So many Mirandas/So few Constitution-refits?

[Praetor]

No sorry, not the physical model - the digital one created for the Nexus scenes in "Generations." That was the one that was (ostensibly) lost, not the physical model.

I just realized that's how blssdwlf read it too... my bad fellas. Nothing at all happened to the ILM Excelsior/Ent-B/Lakota model... as 137th says, she got auctioned off and is in some collection of film miniatures somewhere now, IIRC.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That's glare - which increased the brightness by a small amount for the entire frame.

At the point of impact, yes. However:

IF it was significantly brighter than the torpedo itself, which -- judging by the illumination on the bridge dome -- it was not.

We have an example of what it would look like with a small light source between the impulse drive and bridge module

No, YOU have a GUESS at what it would look like in that position. This contradicts the fact that the actual reflection from the torpedo is not present except where it is VERY close to the hull (e.g. the saucer on the starboard side, the bridge dome on the starboard side). We would only expect any glare against the impulse deck when the torpedo gets close to it before detonating; since it does not, we wouldn't expect to see be any.

She'd still need to be able to carry out the mission

The mission is to act as a deterrent. If they try anything AT ALL, the mission has failed.

That line isn't in the filmed movie so they changed the premise.

They didn't change the PREMISE at all. Nothing contradicts it and all of Spock and Gorkon's dialog is fully consistent with it, especially his greeting "Face to face at last!" in the transporter room.

It's only painfully obvious the bridge crew were getting old. However the ship itself showed no signs of obsolescence.

Being returned to space dock to be decommissioned is a pretty big sign of obsolescence, especially since this is the same fate intended for its only known sister ship half a decade earlier.

Your boss may drive something that physically looks like it might be falling apart but the E-A is lacking any physical signs of wear-and-tear or technical problems.

So does my boss' car if you're not looking too closely at it.

Compare the TFF Enterprise to its TUC incarnation and then think to yourself what the word "miracle worker" really means. What's more, look very closely at the TUC Enterprise: exposed pipes and conduits in the ceilings, exposed machinery and poor lighting in the torpedo room, safety grates, warning labels, and -- for the first time on a ship named Enterprise -- hot-bunking. These are things we've never seen before on a starship and we never see again afterwards; it's entirely possible that the ship's condition hasn't actually improved all that much since TFF and that it remains as functional as it is only the extensive shipwide application of jury rigging which in the mean time has forced half the crew out of their quarters. Some of the new equipment they'd be asked to carry might be literally too advanced to actually integrate with their systems and would require whole sections of the ship to be converted into equipment bays just to house them.

But that's the rub isn't it? The old Reliants and Excelsior(s) in TNG/DS9 don't really change their shapes. They just accommodate the new technologies. The Soyuz class also got retired but she also has about the same or slightly more volume than the Reliant. So pinning it to a technological reasoning is alot harder without more specifics.

Not really. The original Constitution design was built with what appears to be VERY old technology, none of which reappears in operational starship designs of the 2280s. The parallel is very fitting for, say, the Albany class guided missile cruisers which were built as gun platforms and later reconfigured (and THOROUGHLY rebuilt) to be used as guided missile cruisers. Newer ships that were DESIGNED to carry guided missiles had much longer service lives with the U.S. Navy and second-hand buyers years later; the Albanys were never more than a stopgap and quickly became obsolete as newer technologies could not be fitted to them at all.

Let's get into specifics: Enterprise' refit featured
- a brand new warp drive
- a new power grid that channeled engine power into the phaser banks
- new torpedo launchers
- new deflector shields
- new sensors
- new computers
- new shuttle/cargo bay configuration
- new impulse engines
- a different hull plating configuration.

That's nine new features fitting into a spaceframe that was never originally DESIGNED for any of them. Meanwhile, the Mirandas and Constellations were built with those basic systems in mind.

The most obvious difference between them is the lack of the large secondary hull separate from the saucer; this modularity may actually be a severe handicap in the new engine configuration, especially if you take Probert's design intent literally (the intermix is just a large power transfer conduit) in which case the location of the main reactor is prohibitively far from the impulse engines AND the warp drive and is a source of both power loss AND severe occupational hazard for the crew (longer conduit means more radiation leaks and more that can go wrong). At the same time, Constitution's saucer is too small to support all the hardware of the Matter-antimatter reactor and the power conduit would still be way too long even if you moved the reactor into the impulse deck or the neck of the ship. Still worse, the layout of the power systems means that the main reactor -- at the bottom of the secondary hull -- has to transfer all of its power past the torpedo launcher and up to the impulse deck before it ever gets anywhere near the phaser banks; damage to the impulse deck will therefore cut off phaser power, and radiation leaks in the intermix might disable the torpedo launcher as well as cut off any access between the saucer and the engineering section.

