Size of the K'Tinga-class

[Crazy Eddie]

the interior atmosphere and people inside cannot... everything within the ship would be vaporized.

Not if the hull holds, and the inertia-damping magic works.

It wouldn't work in every case where torpedoes BREACH the hull, unless STI fields are actually deflector shields that cover every INTERIOR surface of the ship in the same way that regular shields cover the hull.

Occam's razor being what it is, though, it's more likely to assume torpedoes are abnormally weak than that starships are abnormally strong. Incidents like the destruction of the Lantree and the Jenolan could be explained by specifically targeting the ship's warp core.

 

[Longinus]

I would certainly assume SIF to cover every interior wall, but there probaly is hull partitioning by stronger supporting walls that would be strengthened by the field.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This is a logical fallacy: "Product A survied 10, so product B MUST survive 10,000"

No it is not, if product B is 1000 times more durable.

You're forgetting that the Hiroshima bomb was an AIRBURST; even those surviving structures were thousands of feet away from the actual fireball.

Photon torpedoes don't produce airbursts, and a nuclear weapon striking the hull would produce a fireball dozens of meters in diameter that would literally vaporize anything it came into contact with. "Hardness" is not a factor in this equation, what you're looking for is a matter of THERMAL tolerance.

Since such a fireball will produce plasmas in excess of 3,000 kelvins, you need a material capable of withstanding sudden heating to that temperature and then instantly re-radiate that heat into space without succumbing to kinetic shock from the blast itself. That it is difficult if not impossible to assemble a material that can withstand this kind of environment in and of itself is self-evident, hence the need for deflector shields in the first place.

 

[Longinus]

Since such a fireball will produce plasmas in excess of 3,000 kelvins, you need a material capable of withstanding sudden heating to that temperature and then instantly re-radiate that heat into space without succumbing to kinetic shock from the blast itself. That it is difficult if not impossible to assemble a material that can withstand this kind of environment in and of itself is self-evident, hence the need for deflector shields in the first place.

Yes, and this is why the torpedoes actually do damage the starships! However, I can easily believe that structures built with far more advanced technology that we have today could be fantastically more resilient.

 

[Vance]

This is a logical fallacy: "Product A survied 10, so product B MUST survive 10,000"

Fortunately, durability numbers ARE available. I made these for game modelling purposes some time ago...

Steel : 12 H
Ceramic Armour: 25H
Chobham Armour: 45H
Rodinium: 1284H, 2500HP
Tritanium: 1284H, 2500HP
Duritanium: 2400H (est)

So, 100 times more durable than steel, but not one thousand times, and I seriously doubt that the steel at Hiroshima was good enough to hold up new buildings anyway.

We're down again to 'defending the realism of magic', and I'm really not interested in that.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Since such a fireball will produce plasmas in excess of 3,000 kelvins, you need a material capable of withstanding sudden heating to that temperature and then instantly re-radiate that heat into space without succumbing to kinetic shock from the blast itself. That it is difficult if not impossible to assemble a material that can withstand this kind of environment in and of itself is self-evident, hence the need for deflector shields in the first place.

Yes, and this is why the torpedoes actually do damage the starships! However, I can easily believe that structures built with far more advanced technology that we have today could be fantastically more resilient.

I don't, and I can actually recall precedent for this:

NX-01 in "Minefield" is damaged by what Reed describes as a "quarter kiloton yield" of a Romulan bomb. Quarter kiloton is pretty big in terms of chemical explosives, but had that mine been equipped with even a humble Earth tactical nuke it would have been somehwere between 250kt to a Megaton blast. Reed also states that the mine is comparable to a "titan class spatial torpedo," which may or may not be similar to the Enterprise' torpedoes.

Yet that quarter kiloton blasted a chunk out of Enterprise's saucer dozens of meters across. Extrapolating this, a 250kt warhead would have instantly obliterated the entire ship.

So we have two questions:
1) Why wouldn't the Romulans be using nuclear warheads in their torpedoes, since even that quarter kiloton blast only damaged an undefended starship?

2) Why would Starfleet be using such small warheads in their OWN spatial torpedo warheads?

And the third problem, of course, is Enterprise' spatial torpedoes themselves. This at a time when Earth has had access to small nuclear warheads for more than two centuries, and yet equips its deep space starship with weapons of sub-kiloton yield. Photon torpedoes, if they really were the powerful antimatter warheads they are made out to be, would be literally thousands of times more powerful, and even equipping them would render spatial torpedoes instantly obsolete; yet Enterprise continues to use the older designs even through the end of Season 3.

