Cary L. Brown said:
hutt359 said:
aridas sofia said:
Matt Jefferies' own cross section has, IIRC, an average 10 foot deck height with one foot interstices.
See, I always thought that was too high. It wastes a lot of space when you factor in that that volume serves no real purpos and yet has to be filled with atmo...
I always felt that 8' was a better hight choice. Tall enough to allow work to be done, and to account for taller humans/species, but not so tall as to be wasteful. Now on some decks, the hight would be taller, but that would mostly be engineering spaces, Cargo deck areas, and such.
As for the space in between each deck, your guess is as good as mine.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind here.
First, I think M.J. was pretty much spot-on for the floor-to-floor distances. 11' total. So I tend to stick with that one.
Now, we know the ceiling height above the floor tended to be a bit "taller" than we'd normally see. But that was driven at least as much by filming requirements as by any technical "ship design" requirement.
I tend to assume that in the corridors, they don't have a "suspended ceiling" and we're actually seeing structural frame members on the ceilings in there (covered with some funky dress-up panels of course). If I were "redoing" that ship, I'd probably beef up the ceiling cross-members in the hallway a bit, and show a few pipes and conduits crossing through that region, but keep it pretty much as we see it.
In cabins, the ceiling height would be lower, though... somewhere between 8' and 9', most likely. 2' to 3' interstitial space, you've have both structural mechanics (frame members, tensile stringers, etc etc) and support equipment (gravity generation, life support hardware, plumbing and wiring, etc).
There is a second thing to consider, however... and that's human psychology. In particular claustrophobia concerns. The closest known information re: this comes from our space station crews and from submarine crews.
Sub crews are in tight quarters... but every so often they can surface and go up top. They also are only on maneuvers for a relatively short time, followed by MANDATORY shore-duty. This is mandatory, because it's pretty well established that putting people inside of cramped spaces for long periods results in people going whacko (speaking technically, ya see...).
Given that the crew of the Trek ships can't go outside whenever they start to go stir-crazy... they have a choice... a "holodeck" type thing (even if it's just VR glasses, something we could do today!) or making the spaces large enough to reduce the claustrophobia issue.
You'd also need to go for colors that would fulfill the psychological needs of the crew. No "all metal and gray walls." You'd need a lot more color than that... and in that regards, TOS was actually far more believable than ENT (for example) was. The use of "sky blue" for wall paint, for instance... combined with "real daylight" light sources... might prove CRUCIAL to keeping earth-born humans from losing it over time.
See, I think that the TOS folks "got it RIGHT" far better than much of the latter-day Trek has. Ya've either gotta have big honkin' on-ship spaces (say, a two-story "rec deck") or individual spaces that are a bit less claustrophobic. Or you just assume your crew will be gnawing their own tongues within a few months...
