Another fan attempt at TOS deck plans

[Shaw]

The creators of TOS also talked about fusion being used for the impulse-engines and fusion used for the impulse-drives.

And yet the smartest thing they did was avoid getting specific on the show. These were generally good writers and not great scientists or engineers. Their consultants would have told them to keep it vague, and during the series they did.

It would take a hell of a lot of energy to generate an artificial gravity field, and inertial dampening and stuff. Those must be some amazing batteries...

Based on your Victorian Era view of science?

At a certain point this becomes a pointless discussion in which neither of us cavemen of the past can see beyond our stone knives and bear skines. You're more than 200 years in the past attempting to decide what can and can't work in the future.

Do you know how artificial gravity works?

We don't have it today, so none of us seem to know. But if you want to figure out how much power is needed, consider this... gravity as seen in TOS might be nothing more than giving objects within a couple meters of the deck the potential energy they might have had at that distance above the surface of the earth.

Lets do a thought experiment... You have a 1 kg ball sitting on a desk 1 meter high onboard the Starship Enterprise. How much energy is the ship's artificial gravity expending on that ball as it sits (at rest) in that position? If the ball rolls off the desk, how much energy must the ball have as it leaves the edge for it to move towards the floor with the same acceleration as it would have in similar circumstances if this had happen on the surface of the Earth?

One could think of artificial gravity as giving variable amounts of potential energy to objects as they change their distance from the floor and converting that potential energy into kinetic energy if they are in free fall. And inertial dampening might be the same thing only in different directions and designed to cancel the odd moments of kinetic energy relative to the ship.

Here is something even more interesting than playing with the physics of the future, I've found that most people aren't up to dealing with the physics of today. If you ask them how their computer works you'd most likely get a commentary about how well they think their computer works. I doubt that hardly anyone here knows about the solid state physics used to make the processors, memory and the like in their systems... or even how a transistor works.

But then again, they don't need to understand any of that to work with computers... computers are a black box for most people, and all they care about is that they work in a consistent fashion. And that is how most everything works on the Enterprise for it's crew.

I think you should study this post. Because the content of that post is going to be my answer to any time you say "well, we know this". Frankly, we know next to nothing.

Truthfully speaking you're not just providing a huge burst of power for an explosion. You are producing a continuous explosion for very long periods of time...

Truthfully speaking I was ONLY talking about what would be needed for that explosion and nothing else.

I dismissed your assumptions and dismiss these new ones as the idol thoughts of someone trapped in the past (which just happens to look like today). You know nothing of the future so you aren't in a position to say things can or can't work (time to re-read this post again).

But lets play the physics games for one more moment... what is thrust? Isn't it conservation of momentum (or energy). You expel something in one direction and you move in the opposite direction (proportional to the relative masses and velocities). If the Enterprise is 190,000 (metric) tons (for the sake of argument), then to get the ship up to 1 meter per second, how fast would it have to expel a single hydrogen atom? Now remember that at very high velocities the mass of the hydrogen atom is going to increase due to the effects of relativity.

What if you want the ship to go faster? You could increase the velocity of the hydrogen atom or you could add a couple more into the mix.

No continuous explosion... just a few atoms pushed into space.

But as I said before, this is not the thread for that type of thing... I think another thread on theorizing what might or might not work for technologies beyond our lifetimes would be appropriate. It is an interesting exercise, but not for this thread.

Besides, if you could think a way to make it work today, then that can't be how it will be done in the future!

 

[Kemaiku]

^I'm not sure how much you consider Enterprise to be canon, but the episode featuring the Constitution Class Defiant showed a unit of the artificial gravity system.

Each corridor or certain ones, had gravity units that generated an effect for a given area of the ship only, when shut down caused one deck or one section (much like the compartmental structure you've shown) to lose gravity, without effecting the ones above, below or around.

So you're idea of a system of localised units giving an "effect" of an unspecific nature in terms of our science seems to be how they do it. The units are behind shielded hatches on the floors and seem to be connected to a power grid but obviously not the mains as we've seen that go offline without loss of gravity before. So either generators or "batteries" of a sort.

 

[Warped9]

As I understand it gravity is a product of mass. And so the trick of any artificial gravity system (with the exception of centrifugal force which isn't actually gravity) is to create the effect of mass yet without the actual mass. If you want a 1g gravity field then you have to replicate an Earth equivalent in planetary mass yet without the planet.

We could well be talking about some manner of exotic matter here. Or possibly exotic energy. For an artificial gravity system you don't actually have to have a gravity field pulling you down at 1g--you could just as easily have a negative gravity field pushing you down at 1g.

