In the Voyager finale Endgame, The U.S.S. Voyager is able to generate “ablative armor”. This technology was developed by the Starfleet in the early 25th century. The ablative generator was designed to protect starships by generating a nearly impenetrable hull armor, which was deployed from externally mounted generators across the ships hull. From Memory Alpha – http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ablative_generator
There was also a shuttle craft version of the ablative armor seen in Endgame. In an upcoming entry I’ll run elevations of those designs. The effects for this episode were created at Eden.
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Screen grabs courtesy Jörg
Also known in fan circles as “Batmobile armor”.
Thanks for the CG views, I don’t believe we’ve seen these before.
Although I didn’t see the episode, the concept is really cool…reminds me of the first Batman movie when Batman said “Shields”.
I could imagine the “tink tink clank” sound as it extended over the hull. 
And that’s why it’s called “Batmobile armor”.
Nice images, if i’m not mistaken I think Pierre-Martin Drolet was responsible for that?
Andy, Most likely it was Pierre, I’ll ask him when I see him on Monday. Martin, huh? My favorite Martin!
YEAH BABY! I’m lovin these!!!!
Umm… Batmovile Armor….
It’s nice to see in full detail it. Thanks Doug!
I ask my-self, What happen which the future tech, when the Voyager arrives to Earth ??
I don’t think this kind of armor would really be practical for regular use. Encasing a ship that completely would interfere with sensors, block maneuvering thrusters, and most critically of all, prevent heat dissipation. Also, you’d need to carry the necessary mass for generating and replenishing it in the ship’s replicator system, increasing the mass of the ship and diminishing its performance. Plus it’d take a lot of energy to keep regenerating it.
Not to mention that dense solid armor can do more harm than good when struck by high-energy particle radiation, because the secondary radiation cascades within the material — neutrons knocking out other neutrons and creating chain reactions — would increase the radiation hazard to the crew.
So I figure that the ablative armor was only developed as an anti-Borg defense, one the Borg hadn’t adapted to because, as a rule, nobody ever used it. It wouldn’t be very practical otherwise. And of course the Borg did adapt to it when the Queen assimilated Admiral Janeway’s shuttlecraft, rendering it useless as an anti-Borg defense thereafter. So I wouldn’t expect it to be used again.
Jörg, nice shots of the armor deploying. It really gives you a closer look at it.
I know that this is different that the plating that Defiant used, but I’m not sure what the difference is. Is it basically more advanced because it comes from the future, or are these two forms very different in core design?
Love it! Gives Voyager that sort of “silver bullet” look to it.
Some good points, Christopher, but I have to say that it made one heckofva cool storypoint and sequence in the episode!
I know that this is different that the plating that Defiant used, but I’m not sure what the difference is. Is it basically more advanced because it comes from the future, or are these two forms very different in core design?While we didn’t see much of Voyager’s armor, it can probably regenerate the armor more or less on the fly, given adequate resources, while the Defiant would have to go back to dock and replace the hull plating to repair the armor.
I’ve always wondered what, if this were looked at from a practical rather than storytelling pov, the trade-offs would be for a starship to have such a 25th Century turtle shell.
If I remember correctly the armor is generated in much the same fashion that the replicating mines were in the DS9 episode “Call to Arms”. As it is meant to ablate when hit with, well, pretty much anything, it would have to have physical density and therefore mass. I would think that placing a shell like this around a vessel not designed to normally have such a shell would have some affect on mobility, speed, offensive weaponry, external communications, external sensors, etc. I mean, among other things, just the additional energy requirement of maintaining such a shell would, I think, necessitate diverting that energy from other (possibly even defensive/offensive systems) places.
The questions just keep coming when I see this episode and I comfort myself be remembering that:
1) Star Trek has always engaged my curiosity and imagination like this and that’s what makes it fun.
2) Far brainier folks than I would have looked at some of these same things during the story development process because Star Trek has always tried to stay (mostly) true to science.
3) This was a storytelling device for a “let’s pull out all the stops” episode.
4) It was a tale absorbed by a Trekker of the 1st generation.
Thanks Doug. I love this stuff.
Well it’s the future and they probably worked around such issues. And to me, the AHGs were like a last-resort measure to ensure crew survival. Because like you said, you couldn’t do much. You are essentially a turtle in it’s shell.
But using the AHG was one of the most awesome moments of Voyager and well deserving of the end.
And Doug, instead of pictures, you should use this video that I found off Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpc6SwYd8Dg
Better defines the armoring.
Scott, I like it when you do the work for me! Thanks, buddy!
Thanks Doug. It’s a shame this armor had such a terrible mesh for a basis though…
Say, if you’re seeing this Rick, would you have any sketches of this armour on hand? I’d love to see those.
@ Mr. Bennet
You are the MAN! I’ve always disliked the idea that this armor might become common-place, because I’ve always thought it a rather silly idea. (The covering of the thrusters, and the heat dissipation problems always annoyed me too.) But your explanation sounds pristine in its logic, and sound in reasoning.
