Official sources have stated that the USS Enterprise of the new timeline is 762 metres long, making it a behemoth comparable to a Galaxy class ship. However Berndt Schneider has come up with a much more modest estimation of around 366 metres, making it still larger than the prime universe Enterprise, but not by anywhere near as much. Which definition works better though? I'm kind of undecided at the moment, though part of me does feel that 762 metres is a bit too much.
Size of the NuEnterprise
- Thread starter EJA
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The official size of the ship is 725m, from the Bluray and the "Art of" book. The ship was originally designed at 366m, but was scaled up because the shuttles, the brewery and the bridge deck simply wouldn't fit at the smaller size.
The CG model was scaled at around 725m in all but the Riverside Shipyard shot (where it's 366m), but for the shipyard shot the CG model was scaled down - the people walking on the hull wouldn't fit in the exposed decks. The ship is huge (725-ish meters) in the "under construction" teaser too.
As I said before, the bridge deck (a corridor network and transporter room are behind) wouldn't fit in a 366m ship, nor would the bridge window, the enourmous brewery engine room and the huge shuttlebay.
You can see tiny people at the viewscreen-sized windows when Kirk's pod launches to Delta Vega.
So I say the ship is 725m long, simply because to do otherwise would require you to ignore so much of the movie.
The Kelvin is similarly huge at 457m (with 800 crew), according to the Bluray.
The CG model was scaled at around 725m in all but the Riverside Shipyard shot (where it's 366m), but for the shipyard shot the CG model was scaled down - the people walking on the hull wouldn't fit in the exposed decks. The ship is huge (725-ish meters) in the "under construction" teaser too.
As I said before, the bridge deck (a corridor network and transporter room are behind) wouldn't fit in a 366m ship, nor would the bridge window, the enourmous brewery engine room and the huge shuttlebay.
You can see tiny people at the viewscreen-sized windows when Kirk's pod launches to Delta Vega.
So I say the ship is 725m long, simply because to do otherwise would require you to ignore so much of the movie.
The Kelvin is similarly huge at 457m (with 800 crew), according to the Bluray.
The way I see it, comparing the TOS Enterprise and the Kelvin or the STXI Enterprise is like comparing the Enterprise-D and Voyager. Both have almost identical capabilities, but are vastly different in size.
The Daytrom Institute Technical Library gives the size of the Kelvin as 450 metres. Berndt Schneider gives its length as 315 metres. Both of which I can just about cope with, but over 700 metres? I just think it's a little bit of a stretch. Are there any Federation starships listed in the old tech manuals from the time of the original Kirk and before that were anywhere near this size?
The old tech manuals had Federation Dreadnoughts that were slightly bigger than the TOS Enterprise, at around 320m. The old novels "The Wounded Sky" and "My Enemy, My Ally" featured mile-long Defender-class Federation ships, crewed by elephant-sized nonhumanoids(!).
You've got to remember that STXI is a reboot. Those in charge made the changes, we just have to live with them. Bernd Schnider is basically trying to retcon STXI to fit in with old Star Treks, rather than look forward and fit the old in with the new. I have a feeling he's gonna have a very rough time with the new films.
Are there any schematics for this Defender class out there? I wouldn't mind seeing it in comparison to the TOS Constitution class. Exactly how much bigger/longer would it have been?
We've never seen a pic of one.
From "My Enemy, My Ally", page 45:
Four were built in total. In the passage above it's Destroyer-class, later it's called Defender-class
Novel authors in the 80's were a lot freer to come up with whatever they wanted than today. The novels aren't canon, but then neither are any of the tech manuals.
From "My Enemy, My Ally", page 45:
Four were built in total. In the passage above it's Destroyer-class, later it's called Defender-class
Novel authors in the 80's were a lot freer to come up with whatever they wanted than today. The novels aren't canon, but then neither are any of the tech manuals.
If the Defender's engineering hull was a mile long, wouldn't the nacelles be a bit small for it? I'm not sure exactly how long the Enterprise's are, but even twice their length would be well under a mile. The saucer section would be comparatively small as well. Could it be that Diane Duane thought the Enterprise was considerably larger than it was later confirmed to be?
Problem with the resized nuEnterprise (at least for those who know the TMP refit) is that most of the details are almost exactly as on the TMP refit. For example the windows, in relative size and arrangement.
It's like had they built the Super Star Destroyer model in ESB without making the conning tower smaller. Otherwise it would have been harder to get a proper sense of scale.
It's like had they built the Super Star Destroyer model in ESB without making the conning tower smaller. Otherwise it would have been harder to get a proper sense of scale.
