Another take on the Original Enterprise...

[CuttingEdge100]

How did you arrive at 1067 feet? I thought you were using 1080?

[Cary L. Brown]

CuttingEdge100 wrote:

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How did you arrive at 1067 feet? I thought you were using 1080?

Go back and re-read my first post in the thread. I started off using 947'... and immediately ran into so many problems that I abandoned it and tried 1080', which worked pretty well. But as I fine-tuned things, I determined that the ideal length was actually 1067'. In fact, I'm still open to revising this further, though I can't imagine why I'd do so. Everything has worked out so perfectly at this scale so far that I think I've pretty much locked in on the new number.

The point of this exercise, after all, isn't "to prove one side right and the other wrong." It's to determine what the best possible "real life" configuration for the ship that I can come up with would be. And so far, 1067' is looking really, really good.

Make sense?

Now... a bit more progress this afternoon...

I've completed the last details on the top side. I might add in ship's ID markings later, but for now I'm leaving that off (and if I do, they will be the very last features in the model).


I still haven't done the rim windows or sensor portholes, but those are the sole remaining external features. Everything else is done. (No ship's ID markings down here either, for the same reason.)


And a closer look at the separation. This is now, formally, an independent model!

[Warped9]

^^ Could you clarify why you consider 1067ft. ideal as opposed to 1080ft? I know it's only a difference of 13ft. but what was the determining factor rather than just take as much space as you can get to cram all the stuff in there?

[Cary L. Brown]

Warped9 wrote:

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^^ Could you clarify why you consider 1067ft. ideal as opposed to 1080ft? I know it's only a difference of 13ft. but what was the determining factor rather than just take as much space as you can get to cram all the stuff in there?

I downsized a bit to make the bridge match up slightly better and to make the various decks line up slightly better with the local window locations.

Either can work, but based upon my efforts to make sets (or in the case of the bridge, McMaster's prints) match up with the various external drawing sets, I just ended up tweaking it up and down slightly until I converged on a "best fit."

Truthfully, I didn't even pay attention to length when I was doing this. I just tweaked the image scales up and down. Once I had everything lining up nicely, I created datum planes which represented the leading, trailing, pore and starboard edges of the primary hull, created datum planes representing the primary hull decklines, and representing the centerlines of the nacelles and secondary hull. (I actually ended up very slightly adjusting the secondary hull centerline later once I recognized that the axis of the secondary hull is at the exact convergence of the nacelle pylons by design... a key reason I decided to do the "pylons through" approach.)

It was only once I had the full thing worked out that I measured the distance from the nacelle trailing-edge datum plane to the saucer leading-edge datum plane. I had not measured this... at all... prior to that. The reason was that I didn't want preconceptions to guide my work. My entire purpose was to make the sets we know fit into the hull we know.

I actually expected the final number to be closer to 1080'. But that's not the number I arrived at, and I'm not going to try to "drive my results to meet my expectations." That's the sort of thing that bad scientists and bad engineers do.

I let the process give me my results, not vice-versa, in other words. Make sense?

[Albertese]

I'm curious about how the shuttlebay fits in. I always wanted to see how big the ship would need to be if you took the width of the shuttle set piece and compared that to the width of the model shuttle photographed with the shuttle bay model and use those stills to arrive at a scale size for the shuttlebay if built to the same scale as the set piece shuttle. Then how big would the ship need to be to fit that inside it?

--Alex

[Cary L. Brown]

Albertese wrote:

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I'm curious about how the shuttlebay fits in. I always wanted to see how big the ship would need to be if you took the width of the shuttle set piece and compared that to the width of the model shuttle photographed with the shuttle bay model and use those stills to arrive at a scale size for the shuttlebay if built to the same scale as the set piece shuttle. Then how big would the ship need to be to fit that inside it?

--Alex

That's definitely one of the things that's always driven me towards the 1080' number in the past. You really can't fit the shuttlebay as shown on-screen with the 947' ship, in my opinion, regardless of whether or not you put it under the pylons or behind them.

