My god, the new Enterprise must be HUGE

[Timo]

As I stare at the bow shot, futilely trying to find evidence of an actual deck structure within, I can't help but wonder where all the portholes have gone.

Unlike any incarnation of the ship before TMP, this baby seems to lack the three big bow windows or other glowy-things that so prominently feature in all bow shots. Furthermore, the double rows of windows on the TMP ship are missing as well (they should appear at the very edges of the shot here). Will even the humbler double rows of the TOS design be present?

TMP was the only instance where we got a halfway decent impression on the exact scale of the ship, with the heroes walking on the saucer. XI might well end up not having a single shot that would establish scale like that. At best, we might be doing rough comparisons with other vehicles or structures whose scale is also ambiguous. In that sense, I'm all for giving the trailer our best effort...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Franklin]

darkwing_duck1 said:

Franklin said:
As for the size of the ship, YES, the saucer IS thicker. The TOS saucer was about 20 to 22 feet thick at the rim. This is definitely thicker than that. By my estimate, probably twice as thick. But it's wrong to extrapolate a scale from that and say the rest of the ship must be much larger than TOS Entperprise.

I openly stated that my measurements other than saucer thickness at rim were predicated on the ship maintaing her original proportions. You want to speculate about changing those, go ahead. That's another topic entirely.

A valid point. And, your calculations would be correct based on your point. But your assumption itself may not be valid. Guess that was my point.
I can't buy that merely adding thickness to the end of the saucer automatically leads to the conclusion that the overall size of the ship has changed.

Perhaps the saucer of the XI Enterprise looks more like that of Picard's Stargazer, which was comparatively thick at the ends for its diameter.

 

[Woulfe]

Timo, i'd also like to know where all the windows are, have they gotten rid of them ?
I hope not, it would make the ship too submarine like then, being all cooped up inside it with no way to look out of it, that'd drive the crew crazy after awhile.
I know that the ISS has a nice big window to look out of for just that reason, the shuttle has windows to spare.
Wonder if the ship that'll take folks back to the moon will have loads of windows, and the one going to Mars later on.

- W -
* Pondering *

 

[starburst]

What I would like to see is windows which cover over in emergency circumstances, kind of like what the TOS shuttle used to do.

Call it a poor mans force field, not sure if it would do any good but it seems like a good idea in the event of being attacked without shields it would make the hull less vulnerable

 

[Woulfe]

^ That'd be sweet actually....

Without the windows though we're GUESSING the ship's size.

- W -
* Windows would so help us out here *

 

[Franklin]

starburst said:
What I would like to see is windows which cover over in emergency circumstances, kind of like what the TOS shuttle used to do.

Call it a poor mans force field, not sure if it would do any good but it seems like a good idea in the event of being attacked without shields it would make the hull less vulnerable

Don't see why that would be necessary, but I digress.

There is a gap in the front where the three circular windows in the front of the TOS Enterprise could go (though it's a narrow gap -- maybe it's for ONE of those circles). Beyond that, we aren't seeing enough of the rim to see where we know windows are in the TOS Enterprise.

 

[ancient]

They haven't cut the window holes yet.

 

[Samurai8472]

darkwing_duck1 said:


Only if that man is a midget (6' ~= 1.9m [rounded to 2m], 1m would be only about 3.5' tall)

hehe we have midgets working on this ship

 

[AudioBridge]

we have midgets working on this ship

Aren't the Oompa Loompas building it?

 

[Lieut. Arex]

No, those little copper guys from "Journey to Babel".

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Timo said:
As I stare at the bow shot, futilely trying to find evidence of an actual deck structure within

I posted a pic awhile back showing deck structure indicators.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Franklin said:

darkwing_duck1 said:

Franklin said:
As for the size of the ship, YES, the saucer IS thicker. The TOS saucer was about 20 to 22 feet thick at the rim. This is definitely thicker than that. By my estimate, probably twice as thick. But it's wrong to extrapolate a scale from that and say the rest of the ship must be much larger than TOS Entperprise.

I openly stated that my measurements other than saucer thickness at rim were predicated on the ship maintaing her original proportions. You want to speculate about changing those, go ahead. That's another topic entirely.

A valid point. And, your calculations would be correct based on your point. But your assumption itself may not be valid. Guess that was my point.
I can't buy that merely adding thickness to the end of the saucer automatically leads to the conclusion that the overall size of the ship has changed.

Perhaps the saucer of the XI Enterprise looks more like that of Picard's Stargazer, which was comparatively thick at the ends for its diameter.

A fair point on your part. My only potential rebuttal would be that all indications from people in the know of the production (like the production designer whose statements raised such a furor in another thread) indicated that the EXTERIOR appearance of the ship would be substantially identical to the original.

We shall have to wait and see...

