Ship Size

[Lighthammer]

I agree. Starfleet ramped up its hardware designs which changed the design of the Constitution class, bumped Robert April, etc, etc...

Who in the hell is Robert April? A person with that name wasn't in the movie, or in any episode of TOS

Robert April was the Enterprise's maiden captain.

I'm actually astonished that that fact came up. I haven't thought about that factoid in over 15 years >.>

Cudos for obscure knowledge!

 

[M'Sharak]

^ Not so obscure, really - not around here. (Hence Dukhat's winking smiley. )

 

[Sector 7]

I agree. Starfleet ramped up its hardware designs which changed the design of the Constitution class, bumped Robert April, etc, etc...

Who in the hell is Robert April? A person with that name wasn't in the movie, or in any episode of TOS

Therefore, Robert April is not canon, but fanon. When Roddenberry later created a backstory for the Enterprise, he created Robert April as the first captain. April has been the focus of many wars, debates and bloodshed on TrekBBS.

Hope that helps.

 

[Anticitizen]

I don't buy that the Kelvin's destruction would ramp up tech development so much that ships would be more than double in size and be so much faster that a previously 1.8-day trip would be reduced to 5 minutes. The Doomsday Machine certainly didn't seem to have any such effect.

 

[GhostFaceSaint]

Yeah, I remember that fact too though really to me it doesn't matter since like what has been stated already Robert April was never mentioned in anything outside of the Star Trek Encyclopedia and tech manuals, so to me its too obscure to matter for the story which needed Pine a Captain we did know from the very first pilot and TOS.

 

[Corran Horn]

I agree. Starfleet ramped up its hardware designs which changed the design of the Constitution class, bumped Robert April, etc, etc...

Who in the hell is Robert April? A person with that name wasn't in the movie, or in any episode of TOS

Well, I was counting TAS.

 

[StarshipDefiant]

TAS isnt always counted as canon though (last I knew, it actually wasn't), as for the topic at hand. I found the ship size to be rather silly, again if it stems form the Kelvins destruction (man, that ship must have been really pivotal to history to be honored so much, huh?) it just seems odd. I found the scale putting because it didn't make sense to me, and why it has to be so large to fit in so many shuttles (I seriously don't see why, in TOS the fact they only had four seemed odd to me), I don't know.

As for the deck count? No idea, they used numbers when counting the decks in the movie they used numbers but on the promotional sites, they used letters within the alpha bet. I think the shuttlebay was on like Deck O or something like that. I wouldn't put much stock in it, though because they also said the transporter room was on a lower deck (one could be, sure) when in the movie, they seemed to go from the bridge, to the transporter room without leaving the deck.

--Edit--
With that, I mean that if those were at all accuate, I'd say around 20-26 decks?

 

[Cyke101]

I don't buy that the Kelvin's destruction would ramp up tech development so much that ships would be more than double in size and be so much faster that a previously 1.8-day trip would be reduced to 5 minutes. The Doomsday Machine certainly didn't seem to have any such effect.

1. How do we know it was a 5 min. trip? We don't know exactly how long Kirk was knocked out. We only know that he revived right before the end of the trip.

2. We also don't quite know if Starfleet made vast improvements as a result of the Doomsday Machine or any other TOS-era threat. For all we know, the refit of the Constitution was in response to those threats. Similarly, in TNG/DS9/VOY it took some time to see the results of Starfleet's advances as a response to the Borg's first appearance, like the Defiant or the E-D's upgrades.

 

[The Castellan]

I know, it's hard to believe that the whole change over happened because the Kelvin got wiped. Would have thought stuff like the Xindi and the Romulan 'murader' would have been more of a reason.

 

[Lighthammer]

I don't buy that the Kelvin's destruction would ramp up tech development so much that ships would be more than double in size and be so much faster that a previously 1.8-day trip would be reduced to 5 minutes. The Doomsday Machine certainly didn't seem to have any such effect.

