Size Of The New Enterprise (large images)

[The Doctor]

Re: Size Of The New Enterprise

Makes me all the more glad I blueprinted all my own major designs.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

So am I. Your E-D blueprints are still my favorite piece of Trek tech literature.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Re: Size Of The New Enterprise

Makes me all the more glad I blueprinted all my own major designs.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

So am I. Your E-D blueprints are still my favorite piece of Trek tech literature.

Thanks for that. The published blueprints aren't perfect, but the numbers are all there. The production blueprints are more what I meant, of course, so the numbers for those ships exist as well. Regardless of how VFX may have screwed up the scales on screen.

No, don't people quote me as dissing VFX. They had their hands full same as us in the art department. I'm amazed we all got everything done.

Kudos again to Disillusion.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[EJD1984]

Re: Size Of The New Enterprise

You can't fit all those new shuttles inside a shuttlebay the size of the original TOS E.

It simply can't happen. Why? The TOS shuttle seats 5-6 tops. The new shuttle seats 12 or more, plus gear stowage. In the shuttle approach-to-the-hangar-bay shots, we see the new shuttles having room to do some maneuvering in-flight inside the shuttle to dock with one of about 6-8 rack structures.

Where's the room for that in the TOS E?

Not getting into the scale rehash again, but I did notice that the secondary hull doesn't have much of a taper (from top view), as the TOS & TMP Enterprises - Therefore wider hangar bay doors.

Even if you were to scale down the NuE. near the TMP size, looks like you would windup with an additional 25/30% in hangar bay width.

Just a observation.

 

[RAMA]

Ditto that - it's a perfect analysis. I just wish it weren't so dang big.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/bop-size.htm

WHYYY? This makes no sense. First, the ONLY reason for wanting to white knuckle it and believe the ship isn't bigger is because of an the original reality which is NO longer valid. Secondly, the size change is in line with many other SF universes, where the ships tend to be larger, including Andromeda, SW, B5, BSG, and so on. What's more even the OLD ST universe has precedent with ship of all sorts ranging into MILES (Varro, Borg, V'Ger, Voth, etc) . The Romulan warbird was huge, almost twice the size of the E-D!! Most of the argument on this thread is useless and baseless.

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

I liked the music by The Calling that was used in the Enterprise promos, and wish that and the general editing and tempo of those ads had portended more than turned out be true of the series.

I don't buy jswhitten's explanation because I don't see any structures, military or civilian, doubling suddenly in size and far more than that in volume and tonnage without extraordinary breakthroughs in engineering. I don't believe that in oldTrek these sophisticated vessels were as they were simply because no one thought it was important to make them bigger.

I also think that if the "Kelvin Incident" were so big a deal to Starfleet as to cause it to totally redesign and rethink its vessels and technology, the one guy in this movie who should have been intimately familiar with it - Pike, who did his thesis on it - would have been even less likely to forget all the details of it until a cadet showed up on his bridge to remind him of them. Nah, the internal evidence leans sharply toward the matter having been largely unexamined for 25 years.

That said, I don't care that much. I don't believe in any of this, and haven't since I was a kid. To believe in the possibility of most of what goes on in Star Trek requires willful ignorance - or, as we more gently put it, "willing suspension of disbelief." It's just a game, a way of entertaining ourselves and I'm not going to waste much time on coming up with explanations for how any of it could be taken seriously on an adult level.

Not recently no, but in the last century, capital warship sizes went up from 18,000 tons for the HMS Dreadnaught to 100,000 tons forthe USS Nimitz. The Yamato was 50,000 tons heavier than the Dreadnaught during WWII.

Modern US destroyers are 4-5 times larger than destroyers of the WWII era.

Tankers are roughly 10 times larger in tonnage than 1950s era ships. The largest is 1504 feet long!!

The ISS is 240 long and 356 feet wide, 669,461lbs. Vostok 1 was just over 10,00lbs.

RAMA

 

[lawman]

How about this, folks...

DiSIllusion did a solid job with the scaling exercise. Let's assume the deck-numbering analysis is correct (at least for the saucer section. And it's necessary to accommodate that big hangar bay.

But visually, the ship simply doesn't look 2000+ feet long in most instances... notably the planetside construction scene at the beginning and the bridge pullout at the end. And at that size, the windows would be humongous. And just aesthetically, obviously a lot of us have problems with a Constitution-class ship two or three times the size of what it was in the old timeline.