Other reasons too, but you get the idea: just the BASIC SHAPE of the constitution class makes a very poor fit for the new engine design and potentially hinders risk-management and damage control efforts in a fundamental way. Even the exposed/bulging torpedo deck in the neck of the ship could easily be interpreted as a tactical liability; the Mirandas move it into an apparently removable pod (and is therefore probably fully automated) where it won't be affected by anything happening elsewhere on the ship; the Constellations move them to the nacelle pylons, safely isolated from the hull. In either location, it's also a safety feature in case of accidental torpedo detonation; the Mirandas could survive that kind of accident while a Constitution would likely be blown in half.

Starfleet would be looking at ALL of these things and realizing that if you were to change the design to eliminate these issues, it wouldn't be Constitution class anymore, it would just be a franken-Miranda or a butt-ugly Constellation class. Or this thing. Ultimately this means the "secondary hull" Y-shaped configuration for starships comes to require either a much different engine design (see Excelsior's "humpback" which probably contains a reactor core of some kind) or a much larger ship altogether.

Those are good examples but they're because of financial reasons and not technological.

Technology has an element of feasibility too. If you have an infinite amount of resources, ANYTHING is technologically possible, but not anything is feasible for the resources you are willing to expend.

 

[BK613]

Here's a wacky idea: if there were new-built TMP style Connies, what if they became the Constellations.

 

[Praetor]

The most obvious difference between them is the lack of the large secondary hull separate from the saucer; this modularity may actually be a severe handicap in the new engine configuration, especially if you take Probert's design intent literally (the intermix is just a large power transfer conduit) in which case the location of the main reactor is prohibitively far from the impulse engines AND the warp drive and is a source of both power loss AND severe occupational hazard for the crew (longer conduit means more radiation leaks and more that can go wrong). At the same time, Constitution's saucer is too small to support all the hardware of the Matter-antimatter reactor and the power conduit would still be way too long even if you moved the reactor into the impulse deck or the neck of the ship. Still worse, the layout of the power systems means that the main reactor -- at the bottom of the secondary hull -- has to transfer all of its power past the torpedo launcher and up to the impulse deck before it ever gets anywhere near the phaser banks; damage to the impulse deck will therefore cut off phaser power, and radiation leaks in the intermix might disable the torpedo launcher as well as cut off any access between the saucer and the engineering section.

Other reasons too, but you get the idea: just the BASIC SHAPE of the constitution class makes a very poor fit for the new engine design and potentially hinders risk-management and damage control efforts in a fundamental way. Even the exposed/bulging torpedo deck in the neck of the ship could easily be interpreted as a tactical liability; the Mirandas move it into an apparently removable pod (and is therefore probably fully automated) where it won't be affected by anything happening elsewhere on the ship; the Constellations move them to the nacelle pylons, safely isolated from the hull. In either location, it's also a safety feature in case of accidental torpedo detonation; the Mirandas could survive that kind of accident while a Constitution would likely be blown in half.

Starfleet would be looking at ALL of these things and realizing that if you were to change the design to eliminate these issues, it wouldn't be Constitution class anymore, it would just be a franken-Miranda or a butt-ugly Constellation class. Or this thing. Ultimately this means the "secondary hull" Y-shaped configuration for starships comes to require either a much different engine design (see Excelsior's "humpback" which probably contains a reactor core of some kind) or a much larger ship altogether.

You make some very good points here, and I'm glad you bring up the TMP intermix chamber, as I've been thinking about it lately.

The TMP style intermix chamber is an oddity. I recall reading that Mr. Probert said when he designed it he mostly imagined it being needed to move antimatter around, not factoring in the matter/antimatter annihilation which Mr. Sternbach helped him figure out on TNG. As you say, what's the point of having this big vulnerability, other than because you want to directly integrate power sources?

I think possibly that the intermix chamber might exist with the reactor down at the bottom, as you mention, but that the matter/antimatter mix might "actually" be deflected back down the shaft by the deflection crystal (which isn't really it's original purpose but bear with me) which somehow causes a reaction loop to generate a continual power flow from the reaction.

Or, perhaps the reactors are in the engines, and what we see is just a glorified EPS conduit? Perhaps there is no reactor in the hull.

Now, regarding Excelsior, when it comes to her I obviously have some opinions on that. I've contemplated putting the intermix chamber in the humpback pod with the pylons, but then how do you reconcile having two deflection crystals atop the primary hull? There has to be some form of conduit extending up there, at least if they fulfill their original purpose of "deflecting" warp power into the impulse engines.