Candidly I've come to believe that with the examples of gravity manipulation we've seen in TOS it wouldn't surprise if both the impulse drive and the tractor beam as well as deflector beams are actually forms of gravity manipulation at work. Note the impulse engines only appear to face rearward and yet we've seen the ship put into reverse on impulse--how can that be if the impulse engines are strictly a form of reaction drive? But a gravity drive or even better a negative gravity drive could push the ship in any direction. Indeed this is actually the very kind of stardrive I've adopted for my own original fast relativistic starship design.

 

[Kemaiku]

^Weren't the main sublight engines of the Excalibur in Crusade a triangular arrangement of gravity engines working together to propel the ship?

 

[Shaw]

Chemahkuu,

I actually like (and very much enjoyed) Enterprise, and liked their recreation of the Defiant. But for the most part, I'm mainly exploring whether or not Jefferies' views of this during the pilots and original run of the series works out nicely or not.

I, obviously, have my own theories on lots of this stuff... but I'm trying to keep those some what separate from what I'm attempting here.

As I understand it gravity is a product of mass.

Gravity is an accelerated reference frame. So as long as you are in a reference frame of constant acceleration, you'll experience gravity... with all the relativistic effects one would associate with that magnitude of gravity.

The foundations of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity are based on thought experiments about what really is gravity. If you were in a room in the middle of nowhere, no large bodies near by, and the room was accelerating at a constant 9.8 meters per second per second, there is no experiment you could do within that room to differentiate between the gravitational effect of a planet like the Earth or the constant acceleration of the room in empty space.

Mass happens to distort space-time near sufficiently large bodies to give those regions the characteristics of an accelerated frame of reference. And the accelerated frame of reference is really our only experience with gravity, and would be the only thing needed to be replicated for artificial gravity.

What is often overlooked is that General Relativity wasn't just a theory of gravity, it was intended to fill in the (rather large) holes left open by Special Relativity (which only works for reference frames of constant velocity... something that doesn't really happen much in the real world, hence the Special part of the name).

I love the subject of gravity, and it was the attractive force ( ) that pulled me first into physics and finally into mathematics (because physics programs do an awful job teaching the differential geometry and differential topology needed for a truly deep study of the subject... sorry for the rant about physics programs ).

 

[Kemaiku]

Chemahkuu,

I actually like (and very much enjoyed) Enterprise, and liked their recreation of the Defiant. But for the most part, I'm mainly exploring whether or not Jefferies' views of this during the pilots and original run of the series works out nicely or not.

Fair enough.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

And yet the smartest thing they did was avoid getting specific on the show. These were generally good writers and not great scientists or engineers. Their consultants would have told them to keep it vague, and during the series they did.

Absolutely true. The moment you start talking tech (instead of presenting something believable and then just letting the audience accept "it works without explanation") you have the potential to cause trouble.

It would take a hell of a lot of energy to generate an artificial gravity field, and inertial dampening and stuff. Those must be some amazing batteries...

Based on your Victorian Era view of science?

At a certain point this becomes a pointless discussion in which neither of us cavemen of the past can see beyond our stone knives and bear skines. You're more than 200 years in the past attempting to decide what can and can't work in the future.

Do you know how artificial gravity works?

We don't have it today, so none of us seem to know. But if you want to figure out how much power is needed, consider this... gravity as seen in TOS might be nothing more than giving objects within a couple meters of the deck the potential energy they might have had at that distance above the surface of the earth.

Well, I hate to argue against you (since I generally agree with most of your points here) but this is definitely untrue.

There are two things that come into play here. The first thing to realize is that it is impossible for anything to ever be more than 100% efficient. In other words, everything has losses... energy in is always greater than work out, with the balance being loss... this is referred to as "entropy" and is one of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. It's one of the most important of all physical laws.

The second, though, is that we can easily determine how much energy is present in a gravitational field. Simply consider the work which said gravitation field is performing. This is really a very simplistic calculation. The energy in the field itself may vary depending on things like "anti-acceleration" effects, but in the lowest-energy state... nothing moving, nothing falling, everything stationary and at rest... we can absolutely establish a minimum energy level in this field. It doesn't require any grasp of HOW to create such a field. We only know that the field itself has a certain amount of energy in it.

Then, realizing that the energy input required to drive that field is going to be measurably higher (potentially many times higher) than that intrinsic energy state, due to the aforementioned issue with entropy.

We can certainly state that the generation of a static gravitational field will require "no less than this specific amount of energy." Even without having the slightest idea how we would actually convert one form of energy (say, electricity) into the other (a gravitational field).