As a side point, it’s nice to know that some Trek authors put that much thought into the tech about which they write. Kudos to you, sir.
Fun fact: ablative armor is designed to work by absorbing energy and then vaporizing, carrying the heat away instead of dumping it into the ship. It’s used in real life in spacecraft re-entry shields.
@Andrew – thanks for that thought. I’m going to have to take a look at the DS9 episodes again, if I ever have enough time! I was going to watch a few original BSG episodes for nostalgia’s sake, but after 1 1/2 shows, I realized I have other things (like DS9 episodes) I’d rather re-watch.
Doug – Once again, fantastic renders! As far as I know the only way to study these in any kind of detail is because of you – Many thanks!!!
I loved the “Endgame” story although it could have done with about 20 minutes more to see Voyager actually touch down on Earth. The end credits were rolling literally moments after Voyager exited that transwarp conduit making the ending seem rather sudden.
Jim Movray – Where were you? You have to see this story! Go on, treat yourself! It’s a very entertaining 90 minutes!
Christopher L. Bennett – It might be impractical to have this kind of protective shell permanently in use around a starship but if you were Janeway and you had to cross a cloud of Borg cubes, wouldn’t you employ the very armour that the Borg have a problem penetrating, If only to get the ship through to the other side?
I agree that Voyager wasn’t designed to operate with this kind of lump around it but if you watch the relevant scenes where the armour is employed you’ll see that Voyager is hardly requiring the extremes of its performance for things like complex manoeuvres; it’s a straight and steady course. Frankly Voyager negotiating fluidic-space in “Scorpion, Part II” with no modifications applied to it whatsoever was far less believable!
You mentioned problems with the armour blocking exhausts, limiting heat dissipation and causing sensor interference. When Voyager fired its crikey-o-blimey-mass-destructo-torpedoes the impenetrable armour clearly opens up small apertures to allow for the firing of these things; isn’t it likely the impulse engines are granted the same considerations. You can see from the renders in this post that even with the armour fully deployed the warp grills in the nacelles and the bussard collectors are only partially covered.
The energy requirement you mentioned: I can appreciate that it would indeed be high but Voyager is turning energy into matter and back again every day; this can’t be that different. Admittedly using this armour in the Delta Quadrant could wear on Voyagers limited resources however the armours usage in the Alpha Quadrant, where Voyager and other starships enjoy energy replenishment-aplenty would make this a non-issue. ST: Voyager also confirmed in the episode “The Year of Hell” that matter can at least be repatterned or recycled aboard ship to provide the ship and crew with other materials.
The radiation issue you mentioned I think was pretty well taken however I think the armour is still far from useless; isn’t the whole point of ablative armour to direct the impact over a wider area of the ships hull meaning no single panel of that armour has to do all the work without the help of its neighbours (thus padding out the brunt of the impact)? If that is indeed true then Voyager would still have to be exposed to a lot of sustained hits before radiation became an issue. I think there have been a few episodes that suggest that our heroes have methods for dealing with protecting the crew from radiation (TNG: “Booby Trap”, TNG “Final Mission”).
Good stuff!
Sorry everyone for extended the missive.
@Christopher L. Bennett
You don’t need a mass reserve, you “merely” need an energy reserve. The replicator/transporter system will convert that at need to mass for the ablative armor. Some kind of superconducting capacitor coupled with the already lavish energy budget of a Federation starship could easily meet this need.
From how they are treated thematically, these seem to be shields made of matter. The advantage is simply that its actual matter out there. The Borg always resorted to more technowizardry to simply ignore the technowizardy that makes up shields.
By contrast, despite all their advanced technology they had just about as much trouble actually cutting through things as the Federation. Think of how much firepower the relatively thin skinned Federation ship hulls can handle from the Borg without the benefit of (the bypassed) shields. Think of Archer’s ship, which had no shields at all, when faced with vastly superior technology.
So, more physical material seems to be a pretty good defense. There seem to be more physical limits to the science of manipulating matter in the Trek universe than all the whiz bang ray guns might lead one to believe.
OK, so you bring up some issues.
What about heat dissipation? The shield is metal after all, its internal arrangement could readily collect heat from the ship and convert it to power via the thermoelectric effect- thus neatly “energizing the hull plating” or I guess I should say energizing the ablative armor.
Of course this all assumes that the Federation has a great deal of waste heat to deal with. I imagine that it may be an issue for other Trek cultures, but I don’t think Federation engineers could see an abundance of anything, including waste of any sort, without turning it from a problem into an elegant solution.
Sensors can readily see through all sorts of solid matter- including on a routine basis ships hulls and shields. Only very special cases actually obstruct sensors.
