Mistakes in the Enterprise?

[ZapBrannigan]

I love the Enterprise. I memorized all the Matt Jefferies drawings in TMOST and all the Franz Joseph blueprints, including the dimensions. I built the AMT kit twice. Not unusual for a fan in the 1970s. But if TOS were going back to the drawing board, there are a couple of things I'd change.

1) The captain's quarters should be on the bridge deck, and preferably just a few steps away. Also helpful: a ward room or dorm room where other senior officers could rest during a prolonged crisis, but still be quite near the bridge. In any case, whether you think Kirk's quarters are on Deck 12 ("Mudd's Women") or Deck 5, his bed is too far from the bridge in an emergency.

2) The horizontal turbo shafts have got to go. They destroy a deck plan. In some places on board, instead of walking five steps to get from room A to room B, you'd have to walk 200 feet to the end of a horizontal shaft, go around it, and then walk 200 feet back to where room B is. It's crazy.

A horizontal shaft blocks off the whole deck, to say nothing of the floor space it consumes. It's like a very long wall, ten feet thick, with no doors. Having an elevator go sideways must have seemed like a cool science fiction idea, but it's impractical.

As an alternative, if the ship is so big that you can't walk it, you could put in a moving walkway like they have in large airports. This conveyor belt for crewmen should be something you could step across laterally to get from point A to point B on the other side of it.

Even better: where the horizontal shaft would go, just have an open, zero-G passageway that people can fly through like real astronauts on the ISS. And then: do you really need elevator cars in the vertical shafts? Just leave them wide open, with zero-G's as well.

So... what would you change in or about the ship to make it a better design?

 

[Jedi Marso]

Put the bridge in the heart of the saucer section, where it isn't exposed. Put stellar cartography or the ship's astronomical facilities or what not on the very top. Where the bridge is now on most Federation designs, every bad-guy in the verse knows where to put the first shot once the shields go down.

 

[Phaser Two]

Can't find too much fault. The ship remains and always was magical. I guess I'd clear up whether there was really only one transporter room and whether engineering was in the primary hull, by the impulse engines.

 

[Warped9]

Having senior officers’ quarters near the bridge and bunched together is a disaster waiting to happen with one lucky enemy shot.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The whole shape is ridiculous and nonsensical.

It's cool and unique, though.

 

[Maurice]

Well, the saucer is the silly-ish part. Cyclinders are pretty practical.

 

[Timo]

Expending tons of futuro-metal to place the "engineering hull" away from the saucer, and then expending further tons to bring the "warp nacelles" right back to the saucer... Why? Do the engineers reek of dilithium so badly that they have to be placed far away from the cleaner crew, whereas the engines themselves are perfect neighbors?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

The only change I can think of would be to thicken the neck, so as to allow more than a turbolift shaft and conduits and make it a more practical, usable space.

 

[johnnybear]

I still can't believe that those beds they had were comfortable in any form and where were the blankets?
JB

 

[SpyOne]

As I understand it, actual ships do a compromise: the Captain has a room near the Bridge where it is possible to sleep, but his quarters are further away.
Because sometimes you need to let other people handle things.
"Mr. Spock, you have the Bridge. I'm going to get some sleep someplace far enough from this room that I can't hear anything at all, and I'll be back in 17 hours."
Versus
"I'm going to take a nap. Wake me the moment we hear from Starfleet Command."

Edit: so many typos

 

[SpyOne]

The horizontal turboshsfts are ... a nessicary evil.
I suppose if I were designing from scratch, every few decks there would be a deck that was nothing but equipment and maintenance access, and that's where the horizontal turboshafts are.
So if you need to get from that crystal thingy at the top of the neck to the bridge in a hurry, you'd enter a lift that takes you down to a mechanical level, then forward to the center, then up.
And if you have to get from the starboard forward phaser emitter to the port forward phaser emitter, ... yeah, the shortest way is to go up one deck, cross over the turboshaft, then back down. Probably through hatches in the floor for just that purpose.

 

[Warped9]

Having a thoroughly logical designed ship wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as what MJ came up with. The design of the Enterprise suggests a mastery of science, technology and engineering far beyond what could be considered possible by known conventions.

Real world science is replete with things that at one time would have been considered sheer fantasy and flat out impossible by the conventions of the past.