Magic materials or not, the yields of trek weapons have ALWAYS been handicapped, and rarely for any consistent reason.

 

[Longinus]

So we have two questions:
1) Why wouldn't the Romulans be using nuclear warheads in their torpedoes, since even that quarter kiloton blast only damaged an undefended starship?

2) Why would Starfleet be using such small warheads in their OWN spatial torpedo warheads?

3) Why were the Romulans using a cloaking device, even though it was supposed to be new and surprising innovation more that hundred years later.

Answer to all these questions it the same: because ST:Enterprise does not make any sense whatsoever!

 

[CuttingEdge100]

What I remember being really odd about the D-7 and K'Tinga was that the D-7 was 228 meters and the K'Tinga was 214 meters even though for most intents and purposes the D-7 and K'Tinga seem to have basically the same hull size. In the "The Motion Picture" Novel Gene Roddenberry stated the ship had longer warp-nacelles than the regular D-7.

I actually did a scaling based on that some time back. The results assuming a 228 or 228.3 meter hull (I forgot which figure I used) for the D-7, resulted in the K'Tinga with longer-nacelles being


Goose814,

Did you conduct a scaling estimate? Like scale the image so that one foot equalled a pixel or something or 10 pixels equals a meter to help determine exactly how big each ship would be?


Helen

 

[T'Girl]

What I remember being really odd about the D-7 and K'Tinga was that the D-7 was 228 meters and the K'Tinga was 214 meters even though for most intents and purposes the D-7 and K'Tinga seem to have basically the same hull size. In the "The Motion Picture" Novel Gene Roddenberry stated the ship had longer warp-nacelles than the regular D-7.



Helen

We are making the assumption that these are all the same model/class of ship.

The german navy in the early twentieth century designed and built all of their ships with the same basic layout and profile, a enemy viewing the ship from a distance won't know what they were dealing with.

A group of klingon ships, with a simular shape, might have simular warp field charactistics, and warp dynamics, making them easier to design and build.

Ju

st because the three ships in TMP were K'T'ingas', does not mean that Kronos One in FC was one

 

[T'Girl]

double post

 

[goose814]

Goose814,

Did you conduct a scaling estimate? Like scale the image so that one foot equalled a pixel or something or 10 pixels equals a meter to help determine exactly how big each ship would be?

No, I just used the Refit E as a base and scaled the other ships so that the primary hull edges were the same as the refit. (Two decks thick). Although, the scale may differ somewhat depending on whether Klingon decks are the same height as Federation ships.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

What I remember being really odd about the D-7 and K'Tinga was that the D-7 was 228 meters and the K'Tinga was 214 meters even though for most intents and purposes the D-7 and K'Tinga seem to have basically the same hull size. In the "The Motion Picture" Novel Gene Roddenberry stated the ship had longer warp-nacelles than the regular D-7.

I actually did a scaling based on that some time back. The results assuming a 228 or 228.3 meter hull (I forgot which figure I used) for the D-7, resulted in the K'Tinga with longer-nacelles being


Goose814,

Did you conduct a scaling estimate? Like scale the image so that one foot equalled a pixel or something or 10 pixels equals a meter to help determine exactly how big each ship would be?


Helen

We are making the assumption that theses are all the same model/class of ship.

The german navy in the early twentieth century designed and built all of their ships with the same basic layout and profile, a enemy viewing the ship from a distance won't know what they were dealing with.

A group of klingon ships, with a simular shape, might have simular warp field charactistics, and warp dynamics, making them easier to design and build.

Ju

st because the three ships in TMP were K'T'ingas', does non't mean that Kronos One in FC was one

Exactly correct...

It's a common "fan-conceit," but a FALSE one, that "ships that look the same ARE the same."

Class doesn't mean "looks the same." It means "functionally and logistically interchangable." Two ships that can be serviced in the same facilities, with the same set of "spare parts," and which can perform the same functions, are the same "class."

The reason for this term being used at all is for organizational purposes. If you have a certain task which needs done, you can assign any ship of a given class to perform that task and be equally assured that the ship will be able to handle the task as well as any other ship of that class could. (Obviously, this doesn't mean every ship is "equal in every possible way" to other ships of its class, though.)

So, Starfleet Command could assign the Constitution-class USS Enterprise (TOS ship) to the same task as the Constitution-class USS Lexington and expect the same job to be done by either ship.

