How much does the Enterprise weigh?

[Santaman]

^^ Even the Ent D wouldn't have to depend on any SIF under normal conditions, I assume that even a D'Deridex wouldn't have a problem with flying around at moderate speeds without a sweat, things get different when you're accelerating with 1000G's and the like, thats when the SIF and everything alike comes into play, quite handy when you want to keep the crew from turning into a red-ish goo..

As for the rest, Roddenberry etc were thinking from a naval perspective, even talking about a sort of Hornblower in space, i don't believe that the big E was designed with lightness in mind, its a cuiser so its a big ass heavy metal machine with a thick skin, very elaborate and sturdy spaceframe and some very big guns which brings us back at the 190.000 ton figure which is fine with me for a standard load fully operational starship of that size.

 

[TIN_MAN]

On a related note (I think/hope) Here's the word-origins.com derivation of "Navy"...

"Latin nāvis ‘ship’ is the ultimate source of navy. In post-classical times it spawned an offspring nāvia ‘fleet’, which passed into English via Old French navie. Other Latin derivatives of nāvis were nāvālis, source of English naval (16th c.), and the verb nāvigāre ‘manage a ship’, from which English gets navigate (16th c.) (navvy (19th c.) originated as a colloquial abbreviation for navigator, a term applied to someone who dug ‘navigation canals’).

Nāvis was related to Greek naus ‘ship’, whose contributions to English include nautical (16th c.), nautilus (17th c.), nausea (16th c.) (etymologically ‘seasickness’), and, somewhat surprisingly, noise"

Since Starfleet uses the terms "ship" and "fleet" and they do a lot of "navigating" why wouldn't they be considered a navy? Mind you, I'm not insisting on the usage of the term, just food for thought? Carry on.

P.S. More on topic, I see the "SIF" not so much as a seperate generated field, but more like a set of "wave guides" built into the "spaceframe" that actually channel the warp field throughout the structure? This way, the integretity increases automatically "in synch" with the added warp velocity etc.?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You do realize that we're engaging in general comparisons, right? That no analogy we come up with is going to be a perfect match, right?

Absolutely. Just that some comparisons will be useful for what we're trying to do and some will not; moreover, even among useful ones, some comparisons will be far more useful than others.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I see the "SIF" not so much as a seperate generated field, but more like a set of "wave guides" built into the "spaceframe" that actually channel the warp field throughout the structure? This way, the integretity increases automatically "in synch" with the added warp velocity etc.?

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this is how some deflector systems function, judging by the positioning of "shield grids" all over the ship. They might also turn out to be essential in some way to warp drive itself for maneuvering and field control. That would be one possible explanation for the decco lines on the rim of the TMP saucer: warp field waveguides that help stabilize the field around the ship and enhance maneuverability.

I actually see SIF fields being an outgrowth of NX-01's polarized hull plating. Probably there are certain structures in the ship that are normally very flimsy but can become incredibly strong if enough power is channeled through them. That would give a starship the ability to "brace" itself for impacts and collisions like the way a boxer might tense his muscles to absorb a shot to the gut. Even if it isn't a critical system or a frequent plot device, it makes sense as something that might commonly work in the background of a normal vessel.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

So, I'm thinking hull and structural members of comparable weight and mass as their counterparts on present day Naval vessels, with an appropriate increase in strength and resilience that one would expect from a tritanium/duranium hull.

This is what I mean by fitting comparisons. Present day naval vessels are designed to be able to support their own weight in full gravity as well as the weight of their components. Alot of the load-bearing components in those vessels exist strictly to keep components in the superstructure from falling in and crushing things/people belowdecks. Starships only have to deal with ARTIFICIAL gravity and this is probably not continuous throughout the ship; it's more likely that the gravity net on each level only affects things on that level and has at best a minimal effect on the level above it, so your load-bearing requirements will be halved at least.

