Certainly sounds plausible!
Concerning deck heights in TNG (and how they should relate to the TMP and earlier starships) I found these:
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Engineering-schematic.jpg
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Engineering-schematic1.jpg
Some of the details are a little unclear, but the 12' height of the Main Engineering Deck is clear. Also clear is the fudging used for the upper and lower levels, set at a mere 7'6"
I recall that the "making of" Voyager book shows a cross section of Sickbay, which measures 10' to the top of the lighting mesh. I imagine tall rooms are handy for sound booms etc.
Fascinating. I can't help but wonder if it's coincidental that 12 +7.5 x 2 = 27/3 = 9. I can forgive the fudging, though. And as you observed, I'm fairly sure the structure is the same so one must conclude that this is probably how those decks were arranged for TMP, too.
Regarding the
Voyager, I had originally thought perhaps TNG era ships had 10' decks until dissecting the D cross section suggested 9.5' decks. Still, I haven't thought to try the
Voyager.
This confirms my suspicion that the TNG engine room wouldn't fit on the Enterprise-A as seen in TUC, if the core was in the same place it was in TMP and the ship the official 305m length.
I'm probably missing something but why not?
I've been going back and looking at the only cross deck example we have for the refit saucer section - the Recreation Deck. I was curious to see how close the 9'6" proposed deck height was. The results were not what I expected!
I looked at
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0385.jpg and
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd1986.jpg
By comparing the width of the turboshaft with the height of each section and reasoning that the width must be around 8 feet, I arrived at a floor to ceiling deck height of 12 FEET!
Just for fun I also looked at the cargo bay turboshafts
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0385.jpg and the proportions are very similiar. It really does seem that the Recreation Deck levels are 12' apart.
So, in the same why that the modeller of the Excelsior was unaware that the secondary and primary hull were supposed to have different deck heights and assumed they were all around 9 feet, the set builders of TMP seemed to have gone with a 12' deck height for ALL their cross level sets.
Obviously, even at a ship length of 1164' the Rec Deck will not fit into the location suggested by offical sources. In fact, the more I look at it the more it seems to suggest a room that should exist along the centreline, with its large open and symmetrical design. The twin turboshafts mirror the two on the bridge (although the distance between them is greater on the Rec Deck).
The
"forgotten Trek" website goes into some details about other potential locations for the Rec Deck, and I'm sure I read somewhere that the set designers originally wanted to place the room where the impulse engines were - obviously this was impossible, but it would have fitted the room nicely.
So, where could the Rec Deck actually be located? If we are to assume that the 8 "windows" are actually holographic viewers then it can be located inboard easily enough - but it would require that at least part of the saucer have 12' decks. The other possible location is underneath the Cargo Deck - where the so-called arboretum windows are, And there could still be two mini-arboretums, positioned behind the bulkheads on the upper level of the Recreation Deck.
Good googly moogly. What a can of worms that is. Shall we examine the torpedo bay next?
I do wonder why the rim location was eventually chosen and the details of it so mucky, when other deck layout details outlined by Mr. Probert are so, well, clear and concise.
The one problem I see with trying to put it somewhere other than where it is, is that we seem to see the ceiling of drydock through those windows. How do your figures stack up against the known heights of any of the present principal actors? Shatner, for example.
^Holy cow, you made me realize something. For years my Dad has maintained that those blue windows for the botanical gardens was where the Rec Deck was. Looking at the turboshafts in these pictures, I now see how he came to that conclusion.
Makes me wonder why have twin shafts in the cargo bay. I can understand in the saucer because of the twin turbolifts on the bridge. But that is in the saucer. Why have two vertical in the engineering hull?
-WB
ETA: Here is the money shot right here:
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0549.jpg
This shows the height differential between two decks. Just eyeballing, it seems like it is somewhere between 9 and 10 feet. Definitely not 12 feet.
ETA (again): I just noticed that you can see the warp nacelle in the back windows. Since this is the HD screenshot, this must be the theatrical version, not the DE, correct? I never noticed that that was there.
Great finds! I don't remember for sure if that's in the original, myself.
I never got why the turboshafts were transluced and lighted.
I always thought that was rather odd, too.
My friends, as you've noticed I like to wander away from this project for about a day or so to contemplate. This has proven a pretty effective pattern for me, since most of my epiphanies happen during these little wander-offs. Well, I think now, finally, truly, I have the correct and proper deck layouts for both the larger and smaller (official) versions of
Excelsior.
As the World's Record holder for the loser whose stared at the most images of
Excelsior (what do I win, anyway?) I was irked by the fact that my latest attempt based on the Tobias Richter renders was suddenly 640 meters long instead of the 600-620 figure I expected. Well, I suddenly realized that she was too damn long. I had compared sections of the
Enterprise-B model study plans I posted upthread, but
hadn't actually bothered to study a composited version against Tobias'
s renders!!
Well, shit. So I did indeed create such a composite and compared it to the available side views of the model, as well as various other models from around the web, and finally came up with a new outline (Version 4 for those who are counting, although I suspect I've deleted and redone it a few times without adding a number.) Anyhoo, applying my IMO concrete deck alignments for the secondary hull to it, I was able to again derive large (12 ft secondary, 9.5 foot saucer) and small versions of the ship.
Click for mucho embiggenment:
So, let's talk math. By now you guys know how much I love math, right?
Version One (12 ft secondary hull decks, 9.5 ft saucer decks
12ft/30px = .4 ft/px
5060 * .4 = 2024 ft = 617 m
9.5ft/24px = .4 ft/px
5060 * .4 = 2024 ft = 617 m
Bazinga. The two heights even agree!
Now onto the smaller version. To try to get close to the 467 meter official size and prove my theory about all decks being equal height and all decks being of the smaller height, it becomes necessary to drop to a mere 9 feet:
Version Two (9 ft all decks)
9ft/30px = .3ft/px
5060 * .3 = 1518 ft = 462.7 m
Not quite 467 meters, but believe you me it's as close as you can get without some painfully long decimals. I consider my theory as to where the 467 meter size came from now proven.
Here's one final interesting piece of math. (
King Daniel, watch this one.)
467m/462.7m = 1.0092
So the difference between the official size and mine is 1.0092 If I multiply my larger size times this...
617*1.009 = 622.5 meters.
(Hey
King, look familiar?
)
So, I'm choosing to blame imprecise pixel alignment for the deviation. Sticking with 467 meters for the smaller official size, I hereby proclaim my larger size to be 622 meters.
Of neat consistency, if you check out the above you'll see I labeled the saucer decks by letter (with an optional 0-prefixed number designation as well) and the secondary hull decks starting at the neck top with digits only. The result? Deck 15 is just where Demora Sulu thinks it should be on the larger ship, and pretty damn close on the smaller one too! (Remember the secondary hull configuration doesn't change between the two, but we lose a deck in the neck because of the saucer window requirements.)
Now, remember my scaling comparison between those two famous screenshots? With my slightly revised scaling of the big
Excelsior now applied:
Drown the kids and shoot the neighbors... that's spot on. (Again, that's next to a 642 meter
Enterprise-D and 305 meter
Enterprise refit.)
My friends, the
Excelsior class starship, at least according to the original filming model,
is 622 meters long.
Thoughts?
Alternately, we could assume there's some kind of Terratin shrinking device involved, notice how the high walls correspond to the shape of the smaller corridor walls 
)
It-does-not-make-sense!