1. How do we know it was a 5 min. trip? We don't know exactly how long Kirk was knocked out. We only know that he revived right before the end of the trip.

I rewatched it and I have a good explination for this "5 minute trip".

The scene progression is this:

1. (39:00) Sulu puts the ship into warp.
2. (42:58) Kirk wakes up in sickbay. He asks how long he was out with no answer.
3. (43:25) Kirk goes on his mad rush trying to explain that he thinks it's a trap.

This whole range starts at about the 39 minute mark for those interested in watching it.

Kirk's time unconscious isn't really highlighted in any way, shape or form so it's a little easy to skip over it.

There's never any stated times of how long anything takes. Presumably we can imagine that most of the travel time took place with Kirk asleep.

So there you have it. We have no idea how long it took.

 

[Anticitizen]

I don't buy that the Kelvin's destruction would ramp up tech development so much that ships would be more than double in size and be so much faster that a previously 1.8-day trip would be reduced to 5 minutes. The Doomsday Machine certainly didn't seem to have any such effect.

1. How do we know it was a 5 min. trip? We don't know exactly how long Kirk was knocked out. We only know that he revived right before the end of the trip.

I kinda doubt that Nero was drilling on Vulcan for 2 days.

 

[Cyke101]

I don't buy that the Kelvin's destruction would ramp up tech development so much that ships would be more than double in size and be so much faster that a previously 1.8-day trip would be reduced to 5 minutes. The Doomsday Machine certainly didn't seem to have any such effect.

1. How do we know it was a 5 min. trip? We don't know exactly how long Kirk was knocked out. We only know that he revived right before the end of the trip.

I kinda doubt that Nero was drilling on Vulcan for 2 days.

But I also doubt that the drill can be deployed, charged up, and hit the core in 5 minutes, either. While the ship speeds are faster than 1.8 days, that's still a far cry from 5 minutes. Besides, in the past, how often have we seen a starship clock a maximum warp run to Vulcan? I was under the impression that on the vast majority of past cases, our heroes would fly to Vulcan on average warp speeds.

 

[thesovereignman]

1. How do we know it was a 5 min. trip? We don't know exactly how long Kirk was knocked out. We only know that he revived right before the end of the trip.

I kinda doubt that Nero was drilling on Vulcan for 2 days.

But I also doubt that the drill can be deployed, charged up, and hit the core in 5 minutes, either. While the ship speeds are faster than 1.8 days, that's still a far cry from 5 minutes. Besides, in the past, how often have we seen a starship clock a maximum warp run to Vulcan? I was under the impression that on the vast majority of past cases, our heroes would fly to Vulcan on average warp speeds.

That's a very good point.

 

[thesovereignman]

For Ref

New Enterprise:

• Length: 2500 feet (760 meters)
• Height: 625 feet (190.5 meters)

Old Enterprise

• Length: 948 feet (289 meters)
• Height: 237 feet (72.25 meters)

That makes the new enterprise roughly 40% (38.5% exactly) bigger.

It's 263% longer, and 400% taller, by those numbers. I'd say something is off

 

[therealfoxbat]

I'd say the theory about faster warp speeds to simply be a bad fact check, especially since the orders were to meet the fleet in the Leoranchin (sp?) system if they failed at Vulcan. I mean if it takes 5 minutes to go from Earth to Vulcan, then why would they go to some place more then 5 minutes away.

Besides, it's been stated that their warp speed is substantially lower then the TOS version because it's already normalized. Keep in mind, we've seen the TOS version do some wiked crazy speeds that just don't work in Trek Reality anymore.

The only reason I've been able to dig up is apparently they scaled up the size due to the shuttle crafts being used as troop transports.

I personally don't really like that answer because that could have been easily modified. It sounds like a slip in judgment between budget and set design ultimately >.<.

It's not a bad fact check. That's how long it took. (I'm very careful about my facts.) I just happen to be one of those rare and wonderful people who can see a movie and read a clock at the same time...

The chronology of the trip to Vulcan goes like this...
(Times listed are the timer clock on the video...)

