How many shuttlecraft did the Enterprise have?

And yet, both FJ and Warped9 set their shuttles in the 24-foot ballpark.

 

That's a good choice to make, but it's not a show-internal, no-assumptions-required, no-intermediate-steps yardstick like the observation gallery. Similarly, we could choose to believe in a bridge set where the (generally unseen) upper edge coincides exactly with the circumference of the dome seen outside the ship, or that the distance from the center of the bridge set to the center of its turbolift is the same as from the center of the dome to the center of the cylindrar bulge aft of the dome. But that, too, would be a subjective choice and potentially troublesome.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Here's the deal. The hangar miniature as seen was the wrong scale. It was a production exaggeration to convey an idea. But even MJ knew that since in his cross-section drawings of the ship for TOS and Phase II he drew it to more correct scale. Gary Kerr also came up against this in working out a miniature hangar for the PL 1/350 TOS E model kit.

As for the shuttlecraft that's another kettle of fish where hardly any two people are going to agree. It simply cannot be only 24 ft. long and have anything like the interior we saw. And if you make it 32 ft. long to have the onscreen interior as seen then the craft is too large to be properly accommodated, let alone four such craft. All this because the shuttlecraft mockups and miniature were also all production compromises.

And put together the shuttlecraft miniature onscreen is not in correct scale with the miniature hangar. It didn't have to be that way, but it was.

So one is left trying to figure out how these things can work in relation to each other in a plausible way.

Timo, yes, you could put corridors under the observation decks by extending them further into the Flight Deck, but then you are altering how the area looks the way it does onscreen more than what I was willing to do. To maintain the illusion of how it's designed you would have to change the inner radius of the entire bay which tightens up everything and makes it look even smaller.

 

This all makes perfect sense.

 

It's apparent MJ originally planned for a smaller shuttlecraft. In that regard the 22 ft. exterior mockup was only a bit smaller than the 24 ft. referenced onscreen. And it is on record that the original interior was to be smaller with a lower ceiling, but in the midst of construction the word came down to make the interior bigger and add an aft compartment. That completely overrode MJ's original plans.

It gets onscreen and now we're faced with all these contradictions.

My hope was to see how small I could make the shuttlecraft and still retain the design we saw onscreen without losing too much. That's how I came up with 27ft. rather than 24ft.

The hangar area was the same: how to maintain the overall design while sacrificing as little as possible.

 

So the biggest problem is that the TOS shots show rather shallow alcoves?

Hmm. One way to circumvent that would be to note that the forward ends of the bigger alcoves aren't actually shown in TOS. They might widen out there as needed (in contrast to how the actual but for that part unseen model is built). After all, the alcoves appear artificially shallow: the outer wall of the observation gallery is farther out than that, and the secondary hull still keeps bulging out at that point.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The shape of the Flight Deck follows the shape of the exterior hull in tapering outward as you go forward. As such the sides of the Flight Deck are not parallel to each other. Think of the hangar as a section of a cone rather than a cylinder. And if you had a cylindrical shape extending from the bay doors going forward then you lose a lot of interior space and the entire look of the area.

 

Clearly Starfleet was using Time Lord technology to make their shuttles.

 

Ah yes, the sticky matter of shuttle size! Well, all exterior shots of the vehicle clearly show a 22' shuttle, regardless of what other scenes take place in the apparent "shuttle interior".

To be honest it's a shame - the full size shuttle of 30' (as detailed on Cygnus) makes a lot more sense as a deep space auxiliary vehicle and would easily be my transport of choice in such situations as the one in Metamorphosis, for instance.

The trouble comes in that the interior has virtually nothing in common with the exterior, or even the glimpses of the 22' mockup's interior that we see. Just off the top of my head:

1) The height
2) The width
3) The length
4) The interior has a two-tone colour scheme
5) Different entry hatches (exterior doors retract, interior has pocket doors)

So, how to rationalise the discrepancies? 15 years ago I just stuck my tongue in my heek and said that the gravity generator had been cranked up too high, relativistically compressing the occupants of the craft.
These days, it looks more like the crew were asked to re-enact certain scenes for use in the "historical records" but unfortunately, the other (smaller) class of shuttlecraft was out on patrol, so they had to use the larger one.

YMMV

 

Great CGI pictures, Warped. Keep 'em coming.

 

I was always under the impression that since there were 12 starships in the fleet, that each starship had a dozen shuttlecraft.

 

Although that does seem a high number to me, I can certainly believe that It probably varies for each starship, depending on their mission parameters. However, in the Enterprises's case, what situation would they be in where 12 would be necessary?

 

People can handwave whatever they want. It'c those who work the numbers and start reasoning things out in realistic terms who grasp handwaving doesn't hold up to any real scrutiny.

 

^^^
+1

 

An evacuation scenario like in the 09 movie.

 

...To evacuate a mere 84 of the crew?

 

Is that the total of how many are not wearing red shirts?

 

Well, hey, there are only six pads on the transporter. That shit takes time.

 

If you believe TMoST page 192, there are five 22-pad emergency transporters for abandoning ship.

 

You'd have to wonder about the logic of that? Transporters seem rather energy intensive, and I'd imagine energy would be an issue in most abandon ship scenarios.