D'Deridex Turbolift System

[James Wright]

Being 4,440' long, the Romulan D'Deridex is probably one of the largest starships seen in Star Trek, do you think the way the ship was designed it's turbolift system is no more expansive then that of the Galaxy class starship?

James

 

[JNG]

I can only say that I would hope it's a speedy system, or people who are somewhere up in the middle of the top hull and have to get to the middle of the bottom one would have an annoyingly long elevator ride. Maybe this is a reason why Romulans are so salty lots of the time.

 

[Praetor]

From what I've heard from Mr. Probert, the "head"/upper shell/lower shell are pretty well divided between command/living, engineering, and cargo/support facilities, so presumably one would either have his/her quarters near where he/she worked, or worst case scenario the average centurion might only go from, say, his quarters in the "head" to the engine room and back for his daily work. "Localization" as it were.

But yeah, I suspect it's a rather expansive network in any case. I need to get cracking at that MSD...

 

[JNG]

If each deck is 3.5 meters high, that type of ship has over 100 decks!

:steps into turbolift: "Deck 102."

Romulans. Can't live with 'em...

...pass the beer nuts.

 

[Praetor]

^

'Oy, we built our ships gigantic even pre-Abrams, unlike you Earthers.

 

[Santaman]

I like the D'Deridex a lot.. Andrew Probert made a great looking ship.

 

[Praetor]

He sure does.

 

[Thor Damar]

^

'Oy, we built our ships gigantic even pre-Abrams, unlike you Earthers.

Ha, small and efficient, that's what a warship should be. A true model of Cardassian elegance.

 

[James Wright]

There's a lot of empty space between the nacelles and the upper and lower hulls, although the D'Deridex is more than twice the length of a Galaxy class starship, wouldn't 45 or 50 decks be a better deck count?

James

 

[Mister_Atoz]

I've always taken the "twice the size of the Galaxy" figure to be first season hooey, that first shot where it seems to dwarf the Enterprise could be reinterpreted as a perspective thing, since it is ever after shown to be comparable in size to the Galaxy Class or hell, it doesn't look that much bigger than the Galor class in most cases.

 

[Praetor]

^

'Oy, we built our ships gigantic even pre-Abrams, unlike you Earthers.

Ha, small and efficient, that's what a warship should be. A true model of Cardassian elegance.

That worked out well for you guys. (Like a Romulan would be one to talk... )

I've always taken the "twice the size of the Galaxy" figure to be first season hooey, that first shot where it seems to dwarf the Enterprise could be reinterpreted as a perspective thing, since it is ever after shown to be comparable in size to the Galaxy Class or hell, it doesn't look that much bigger than the Galor class in most cases.

According to Mr. Probert, it was the original intention that it really be that big; it was only later scaling decisions that made it smaller than the original artistic intention. Personally, I'm inclined to assume all the latter scaling was a perspective trick, but I might be a bit biased.

There's a lot of empty space between the nacelles and the upper and lower hulls, although the D'Deridex is more than twice the length of a Galaxy class starship, wouldn't 45 or 50 decks be a better deck count?

James

Ye must recall that the head and connecting "tail" span the height of the ship even in the empty space, and have decks with visible windows, so from dorsal to ventral there really would be around 100 or so. I think the bigger question is, would they number them from top to bottom, in section, or how?

 

[James Wright]

Well. a few years back I e-mailed Andrew Probert and asked about the D'Deridex class warbird length and he gave the number listed above in my first post. I doubt he'd know how many decks the D'Deridex class warbird has!?

James

 

[Praetor]

I wasn't questioning your length measure. (It does work out to be about double the Galaxy's 2103.02 feet, btw) I'm not sure that he ever counted them, but he did do an comparison drawing that I'm not sure that I'm allowed to share.

 

[James Wright]

I thought the Galaxy class starships were 2,108 ft. lg.?


James

 

[Praetor]

Well, I reversed 641 meters. So, with rounding and all, probably.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Being 4,440' long, the Romulan D'Deridex is probably one of the largest starships seen in Star Trek, do you think the way the ship was designed it's turbolift system is no more expansive then that of the Galaxy class starship?

James

I would LOVE to see the D'Deridex be the first Trek ship with decks that don't all share parallel planes. In which case, this ship would be an ideal candidate for something I, personally, very much want to see - spherical lift cars.

