Jefferies Tubes and the Saucer Undercut

[Wingsley]

Over the years, there's been some speculation about where the original Enterprise's Jefferies tubes are and where they lead to. TNG seemed to muddy the waters by showing a shadowy labyrinth of apparently non-public-use tunnels.

The thought occurred to me: we know the hull undercut on the underside of the saucer carves out a half-deck area the houses equipment bays. Could the Jefferies tubes be located beyond the periphery of this undercut, with the tubes leading up into the equipment? After all, the crew has to have some way of accessing all that equipment that's stored atop the undercut, right?

 

[Maurice]

Over the years, there's been some speculation about where the original Enterprise's Jefferies tubes are and where they lead to. TNG seemed to muddy the waters by showing a shadowy labyrinth of apparently non-public-use tunnels.

The thought occurred to me: we know the hull undercut on the underside of the saucer carves out a half-deck area the houses equipment bays. Could the Jefferies tubes be located beyond the periphery of this undercut, with the tubes leading up into the equipment? After all, the crew has to have some way of accessing all that equipment that's stored atop the undercut, right?

That's probably overthinking it. Would probably be easier just to lift up floor plates around the specific equipment you'd want to get at.

I always took the Jefferies Tubes as just some kind of fast access point to some critical junctions for emergency bypasses and whatnot, not a general maintenance thing.

 

[Timo]

Or it could be that we have cause and effect all wrong here. Perhaps there is no undercut?

Perhaps there is merely a flat, Kelvin-style saucer there, but with a new rim that has been extended downwards by one or one-half deck in an important refit, and then smoothly faired to the remainder. Ditto for the lower vertex of the saucer: originally flat, then a lot of important sensor and weapon stuff was installed there, and the best way to cover it up with hull metal was a smooth dome. The sum effect of the two extensions is a seeming concavity...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MyClone]

Or it could be that we have cause and effect all wrong here. Perhaps there is no undercut?

Perhaps there is merely a flat, Kelvin-style saucer there, but with a new rim that has been extended downwards by one or one-half deck in an important refit, and then smoothly faired to the remainder. Ditto for the lower vertex of the saucer: originally flat, then a lot of important sensor and weapon stuff was installed there, and the best way to cover it up with hull metal was a smooth dome. The sum effect of the two extensions is a seeming concavity...

I like this idea a lot. It comports with the notion that the lower saucer vertex is some kind of add-on weapons module, which makes sense given that all the weapons we saw in TOS seem to be housed there.

Of course, wouldn't this create greater discontinuity between the 3-foot and 11-foot model shots? The lip of the saucer isn't proportionally thicker on the 11-footer than the 3-footer, which we would expect if the outer "ring" was added to the saucer later.

A wacky idea: maybe the "undercut" is a flexible membrane inside of which the ship stores liquid or gaseous consumables? Like a modern oil storage tank, it expands (to "flat") when full, and contracts (to the "undercut") when empty? Only the saucer vertex and outer ring would be rigid.

Best,
--Ken-A

 

[RapidNadion]

^ Variable starship dimensions. Probably a valid notion for space vehicle design.

Also, though: Variable starship dimensions. A hellish nightmare for we specification-obsessed Trek Techies!


With regard to TOS, I always thought the Jeffries tubes were located in varied and diverse locations throughout the ship. I think we often forget how large the 1701 really would be, were it in existence. And this problem tends to worsen, it seems, the more 2-dimensional side elevations of the ship we look at (though they're often very pretty). The E is massive. There's room aplenty for tubes running up the nacelle pylons, from engineering hull into interhull, from interhull into saucer, from interhull into impulse drives, from keel along the inside of the engineering hull undercut, etc.

 

[Wingsley]

I never meant to suggest that the Jefferies tubes were all in strictly one location, or one deck. Rather, I was suggesting one possible place where some of the tubes could be located, that being where the inboard curve of the saucer undercut gives way to the lower saucer vertex. Placement of the climb-up-incline tubes there would provide a means of accessing some equipment stored in the area behind the corridor wall, which could be connected to various lines and equipment in other parts of the ship, including the undercut. If you look at what Spock and Scotty were doing to override the M-5 computer, that could've been a line connecting the Bridge and/or Auxiliary Control in a corridor of the lower vertex, right next to the undercut.

 

[Green Shirt]

A wacky idea: maybe the "undercut" is a flexible membrane inside of which the ship stores liquid or gaseous consumables? Best,
--Ken-A

Not so wacky, its like a really big foreskin.