So how about this by way of splitting the difference: change the assumptions about deck height. Dis used 4.15 meters -- that's over 13.5 feet. As already noted, the 15% reduction to a 610-meter ship length fits with 3.5 meter decks (11.5 feet).

But even better, I think, is an overall 33% reduction -- which gives us decks of roughly 2.75 meters, or 9 feet. That certainly seems the best match for the interior shots of corridor size -- and still allows room for conduits, circuitry, and so on behind the curved portions of the walls and above the drop ceiling.

At that deck height, the ship length would be roughly 484 meters, or 1586 feet... in the same range as some of the "smaller" estimates in this thread. It still allows the hangar deck to be 36 feet high (and height is its smallest dimension; it's wider and deeper than that), which IMHO can accommodate the number of shuttles seen on-screen, notwithstanding possible minor scaling errors.

That's still 1.6 times the size of the original ENT, but it's not so humongous as to induce visual cognitive dissonance. And it keeps the portholes, docking bays, and "windshield" at reasonable sizes.

(Now, crew size? That's another matter. I think 1100 is ridiculous (just as I think 800+ was ridiculous for the Kelvin, especially given the size and number of shuttles we actually saw escaping).)

Thoughts?

 

[Hyperspace05]

(Now, crew size? That's another matter. I think 1100 is ridiculous (just as I think 800+ was ridiculous for the Kelvin, especially given the size and number of shuttles we actually saw escaping).)

I thought it was pretty clear that the majority of the crew on the Kelvin were tribbles... 500 of them could easily fit inside a shuttle.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Not recently no, but in the last century, capital warship sizes went up from 18,000 tons for the HMS Dreadnaught to 100,000 tons forthe USS Nimitz. The Yamato was 50,000 tons heavier than the Dreadnaught during WWII.

Modern US destroyers are 4-5 times larger than destroyers of the WWII era.

Tankers are roughly 10 times larger in tonnage than 1950s era ships. The largest is 1504 feet long!!

Yes, and in all of those cases there have been significant passages of time and improvements in technology.

Sorry, I just don't buy the rationalizations advanced. But then, I don't find the question of how to make this "fit" with previous Trek interesting either: it's simply a new version of the same material, a reboot, and I'm fine with that.

 

[Tomalak]

I just go along with the view that it was always an alternate reality - it just explains all the other inconsistencies far better than Old Spock's half-baked ponderings. Maybe Bendii syndrome is an inheritable condition?

The new ships seem to be consistent enough in themselves, with indications being that ILM knew what they were doing. It's hard for some to accept that it could be so much larger than the original Enterprise, but they'll have to get used it it. They do things differently in this parallel world.

 

[Praetor]

Ditto that - it's a perfect analysis. I just wish it weren't so dang big.

WHYYY? This makes no sense. First, the ONLY reason for wanting to white knuckle it and believe the ship isn't bigger is because of an the original reality which is NO longer valid. Secondly, the size change is in line with many other SF universes, where the ships tend to be larger, including Andromeda, SW, B5, BSG, and so on. What's more even the OLD ST universe has precedent with ship of all sorts ranging into MILES (Varro, Borg, V'Ger, Voth, etc) . The Romulan warbird was huge, almost twice the size of the E-D!! Most of the argument on this thread is useless and baseless.

RAMA

My conservative side just liked the smaller size more. I'm not crying foul here, or even claiming to disbelieve that it is bigger, as you seem to implicate.

 

[EJD1984]

But visually, the ship simply doesn't look 2000+ feet long in most instances... notably the planetside construction scene at the beginning and the bridge pullout at the end. And at that size, the windows would be humongous. And just aesthetically, obviously a lot of us have problems with a Constitution-class ship two or three times the size of what it was in the old timeline.

So how about this by way of splitting the difference: change the assumptions about deck height. Dis used 4.15 meters -- that's over 13.5 feet. As already noted, the 15% reduction to a 610-meter ship length fits with 3.5 meter decks (11.5 feet).

But even better, I think, is an overall 33% reduction -- which gives us decks of roughly 2.75 meters, or 9 feet. That certainly seems the best match for the interior shots of corridor size -- and still allows room for conduits, circuitry, and so on behind the curved portions of the walls and above the drop ceiling.

At that deck height, the ship length would be roughly 484 meters, or 1586 feet... in the same range as some of the "smaller" estimates in this thread. It still allows the hangar deck to be 36 feet high (and height is its smallest dimension; it's wider and deeper than that), which IMHO can accommodate the number of shuttles seen on-screen, notwithstanding possible minor scaling errors.

