Starship Size Argument™ thread

[JarodRussell]

Not at all. Part of Star Trek "philosophy" was extremely advanced invisible ubiquitous technology (an idea that companies like Apple pursue as well). Everythings clean and hidden, even in engineering. In TOS mostly because of budget, but ever since TMP because of purpose.

It's the difference between a 1950s car engine and a modern car engine (or even an electric engine). Between a computer workstation from the 70s and an iPhone. Or between an ISS module and a MIR module. Or between the cable spaghetti of an old desktop computer and the cable less bluetooth systems of today. Heck, the difference between a 100 year old brewery and a modern brewery.

All that visible piping and plating and circuiting goes against that idea.

 

[ATimson]

Not at all. Part of Star Trek "philosophy" was extremely advanced invisible ubiquitous technology (an idea that companies like Apple pursue as well). Everythings clean and hidden, even in engineering. In TOS mostly because of budget, but ever since TMP because of purpose.

Apple can afford to throw out your old iPod and give you a replacement under warranty, rather than trying to repair something so fiddly. Scotty doesn't exactly have that same choice where the warp core is concerned; some access to the guts would still be necessary on a regular basis.

In TNG, they hid that kind of stuff behind that "fusebox" panel in main engineering, or shoved it into the Jeffries tubes. The new movies keep with the "hide it" philosophy on the "user facing" parts of the ship, but not down in engineering. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

 

[Belz...]

There's an idiot moment in TWOK when during the 'energize defense screens' bit, somebody splices in 2 cuts of a modern console that has ZERO continuity with everything else in the show. But Abrams basically does half his ship that way.

I guarantee that boiler rooms will still look the same in 300 years.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Not at all. Part of Star Trek "philosophy" was extremely advanced invisible ubiquitous technology (an idea that companies like Apple pursue as well). Everythings clean and hidden, even in engineering. In TOS mostly because of budget, but ever since TMP because of purpose.

But doesn't that work against easy access for maintenance and replacing parts? And even accepting that Starfleet-Prime liked to keep the inner workings of their starships hidden, isn't it possible that in the AU they went "Fuck it" and decided on a giant open-plan engineering section?

It's the difference between a 1950s car engine and a modern car engine (or even an electric engine). Between a computer workstation from the 70s and an iPhone. Or between an ISS module and a MIR module. Or between the cable spaghetti of an old desktop computer and the cable less bluetooth systems of today. Heck, the difference between a 100 year old brewery and a modern brewery.

All that visible piping and plating and circuiting goes against that idea.

But it's all visible in the original! Yes the new version is more densely cluttered, but I maintain that what's in the TOS and STXI engine rooms is the same. I'd even go so far as to suggest that TOS episodes like "Court Martial" and "The Enemy Within" implied an engineering section far larger and more maze-like than they were able to depict.

 

[BillJ]

In TNG, they hid that kind of stuff behind that "fusebox" panel in main engineering, or shoved it into the Jeffries tubes. The new movies keep with the "hide it" philosophy on the "user facing" parts of the ship, but not down in engineering. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

I like the hybrid mechanical look. Things that you would need quick and easy access to are there out in the open. Wish my mother-in-laws car air filter were someplace out in the open and easy to get at.

 

[Gonzo]

In TNG, they hid that kind of stuff behind that "fusebox" panel in main engineering, or shoved it into the Jeffries tubes. The new movies keep with the "hide it" philosophy on the "user facing" parts of the ship, but not down in engineering. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

I like the hybrid mechanical look. Things that you would need quick and easy access to are there out in the open. Wish my mother-in-laws car air filter were someplace out in the open and easy to get at.

To me it makes it look more realistic and it also means a larger open area for action shots (Scotty stuck in the pipes for instance).

I think tons of plastic looking panelling is not going to cut it in 2013, in the 80's it may have looked futuristic but now it just looks cheap and nasty, I especially liked the new warp core used in Into Darkness (you know the scene I mean).