It can't be stressed enough that "extreme environment" isn't enough similarity to imply that naval engineering will be in any way useful for a starship. "Extreme" in the context of space flight has completely different implications; space craft have to deal with bombardment by ionizing radiation, cosmic rays, charged particles, micrometeorites, sudden and extreme temperature changes up to 200 degrees above or below freezing (or lower still if the ship is in interstellar space). Any of the above could easily cripple a submarine no matter how well it's constructed; to the farther extreme, many orbiters also have to deal with compressive airflow of atmospheric entry at speeds in excess of Mach 25, direct contact with superheated plasma at 30,000 degrees combined with sustained accelerations of three to six gravities; even the sturdiest naval vessels would probably disintegrate under such conditions.

So I'm thinking hull structures of comparable weight and mass to reusable spaceraft is a better starting point, then scale up by volume until you reach something the size of the Enterprise. Given technological advancement, it's likely that follow-in technologies of the 23rd century would probably have the same weights with far greater capabilities, so if anything scaling up from a space shuttle or an X-37 would result in a baseline UPPER limit for the ship's mass.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The space shuttle isn't designed to take the kind of punishment a starship would face, even under ideal conditions, never mind combat. Even the Galileo could fly circles around our primitive space shuttle.

Time to broaden your horizons a tad.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The space shuttle isn't designed to take the kind of punishment a starship would face even under ideal conditions,

Neither are submarines... speaking of fitting analogies.

Let's go down the list:
- Micrometeorite collisions
- Temperature extremes greater than 400 degrees
- Sustained accelerations up to 7-Gs
- Ionizing radiation and cosmic ray bombardment
- Direct sustained contact with superheated plasma (30,000 degrees)
- Hypersonic atmospheric flight (if you can call it flight)
- Pinpoint maneuvering and stationkeeping

Which of the above environmental factors are naval vessels designed to cope with?

Now, on the assumption that there are some other mysterious factors starships face that modern orbiters don't, let's again go down the list:

- Direct contact with VERY high concentrations of radiation and cosmic rays
- Extreme cold close to 400 below zero
- Contact with micrometors at relativistic velocities
- Electrical interference from ionized particles
- Sustained accelerations of several dozen gravities for long periods of time.

This already rules out the shuttle since these are features faced by interplanetary space craft. I can name off the top of my head three such craft specifically designed to cope with these types of hazards; can you think of any naval vessels?

BTW, if you can think of any other environmental hazard faced by starships beyond those I've already listed, PLEASE, don't hesitate to list them.

Even the Galileo could fly circles around our primitive space shuttle.

It would fly circles around a submarine too. Rather easily, I should think, since submarines cannot fly.

Time to broaden your horizons a tad.

It requires a BROAD horizon to think submarines are better at flying in space than space ships?

 

[Warped9]

It requires a BROAD horizon to think submarines are better at flying in space than space ships?

And THIS is where the confusion is coming from. No one said anything about a submarine being suited for flying through space. The analogy was that a submarine is the closest thing we have to the experience of being aboard a deep space starship. Enclosed airtight environment where the only way to navigate is purely by instrumentation. We're not talking about constructing a starship like a submarine.

Contemporary aircraft and spacecraft would be a fair starting point to extrapolate from and scale up, but we still don't have anything remotely like the Enterprise.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It requires a BROAD horizon to think submarines are better at flying in space than space ships?

And THIS is where the confusion is coming from. No one said anything about a submarine being suited for flying through space. The analogy was that a submarine is the closest thing we have to the experience of being aboard a deep space starship. Enclosed airtight environment where the only way to navigate is purely by instrumentation. We're not talking about constructing a starship like a submarine.

WE (you and I) are not. CRA and a few others, however, ARE.

I fully agree the experience is likely very similar, in fact we have Malcolm Reed's word for it in Enterprise where he occasionally compares his service on the Enterprise with his brief stint in the Royal Navy. Significantly, submariners and astronauts alike have made the comparison dozens of times in the real world; Robert Ballard, taking Alvin to the ocean floor for the first time, described "an environment as alien as the moon." And certainly the analogy does fit.

The thing is: "hull and structural members of comparable weight and mass as their counterparts on present day Naval vessels" isn't an analogy, it's an engineering assessment, with the implication being that the design of a starship would have more in common with the design of a naval vessel than a space craft. My response is and has been "No it does not," because analogies aside, naval vessels are NOT space ships, they are not designed to fly in space, let alone in DEEP space, and therefore starships will not draw in any significant way from the design of naval vessels in the future.

we still don't have anything remotely like the Enterprise.

