A bit more from "Inside Star Trek":
Engineering -- Warp Engines?
- Thread starter Smellincoffee
- Start date
The earliest source I know of asserting this is the FJ Enterprise blueprints, which cannot be considered authoritative.
And he got it from "The Making of Star Trek" although it is a matter of interpretation whether or not the author of that reference (Poe/Whitfield) meant it that way or not?
Also, Roddenberry was going around the convention circuit in the seventies telling everybody it was in the impulse deck. So he may be the ultimate source of this Idea?
GR was never one for technical details.
Really? I don't think so. I have the 13th edition, printed in 1974 [paperback]. Part II, Chapter 2, is called "The U.S.S. Enterprise" and is devoted to a deck by deck description of the ship. In my edition it is on pp. 171--201. The description of the entire saucer makes no mention of engineering. On page 190 of my edition, it describes the "cigar-shaped secondary hull", gives dimensions in feet, and says it "is often referred to as the engineering hull", since much of the hull is devoted to engineering. That, and the absence of any mention of engineering in the saucer, pretty much says that the engine room is in the secondary hull. However, if you can find passages in Making elsewhere that say otherwise, please let us know.
This is an interesting tidbit. Do you have any references, reports, or transcripts regarding this?
Back up a couple pages. There is a mention of how the "headquarters for Engineering" is located at the rear of the saucer, back near the impulse engines. (If I was at home, I'd be able to give a more exact quote.)
Hence, the interpretation that Engineering was located next to the impulse engines.
Hence, the interpretation that Engineering was located next to the impulse engines.
CorporalCaptain, I'm pressed for time right now, but there is a reference in TMOST to the effect of "Head quarters for the engineering division" being in the impulse deck, I'll see if I can track it down later.
As for GR's tidbit, I don't have an actual quote handy, but I believe I read it somewhere on this very board once upon a time?
As for GR's tidbit, I don't have an actual quote handy, but I believe I read it somewhere on this very board once upon a time?
If you could look this up when able, I'd be grateful. I'm still looking too, but I have yet to find the passage you are talking about. I mentioned the edition I have on the off chance that the text has been revised. My edition predates the FJ plans.
Doesn't the undercut built-into the underside of the saucer section rule out a room the size and shape of the Engineering set being able to fit in the aft of the saucer? The Engineering set is at least two stories tall (looks like at least three from the photos) which would not fit in the aft-rim of the saucer, right?
Page 171.
"The impulse engine section is located at the bottom rear end of the saucer. Headquarters for the engineering division is also located in this same area, as are the main engineering control facilities plus sufficient repair, storage, and other facilities to service the primary section when detached from the star-drive sections of the vessel."
It makes sense the control systems would be duplicated, for the most part, in both major sections of the ship in case of battle damage or separated operations.
"The impulse engine section is located at the bottom rear end of the saucer. Headquarters for the engineering division is also located in this same area, as are the main engineering control facilities plus sufficient repair, storage, and other facilities to service the primary section when detached from the star-drive sections of the vessel."
It makes sense the control systems would be duplicated, for the most part, in both major sections of the ship in case of battle damage or separated operations.
^ Thank you, Lieut. Arex. I stand corrected.
What I gathered was that the engineering section seen in "Court martial" was a different part of the ship from the main engineering section. Looks like at least several sources above bear me out on this point...
Though this schematic from Drexler shows the Main Engineering deck to be below the pylons...
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/1701-cutaway/
RAMA
Though this schematic from Drexler shows the Main Engineering deck to be below the pylons...
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/1701-cutaway/
RAMA
^ That's a common conception. I still don't like it. To make it work, you have to overcomplicate the plumbing, and like I said upthread, it puts the works too close to the hangar deck, as well as running smack up against those tech references that imply a connection with the impulse engines.
Didn't stop the TMP rec deck from somehow fitting in the saucer rim.
Here's my analysis of the TOS engine room's likely location.
Thanks a million credits, RAMA, for that link.
The Responses to “1701 Cutaway” are a great read, discussing many of the issues raised here.
By the way, while I'm in this thread, it's a good time to paste something I posted on another board, now offline.
If faster-than-light propulsion ain't something that might pollute the timeline, I don't know what is. We can simply say that Starfleet sabotaged the depiction of the warp technology in our copy of the Tech Manual. And Drexler's design is what they were hiding from us.