 

[JNG]

It never got scaled to below a kilometer, and I think the vast majority of the shots allow it to be the length intended by the designer. It seems to me a case where there is no particular reason to deny the designer's intention; for me, it's kind of interesting to think about what the Romulans have been up to that has guided them to build a respectable number of ships that are so big. Though I am sure they have some, they clearly aren't focusing on stripped-down, Spartan warships like some Trek powers, and this represents a deliberate change from the submarine-like cramped spaces with which their BOP was depicted in TOS; I imagine there are Roms out there on long voyages of exploration, especially with their easy-to-refuel quantum singularity drives. Upon their return, they hint at other matters that have kept them busy. Aside from off and on feuding with the Klingons, I wonder what they were up to.

If the density is similar to Voyager, one of these ships is north of thirty million tons.

As for height, it's 1,224 feet high at Probert's quoted length, so anyone who wants to check the height of sets used to represent it could make rough guesses about how many would fit in there.

A Romulan ship designer on the subject: ""

I would LOVE to see the D'Deridex be the first Trek ship with decks that don't all share parallel planes. In which case, this ship would be an ideal candidate for something I, personally, very much want to see - spherical lift cars.

What do you think would be some advantages of a nonparallel deck structure like that? This reminds me the ship was originally to be vertically oriented.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

A Romulan ship designer on the subject: ""

I would LOVE to see the D'Deridex be the first Trek ship with decks that don't all share parallel planes. In which case, this ship would be an ideal candidate for something I, personally, very much want to see - spherical lift cars.

What do you think would be some advantages of a nonparallel deck structure like that? This reminds me the ship was originally to be vertically oriented.

Well, for me, as an engineer, I tend to think of the functionality first.

So a ship's general arrangement and construction is going to be driven, not by some "wouldn't it look cool if we did this" as much as it's going to be driven by "we need these bits of hardware, in this orientation to each other, held together by this much structure."

Once you have that, then... and only then... do you start stringing "space condos" into the spaces in between those mechanical systems.

One has to assume that there's a functional reason, at least as much as a stylistic one, for the D'Deridex to be laid out as it is. The "twin clam-shell halves" hull structure isn't exactly conducive to laying in rational deck-plans if you assume every habitable space must be paralle to every other habitable space, is it?

But... what if the "decks" in the twin-clamshells are, rather, arranged so "up" is always normal to the hull surface (or nearly so in any case)? It might seem a bit disorienting in a smaller vessel... walking the length from one nacelle to the next would involve walking over a significant curved region. But in a ship as large as a D'Deridex... you'd barely notice.

It just seems to me that the internal layout of those structures would lend themselves more towards the "normal to surface" deck layout than towards the "everything parallel" deck layout.

FYI, the reason I like the spherical-lift-car concept is that it can reorient itself to whatever location it's arriving at without requiring any special hardware. This doesn't work in a ship like Enterprise (any of them, so far, with the possible exception of the -J) but for the D'Deridex... well, the amount of space you save by going with "normals" deck layout would more than compensate for the slightly larger lift-tube runs.

Anyway, that's MY take...

 

[Myasishchev]

I always figured the double-wing was to take advantage of lift for a combat or emergency landing/crashing. Of course it's not very aerodynamic, as could be easily demonstrated by throwing a D'D model across the room, so this might be a bad explanation.

 

[JNG]

Well, Mr. Probert wanted to maintain line of sight between the warp nacelles, so that's why the unusual double-hull feature is on the model (and distinctiveness is always good). The Romulan version of warp drive might derive significant advantages from this, or perhaps the large size would make it a bad idea not to do this.

It is also possible that there is some way to sling cargo modules or something along the hulls, making use of the space between them. This would illustrate the value of the huge size as well; you could probably haul enough at a time to get a listening post or small colony set up!

And while it could be all of these, my favorite idea about the double hull is that it has something to do with optimal cloaking function. Wouldn't it be interesting if the cloaking field had multiple lobes like a warp field and somehow redirected signals so they passed through the "clean" space at the center of the ship instead of always having to bend them all the way around the outside of a spherical or oblong field? I can imagine the advantages of this.

I wish we'd gotten to see one of these on the big screen.