Very nice find! The bottleneck is, well, the opening aft. One reason to have an interior cross section larger than what a craft in the hangar has to fit through anyway would be to perform maintenance on it. However, there doesn't seem to be any utility to the hangar cross section increasing as one moves forward for this reason, since apparently/I presume we more or less all envision the shuttle maintenance area to be down below. On the other hand, TAS showed shuttlecraft apparently being stowed in the hangar (e.g. making it easier for Mudd to abscond with one). This might also be a reason to have the hangar cross section increase as one moves forward, but TOS never showed shuttlecraft so stowed. Presumably, the hangar is designed to admit craft substantially larger than the shuttles we know, presumably including, if necessary, non-Starfleet craft. Both paragraphs above could apply in this case, regarding maintenance and stowage. If we're going for original Jefferies intent, that figure seems to weigh in the column of cylindrical.
From “The Omega Glory”: KIRK: What about the shuttlecraft? GALLOWAY [OC]: Galloway on the hangar deck, sir. All four of the craft are still here. If they left, they didn't leave that way. The question is, what was meant by “hangar”? Is that the unseen maintenance and repair area below the part we see - the part we rightly should be calling “flight deck”? In “The Doomsday Machine”, Sulu calls it the “shuttlecraft bay”. But in “Journey to Babel” it is “hangar deck”: “Clear hangar deck. Clear hangar deck. Depressurizing. Recovering shuttlecraft. Hangar deck pressurizing.” I suspect it was ALL hangar, with part of it - the flight deck part - cleared for launch and recovery as needed.
Hmm the door wedges don't appear to be the same size in that top-down. I wonder what MJ had in mind there?
Yes. About 18 months before. This is the original construction drawing from November 1964. The hanger was not drawn until production for The Galileo Seven in 1966.
I am working toward releasing as much of the complete drawings as I have. These will be a composite of each of the two drawings, built from multiple images from several sources of varying quality. There are a few areas that I don't have imagery for yet. I do have measurements for these areas taken from the originals by Mr. Datin himself, and I plan to include the missing geometry with line work of a style that makes clear what is original and what is not. Perhaps the project will encourage others with unseen material to come forward so I can refine the reconstruction. I have been collecting this material for many years and it is time to collate it and share it with everyone. Ultimately, my plans include a new, complete drawing based on the originals to accompany the reconstruction. This will be much like what Shaw has done, but without any attempt to make it look like an actual artifact. It will also likely be a true 3D blueprint, which would differ from MJ's drawing in that it would depict the actual intersections of the various shapes, rather than the construction profiles. I will start a new thread for it once it is ready. Stay tuned.
I have to say that this whole business about Kerr having that original blueprint and not sharing it has bothered me for awhile. I don’t know what the conditions were under which he gained access to it, so I am not justified in saying anything beyond “bothered”. I know I was long ago given photos of the 11’ model from the time of its receipt at the Smithsonian with the understanding that they not be published or otherwise shared. But I also got copies of the production art from TMP, Phase II, and Planet of Titans (including the construction plans for the Phase II Enterprise), that I shared in one form or another almost 40 years ago. You’d think the original construction plans for a model built almost 60 years ago would be sharable by the one person who apparently has/had access to them. You’d think.
I believe you may have the wrong idea about Gary Kerr having the original blueprints. Last I heard, they are still in the possession of Mr. Datin's family. Datin went to great pains to give the blueprints to the Smithsonian, but they made him jump through so many hoops to do it that he gave up the attempt. The blueprint Gary has is his own, based on measurements and access to the 11-footer. And he has shared it with all of us, in a manner of speaking. The orthographic renders on the large Polar Lights carton, which serve as a painting guide, are based directly on his blueprints. There are also the vector blueprints in the smaller Polar Lights model instruction sheet PDF, downloadable from their website. This slightly simplified decal guide is also based directly on his blueprint, albeit a an earlier version. I corresponded with Mr. Datin, before his death, and he promised to share scans he had made of the blueprints. At the time, he had recently moved houses and the disks with the scans were inaccessible to him. He did have access to the blueprints themselves and read out info from them at my request. Unfortunately, he passed away before sending the scans to me. Some of the images I do have of sections of the prints came to me from Gary, who got them from Datin, and felt he could share them with me since Datin had meant for me to have them. But these are fragmentary. The plans are large and you can't scan them in one piece without specialized equipment. To get images of the whole sheets you have to lay them out on a table and photograph them with a hand held camera. Then you get into issues of lens distortion, uneven lighting, perspective distortion, and the fact that a large paper than has been folded for decades doesn't just lay flat. Anyway, the only way I know that anyone can get complete copies of these items at the present time is to do a lot of work collating, processing and reassembling many fragmentary sources together, guided by dimensional data from the print themselves. This is what I am doing and I will share my result freely. After that is done, I will likely turn to the Phase II Jefferies blueprint. When it sold at auction several years ago, I got in touch with the guy who bought it and offered to put together a digital composite of the entire drawing if he would supply me with flatbed scans made under specific conditions. He was pleased with the offer, since the drawing is too large to get a single flat image of it any other way. My reward for doing so was a complete set of scans and my own completed composite image. He placed no conditions on my use of the scans and I think it is about time to share them with the world. There have been some images of these subjects that were made available on Phil Broad's late lamented site, but these are direct scans from the blueline and much clearer. I attach a couple of samples: In any case, I look forward to sharing what I have collected; and what I have made of it. I hope others who may have other pieces to these puzzles may be motivated to contribute. M.
Ooooooooooh. This fragment is the Phase Ii Enteprise? Are the dimensional callouts in feet or meters or something else?
The plans that were on Phil Broad’s site came from me. I shared scans of my copies with him. This was at least 15 years ago. (At the same time I shared scans of the TMP tram construction plans with The God Thing). Some years later, Rick Sternbach sold his set of Phase II plans and the person who bought them made them available iirc. That set was much clearer than mine, one page of which was a blue line taken from the originals. So if I understand you correctly, Kerr has photos of the Datin plans. I’m not sure how that differs from what I said above. I wrote that I didn’t know what the conditions were under which he had “gained access” to them. If Datin was going to share scans of them with you, he must have wanted them available to the public. Is that not sufficient reason for Kerr to make his photos available generally?
Aridas, To speak about "Kerr having the original blueprint" gives the impression that he has, at least, copies of the complete plans. I do not believe this is the case. He has fragmentary pieces of the plans that Richard Datin scanned or photographed himself with his meager resources. Datin never reproduced the entire plans, to my knowledge. As you acknowledged, we cannot speak to any conditions Mr. Datin might have placed on Gary when he gave them to him. We both know that sometimes there are promises made. I just don't want Gary Kerr to get a black eye. He has been very generous with his knowledge. In my case, I have correspondence with Mr. Datin in which he said he'd be glad to give me what scans and images he had, once he could get access to them. He put no conditions on me and he also tried to make them what amounts to public property by giving them to the Smithsonian. With this in mind, I feel at liberty to share what I have and plan to do so. I am pleased to find out that you were the source for Phil Broad's Phase II plans. They have been a very valuable resource all these years. M.
I think Kerr and Cushman are working on a TOS Enterprise book. I think once that is done and on shelves...perhaps more will be made available?
Gawd...why do people keep working with Cash? He's the worst kind of historian: he literally makes shit up.
Some of my favorite drawings are from Aridas….when my townhouse flooded…those were the first I protected