2 Miles Long, "Grown" Starship: The Universe Class

I do like the concept of a fed ship so far into the future that it's capabilities cannot be understood by the contemporary series characters. This ship is to them, what the Enterprise TOS is to us.

I love how starships are designed "aerodynamic" even though it's a space ship. The Borg just had cubes. LOL!

I hated the J…until I saw a universe class in STO. Seeing it in scale compared to the rest of the ships made the design work so much better for me

I like the updated version where the hull is transparent, making the streets and parks visible. This ship is essentially a mobile colony. This ship would look so cool in a canon show with its apartment buildings and shops with trees lining the streets. Like what they tried to do with interior shots of Babylon 5.

I actually really like this ship, for the reasons you point out - it's right on the edge of "not making sense", but not beyond that edge. It's what I'd expect from a Federation whose technology was just on the edge of singularity. So basically, like Iain M. Banks' "The Culture." I can imagine this ship arriving in a brand new galaxy, exploring, making peaceful contact with the civilizations there, serving as the spark of a grand renaissance in the native star-empires by showing them what it's possible for them to become... and then bidding them farewell and moving on, much like how the Enterprise of old visits a planet and then moves on at the end of the episode. Initially I didn't like the "windows" on the ship. They were so hugely stretched and distorted that trying to imagine the rooms inside was weird. But then I decided they were probably all skylights - both the ones on the top and the bottom, since why have all the decks oriented the same way? Have the gravity flip at the midline of the saucer so both sides of it are the "top," that works fine. The only remaining bit of the design that I don't care for is that the spike-like pylons poke through the hollow parts of the engine nacelles. I like to imagine that the hollow parts have some really intense spatial distortions going on in there when the ship's hauling ass, so I'd rather have the spikes not interfere with that. But eh. Perhaps the nacelles move around and that's just their sub-warp docking arrangement.

I love that in STO you participate in the battle that's happening outside the window in that Enterprise Episode. That entire arc of the game was just so good.

The Enterprise J captured my mind from the moment I saw it in "Enterprise". It is just so mysterious and evokes a certain kind of grace. I love how the secondary hull is inline with the saucer and the sweeping of the outlines.

The Roddenberry Archive recently put out some more detailed concept art, where the ship shimmers and has clear sections revealing the internals to have skyscrapers and such, making the whole ship even more of a floating city. I like the idea; reminds me of Mass Effect's Citadel, which this ship sort of is.

The biodome version that has gone viral lately is also gorgeous.

If you told me it had a sort of Wormhole Drive, point-to-point jump across most if not the whole Universe, I'd buy it.

There would be crew members who would probably never meet on a ship that size. I already feel like that was implied on the Enterprise D with its size. I'm sure people met other crew members for the first time ever on Ten Forward

The Roddenberry archive recently put out a video showing the evolution of the enterprise, the enterprise J is briefly seen, though it has undergone a slight redesign by Doug Drexler, and by slight I mean that the entire ship is now transparent, allowing you to see the metropolis inside. Edit: it has been brought to my attention that Drexler did not contribute to the redesign. Not sure who did.

Makes sense for a 'universe' class as there was a 'Galaxy' class

Although it tends to be unpopular, I find the J’s design to be lovely and majestic. I would be fascinated to see its interior (beyond the humdrum corridor we saw in “Enterprise.”).

Fell in love with this ship the first time I saw it on Enterprise. Just watching this video makes me want to hop on STO and take it out again. I wish they had given us more of an interior for it.

I’d love to see your take on the Klingon and Romulan iterations of this era’s ships

given the implication of exploring the universe, i always assumed it was as big as it is and shaped the way it is, because the original intention might have been making a ship that could survive crossing the galactic barrier and make the intergalactic journey beyond as a generational ship.

The Universe class has grown on me the way the Galaxy has, I love the "flying city in space" and "generation ship" concepts, this one takes it a step further. Here's hoping DSC makes some reference to this one.

Regarding the possibly detatched nacelles... strictly speaking, they don't need to be attached to the ship at all. If they've each got their own warp cores to generate warp plasma for their respective coils, then whether they're attached to the rest of the ship or not is immaterial. They generate a warp bubble that wraps around the ship (connected or not) and then any trivial amount of momentum carries everything in that warp bubble forward. The warp nacelles were never "pushing" a starship forward, the whole region of space around the ship was "falling" forward. This is why we sometimes saw a ship "extend" its warp field around another ship and carry both at warp speeds, even though the ships weren't physically touching.

I loved the concept art that had an entirely transparent hull, as if the saucer section was a mobile colony habitat.