41:34 - The Enterprise goes to warp on its way to Vulcan.
42:24 - Chekov begins mission briefing to the crew.
42:55 - Chekov states "We should be arriving at Vulcan within three minutes."
42:57 - Chekov ends mission briefing.
42:58 - Kirk wakes up and realizes Chekov said "lightning storm" during mission briefing.
43:22 - Kirk begins frantic running around the ship to warn people about the Romulan attack.
44:44 - Romulan first officer warns Nero "Seven Federation ships are on their way."
46:36 - Hannity informs Pike that the other Federation ships have arrived at Vulcan but are no longer in contact.
46:54 - Sulu begins five second countdown to arrival at Vulcan.
46:59 - Enterprise arrives at Vulcan.

46:59 minus 41:34 equals 5 minutes and 25 seconds...

They were ordered to fall back to the Laurentian system because that's where the rest of Starfleet was. Spock insisted on following those orders because he was employing the same mentality he did in The Doomsday Machine. The fleet that went to Vulcan got their asses KICKED!!! The got their asses kicked until their asses were up around their NECKS!!! Of the eight ships that went to Vulcan, seven were destroyed outright and Enterprise got away by the skin of their teeth. Spock was thinking "We can't fight this on our own. We need the rest of Starfleet..."

The Enterprise was able to go halfway to the Laurentian system and back to Earth getting there before the Narada because even though the Narada was more than a century in advance of the Enterprise and using reverse-engineered Borg technology, it is still using a version of the much-slower warp drive from the original timeline...

Considering the huge size of the Kelvin compared to other Prime Universe vessels, I like to think that the split in realities actually happened much earlier, when the Temporal Cole War happened in ST: Enterprise. The Xindi attack on Earth, which did not occur in the history until the Sphere Builders intervened in time, caused Earth's Vulcan and Andorian allies to share their advanced shipbuilding tech, much earlier than in the Prime timeline, allowing for much larger, advanced vessels. On the other hand, in the Prime timeline, the Vulcans didn't share these techniques until the 2270s, when the prime Enterprise was majorly refitted (perhaps?). Just some speculation...

I have to agree with this. There are FAR too many differences in the two timelines to be explained by the divergence happening in 2233...

The physics of warp are different, but that can be explained by a different development in warp theory...

The physics of phasers are different. Phasers are now a pulse weapon...

The Stardate system is different from the beginning. The new timeline Stardate system is based on the Earth calendar. Stardate 2233 equals the year 2233...

Chekov is now four years older. In the second season of TOS, Chekov's age was established at 22 (Who Mourns For Adonis) and Kirk was 34 (The Deadly Years). They were 12 years apart. In the movie Chekov is 17 and Kirk is 25. (They don't actually say Kirk is 25, but they DO say Kirk was born in 2233 and became captain in 2258...)

The new Enterprise was launched in 2258. (Launched as in released from the spacedock for the very first time and christened, which is only done for ships when they are first launched and not when they are refirtted.) In the TOS timeline, this is four years AFTER Captain Pike went to Talos 4...

There is nothing contradicting the idea that Star Trek Enterprise could be common to both timelines. However, the latest event that can be confirmed as being common to both is the founding of the Federation in 2161...

Do we know that the time to vulcan was really 5 minutes or so? Couldn't chunks of that journey have been cut from the movie? I mean, movies jump forward in time often. You don't really think that Old spock and kirk made it to the station that was over a kilometer away in about 10 seconds? just asking, I don't know myself And it's worth mentioning that the Enterprise was not superior in speed to any other vessel in the 6 other ships sent to vulcan, since they all beat him there. In reality, I think it would have been going slower, since all the ships had been destroyed prior to the Enterprise getting there, which went to warp only about 10 seconds before the rest. I think it would have taken more than 10 seconds for the Narada to destroy 6 ships, even with it's advanced borg weapons.

It's also worth noting that even though the Mayflower, Farrugut, and the other 4 ships seem to be older than enterprise, they all were about the same size.

