Discovery Size Argument™ thread

[Mytran]

What about this shot for example:

It is weird (and probably a result of the f*d up too small size of the ship being used for the CGI model). Because - again - it's obvious the saucer is two decks high, the two-stores high recreation deck is given an exact position (in the very same movie!) in the back of the saucer, and the saucer has two levels of windows around.

And yet, the human figurines are way off scale. The saucer is about exactly twice as high as the people, making a two-deck saucer impossible, and a one-deck saucer ridiculous (and ALSO impossible, because of the other scenes in the movie). Really, the only explanation is the ship itself is bigger, and everytime they put humans next to it it becomes painfully obvious they underscaled the raw size.

If you scale the humans to the lower half of the saucer rim then the decks are indeed too short, but that is partly because the angled rim foreshortens the true height. If we look instead at the top half, things are less crazy:

Allowing for a little foreshortening, we can easily suppose that the CGI Enterprise rim has two 10' decks.
And 10' decks (9' ceilings) is exactly what we see in the Rec Deck scenes

 

[Longinus]

If you scale the humans to the lower half of the saucer rim then the decks are indeed too short, but that is partly because the angled rim foreshortens the true height. If we look instead at the top half, things are less crazy:

Allowing for a little foreshortening, we can easily suppose that the CGI Enterprise rim has two 10' decks.
And 10' decks is exactly what we see in the Rec Deck scenes

And that crotch-height window makes sense to you?

 

[Mytran]

And that crotch-height window makes sense to you?

The "window" arrangement on the rim of the refit have never made sense to me. That's why I prefer to see them as sensor palettes, like a precursor to the sensor array on the Enterprise-D

 

[Prax]

I was reading through the thread and someone said that the docking ports reflect a larger ship so I did a little research, but they don't. On a 1,000ft/300m Enterprise, the docking ports have a 8' OD/ 7' ID, like the shuttlepod prop.

Fixed the "walking on the hull" pic

300m Enterprise

450m Enterprise

(only 9 pixels tall, and she's still hot)

 

[Longinus]

The "window" arrangement on the rim of the refit have never made sense to me. That's why I prefer to see them as sensor palettes, like a precursor to the sensor array on the Enterprise-D

But they're obviously meant to be windows. And work just fine if the ship is bigger.

 

[Prax]

But they're obviously meant to be windows. And work just fine if the ship is bigger.

The scene of the people on the hull don't reflect a ship that is too small, but the cgi people added to the image are 15% too large. So far, the only thing that doesn't fit here is possibly the flat floor of the recreation deck not following the concave contour of the lower saucer hull. If you blow up the ship to 450m, suddenly all the windows are too large, and the docking ports are 12ft tall. This is what we have for scale along with the bridge dome(which would also be too large).

This ship is 1,000 feet long.

 

[Longinus]

The scene of the people on the hull don't reflect a ship that is too small, but the cgi people added to the image are 15% too large. So far, the only thing that doesn't fit here is possibly the flat floor of the recreation deck not following the concave contour of the lower saucer hull. If you blow up the ship to 450m, suddenly all the windows are too large, and the docking ports are 12ft tall. This is what we have for scale along with the bridge dome(which would also be too large).

This ship is 1,000 feet long.

Why would the windows be too tall? They would be on correct height.

 

[Mytran]

But they're obviously meant to be windows. And work just fine if the ship is bigger.

The windows that we see in TMP are large and squarish and confined to the recreation lounges - which makes sense, since why would important work areas have major structural weaknesses like windows?
The crew quarters that we see in TMP and TWOK do not have windows either.
So, what would be behind such a plethora of windows?

BTW, I'm all for a larger refit Enterprise, but enlarging it to the point that the saucer windows make sense and the the Rec Deck matches the 8 squares on the rear of the saucer would require something like a two-fold increase. Was the refit really 2,000 feet long?

 

[Prax]

I will show you...as soon as I am ready!

 

[Longinus]

BTW, I'm all for a larger refit Enterprise, but enlarging it to the point that the saucer windows make sense and the the Rec Deck matches the 8 squares on the rear of the saucer would require a two-fold increase. Was the refit really 2,000 feet long?

That probably would work well enough in 480m size.

 

[jaime]

And that crotch-height window makes sense to you?

You have seen the TMP uniforms......

 

[Longinus]

You have seen the TMP uniforms......

Yes! They're one of my favourite uniforms!

 

[jaime]

Yes! They're one of my favourite uniforms!

And the crotches of those define why the windows are where they are

 

[Mytran]

That probably would work well enough in 480m size.

Given all the foreshortening on the angled rim and my "eyeballing it" of the Christie's Auction photo, 1500 feet is not too far off if I match the top 2 round and 4 rectangular windows:

 

[Longinus]

Given all the foreshortening on the angled rim and my "eyeballing it" of the Christie's Auction photo, 1500' feet is not too far off if I match the top 2 round and 4 rectangular windows:

Excellent!

 

[Prax]

I'm not at my computer anymore. I'm going to scale the bridge dome, officer lounge, and maybe some other windows, but I'll say this:

You can't just supersize a ship because a single room doesn't quite fit. It screws up everything else. It's not even that large of a room.

