Well... Might as well post the little bugger in here :)
The whole idea consists of an organisation within Starfleet's rank -Starfleet's Centre for Stellar Cartagrophy, or SC˛-, which utilises state of the art technology to map the stars. If one wishes, I could post images of the building as well but that's not our focus for today. What is, is the class of ships that have been produced to assist SC˛ in it's task of mapping the stars: the Hayden class.
These ships usually venture off of known shippinglanes, tend to avoid making first contacts as much as possible (leaving it to a ship of the line), and are fast. Their sensor-packed pods are directly connected to the nacelles and as a result feed off of the high energy plasma. The ships carry a dedicated Quantum torpedo launcher and are equiped with ablative armor generators; these ships are not unarmed. If they ever find themselves in a fight, though, their main rescue is their sheer speed. They are as fast as an Intrepid class, but use a bigger core to gain that speed. The pods create a considerable subspace drag but Starfleet Command found the design elegant and small enough to justify this.
- - - WARNING: Treknobabble ahead! - - -
The Hayden Class relies on it's incredible speed to enhance its survivability in threat encounters. Several technologies were blended together for the first time in a production package that allowed hyper-impulse-like speeds without the complex equipment requirements of the traditional Hyper Impulse package.
The Hayden has two twin-reactor impulse engines on port and starboard. To save space, the fusion reactor element is a compact high-plasma-density model similar to that of the Defiant class. Attached directly to the exhaust face of the reactor sphere is a subspace driver assembly. Like it's counterparts aboard larger ships this unit reduces the apparent mass of the ship while accelerating the exhaust of the impulse drive thereby increasing it's efficiency. A short segment of accelerator coils allows for a substantial increase in driver output and also allows for the installation of more power taps. This allows the impulse engines to carry more of the ship's baseline load as opposed to the warp-core carrying the balance of the load. This in turn allows for greater survivability in threat encounters as the impulse engines can power the shield grid and weapons at full capacity without a drop in propulsive thrust.
Aft of the driver assembly is the thrust vectoring unit. This is a modified traditional model that incorporates a special antimatter injection unit. Small amounts (less than a microgram) are injected at this point to create a thrust “explosion” that can hurl the ship forward at incredible speeds. Other ships can preform this same stunt but only the Hayden class is designed for extended operation in this realm: the way the nacelles are positioned means that they won't get damaged by these bursts, a problem that was noticed during the test runs of the Jackalope pathfinder hull.
The final addition to the impulse system is a Relativistic Dampener Assembly. Traditional impulse flight is restricted to .25c to prevent relativistic effects such at time dilation. The Hayden incorporates a subspace field generator and low-level phase-shifting device integrated with a chronometric particle condenser. When operational this allows the ship to approach .75c for extended periods. Experiments have proven that the ship can reach .90c for short periods but due to the limitations of the dampener measurable time dilation begins to occur within 180 seconds.
Another innovation that the Hayden class brings to the table is its new Minimal Inventory Reaction Chamber Assembly. Traditional warp cores respond to changes in load balance by storing a reserve of matter and antimatter in the injection segments and a “surge reserve” of plasma in the reaction chamber itself. This is great for situations where the ship has to raise shields, arm weapons and jump to warp in the span of a few seconds. It allows time for the core to rev up to full output.
The major drawback is that this design is horribly vulnerable to damage. Damage to the reaction chamber containment system, the chamber containment cooling system or any magnetic chamber seals or interlock systems can result in uncontrolled mixing of reactants or a loss of containment pressure around the core. Simply valving off the fuel supply is not enough as the core has to burn through its entire inventory of fuel as well as vent the generated plasma into space Ejection is limited to situations where the core can survive being disconnected from the mains and ejected at high impulse out the bottom of the ship. In reality, it seldom works when the core is damaged to the point where ejection is required because the core is so badly damaged it cannot survive the ejection process.
In order to prevent the catastrophic loss of starships Starfleet rethought it's power distribution models and created a Minimal Inventory Reaction Process that feeds in a tiny amount of reactant at a time and only enough to meet the requirement of the moment. In case of the Hayden class, this allows for load-shifting a majority of the loads aboard the ship to be carried by the ship's massive impulse drives. This allows the core to rev up to full output without a loss of combat ability or an adverse effect on the survivability of the ship in hostile situations.
If a situation results in loss of chamber integrity or loss of power/cooling to the containment field system the core can be fully shutdown to a safe condition 100% of the time. From the receipt of the SCRAM signal to final reaction burnout tests have indicated an average shutdown time of less than five seconds at full power even with containment cooling flow set to zero.
The centerpiece of this design is the dynamic load balancing software that shifts the power loads from warp-core to impulse reactor modes in real time. Real-world tests aboard the project pathfinder hull USS Jackalope have shown no measurable lag in load shifting under simulated combat conditions. Even in situations where the ship has suffered severe damage the load-shifting can continue with three out of four impulse reactors inoperable and the computer running at less than 33% capacity.
As always Starfleet incorporates the maximum amount of safety in all it's designs. In the unlikely event the core remains a threat to the continued survival of the ship and crew the lower pylon (and, thus, the nacelle) can be explosively separated and the core ejected through the bottom of the ship. Doing so would expose the entire engineering chamber to vacuum requiring it to be isolated from the ship via hard-seal doors and force-fields. If the ship survives the resulting blast, it can limp back to friendly territory using a small anti-matter "battery" situated deep inside of the saucer, which would proceed to feed the micrgrams of anti-matter into the impulse engines in order to be hyper-impulse capable.
The Hayden class serves as a real-world testbed for this novel and revolutionary power distribution system. It is hoped that future classes of large ships can benefit from the lessons learned in the Hayden class.
- - - END OF TREKNOBABBLE! - - -
With that, let's start with the first image. Meet... The Jackalope! A Frankenfleet stayer, this Nova spaceframe is a scaled down version of it's original self and stripped to the bulkhead, only containing essential technologies such as the new, aforementioned warpcore, life support and only two phasers. Her nacelles are the miniature, sensorpod-less sisters to the ones the Hayden Class is going to be sporting, and it's got a test version of the massive impulse drives. It's got an auxilary craft, though: ONE WHOLE WORKBEE! Isn't it amazing! :wink:
