Is there an official class for the Kelvin yet?

I was wondering about this for a while and was hoping by now, we would have some official stats and ship class for the Kelvin by now. Yes, she looks very similar to the Saladin class of the FJD Tech Manual (with the addition of the top engineering hull/shuttle bay) But obviously, it is not a Saladin. So what class is she? And what is she considered? Deep space Scout? Destroyer?

 

She's what Saladin was before the round of 2240s refits, naturally...

Just add half a deck on the saucer lower rim for a new shield generator system, a taller superstructure, and a taller neck for the new and more powerful warp nacelle, and you get the familiar Saladins. Lamentably, USS Rahman, NCC-514, didn't get her shot at such a refit in the STXI timeline... But she did get a refit into an observation vessel, involving the adding of an exploration pod above the hull (surplus from the contemporary Pytheas or Ranger programs), an O prefix to the registry, and a change of name from warrior leaders to famous scientists (or then famous rivers of Scotland, or whatever).

...Looking forward to finding out the official class name. But sort of hoping that the obvious Saladin connection would feature in this somehow.

Timo Saloniemi

 

We don't know the class of the Kelvin, but we know it's size and complement - 457m (from the Bluray "starships" feature), and a crew with at least 800 (that's only the survivors!), which makes it far bigger than the Destroyer/Scout of FJ's old manual.

The official site's dossiers say Kelvin's "primarily used as a survey vessel".

Although much bigger, the design is obviously inspired by the old Technical Manual, as was the Spacedock. The duel-hulled USS Newton was based on the Proxima class battlecruiser from old Trek videogames, with the half-saucer of the NX-01 era Intrepid.

The USS Iowa concept art in the "Art of The Movie" book even has the 1960's Enterprise aesthetic, and appears to be about the same size as FJ's design, too. Like the Enterprise, it seems Iowa/Kelvin was designed smaller and then bumped up.

 

We may choose to disregard the background material, though. On screen, the vessel's size is only established via two comparisons: an ejected body, and the shuttlecraft she launches. The body does not allow for an easy comparison, as it is not placed near telltale hull features. The shuttles can be compared to the ship in two shots: an inside one and an outside one of them leaving the shuttlebay. Both give enough leeway for the dorsal hull of the Kelvin to be roughly equated with the ventral hull of the TOS Enterprise in size, which allows for a 250 meter ship just as nicely as a different way of squinting allows for a 450 m one.

Of course, "background material" is going to be our only source for the class name of the Kelvin, unless there's a name-drop in STXII...

Timo Saloniemi

 

^You forget the exterior close-up of the bridge windows during the second or third attack (they're tiny on the outside), and that there's tonnes of other evidence for a huge ship, like the corridor network behind the bridge and the HUGE chamber Robau's lift exits into. We also see a Kelvin-style hull cut in half, exposing the decks, when Enterprise drops out of warp over Vulcan. Unless it's designed for a crew of Keensers, it's a big ship.

Imagine FJ's Destroyer/Scout as Voyager, and the Kelvin as the Enterprise-E - same shape, just scaled up.

 

This?

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xihd/trekxihd0138.jpg

Just goes to confirm the top part of the superstructure is the bridge, i.e., represents the height of one deck. And the saucer is the same thickness as the bridge height, as it should be for a 250 m ship.

No real problem there: the ship has a spine that extends back from the bridge, and can accommodate those corridors even if/when the bridge is represented by the circular part visible to the outside.

In addition, the lower part of that spine, as well as the secondary hull, appear to feature docking ports. If they are approximately two meters across, then the 250 m size is again supported. Although admittedly NX-01 had ports that are smaller than an upright man.

About the height of the dorsal hull in a 250 m ship.

That ship is not the Kelvin, though. Parts of the Kelvin CGI model were stretched, truncated and mangled to create the cadet-crewed ships, establishing that there's not just one size for engines of that shape, and supposedly not just one size for saucers, either.

It would appear that even if the Kelvin was conceptually enlarged during the writing or filming process, no effort was made to alter her design to reflect the new size. And since we never see the Kelvin compared directly against the new Enterprise or the cadet fleet ships, we don't really have a pressing reason to believe in the size increase.

