Lacuna Class

Design by Robert Heckadon

Type: Medium explorer
First commissioned: Stardate 68987.0
Length: 450m
Width: 225m
Height: 51m
Decks: 16
Displacement: 1,700,000t
Complement: 100 officers + 350 crew, evacuation limit: 9500
Speed: Warp 8 (cruise), Warp 9.9985 (max.), Warp 9.9995 (max. emergency)
Sublight speed: 0.9c (max.)
Armament: 12 type 16 phaser arrays, 4 photon/quantum torpedo launchers
Defense: Regenerative shields, SIF enhanced hull plating (backup)

“Somewhere there my fate revealed; I hear but how will I see” - The Siren by Nightwish

The Lacuna class starship is Starfleet’s newest medium class exploration cruiser. Built more than 10 years after the Scimitar incident, the Lacuna is designed so that almost every duty compartment, such as science labs and sensor arrays on the ship can be used for both scientific and military application, reducing the amount of refit time needed. The lower saucer contains 8 replaceable cargo modules. These modules not only can be replaced for cargo that require specific environmental conditions, but can also be replaced with missions specific modules for either military duty or scientific discovery.

Almost every crew member ranging from engineer to scientist has some MACO combat training closely related to their field of study. This maximizes crew efficiency during hostile situations. And each crew member has a secondary field of study should they be needed for backup for another department. Like medical for engineering. With the multiuse structure of the Lacuna and the training of its crew, it can perform missions exceeding those of a Galaxy class starship.

As with the Lightyear class, the Lacuna class uses a hybrid dilithium crystal at the heart of the primary antimatter reactor. It uses 95% of conventional dilithium and 5% of an artificial version of the dilithium crystal that was discovered in the Delta quadrant by the U.S.S. Voyager on stardate 49373.4, which allows ship to travel at warp 10. This dilithium hybrid allows the ship to travel at the remarkable warp 9.9985 for 20 hours, and warp 9.9995 for almost an hour. Placed on the ship’s upper saucer section and the nacelle pylons are 14 solar collectors. They are normally used to augment the ship's power reserves.

One of the unique feature of the Lacuna class is that is has a forward firing impulse engine to reverse impulse thrust or to bring the ship to a full stop (1). Traditionally reversing thrust involves channelling the impulse power to the driver coil assemblies only, and venting the exhaust gas in a non-propulsive order. This reduces the ships apparent mass, and therefore reducing the force requirements enough to vent gases from the Bussard ramscoops to provide sufficient reverse thrust (2).

But venting gases from the ramscoops for propulsion uses significant amounts of fuel and can cause a disruption in the deflector shields because the venting is un-modulated and disperses in all directions. Although the shields can still withstand phasers and torpedoes, they are somewhat vulnerable to high impact collisions, such as with another starship. By adding on a forward engine, whose exhaust can be modulated and focused, those weaknesses can be significantly reduced. And the power of the impulse engine can be used to increase the kinetic yield of a forward firing quantum torpedo, or serve as a backup power source. The ship also uses an old style M2P2 electromagnetic sail, located on the pylons, for deceleration while entering a star system. The Lacuna class is the first starship to use a liquid crystal medium to transfer power less than 25 GW throughout the ship that the EPS conduits do now. Everything over 25 GW still uses standard EPS conduits.

The Lacuna was originally suppose to use a phase distortion generator to “open” its shuttle bay doors by temporarily making them “disappear,” and reappear when it came time to close them. However, due to technical problems, energy usage, structural fatigue, and the death of an engineering team has lead to both shuttle bays to be refitted with single piece sliding doors.

To provide and effective defence, yet not to unintentionally show hostilities to a somewhat xenophobic alien culture, the Lacuna class is only armed with 2 transphasic torpedoes. Enough to disable a Borg cube. However the ship is still armed with 400 photon torpedoes, and 100 quantum torpedoes. Aside from the military hardware, the ship boasts nearly 50 science labs, 10 conference rooms and a multi-spectral astrometrics sensor array located at the bottom of the saucer section.

Currently Starfleet has only 3 Lacuna class starships in service:
U.S.S. Lacuna (NX-81000)
U.S.S. Nightwish (NCC-81001)
U.S.S. Reliant (NCC-81002)
with 2 more already under construction:
U.S.S. Lancaster (NCC-81003)
U.S.S. Tucker (NCC-81004)
and 10 more unnamed ships already contracted for construction.

Though they still have yet to be installed, these ships have hardware connections for an exotic matter drive. Which is an exotic matter particle beam emitter that can open a wormhole that exists between 2 black holes.

With the Lacuna class starship, as with many other exploration star cruisers before them, they will be paving the way for both the defence of the Federation, to explore strange new worlds, and encounter phenomena that goes beyond the imagination.

Reference notes:
(1) - Due to the complex dynamics of space, the term “full stop” refers to either maintaining the same distance from an object of interest, or “full reverse” with much greater urgency in a combat situation.
(2) - One of the functions of the driver coil assembly is to reduce the apparent mass of the spacecraft at its inner surface. And thus less force is required to accelerate the ship.