The only problem with that theory is, as Iv'e already demonstrated earlier, every moment of the 5 minutes and 25 seconds is accounted for in the video evidence...

The reason all those ships are about the same size as Enterprise is because the Federation has been building these bigger ships for nearly a century...

It's probably been mentioned before on here but how many decks was the Enterprise supposed to have? Was it the same as the Original, at 23, or would it have more as the stated height of the new Enterpsrise is given as 190.5 meters meaning if you had 23 decks, each deck would be on average 8 meters high or if you had an avergae deck height of around 3 meters then you'd have up to 54 decks plus maybe crawl space for Jeffries tubes etc?

The original Enterprise had 21 decks (established in DS9 Trials And Tribble-ations). The height of the Constitution class 21 decks is consistent when compared to the height of the Galaxy class 42 decks. On the new Enterprise, the secondary hull is proportionately smaller compared to the to the primary hull than it is on the TOS version. The math says the new Enterprise would have 38 decks. Also, the warp nacelles on the new Enterprise ride a lot higher above the bridge dome than they did on the TOS version...

A height of 190.5 meters? Where is that stated? The stated length of the new Enterprise is 2357 feet (718.4 meters). This size comes from the supervisor of the CGI crew that DESIGNED AND CREATED the computer model used in the movie. Quoting a different size is the same thing as contradicting Matt Jeffries about the size of the original Enterprise. If you measure a PHOTOGRAPH of the ship model like I did (instead of a drawing), the math says a height of 157.6 meters...

The average deck height used throughout the history of Star Trek is about 3.277 meters (around 10 feet 9 inches). This is consistent with the 21 decks (68.9 meters) of the Constitution class and the 42 decks (137.5 meters) of the Galaxy class. (I know... The Constitution class is 72.6 meters high. The 21 decks from the bridge dome to the bottom of the secondary hull is 68.9 meters.)

The ship is bigger becuase they had a bigger budget. The ship looked amazing to me (brewery and all!). The sense of scale was fantastic. For the first time in Trek i truely believed we were watching people fly around in a giant spaceship.

People who wanted small, TV-show scale sets and a smaller ship need theit heads examined. People who cry because their size-comparison charts have been ruined need to get a life (sorry, this is about the trillionth thread along these lines, and it's sure not to be the last!). People who blindly insist the ship is smaller dispite the corridors off the bridge, the window at the front and the shuttlebay all making that physically impossible (looking at you, EAS) need a good shake.

There's nothing wrong with the USS Kelvin (457 meters) bieng bigger than the TOS Enteprise (285 meters). Why people think the Enteprise must be the biggest ship available makes no sense. Kelvin was mant to be a survey ship, and to do a PROPER survey of a planet (i.e. more than Spock looking though his Spock Scope) you'd need 800 people, dozens of shuttles and god-knows-what-else.

About the decks: I have no idea, but the ship innards were far less 'standardized' in this film. Some areas had huge high cielings, and there was even that weird area with the Giant Eggs where Kirk tracked down Uhura.

Here's to the next dozen threads on this subject!

I don't care about anybody's size charts. I go where the evidence takes me...

When I first started doing the math on the new Star Trek movie, I made my own mistakes. Before the movie came out, I went by the assumption that both ships (Enterprise and Kelvin) have a one-deck bridge dome and a two-deck edge of the saucer hull, like the TOS Enterprise (and on the same size scale). This resulted in the Enterprise length of 273.4 meters and the Kelvin length of 332.2 meters. When the CGI supervisor announced the size of the new Enterprise, I revised all my math on it and took a closer look at the Kelvin. Unfortunately, there is visual evidence in the movie for each of the ships to have two possible sizes, which is DAMN annoying. I go with the larger sizes in both cases because in each case there in a greater amount of visual evidence for the larger size than the smaller one. I found that unless the bridge windows on the Kelvin are about the height of an average car windshield, the size I came up with wouldn't work. What does work is a two-deck bridge dome and a four-deck edge of the saucer hull, resulting in a Kelvin length of 665.1 meters. This is by no means official like the Enterprise length, it is simply where the math took me. If someone has some better math, please let me know...