The ship was scaled at 1,000 ft/305m when it was designed, as shown above by the docking ports. A 450m refit has silly 12ft diameter docking ports that simply don't match the sets at all. A 1500 meter ship would have...40 foot tall docking ports?!?! Did I math that right? That's just effing dumb.
Seriously...

The official size, as of 2018, is still 305m, as shown on page 59 of this thread in King Daniel's post. This ship will never be shown on screen again. It ain't changing.

Increasingly large ships have an increasing loss of sense of scale, plus number of decks, size of crew, etc. The enterprise D is so large, that 75% of it must contain neverending miles of uninhabited hallways. Who's gonna vaccum all that carpet?!

The ships that do well, with a tighter consistency for where things are, what deck they are on, etc, are the mid sized/smaller ships, like Voyager, and the NX-01.

Anyways, none of this stuff matters. If people prefer the smaller size, they have every right to do so. No one has changed it. That's still the official size.

If people like to imagine a larger size, they have every right to do so, because it's a fictional ship, and doesn't actually exist.

 

[Mytran]

I'm not at my computer anymore. I'm going to scale the bridge dome, officer lounge, and maybe some other windows, but I'll say this:

You can't just supersize a ship because a single room doesn't quite fit. It screws up everything else. It's not even that large of a room.

The ship was scaled at 1,000 ft/305m when it was designed, as shown above by the docking ports. A 450m refit has silly 12ft diameter docking ports that simply don't match the sets at all. A 1500 meter ship would have...40 foot tall docking ports?!?! Did I math that right? That's just effing dumb.

Whoever mentioned 1500 metres? That would be nearly 5000 feet!!!
The proposed length was in fact 1500 feet

The Rec Deck is not the only set that doesn't fit - the Cargo Bay as shown is also too wide to fit into a 1,000' Enterprise. Blssdwlf's research on another thread show that a minimum length of 1,164' would be required, which would turn a 7' wide airlock into a 8' wide airlock; not so drastic a change, but still larger than the "official" size of the ship (which was never established on screen anyway).

EDIT: I'm throwing the Torpedo Room in there too, as another set that would struggle to fit inside a 1,000' vessel (thanks @jaime)

 

[jaime]

I'm not at my computer anymore. I'm going to scale the bridge dome, officer lounge, and maybe some other windows, but I'll say this:

You can't just supersize a ship because a single room doesn't quite fit. It screws up everything else. It's not even that large of a room.

The ship was scaled at 1,000 ft/305m when it was designed, as shown above by the docking ports. A 450m refit has silly 12ft diameter docking ports that simply don't match the sets at all. A 1500 meter ship would have...40 foot tall docking ports?!?! Did I math that right? That's just effing dumb.
Seriously...

The official size, as of 2018, is still 305m, as shown on page 59 of this thread in King Daniel's post. This ship will never be shown on screen again. It ain't changing.

Increasingly large ships have an increasing loss of sense of scale, plus number of decks, size of crew, etc. The enterprise D is so large, that 75% of it must contain neverending miles of uninhabited hallways. Who's gonna vaccum all that carpet?!

The ships that do well, with a tighter consistency for where things are, what deck they are on, etc, are the mid sized/smaller ships, like Voyager, and the NX-01.

Anyways, none of this stuff matters. If people prefer the smaller size, they have every right to do so. No one has changed it. That's still the official size.

If people like to imagine a larger size, they have every right to do so, because it's a fictional ship, and doesn't actually exist.

Personally, I always assumed the bridge to be slightly sunk below the dome anyway. The docking ports, the officers lounge at the back of the bridge module...these precisely give you a sense of scale that you can outright see when looking at the film.

The same is very true of the enterprise D as well though...you can literally see a crew member moving in the observation lounge up there behind the bridge at the opening of every episode. It’s a nice piece of visual scale shorthand that gives you the sense of the ship. As to empty hallways...well...the ship is self cleaning, and we know that quite a chunk of it is thinks like the shuttle hangar deck, the deuterium tanks...someone’s done a beautiful render of the full interior up on YouTube, and it just cements it as a nice place to live and work, like a university campus in space (with phasers.)
I don’t think there will ever be as completely designed a sci-fi ship as the enterprise D ever again. Sternbach and the okudas finished that thing up.
The refit...well, she’s got the most visual scale markers of any ship ever. There’s what...seven obviously identified docking ports? We literally see the inside of those on screen. There’s....the officers lounge, the red deck...the shuttle bay...
That’s just TMP, after that with set redressing and borrowing, it all gets squiffier. But back when a photon torpedo was less physical, and no one had to pull up the decks to launch one, there was a proper sense of ‘this is a space vessel’ which is what that dry dock scene is all about.

 

[Prax]

Whoever mentioned 1500 metres? That would be nearly 5000 feet!!!
The proposed length was in fact 1500 feet

lol. Sorry.

 

[Mytran]

lol. Sorry.

My bad for keeping switching measuring systems.
FWIW, I agree that 1500m would be way off the mark