Daedalus Size / Window-Size

[CuttingEdge100]

Most sources about the USS Daedalus generally list it as being like 100 something meters.

There was one source which listed it as being around 228 meters. Something which I would normally consider just totally out of scale. But if you were to assume that the windows of the Daedalus and Enterprise were about the same size, and I don't see much reason to assume they aren't and from what I remember each row of windows in the sphere at least amounts to a deck -- would the ship come out to that size?

CuttingEdge100

 

[JNG]

It looks to me like you'd have to pack windowless extra decks in between to make it so big. At such a length, its high-volume spherical hull would, I think, end up making it much closer in overall size to the TOS Enterprise.

I don't imagine that was the intention. The only problem some have with the small size is the crew figure of 229 given in "Power Play." As far as I can see, this crew figure is comparable to that of many modern sailing ships that have probably 20-25% of the volume of the Daedalus-class starship at 105m length, and while the crew accommodations are probably not in the futuristic comfort some may expect, there's plenty of room for bunks and stuff for all the crew members.

It is also possible that 229 was not the regular crew figure, and that she was carrying extra people at the time for some reason or other. In the episode, it would have made the most sense for the alien in Troi's body to account for the number of persons believed lost in the disappearance of Essex when it was rattling off facts.

 

[Timo]

The window rows on the model are too irregular for discerning a definite deck spacing. We might claim that some single dots below or above a row indicate the next deck, which would make the sphere some 20-30 decks high, depending. The ship would then be quite a bit larger than NCC-1701.

Window size and shape on the model seems to vary a lot. Kirk's ship basically had rectangles of one size and circles of another; Sisko's tabletop model seems to have irregular blobs of varying sizes in the Art of ST photo. (Doug Drexler's blog would have better pics, but I can't find them at the moment.)

Scaling by the bridge dome would suggest something like 10-15 decks in the sphere - so it would still be as tall as the TOS Enterprise's saucer, or taller. She'd still possibly have more room than Kirk's vessel - perhaps making plausible the 200+ crew quoted in TNG "Power Play" for the Daedalus class.

Assuming, of course, that the sphere-and-can design really is the Daedalus class. Nothing in canon supports such a claim, though. In theory, we might spot Sisko's tabletop model of an old Starfleet vessel named Horizon in this sphere-and-can configuration - but nothing links any starship Horizon with the Daedalus class in canon.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Masao]

The length of around 100 m is taken from a picture in the encyclopedia showing the side views of all Starfleet ships. To calculate the length, one has to measure the image of Daedalus, which is really small, and compare it to ships of known length, such as Galaxy or Constitution. As such, the length could be off by 5 m or more either way. Here's a chart of possible lengths I made a few years ago when a guy at Starship Modeler was trying to decide how large to make a master for a proposed kit. I think 131 m looks best. By the way, the volume of the 100-m Daedalus is only about 25,000 m^3 (if I remember correctly), about an eighth of that of Constitution.

 

[SicOne]

I'm a fan of a 150-200m Daedalus. 229 people is a helluva lot of people to cram into a 105m ship and have room for sleeping, eating, working, plus all of the shuttles, equipment, things that actually make the ship work. 105m is still a big ship, but that means the ball is 25 meters in diameter or so, and that's not much room for people.

 

[Timo]

But once again, we don't have a direct reason to think that there would ever be 200+ people aboard that ship.

We know that there can be 200+ people aboard a Daedalus class ship (unless the aliens were lying and the heroes didn't check the facts in "Power Play"), but we have never really seen such a ship. The ship in these pictures does exist, but is of an unknown class, as far as canon data goes. On screen, the design is associated only with USS Horizon, NCC-178. And we have no other data on a vessel of that name or registry.