One can disagree with some of MJ’s choices, but to say those choices were outright mistakes, considering the idea he was trying to convey, goes a bit far IMO.

 

[Maurice]

@Shaw devised a rather ingenious pathing system for turbolifts which causes very few of the problems described here.

 

[uniderth]

I love the Enterprise. I memorized all the Matt Jefferies drawings in TMOST and all the Franz Joseph blueprints, including the dimensions. I built the AMT kit twice. Not unusual for a fan in the 1970s. But if TOS were going back to the drawing board, there are a couple of things I'd change.

1) The captain's quarters should be on the bridge deck, and preferably just a few steps away. Also helpful: a ward room or dorm room where other senior officers could rest during a prolonged crisis, but still be quite near the bridge. In any case, whether you think Kirk's quarters are on Deck 12 ("Mudd's Women") or Deck 5, his bed is too far from the bridge in an emergency.

Put the bridge in the heart of the saucer section, where it isn't exposed. Put stellar cartography or the ship's astronomical facilities or what not on the very top. Where the bridge is now on most Federation designs, every bad-guy in the verse knows where to put the first shot once the shields go down.

When you're dealing with anti-matter weapons and things go boom, it's not going to matter whether your bridge is on the top or in the center.

2) The horizontal turbo shafts have got to go. They destroy a deck plan. In some places on board, instead of walking five steps to get from room A to room B, you'd have to walk 200 feet to the end of a horizontal shaft, go around it, and then walk 200 feet back to where room B is. It's crazy.

A horizontal shaft blocks off the whole deck, to say nothing of the floor space it consumes. It's like a very long wall, ten feet thick, with no doors. Having an elevator go sideways must have seemed like a cool science fiction idea, but it's impractical.

As an alternative, if the ship is so big that you can't walk it, you could put in a moving walkway like they have in large airports. This conveyor belt for crewmen should be something you could step across laterally to get from point A to point B on the other side of it.

Do we even have evidence there are horizontal shafts?

Even better: where the horizontal shaft would go, just have an open, zero-G passageway that people can fly through like real astronauts on the ISS. And then: do you really need elevator cars in the vertical shafts? Just leave them wide open, with zero-G's as well.

So... what would you change in or about the ship to make it a better design?

We do see vertical shafts with ladders. Not quite the same thing, but similar.

 

[Rahul]

Having a thoroughly logical designed ship wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as what MJ came up with. The design of the Enterprise suggests a mastery of science, technology and engineering far beyond what could be considered possible by known conventions.

Real world science is replete with things that at one time would have been considered sheer fantasy and flat out impossible by the conventions of the past.

One can disagree with some of MJ’s choices, but to say those choices were outright mistakes, considering the idea he was trying to convey, goes a bit far IMO.

This!
So much, this.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

When you're dealing with anti-matter weapons and things go boom, it's not going to matter whether your bridge is on the top or in the center.

That's what I've always thought. If the shields are up, the bridge is no more exposed than Sickbay. If the shields fail, a torpedo would reach the innermost compartments with ease.

Do we even have evidence there are horizontal shafts?

The evidence is in the elevator car's motion indicator, which often portrays the car moving sideways. It's the rectangular window between McCoy and Scotty in this frame:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x13hd/elaanoftroyiushd0015.jpg

I haven't found a frame that shows the sideways movement, but it happened from time to time.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Building a logical starship sounds like a job for the Vulcans, but logic doesn't always play out in the real world with real people. Most of what seems illogical to us has a good reason behind it which is grounded in a heretofore untold incident.

 

[Warped9]

I have sometimes wondered if the general configuration of Starfleet starships could be somewhat dictated by the conditions of warp flight. Maybe certain shapes work better than others in a space wap field.

 

[XCV330]

Non-slip flooring. My God, Man! those crowded corridors must look like a 3 stooges movie when someone spills their coffee.

and the bridge needed some kind of briefing/ready room. David Mack has a fun comment about the whole problem of Connies not having one (in Desperate Hours), and the captain's quarters being nowhere near the bridge on them.

other than that, and the Constittution class's penchant for not getting retired peacefully to the scrapyard, no ideas.

 

[Warped9]

No reason a ready room or Captain’s Office couldn’t have been just down the next deck from the bridge. Just because we never saw one used doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Maybe Kirk opted not to use said office and had it repurposed for something else.