This ship is basically a runabout duct-taped onto two photon torpedos with a reverse-engineered Romulan singularity drive (and by 'reverse-engineered' I mean more than half of it was invented whole cloth with a lot of Human ducttape, Tellarite swearing, Andorian doubt, and Vulcan suppressed resigned sighs).
@@Aragorn7884 In a vacuum yes but when you are traveling past the speed of light dust particles are going to seem closer together but there is also a deflector that would push that aside, also this ship travels in atmosphere as well so it is going to need the aerodynamic structure but in space not so much since there is no air.
I feel like the Protostar is actually a long-range stealth bomber dressed up to look like a scout or diplomatic vessel. Look at how it's small and difficult to track despite its insane power output, and how it's got multiple torpedo launchers even though that's very rare on Starfleet ships that are that small. I think as a design it's the Federation's strategic response to the Dominion War, able to directly counterattack an enemy home world in any part of the galaxy within a couple of days.
I think one of my favourite parts of Star Trek is that is the Federation wanted to, they could conquer the galaxy. Thankfully they are peaceful and dedicated to their enlightened goals that this does not occur. A federation science vessel is a match for a battlecruiser of most other nations. Imagine being a Klingon and having to cope that your state of the art warships are on par with fucking diplomatic transports!
I think starfleet learned it's lesson in making it's whole fleet pure explorer ships thanks to the dominion war. Without shields, federation ships never lasted long, and their weapons seemed to favor precision and versatility over power. Now their ships have the weapons and armor to go toe-to-toe with any threat while still staying true to their explorer roots.
you have to remember, those explorer vessels held, at various times, the romulans, klingons, the dominion, and even the borg, at bay. a galaxy class cruiser had upwards of 14 phaser banks and 2-4 photon torpedo launchers (depending on which source you go by). that is not a light loadout.
I'm shocked at the scale of the Protostar being, at least presumably, smaller than the Defiant class. Makes sense considering it's race car inspirations, but what little I've managed to watch of this show gave me the impression that it was closer in scale to the Constitution class with a more current gen ship profile. Still a really cool ship class and I hope we haven't seen the last of them.
The show has scaling all over the place for dramatic effect, but from what we see of the interior it definitely seems suited to the 20 people listed for the crew. One small mess hall, an engineering space that's positively cramped by post-TNG standards, etc. I think it's just a bit deceptively arranged because it's stretched out compared to the Defiant and so much of it is actually taken up by the enclosed protowarp machinery.
@@leepky Glad to hear I wasn't alone in confusing the ship's scale. Still, it's cool to see Starfleet create a prototype ship that's basically three warp/protostar cores and a steering console. Sounds like something Tom Paris would try to make.
@@kaitlyn__L Well that'd be cool if it's ever confirmed. Would definitely track with his love of fast vehicles (not to mention the possible captain proton reference). Here's hoping Prodigy season 2 gets out of limbo soon.
@@wolfpack_104 I definitely hope it gets confirmed! As to the scale, as stated in the video if we scale it based on the bridge it can’t be smaller than the Defiant. Personally I interpret the main body of the ship as being roughly Defiant sized (but with less internal space, since the rim is one deck thick instead of 3) with all the engines hanging off the back.
They feel more like custom built science and explorer ships. Old earth explorers may have used large ships, but in sci-fi large ships tend to scream warship.
@GrandInfernoElite But not in Star Trek though, large just mean is more focus on deep space exploration. It's those medium and small one we need to watch out for. They're the one with the fangs
@@Predator42ID The Titan-A is a science cruiser. The fact that they converted it to be the new Enterprise-G speaks volumes of Starfleet's desire to return to its exploration roots. They only seem militaristic because they know just how much more dangerous it is out there thanks to USS Voyager, so they now fly softly again, but carry very big sticks (quantum torpedoes and type-xii phasers being standard that used to be only on ships designed to fight the Borg).
The entire ship was effectively a holodeck, I wonder why the crew quarters weren't just holographic so the crew could have anything they like in their alloted personal space and communal areas. It's not like the Protostar was short on energy with two warp cores, it would be great to have a fully customisable ship with largely invulnerable holographic security personnel and medical staff.
yeee, while the Holodeck is a great storytelling device it still runs on power and given of how often there is a poweroutage on a Starship in distress, it isn't great to have all your furniture disapear in the state of emergency. In Reality i would also say that it also cost to much energy but that was only a issue for a few VOY Episodes
@@enisra_bowman I think that Picard also solved the Holodeck thing with the separate, incompatible power systems because it makes sense as a place to congregate the crew and handle a LOT of things. Hell, with the EMH, it also adds another location where you can deal with things outside of sickbay in a mass casualty or similar situation
4,000 Lightyears in a few minutes? Damn makes the timeframe for Voyagers journey back from the Delta Quadrant seem ridiculous. With the Protostar they could cover that in a couple of days
With the Right SetUp, you can easily get over Warp 204 while the Protowarp is activce, get a Cooldown of unter 20 Secopnds, and a Turnrate, that's way better than in Normal Warp
I love that little ship (instantly thought of Worf and Riker in First Contact when I typed that…Riker saying ”tough little ship” to Worf who replies “little!”) Anyway, I love the design, it’s sleek and would be a great emergency response ship for the Federation.
