Hello all, Ric here once more with a video on another Starship, this time one of the few vessels
that deviate from standard Federation designs by having four warp nacelles instead of the
usual two. As always, we’ll begin with looking into the real origin of the Cheyenne class.
The design for this vessel came about as a kitbash to create a background model for the debris and
wreckage of the battle of Wolf 359 where a Borg cube swept through a Starfleet defensive line
and the USS Arwahnee NCC-73620 was one of the casualties. The model was made with a galaxy
class saucer section, as had ships like the Nebula and Freedom class, but it received some slight
alterations, such as the enlarging of the windows to make it appear of smaller proportions than the
Galaxy. The model creator was Ed Miarecki. Now this is the fun part, the nacelles that the
Cheyenne class has are different from many other designs from the past and present Trek nacelles
and this is because they are pens. Yup, they are a certain square shaped marker pen with the lid on,
coloured in Starfleet style, the grills behind the ramscoop are the grips. Four of these glued onto
the pylons and there you go, the ship was created. The connecting pylons do most of the work here
to unify the design I think and for such a funny origin, it actually comes off as a very cohesive
vessel. It was created at the same time as the Springfield class, another background
kitbash vessel for the remains of the fleet. So this is one of those Starships that despite
being canon and appearing in the shows, never received much attention or lore. Pretty much none
on-screen and very little in other licensed works but I’ll put together what I can. The vessel was
designed based on the Galaxy class project, which as mentioned in its dedicated video,
has the dubious honour of the longest development period of any starship at the time. This meant
that there were a myriad of vessels that branched out from the project as innovations were made in
it, taking a bit of inspiration here and there and the Cheyenne was one such class. Other ships
that sprung out from the Galaxy class are easy to identify for sharing the same sort of wide saucer
look and hull patterning, like the Nebula class. The Galaxy saucer section was used as the basis
for the Cheyenne, but early enough from its design that the resulting saucer
only really bears a similar bridge design and shape. The Cheyenne is a lot smaller,
so it’s not like the Galaxy frame was copied “one to one” but the Galaxy style inspiration is there
in the neck design too. The Cheyenne began work in 2345, The biggest focus of this project was to
devise a new long term explorer, similar to the Galaxy class but following the legacy of design
set down from the Constellation class before it, with four nacelles. The ship was 362 metres long,
260 wide and 113 metres tall and weighed over 1,000,000 metric tons. Its crew
complement was around 320 individuals, although it could operate with far less.
The first of its line was the USS Cheyenne launched around 2347 and without much issue.
It must have performed well because the line was in full production until 2352 when the
final of its class was launched. There were no plans to revive the line, or manufacture
more over time but the class was a robust one that saw some last into the early 25th century,
despite not receiving the updates and limelight that ships like the Galaxy or Nebula saw.
The warp core was rated similarly to the Galaxy class too, with a cruise speed of warp 6 which it
could maintain for as long as it had the deuterium to burn. However, the Galaxy class would initially
struggle to reach warp 9.2, before later tinkering allowed for 9.8 at it limits, the Cheyenne
launched with the ability to reach 9.6. The advantages of having more nacelles was primarily
the ability to travel at warp speeds for longer, employing a technique known as “Warp Coasting”.
This is where the warp drive alternates power between the upper and lower pairs,
transferring power as one pair of nacelles approaches its limits. So rather than a
fast sprinter, the Cheyenne was a marathon runner that could maintain warp for far longer, allowing
it to explore into the deep reaches of space. Like all Starfleet vessels, it was armed with
their trademark phaser technology, in this case two primary type 8 phaser strips on the saucer
section giving it nearly full coverage. Later designs show it to also have 4 additional smaller
arrays on the pylons, supplementing its blind spots created by the nacelle positioning but these
were not present on the original design. It also has two torpedo launchers, one fore and one aft.
Firepower was not its strong suit, it was after all an exploratory vessel of moderate power.
It had standard deflector shielding and the primary deflector array seems to not actually be
firmly established with several designs showing it in various formats, one located on the underside
of the saucer and another having them under the hull at the pinnacle of the nacelle tower.
Now according to some, it also had the ability to saucer separate, but as the Galaxy class was
the first to have this function be reversible, it implies that the Cheyenne’s separation was more
akin to the emergency jettisoning that other vessels employed. It did retain a captain’s
yacht on the underside of the saucer and a shuttlebay at the rear of the vessel covering
two decks inline with the impulse engines. The complement is not stated but it looks
to be able to house at least 6 shuttlecraft and the same again in shuttlepods. That is a guess.
All in all, the Cheyenne class revolved around its four-nacelle design to test out
new iterations of the warp coasting design fuelled by the next generation technology.
Aside from that, it really was a pretty run of the mill Starfleet exploratory cruiser.
Armaments were light, maximum speed was reasonable and the only other claim to success it has is its
lifespan considering they are still in operation, seeing even the Galaxy class enter retirement
ahead of it. The four-nacelle design would not be something left behind by Starfleet either,
the Sagan-Class picking up the next era of this profile with an advanced scientific loadout.
Although this unique warp design does work, Starfleet would more often opt to just create
faster vessels like the Intrepid, Odyssey and Constitution Mark 3 instead of these slower but
steady vessels. However, such systems still have their place in the fleet as we see it return with
every generation of innovations in warp and the Cheyenne is merely the 2350’s era contribution
to furthering the four-nacelle design. Thanks for watching this video on this
background class of Starship. It’s one of several that came out of the development
of the galaxy class and in time I’ll cover these too but until then, I’ve been Ric,
thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time for another lore video. Thanks again and goodbye!