Yes we do. The Enterprise is a space ship; it is an incredibly large and sophisticated space ship built with technology we do not have, but it is still, in fact, a space ship. It is therefore "remotely" like space ships we have today; the comparison is called for just by virtue of their being the same type of vehicle.

Likewise: we do have things that are remotely similar to Deep Space Nine. It is a space station; a large and sophisticated space station, but still a space station. It is therefore "Remotely" like the ISS and the Mir (and even like Skylab), and the comparison is called for just by virtue of their being the same type of facility. What's interesting is that, in this latter case, it's harder (for some) to compare DS9 to something other than a space station. We don't really have "water stations" of a comparable analogy; the best you can do is a harbor or a port somewhere, but that analogy quickly falls apart by virtue of the station's isolation, its dependence on other ships for the transport of material and personnel, all while at the same time facing the same environmental hazards of space ships themselves. The closest navy analog to a space station is still, even now, largely in the realm of science fiction.

 

[Captain Robert April]

 

[blssdwlf]

BTW, if you can think of any other environmental hazard faced by starships beyond those I've already listed, PLEASE, don't hesitate to list them.

Here are some TOS specific ones

• Greater than 1 atmosphere external hull pressure (no top number given) - "Who Mourns for Adonais?"
• Unshielded atmospheric flight - "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
• Unshielded immersion in space protoplasm and withstanding shockwave/explosion - "The Immunity Syndrome"
• Magnetic/ion storms producing pressure, vibrations and capable of pulling starships great distances - "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Court Martial", etc
• "Turbulent waves of space displacement" - "City on the Edge of Forever"
• Tractor beams capable of stopping the Enterprise while even at warp - "Corbomite Maneuver", "Doomsday Machine", etc
• Warp power (as in too much) - "The Changeling"
• >10 G Impulse acceleration - "Squire of Gothos"
• Flying right up to a star - "Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Operation: Annihilate"

And a couple of TFS ones

• >100 G Impulse acceleration - "The Motion Picture"
• Fighting in a dense nebula capable of bringing a starship to a stop upon entrance - "The Wrath of Khan"

There are probably a few more that I can't remember though...

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Can somebody draw up a 10G acceleration curve? How many seconds, to how much velocity?

 

[blssdwlf]

10G is approx 98 m/s2 so in 10s = 2,192 mph, 60s = 13152 mph, etc

Considering how fast from the bridge viewer the ship seems to break orbit/scoot away from planet, the acceleration could be much higher than 10G.

The TMP reference is for Earth to Jupiter in 1.8 hours, accelerating to Warp 0.5

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But 1.8 hours to Jupiter is a VELOCITY of between .25 and .5C. ANY level of acceleration would have to produce high relativistic velocities relatively quickly in order to cover that kind of distance. It couldn't be traditional acceleration as we understand it; even at a thousand Gs it would take the better part of a week to reach those velocities. Futuristic material or not, NOTHING is going to withstand those kinds of G-forces; your impulse engine will probably tear off its mount the instant you fire it up.

For the TMP instance (and it is fairly unique) you could say they were channeling impulse power into the warp drives to achieve "sub-warp" speed, hence the reason Kirk ordered a fractional warp factor instead of "full impulse power" or something like that as in other references. Beyond which, outside of TMP accelerations visibly accounted are closer to 10 to 15Gs maximum, usually much lower.

• Greater than 1 atmosphere external hull pressure (no top number given) - "Who Mourns for Adonais?"
• Unshielded atmospheric flight - "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
• Unshielded immersion in space protoplasm and withstanding shockwave/explosion - "The Immunity Syndrome"
• Magnetic/ion storms producing pressure, vibrations and capable of pulling starships great distances - "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Court Martial", etc
• "Turbulent waves of space displacement" - "City on the Edge of Forever"
• Tractor beams capable of stopping the Enterprise while even at warp - "Corbomite Maneuver", "Doomsday Machine", etc
• Warp power (as in too much) - "The Changeling"
• >10 G Impulse acceleration - "Squire of Gothos"
• Flying right up to a star - "Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Operation: Annihilate"

Apart from unshielded atmospheric flight, it strikes me that the best points of comparisons will all come from interplanetary space craft. The problem is that most of these are unmanned probes so the introduction of crew spaces will screw things up, so in this case I think the best candidate for comparison would be the Soviet TKS module they used on Mir and Salyut. It wasn't designed for interplanetary flight, of course, but given the shit that happened to the Mir over the years (all the while remaining intact) it seems to me a pretty fitting analog.