Overall, your argument is reasonable, but this one point is clear. We know that the amount of energy to create gravitation will be AT LEAST a certain amount, so on that count, you seem to be... not confused, but, "mistaken?"

 

[Maurice]

I have a question I'd like Shaw's opinion on. I apologize if this has been discussed before and I missed it.

Seeing all these repeated references to the 540 foot original concept for the ship and it's 947 foot final length as described by Jefferies, I'm wondering if you think that the 947 foot number was arrived at my calculating the size of the ship relative to fitting the bridge into the done on top, rather than just doubling it. For instance. if the ship were only 540 feet, the bridge set would clearly not fit in the top dome, but would have to be in the teardrop shaped structure. Would the domed ceiling above have fit into what became the bridge? Would that explain its original height?

I'm just curious because on the face of it, it seems like doubling the original design size would've been the easiest thing, but that's not what was done.

I'm not postulating that this IS or IS NOT the answer...it's just something that occured to me looking at the diagrams.

 

[Shaw]

Well, I hate to argue against you (since I generally agree with most of your points here) but this is definitely untrue.

There are two things that come into play here. The first thing to realize is that it is impossible for anything to ever be more than 100% efficient. In other words, everything has losses... energy in is always greater than work out, with the balance being loss... this is referred to as "entropy" and is one of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. It's one of the most important of all physical laws.

The second, though, is that we can easily determine how much energy is present in a gravitational field. Simply consider the work which said gravitation field is performing. This is really a very simplistic calculation. The energy in the field itself may vary depending on things like "anti-acceleration" effects, but in the lowest-energy state... nothing moving, nothing falling, everything stationary and at rest... we can absolutely establish a minimum energy level in this field. It doesn't require any grasp of HOW to create such a field. We only know that the field itself has a certain amount of energy in it.

Then, realizing that the energy input required to drive that field is going to be measurably higher (potentially many times higher) than that intrinsic energy state, due to the aforementioned issue with entropy.

We can certainly state that the generation of a static gravitational field will require "no less than this specific amount of energy." Even without having the slightest idea how we would actually convert one form of energy (say, electricity) into the other (a gravitational field).

Overall, your argument is reasonable, but this one point is clear. We know that the amount of energy to create gravitation will be AT LEAST a certain amount, so on that count, you seem to be... not confused, but, "mistaken?"

Odd, because you seem to be arguing the point I made for suggesting a way to figure out the lower bound when I said the following:

"We don't have it today, so none of us seem to know. But if you want to figure out how much power is needed, consider this... gravity as seen in TOS might be nothing more than giving objects within a couple meters of the deck the potential energy they might have had at that distance above the surface of the earth.

Lets do a thought experiment... You have a 1 kg ball sitting on a desk 1 meter high onboard the Starship Enterprise. How much energy is the ship's artificial gravity expending on that ball as it sits (at rest) in that position? If the ball rolls off the desk, how much energy must the ball have as it leaves the edge for it to move towards the floor with the same acceleration as it would have in similar circumstances if this had happen on the surface of the Earth?

One could think of artificial gravity as giving variable amounts of potential energy to objects as they change their distance from the floor and converting that potential energy into kinetic energy if they are in free fall. And inertial dampening might be the same thing only in different directions and designed to cancel the odd moments of kinetic energy relative to the ship."​

So either we are both right or both mistaken on this... but the larger point was that a lot of this stuff (like the generation of that power and the amount of fuel needed for it) our issues I'm not going to tackle here as we don't know what the future holds in those areas... and I'm trying to get CuttingEdge100 to understand that I won't go down that path while at the same time encouraging him to figure out what we can.

So for the later point, I wanted him to reach the conclusion you voiced so eloquently without having to hold his hand through every step of it. You know... give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime type of thing.

But on the laws of thermodynamics in your first part and our ability to apply them in all cases, if we return to the 1870s (which also had those laws by that period) do you think that knowing what they knew would have helped them conceive of nuclear power for use in submarines?

They did not know what they did not know... and we do not know what we do not know.

The attempts to figure these things out is a noble pursuit, which was why I said a few posts earlier:

"My feelings are that we should temper our attempts to retrofit these fictional craft to fit our contemporary views of science and technology... but never stop asking the all important questions of why and how.

I have spent decades in the study of math and science, and have paid more (and owe more) than I've earned directly from those studies... but I regret not a single dollar nor single hour of that investment because it was all spent towards answering my questions of why and how. And most of those questions were born out of watching Star Trek."​

But these plans are going to leave open most of those questions for everyone to contemplate on their own.

