Another fan attempt at TOS deck plans

Discussion in 'Fan Art' started by Shaw, Feb 11, 2008.

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  1. Praetor

    Praetor Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Wow. Your research continues to astonish and inform. I had no idea about the missing trench. It's interesting how assymetrical the 11-footer seems to be.
     
  2. RobertScorpio

    RobertScorpio Pariah

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    Shall...just wanted to say that these are cool...keep it up...

    Rob
     
  3. Firebird

    Firebird Commodore Commodore

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    Shaw, I gotta tell you, the amount of time and effort that you're putting into this is really showing. These are going to be the most well thought out set of plans that I've ever seen.

    Keep up the amazing work!
     
  4. CuttingEdge100

    CuttingEdge100 Commodore Commodore

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    I know I brought this one up before... storing the turbolifts... The neck can't be used... in the event of a saucer separation you wouldn't have any turbolifts...

    Also I was thinking of something else. You know those three circular windows on the front of the vessel. At least some sources say those are auxiliary navigational deflectors... That would take up some space in the forward saucer.

    Another factor that I don't think was ever factored in was fuel.
    -> The secondary hull will obviously need fuel-tanks: Hydrogen (not deuterium... there's no point in using deuterium in a matter/anti-matter reaction -- the neutron and anti-neutrons don't annihilate) and anti-Hydrogen.
    ->The primary hull would need fuel as well as it's where the impulse engines are housed, and the ship would have to be able to use them when separated from the secondary hull. Fusion-drives best work with deuterium and tritium as it produces the most efficient hydrogen-fusion reaction. For all I know there might be a need for a matter/anti-matter drive in the saucer though I have no evidence for this, but you'd need deuterium and tritium tanks.


    CuttingEdge100
     
  5. Shaw

    Shaw Commodore Commodore

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    Again, I'm going to fall back to the example of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. If you were to show people of the 1870's a submarine of today, and described it size, crew complement and accommodations, it's duration between refueling, and the amount of time it could stay submerged, and then asked them to come up with how it was done, what do you think their best guesses would be?

    Remember that the best physics of the period (James Clerk Maxwell's Electromagnetic Theory) wasn't even widely adopted yet, so those people would be unable to comprehend any of what we take for granted today.

    That is a difference of 135 years. Do you really expect to be able to make better predictions of more than 200 years into the future from where we stand today?

    How much coal or oil would it take to power a vessel (without the use of sails at all) back in the late 19th century as far as one of our submarines can go between refueling these days? How much space would that fuel take up? How much less space does the reactor core of one of our subs take up today? Would those people comprehend that difference as anything but pure fantasy?

    What ever amount of space you think should be devoted for fuel on this ship, divide it by 10... and that'll still be too much.

    We don't know how this stuff works. Later Trek did us all a major disservice by attempting to apply today's ideas to tomorrow. What hasn't changed much in the last few hundred years will most likely not change much in the next few hundred years, but what has changed quite a bit will most likely change even more in the next few hundred years. That is how I'm approaching the interiors and why some aspects I'll leave a little space for and say take a guess.

    It is funny, the point of using matter/anti-matter was to negate the issue of fuel storage as a problem onboard... but because people think you could burn through it like fuel oil on ships of today, they think a large amount of space has to be set aside for it (mainly thanks to TNG).



    As for the three port holes on the front of the primary hull, we never saw what they were for... they were dark in the first pilot, the center one became a navigation light in the second pilot and they were all lit like the other windows by the time of the series. I left the space behind them on deck 6 unoccupied.

    Because all the windows we saw from within the ship were rectangular, I'm treating port holes as something else other than windows.
     
  6. TIN_MAN

    TIN_MAN Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I always assumed that little long thing atop the saucer running from between the impulse engines and reaching almost to the back of th B-C decks was the fuel tanks for the impulse fusion reactors? Not much capacity there, but presumebly you wouldn't need much fuel for an extremely efficiant fusion reactor?
     
  7. Praetor

    Praetor Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Tin Man, I always thought that particular piece of equipment was some kind of heat sink/radiator for the impulse reaction system.

    And Shaw, I must say one of the reasons I so enthusiastically follow your effort is because of that particular mindset you just described. We can try and try to imagine how a 23rd century starship would work but when it comes down to it, it's like cavemen playing with a book of matches. However, realizing this makes the results of the effort just a little more feasible.
     
  8. Shaw

    Shaw Commodore Commodore

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    My feelings are that we should temper our attempts to retrofit these fictional craft to fit our contemporary views of science and technology... but never stop asking the all important questions of why and how.

