Flipped ship?

Doug Drexler wrote a piece about the Enterprise design way back in his fannish days (1970s) in which he suggested that the pylons and nacelles evoked the masts of a sailing vessel. Certainly having them elevated at those angles is suggestive of wings.

 

There's basically no way that the nacelles can be anything like rockets in the conventional sense, because it's mathematically impossible for the center of mass of the ship to be between them (unless the top of the saucer is ridiculously heavy compared to the rest of the ship below the nacelles). You'd at least need the aft end of the engineering hull to be a rocket too, which is how the artist interpreted it for the painting on the cover of Blish's original Star Trek book. No, the engines must be something else of pure fantasy, and it follows from the design itself.

 

It is intersting what is construed as 'believable'. Realistically, the Enterprise saucer and bridge is really just an enlarged version of this...

 

Here's the Reliant "flip" story on Ottens (link).

 

The version I recall reading – and this was in a Star Trek: The Magazine interview with Matt Jeffries, though the issue number escapes me – was that he had a little wood study model hanging from fishing line he took with him to a meeting, and during the meeting it flipped wrong-way round, with the nacelles on the bottom. Jeffries had to very quickly make the point to Roddenberry that it wasn't supposed to be oriented that way, out of concern that Roddenberry might like it in that direction.

So, it wasn't approved upside down; there was one, brief moment where the ship was upside down, but then it was corrected and things proceeded the way Jeffries intended. I suspect people are conflating the Enterprise anecdote with the Harve Bennet Reliant one, which as Maurice linked above did happen that way.

 

I've read that Matt Jefferies wanted to get away from the cliché of a flying saucer, but kept coming back to the saucer shape because it just looks so damn cool.

 

Yes, this is how I've recalled it for decades.

The use of a sphere as MJ tried initially doesn't work as well aesthetically as a saucer. A sphere seems to make the design look unwieldy and "slow." You can't really make a sphere look sleek and "fast."

The final MJ design suggests many things visually. It conveys the idea that very advanced science and technology has been mastered to the point of unfamiliarity from our current understanding. Imagine if a modern jet fighter or airliner were thrown back in time to anywhere pre WW2. Such a vehicle would be completely alien to the people of those times. And any technical explanation or jargon associated with the craft would be largely meaningless.

 

That's sort of 2D as well, Enterprise should have just pitched up and fired at Reliant from underneath (granted, not as cool of a shot as the Enterpise rising from behind).

 

That one I can rationalize. Kirk needed that specific firing angle to hit the subsystems that would cripple Reliant without destroying or leaving her at least partially operational and a threat.

 

It's still a case of moving vertically, though. And with both ships pretty much flying blind within the Mutara Nebula, the Enterprise maneuvering up and behind the Reliant in order to get as close as possible to see her (without being detected in the process) might have been the best option at the time.

 

Umm....

If it doesn't look like a swan--it doesn't look like anything.

 

Poetically stated.

Correctky oriented (as MJ intended it) it looks like it's in flight. Otherwise it just looks weird.

 

http://fsd.trekships.org/art/images/de-7.gif

Bottle left.

As for upside down Enterprise

http://z0.enha.kr/http://rigvedawiki.net/r1/pds/MUSAILPT.jpg

 

If I understand what Chekov was aiming for on his own ship (since Reliant technically was his ship now that Captain Terrell was dead) was the photon torpedo launchers and the warp nacelles. This makes it impossible for Reliant to escape and impossible for Khan to return fire. The trouble is that these things (to properly hit them) are on opposite sides of the saucer in the up and down plain. Thus to hit both, you need to hit them from the front or back aspect of the ship. The Enterprise's photon torpedo launcher is forward firing. And with targeting down, they'd likely have to dumb fire the thing. Note that that last attack on Reliant was two torpedoes and a single phaser strike. The phasers they could have fired from just about any angle in Enterprise given that she is somewhat covered in phaser turrets. But the torpedoes only go one way.

 

The faceted hull on Carey's dreadnaught makes sense. I always pictured that (octagonal?) saucer each having a torpedo bay for each firing arc.

Now if you had a pointy end first, all tubes/phasers would miss the two bottom nacelles below the saucer, and the top nacelle, whose pylon would be in between two facets.
Have the secondary hull have two whopper torpedoes pure fore and aft.

 

If they had done that, they would have been detected because the Enterprise had to basically fire at point-blank range with phaser lock inoperative.

 

Spock was able to somewhat detect Reliant via some sort of energy spikes. "An impulse turn", I believe was the line just before the suggestion to think three dimensionally came up.

 

Something along the lines of: "Sporadic energy readings. Port side, aft. It could be an impulse turn."