And Starbase 11 might be set up with facilities to perform heavy repair jobs on Constitution-class starships, while Starbase 10 might only be able to provide "basic support" to Constitution-class ships (but might be set up to provide intensive support to, say, Baton Rouge class ships).

This fits particularly well with the whole F.J. "modular designs" concept... as any starbase equipped to support a Constitution would be equally able to support a Ptolemy, or a Saladin, or a Hermes, or a Federation class ship (pre-refit, obviously... the refit versions would require different facilities, or rather, would require the Starbase facilities to be upgraded as well!)

Hence... the Constitution-class may have been so successful that it was worthwhile to "expand the class" so to speak... from a maintenance/upkeep standpoint... into other variants (Scout, Destroyer, Tug, Dreadnought) and have one primary "upkeep profile" for the entire "Class One" Starfleet.

One would assume that later on, as replicators and so forth became more advanced and more "economical," that the need for such standardization might decrease (though I can't imagine that it would ever go away... Starfleet in TNG times seems to have been living the life of luxury. At least, til the Borg and the Dominion came along. I'd love to see a post-Dominion-war return to "economy" in Starfleet planning and design again. )

Back to topic... "Class" doesn't mean "looks the same." It means "does the same job and has the same needs."

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Goose 814,

No, I just used the Refit E as a base and scaled the other ships so that the primary hull edges were the same as the refit. (Two decks thick). Although, the scale may differ somewhat depending on whether Klingon decks are the same height as Federation ships.

I managed to compute a scale of the K'Tinga using the images you provided, and making the assumption that the K'Tinga's and the Enterprise Refit have the same primary hull-edge depth.

Firstly, the image you have provided is 2,016 pixels in width by 2,688 pixels in height

With that said the Enterprise Refit measures in at 1,942 pixels or 1,943 pixels, and in the ship has an official length of 304.7 meters.

As a result
- 1,942 pixels / 304.7 meters = 6.3734821 pixels per meter
- 1,943 pixels / 304.7 meters = 6.376764 pixels per meter

The Klingon K'Tinga in the image measures in at 1,670 to 1,671 pixels.

- Assuming 6.3734821 pixels per meter, if the ship is 1,671 pixels long, the vessel would be 262.18007 meters in length. If the ship is 1,670 pixels long, the vessel would be 262.02317 meters in length.

- Assuming 6.376764 pixels per meter, if the ship is 1,671 pixels long, the vessel would be 262.0514 meters in length. If the ship is 1,670 pixels long, the vessel would be 262.04514 meters in length.


Still, this relies on a big assumption, that the K'Tinga was an entirely new class of vessel than the D-7. Technically in The Motion Picture novelization it was stated more or less to be an advanced D-7 with longer warp-nacelles, more powerful deflector-grids, and bigger photon-torpedo tubes. The book, however while written by Gene Roddenberry, himself, was not technically considered canon. Assuming the ship was a D-7 with the following modifications, the vessel would be around 232.64 meters in length assuming the same dimensions excepting the longer warp-nacelles, though for some reason official sources list it at 214 meters, even though the D-7 was 228.3 meters.

Providing the primary hulls are of roughly the same thicknesses, though, the K'Tinga would be a tiny bit over 262 meters.


CuttingEdge100

 

[Longinus]

Still, this relies on a big assumption, that the K'Tinga was an entirely new class of vessel than the D-7.

...Or that D-7 is bigger than we thought. I'd go with that.

 

[T'Girl]

By vulcantgirl at 2009-09-05

So the klingon could use the same shape for light, medium, heavy and battle cruisers and maybe battleships too.

Many of us would agree that the basic bird of prey is produced in different sizes. Or just changes sizes.

 

[Longinus]

In that pic D-7 is just closer to the camera.

 

[Timo]

In this one, it isn't.

http://tas.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x12/thetimetrap_103.JPG

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

In this one, it isn't.

But that is a cartoon...

Though the size of the Klingon cruiser would seem to correspond to these larger K'tinga figures postulated in this thread, and the scale looks quite sensible to me.

 

[T'Girl]

In that pic D-7 is just closer to the camera.

No. The light from the planet is coming up at a angle. The main Klingon hull is shading the Enterprise's nacelles and aft engineering hull at the hanger deck. Just as the Enterprises engineering hull is slighty shading the dorsal neck. The Enterprise is directly above.

There is also a strong light from foreward.

 

[Longinus]

You are over-analysing smudgy sixties effect shot.