UES Fireball and Comet Class

Overview

UES Fireball side view	Comet orthographic views	Comet and Daedalus
Comet class in UFP livery	Comet class of Houston Energy	Comet class in FedEx livery
Deck plans, part 1 created by Allen Rolfes (see notes)	Deck plans, part 2 created by Allen Rolfes (see notes)
Courier deck plans, part 1 created by Allen Rolfes (see notes)	Courier deck plans, part 2 created by Allen Rolfes (see notes)

Scenes

UES Fireball in orbit created by Giorgio Libotte	3D model for SF Command created by Chris Harris
Rear view created by Thomas Pemberton © 3D Gladiators	Front view created by Thomas Pemberton © 3D Gladiators
Comet in FedEx livery created by Thomas Pemberton

History

UES Fireball started as an experimental cruiser built to test new technologies and new theories of warp field configuration. In early 2156 UESN propulsion engineers at Utopia Planitia speculated that dividing a spacecraft's enveloping warp field into two lobes, a smaller forward "penetrating" lobe and a larger trailing lobe, would decrease subspace resistance. To test this theory, Fireball was designed with the then-unusual feature of a small command hull separated by a thin neck from the larger engineering hull. In addition the warp nacelles were raised slightly above the ship's midline in attempt to decrease subspace vortical interference.

Fireball used an early version of the SSWR-IV reactor. This reactor was approximately 40% lighter and 50% smaller than the SSWR-II series of reactors used in earlier UESN small cruisers and allowed Fireball to be much smaller than any previous cruiser with a true M/AM drive. Another first for Fireball was that her decks were arranged horizontally rather than stacked vertically along the longitudinal axis. For most of her career, Fireball carried Typhoon C nacelles, which were derived from those first used for the Conqueror-class cruiser. Although the Fireball and her sister ship UES Rocket (XL-6) had been intended to serve only as testbeds, the design was so promising and had matured so quickly that the decision was made in late 2158 to put a militarized version of Fireball into production. The Comet (CLM-102) light-cruiser class of 25 ships began to join the fleet in October 2158. Comets were the fastest UESN ships of the war and saw extensive service as scouts, radar pickets, and light strike cruisers. Although 50 Comets had originally been ordered, the final 25 were cancelled in favor of 25 Daedalus cruisers (CXM-127), an exploratory version of Comet. After the war, the 23 surviving Comet cruisers were inherited by the newly formed Starfleet.

Within several years, however, Starfleet began to make veteran second- and third-generation M/AM-powered starships, including several Comets, available to the civilian market for lease or outright sale. Although these ships had seen extensive wartime service with the UE Stellar Navy (UESN), they had undergone reactor overhauls before being handed over to Starfleet and were still in good condition. The Comet and Powhatan scouts were converted to carry both passengers and freight and entered service with new interstellar courier lines, such as Alphatel and Sendak Space Lines, as well as with established cargo services. When operated at 90% of maximum reactor output, civilian Powhatans could reach Alpha Centauri in 29 days. The newer Comets were even faster, reaching Alpha Centauri in 20 days or less. For several years, high-speed travel between the Sol System and Alpha Centauri became something of a fashionable competitive sport for the wealthy classes of the Federation core. In one celebrated early case, one Miss Sachiko Kawasaki of Bartertown, Proxima Centauri IV, departed for Earth aboard the Comet H.M.S. Hotspur of Imperial Spaceways on May 1, 2163. After arriving in the Sol system on May 20, she boarded a shuttle for San Francisco, where she purchased an extremely expensive Himalayan kitten born from two championship lines. She returned to orbit aboard the waiting shuttle, immediately boarded a second Comet, S.S. Sennen Hayabusa of the Transsolar Line, and arrived back in the Centauri system on June 8, only 38 days after leaving home. Although extremely expensive, these high-speed courier services were immediately successful and increased public demand for cheaper, higher-capacity passenger and freight services.

UES Fireball and her sister ship UES Rocket (XL-6) continued to be used for extensive testing of propulsion theories and new technologies, which helped greatly in the development of the second-generation of M/AM-powered ships. At the ends of their research careers in 2165, UES Fireball and UES Rocket joined Starfleet and served as couriers and diplomatic transports until 2193.

USS Fireball and the Comet-class cruiser USS Meteor (NCC-201) are now on display at the Starfleet Museum.

Commissioned Fireball-Class Ships

Fireball-Class Specifications

Standard displacement: 39,441 t

Crew complement: 52 (8 officers + 44 crew)
Weapons: none
Embarked craft: 4 transatmospheric sublight shuttlecraft
Warp drive: SSWR-IV-0 M/AM reactor with two NPO Energomash Typhoon C warp nacelles
Velocity: Warp 3.2, standard; Warp 4.4, maximum
Units commissioned: 2

Commissioned Comet-Class Ships

** denotes lost or missing ships.

Comet-Class Specifications

Standard displacement: 45,826 t

Crew complement: 87 (14 officers + 73 crew)
Weapons: 8 Spider area-defense missiles, 12 Narwhal II long-range antiship missiles, 2 pulse laser cannons
Embarked craft: 4 transatmospheric sublight shuttlecraft
Warp drive: SSWR-IV-1 M/AM reactor with two NPO Energomash Typhoon C-bis warp nacelles
Velocity: Warp 3.1, standard; Warp 4.5, maximum
Units commissioned: 25

Last modified: 28.04.08