Luna Class Number of Decks
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^^Well, since Riker loves poker, I'm sure there are plenty of decks on board. 
I checked the series bible and couldn't find any reference to the number of decks. But apparently it's 80.7 meters tall, including the sensor pod. The refit Enterprise was 71.3 meters tall, and it had 21 decks, plus a little extra for the tops of the nacelles. So maybe something in the vicinity of 24-25 decks, give or take, if you count the sensor pod and its connectors?
I checked the series bible and couldn't find any reference to the number of decks. But apparently it's 80.7 meters tall, including the sensor pod. The refit Enterprise was 71.3 meters tall, and it had 21 decks, plus a little extra for the tops of the nacelles. So maybe something in the vicinity of 24-25 decks, give or take, if you count the sensor pod and its connectors?
That is about what I figured myself.
LOL! I can imagine that a lot of poker is played on the U.S.S. Titan and there is also a lot of jazz music.
I was curious if an official number had been determined because deck height isn't consistent between classes. Some starships have taller decks while others are shorter. Some ships have decks that are 3.5 meters tall while the Intrepid class has decks that are 4 meters tall. Ex Atris Scientia has an article entitled "Starship Sizes" that discusses how to calculate starship size: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ship_sizes.htm.
Christopher, can you give us a little more information about the Star Trek: Titan series bible? Is this similar to a television series bible in length and content? Does a series bible exist for all book series or is Star Trek: Titan a unique case? I presume that it is updated after each episode in the book series. Is that correct? Do have every Star Trek book published by Pocket Books or are there times you need to consult a resource like Memory Alpha or Memory Beta?
Thanks for verifying the ballpark number of decks Sean.
I was curious if an official number had been determined because deck height isn't consistent between classes. Some starships have taller decks while others are shorter. Some ships have decks that are 3.5 meters tall while the Intrepid class has decks that are 4 meters tall. Ex Atris Scientia has an article entitled "Starship Sizes" that discusses how to calculate starship size: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ship_sizes.htm.
Christopher, can you give us a little more information about the Star Trek: Titan series bible? Is this similar to a television series bible in length and content? Does a series bible exist for all book series or is Star Trek: Titan a unique case? I presume that it is updated after each episode in the book series. Is that correct? Do have every Star Trek book published by Pocket Books or are there times you need to consult a resource like Memory Alpha or Memory Beta?
Thanks for verifying the ballpark number of decks Sean.
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There are similarities, but there's a lot of variation in series bibles.
I'm aware of bibles for Titan and Vanguard; the latter is a lot like a TV series bible because it was largely written by David Mack, who has TV experience. I imagine that bibles are needed mainly for multi-author original series, since their purpose is to give incoming writers information about the basics of the series.
Well, I haven't gotten any updates since the original one, so I don't know.
I don't have room to have all of them, but I can request any I need from the editor, and yes, the Memory sites are often useful.
Since those sites are fan-written and edited, though, I wouldn't rely on them with absolute certainty. They're a great handy shortcut for reminding you of something you probably already knew in general but couldn't quite remember the specifics, but I wouldn't believe them absolutely without backup evidence. After all, didn't we just have a few posts about how wildly inaccurate the description of Olympus Descending was?
A quick google turned up this fan-made MSD cutaway, with 12 main decks and a couple more in the sensor pod.
Hi Chris
From some of your recent posts it seems there is less of an overall arc to the novels (or at least more freedom for the authors) than I was expecting.
Can you give an overview of how the larger process works ? With, for instance, the Typhon Pact, is there a specific plan or destination ? Is there a central document for where the Trek universe is going, a timescale (real and in Trek universe) for when things happen, and who exactly makes these decisions ?
It looks as if it may be a more organic process than I thought, with the various authors coming up with stuff and relying on their own reading of their colleagues work to stay in a coherent (or at least non-contradictory) world.
Even if that is the case, you must be (?) all generally working towards the start of the JJ movie. How does it all hang together ?
It's often surprising to me how many misconceptions there are out there about the creative process.
Oh, God, no! It's not that centralized. There's no master plan. An editor may have a loose plan in mind for a specific series or miniseries that he or she is editing, but it's just going to be some of the main points that the series should hit; the rest of it is for the authors to come up with. After all, coming up with stories is our job. Why wouldn't they let us do it? There can be a series outline for something like DS9 post-finale or Vanguard, but it's tentative and can easily be changed by the ideas the writers bring to the table. For instance, the course Vanguard has taken bears very little resemblance to the proposed 6-book plan in the original bible for that series.
