Ship sizes: ALL LIES! (big pics)

[Cicero]

The thickness of two decks of the Enterprise-B can be seen during the long shot of the damaged ship in Generations. The usable height of the decks shown also appears to be less than that of the bridge. (The height difference can actually be seen when Harriman is making his way to the damaged section a few moments before.)

 

[Vincent Law]

Isn't one of the major scaling issues of the Excelsior class due to the change in bridge module from STIII to STVI?

 

[Saquist]

^Thanks 9-10' was what I guestimated.

You cite the Excelsior class. Okay, here's a cross section where the length of 469 meters is shown in 695 pixels, with 4 pixels for deck height. So (469/695)*4 ylelds 2.6954 meters (8.86 feet) deck to deck. That is a bit tight, but not severe. When I do these I usually determine number of decks looking at 3.5 to 4 meters deck to deck, whatever in that range can fit the exterior clues.

I hope you don't mind, I borowed it and scaled it with a 6' Spock:

It looks too small to me. Considering the complex ceilings that Trek sets usually have, and that there probably needs to be room for machinery between decks (has Trek deck thickness ever been established?), I think 777.7m (which perfectly fits the tiny bridge/lounge dome added on top for STVI and matches the bridge set itself) is the correct size.

I don't know. It looks passable to me. The newer ships have more ceiling space, plus conduit space between decks.

I think he's right.
I've had the same concerns after doing the LCARS for my ship. 2.7 meter 0r 9 feet is good for ceiling height but not for deck height. In some places even another meter is insufficient to accommodate the Lattice work of structure beams and Sections a ship like this would be made of.

But that's what makes it fiction and I can let some of it pass.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Here's the 2009 Enterprise stuff, supporting a 1200 meter size

But my original point is this: Why fudge at all? Why not just say Excelsior is 700-777m, the refit Enterprise ~350m, nuEnterprise 1200m, etc.? Has anyone considered that the last few technical manuals may have sold a little better if the statistics matched what was on-screen in Star Trek, especially in an age where we've got the technology to easily spot a bogus figure?

Ironically, I recently figured out that the 2009 Enterprise could have approximately the same deck structure as the TMP refit, provided you established the deck height at about 5-6 meters and built the ship's interiors to fit those. In that case a "deck" wouldn't be a physical space for the crew but a subdivision in which a portion of the internal structure is positioned, much like "frames" on modern naval vessels. A single deck may have multiple levels and multiple compartments for different purposes and not all of them need be habitable; the ENGINEERING decks would be mostly high bays with catwalks and ladders wrapped around the machinery for the engines and power systems.

After all, it's a starship, not a hotel. Why should we assume the deck height and internal arrangement is necessarily arranged to fit the crew's expectations? If anything, the crew should be trained to find their way around a starship.

Anyway, the way I figured it a 700 meter Enterprise seems to fit reasonably well as far as I can tell (I figured it with a 6' bridge window, though). I do agree that fitting the shuttles is slightly awkward at that scale and works better at 1200 meters. OTOH, I did a good deal of work a couple of years ago on some modeling for the SDF-Macross--which is also supposed to be about 1200 meters--and I vividly remember being very confused about how easy it was to fit something as large as a Valkyie into the seemingly puny launch doors of the ARMD platforms. The thing to remember here--as you have clearly discovered yourself--is that it's hard to tell how things "fit" into an object if you're looking at a very small picture of it. I think those shuttlecraft would fit alot better if we were looking at it in a much larger scale.

 

[Bill Morris]

From John Eaves regarding the NYFST E:

 

[Shaw]

We saw in Trek TOS that the dome at the aft end of the engineering hull is a flashing navigational beacon. Whose idea was it to put a control room under there?

I believe the first time it was put forward was by Geoffrey Mandel and Doug Drexler in the U.S.S. Enterprise Officer's Manual (page 43). I don't recall the idea before seeing it in that book.

 

[ST-One]

has Trek deck thickness ever been established?)

No, and I've always found it odd that people try to make every deck identical in height, when no ship or building is like that in real life. Most hi-rise buildings have 4 or 5 different slab heights (Empire State Building has a dozen somewhat standard heights ranging from 11' to 21'4.5", exluding some areas which generally aren't considered floors (those range down to 5' high)). Naval ships are built to whatever they can fit around the machinery and store rooms.

This.

 

[Vance]

It's Hollywood, people. We all know that the sets in every show were shot sans-ceilings, so trying to say that "well we see at least 50 feet of call, topped with cinderblock" isn't going to help your case in scaling.

My next project will be to figure out what phase of the moon is required for some arse to defend the huge NuEnterprise by saying that all ships, ever, of any type, are really the size of small planets. Right now it's waxing gibbous.

 

[Mytran]

Although that's true, ceilings were seen on at least 2 occasions:

Hmmm, just plain white ceilings. I wonder where the lights are?

 

[Vance]

Hmmm, just plain white ceilings. I wonder where the lights are?

I just get a kick out of the fact that they dropped in ceilings just for each shot. (The shooting angle is unusual on each, so they threw in ENOUGH of a ceiling for the shot - no lights, etc.)

If you're going to cite this, though, it does put deck height around 8' for the habitation decks.