    I have spent decades in the study of math and science, and have paid more (and owe more) than I've earned directly from those studies... but I regret not a single dollar nor single hour of that investment because it was all spent towards answering my questions of why and how. And most of those questions were born out of watching Star Trek.


    :rolleyes: Anyways, on a lighter note...

    How many people printed out my 33" plans on 24"x36" sheets?

    The reason I ask is that the plans I'm working on are one quarter scale to the actual model. And I'm thinking about putting together a special set of printed plans revolving around the birth of Star Trek... the Enterprise of The Cage. These would include a more fleshed out version of Jefferies plans for the models from November of 1964 at 1:1 scale, a modified version of my 33" model plans to reflect how the model looked in December of 1964, and the 1:4 scale plans I'm working on now which are of the 11 foot model as finished at the end of December 1964.

    Obviously very little of the information will be new (as I've been sharing my progress all along), but I really think that this stuff should be printed out on paper to get the full effect. Below is me holding one of my early test prints of the 33" model plans.

    [​IMG]

    You can do all sorts of things with images on screen, but seeing these plans (two out of three of them at 1:1 scale) on paper is really how I think they should be viewed for full enjoyment.

    ... That, and the fact that I love building models and having plans on paper is one step closer to having a physical model.
     
  9. FalTorPan

    FalTorPan Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I love uber-huge blueprint printouts.
     
  10. Captain Robert April

    Captain Robert April Vice Admiral Admiral

    I printed out a couple sheets of mine full size, but since I don't have that size of paper, it involved using several sheets per page and a good deal of tape.

    If I come across them during my current move between storage units (the old one's being taken out to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, er, freeway offramp) I'll take a few pics.
     
  11. USS Jack Riley

    USS Jack Riley Captain Captain

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    Shaw - Great work as usual. Better watchout or we will start to expect it (kind of like Dan Aykrod's line in Ghostbusters "You've never been in the private sector; they expect results.").

    I know it was all stock footage, but the use of the middle light as a navigational beacon was not limited to the 2nd pilot. I remember seeing it in "Mudd's Women" and going WTF? I had thought they were just windows or something all this time, I get a copy of the epiosodes on DVD (non-remastered) and see this navigational light. Again, not faulting you for namingg every single episode in which it appeared dark, blinking or on (we'd be here through the next decade if we did that kind of thing), but just an FYI to point out that it was still a navigational deflector in at least one other episode in case you had missed it (took me 30 years to catch it and I am usually good at catching things like that).
     
  12. Captain Robert April

    Captain Robert April Vice Admiral Admiral

    Recycled footage from the second pilot still means that it blinked in the second pilot. Anything shot after the big refit before regular production shows non-blinking forward lights.
     
  13. Shaw

    Shaw Commodore Commodore

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    You should keep in mind that right now I'm totally in model mode as I attempt to finish my studies of the 11 foot model. From that perspective, the timeline is pretty straight forward...
    • December 1964 ("The Cage") version
    • September 1965 ("WNMHGB") version
    • 1966-1969 (Series) version
    • 1974 (1st Garber) version
    • 1984 (2nd Garber) version
    • 1991 (Miarecki) version
    It is important right now to use only those version references while I'm reverse engineering this model. Specially considering that my first version of these plans is going to be the first version of the model itself. I might find out something very interesting about either the WNMHGB or Series versions, but I have to make sure that I don't accidently add that to The Cage version if it wasn't actually there on it.

    So right now I'm treating the Enterprise as a non-fiction, real historical artifact which I am attempting to document to the fullest degree possible.

    When done, we'll need to go back and distill the features we want for the fictional Starship Enterprise. Some details we'll obviously want to keep... others we'll obviously want to discard (like the image below).

    [​IMG]

    Yeah, when used as footage in the series itself, the first three versions were all mixed together. And we'll have to figure out where to draw the line on some stuff (or we could do what TOS-R did to differentiate the versions). But right now (in my mind), the Enterprise is a model that I'm trying to document.
     
  14. CuttingEdge100

    CuttingEdge100 Commodore Commodore

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    Shaw,

    The energy produced by a nuclear fusion reaction for the impulse engines are readily quantifiable, and in Star Trek it did specifically say they were nuclear fusion reactors -- E=mc^2.

    I'd say there's actually a simple solution for the problem.

    - http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/jefferies/internals_005.jpg
    - http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/jefferies/internals_020.jpg
    - http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/jefferies/internals_026.jpg

    In the uppermost and lowermost image of the first link, and the lower image in the second, and the third image all show some "unused" space in the saucer

    The first and second image show this unused space to be located at the front and sides of deck 3, 4, and some of deck 7. There's also a gap on deck 5 where the saucer height is too high to house a deck but there is empty space there.