For Ref

New Enterprise:

* Length: 2500 feet (760 meters)
* Height: 625 feet (190.5 meters)

Old Enterprise

* Length: 948 feet (289 meters)
* Height: 237 feet (72.25 meters)

That makes the new enterprise roughly 40% (38.5% exactly) bigger.

To compare,

Sovereign Class Enterprise

* Length: 2,247 feet (685 meters)

Here's a graph to show size comparisons:
http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_medium.png

Please ignore the 2009 Enterprise and Kelvin towards the bottom. This is a chart put out LONG before release. Based on comments from Bad Robot on the Star Trek Blue Ray Disc, the size was increased to the current 760 meter length.

It's really kind of annoying because no one on the production team seems to have a good reason why the size was increased so much and I really prefer not to make a up a reason for them.

To me, there's far too much speculation going on in this thread where as everyone is trying to shove a puzzle piece where it doesn't fit.

I think the real reason really tracks back to Holywood needs better people following up on continuity >.>.

The length of the new Enterprise is 2357 feet (718.4 meters). The often-quoted 2500 feet (762.0 meters) comes from Quantum Mechanics (the toy company producing the commercial release plastic model of the new Enterprise which is yet to be actually released). Quantum Mechanics announced their model would be 1/2500 scale and APPROXMATELY 12 inches long. The first person who read this jumped to the conclusion that the new Enterprise is EXACTLY 2500 feet long. Quantum Mechanics later revised their announcement to the model being APPROXIMATELY 11.5 inches long, but this was mostly ignored...

The math says the height of the new Enterprise is 517 feet (157.6 meters)...

The length of TOS Enterprise is 947 feet (288.6 meters) according to Matt Jeffries...

The height of TOS Enterprise is 238 feet (72.6 meters) according to Matt Jeffries...

The length of the Sovereign class is 2231 feet (680.0 meters) according to the Star Trek Encyclopedia. The often-quoted length of 2247 feet (685 meters) comes from Star Trek Wikipedia (which could have been placed there by literally ANYBODY)...

Who in the hell is Robert April? A person with that name wasn't in the movie, or in any episode of TOS

Captain Robert April was the original captain of the Enterprise before Pike, according to the Star Trek Animated Series. In some TOS traditions, his first officer was George Kirk...

 

[T'Girl]

41:34 - The Enterprise goes to warp on its way to Vulcan.
42:24 - Chekov begins mission briefing to the crew.
as Iv'e already demonstrated earlier, every moment of the 5 minutes and 25 seconds is accounted for in the video evidence

You missed smething. In the time between when McCoy gets Kirk into sickbay and the time Kirk awakens, McCoy has time to leave sickbay, change his uniform, return to sickbay. "every moment ... is accounted for in the video evidence" is not the case,

 

[STR]

The often-quoted length of 2247 feet (685 meters) comes from Star Trek Wikipedia (which could have been placed there by literally ANYBODY)..

Yeah, like the guy who designed it.
http://johneaves.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/scales2.jpg

Quarter of the way down on this page:
http://johneaves.wordpress.com/category/trek-movies/page/2/

 

[F. King Daniel]

I don't care about anybody's size charts. I go where the evidence takes me...

When I first started doing the math on the new Star Trek movie, I made my own mistakes. Before the movie came out, I went by the assumption that both ships (Enterprise and Kelvin) have a one-deck bridge dome and a two-deck edge of the saucer hull, like the TOS Enterprise (and on the same size scale). This resulted in the Enterprise length of 273.4 meters and the Kelvin length of 332.2 meters. When the CGI supervisor announced the size of the new Enterprise, I revised all my math on it and took a closer look at the Kelvin. Unfortunately, there is visual evidence in the movie for each of the ships to have two possible sizes, which is DAMN annoying. I go with the larger sizes in both cases because in each case there in a greater amount of visual evidence for the larger size than the smaller one. I found that unless the bridge windows on the Kelvin are about the height of an average car windshield, the size I came up with wouldn't work. What does work is a two-deck bridge dome and a four-deck edge of the saucer hull, resulting in a Kelvin length of 665.1 meters. This is by no means official like the Enterprise length, it is simply where the math took me. If someone has some better math, please let me know...

