Focusing Element
14 Aft Footpad Structural Reinforcement
15 Gear Retraction Limit Sensor
The struts and pads are constructed of multiple layers of common densified tritanium and duranium. The rotating bearings and cylinders are spun from a forced-matrix alloy of berixinite and lorkenium, incredibly strong but almost impossible to machine after cooling, requiring precision fabrication within tolerances the first time.
Landing gear deployment on the B’rel-class typically coincides with the change in wing angle to the full-up position. As previously noted, this raises the wingtips and their disruptors above eventual ground level. Planetary approaches and terminal landing sequences can involve many different atmosphere and terrain types, as well as gravity levels. Sensor readings processed by the central computer determine the flight and surface conditions and configure the landing gear and wing hydraulics for approach and touchdown.
The landing gear is useable in environments at or only slightly above Qo’noS-normal gravity with the driver coils at idle. Above an idle setting and into actual impulse hover power, of course, the Bird-of-Prey can manage to make footpad contact with higher gravity worlds. The opposite end of the gravity scale also presents some interesting challenges, including setting down on moons and asteroids. The footpads are equipped with scalable magnetic field coils, used to hold onto nickel-iron or ferrous-analogue bodies in different star systems. In cases of predominantly rocky asteroids, low impulse power can be reversed to press the ship downward. Certain stealth missions or active predator-prey pursuits may require the ship to find a convenient hiding place or observing point.
DOCKING
When the Rotarran docked at Deep Space Nine it did so nose first, hooking up to the station’s Cardassian-designed docking ports.
There are a number of entry hatches around the Bird-of-Prey that can be used to dock with space stations or other vessels. Which and how many hatches are used depends on the type of space structure to which the ship is connecting. Sometimes the ship will dock with small autonomous resupply modules not much bigger than the Bird-of-Prey itself, whereas full orbital shipyards envelop the ship providing multiple connection points. In the case of a space station the Bird-of-Prey will connect nose first using its central docking port, which is installed at the front of Deck 6, inside the pressure cowling surrounding the photon torpedo launcher.
The docking hardware embedded in the Bird-of-Prey’s hull and mounted on Decks 5L and 6 includes magnetic grab panels, mooring beam receptors, backup force field emitters, and sensor subsystems. Most of the active equipment is on the yard or space station side, which provides more powerful field emitters and direct yardmaster traffic control. Once the ship has docked, personnel and small cargo can leave the ship through hatches in the pressure cowling.
Docking is a two-step process involving a computer controlled approach and the physical latching up of the vessel to the destination docking port. A safe approach velocity of roughly 5.5 meters per second will get the ship to within 100 meters, by which time the Z-axis of the ship will be almost perfectly aligned with the port on the space station side.
A nominal terminal approach will see the ship slow gradually to 0.3 meters per second prior to force field latchup. In practice, however, especially during wartime, high-speed manual dockings at 2 meters per second have been recorded with commanders relying on their ship’s dock force fields and inertial dampeners to cushion the impact.
Under normal conditions, the navigation subroutines used by the Bird-of-Prey typically bring the head end of the ship to within 37 meters of the port before the helm officer releases control of the ship. This is commonly referred to as free-drift mode. The dock mooring beams—essentially narrow focus tractor beams—then engage the vessel, fine tune its rotational attitude and position, and bring it to a full stop in the docked position.
Variations on the sequence occur when the Bird-of-Prey connects with unmanned spacecraft such as the resupply modules. In that case the helm officer retains full control throughout and uses the ship’s own field emitters to make the latch-up.
When approaching a non-Klingon station for the first time, sensors and active geometer scanning beams on the ship read the physical construction of the docking port and quickly configure a viable connection, usually in concert with data from the station’s computers. Non-Klingon stations that have been previously visited successfully have all docking data pre-processed and stored.
Once the mooring beams and other stabilizing fields are in place, a breathable atmosphere is established between the ship and the transfer tunnel or airlock structure. Most station docks are equipped with annular fields that retain a cylinder of air within the ship-station interface. Computer reminders automatically inform the crew of a
ny pressure or atmospheric composition differences that need to be addressed before hatches are opened on both sides. For the typical Klingon warrior, this is not a problem. Bird-of-Prey crews are trained and medically prepared to adapt to a wide range of ambient conditions, short of those absolutely requiring an environment suit.
While many safety protocols are in place to deal with a dangerous pressure drop in the interface area, most of the docking regulations are more concerned with the structural integrity of the ship while the force fields are at full power. Torsional effects during hostilities, such as weapon hits on a station, can put a strain on the mooring emitters, and crews must be prepared for emergency undockings to head into battle. In the event of an unavoidable undocking, protocols require any crew members who did not make it on board to return via transporter, or if it is not safe drop the shields for transport, the crew members are abandoned and recovered after combat is completed.
In certain rare instances, the opposite of a forced undocking has occurred. Ships have been prevented from undocking as the result of a military situation or factional dispute, and the space station personnel have refused to release the docking clamps and mooring force fields. Deliberately running impulse engines against the pull of mooring beams can have destructive effects on ship and station alike.
Orbital shipyard docks, which accept complete ships into maintenance bays, can extend transfer tunnels to attach to alternate entry hatches, such as the dorsal hatch in the head leading to Deck 4 and the smaller dorsal hatches in the aft hull leading down into the Deck 3 cargo area. Another type of extendable tunnel can attach to the ventral cargo loading ramp at the bottom of Deck 7, though this loading area is more commonly used during planetary landings.