Sure, there's a mention of a vessel named Horizon operating around the same timeframe as the Daedalus class Essex, NCC-173, in TOS "A Piece of the Action", but that Horizon is never quite established as a Starfleet vessel, merely Federation. And some elements of ENT would suggest that the TOS Horizon was in fact a 2150s civilian freighter. So we have no real idea when or under what class name the NCC-178 would operate, although she does seem to have UFP symbology on her hull and thus is probably from the 2160s or later. Or then her symbology is, and the ship is older.

Just remindin'...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Hmm... Managed to relocate Doug Drexler's photos:

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/

Note the raised paneling on the sphere hull, not this clearly visible in most other images. It appears that there could be a deck just above the "equator", the height of the raised panels and with just one row of windows at the upper edge. Then perhaps another deck above that, similarly with just one row for one layer of raised paneling, and a final deck atop, with the "bridge dome" just a very shallow cap atop the bridge, hardly a meter in height.

That would make the sphere just six decks tall, and the tube connecting it to the can would be a mere crawlway. Overall length would be about 80 meters only. A possible design intent? I'm much more willing to believe in a mere 100+ m ship now than I was before seeing those panels... And more convinced than ever that this can't be the ship type that held 229 people in "Power Play".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

Hm. I'd be generally happier with the 131 meter version Masao showed above. Also, FWIW, further down on Drexfiles Mike Okuda mentioned that there were two models, so the details on each might conflict.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

I'd say the 131 meter design and the 157 meter design have the best window/deck alignment with the Constitution-Class.

If you want to include an NX-Class, or a NX-like ship into the storyline (like was done with ST: Enterprise), 209 meters sounds more consistant when you consider the size of the NX-class (225 m)


CuttingEdge100

 

[Praetor]

But when you consider that a good chunk of the NX's length is nacelles, the Daedalus can be smaller and still be 'competitive.'

 

[Timo]

How the size medals are to be awarded is something to consider, too. Previously, one might have thought the chronological order of ship designs would be pre-UFP->Daedalus->Constitution. But current novels have it as Daedalus->Enterprise/NX->Constitution instead - that is, the Daedalus class predates the events of ENT by a decade or so. So perhaps size also grows more or less in that order?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

I thought the Daedalus (with the failing ion cascade drive or whatever) that preceded the NX was supposed to be a wholly different ship than the sphere-cylinder here? (I haven't read the books, so I don't know.)

Then again, nothing has officially linked the name Daedalus to the sphere-cylinder either, or is that your point?

 

[Verteron]

But if you were to assume that the windows of the Daedalus and Enterprise were about the same size

Why on Earth would you assume this? The Daedalus class is a primitive and cheaply produced vessel, its windows may be little more than portholes...

 

[JNG]

Why on Earth would you assume this? The Daedalus class is a primitive and cheaply produced vessel, its windows may be little more than portholes...

Well, why would you assume it's primitive or cheaply produced? I personally always envisoned it as the first Federation-designed long-range exploration and science vessel, perhaps spartan in accommodations but the first to incorporate multiple major technological innovations from the collaboration of Federation members; it is awfully small (well, maybe, anyway), but I did think it postdated the NX class, so I tended to assign it some prominence.

Heck, we just don't know.

 

[Praetor]

I still kind of like the idea that the Daedalus is the product of the need for utmost efficiency and minimal razzle dazzle during the Romulan War and is one step up from being a Starfleet Liberty Ship.

 

[Timo]

I thought the Daedalus (with the failing ion cascade drive or whatever) that preceded the NX was supposed to be a wholly different ship than the sphere-cylinder here?

Possibly; Dave Stern never specifies that in the books.

However, other ENT books ever since Last Full Measure have made references to the 2140s existence of Daedalus class ships, as defined by the Encyclopedia: ships with names familiar from the Okuda book and with an explicit Daedalus class identity.

Even Mike Friedman's Starfleet: Year One, which describes development work on the Daedalus class after the founding of the Federation, funnily enough uses turns of phrase that never explicitly establish the class as not pre-existing. That is, the book could describe development work on an already existing ship class for the purpose of making her useful for the newly founded UFP Starfleet.

