Tankers are actually not getting bigger, there has been more interest in smaller ones, there hasn't been a ship the size of Jahre Viking (Knox Knevis) and the Batillus class since the 70's/80's out of those only Jahre Viking still remains. Jahre Viking isn't allowed to sail the seas anymore partially because of her size and also because she's a single hulled tanker. As for size... well she is enormous. 260,941 GT 214,793 NT Length: 458.45 m (1,504.10 ft) Beam: 68.8 m (225.72 ft) Draft: 29.8 m (97.77 ft) Capacity: 564,650 DWT As for why she was so big, only one answer: greed a 100.000 ton tanker doesn't need 10 times the engine power of a 10.000 ton tanker, also the larger tankers get the more efficient they get in tems of water resistance and the like. I wonder if this all goes for starships as well especially warp power and so on, does a Galaxy which is about 6-8 times as big as a Connie need 6-8 times the amount of power to reach the same speeds or less like 4-5 times?
According to a line uttered by Kirk in TOS,the Enterprise weighed one million tons...more than any supertanker ever conceived. It was an episode in which they were losing the dilithuim crystals and had to get more to keep the engines operating...Mudds women maybe?
Close to a million gross tons... That makes 300,000 tons apiece. ...Yes, that's the episode. It seems doubtful that the whole ship would be dense enough to yield that sort of total mass, so probably some parts of it are superdense. Possibly the warp engines? (Or the junior navigator?) Timo Saloniemi
Depends on what kind if tonnage was used I guess, was it gross register tonnage, net tonnage, deadweight tonnage or displacement?
A starship would not be bounded by the limits of a supertanker though it does serve to illustrate just how big an ocean going vessel can be built with current technology. As for the aircraft carrier, a design study postulated an ultra large carrier with 1500 feet in length and enough width so that the island was in the center with launch/recovery on either side of the Island and plenty of space above and in the hangar for aircraft stowage. As the Mobile Offshore Base will not be built then we shhould look at the Ultra Large Carrier even if USN bases have to be dregged to accomodate it and a special drydock built for construction and repair. The current Newport News Dock Ten is 1500 plus feet long, I think. The point of all this speculation is to support the concept of a vast ship that Abrams desires but our upsized Ent. will require changes to the model to allow for the size boost.
^^Gross Tonnage is a unitless index related to a ship's overall internal volume, Neither Gross Tonnage nor Gross Register Tonnage are measures of the ship's displacement (mass). I guess that will make everyones headache even bigger, as for the usual accepted 190.000 tons, that does IMO fits nice into the ballpark when it comes to the mass of the ship.
Yes, that always does give me a headache. 190,000 tons always worked well for me - roughly twice the weight of the aircraft carrier Enterprise (if displacement can be equated) (there's that headache again). I attribute the extra mass to dense warp coils.
Forbin, does it matter if the Ent is doubled in dimensions with an eight fold increase in volume? After all, the dimensions currently established were never on screen and cannot be ultimatly considered canon until an actor mouths the words 400 by 947 with 24 decks. I notice you have an advanced version of the Ralph McQuarry version of the Enterprise which is noticable larger than the TOS version.
Of course it matters. The scale and size has been established for 40 years. It was seen on screen in the Jefferies diagram shown on a monitor in The Enterprise Incident: http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x02/The_Enterprise_Incident_046.JPG And my avatar is a kitbash of mine, based loosely on McQuarrie's UNUSED proposal, and not meant to be the Enterprise. How would someone's kitbashes have any bearing on the show?
There is plenty on room for canon wiggling of the scale. (The hangar bay, anyone?) Of course, in TOS they didn't always get scales to make sense - like the shuttle interior. Fans have been fudging scales to get things to fit for quite some time. Of course, doubling the size of the ship would be a little excessive. Then again, this is an all-new version of Trek so they can do whatever they please.
Umm, yes, Gross Register Tons are measures of volume, which is why they are never called just plain Gross Tons or Tons, due to the massive potential for confusion. But gross tons certainly are a measure of mass (or of weight, to be accurate, since the terminology dates back to the era when tons and pounds were simply units of the gravitational force, and the property of mass wasn't separately considered). Since that expression is currently used to separate the 2240-pound (1016-kilogram) gross/long/imperial ton from the 2000-pound (907-kilogram) short/ ton, one could readily assume that gross ton in the future is the poetic equivalent of the 1000-kilogram ton. It would be different if Scotty really spoke of Gross Tonnage, which, much like Gross Register Tonnage, is a measure of volume. But he speaks of gross tons, which confusingly enough have nothing to do with Gross Tonnage, and never had. Timo Saloniemi