Maneuvering thrusters are not by any means a starships primary motive force. Impulse engines would present a bigger hurdle, as they appear to be highly advanced reaction thrusters. So, it would be tough to move the ship at sublight speeds- or would it? Warp engines don’t seem to work that way at all. Simply use warp drive at factors less than 1. While 24th Century starships might not have systems optimized for this level of fine warp maneuvering, it should be trivial to design it into later starships once its realized that there is a legitimate need.
Star Trek engine technology pretty much ignores the effect of mass anyway, so I don’t see why it would suddenly change. (For those who don’t know, as velocity increases so does mass according to relativity. Anything moving at the speed of light has “infinite” mass.)
OK radiation from particle effects. Maybe you haven’t seen the episodes where starships fly around near all sorts of things more dangerous than a few particle beams- like stars. The hull of a Federation starship is an impressive thing. Then there is how the Federation contains huge radiation sources inside ships, with all sheilding being from a thin sheet of transparent aluminum. Clearly however they manage that is beyond how we understand science.
In any case, assuming the problem is a real one for Federation engineers, they have ready solutions. Simply erect a shield between the ablative armor and the normal hull. It doesn’t have to actually resist weapons fire, just secondary radiation effects. Of course those secondary radiation effects would probably be more dangerous in most cases than 20th century battlefield weaponry- so these would be an impressive defense in their own right.
The way to negate matter based shielding/armor is obvious. Transphasic torpedoes. I have always assumed that the transphasic torpedoes from Endgame used a modified derivative of “Phase Cloak” technology from TNG’s “The Pegasus”. The counter to that? Shields with a multiphasic component… blah blah blah. Treknobabble is entertaining.
Ultimately this is a fictional ship in a fictional world. It breaks the known rules of physics in every frame of the show. Bringing up “reasonable” objections is unreasonable in this context. Its far better to take your cues from the characters- they think it works, and they know way more about it than you do.
Sit back and pay attention to the story. If you really can’t just overlook the issues, come up with creative solutions that are consistent within the story’s setting instead of merely noting problems. That’s what the writers and everyone else on these shows do week to week. Join in, have fun!
Doug, you are just like Santa Claus in the middle of May! Such great images…I always wanted to see a kit of this done…I actually like this profile a little better than the naked Voyager. Thanks again, Michael
I always said those Starfleet engineers were clever folk!
Michael – Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, don’t let anybody tell you differently but, “better than the naked Voyager”? Really??
Alex Ibrahim – Interesting you should mention the phase-cloak from the Next Gen. episode: “The Pegasus” as I was going to mention it in my post, although not in the same context as yourself. That episode answered once and for all why the Federation do not exploit cloaking technology, a justification which I believe acknowledged some informal rule that had been set by the big man Gene Roddenberry himself: “Federation vessels do not go creeping around the cosmos…” Giving the Enterprise this ability on a permanent basis would have provided our heroes with the easy option too often whenever they were met with situations that endanger their lives thereby gutting the dramatic potential in countless stories; however giving that advantage to an enemy increases the danger to our heroes and invites more dramatic potential which is surely what a series wants!
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I was going to say that had Voyager been given this really cool impenetrable armour a year before the end of the show (or had there been a Season 8!), like the phase-cloak from the Pegasus-story it would have been the easy option for a our heroes just to switch it on every time their lives were endangered and thus invite the story-gutting that Mr Roddenberry warned us about when the risk is removed too easily! (that’s all!
Correct me if I’m wrong (I could be opening a can of something here!) but the warp drive: Everyone knows that the faster a body moves the greater its mass becomes until the speed of light is reached at which point its mass becomes infinite and the energy required to move that mass is also infinite… You said that Starfleet technology ignores this fact. Is it not more appropriate to say that with the warp drive infinite mass/infinite fuel simply isn’t part of the equation as it’s the warped-space itself doing all the moving? The space moves, the ship doesn’t so much, the ships mass stays less than infinite and the power requirement though enormous remains less than infinite – The observer sees the ship disappear into the distance.
Stu, that’s only true when approaching the speed of light using the Impulse Drive, where relativity kicks in and mass increases to the point of infinity. Warp Drive works around that where your in a patch of subspace and essentually a ship ends up like a surfer on the waves.
Doug, you’re very much welcome!
Holy Borg-buster, Batman! I still like the Bat-armor, even if it may have some practicality issues.
Defensive considerations aside, this soberly but highly stylized molded look, changing the textures from armorish menacing to Syd Meadish optimist steel (and blue lights somewhere
) would make for an excellent future Trek technology stage and family of ships
Scott – I think we were on the same page there really…
Yeah, the armor was a welcome addition. I would really have loved to have some more of it
Hey Doug, have you had any success in finding some images of the models used in the Wolf 359 wreckage yet?
It just struck me, the Batmobiled Voyager looks like Moya from Farscape. . .
Do you by chance have images of the Eden FX Voyager model without the ablative armor? I’ve seen orthos of a low-poly model from way way back, but it’s definitely not of the same resolution & detail as the images you’ve been posting here. Thanks!