It would be sort of fun to think that the sphere-and-can ship indeed began life as a 2141 Cascade Ion Drive prototype (hence looking like a half-baked test rig), was series-produced to some degree before CID was found to be a dangerous dud, and languished in secondary roles during ENT. In the 2160s, she got a revamp into UFP Starfleet's first dedicated explorer, at a time when most of the fleet consisted of much larger, Romulan War surplus combat vessels. She then survived as Starfleet's early Oberth equivalent until 2196, and was indeed the class of some of the early ships mentioned in TOS and TNG - the Essex, perhaps the Archon, possibly the Horizon, although none of those really is a very good match.

Incidentally, that history would also be a good match for some older fan speculation: the class history could match that of the Horizon class from good old Spaceflight Chronology, just with a name swap. Perhaps the embarrassing loss of USS Daedalus in the CID experiment prompted Starfleet to name the remaining, CID-less ships after the second keel completed, the Horizon? And perhaps the original name was rehabilitated later on, but some "historical records" would disagree.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

I thought the Daedalus (with the failing ion cascade drive or whatever) that preceded the NX was supposed to be a wholly different ship than the sphere-cylinder here?

Possibly; Dave Stern never specifies that in the books.

However, other ENT books ever since Last Full Measure have made references to the 2140s existence of Daedalus class ships, as defined by the Encyclopedia: ships with names familiar from the Okuda book and with an explicit Daedalus class identity.

Even Mike Friedman's Starfleet: Year One, which describes development work on the Daedalus class after the founding of the Federation, funnily enough uses turns of phrase that never explicitly establish the class as not pre-existing. That is, the book could describe development work on an already existing ship class for the purpose of making her useful for the newly founded UFP Starfleet.

Interesting. Thanks for clearing this up a bit - I haven't read enough of the books to know how it's been dealt with.

It would be sort of fun to think that the sphere-and-can ship indeed began life as a 2141 Cascade Ion Drive prototype (hence looking like a half-baked test rig), was series-produced to some degree before CID was found to be a dangerous dud, and languished in secondary roles during ENT. In the 2160s, she got a revamp into UFP Starfleet's first dedicated explorer, at a time when most of the fleet consisted of much larger, Romulan War surplus combat vessels. She then survived as Starfleet's early Oberth equivalent until 2196, and was indeed the class of some of the early ships mentioned in TOS and TNG - the Essex, perhaps the Archon, possibly the Horizon, although none of those really is a very good match.

Incidentally, that history would also be a good match for some older fan speculation: the class history could match that of the Horizon class from good old Spaceflight Chronology, just with a name swap. Perhaps the embarrassing loss of USS Daedalus in the CID experiment prompted Starfleet to name the remaining, CID-less ships after the second keel completed, the Horizon? And perhaps the original name was rehabilitated later on, but some "historical records" would disagree.

This all works pretty well for me.

 

[Verteron]

Well, why would you assume it's primitive or cheaply produced? I personally always envisoned it as the first Federation-designed long-range exploration and science vessel, perhaps spartan in accommodations but the first to incorporate multiple major technological innovations from the collaboration of Federation members; it is awfully small (well, maybe, anyway), but I did think it postdated the NX class, so I tended to assign it some prominence.

Traditionally, I'd envisaged this too. But unfortunately the ST:Enterprise retconning makes it look odd and primitive, its non-streamlined hull shape, lack of deflector, etc. fit with how this time period was previously imagined, but it does not look like a halfway point between NX-01 and NCC-1701.

Hence I now picture it in my head as a mass-produced grunt for the Romulan War and the early Federation's activities, perhaps an early attempt at integrating the technologies of the four founding races, which turned out to somewhat of a compromise.

But you're right, we don't know for sure.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Truthfully speaking it would have been better if the NX came after the Daedalus class... but before the Constitution class.

 

[Praetor]

Who says that design-wise it didn't? Wasn't the NX project a very long one, beginning in the 2110s?