 

[[[[MAC]]]]

darkwing_duck1 said:

Timo said:
As I stare at the bow shot, futilely trying to find evidence of an actual deck structure within

I posted a pic awhile back showing deck structure indicators.

darkwing,

I didn't post a picture (can't do it from here), but if you go back to my
second post a day ago, I think you'll see that you over estimated. What
we see thorough the open hull plates is only TWO decks, with moderately
thick deck bulkheads separating them(the black and the gray horizitonal
bands that each have the vertical ribs) , and "crawlspace's" with machinery
visible above and below.

Furthermore, I think that as an 'in joke', although we never saw it on
the original series, the red/brown area is a wood lined bar/lounge
(like Ten Forward from NextGen).

With only two decks at the rim, the saucer is no thicker than the
original Big E from the TV series.

Give it a try...

MAC

 

[Roshi]

I too think that brownish area is some sort of a bar.

 

[Wowbagger]

Arlo, I would think that to be obvious.

What surprises me about this conversation is that people seem to think that there is a canon measurement of the 1701. Or that anything on that ship's exterior was to scale with what was on the interior. Or that it makes the slightest bit of difference to anything, ever.

After all, Patrickivian's argument, "What the hell is the point of making a Star Trek movie based on the Original series if you're not going to use the same ship?" would also be an effective case against all episodes and films that featured the absurdly and consistently rescaled Klingon Bird-of-Prey after its initial appearance in TSFS.

Honestly, folks. This is a fascinating discussion, and I look forward to seeing how it ends up working out in the grand scheme of canon. But judging the movie based on the size of the ship? Are ye daft, man?

 

[Patrickivan]

The size of the Enterprise is surprising easy to to determine. We know how big our charcacters are based on the height of the actors. We've seen them standing next to shuttles. We can determine the size of a shuttle by knowing the size of our fav characters. Now that we know that- we've seen the shuttle in the shuttle bay passing right by the shuttle entrance. Now you can know the height of the flight deck to the top of the door opening. From that, you can get the size of the rest of the ship using existing exterior shots.

By the way- I'm not doing the bloody math right now. That would involve sitting in front of the computer- thinking- I just got up!

As for the BoP re-sizing. I would love to kick the CGI guy's and writers right in their collective asses for causing all these continuity issues! Though I don't have a problem with the Klingon's using the exact same design to make different sizes of this ship. I mean come on, it looks cool! They're not all, 'kill this', and 'die honourably that'!

 

[trevanian]

Patrickivan said:
As for the BoP re-sizing. I would love to kick the CGI guy's and writers right in their collective asses for causing all these continuity issues!

Resizing the BOP predates CGI for trek ships on TV by quite awhile. Blame the vfx guys or the producers who told them to change for effect.

 

[Franklin]

I'm not sure why some folks believe the size of TOS Enterprise is a mystery or not etched in stone. It's in black and white. From "The Making of 'Star Trek'", by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry (copyright 1968):

"The Enteprise is the largest man-made vessel in space. It is 947 feet long and 417 feet wide overall, and has a maximum gross weight of 190,000 tons....
The unit components were built at the Star Fleet Division of what is still called the San Francisco Navy Yards, and the vessel was assembled in space. The Enterprise is not designed to enter the atmosphere of a planet and never lands on a planet surface."

[We can debate "atmosphere" since it could at least handle however far down into the atmosphere it was in "Tomorrow it Yesterday". But at least it's not meant to be flying around down here.]

OK, none of that exposition appeared ON SCREEN. But "The Making of 'Star Trek'" was at least written canon and the argument settler for many canon questions for my generation of fans. Everyone had to have a copy of it.

 

[FlyingTigress]

I'd agree and support that conclusion...

Just my 0.02

IF the cross-section of this Enterprise primary hull, either along the fore-aft axis, or the port-starboard axis, is similar to that of TOS (with it being concave, slightly thicker at the rim than immediately closer to the center of the P/H), then it would make further sense that we're not seeing something much more 'out of proportion' than the TOS ship.

First off, I don't know that the CGI folks would be that careful -- if this were created only for the teaser/trailers -- to get the relative scale of the construction crew 'accurate'. They're likely to go with 'impression', rather than an accurately scalable welder/electrician/____. Strict accuracy, however, might suggest that this might put in an appearance in the movie, itself.