Here's a quick sketch of what the two "variants" of Saladin would look like side by side. Note the similarly sized bridges and similar saucer thicknesses, minus the infamous half-deck of the TOS saucer. The engine sizes match, too; the rest is added superstructure.



Timo Saloniemi

 

Well, as far as I'm concerned, the sizes of the ships are decided by the people who made the film and not by fans on the internet who think they "know better".

No offence. It doesn't break the entirety of Trek tech fandom for ships predating the TOS Enterprise to be bigger, so I don't see the fuss.

 

FWIW, I don't think the people making the film really had any wish to make the Kelvin 450 m long. Some people involved in some aspects of making the film (and possibly the ships in it) just inserted a number where they felt they needed one. Doesn't mean it would have to match what was seen on screen.

Really, the people making a movie are not part of the movie. James T. Kirk isn't a spy whose real name is Chris Pine, and he doesn't receive his orders from JJ Abrams. What we see is what we have - and while the hero ship of this movie appears to be huge, this particular sidekick ship doesn't display signs of hugeness on screen.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Remedial Class

 

I was under the impression they made the ship bigger when the script called for 800 survivors and "medical shuttle 47". The sizes of the ships changed during development (An early chart in the "Art of" book says 660m Kelvin, 1200m Enterprise), but there's no way the gigantic interiors shown (a disused power plant, IIRC) would fit in the TOS scale ships. Compare Robau's arrival at the base of the lift shaft to the TMP Enterprise cargo area. Kelvin is far bigger.

 

We had a shuttle numbered "78072", too. Doesn't mean there'd have to exist 78 thousand of those things.

As for the 800 crew, that number could well fit within Kirk's ship, too. Which in the 250 m interpretation would be the same as Robau's ship, plus one nacelle. The real problem lies in fitting 800 survivors into twenty shuttles, when we know how small those shuttles were from the inside. (Fitting the twenty shuttles inside the dorsal hull is no problem given the style of parking we see, no matter whether 250 m or 450 m size is preferred.)

The creators knowing their ships... Dunno. We still don't know how big Kirk's ship really was, or how big the Excelsior is, as creator intent is contradictory. Why should STXI be any different in that respect? We can still decide on at least approximate sizes for the ships based on what we see.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The NX-01, a ship built 100 years before Star Trek '09, had a saucer roughly the same diameter as Kirk's TOS Enterprise. And that was a century before. What's the problem with the Kelvin being far larger than that?

Intent is one thing. What the finished product actually showed is another. The finished product showed gargantuan-sized ships (to our frame of thinking), and I'm fine with that. I can cite numerous examples of pieces of technology that get smaller as they get more advanced. Why can't starships be the same way?

 

Apparently not, since your approximate size and my (and the filmmakers) approximate size are totally different.

As far as I'm concerned, the bridge deck (as opposed to the single room in TOS as seen in "The Cage"), the power plant interiors, the 800 crew, the bridge windows, the many shuttles, the gigantic phaser turret (compare to the NX-01's!), the Kelvin-kitbashes seen next to the Enterprise (and the visible decks on the first wrecked saucer over Vulcan) and even the pattern of windows on the rear of the saucer rim (4 decks?) scream "huge!" to me - and that was before I read the official numbers.

Agree to disagree?

 

You said it yourself: it deviates from the norm.

"Decide" is one thing, "agree" is something else altogether...

This?

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xihd/trekxihd0006.jpg

A single row and stragglers. Why four decks? Two would be stretching it already.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That looks like two at the very least to me (unless you're postulating ankle-height windows), but maybe more owing to the uneven placement.

I'm not gonna go tit-for-tat on minuate here. The filmmakers say the ship's huge and I agree with them.

 

Um, I think the answer to the OP is "no."

 

"No" to the class name bit, but as for stats, the length of the ship is listed on the Bluray (whether longtime Trek tech fans agree with it or not).

 

Ironically, the length of the ship wasn't what the original poster asked for, but he got a debate about it whether he wanted it or not...

 

I just accept the "Kelvin" as being a Heavy Cruiser

 

...Where's that from?

(And what does that make the other ships from the movie, the ones with more or bigger engines or secondary hulls? Heavier cruisers? No matter what size the Kelvin, as long as her components aren't markedly bigger than the similar-looking ones on the other ships, she's the smallest of the lot.)

Timo Saloniemi