I can't help thinking of Galaxy Quest, where those cool aliens made a fully functional and completely operational starship, based on what they saw on a cheesy TV show and thought was real...
Only by TNG standards. Compare to how much living space the Apollo rockets had compared to their engines (not fuel, just engines). And these puppies have to push the ship to near lightspeed! Regarding Transport Rooms: For years I stuck doggedly to the opinion that there was only one Transporter Room on the original Enterprise. After all, Kirk only ever said The Transporter Room and everyone knew where to go. However, after scrutinising nearly all the episodes in greater detail, the only sensible way to account for the differrent appearances is that there are at least two different Transporter Rooms in the series (and perhaps another one in WNMHGB, due to the different corridor). That's pretty similar to my own solution on the matter. After all, there's a tremendous amount of energy being cycled through those Transporter "circuits", why wouldn't they need regular repairs and replacements? However, I think that the time it would take for an overhaul is pretty much the same as the lifspan of an active Transporter Room; this restricts ship operations to having one on the go at any given time, which explains why there are so many story situations which depend on there only being one Transporter.
Thinking back to my Navy days, on one side of our main engineering space, we had the ship's three generators and on the other side, the condensers for the ship's boilers (plus the desalination plant and the main seawater pump.) In the mddle, the propulsion turbine. IOW, an asymmetrical arrangement. I say all this to suggest that, instead of a mirror engine room that we never saw, that the space is filled with other engineering equipment and maybe that will help tie in the strange corridor.
@Mytran - That makes sense on the transporter rooms. The ship probably only has one transporter circuit that is shared between the multiple transporter rooms so they might do something like the one that is active has priority. The circuit seems to support de-materializing more than 6 people at a time ("Day of the Dove", maybe even other eps) but perhaps the safety limit is to materialize only 6 at a time? @BK613 - I like the idea of equipment not necessarily mirrored but for now I'm going to mirror the engine room itself for placement just to see how far I can take it Right now, I'm working on the idea that the Engine Rooms seen in "The Naked Time" and "The Ultimate Computer" are in the primary hull while all the other rooms more than likely are from the Engineering hull.
BK613's thoughts on an asymmetrical arrangement is something similar to what I initially had in mind, although it's good to know that it exists in real life too. I'm keen on getting some real-life parallels into my Enterprise. When I first drew up the twin Engine Room plan my primary goal was to reconcile the Tubes Section, since they are off centre from the circular corridor. Duplicating them seemed a viable solution, and I thought that the secondary Engine Room I'd created (aside from monitoring the Tubes) could be something to do with engineering support (fabrication, computers etc). But it has to be said, I do like blssdwlf's double setup! blssdwlf - Regarding the Transport "circuit", I think the limitation on how many people to reconstruct is not a safety one, it's purely practical; there's only 6 pads!
Actually, by TOS standards. The propulsion technology seen in TOS didn't require much space... either in the Enterprise or it's shuttlecraft. It is a shortcoming of later Trek that they didn't significantly advance over TOS technology (or in the case of the TOS movies, took a step backwards). People often recon TOS to have larger equipment than the show's creators had intended because of the later Trek series and movies. I think there was more there than FJ had in his plans... but not by much. blssdwlf, you have some interesting ideas and thank you for sharing them with us. But I do have one question... how does someone get from the primary hull to the secondary hull with your impulse engine configuration (and not get fried while doing so when the impulse engines are in operation)? Best of luck with your project! I love following all attempts at figuring out the layout of the TOS Enterprise.
Good point about the shuttle, that is one compact engine! Of course, it was not fullfilling quite the same role as the Enterprises' impulse engines, which had to operate continuously and over far longer periods of time (2 months, in TPS). It may well be that the E's setup had extra components and backup facilities that were simply deemed not neccessary to the standard operating practises of a shuttle. Franz Joseph (as Shaw pointed out) doesn't allocate a lot of space in his cutaway for impulse engines. But what clues are on the outside? [LEFT] There's the "spine" (which I coloured blue for clarity), a red outline leading to the base of the "teardrop" and shortly after that a bright yellow rectangle, outlined in red. What to make of all these? The spine could be an anchoring point for the saucer (I think it actually was on the model). Or it could be a reinforcing strut for the impulse engines. Or perhaps it's some sort of power transfer conduit. The long red outline carries on in this direction and looks even more conduit-like. Finally, the bright yellow rectangle screams "danger!" and so could be an engineering hatch as well. Factor in the L-shaped hatches and that's a fair amount of engineering space overall. Is it all impulse engines? Who knows! [/LEFT]
You mean like Jefferies? I do see the appeal of the Throwing Spaghetti Against the Wall thought process... but it seems a little messy to me. I constantly see people get attached to pet theories and watch them overlook the obvious trying to make them work. I'm not going to go into anything at length here (I generally avoid posting in other people's threads on the TOS Enterprise because it is best for them to figure things out on their own), but I'll leave you guys with this quote... "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia Again, blssdwlf, best of luck on this endeavor.
@Shaw - Thank you Shaw for the words of encouragement. I've been keeping up with your thread and it is quite the resource for all things TOS Enterprise This project is meant as a recreation of the ship as seen on screen so I'm going to throw this (awful) joke out here: "Ask not what Jefferies meant it to be, but what the Thermians ended up building." Whenever possible, I'll try the designer's intent, but my goal is to recreate as closely as possible as what's been aired and in the empty spaces add my take to it whenever it doesn't run afoul of what has been shown. On the turbolift and radiation issue - it might not be an issue given how close the turbolift would run next to warp core conduits in the neck of the TMP Enterprise... @Mytran - D'oh! Of course 6 pads. As far as volume taken up, I thought this might be an interesting comparison: the TOS shuttle vs the TOS primary hull with my interpretation (WIP!! ) of the impulse section.
..well, what did he say about those markings? IIR, he didn't particulalry like adding gridlines or other details, so he did somewhat reluctantly... ?
I also thought Jefferies was against markings on his ship and had to be pretty much pressured into including them. So maybe he didn't see the red and yellow shapes as meaning anything? blssdwlf, fascinating comparison!
Holy moly. The spine in this config in blue looks just like a miniature Excelsior warp nacelle. I think I'm going to use it as the part that helps the impulse system go FTL [/LEFT]
TMP makes the same implication with an impulse engine. More than likely as warp engines started becoming more efficient they needed greater and greater magnitudes of high energy plasma. In TMP it's likely impulse plasma could power the warp coils. Likely this was a change in the materials the coils were made from. With Fusion reaction there is ceiling to how much energy the plasma will have have but anti matter is a reaction that turns 100 percent of the matter into energy. That's why to it makes more sense that the first warp engine was actually an impulse engine since warp and impulse essentially are both types of field propulsion.