Second, if you accept that the person (in silhouette, at top in the service crawlway in the expanded screencap) is an average 1.7m - 1.8m male, I'm thinking that, in a crawlspace/machinery area/duct space, the height of that area is going to be such that the construction guy is going to be hunched over a little. An area where there's only an infrequent (at best) need for access, isn't necessarily going to be built for someone to stand straight up – case in point, friends of mine who were in the service ("Snipes" in the Navy, in particular) who were of ‘less than average stature’ who were the ones pressed into duty to get into some of the crawl/conduit/equipment spaces. In IaMD, the service deck, iirc, was sufficiently high for a scene for a stand-up fight between the Gorn and the ISS E crew. And, in the "65 deck" version of the Big "E" in STV, it was behind a brig, and there for a sight gag -- which, to be fair, included James Doohan banging his head. But, a full-height mechanical area/service crawlway...that seems like a poor use of ship volume that has to presumably be capable of being heated, pressurized, when it is unlikely to be accessed except in an emergency.

The ceiling to deck height for an occupied 'deck' is going to be close to 2.2m - 2.3m. I'm basing on an assumption that, unlike a sub with knee-knocker type hatches, you're going to design to have a little headroom -- perhaps as much as 0.6m (2 feet) -- maybe a little lower -- above the top of the 'taller than average' crewdog's (human or potentially non-Terran) head. I'm just a shade under 1.8m (yeah, I know, long legged gal) in a home with apprx. 2.4m ceilings, and it feels a little claustrophobic at times. By the time that you leave area above hatches/doors for lighting panels and structural elements (the trapezoidal-shaped corridor frames in The Cage and TOS), etc., the extra 0.3m above the "2m stick" isn't grossly unreasonable.

I don't know that we're actually seeing through to the decks (pressurized area). If this is like the overhead shots of the structure, we may be looking at the framing, and some of the 'plumbing area' dead space (so that conduits can be accessed from the interior -- unless you want to assume that they're exposed in the interior as you might see in a contemporary naval vessel only on the bulkheads, and 'hidden' in 'tween decks "Jeffries Tubes”) located between the interior bulkheads and framing and the hull plating. That's making it difficult to judge, precisely, where the overheads and deck surfaces are relative to the upper and lower hull plating.

Best judgment from this civil engineer? Two decks carried through the entire disk of the primary hull. Plus service crawlways between the decks, and immediately adjacent to the upper and lower primary hull plating. And a ‘taller’/deeper crawlway, at the bottom rim of the disk, if the cross-section with the concave hull matches that shown (for instance) in the TOS model and FJD "blueprints".

Maybe, just maybe, a third deck that -- in some areas -- could be a high-bay (two deck) type facility: your basic 23rd Century version of the Ent-D Stellar Cartography lab, or cargo space.

 

[Vektor]

FlyingTigress said:
First off, I don't know that the CGI folks would be that careful -- if this were created only for the teaser/trailers -- to get the relative scale of the construction crew 'accurate'. They're likely to go with 'impression', rather than an accurately scalable welder/electrician/____. Strict accuracy, however, might suggest that this might put in an appearance in the movie, itself.

Actually, I’d be surprised if they didn’t build the model to a very specific scale. There is a point in the process where they have to start deciding how big certain details are going to be, like the width of the gaps between hull plates or the dimensions of the windows, that need to remain consistent across the entire model, and it’s easier to work with real numbers than just arbitrarily making it up as you go along. Having said that, it’s entirely possible that J.J. asked them to scale the ship up or scale the workers down in order to enhance the impression of sheer, massive hugeness. In fact, I’d almost be willing to bet that’s exactly what was done.

I don't know that we're actually seeing through to the decks (pressurized area). If this is like the overhead shots of the structure, we may be looking at the framing, and some of the 'plumbing area' dead space (so that conduits can be accessed from the interior -- unless you want to assume that they're exposed in the interior as you might see in a contemporary naval vessel only on the bulkheads, and 'hidden' in 'tween decks "Jeffries Tubes”) located between the interior bulkheads and framing and the hull plating. That's making it difficult to judge, precisely, where the overheads and deck surfaces are relative to the upper and lower hull plating.

This is where I can see the CG guys being a lot less careful. All they really need to do for the purposes of this teaser is show some plausible looking “guts” beneath the missing hull plates. I wouldn’t lay any bets on them actually corresponding to identifiable internal structures like decks and crawlspaces, though, simply because those kinds of details have probably only been worked out to a rudimentary degree, if at all. Frankly, I think anybody who believes they can look at these images and puzzle out a meaningful deck arrangement including heights and clearances, or identify specific compartments like bars or lounges or crew quarters or whatever, is doing little more than providing amusement to some guys back at ILM who just put together some pipes and trusses and paneling and stuck it in there so it looked good.

My best judgment as a draftsman, 3D modeler and design/construction professional is that the saucer is about 60’ thick as shown in the teaser, but that the ship’s overall size has probably been exaggerated for dramatic effect. The 947’ overall length may not be canon, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that the people who built this model are well aware of it and that the “real” version is a lot closer to that dimension than to 3,500 feet long or any of the other extreme measurements various people—including me—have come up with.