Well, I got sort of carried away today, and so I've accomplished my "big goal" for the weekend already.





(I wouldn't have gone this far today, except that the secondary hull started collapsing when I tried to make it a separate model... and having problems like that pop up always grabs my full attention.)

[Cary L. Brown]

One more picture before calling it a night.

I decided to give the landing bay and hangar deck a quick once-over... It became necessary to tweak deck levels a bit more, but interestingly, Warped9's shuttle actually fits, IF I adjust the deck below to exactly match the hatch (I'd left some margin around the hatch previously).

Here's a side-view of the whole ship, in section. You can see the landing bay. Note that the bay itself does not run to the exterior hull. There's actually a fair amount of space between the two. This is well-established by the TOS filming minature of the deck, which clearly shows that the doors are significantly larger than the interior structural ring inboard from them... and when comparing the doors themselves (on the 11' model) to the opening in which they sit. I've only "eyeballed" the size of the opening in that aftmost bulkhead, so far. But I'll be doing a bit more analysis as I move forward.

[Praetor]

Wow, Cary. I can't wait to see the engineering section get filled in.

[Bernard Guignard]

very interesting and very nice work there

[Santaman]

Indeed a fine job.

[UssGlenn]

This is really great work. You're just a few inches over 325 meters (325.2216 to be exact). That number seems a bit less random than 1067'. How does the diameter of the saucer at 1067' compare to the one on the 1000 foot refit?

[Praetor]

The question of 'rescaling' the refit to match this new size for the classic is a provocative one.

[Cary L. Brown]

UssGlenn wrote:

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This is really great work. You're just a few inches over 325 meters (325.2216 to be exact). That number seems a bit less random than 1067'. How does the diameter of the saucer at 1067' compare to the one on the 1000 foot refit?

That's not been lost on me (since I'm using meters as my default unit, and only talking "feet" because that's the nature of the conversation, normally, on this topic). Once I have everything worked out, I may do a comparison of 947'/1080'/1067', and the "refit" along with it.

For now, I haven't done any "secondary hull" work today, and I'm done (only spending a few hours on it today).

What I did today was finish the windows on the primary hull (turns out I found my second major error in Sinclair's prints, by the way... the first was that the upper running light locations aren't the same in all views, and this one is that the aft saucer rim windows aren't the same in the bottom and starboard views).

I also put in a couple of details I'd forgotten about (damn, why'd nobody remind me? What am I paying you guys for? ) Specifically, the three little "knobs" around the lower sensor platform, and the "rim" at the back of either of the triangular shapes. Both are there now, though.

The only external features I've been stewing about might be some subtle indications of RCS thrust ports (either covered or with a screen over them, so that we could accept that they wouldn't even be visible in 1966 TV terms), and slide-back hatches for the phaser and torpedo firing ports. I won't give any indication (externally) of my lifeboat positions, and while I've been thinking about a "gangway hatch" on the port side, behind a slide-panel, I've largely decided against it, though I could change my mind.

This time, with my renders, I put sources inside of the running lamps. It's not really surprising to see how it turns out, but it IS curious that we never saw any indication of this on-screen... we really ought to have, don't you think?

And... well... "festive," isn't it?

[Gep Malakai]

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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This time, with my renders, I put sources inside of the running lamps. It's not really surprising to see how it turns out, but it IS curious that we never saw any indication of this on-screen... we really ought to have, don't you think?

That depends. Do your light sources have falloff on them (e.g, are they decaying with the square of the distance)? If not, then the light hitting the bridge module going to look much, much brighter than it would in reality.

[TIN_MAN]

^^Also, how do you feel about strobes or slowly revolving 'siren' style running lights? One of the things I liked about the original FX for "Space Seed" was the way the starboard runnig light seem to revolve, sold the whole scene IMHO, but was sadly lacking in the remastered version.