The 457 meters (1500 feet) is from the BluRay extras. The Art of Trek book says 660 meters for the Kelvin, and a 1200 meter (!) Enteprise. Maybe one day someone at ILM will post a scene-for-scene ship-size commentary, about how the ship's a different size every time we see it

 

[therealfoxbat]

41:34 - The Enterprise goes to warp on its way to Vulcan.
42:24 - Chekov begins mission briefing to the crew.
as Iv'e already demonstrated earlier, every moment of the 5 minutes and 25 seconds is accounted for in the video evidence

You missed smething. In the time between when McCoy gets Kirk into sickbay and the time Kirk awakens, McCoy has time to leave sickbay, change his uniform, return to sickbay. "every moment ... is accounted for in the video evidence" is not the case,

Every time someone points out a possible flaw in this timeline, I go back to the video and very carefully re-check my facts.

Here is the updated timeline...

41:34 - The Enterprise goes to warp on its way to Vulcan.
41:35 - McCoy brings Kirk into Medical Bay.
41:54 - Kirk passes out from sedative.
41:55 - Sulu turns to Pike and reports "Engines at maximum warp, Captain."
42:24 - Chekov begins mission briefing to the crew.
42:55 - Chekov states "We should be arriving at Vulcan within three minutes."
42:57 - Chekov ends mission briefing.
42:58 - Kirk wakes up and realizes Chekov said "lightning storm" during mission briefing.
43:00 - McCoy is standing next to Kirk wearing blue uniform.
43:22 - Kirk begins frantic running around the ship to warn people about the Romulan attack.
44:44 - Romulan first officer warns Nero "Seven Federation ships are on their way."
46:36 - Hannity informs Pike that the other Federation ships have arrived at Vulcan but are no longer in contact.
46:54 - Sulu begins five second countdown to arrival at Vulcan.
46:59 - Enterprise arrives at Vulcan.

46:59 minus 41:34 equals 5 minutes and 25 seconds...

Between the two points where they show McCoy wearing two different uniforms, there is 1 minute and 6 seconds for McCoy to change. (A bit fast, but possible. There is nothing to suggest McCoy had to leave Medical Bay. Maybe he keeps duty uniforms in a locker there, like modern-day military doctors do where they work...) That entire time is occupied by the scene where Pike has a conversation with Chekov followed by Chekov's mission briefing to the crew. If there is any kind of lag time, it was VERY carefully and seamlessly edited out of the video. Personally, I ***REALLY*** wish there was evidence of lag time. The kind of speed exibited by the Enterprise in the new movie has implications for the future of Star Trek that make me more than a little uncomfotable. If it takes 5 minutes and 25 seconds to travel the 16.39 light years to Vulcan, that is more than 1.5 million times the speed of light. Perhaps this is the maximum warp speed that can only be attained for short periods in emergencies (the new Warp Factor 8). If this kind of speed can be sustained for any length of time, then the background for Star Trek Voyager simply couldn't happen in the new timeline. At that speed, the Enterprise could travel between any two points in the Milky Way galaxy in 23 days. It could reach Andromeda in slightly more than 15 months. (That kind of speed is approaching the speed of the intergalactic hyperdrive the Asgard gave to the Terrans in the Stargate series.) At first, I thought this would also rule out By Any Other Name, but then I realized this situation allows that episode to make even more sense. The Kelvans would definitely come to the Federation if they could obtain a warp drive fast enough for them to evacuate Andromeda...

Unfortunately, evidence for lag time simply isn't there. Perhaps some future movie will redefine the situation and create one of those really annoying inconsistencies we have all come to know and love from Star Trek...