When I saw the engineering area I didn't automatically think brewery at all, it looked good to me and gave an excellent indication of the size of the NUEnterprise, same goes for the more realistic and fit for purpose shuttle bay.

In the original series I hated the tiny little shuttle bay and engineering which for a ship that was supposed to be going on a 5 year extended mission felt way too small, what was acceptable in the 70's/80's simply wont cut it in 2013.

 

[gerbil]

I think the "panel-free" ideal of Gene Roddenberry looks antiquated in this era. There's got to be a strong functionality in design ethos now. I never would have thought it was a brewery until people started whinging about it online. I think it fits just fine in a massive ship that is going to need maintenance. Plus--even though it's a fanon explanation--I think it fits with the idea that Starfleet was jolted by the attacks on the Kelvin and Vulcan into investing in different technological developments than they had in the original series.

 

[drt]

In TNG, they hid that kind of stuff behind that "fusebox" panel in main engineering, or shoved it into the Jeffries tubes. The new movies keep with the "hide it" philosophy on the "user facing" parts of the ship, but not down in engineering. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

I like the hybrid mechanical look. Things that you would need quick and easy access to are there out in the open.

I concur.

After seeing ST'09 my friend commented, "That's the first Enterprise I've seen on screen that I'd believe had a working toilet."

 

[Gonzo]

In TNG, they hid that kind of stuff behind that "fusebox" panel in main engineering, or shoved it into the Jeffries tubes. The new movies keep with the "hide it" philosophy on the "user facing" parts of the ship, but not down in engineering. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

I like the hybrid mechanical look. Things that you would need quick and easy access to are there out in the open.

I concur.

After seeing ST'09 my friend commented, "That's the first Enterprise I've seen on screen that I'd believe had a working toilet."

I could not agree more!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This and this, before it enters the mouth of the shuttlebay and while it's in the mouth.

Which demonstrates WHAT, exactly? Other than the fact that, as I said earlier, the engineering hull of the ship ALL BY ITSELF is the size of an aircraft carrier?

That brewery is highly unrealistic, Abrams should have used money to actually design an engineering set instead of using a beer brewery...

Because being a film director comes with the ability to magically pull money out of your ass just because some guy on the internet thinks you should.

I'm looking at the brewery they used on google earth and the brewery itself could fit in a ship that was smaller than 725 meters.

But nothing else could, especially in the engineering hull.

 

[JarodRussell]

Not at all. Part of Star Trek "philosophy" was extremely advanced invisible ubiquitous technology (an idea that companies like Apple pursue as well). Everythings clean and hidden, even in engineering. In TOS mostly because of budget, but ever since TMP because of purpose.

But doesn't that work against easy access for maintenance and replacing parts? And even accepting that Starfleet-Prime liked to keep the inner workings of their starships hidden, isn't it possible that in the AU they went "Fuck it" and decided on a giant open-plan engineering section?

It's the difference between a 1950s car engine and a modern car engine (or even an electric engine). Between a computer workstation from the 70s and an iPhone. Or between an ISS module and a MIR module. Or between the cable spaghetti of an old desktop computer and the cable less bluetooth systems of today. Heck, the difference between a 100 year old brewery and a modern brewery.

All that visible piping and plating and circuiting goes against that idea.

But it's all visible in the original! Yes the new version is more densely cluttered, but I maintain that what's in the TOS and STXI engine rooms is the same. I'd even go so far as to suggest that TOS episodes like "Court Martial" and "The Enemy Within" implied an engineering section far larger and more maze-like than they were able to depict.

It's not about size, it's about technique!