_________________​

On a historical note... we shouldn't forget what physics was like towards the end of the 19th century. Physicists thought they were on the verge of knowing all that was knowable about nature, there was the recent Unification of electricity and magnetism into a single theory... from their point of view, all the best discoveries were already made and the future physicists were going to be left to do the busy work of sorting out the finer details.

People today often fall into the same trap of over confidence in our understanding of nature. And because of that I think the bigger lesson (than both the laws of thermodynamics and theory of electromagnetism) for us from those fine men of over a century ago would be humility.

_________________​

Seeing all these repeated references to the 540 foot original concept for the ship and it's 947 foot final length as described by Jefferies, I'm wondering if you think that the 947 foot number was arrived at my calculating the size of the ship relative to fitting the bridge into the done on top, rather than just doubling it. For instance. if the ship were only 540 feet, the bridge set would clearly not fit in the top dome, but would have to be in the teardrop shaped structure. Would the domed ceiling above have fit into what became the bridge? Would that explain its original height?

I'm just curious because on the face of it, it seems like doubling the original design size would've been the easiest thing, but that's not what was done.

I'm not postulating that this IS or IS NOT the answer...it's just something that occured to me looking at the diagrams.

Part of the problem is that the 540 foot length is conjecture... the physical shape of the Enterprise at that point was quite different than we know it today. For example, the neck was taller (in proportion) and less angled than what we finally got. So there may have been a single structure (just for the bridge) rather than the two-tiered version we ended up with.

The reason that the original scale got out seems to have been that the hull graphics were taken from those early plans rather than wasting the time on redrawing a second set of the final ones (which had no hull markings on them at all).

What did it look like?

Odds are that it looked like some of these sketches by Jefferies (specially towards the bottom).

 

[Warped9]

As I understand it gravity is a product of mass.

Gravity is an accelerated reference frame. So as long as you are in a reference frame of constant acceleration, you'll experience gravity... with all the relativistic effects one would associate with that magnitude of gravity.

The foundations of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity are based on thought experiments about what really is gravity. If you were in a room in the middle of nowhere, no large bodies near by, and the room was accelerating at a constant 9.8 meters per second per second, there is no experiment you could do within that room to differentiate between the gravitational effect of a planet like the Earth or the constant acceleration of the room in empty space.

Mass happens to distort space-time near sufficiently large bodies to give those regions the characteristics of an accelerated frame of reference. And the accelerated frame of reference is really our only experience with gravity, and would be the only thing needed to be replicated for artificial gravity.

What is often overlooked is that General Relativity wasn't just a theory of gravity, it was intended to fill in the (rather large) holes left open by Special Relativity (which only works for reference frames of constant velocity... something that doesn't really happen much in the real world, hence the Special part of the name).

I love the subject of gravity, and it was the attractive force ( ) that pulled me first into physics and finally into mathematics (because physics programs do an awful job teaching the differential geometry and differential topology needed for a truly deep study of the subject... sorry for the rant about physics programs ).

No problem. Thank you for the clarifications.

 

[Maurice]

Seeing all these repeated references to the 540 foot original concept for the ship and it's 947 foot final length as described by Jefferies...

Part of the problem is that the 540 foot length is conjecture... the physical shape of the Enterprise at that point was quite different than we know it today.

Right. Do you happen to have any insight as to at what point the decision was made to size-up the ship? Was it after The Cage?

 

[Shaw]

Right. Do you happen to have any insight as to at what point the decision was made to size-up the ship? Was it after The Cage?

Before... well before.

Both models were seen in The Cage. So by the time of filming, the Enterprise had a fictional length of 947 feet and a fictional mass of 190,000 tons. Both of those dimensions were included in printed materials that accompanied The Cage, and were quoted by Hollywood press covering the making of the original pilot (before it was rejected).

The change happened in either September or October of 1964. The new size and changes in overall appearance were reflected in the final construction plans finished by Jefferies on November 7, 1964. The 33 inch model was built between November 8 to November 15, with additional requested changes (including the addition of windows... correctly scaled to the 947 foot length) between November 15 and December 14. The 11 foot model (based on the exact same plans as were used for the 33 inch model) was built between December 8 and December 29 of 1964. The live action part of The Cage was filmed in mid December of 1964.

Again, we've never seen a 540 foot Enterprise... and odds are the only model made of that version was the original proof model made by Jefferies and the art department to help illustrate the basic ideas.