This ship is the answer to questions i had back in the 90s about Starfleet developing a rival drive comparable to the Romulan's quantum singularity reactor. Which is why i always found it ridiculous that the Fleet in discovery's Future would still be using Anti Matter in most of its ships. If Starfleet wishes to explore beyond the Galactic Barrier, they can't keeping using Anti-matter reactors.
@@GrandInfernoElite Because the aesthetic of Orville is clearly and self admittedly, by the creator, inspired by Star Trek, and the Intrepid class popularized the triangular primary hull style of Federation ships which the Orville emulates.
@@drksideofthewal having the same basic shape isn't a ripoff, that's inspiration, if that. Otherwise the borg sphere would be a ripoff of the death star
I got this ship two days ago in Star Trek Online... and i am absolutely in love with her. I think a quote from Voyager sums her perfectly "She may not be as big as a Galaxy-class, but she's quick and smart." Extreme Emphasis on "QUICK" lol
Voyager was faster, but could only keep up her top speed for a short time before stuff broke. Protostar can do warp 9.97 for as long as it wants. So even without their super-drive, Protostar would still win.
@@singletona082 I'm also thinking that Romulans were involved since the contained protostar seems oddly similar to the Romulan contained singularity thing
I really like the design of the protostar, it is a far more logical step in starship design than the Pizza Cutter seen in STD, that thing had a literal jump drive before Starfleet had even built the transwarp drive for the Excelcior class, and it clearly didn't fit in the timeline where it was, the Protostar however does. I hope we get to see more of it in Prodigy season 2. It's a shame we never got an offical speed calculation for the protodrive, i personally recon it's about 1000ly/mn. Imagine if Voyager had that drive, they would have been back at earth in just over an hour, or at most, a _day._
Hopefully we get to see _Prodigy_ season two. Paramount seems to be trying to forget the show ever existed, much less has a full season ready (or nearly ready) to release.
Looks like a next generation Nova-class replacement as a planetary survey vessel. Fill it with a bunch of scientists and move on to the next star system to chart it.
I'm still trying to figure out the timeline with the fall of Romulus, but the Protostar Drive seems like something that would come out of several Romulan engineers working with Starfleet to design something, as it seems to be a far better option than the singularity drives that the RSE uses while being something that would utilize a lot of their tech fed through a Federation filter.
I just realized what the Protostar class reminded me of: The Warp Delta from Enterprise! The big arrowhead wedge. The two extremely short narrow pylons with the path of propulsion going just above and just outside the main saucer. Built for a crew of 30. Few niceties since it was a propulsion and tech bed. Smooth underside and fore hiding the unaerodynamic experimental tech platform in the back. And if you squint a little, it even has a Duotronic take on that big dome covered bridge giving panoramic views from the dorsal side. That tested Warp 2, this tests quantum slipstream, still proud little testbeds.
Only a crew of 20? At least half are engineers then, bridge crew of 6 (captain, first officer, helm/navigation in one, communications officer then a chief science officer and tactical officer), 3 science officers (since regular missions to the Delta Quadrant would require a heavy science compliment), 2 medical officers then the ship's Chief Engineer and their department of 8 engineers to maintain the warp cores and protostar drive
They're not official ones, I tend to find schematics (Star Trek online promotional view pf the protostar class in this case) where I can then create my own stencils with those as reference in photoshop
"Realistic?" That's arguable. "Heroic?" Without a doubt. As John Paul Jones once said, "I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way." And the USS Protostar goes REALLY, REALLY FAST.
@@Timeward76 Klingon ships have a similar design to ships from Avatar or Horizont Event. In front, the crew section separated from the engines by a long neck, because the engines are radioactive.
Ironically, this is actually one of the few places where I think it works, because on a ship that small and so heavily devoted to engines, anything that gets through the shield and hull at all is going to be a mission kill anyway.
