Another fan attempt at TOS deck plans

I must respectfully disagree. At the intended size of 947' the total room available, outer hull surface to outer hull surface, comes to only 11'-7".

Even enlarging the ship to 1080' only gets you up to 13'-2.5". And this is without accounting for hull thickness, which would necessarily reduce the available room.

Unless you enlarge the ship to a far more than reasonable size, you can't fit two uninterrupted decks between the upper edge of the rim and the undercut.

M.

 

There may not be room for anyone to walk around at that level, but there's just oodles of room for piping, conduits, and other assorted technical miscellany.

 

My 1080 ft ENT doesn't have two full deck heights in the undercut. One full-size, and one with a 6-ft cieling. That's not enough to call it a full deck, but enough to make some storage space and so forth.

 

How tall is the ceiling in your "full height" section, if you don't mind my asking?

 

I found it interesting that people find it hard to believe that the Enterprise could have 430 crew with Jefferies' given dimensions. So I decided to compare the habitable areas of an Ohio class submarine with those of the Enterprise. The Ohio class has a crew of 155 living and working in about 54,000 square feet. The approximate area of deck 5 alone on the layout I'm working on is about 134,614 square feet (more than twice that of the Ohio class), and that doesn't take into account any of the other decks of the primary or secondary hulls.

So by US Navy standards the starship Enterprise is practically a luxury ship.

 

The description of ship's accommodations on page 174 of TMoST makes it clear that Enterprise's accommodations are luxurious by Navy standards. Compare the following to the accommodations on the Ohio class sub you mentioned above.

This also tells us that "hot bunking" was not envisioned, because the sleep areas were conceived as needing extra space for... an extra bed. Also, it is arguable that the "outer work room" was not envisioned as a primary work station, but rather as an off-duty workplace, because of the way the habitation decks are described as lacking duty stations.

Compare this description with the Ohio-class berthing for enlisted crew:

http://home.comcast.net/~aridas/Trek/0873517.jpg

 

If that's luxurious, I wonder what they would have thought of the 1701-D...

 

The only place I might differ from your interpretation there is the assumption that shared quarters will require more floor space to be used by the extra bed. I've always envisioned this as being a bunk setup... so the "floor space" used is no different.

This is actually very close to being what modern billetting for enlisted personnel on Army bases is like (not combat billeting, mind you, but home-base type), although these are typically four personnel per room... two bunks. The portion of the room furthest away from the entrance is where the bunks are (typically next to the windows, though... go figure!). There's a "common area" near the entrance, where there's a table, a couch... typically someone has a TV and/or stereo... etc, etc. It's not a "work area" per-se, because it serves the purpose of "play" every bit as much as work. But you'll always find the troops polishing their boots or cleaning their field gear in this area as well, so it's "work" too.

That's kind of the IDEA behind the TOS billetting structure as I've always seen it.

Of course, one thing Roddenberry was adamant about was that there were ONLY "officers" on the Enterprise. This demonstrates the fairly isolated experience he had serving in the Air Force. Since officers are, by definition, "order givers" ... this makes no sense. This is something that was abandoned after Roddenberry "stepped aside" after the first year-and-a-half of TNG, too. SO... I ignore this dictate and assume that there are probably enlisted men onboard. ESPECIALLY since episodes of TOS clearly showed them to us (for an example, see "The Man Trap" and the fellow Swahili-speaking image Uhura saw in the hallway... "Crewman" is the Trek equivalent to the modern U.S. Navy's "seaman" or the modern Air Force's "airman"... which are also terms used exclusively for enlisted personnel.)

SO... if I were coming up with billetting for the 1701, I'd have senior officers having private quarters, senior enlisted (the equivalent of Sergeant Major ranks or whatever) having similar private quarters, junior officers having two-up bunked quarters, and junior enlisted having four-up bunked quarters. This would not be contradictory with anything we ever actually saw on-screen, and would make more sense in terms of "useful space" allotment while still leaving the crew to have a reasonably comfortable living situation.

One thing that bugged me... a LOT... about the TNG-and-later billetting structure was the idea that after work, most people were essentially encouraged to just go back to their quarters and be alone, rather than them having an incentive, for instance, to eat in a more communal setting (something that Voyager "cheated" to overcome and Enterprise dealt with in what was actually a reasonably acceptable fashion). There's a good reason for "messhall" dining... it's all about team-building and socialization.

 

Cary, as I've noted before in discussions about the idea of enlisted men being absent in TOS, I'm fairly certain that Roddenberry was basing his view as much on his experience in the police department, as in the Army Air Corps or on contemporary NASA arrangements. In a police department -- a paramilitary organization charged with law enforcement, which is definitely one of the main duties GR assigned his Starfleet -- the patrolman rank is part of a continuous, undifferentiated scheme. All are "officers" in the sense that they have all received the same "commission" -- having been deputized with appropriate jurisdictional authority.

I believe his time in the LAPD is more informative of this decision, but the ongoing question of whether such a scheme is appropriate to running an isolated ship in a technologically advanced future remains. I think that if you see the base "rank" of "crewman" as an entry rank for academy graduates that must pass through service in the various ship's departments before either specializing in one of them and becoming a "crewman specialist" or advancing to broader leadership education as an ensign, then you have a rough analog to the "patrolman" idea.