It's possible. Things were a lot more up in the air back then, with a lot more room for interpretation (despite size figures for the 1701 being available since "The Making of Star Trek"). Diane Duane always had a very unique way of looking at the Star Trek universe, almost reimagining it for the budgetless medium of books. The orignal chronological placement for "My Enemy, My Ally" was during a second five-year mission before TMP. The re-release as part of "The Bloodwing Chronicles" tweaks a few details and moves the book post-TMP, to comply with the modern Star Trek Chronology.
Why not? Starfleet built the insanely huge spacedock from STIII, that's as big as a thousand starships. They built the Enterprise-D in the 24th century, why not build something as big in the 23rd? Enterprise made it pretty clear that earth (and Klingon, for that matter) technology's been pretty much the same from 2151 to 2278. The only differences are ships go a little faster and have holodecks (and we even met the aliens they premably get that tech from in "Unexpected").
And besides - it a budget thing and a rebooted franchise. They could afford bigger sets/locations, thus they made the ship bigger to fit. They've made the change, why fight it? Isn't it harder to try and make sense of a huge brewery that couldn't possibly fit, or all those corridors that would be sticking out behind the bridge dome on a smaller ship, or a shuttlebay that can't fit the shuttles inside?
Well, that's my view anyway.
And besides - it a budget thing and a rebooted franchise. They could afford bigger sets/locations, thus they made the ship bigger to fit. They've made the change, why fight it? Isn't it harder to try and make sense of a huge brewery that couldn't possibly fit, or all those corridors that would be sticking out behind the bridge dome on a smaller ship, or a shuttlebay that can't fit the shuttles inside?
Well, that's my view anyway.
Just because the nacelles were twice the length of the Enterprise's doesn't automatically mean they were "only" twice the diameter, they could have been five times the Enterprise's in that dimension.
Also, a modern day naval cruiser's engines are smaller than a aircraft carrier's, but the cruiser's engines are a greater percentage of the cruiser's total size than in the case of the aircraft carrier's. Cruisers can also run circles around a carrier, which is probably also the case with the Enterprise and the Inaieu.
Probably the case too with the TOS Enterprise and the last movie Enterprise as well.
It not exactly clear just how big the Federation is in Kirk's era, I sort of figure a third or so of Picard's 150 plus member figure. If we're talking about a group of fifty star "empires" with collectively a thousand colonies (Metamorphosis) their combined industrial capacity should easily permit the construction of tens or hundreds of mega-prises.
The Enterprise described in Diane Duane's novels is a pretty obvious a post TMP refit Enterprise, the details of the officer's lounge, the huge crew rec room with huge windows oriented toward the starboard warp engine, the airlock prep room and the differences in the bridge layout. From my reading of early Star Trek materials, Diane Duane is the first person to coin the term "Flagship" in reference to the USS Enterprise, years prior to TNG.
Interestingly, in the mid 1980's she also equipped the Enterprise with a computer bulletin board system,
a trekBBS.
Duane's Enterprise isn't quite the TMP one. "My Enemy, My Ally" indicates the new Intrepid is the first ship of the TMP Enterprise type, and the rest of the fleet (including Enterprise) are soon to be upgraded. I think Duane was going for the Phase II Enterprise design, almost identical to the TMP ship inside (and reusing the TOS uniforms, as described in the book), and about halfway out. Here's the excellent CG of the original Phase II design, made for the Phase II (no relation 
) fan films:
http://trekmovie.com/images/PIIent0000_st.jpg
http://trekmovie.com/images/PIIent0001_st.jpg
) fan films:http://trekmovie.com/images/PIIent0000_st.jpg
http://trekmovie.com/images/PIIent0001_st.jpg
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Is there some sort of story related reason for the change in size between TOS era Enterprise being a fraction of the size of the NuEnterprise? Something to do with the timeline altering technology, perhaps?
Not really. The writers have suggested that the Kelvin's scans may have altered the development of Federation technology, but that doesn't explain why the Kelvin (457m) is bigger than the TOS Enterprise (285m).
The only explenations I can think of is either (and yes I've way over thought this):
-Something happend between prime 2233 and 2245 to make Starfleet shrink their ships, that didn't happen in the AU.
-Ships bigger than the TOS and TMP Enterprises "always" existed and were just unseen until now. The TOS Enterprise was a smaller or medium-sized Federation ship (along the lines of an earlier Voyager) rather than the biggest (an earlier Enterprise-D, Nebula or Sovereign).
I have no idea, since I haven't read "Bloodwing" myself. All I know is that references to Christine Chapel were dropped (she was studying for her doctorate, but would have already been a doctor in the latter timeframe), the Rihannsu (Romulan) "elements" were renamed "powers", and the stardates changed.
I've often wondered if the two Constellation-class ships from Swordhunt/Honor Blade (two half-books released that make up book 3 of the onmibus) were stand-ins for the Defenders, since those books were originally written during an era of much tighter author contraints.
I still reckon he makes some interesting points. You ought to have a look at his article here:
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise_comment.htm#size