I absolutely love this type of video. I screenshot (yeah for RU-vid) the last schematic in the video and then convert it into a wallpaper for my computer. Including this one, I now have 17 of them.
i would say, that the Protostar is not a Courier, Scout or anything but more a pure testbed Prototyped, like the Turbinia or the Sea Shadow or the NX-Prototypes, only with longer travel distances in mind and to test a totally new propulsion system, while the Excelsior is more a ship like the Nautilus or the Nuclear Merchant Ships like Savannah or Otto Hahn
I always had specific theory how protostar drive worked. Basic emphasis, was Protostar was an experimental attempt by Federation and Starfleet to make a safer version of Romulan singularity engine core. But wanted a system they could potentially destroy, unlike a singularity they couldn't shutdown. Thus keeping anyone from stealing it. The drive core functions like an artificial star, likely harvested high energy protomatter held in artificial gravity chamber like pre burner in fusion reactor. The baby star is fed a steady diet of gravitons and tachyons. The system when engaged it is fed warp energy, which catalyzes the reaction producing enormous volumes of tachyons and displaces subspace, the radiative flux of the baby star, whose new gravitons are gravitationally attracted to adjacent stars. The big engines exhibit huge subspace driver coil designs, which helps to mitigate more ships mass than conventional subspace displacement systems. In much the same way the Enterprise D rode thru the distortion wave of the subspace damaged sector of harkaras.
another awesome video sir i enjoy it a lot how many crew can the ship carry in your opinnion and also the exposed bridge desing like and acrylic cover its just mesmerizing
I really dig the windowed hallways along the saucer and the open canopy bridge. I'm going to get the ship in STO when I can and look forward to getting my hands on her ample nacelles, to paraphrase a famous engineer.
I gotta wonder what happened to this class by the Discovery future era. Obviously IRL production didn’t know about the class getting greenlit or budget wise they don’t have a model to work from (same reason no California classes I think). But the protostar class sounds like something that could survive the burn. …or possibly be a bigger than normal explosion during the event. Unsure. But it feels like technology they would try to recreate. Unless season 2 has reasons why it might be abandoned.
It's possible that production of the ship wasn't scalable. Presumably they needed to harvest a protostar every time they built one, and the demands of keeping it gravitationally confined must have been significant. Plus when it blows up it can disrupt entire systems.
This gotta be one of my favourite new ship in recent Treks. I like how small it is, very nimble and the design itself still feels in line with the current timeline and technology while also referencing lots of the past designs. Looking at 32-century Discovery, it felt too sharp and alien tech but I guess for that long of a period gap who knows what forced them to change Still, I love some small yet fast ship, definitely my type and Protostar have all the goodness of being very trek-y in a fresh new way.
I think Nickelodeon have heavily underestimated the size of the Protostar There is plenty of on-screen evidence to support this. We've got exterior footage of Janeway visible on the bridge of the Protostar as viewed from outside the ship, footage comparing Dal to Admiral Janeway, and footage of Dal walking along the edge windows of the saucer. A 139 meter long ship would mean the bridge canopy would be at most 2.2 meters high at its tallest section. Rok-Tahk is 8ft tall, she would have to duck to enter any part of the bridge If you measure the length of the bridge compared to Janeway and the characters you get a ship that is much bigger, comparable to Voyager or NCC-1701 The ship is 312 meters long
I did not realize this thing was so tiny. Never going to watch the show, so STO was the first time I saw her alongside other ships, and in the internal docks of ESD. I don't know why I assumed she was the size of the Sovereign or something similar, but now it seems even smaller than a Miranda.
indeed though that made no sense why Cryptic would put this ship in the infinity lockbox instead of putting it in the requisitions store i mean COMMON damnit i mean seriously? Cyptic?
Two things: 1) Starfleet must have been *very* confident in the drive if they sent it straight back out to the Delta quadrant 2) I swear if I was put in charge of trek the first thing I would do is sort out all the scaling issues once and for all. They already spend a lot of time on ship design, and long term the design of the ships end up being quite important to the shows. It would take considerably more effort but I would just physically map out the ship's layout at the correct scale in a 3D model. If we were fortunate enough to get at least a mockup of a filming set for the ship then I'd use that to inform tweaks to the design before it was finished but if you design it with filming in mind in the first place it shouldn't be an issue. Oh and I still find it really odd how Starfleet is using completely exposed bridges with either a single wall or actual windows, and how this isn't more of a plot point. I don't know if it is or not in Prodigy but I hope that the tech required a physical window to be there because of something the proto warp stuff does, it's a big missed opportunity if not
I haven't seen the show yet, but I really like this ship for its size and efficiency in terms of minimal crew requirements. A ship with a smaller crew means you can build many more of these and send dedicated hand-picked specialists to go out and survey targeted areas all over the galaxy all at the same time. Starfleet Intelligence would be forced to work overtime going over so much new data!