 

Upper hull: ~1 ft

Deck 6 height: 9 ft

Deck 6 floor thickness: 10 inch

Deck 7 @ undercut: 6ft 4 inch

Bottom hull thickness: ~1 ft

So what you said is actually pretty plausable, now that I look at it. :thumbsup:

 

Don't worry. I'm well aware of the Naval tradition. I was just offering a little "toilet humor" about the situation...

(Sorry about that... I just can't resist a good opportunity for a bad pun...)

 

Yep, that's what I was thinking.

That's a total of 218 inches. Now, assume a mere 8' ceiling in each section on those two decks. That's 26" left over. Assume that the floor between deck 6 and 7 isn't filled with hardware (like many others probably are) and is in fact a "thin" floor section... oh, I dunno, let's say 6". That allows for a 10" hull thickness top and bottom.

Which is what I was thinking of.

NOW... it's also worth noting that the depth of the "undercut" is never really completely visible on-screen. Yes, from studies of the Smithsonian model, we know how deep it seems to be (but then again, did anyone actually take a caliper and MEASURE that or is it all just "eyeballed?"). But if you really want a few more inches there, I think that you can justify it without much of a problem.

I went looking through my bookshelf, trying to find where I'd seen the deck layout showing this. I couldn't find it in the short time I had at lunch, but I did find this... the first time I ever saw this particular concept. This is from the original (ring-bound, not square-bound) version of the "Enterprise Officer's Manual." I don't think it made it into the square-bound version (which is a significantly different book in many, many ways).

I never cared for the idea of making the lower dome an "extending pedestal" but I did like the idea that the triangles, and PART of the dorsal, would serve as landing legs. I don't see a whole lot of reason for having the A/B/C deck structure entirely separable as shown here, either (though it COULD easily justify how what we see on the ship in the St-11 trailer looks different, up there, than what we see in the series, couldn't it?).

But this is where I first saw the idea of the "undercut not being as much of an undercut, and being more of a "ring of hardware on the outside underside of the primary hull" idea.

(click the link to see it full-size)


Also, this is where I came up with the idea I've always had, that the little "nipple" on the lower dome was the Ion Pod.

 

The last time I had a copy of the Officers Manual was around 1980 or so, and back then the ion pod idea seemed like a good one to me too. But since then I've gotten to see a ton of artwork from the series itself and now I sort of wonder if it wasn't originally meant to be a phaser emitter.

 

No handy link, but wouldn't those Sinclair drawings be rather accurate as to the depth of the undercut?

 

From what I can tell they are 20% shallower then what I got from initial raw image studies of the 11 foot model.

But because the surface is not regular, a definitive measurement would be impossible. I measured the depth along the line dividing the front and back halves of the primary hull... but if Sinclair got his measurements based on the intersection of the dorsal and primary hull (which I haven't measured yet), then we could easily both be right.

 

I'm beginning to see how injured atheletes feel, having to sit on the sidelines while the game is still in progress...

 

Shaw, you realize, of course, that those drawings of the phasers in the picture you posted (from the technical display in 'The Trouble With Tribbles') are real technical specifications, most likely from a boiler of some sort, and were never ment to be scrutinised in any creat detail? However, I agree, the nipple in the sensor dome was most likely originally intended to be a phaser emitter(proximity blast?) or a torpedo bank?

 

You wouldn't be referring to this seldom seen detail, would you?

 

I can sympathize, Capt. A, I really can. I've never been evicted or lost my property, but I've had a few rough times too. Then again, if you play your cards right, you can make it all work out for ya in the end.

A great example was my last job. I came here for the job... and tried really hard to deal with a really bad managerial situation for two years. The guy in charge of the team was, simply put, a really really BAD leader. There was incompetence, and there was mismangement (you know, folks who play golf with the boss don't have to perform, guys who don't end up having to cover for the boss's buds). And there was dishonesty towards customers (ie, I calculated the weight of a system we were proposing and, in order to win the contract, they altered the REAL numbers downwards by about 30% in order to win it, saying we'd just "creep" it back up later.

I got really tired of it over time... though I was never really happy. Eventually, I realized that I was never going to make things better, so in the beginning of December I started looking for something else (not wanting to move, just wanting to get away from that particular intolerable situation).

My boss became aware of my desires, and as a result (ILLEGALLY, mind you) he terminated my position, right before Christmas. I was tempted to go get a lawyer... for a couple of days. But in the end, I decided to treat it as an opportunity.

Bottom line is that, as a result of my ability to devote myself almost exclusively to the "hunt," to creating a good portfolio, and to be available to travel, I got a new job offer last week, and will be relocating to Cary North Carolina (the city they'll always spell my name correctly... just outside Raleigh) for a new job in a better organization, with a better working situation, and nearly 60% more pay than before (without much of a cost-of-living change).

And there were other things that happened around the same time that also sucked (some of you may recall one or two of those!). It would have been really easy to "give up" and get depressed.

My point... I could have gotten really made, sulked, and let this drag me down. But I treated it as an OPPORTUNITY, and made use of that opportunity, and as a result I'm far better off than I was before.

(I also have an old girlfriend... "The one who got away" years ago who I SHOULD have married... who lives near there. So... we'll see!)

Cheer up, and treat it as an opportunity. It's 99% about how you THINK about your situation. That'll establish how to DEAL with it, and how other people see you... and if those are both positives, you'll be back on top of things before ya know it!

 

CRA, yes that's the nipple thing I was refering to in the second part of my response to Shaw's post above, it was thought to be the ion pod, once upon a time.