One shouldn't forget (though most people seem to) that the Enterprise has no real world equivalent features (other than the windows) for the model makers to match up. While the first drawings had a definite scale to them, the later construction plans were an attempt to fit the whole ship onto 24"x36" sheets... and the final plans said FULL SIZE & 3" = 1'-0" TO LARGE MINIATURE as the only scale reference.

I can do up some illustrations of what I think the 540 foot version might have looked like... but I doubt that it would be 540 feet long as the ship wasn't an exact match for the final Enterprise configuration.

As I said before, those original drawings got out as elements for other aspects because copying was difficult back then and it was easier to make notes all over the old drawings saying DON'T BUILD THIS and DON'T BUILD THAT.

Similarly, people look at the writer's guide illustrations and can't figure out why they are so imprecise... but if you were around back then, you would know that the only way of making multiple copies of that type of thing would have been using the old hand cranked Ditto Copiers... which wouldn't pick up fine lines and usually blurred everything (and always smelled of something like ammonia ).

 

[CuttingEdge100]

BK613,

I wonder what they do with the helium? Expend it?

Well assuming it's a typical hydrogen to helium reaction it would simply be jettisoned as exhaust. I suppose if there was some kind of need some helium could be tapped off and used for other purposes.


Shaw,

It's not just producing a field of gravity, there's also inertial dampening. The enterprise during maneuvers could easily thousands, hundreds of thousands of g's. You'd have to produce a field that would negate those g-loads. Those in itself would be artificial gravity fields.

That's going to be some serious power.

Regarding a fusion reaction you are going to be shooting more than just a few helium atoms out the back. Granted fusion reactions are quite efficient, but you're producing a gigantic amount of thrust to push something anywhere near the size of the Enterprise at the speeds it travels at sublight...


CuttingEdge100

 

[doctorwho 03]

I noticed on those evolution sketches they make references to the hangar deck. At that stage of developing the show, were they planning on including something similar to the shuttlecrafts, but once they went into full production, didn't see a need to have them until "Galileo 7"?

 

[Shaw]

At that stage of developing the show, were they planning on including something similar to the shuttlecrafts, but once they went into full production, didn't see a need to have them until "Galileo 7"?

It came down to money... and they ended up making a deal with AMT for the rights to make some model kits for the financing of building the production aspects needed for using the shuttlecraft. AMT paid for the building of the filming miniature, the hangar deck miniature, the full size interior and the full size exterior.

As I recall, the deal was made after the series went into production so even if the shuttlecraft would have made for a good solution for an episode (like in "The Enemy Within"), there wasn't anything to film yet.

But the shuttlecraft was always part of the plan... but the designs that Jefferies was working on were scrapped when the deal with AMT was made.

Though I would point out that some of Jefferies' ideas did finally make it to screen... the ship used by Lazarus in "The Alternative Factor" uses some of the same design esthetics as Jefferies' early sketches of Enterprise support craft.

 

[Maurice]

Though I would point out that some of Jefferies' ideas did finally make it to screen... the ship used by Lazarus in "The Alternative Factor" uses some of the same design esthetics as Jefferies' early sketches of Enterprise support craft.

I was always disappointed that they didn't repurpose Lazarus' ship into exactly that...some kind of Enterprise support craft.

 

[uniderth]

It would have been a cute little ship. BUt there was supposedly a "Scout" ship in the hanger bay in TAS. Maybe a "real" version of this would be similar to Lazarus' ship.

 

[Warped9]

I can do up some illustrations of what I think the 540 foot version might have looked like... but I doubt that it would be 540 feet long as the ship wasn't an exact match for the final Enterprise configuration. .

You're already doing so much excellent work, but I must say that if you ever get around o doing this then I'd love to see it.

 

[Shaw]

You're already doing so much excellent work, but I must say that if you ever get around o doing this then I'd love to see it.

I'll try to put together some sketches of what it might have looked like this weekend (my schedule is pretty backed up right now ).

But here are some interesting things to keep in mind... the interior deck area didn't just double with the change to the 947 foot length. The rim deck of the smaller ship (which would most likely be deck 3) is less than a third the area of just deck 5 of the final dimensions. So I don't think that the 203 crew compliment was intended for the smaller ship (which seems better fitted for a crew of around 80) because you not only lose half the decks, but almost two thirds (in the primary hull at least) of the area of those that remain.

I think the top view comparison is most likely better for seeing that difference.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Shaw,

So the TOS Enterprise was only physically able to carry 203 people, and couldn't carry 430?


CuttingEdge100
BTW: Have you factored in spaces for the ship having twelve labs and a gym?