Another fan attempt at TOS deck plans

USS Mariner,

I would have thought the impulse engines would be a modular component of the ship able to be removed and replaced with a new unit. If you look at the Impulse engine in Where No Man Has Gone Before, and The Cage you'll notice the nozzles are set-up different.


Captain Robert April,

Generally hydrogen fusion is generally best performed with deuterium and tritium.


CuttingEdge100

 

I don't have any of my notes in front of me right now, but I'll try to answer these... specially if some CAD tools can be applied.

My early estimates of the placement of the compartment walls was based on a couple general figures... all cabins are about 15 feet deep (from the corridor wall to the back wall of the cabin) and the corridors are 9 feet wide. So the compartment walls are 39 feet apart (radially), and working from the outer edge of the ship (assumed to be 208.5 feet out from the center) we get 169.5 for the inner wall of ring 4, 130.5 feet for the inner wall of ring 3, 91.5 feet for the inner wall of ring 2, and 52.5 feet for the inner wall of ring 1.

This early sketch shows how those basic elements all sort of fit together.

​

A few feet in from the corridor wall (into every room) is the primary plumbing trunk. These carry all of the ships major infrastructure and are wide enough for a person to crawl up inside (which is why you see alcove ladder entrances to that area every so often in the corridors). These go over the doorways, and are the access points for the door's equipment (so if someone was fixing your cabin door, you wouldn't see them do it until they came around to test their work. Because these trunks follow corridors, the compartments main connections to each other (power, water, etc.) occur where the corridors cross compartment bulkheads. So if one was wondering what a Jefferies diagram of the ship's main resource network would look like, it would roughly trace out all the ship's corridors (so the network is basically protected by the rest of the compartment by existing in the center of them).

The strength of the outer hull of each compartment (no matter how deep inside the ship that compartment may be) comes from the structural frames seen inside of nearly every room on the Enterprise.

If a compartment hull is breached, you would hear a double red alert... meaning you need to evacuate that compartment or stay in your cabin (if the corridor is unpassable)... you could always be beamed out of your cabin later if the compartment's corridors were too badly damaged.

Actually, this strange feature of Jefferies diagram is exceptionally helpful.

The rear two quadrants of ring 1 take up the space that one would normally expect to see used for the rear two quadrants of ring 2 (which aren't there). Remember that I based those compartment walls on the depth of the cabin set plans... other rooms seen on the show (the transporter room and briefing room for example) are significantly deeper. So they would need a compartment that didn't have to follow the 15'-9'-15' constraints I was using for areas with cabins. Those deeper rooms would most likely be found in the rear two quadrants of ring 1, which is why I avoided putting any cabins in those compartments.

As for the idea of prefabricating and then assembling the ship... it seemed like a logical way to not only build the ship, but if you have a fleet of them to also keep them in good repair over an extended life. For example, looking at the Constellation as she was when the Enterprise found her, she was totally repairable based on the damage we saw. Swap out the bridge and the four quadrants of ring 4 and the primary hull would be as good as new.

 

Shaw,

When you talk about the plumbing trunk are you talking about the stuff between the two foot thick walls?

It would probably be a good idea to put a variety of power generating equipment through there as well. Some of that power could connect to the grav plates in the floor.

I guess it's completely workable then. It strikes me as the preferred way to do it. The only issue I could think of is that it would have made the logistics of the TMP-Refit a bit strange.


CuttingEdge100

 

Thanks Shaw.

I've laid out your diagram as per your figures and it all works out fine in and of itself.

In my own diagram, I'm using the same general arrangement, but my measurements for the crew cabin, corridor, and wall thicknesses are based on or taken directly from the studio blueprints. As it stands, your pressure hull walls are only short by less than two feet in radius, assuming that they divide one half of a cabin block from another between hulls (as you illustrated.) Given that you're using ballpark figures, it's pretty damn close.

I'll post pics tomorrow.

 

^^
Where might one find such "studio blueprints?"

 

The Google.

 

I work with the Treknology that I see established, and Federation starships utilize deuterium slush as a primary component. What they do with it after it thaws is someone else's problem.

 

Could you be more specific. The Google is a large place. Some search parameters would be nice. A link would be even better.

 

Captain Robert April,

That's true, but keep in mind most of Shaw's work here pertains largely to TOS and is largely irrespective of the later series.

 

Actually, the idea that FUSION is best performed with deuterium and tritium is highly debatable.

What is hydrogen? It's a single proton with a single electron orbiting it.

What's deuterium? It's an isotope of hydrogen... instead of the nucleus being a single proton, it's now a proton with a neutron present as well.

What's tritium? It's another isotope of hydrogen... instead of the nucleus being a single proton, it's now a proton with TWO neutrons present.

The prefixes "deu" and "tri" which are part of the nomenclature, here, refer to the atomic weight. Electrons are nearly massless compared to neutrons and protons, both of which have nearly the same mass. So, "deuterium" is twice as massive, per mole of material, as "regular" hydrogen is, and "tritium" is three times as massive, per mole, as "regular" hydrogen.

What happens when you fuse two hydrogens to form a single helium? (That's called "fusion.") You strip away the electrons (high temperature and a strong magnetic field), and attempt to collide the remaining nuclei.