We've seen so many times in Trek, even in TOS, when they need to access something, they take off a plate that hides all the stuff. If there's nothing to repair, everything is clean and tidy, automated, etc... I also wonder why the nuTransporter Room is clean and tidied up when underneath your atoms and molecules are scrambled, buffered and sent thousands of kilometers through space. That's a giant machine that needs particle acceleration, magnetic fields, cooling, and exotic technobabble. Why can that be hidden cleanly, but engineering is such a mess?

nuTrek looks dated (and will even more in the future), and inconsistent. They have manual valves everywhere, but when Scotty gets trapped inside the pipes, Kirk uses a touch screen to release him. Another moment that made me shake my head was when they enter that remote Delta Vega outpost and there's flickering neon tubes and TFT displays. Those will look as dated as the CRT displays in 2001 or Alien in ten years, when affordable OLEDs hit us.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

NX01 was a disaster in the details. contemporary computer fans visible on the helm killed it right off the bat, just like having a tube-powered oscilloscope would.

Tube powered what now?

There's an idiot moment in TWOK when during the 'energize defense screens' bit, somebody splices in 2 cuts of a modern console that has ZERO continuity with everything else in the show.

You slept through all of the Regula-1 scenes, didn't you?

 

[trevanian]

I don't know what that is supposed to be, but it is in McCoy's office too, not just on the cargo set of Khan's I'm pretty sure. More ModernProps stuff that was wholly inappropriate.

Regula 1 is ModernProps galore too, but I don't recall anything looking as basd as those two cuts during the energize defense line. Then again, those consoles they have in TUC's bakery (that also turn up in UNDER SIEGE) are pretty screamingly contemporary also)

 

[James]

That brewery is highly unrealistic, Abrams should have used money to actually design an engineering set instead of using a beer brewery, he even left the brewery's skylight windows in the top of the engineering section. I'm looking at the brewery they used on google earth and the brewery itself could fit in a ship that was smaller than 725 meters. The building with all the tanks and pipes is smaller than the sorting and packaging building. The eastern most part when measured from the last building to the street is 1480 feet. The trouble is we never get any kind of technical graphic that explains everything, That being said, I'm just going to let my imagination guess since their sets do not connect to each other to form a ship that people can accurately figure out.

IMO the engineering sections in Star Trek and Into Darkness are the same as those we saw in TOS, but on a far larger scale:

There is no chance that the brewery would fit into an Enterprise with a 30m wide engineering hull, as would be the case on a 366m/1200ft Enterprise. It would need to be far larger.... say, 725m/2380ft?

As for where everything fits, I made this way back at the start of the thread. Again, I think the only reason you cannot figure it out is because you're working from a faulty assumption - that this Enterprise is about the same size as the old one (300ish meters), when the makers of the film have said and shown repeatedly that their Enterprise is around 725m long.

You labeled the dilithium intermix chamber on the floor of the TOS Enterprise' engineering as a tank, that makes me wonder if you've ever watched the original Star Trek. The image below that is also mislabeled, the "pipes" behind the grid are power transfer conduits and so is the fancy looking conduit next to Kirk and Spock. Your diagram has a purple area that's labeled as shuttlebay 2 when it fact that's where the aft torpedo launcher is. The shuttlebay lost a bunch of it's shuttle racks in favor of the platform that scotty protested the new torpedoes on and that platform also connects to the broadside retrofit torpedo launcher area. As seen in the movie.

 

[bullethead]

We've seen so many times in Trek, even in TOS, when they need to access something, they take off a plate that hides all the stuff. If there's nothing to repair, everything is clean and tidy, automated, etc... I also wonder why the nuTransporter Room is clean and tidied up when underneath your atoms and molecules are scrambled, buffered and sent thousands of kilometers through space. That's a giant machine that needs particle acceleration, magnetic fields, cooling, and exotic technobabble. Why can that be hidden cleanly, but engineering is such a mess?

Look up SUBSAFE (there might be a space between the SUB and the SAFE). The US Navy found out the hard way that putting panels over critical engineering infrastructure is very bad when you need to get to it quickly in a crisis. And given how little people use transporters in nuTrek, it seems pretty clear that the transporter ranks lower in priority for quick access to the mechanical guts than the stuff that runs the ship.

nuTrek looks dated (and will even more in the future), and inconsistent. They have manual valves everywhere, but when Scotty gets trapped inside the pipes, Kirk uses a touch screen to release him. Another moment that made me shake my head was when they enter that remote Delta Vega outpost and there's flickering neon tubes and TFT displays. Those will look as dated as the CRT displays in 2001 or Alien in ten years, when affordable OLEDs hit us.