And if something isn't a planned series, as is usually the case, it's just up to the individual authors to come up with the ideas (albeit subject to approval by the editor and CBS), and the progression of a series is purely a matter of what each individual author comes up with in turn.
To an extent, although it's not like we're dangling in the wind like that. It's the responsibility of the editor or editors to maintain continuity and make sure the authors have the information they need; and like I said, the degree to which a book series is author-driven vs. editor-driven depends on the series.
Some illustrations from my own experience:
On Corps of Engineers: Aftermath, I was hired to contribute an installment in an ongoing series with strong continuity. I was told of the big changes that were coming in Wildfire, and I decided on my own to do a story set after it, dealing with its, well, aftermath. With that decided, my editor (Keith R.A. DeCandido) told me that he wanted the main character to reach a certain point in her emotional arc, but it was up to me to figure out how to get her there. Also, because of where I'd chosen to set my story, I was given the task of introducing the new character Tev and was given the brief on his personality, but I was left to work out the details on my own.
Similarly, in TNG: Greater Than the Sum, I was charged with wrapping up certain loose ends from Before Dishonor and setting the stage for Destiny, but coming up with the specifics was my responsibility. I needed to send the Enterprise on a mission to hunt down the Borgified ship Einstein, and I had to resolve that arc by the end of the novel, but what they encountered on that mission was up to me. And while I had to introduce the new character of Jasminder Choudhury that Dave Mack had created for the outline of Destiny, as the first person to actually write her I got to establish a lot of the specifics of her personality myself. And I created the character of T'Ryssa Chen, whom subsequent writers have continued to use and develop.
The Titan series is very much a one-book-at-a-time kind of thing, practically carte blanche for the writers, so long as they're true to past continuity. I created several alien characters for the series, but had no idea that one of them, Torvig, would catch on so much with other authors. Also, in Orion's Hounds, I decided to toss in the beginning of a thread about Riker and Deanna contemplating parenthood, just because it felt like a logical outgrowth of the story, but I wasn't sure it would be approved by the studio, and I had no idea it would be followed up soon thereafter in Destiny.
Well, the start of the Abrams movie is set in 2233 in an alternate timeline. I assume you're referring to the supernova in 2387 that destroys Romulus and results in Spock's departure from the Prime universe. Naturally the books will have to stay consistent with those events once they reach 2387, but I'm aware of no specific plan to work toward them. Indeed, lately it seems the ratio of 23rd-century books to 24th-century books is increasing, so it's not the case that we're all generally moving toward 2387.
^^Well, since Riker loves poker, I'm sure there are plenty of decks on board.
I checked the series bible and couldn't find any reference to the number of decks. But apparently it's 80.7 meters tall, including the sensor pod. The refit Enterprise was 71.3 meters tall, and it had 21 decks, plus a little extra for the tops of the nacelles. So maybe something in the vicinity of 24-25 decks, give or take, if you count the sensor pod and its connectors?
This doesn't really hold up though, because it seems that every starship has a different deck height compared to the other.
Enterprise-D = 145 m / 42 decks = 3.45 meters per deck.
Enterprise-E = 87 m / 24 decks = 3.62 meters per deck
Voyager = 66 m / 15 decks = 4.4 meters per deck
Defiant = 30.1 m / 4 decks = 7.5 meters per deck
One also has to account for the sensor pod and it's support struts, or rather discount such perhaps, in calculations? Or was such done and the 80.7 is w/out such?
By a really quick and sloppy calculation, counting only from the base of the secondary hull to the top of the bridge dome, you get 66 meters for the Luna. Same as the Intrepid-Class.
Oy. I wish they'd just state such in a novel at some point.
Found these... which one strikes folks at the most likely/accurate?
http://uss-callisto.org/nova/application/assets/images/ship/lunamsd.png
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/lcars24/lcars24-sheet-27.jpg
http://www.starbase400.org/luna/Luna-MSD.jpg
Well, the third one is too low-res to be accurate, and the other two show essentially the same layout, so I'd say it's a tie. (Except the name on the first one puzzles me... I'm not aware of a moon named Washington.)
What, you never heard of the moon called Washington, discovered in the year 2026 in orbit of Uranus?
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