TKS has a habitable volume of about 45 cubic meters. It IS roughly cylindrical, with a length of 13.2 meters and a diameter of 4.15 meters for a TOTAL volume of (approximately) 320 cubic meters. I'll get back to habitable volume in a minute.

From the volumetrics page, we know Enterprise has a volume of about 216,000 cubic meters. TKS at 320 cubic meters weighed 17 tons; it included 12 tons of payload and 4 tons of fuel for a total loaded weight of about 33 tons. That's a density--FULLY LOADED--of about 103 kilograms per cubic meter.

Those densities, of course, reflect modern construction materials and design principles for space craft, but in my mind it's unlikely the principles are going to change dramatically in the next few centuries, only the materials. So using TKS' vessel density as a baseline, a starship at 216,000 cubic meters would have a loaded mass of 22,248 tons. Mind you, this is the mass of the Enterprise IF it was made entirely out of TKS modules. TKS is a sturdy craft, but it might not be sturdy enough to stand up to alot of these pressures. So add a reinforced load-bearing "outer hull" in the exact shape of the Enterprise to encapsulate those modules. The outer hull is shiny and important, but its disposable; all it has to do is hold its shape under stress, it doesn't have to retain atmospheric pressure or support the weight of the ship's internal components. The same site tells us Enterprise has a SURFACE AREA of 60,700 square meters; if you assume the outer hull is about a ten centimeters thick, AND if you assume that it's made out of depleted uranium (d.uranium anyone?) then your ship is encased in 6,070 cubic meters of uranium with a total mass of 115,330kg.

I think this gives us a good upper and lower limit to play with: the extreme lower limit of about 23,000 tons (using modern-day design principles) and the extreme upper limit of 138,400 tons (modern day design principles combined with an heavy armored shell). Now, the other thing to remember is that for the TKS spacecraft only 15% of its internal volume is actually habitable (20% for space station modules). Enterprise is probably more like 60% habitable volume, so that'll screw around with the density figure about; the presence of strong but lightweight materials will ALSO screw around with the density figures, especially if the outer hull is made of something considerably less dense than depleted uranium (the ship would only weigh about 80,000 tons if the outer hull were made of lead).

 

[Captain Robert April]

 

[blssdwlf]

But 1.8 hours to Jupiter is a VELOCITY of between .25 and .5C. ANY level of acceleration would have to produce high relativistic velocities relatively quickly in order to cover that kind of distance. It couldn't be traditional acceleration as we understand it; even at a thousand Gs it would take the better part of a week to reach those velocities. Futuristic material or not, NOTHING is going to withstand those kinds of G-forces; your impulse engine will probably tear off its mount the instant you fire it up.

Probably tens of thousands of Gs. But I think this is where we're going to disagree: The Real World doesn't always apply to TOS. (Or better put, TOS can do things we can't imagine possible.) Now with that said, the impulse engines were probably doing something to help keep the ship together

For the TMP instance (and it is fairly unique) you could say they were channeling impulse power into the warp drives to achieve "sub-warp" speed, hence the reason Kirk ordered a fractional warp factor instead of "full impulse power" or something like that as in other references. Beyond which, outside of TMP accelerations visibly accounted are closer to 10 to 15Gs maximum, usually much lower.