 

[Captain Robert April]

From John Eaves regarding the NYFST E:

 

[Saquist]

Yeah that's pretty good.

I'm sure Ryan Church did exactly what he was supposed to but he has the infamous distinction of creating one of the worse looking ships to bear the name Enterprise. Fortunately it's not NX-01.

 

[Vincent Law]

I'm rather fond of the one that shows a much larger modern VW Beetle next to a regular-sized old VW that made fun of John Eve's claim that the new ship was always supposed to be much larger rather than being scaled up. That being said, Bernd Scheider has an interesting article on the matter.

 

[Shaw]

I'm rather fond of the one that shows a much larger modern VW Beetle next to a regular-sized old VW that made fun of John Eve's claim that the new ship was always supposed to be much larger rather than being scaled up.

Are you talking about this one that I put together a couple years ago?

 

[Mytran]

Well ... seeing as how they've just balanced the ceiling on top of the existing set walls, wouldn't that put ceiling height at 10 feet?

 

[The Inquisitor]

Why do people get overly stressed out about the JJPrise being big? Fair play, it's not the most beautiful if ships (I prefer the kelvin by a long way), and it's nacelles look like they were made to vibrate on 3 different settings and make ladies happy. Did anyone get all worked up when TNG first aired because the galaxy class was huge?

 

[blssdwlf]

Well ... seeing as how they've just balanced the ceiling on top of the existing set walls, wouldn't that put ceiling height at 10 feet?

I would think so... at least for specific decks seen and the other decks can have some wiggle room to 9 or 8 feet and completely unseen decks could be any height. (Like the height off the deck of the 2nd level of engineering at a mere ~6.x feet there is precedence for very short decks as well )

 

[Shaw]

Why do people get overly stressed out about the JJPrise being big? Fair play, it's not the most beautiful if ships (I prefer the kelvin by a long way), and it's nacelles look like they were made to vibrate on 3 different settings and make ladies happy.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else but myself, but my issues with the new Enterprise have a lot more to do with careless implementation than anything else. I liked the original Church illustrations and found them esthetically pleasing... and then they went down hill from there.

But people have had 40 years to learn that many Trek fans are techies and like to see thought and care put into the background technologies. A great story should never be sacrificed for fictional tech, but after a story is told, the longevity of something like a 2 hour film could come from people studying/expanding the tech of it for years.

In that way, this movie was purposely careless. The people making it went out of their way to not be consistent or thoughtful with this aspect (believing that this was a failing of previous Trek). The fact that the new Enterprise was designed and built at one scale, and then changed scale a number of times during the effects production (to the point where people who worked on STXI didn't even know it's size) shows their caviler attitude towards this aspect of the movie.

Personally, I've decided to invest no time or effort into that aspect of the new films... and I enjoyed the new movie with the understanding of what it was and what it wasn't.

Did anyone get all worked up when TNG first aired because the galaxy class was huge?

Size... no.

When TNG came out I was most upset by the fact that the Enterprise D looked like the worst drawings of the original Enterprise from the old Goldkey comic books.

Had those earlier careless drawings of the original Enterprise not existed (or had I not seen them), I might have had a different initial reaction to the Enterprise D when I first saw it.

But I did grow to like/love the Enterprise D in spite of that first impression. And part of the reason for that was that it quickly became apparent that the designers of it cared about making it consistent much like Jefferies had with the original Enterprise.

In the cases of both TOS and TNG, these were weekly shows fighting time and budget constraints, but were still surprisingly well thought out with the background stuff (though sometimes TNG got into too much technobabble... but shows like CSI prove that there is an audience for that type of thing).

By comparison, STXI had the time to spend on this without hurting anything, but dismissed that aspect altogether (and bragged about it).




When all is said and done, the makers of STXI didn't want the audience spending time on the science or technology of their movie. And with that understanding, I haven't... and don't while watching the film. The tech was done the way it was done on purpose (just like all the lens flares were done on purpose... not by accident), and I view the film (and enjoyed it) with that clearly in mind.

I've found that it is best to watch STXI with the left brain turned off.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm rather fond of the one that shows a much larger modern VW Beetle next to a regular-sized old VW that made fun of John Eve's claim that the new ship was always supposed to be much larger rather than being scaled up. That being said, Bernd Scheider has an interesting article on the matter.

"Interesting" or "stupid"? He's saying to ignore 90% of the movie, all the interiors and pretend the ship's actually the size he wants it to be. What about the corridor network behind the bridge? Or is that a "mistake" that "doesn't count", like the brewery, bridge window and shuttlebay? I get that he's passionate about it, but it's so bias and skewed that it hurts the credibility of his site badly.

 

[Saquist]

Why do people get overly stressed out about the JJPrise being big? Fair play, it's not the most beautiful if ships (I prefer the kelvin by a long way), and it's nacelles look like they were made to vibrate on 3 different settings and make ladies happy. Did anyone get all worked up when TNG first aired because the galaxy class was huge?

Really the ship represents the movie perfectly, comical-cartoonish, inconsistent, flamboyant ...and all around spectacle.

Frankly any other sensible design like the Kelvin in a Enterprise configuration would have given the film too much self respect.