(For example, the first indication of time in TOS was The Squire Of Gothos, where the year was set at 2717. Trelane was looking at Earth from over 900 light years away and seeing the Napoleonic Wars. Star Trek being set in the Twenty-Third Century was not established until Space Seed, late in the first season. By a weird coincidence, the difference between the first time estimate and the current established year of the first season of TOS is 450 years. It would seem that Trelane was viewing Earth using something which worked at exactly twice the speed of light, so he was seeing events from 900 light years away which were only 450 years out of date...)

Do we know that the time to vulcan was really 5 minutes or so? Couldn't chunks of that journey have been cut from the movie? I mean, movies jump forward in time often. You don't really think that Old spock and kirk made it to the station that was over a kilometer away in about 10 seconds? just asking, I don't know myself And it's worth mentioning that the Enterprise was not superior in speed to any other vessel in the 6 other ships sent to vulcan, since they all beat him there. In reality, I think it would have been going slower, since all the ships had been destroyed prior to the Enterprise getting there, which went to warp only about 10 seconds before the rest. I think it would have taken more than 10 seconds for the Narada to destroy 6 ships, even with it's advanced borg weapons.

It's also worth noting that even though the Mayflower, Farrugut, and the other 4 ships seem to be older than enterprise, they all were about the same size.

Actually there were seven ships...

During the scene where the Romulans are drilling Vulcan, the Romulan first officer warns Nero "Seven Federation ships are on their way."

As Enterprise gets its first view of Narada, a Romulan officer reports "Sir, there's another Federation ship."

So there were seven Federation ships destroyed at Vulcan, which Narada did in 23 seconds. This is possible, since only Captain Pike had any kind of warning that there was a Romulan ship waiting to attack, Enterprise was the only ship that dropped out of warp with its shields up. Because the other ships had no shields up, all it took was one good missile hit to the warp core and no more Federation ship...

I kinda doubt that Nero was drilling on Vulcan for 2 days.

But I also doubt that the drill can be deployed, charged up, and hit the core in 5 minutes, either. While the ship speeds are faster than 1.8 days, that's still a far cry from 5 minutes. Besides, in the past, how often have we seen a starship clock a maximum warp run to Vulcan? I was under the impression that on the vast majority of past cases, our heroes would fly to Vulcan on average warp speeds.

It was neither...

Chekov's mission report stated that Vulcan reported seismic activity beginning shortly after 2200 hours. Nero started drilling Vulcan shortly after 10 PM the previous night. When eight ships were sent to Vulcan, that was when Starfleet Command decided Vulcan had an emergency serious enough for Starfleet to get involved...

The often-quoted length of 2247 feet (685 meters) comes from Star Trek Wikipedia (which could have been placed there by literally ANYBODY)..

Yeah, like the guy who designed it.
http://johneaves.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/scales2.jpg

Quarter of the way down on this page:
http://johneaves.wordpress.com/category/trek-movies/page/2/

Muchos Thankos...

The best information I had was 680 meters from Michael Okuda's Star Trek Encyclopedia. I was not aware of the origin of the 685 meter size, except that it came from Star Trek Wikipedia...

The 457 meters (1500 feet) is from the BluRay extras. The Art of Trek book says 660 meters for the Kelvin, and a 1200 meter (!) Enteprise. Maybe one day someone at ILM will post a scene-for-scene ship-size commentary, about how the ship's a different size every time we see it

The length of 665.1 meters for Kelvin is my own personal conclusion based on careful examination of the video footage of Kelvin's outer structural features compared to the Standard Deck Height established by TOS and TNG, with the number of Standard Decks in the bridge dome being based on Kelvin's bridge windows being more than 30 inches high (the height of a car windshield). I stand by my math and am happy to share it with anyone who asks...

1200 meters for the new Enterprise is a typo. The CGI crew who created the new Enterprise model began with a length of 1200 feet. As the CGI model progressed, the size was increased several times, finally resulting in 2357 feet...