That's still 1.6 times the size of the original ENT, but it's not so humongous as to induce visual cognitive dissonance. And it keeps the portholes, docking bays, and "windshield" at reasonable sizes.

I totally agree with all of you points. The visual cues don't seem to support a 2000ft size ship. The 1500 seems to more in keep with what we saw in screen. I earlier today did an scaling, and came up with 457.5m (1500.86ft), which can still support the sets & their locations that we saw in the movie.

On visual area that seems to somewhat support my estimate (and yours - lawman) is the neck docking port.

One good example: The escape pod looks to have a maximum diameter of 4ft. When it is jettisoned, it appears to give the neck docking port a similar diameter of the TMP port. Which then using that as a baseline the ship appears to be smaller in size.

It almost seems very disingenuous by the the producers & FX team to give us visual cues as to the size of the ship, then to come out and say it something entirely different.

 

[Peter the Younger]

How about this, folks...

DiSIllusion did a solid job with the scaling exercise. Let's assume the deck-numbering analysis is correct (at least for the saucer section. And it's necessary to accommodate that big hangar bay.

But visually, the ship simply doesn't look 2000+ feet long in most instances... notably the planetside construction scene at the beginning and the bridge pullout at the end. And at that size, the windows would be humongous. And just aesthetically, obviously a lot of us have problems with a Constitution-class ship two or three times the size of what it was in the old timeline.

So how about this by way of splitting the difference: change the assumptions about deck height. Dis used 4.15 meters -- that's over 13.5 feet. As already noted, the 15% reduction to a 610-meter ship length fits with 3.5 meter decks (11.5 feet).

But even better, I think, is an overall 33% reduction -- which gives us decks of roughly 2.75 meters, or 9 feet. That certainly seems the best match for the interior shots of corridor size -- and still allows room for conduits, circuitry, and so on behind the curved portions of the walls and above the drop ceiling.

At that deck height, the ship length would be roughly 484 meters, or 1586 feet... in the same range as some of the "smaller" estimates in this thread. It still allows the hangar deck to be 36 feet high (and height is its smallest dimension; it's wider and deeper than that), which IMHO can accommodate the number of shuttles seen on-screen, notwithstanding possible minor scaling errors.

That's still 1.6 times the size of the original ENT, but it's not so humongous as to induce visual cognitive dissonance. And it keeps the portholes, docking bays, and "windshield" at reasonable sizes.

(Now, crew size? That's another matter. I think 1100 is ridiculous (just as I think 800+ was ridiculous for the Kelvin, especially given the size and number of shuttles we actually saw escaping).)

Thoughts?

I like it.

Of course, I'm with Praetor on this one; I just prefer the smaller size estimates.

 

[RAMA]

Not recently no, but in the last century, capital warship sizes went up from 18,000 tons for the HMS Dreadnaught to 100,000 tons forthe USS Nimitz. The Yamato was 50,000 tons heavier than the Dreadnaught during WWII.

Modern US destroyers are 4-5 times larger than destroyers of the WWII era.

Tankers are roughly 10 times larger in tonnage than 1950s era ships. The largest is 1504 feet long!!

Yes, and in all of those cases there have been significant passages of time and improvements in technology.

Sorry, I just don't buy the rationalizations advanced. But then, I don't find the question of how to make this "fit" with previous Trek interesting either: it's simply a new version of the same material, a reboot, and I'm fine with that.

In most of the cases its only 40-50 years. Less time than between TOS and STNG.

RAMA

 

[miraclefan]

I prefer the ''BIGGER'' is ''BETTER'' idea!

 

[Gepard]

Bernd just put an update on Ex-Astris about the size of the ship, here. It seems he's accepted the evidence of a larger ship, but is refusing to use it on his site, preferring to continue to list the ship at 300 meters anyway. Pertinent passages:

But indeed, after further inspection of the various features of the ship, the windows on a 300m alternate Enterprise would be just 50cm tall. The docking ports would measure only 1.5m. This is smaller than on Probert's Enterprise refit, on which parts of the new design, most obviously the saucer, are based.
....

I have come to terms with the new Enterprise. I have accepted it as an alternate-universe version. But that was under the precondition that the ship was still some 300m long. Aside from not making much sense in-universe, there also a couple of real-world reasons why I hate the idea of the supersized Enterprise:

....