I'm gonna support Drexler's design, at least in the broad strokes, not only because it's "cannon", having been on-screen, which by the way is not in and of itself decisive, but especially because he consulted Matt Jeffries for the placement of Main Engineering. Furthermore, Drexler's design is a brilliant merging of TOS and TMP, introducing the "power transfer conduit" to TOS, and giving us a reasonable interpretation of "the pipes". It even fits with TAS: One of Our Planets is Missing.
Very well done, Doug Drexler!
Greg Tyler's article is also well thought out. (One request: I think he should revise it to include the page numbers from The Making of Star Trek.) But I think the conduit pipes aiming towards the pylons is a great idea. Nothing leans around the secondary hull like those pylons, even though the pipes have to cross on the way up to fit there.
Like scotpens demonstrated, it can be made to work - if we assume that the thing behind the grillework isn't meant to portray a long facility through false perspective, but instead portrays a short facility that just happens to taper.
Most of TOS manages to preserve the illusion of false perspective, though, so I don't really think FJ's "tapering triangles impulse accelerator" interpretation is the best way to proceed.
The only thing in Drexler's work (or its onscreen ENT incarnation) that I find falling a bit short is the size of Main Engineering. Supposedly, it's a maze where a person can hide from search indefinitely. An entire hull is dedicated to it, at least in terminology! Furthermore, we see subtly different-looking corners of it in every season and sometimes thrice or more per season, and each corner shown is more or less the size of the set that was built (and then modified). If Main Engineering consists of the sum total of all the subtly different sets we saw, it would still fit inside engineering hull rather nicely, and would be the required maze, but Drexler's artwork would fail to suggest its true scope.
Say, there could be three parallel horizontal shafts there, each with the triangular pipes we see behind the grille. The angles of the pipes might indicate the positioning of these shafts in relation to each other. And at each end there would be a facility looking like the engineering set, only some would look like a S1 set, some like a S2 set, some like a S3 one... All that would still only fill a fraction of the hull, and would fit nicely ahead of the shuttle hangar area yet would reach aft to the pylon stems.
Timo Saloniemi
Aridas Sofia was working on a 1701 cross section project. Does anyone know anything about that?
Ok building on what Timo suggests here.
WHAT IF... the "maze like" section is below and looks "sort of" like the NuTrek engine room. What we are seeing are the various control rooms and monitoring stations for various aspects of the engineering plant.
You walk into the local nuclear power plant you go through some VERY nice offices... labs... various meeting rooms and so on. Then you go through a big set of double doors to the Control Room(s) and you see huge banks of controls and monitors. Through a regular locking fire-duty door with some ominous warnings you step into either an Auxiliary Machinery Building or the Turbine Deck or... well it depends on the plant. At ours you step out onto the Turbine Deck. There are a few control consoles out here and there.
Step down one level (six foot thick cement floor!) and you are in a "maze" of pipes below the turbine. This level is full of reheaters and condensers and pumps and pipes of all types.
Below that... more of the same... three stories above ground and several below.
---
So what I am envisioning is in TOS we never glimpsed what lay just a level under the control rooms. We saw the top of some vital machinery (including perhaps ONE of several matter-antimatter reactors) and all of the "main control boards" for the equipment below.
If you are so inclined... the NuPrise launched before these control rooms were fully set up/installed. Those were to be installed after months of fitting out and final system checkout before the ship took it's first official mission.
WHAT IF... the "maze like" section is below and looks "sort of" like the NuTrek engine room. What we are seeing are the various control rooms and monitoring stations for various aspects of the engineering plant.
You walk into the local nuclear power plant you go through some VERY nice offices... labs... various meeting rooms and so on. Then you go through a big set of double doors to the Control Room(s) and you see huge banks of controls and monitors. Through a regular locking fire-duty door with some ominous warnings you step into either an Auxiliary Machinery Building or the Turbine Deck or... well it depends on the plant. At ours you step out onto the Turbine Deck. There are a few control consoles out here and there.
Step down one level (six foot thick cement floor!) and you are in a "maze" of pipes below the turbine. This level is full of reheaters and condensers and pumps and pipes of all types.
Below that... more of the same... three stories above ground and several below.
---
So what I am envisioning is in TOS we never glimpsed what lay just a level under the control rooms. We saw the top of some vital machinery (including perhaps ONE of several matter-antimatter reactors) and all of the "main control boards" for the equipment below.
If you are so inclined... the NuPrise launched before these control rooms were fully set up/installed. Those were to be installed after months of fitting out and final system checkout before the ship took it's first official mission.
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