This was a kool original design it is great the show was good the end was fitting.. it grew on me the characters were good and i came to care about them. And that says a lot about the writers great job
"The Delta Quadrant. I can't believe I'm back in the Delta Quadrant. Three times before this place almost killed me. I swore I'd never give it another chance to finish the job."
She's definitely a tough little ship. Didn't realise she was half the size of an Intrepid though, that's pretty damn heavy when you think about potential combat. Odd Starfleet would make such a small ship with the capability it has but at the same time, Starfleet ships have plot armour
I think the in universe excuse is that the ship would basically run from any possible threat it encounters. Considering it’s first mission was to be a second contact ship for the delta quadrant I bet the idea was to simply be a blockade runner to bring supplies and diplomats to worlds that are too far or too dangerous for most ships.
Most likely its just a quick response ship, at the end of the season 2 finale they mention its a science vessel. Most likley then, its mission is to get in and record dangerous or quick events and collect data, then get out. Then again, we have to remember that Stafleet *never designs warships*, but, after the Dominion war would do things like "lets build a medical vessel and arm it to the teeth, so its like a warship, but because we stuck more then the normal amount of sick bays we can call it a medical vessel". So they found ways around the "we never make warships" mentality.
They could fit it out to have more of the crew amenities that were generally the norm of the Fleet by reducing said crew to around 10 plus Holo stand-ins. In so doing, it could serve as either really big Runabouts or as Corvettes. Another use, depending on the size of the Mothership, would make these ships into well appointed Captain's Yachts.
The protostar would be very good as a rapid response vehicle. However, allow it to focus on a specific specialization; and be modular. Maybe allow all that energy from the protostar warp core to be transitioned into weapons. That would allow it to go service Frontline craft in times of war. Or, have it be a space ambulance of sorts. Allowing it to be outfitted with a lot of medical bays instead of crew quarters. I feel like those would be the best uses of the craft.
"It's not really an 'exploration' vessel...." Of course not. When you cover 4,000 lightyears in a single hop lasting minutes, you don't NEED it to be a traditional starfleet 'exploration' vessel. You point it at an area, tell the crew: 'go look around that spot for a month', and let it go. A month later, it pops back to Federation space for some R&R.
I got to Warp 261,57 - still missing the Buff from a Duty-Officer-Mission(The Antimatter-Leaks-Drilll), that needs to be a Critical Success to give me an additional 25% Bonus to Sector-Speed. But that Warp 261,57 requires 2 Other Players, to Assign me the Federations "Grand Diplomatic Immunity" and "Assign Raiding Party" on me got me to that Speed with a Timed Buff. Without that, My current Proto-Warp is at Warp 204,32. Oh, and the Green Duty-Officer that gives you a Cooldown on Transwarp of 100% or even Better the one Purple that gives you a Transwarp-Cooldown of 200%, will both also reduce the Cooldown of the Protowarp.
What is the protostar core exactly? Is it an actual young star held in a compressed space field like the TARDIS? Or is it some kind of mini-star made with proto-matter?
@@RBAWintrow well I was just thinking of the protostar containment is that unstable in long-term operations why not use a slightly smaller Singularity core that runs at lower power but longer?
I think in Star Trek the Romulan singularity core is something like a Soviet nuclear reactor. Yes, it has a lot of power, but I wouldn't try to turn it off :))
My take is that the protostar can produce more energy in short bursts than any other known core power source can, including the singularity core. The singularity core's power output is probably limited by the size of the singularity itself. To reach the power output of the protostar a singularity would likely be too large to keep contained. One phaser blast hitting the hull and _sluuuurrrrrp_ the whole ship implodes as it's sucked into the singularity.
So, I forgot I had this video open, and I walked past my computer and glanced at it sideways in passing, and I misread the title as "PORNSTAR CLASS". I was mightily confused for a second.
Can you imagine a ship that is a skeletal system and its made of various holodeck technologies for its OUTSIDE shape/composition/components... With enough energy and safety redundancies.. it to change it to whatever it wants
I think the Protostar class is a great science scout. All it needs is a cloaking device; while it has teeth, this little ship is probably better served fleeing to report its findings instead of fighting.
Project ship series Nova class was suspended in the past. The new version, uss Equinox class ship, are lost into Delta quadrant after a big jump. USS Voyager find, fight and destroy uss Equinox. This is the beginning of the new TV series, the uss Protostar ship..? The birth of the new era for Nova class project..? Mmmmm.... I don't know.... but very interesting...!
Make the ship 10% larger to add compherts and a bigger medical bay. With that, it should be a decent explorer while keeping its speed. I also think you could only get 15-25% larger without structural redesigns.
I think 139m is a good measurement for the Protostar class. 200m feels a bit much considering that the Nova class, with a crew complement of +60 and seemingly larger visual size, is 165m in length.
