Excelsior study models - Star Trek starship parts kit expansion

[This kit can also be found on my Google Drive mirror.]

Note: I’ve created a Patreon to support my modelling projects. If you’ve found my work useful, have the means, and would like to support my efforts, please give it a look. I will continue to release my designs for free on Cults 3D and Thingiverse, but Patreon members will get early access and in progress updates on my new projects, and it will serve as a central location for announcements. Thanks for reading!

During pre-production for the movie Star Trek III Bill George’s team at ILM, including concept designers David Carson and Nilo Rodis, were responsible for coming up with the next great Starfleet ship: the Excelsior. As documented in this article from ForgottenTrek.com, they went through the process of creating a number of small physical study models to work through ideas.

While not making the cut for “The Great Experiment,” these models did end up being used as background ships in several episodes of TNG, most notably the Wolf 359 ship graveyard in the episode “The Best of Both Worlds” and in the starship junkyard of the episode “Unification”.

This is a kit I’ve been wanting to work on for a long time, and I’ve done my best to flesh out details for the four original models, while still retaining the major shapes and design. I’ve also included some variants that made sense as a logical extension.

These designs were all radically different from anything seen before in the franchise, or really after. They may not be your cup of tea, but I think they should provide interesting kitbashing material at the very least.

In addition to the combined ship files included in this Thing, this kit also provides additional files:

• excelsior-study-models_blender-files.zip – Blender files, including two files for each design: a source file used to generate all the parts stls, and a parts file with those STLs pre-arranged as they are on the output ship stl files.
• excelsior-study-models_parts-stls.zip – Individual STL part files for digital kitbashing.

This following physical study models are covered:

Two-nacelle study model #1

The first ship in this series was a flat model that was labeled the “USS Alka Seltzer” at some point by production. It’s the best documented of these study designs, with photos of most angles, and I’ve tried to keep as close to the original model as possible, while adding some additional detailing to make her seem more complete.

I’ve also created a couple of variants with some modifications I think are pleasing, including a MK2 which uses an Excelsior style bridge module and streamlined, more Oberth-styled nacelles, and a MK2a which also uses standard Excelsior nacelles.

Two-nacelle study model #2

This model was significantly closer to what would become the final Excelsior design, and a subsequent derivative model would be the one chosen as the final design.

With only one photo of it that I can find, I didn’t have a ton to go off of. The saucer and nacelles are clearly unique, but it appears the overall shape of the engineering hull is essentially the same as what ended up on the final Excelsior. As a result, I’ve borrowed a lot of detailing from my Excelsior model to fill in the details.

Given the somewhat awkward saucer/neck placement, I’m also including a variant with a more Excelsior-style layout.

I haven’t included the third two-nacelle study model that evolved from this design in the kit, as it really is just a low-detail model of the actual Excelsior, which has its own kit.

Four-nacelle study model #1

This is a unique lollipop-shaped design, featuring a flat saucer, four Oberth-style nacelles, and a secondary command module trailing the saucer. With limited reference photos, I’ve again had to make a lot of my own interpretations on this one.

Four-nacelle study model #2

Of all the study models, this one is my favorite. As with the previous ships in this series, this one is very different from what we see in other Starfleet ships before and after, and very different from the elongated first quad-nacelle study model, with a flat neck-like secondary hull meeting up with prominent wings mounting the four Oberth-esque warp nacelles.

In my version, I’ve tried to keep fairly close to the original model overall shapes. However, given the limited low quality reference photos and apparent lack of details on the original model, I’ve taken quite a bit of liberties with hull detailing, shield grids, weapons placement, paneling, etc.

One other significant addition I’ve included is a “hardpoint” concept on the end of the wing modules. As background, during one of our occasional virtual hangouts my friend Art Braune was watching me model some of the details on this design, and asked what it would look like to mount Miranda style megaphasers on the end of the wings. After importing the parts from the Miranda kit and playing around with placement, it looked pretty good.

The wingtips seemed like a natural place to mount mission-specific modules, and we walked through adding parts from several other kits, and we found several others that worked very well with the design. In addition, the way the deflector module was mounted under the hull also hinted that it could be a modular component. To demonstrate, I’ve produced three variants mounting different modules.

The first is the megaphaser version, which I’m calling the assault variant.

The second mounts additional torpedo modules, which I’m referring to as the Interceptor variant.

And the last mounts Soyuz-style sensor pods, with the deflector module swapped with an Oberth secondary hull. I call this one the Recon variant.

If you'd like to play around with some other variants, I've included some additional pre-configured modules in the parts blender file, with associated STL part files in the parts zip file.

Notes on scaling and working with Blender

None of these study models have official or fan speculated sizes that I could find. In general, I tried to size them based on a similar saucer size to the Excelsior’s, at \~185m wide.

My target scale for all source files and output STL files is 1:1000. Although these files have not been extensively tested through printing, they are intended to be resized to match common modelling and miniatures scales.

Blender is free, which to be honest was the primary factor in my decision to learn it. There are many fine video and text tutorials available online if you're interested in learning more. See the Blender fundamentals tutorials playlist to get started.

You can use File -> Import -> Stl (.stl) and File -> Export -> Stl (.stl) to load or save STL files in blender.

Note: These kits were built using Blender 2.9.

Post-processing STL output

Although all of the STL files included have been tested as valid watertight meshes, joining the parts together and exporting new STL files can introduce small errors that may cause issues with slicing programs. I recommend any STL files you create are checked using a program like Netfabb Basic free edition. Doing a simple "Close All Holes" repair has fixed most of the issues I've run into so far. If you do run into issues with mesh quality, please let me know.

Parts list

The following lists provide a summary of the included parts. Parts are included in the ZIP file excelsior-study-models_parts-stls.zip.

For the majority of items, the mesh origin has been set so that when you import these objects into your 3D editor of choice, they are positioned as they would be on the sample ships provided.

Parts

Combined ship STLs

All combined, ready-to-print ship files are included in this thing.

Blender files

The excelsior-study-models_blender-files.zip file contains parts files, containing the STL parts arranged as used in the sample ship designs, and parts source files, containing the raw blender objects used to create the parts.

License

I'm releasing this under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You're free to distribute and modify these files (even for commercial use), provided you attribute the creator and distribute your contributions under the same license.