Of course it's going to look dated, it's one time period's idea of what the future will be like. That's like saying TNG-era Trek is dated for making everyone use LCARS-like displays. At least the pipe touchscreen made sense considering the location of the pipe and what it's function was.

As for the valves, I was just happy that Starfleet finally had decent manual backups.

 

[James]

Here is the Vengeance above the eastern tip of the island and right before it goes for a short swim.

Did you read my post about Alcatraz being crushed by this ship ? It's HUGE.

Only the eastern lighthouse part of the prison was crushed, every other part of it was left intact.

 

[F. King Daniel]

You labeled the dilithium intermix chamber on the floor of the TOS Enterprise' engineering as a tank, that makes me wonder if you've ever watched the original Star Trek. The image below that is also mislabeled, the "pipes" behind the grid are power transfer conduits and so is the fancy looking conduit next to Kirk and Spock.

They're as much a tanks and pipes as the things in STXI and ID are.

Star Trek ran from 1966-1969, and at no point during that were the functions of anything in the engine room established. They were just bits of vaguely futuristic machinery. 1969's The Making of Star Trek (co-author: Gene Roddenberry) puts engineering at the rear of the saucer section and speaks of self-contained energy generating warp nacelles. The 1975's Star Fleet Technical Manual and USS Enterprise Booklet of General Plans by Franz Joseph follow this, putting engineering on deck 7 - that thing in the centre of the room is labelled the "Impulse Syncrotron unit" and the pipes behind the mesh are the sides of the two massive impulse engines. It's only in more recent (1994-present) technical publications that have retroactively applied TNG-era technobabble to the TOS Enterprise. I believe the Star Trek Fact Files in 1999 put engineering on deck 19 and call that thing the "matter/antimatter integrator"

So basically, you're quoting technobabble applied to TOS 25 years after the series ended which gave those pipes and tanks new names and saying I never watched the show.

Your diagram has a purple area that's labeled as shuttlebay 2 when it fact that's where the aft torpedo launcher is. The shuttlebay lost a bunch of it's shuttle racks in favor of the platform that scotty protested the new torpedoes on and that platform also connects to the broadside retrofit torpedo launcher area. As seen in the movie.

My placement of shuttlebay 2 was a guess having only seen the movie twice.
Here's a blurry Youtube pic of the Into Darkness shuttlebay from a fanvid, showing that it's as big as ever (note the 40ft military transport shuttles from the prior movie lined up on the shelves, just as I pointed out from the outside!). I'll have to see the movie again to see if there's any direct connection between the shuttlebay and weapons bay.

 

[Belz...]

Did you read my post about Alcatraz being crushed by this ship ? It's HUGE.

Only the eastern lighthouse part of the prison was crushed, every other part of it was left intact.

No, watch the movie again. You are dead-set against the Enterprise being much larger, and as such you are not considering all the data objectively.

 

[Kruezerman]

James, remember when you asked if you were gonna get flamed for believing that the Enterprise was smaller? We said no, just provide evidence?

Well you haven't and have been rejected our objective evidence in place of your own opinion. That's what causes the problems here.

 

[James]

James, remember when you asked if you were gonna get flamed for believing that the Enterprise was smaller? We said no, just provide evidence?

Well you haven't and have been rejected our objective evidence in place of your own opinion. That's what causes the problems here.

I already did provide some evidence, I don't see a problem here. If you think there is a problem that is not my problem. I'm not the one causing it, I simply think the ship isn't as big as some people say due to various scenes that show a smaller ship. One thing is for sure, the new Enterprise is a poor design that's full of large open areas making it easy to breach the hull and wipe out large portions of the crew. We'll have to agree to disagree on the ship size.