Way way back when the Star Trek Enterprise series was announced – 2007? – I had this wild idea: what if they took the opportunity to rationalize the starship, at least as much as it could be, considering? Make no mistake, I love the TOS NCC-1701 Enterprise. The Great Bird of the Galaxy has a special place in my heart. But it makes no effing sense at all. So how about something where impulse engine thrust is you know, orthogonal to the decks, and hey why not the warp engines too? And instead of only two warp engines, how about three so the force is somewhat balanced? And no transporters, but instead a big honking detachable shuttle. My intention was to build a fairly big model, but along the way I figured I’d prototype it in 1/500 and see what it looked like. 

So here you have the Warpship Endeavour, in 1/500 scale. I’ve included a 1/500 Space Shuttle Orbiter in the gallery below for scale. I never got around to the big one, but I’ve got a bunch of parts stashed…

The model is illuminated with a variety of LEDs. There is a yellow blinker in the bow deflector with its circuitry in the detachable, spherical shuttle, along with another white LED to illuminate the portholes. Each warp drive engine has a red LED in the front and small white LED to stern. The central drive has a blue LED, which is not lighting at present… possibly a power supply issue. It runs off an ancient Nokia wall wart, and I’ve been meaning to convert it to USB with a voltage booster forever, so this failure may be the motivation.