    Granted the phasers occupy some of that space, but there's no evidence to suggest they're gigantic or take up a huge amount of space, so there's considerable volume within there for some fuel-tanks to be located.

    The secondary hull definetly has some potential room at the very least on the upper most and lower most deck for fuel tanks to be located and fitted.


    CuttingEdge100
     
  15. Shaw

    Shaw Commodore Commodore

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    Are we talking about TOS? I only recall fusion being brought up in relation to the engines at one point in time... when Kirk was talking about overloading the Constellation's impulse engines...
    Kirk: Am I correct in assuming that a fusion explosion of 97 megatons will result if a starship impulse engine is overloaded?
    Spock: No sir... 97.835 megatons.
    So, considering that fusion explosions are not only created by nuclear fusion reactors, I'd say that is inconclusive.

    Also, the energy of a fusion reaction isn't as straight forward as E=mc^2... what you are actually talking about is providing enough energy to overcome the repulsive electromagnetic forces to gain the even greater potential energy of the strong nuclear forces. There is a resulting loss of mass, but it is not equal to the original mass of the fuel (that type of reaction, 100% conversion, would be from a one-to-one matter/anti-matter process).

    I have other threads on math and physics and would be very happy to discuss this subject in more detail in them. But for our purposes here, I tend to ignore post-TOS (though welcome others to inject whatever they want into their own derivative works) and stay about as vague on this subject as the writers guide was...
    "The Enterprise has a secondary propulsion system. These are the impulse engines (same principle as rocket power), located at the rear of the "saucer section." Vessel speed, when using the impulse engine, is less than the speed of light. In case of total failure of all engine power sources, the vessel's gravitational and life support systems can be switched to battery power, with a full-load capacity of about one week."
    But as an interesting sidebar, how much hydrogen do you think one would need to create an approximately 100 megaton explosion? A hint... the largest fusion based bomb ever exploded was the Tsar hydrogen bomb which yielded about 50 megatons as I recall.


    If we were to theorize about what an impulse engine might be... it could be similar to an ion engine only using particles accelerated to relativistic velocities to create the impulse thrust while expelling very little actual matter in the process. The thrust would be based on the relativistic momentum of the particles rather than a more standard momentum (based on the real mass of the particles).

    But in the end we don't really know... and while it is fun to play with ideas, the plans I'm working on will avoid the limitations of todays ideas on this subject. And everyone else is free to put in as much of this as they want as I'll be leaving those areas undefined and undetailed.

    But you are right... there are lots of places for fuel storage if you wanted to use them that way. I would suggest this diagram when hunting for those spaces.


    The grey-to-black areas on the individual decks represent space too short for standard personnel deck use... but would be just fine for equipment and storage. I plan on leaving a lot of that type of space open for others to interpret it as they want. :techman:
     
  16. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Gotta have room for infrastructural details. So that works for me.
     
  17. Shaw

    Shaw Commodore Commodore

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    This isn't really much of anything. I generally like to stop and take a broader view of what I'm working on by assembling the pieces together to see how they fit... which is all I'm actually doing here.


    This isn't all that different from back when I was working out the details of the 33 inch model a few years ago, sorta like this progress image from back then.

     
  18. Warped9

    Warped9 Admiral Admiral

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    I well understand as I do very much the same thing. Such a review allows me to spot things I may have gotten incorrect or even have been sloppy with that I can easily correct while still in progress rather than after I've gotten everything completed.
     
  19. CuttingEdge100

    CuttingEdge100 Commodore Commodore

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    Shaw,
    The creators of TOS also talked about fusion being used for the impulse-engines and fusion used for the impulse-drives.

    It would take a hell of a lot of energy to generate an artificial gravity field, and inertial dampening and stuff. Those must be some amazing batteries...

    Truthfully speaking you're not just providing a huge burst of power for an explosion. You are producing a continuous explosion for very long periods of time...

    Keep in mind the ship is stated to weigh around 190,000 tons, though I'm not entirely sure, but it's a very large massive object. To accelerate and hold the kinds of speeds mentioned it would need some heavy duty thrust pushing it along.

    Granted there is probably some kind of mass-reduction device or some kind of sublight-warp drive or a gravitational flywheel or whatever that might allow it to accelerate better, but such a device would require energy in it's own right. It would allow the impulse engines to be less powerful, however.

    [/quote]

    I don't know if all of these spaces would be used for fuel storage. The ship has batteries as you said, there are the phaser equipment and phaser-banks and shield generators. However there probably would still be a great deal of space.


    CuttingEdge100
     
  20. BK613

    BK613 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I wonder what they do with the helium? Expend it?
     
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