Here is the simple answer.
There is no canon support for the TOS Enterprise being 947 feet, however much M. Jefferies intended it to be.
The canon support for the NuEnterprise being much, much larger than 947 feet is depicted in the shuttle fly-by of the saucer section and the number of shuttles in the bay, weighed against the apparent size of the shuttle's as depicted at the Academy.
Case closed.
I do admit, there is a little "fuck it all" devil on my shoulder saying this is the best way out. Just retcon the original upwards in size. But it would also cause everything else that ever appeared on screen with the Enterprise to get bumped up in size too, and that way lies madness.
Of course, if such a notion was ever published as the official explanation, Bernd over at
Ex Astris would spontaneously combust.
Peter,
That's my feeling, too.
For 35 years, I've had a number stuck in my head- from non-canon sources that I've always just accepted implicitly.
There were few canon scale-qualifiers and they were largely contradictory to each other.
"24 four foot shuttlecraft" anyone?
And you're right, Bernd would be running around with his hair on fire.
Part of me really, really, wants to just say to hell with it and try upscaling the 1701, the refit (and related ships) and the
Excelsior - especially since the
Excelsior had a tendency to look a lot bigger next to the
Enterprise-D than it "should" have if it were the 467 meter size, and it seemed to have a lot of, erm, "conflicting" ILM scale windows.
Also, the
Stargazer looked hellabig next to the D, at least bigger than it should have, and it used refit components.
Eek! They've been laying the seeds for this for years!
Here is the simple answer.
There is no canon support for the TOS Enterprise being 947 feet, however much M. Jefferies intended it to be.
The canon support for the NuEnterprise being much, much larger than 947 feet is depicted in the shuttle fly-by of the saucer section and the number of shuttles in the bay, weighed against the apparent size of the shuttle's as depicted at the Academy.
Case closed.
So that guy in the spacesuit buzzing around the Enterprise in TMP was thirty feet tall and three feet thick?
Yes! He was a member of the Titanian species.
Also, why the hell was the Federation measuring things in
feet?
TMP and TFF are really the two cases where the scale is made relatively clear by size of vehicles in relation to the size of the shuttle/cargo bays. Of course, one might squint and pretend those are tricks of perspective, while also ignoring that one barely-visible "scale in feet." Indeed, that graphic makes me find my little feet/meters conspiracy theory all the more viable...
You know, I'm sure it's entirely coincidental at this point, but I notice that a 710 meter Enterprise would have an engineering section with dimensions VERY close that of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
Have we really given much thought to engineering/technical/logistical implications of building a space ship this size? I mean, honestly, even with 21st century technology we have the ability to build structures this large, it's just that we don't usually connect them or attach gigantic engines to them.
In point of fact, building a 710 meter Enterprise would be the equivalent of building four Nimitz class aircraft carriers and attaching them together with trusses. There's the engineering challenge of getting all four giant modules to stick together without flying apart, but that's a matter of engineering skill and material science, hardly insurmountable by 23rd century technology.
You know, the more one thinks about it, the more plausible yet impressive a 700 meter
Enterprise seems. The notion of four aircraft carriers strapped together compared to TOS's ship the size of one
is more impressive, even if I still feel like it's overkill.