Collide them with sufficient energy behind the collision, and you permanently bond the two nuclei into a single nucleus, releasing energy in the process.

The advantage of having deuterium or tritium is the increase in nucleus mass... meaning that there's more energy which can be stored in any nucleus at a given temperature (meaning a higher instantaneous velocity and thus higher momentum, really, at impact-time).

But there are also issues against that. Basically, you end up SHEDDING those neutrons (or at least a portion of them), and that's "neutron radiation," which is very difficult to shield against (since it can't be deflected or absorbed by an electromagnetic field) and thus requires VERY THICK plating of some ultra-dense material to protect against (say, several feet of lead).

Now, if you go with "regular" hydrogen, you require a much higher reaction temperature (roughly three times the absolute temperature), but you have an entirely clean reaction... no neutrons are shed, and all energy output is in the form of electromagnetic energy (light, basically).

So... while working with deuterium or tritium may be "easier," I'd argue, strongly, that it's not really PREFERABLE.

Make sense?

EDIT: Now, for FISSION... where you are splitting atoms... you NEED the "neutron bullets" released in every fission reaction (splitting of a nucleus). These neutrons are what strike adjacent nuclei and split them. A sufficiently dense field of neutron "bullets" (which are always being released due to natural decay) can result in the decay rate increasing, and eventually you have "critical mass" (enough decaying material in a small enough volume) that you have enough "neutron bullets" to cause the reaction rate to increase... which releases more "neutron bullets" which increases the rate even more... and more... over and over... this is called a "chain reaction" and is how fission bombs (or "atom bombs") work.

And we use "atom bombs" to create sufficiently high temperatures to cause hydrogen to fuse... in other words, the detonator for a "hydrogen bomb" is an "atom bomb."

 

I think the idea of using Deuterium or Tritium for fusion is that they're quite a bit more unstable, and therefore somewhat easier to push into nuclear reactions either way. It makes some since for deuterium, since it's one of the most common things in the galaxy, and would be a pretty easily-collected fuel (for both matter and anti-matter)... tritium is much, much rarer though, and that excuse doesn't hold. Sounds like someone's brained stopped at "If deuterium is powerful fuel, imagine what TRItium would be!"

 

Vance,

The conventional fusion which happens in the sun which involves two hydrogen nuclei -- i.e. protons ramming each other which results in one of the protons turning into a neutrons which radiate off a neutrino and a positron. Another proton hits the now deuterium nucleus, forming helium 3 and producing a surge of gamma rays in the process. Another helium 3 formed the same way hits that producing helium 4 and two protons. It's power output is less than a Tritium Tritium reaction

If you take tritium and tritium you get helium, two neutrons and 11 million electron volts. If you take tritium and deuterium you get helium, one neutron, and 17 million electron volts.


CuttingEdge100

 

The problem is more the availabity of 'heavy hydrogen' and 'really heavy hydrogen'. Deuterium is all over the place, and it's even relatively common on Earth, much less the giant stockpile known as Jupiter and the other gas giants. Tritium is much, much rarer, so it makes less sense to design a drive based around it. It's not that it isn't more efficient, it's just much harder to get a hold of.

 

Honestly, I can't remember where, but it wasn't hard.

 

There's also this factor: We're talking about fueling a spacecraft, where mass is a critical issue. If we take those two slush tanks, fill one with deuterium, and one with tritium, guess which one will be roughly one third more massive? And with tanks that big, we're talking a lot of extra mass.

By that standard, deuterium wins, even if tritium makes for a better fusion reaction.

 

I think the illustrious author of this thread has already pointed out the dangers of trying to apply what we can do now to magical 23rd century tech.

 

Yeah, maybe we should let Shaw have his thread back.

 

This would be a great point to post some meaningful progress... unfortunately I most likely won't have anything interesting until the weekend.

 

Do you have any information on the pilot sets (the briefing room, Pike's cabin, etc) to include in your plans? The bridge, corridors, and transporter room didn't change, but those sets weren't used, at least not the same way, again.

 

That is a good question... not in conjunction with the plans of The Cage models as those are going to be real world specific documentation of mainly the physical models themselves.

But you are absolutely right about the sets being different between each of the pilots and the final series and I do plan on reverse engineering those sets based on the plans I have of the later versions... even if I only use them as a scale reference within screen grabs (which is what I'm having to do with sets we saw in the series that I don't have plans for).

This question also brings to light something I should have done quite some time ago... which was put together a timeline of sub-projects and how they relate to both my final overall goals and to the other aspects along the way which others may be waiting for (separate from my goals). Given that, here is how I sort of see things going...

​

So I'm obviously working towards all of these, but my first major goal is to finish the plans of the models and a write up of their early history and construction. Having finished documenting the 11 foot model, I can then provide a reasonable exterior to base interior deck levels on (in what seems like the four major configurations people have been asking for). At that point I'll return to the original set plans and redraw them (including missing third or fourth walls in some cases) with a scale key so people can resize them to match which ever exterior they want.

That should give people making other plans a lot to get started with, while I go back and try to reverse engineer areas seen in the pilots and show that I don't have any hard documentation to work from. I'll be trying to make sure that my notes at that point are useful for others, but in the end I'll release an additional set of plans of interior locations for everyone.

And during all that I'll still be playing with my ideas and test fitting elements as I finish them.