I think you've got the right idea, but not the right propulsion system. It looked more like the Impulse engines were used to accelerate to sub-warp speeds (revisiting the old FTL-impulse). Since the TOS impulse engines aren't just simple fusion rockets, we can assume that there is another effect going on to help out on the acceleration

As far as other instances, here are 2 (cause I just watched them on dvd ) there are probably more examples though

Squire of Gothos - "Full power acceleration from orbit".
I'm estimating she's accelerating to .28c and even assuming a high starting velocity, it's well in excess of 10,000G

"Tomorrow is Yesterday" - a much more leisurely departure. This is the Enterprise leaving orbit, prior to Kirk calling "Warp Factor 3". Accelerating to about .03c and assuming a high starting velocity, acceleration is above 10,000G.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Newtype Alpha,

Well, some of your estimates may be flawed here. The Constitution class is not entirely cylindrical and has components such as the primary hull that are disc-shaped. This would have significant effects on hull strength figures. The ship would have a number of systems the TKS wouldn't have such as inertial dampers and artificial gravity and a much larger fuel capacity. Additionally not everything scales up evenly.

Regardless I think it would be perfectly do-able to have a Constitution-Class vessel with a mass of 50,000 to 60,000 tons if not lighter


Blssdwlf,

Well, what's the fastest acceleration level ever produced by a self-propelled vehicle?

I assume it would be logical for the purposes of sublight-acceleration to use both the impulse engines and the warp-drive as it would produce more acceleration and not to mention any accelration produced by the warp-drive wouldn't be felt by the crew.

 

[blssdwlf]

@CuttingEdge100

Here's a link to various examples of acceleration by G force:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force

Basically, in "Squire of Gothos" the Enterprise shot out like a bullet away from the planet.

As far as scaling up stuff - I think whatever it is needs to be scaled up and account for acceleration in all directions. IIRC, we should not just scale something up without beefing up the internal structure to handle all the extra stress (kinda like the classic 50' monster ant example).

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Newtype Alpha,

Well, some of your estimates may be flawed here. The Constitution class is not entirely cylindrical and has components such as the primary hull that are disc-shaped. This would have significant effects on hull strength figures. The ship would have a number of systems the TKS wouldn't have such as inertial dampers and artificial gravity and a much larger fuel capacity. Additionally not everything scales up evenly.

I'm aware of all of that. Like I said, these are just ESTIMATES to get a ballpark figure. The presence of inertial dampeners, artificial gravity, emergency bulkheads, and varying internal arrangements will change things around a bit, not to mention fuel distribution (although I do think Enterprise has a LOWER mass ratio than TKS).

Just a starting point, is all I'm saying. That plus the fact that it's still possible the Enterprise is built with a double hull configuration and its inner hull may very well be a type of modular construction underneath a hardened outer hull that may or may not even be load-bearing.

Regardless I think it would be perfectly do-able to have a Constitution-Class vessel with a mass of 50,000 to 60,000 tons if not lighter

Agreed.

I assume it would be logical for the purposes of sublight-acceleration to use both the impulse engines and the warp-drive as it would produce more acceleration and not to mention any accelration produced by the warp-drive wouldn't be felt by the crew.

For TOS and similar productions I generally assume that the warp engines are ALWAYS being used at some low level or another, just that they may or may not be getting their power from the impulse drives instead of the matter-antimatter reactor. This requires alot more fuel than the main reactor (and even more fuel than using the impulse engines kinetically as in orbit changes, assuming the TOS ship even bothers to do this) but it is a good way to achieve more precise control of the warp drives that otherwise may not be possible with matter/antimatter reactors.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

As far as scaling up stuff - I think whatever it is needs to be scaled up and account for acceleration in all directions. IIRC, we should not just scale something up without beefing up the internal structure to handle all the extra stress (kinda like the classic 50' monster ant example).

Doesn't work that way with modular construction. If they're being held together with a support frame, the real variable is how much frame material you need to ensure the integrity of any small group of modules. With only a few exceptions, this allows you to spread the entire load evenly throughout the entire structure no matter how large it gets (the exceptions being certain shapes and configurations that provide too much stress in a handful of places).

On a ship shaped like Enterprise the primary stress points would be pretty easy to spot and they're the ones that would require the most reinforcement. The connecting dorsel between the saucer and the secondary hull is probably the biggest one; since the impulse engine and RCS thrusters are in the saucer section anyway, the biggest concern there will be the torque on the neck structure and possibly the nacelle pylons and the nacelles themselves. OTOH, if the ship is maneuvering mainly with warp drives or some other type of field propulsion system, mechanical stress might not even matter all that.