I will keep the size at 300m. Maybe I will eventually settle on a compromise of a barely 400m long ship, which would have about the same window sizes as the TMP Enterprise and 2m tall docking ports. But unless I want the new movie to decanonize itself with an absurdly sized new Enterprise, I will not accept the more than 700m length that someone in charge, apparently with problems to understand that there is no size competition among sci-fi franchises, may have deemed necessary. In spite of everything, I have a desire to maintain the continuity of the old and the brand new Star Trek. And this is why I keep defending the new Enterprise design in its original and reasonable size.

So. What a shame. I'd always admired Ex-Astris as a reference site--yeah, this may be the kind of work done by someone just a little too obsessed, but without it, would we know anything about the kitbashed ship models at Wolf 359? Doubtful. The site always was fair, even-handed and thoughtful before, even when I didn't always agree with his conclusions But Bernd just shredded whatever respectability he'd had as an objective researcher and author. It's kind of sad.

 

[Squiggy]

Bernd just put an update on Ex-Astris about the size of the ship, here. It seems he's accepted the evidence of a larger ship, but is refusing to use it on his site, preferring to continue to list the ship at 300 meters anyway. Pertinent passages:

But indeed, after further inspection of the various features of the ship, the windows on a 300m alternate Enterprise would be just 50cm tall. The docking ports would measure only 1.5m. This is smaller than on Probert's Enterprise refit, on which parts of the new design, most obviously the saucer, are based.
....

I have come to terms with the new Enterprise. I have accepted it as an alternate-universe version. But that was under the precondition that the ship was still some 300m long. Aside from not making much sense in-universe, there also a couple of real-world reasons why I hate the idea of the supersized Enterprise:

....

I will keep the size at 300m. Maybe I will eventually settle on a compromise of a barely 400m long ship, which would have about the same window sizes as the TMP Enterprise and 2m tall docking ports. But unless I want the new movie to decanonize itself with an absurdly sized new Enterprise, I will not accept the more than 700m length that someone in charge, apparently with problems to understand that there is no size competition among sci-fi franchises, may have deemed necessary. In spite of everything, I have a desire to maintain the continuity of the old and the brand new Star Trek. And this is why I keep defending the new Enterprise design in its original and reasonable size.

So. What a shame. I'd always admired Ex-Astris as a reference site--yeah, this may be the kind of work done by someone just a little too obsessed, but without it, would we know anything about the kitbashed ship models at Wolf 359? Doubtful. The site always was fair, even-handed and thoughtful before, even when I didn't always agree with his conclusions But Bernd just shredded whatever respectability he'd had as an objective researcher and author. It's kind of sad.

I predict that within 5 years, Bernd will be eating garbage out of a Sabarro's dumpster while covered in his own waste rambling about "meters" and "timeline...we have no time for timelines". I wonder if his poll makes him cry and if he'll just refuse the results and say that we're all the ones with the problem.

 

[ncc-1017-e]

I noticed that the new Enterprise looked a lot bigger when I saw the movie. When they did the shot of the shuttle bay, I thought it looked too big to be on the original sized Enterprise. Then I checked online to find some length figures and was shocked to see that they increased the size to somewhere between 762m and 914m. That's a huge increase in size. Not only did they double or triple the length, but you have to realize what that means in terms of overall volume (not only is it longer, it is taller and wider). If it is 762m, then by overall volume, it is approximately 18 times larger than the original Enterprise. If it is 914m, then by overall volume, it is approximately 31 times larger than the original Enterprise.

Here is a comparison chart I made up. It is to scale.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/7221/comparisongab.jpg

Nobody is certain of the exact size and there is some debate on the subject. However, it seems very likely that the size of this new ship is somewhere between 762m and 914m. Here is a thread over on startrekmovie.com on the subject.

http://www.startrekmovie.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7156

I'm not sure how I feel about it. It just seemed like an odd thing to do. I guess being fans of Star Wars, they were trying to increase the "wow" factor by increasing the scale of the ship.

Bullshit! There is no screen evidence to support this!

 

[ncc-1017-e]

^ yep and they built this thing on earth and got it into space! There is a major scaling problem in this movie! Nothing was thought out or worked out! It is all done willie nellie!

 

[Gepard]

It is all done willie nellie!

What's a legendary singer-songwriter got to do with the size of the Enterprise?

And are you replying to yourself?

 

[Sector 7]

It is all done willie nellie!

What's a legendary singer-songwriter got to do with the size of the Enterprise?

And are you replying to yourself?

My grandma always said, "It's one thing to talk to yourself, but if you start answering back... get help!"