Starship Profile: DY-100 Savannah class
July 1st, 2008
Welcome to this very first proper post on Titan Fleet Yards! The first type of starship I’d like to feature is an old favorite: the DY-100 class, featured as the Botany Bay in “Space Seed” and designed by Matt Jefferies.
History
The Douglas Yakovlev 100 series was one of the most important early spacecraft in Earth history, and a significant step towards permanent human presence in space and a global, unified space program for Earth.
In the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was the first nation to launch a manned flyby mission to Mars, prompting an immediate response from the United States. Faced with a troubled economy and an ever more succesful Soviet space program, President Reagan called for increased cooperation with the Soviet Union, focusing on exploration of the inner Solar System. In 1985, the international Multiple Application Space Transportation System (MASTS) was launched.
MASTS was in many ways an extension of the American Space Shuttle program. As the Space Shuttle was to provide the infrastructure to facilitate the construction and maintanence of space stations and sattelites, so would MASTS facilitate future exploration and colonization of the Moon and eventually Mars.
Douglas-Yakovlev (a cooperation between the American Douglas Aircraft Company and the Russian Yakovlev Design Bureau) was to become the prime contractor for the MASTS program. In 1988, the first orbital prototype of the so-called Near Space Transport, DY-099 Columbus, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was a testbed for the new Interchangeable Payload Module system, but perhaps more importantly, it was the first significant cooperation between Russia and America.
Although the original MASTS program was mainly a Russian-American endeavour, very early on other international partners became involved in the project so that in the end, three more major blocks of power became involved in the program: the European Community, the People’s Republic of China and the Australian Commonwealth. In July 1988, it was decided that five Near Space Transports would be constructed initially, one for each partner.
Technology
The DY series was concieved as a modular system. The baseline specification described a spacecraft consisting of 8 major components. All components of the DY-100 class were constructed on Earth, and launched seperately into orbit by various rockets. Final assembly took place in lower orbit.
The first component to launch was the Habitat Module, launched atop a Russian Energia-built Ogon heavy launcher. The Habitat Module (HM) provided life support systems and was essentially a self-sufficient small space station. From the HM, the further orbital construction of the craft was overseen. Most modules were launched nearly flight-ready into orbit, but the Command Module (providing more living space and advanced control and docking systems) was launched in smaller components requiring actual in-orbit construction.
Coming soon: An overview and short history of all 5 DY-100 spacecraft.
Credits and References
- DY-100 is based on the Botany Bay model as originally designed by Matt Jefferies for Star Trek.
- Douglas Yakovlev name and logo originally concieved by aridas sofia.
- Morrissette, Michael. DY Series Comparison Chart. Starstation Aurora, 1982.
1. Jim Williamsen said:
In your second graphic of the DY-100 (the first one is correct), I think those are not solar panels (they’re not big enough to create electricity, especially away from the sun), but rather radiators to dissipate heat from the propulsion module.
Some good online sources:
http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/BotanyBay/BotanyBay.htm
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/DY-100
I’m looking forward to more of your posts.
2. Harry Doddema said:
I’ve been struggling with those panels. I went with solar panels as they would be the easiest to explain, but theoretically I think they could’ve been intended as some form of microwave ‘rectennae’:
http://www.mtt.org/awards/WCB%27s%20distinguished%20career.htm
It does seem to fit the electrical propulsion theory, but it would require an external source of energy, which I didn’t want to get into for this article.
I did notice I called them heat dissipators in that first image (it was an older image). I might go back and call them that. In that case power generation could possibly be nuclear in nature.
Thanks for your comments by the way, it’s part of the reason why I decided to make this a blog.
3. John N. Ritter said:
Interesting. Your idea for the construction of the ship is quite good. One problem, that I see is the ‘cargo’ moduals. I am not sure if that is what they are, or maybe they are fuel tacks. Or more likely could be either, depending on the mission requirements.
One thing in the real world a couple of years ago, the European Space group developed a two stage ion engine. Double the power, ten times the isp. Power was as I understand it always a problem with ion engines, there being a limit to how much you could put into a ’standard’ ion engine before this.
4. Harry Doddema said:
I suppose those modules could be anything from cargo containers to labs to lunar habitats. Or fuel tanks.
5. Dan Carlson said:
Nice! But how do you explain the onboard artificial gravity?
6. geoff daum said:
Yep – I would agree with that.. Thanks for the line.
7. Jeff said:
I’ve been off-and-on fooling around with ideas of how a DY-100 could be built with 1990s technology. Then I discovered Google’s Sketchup and could actually work out details and layout in three dimensions. I see you came to some of the same conclusions as I did (modular construction, units launched atop in-line launch vehicles, etc). I’m thinking in the next few months as I get closer to a finished product I’ll see if I can’t self-publish manual. It’s been fun trying to fit the layout of the “Space Seed” set into the body, and then the look I was shooting for started to lean towards “Space 1999″ and “2001.” Once I get some decent images, I’ll share them.
Jeff
P.S. Love your DY logo.
8. Harry Doddema said:
Re: Artificial gravity. This is a bit of a strange one. I’m of two thoughts: either we ignore it for sake of plausibility…. or we chalk it up to some ‘black project’. Remember, this ship comes from a world where the US launched orbital nukes in the 1960s, and where genetically superior humans ruled over a quarter of the Earth… anything could happen
9. Pablo said:
I’m glad to find your source. Beautiful site. I’ll become your regular reader.
10. AlexR said:
re artificial gravity… Isn’t there a bit of fanon floating about, going back perhaps to the Mandel era, that humans figured out gravity control technology (and, presumably, the Grand Unified Theory that eludes us today, but that a lot of Trek’s tech seems to be based upon) from studying a flying belt found in a Slaver stasis box on the moon…in the late 20th Century? My memory may be trickin’ me, but I seem to recall some speculation that said box was found by one of the last Apollo crews (the ones that, in Trek’s world, *weren’t* cancelled by the Nixon Administration!), which could be consistent with DY-100 class vessels having artificial gravity by the 1990s.
Just some thoughts…
11. shipfisher said:
We only ever see “cryo-sleep” vehicles with what appears to be artificial gravity in the 1990’s (ie. including the “SS Birdseye” cryo-sat.). A pet theory of mine has these ships requiring a “polar-pulse” grid system in the cryo-bays to interact with polar water molecules and help prevent tissue damaging ice crystal formation in “cryo-nauts”. A side benefit would be ramping the system up, when required, to charge/polarize anything with water in it (ie. people) and use EM repulsion forces to push it against the deck.
You can then put off the intro of actual graviton based systems by several decades at least, which seems easier to believe.
12. jimbo said:
how do we know if they had gravity, they migth just have mag boots like in undiscovered country.
(i know they didnt have floppy hair that goes with wieght loss. lol)
or a rotating middle to there ship!
there plenty to go on.
ps nice site like it.
13. Scott said:
Cool! Re: artificial gravity, I always just assumed that Khan and his Augments designed the Botany Bay (A.G., nuclear propulsion and all) and that after the war we just reverse engineered their technology. (Kinda like we did with nazi Germany after WWII.)
14. Nguyet Nila said:
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