I think it's also important to take into account that the intermix chambers of the Enterprise-A and Excelsior in TUC were represented by the TNG style warp core from the D sets. We may wish to conclude that the "real" cores looked slightly different, but may also conclude that this indicates a jump in reactor design, that Starfleet pioneered with Excelsior and tried to graft through the rest of the fleet.

I would also think that some of the insecurities you mention must not nearly be as dangerous as we think they are, otherwise surely shearing off a warp engine or blowing up the bridge would happen a lot more commonly?

I do think that some of what you say about Constellation and Miranda have a great degree of merit; the key to their longevity may have been in the simplicity of their drive systems. The Mirandas may have retained the old TMP style intermix chambers, but that may have been quite sufficient for their needs.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think possibly that the intermix chamber might exist with the reactor down at the bottom, as you mention, but that the matter/antimatter mix might "actually" be deflected back down the shaft by the deflection crystal (which isn't really it's original purpose but bear with me) which somehow causes a reaction loop to generate a continual power flow from the reaction.

Or, perhaps the reactors are in the engines, and what we see is just a glorified EPS conduit? Perhaps there is no reactor in the hull.

Even if the reaction takes place in the nacelles instead of the "bottom" of the shaft where Probert put it (and I prefer to think of it that way, personally) that still means the power transfer has to travel through almost the entire ship before it gets to the impulse deck, which is also where it would be converted into electrical power to be consumed by the rest of the ship. That's a VERY long route with lots of potential failure modes IMO.

The Mirandas have the benefit that the nacelle pylons are short and there's not much hardware between the pylons and the engineering section. Depending on the internal layout, there might actually be NONE: the plasma conduits would run straight to the impulse engines in a sealed channel, protecting the crew from any radiation exposure. The first and only time the conduits share an an environment with the hull is main engineering; after that, it's all conventional electronics. The Constellations have this feature as well: the engine room is probably right at the back of the saucer, so the plasma conduits wouldn't get anywhere NEAR the inhabited sections of the ship.

The added safety benefits are potentially enormous, especially considering the carnage experienced by the trainees when Khan popped the intermix chamber in TWOK. For one thing, a Constellation class would have a forked power conduit so you wouldn't be able to hamstring the entire ship at a single point of failure; perhaps more importantly, the crew's work spaces aren't anywhere near those power conduits, so shooting at them won't put half the engineering department in sickbay with plasma burns.

Now, regarding Excelsior, when it comes to her I obviously have some opinions on that. I've contemplated putting the intermix chamber in the humpback pod with the pylons, but then how do you reconcile having two deflection crystals atop the primary hull? There has to be some form of conduit extending up there, at least if they fulfill their original purpose of "deflecting" warp power into the impulse engines.

Maybe not. Exclesior is a much larger ship with a very different engine design. Depending on your interpretation of the "transwarp" experiment, it could be that the impulse engines have their own reactors (housed beneath the crystals) because the new transwarp drive can't directly supply useful power to other ship's systems.

I think it's also important to take into account that the intermix chambers of the Enterprise-A and Excelsior in TUC were represented by the TNG style warp core from the D sets. We may wish to conclude that the "real" cores looked slightly different, but may also conclude that this indicates a jump in reactor design, that Starfleet pioneered with Excelsior and tried to graft through the rest of the fleet.

I don't think that would make a lot of sense, considering it would mean the TNG-style warp core was in use for over 70 years with no change; that would mean SEVERE technological stagnation for Starfleet (OTOH, it might as well confirm that Excelsior's transwarp drive is now the standard engine configuration for the 24th century).

If it is, though, this too indicates the problem with the Constitutions: the hull is too thin to safely house the new multi-level reactor design, especially since it would require a pretty impressive amount of deuterium and antideuterium to operate normally. That retrofit would make the neck of the ship even MORE vulnerable, since any damage to that part of the hull could potentially destroy the entire vessel instead of simply irradiate the crew.

I do think that some of what you say about Constellation and Miranda have a great degree of merit; the key to their longevity may have been in the simplicity of their drive systems. The Mirandas may have retained the old TMP style intermix chambers, but that may have been quite sufficient for their needs.

It could be that, but looking back on naval vessels of the real world it occurs to me that it might be as simple as their SHAPES. Constellation and Miranda class ships keep their engine rooms very close to their saucer modules and there isn't a lot of hardware between the saucer and the nacelles. Apart from making the TMP-style intermix a lot easier to use on those ships, it might make it a lot easier to swap those drive systems out for NEWER engine designs without having to take the ship's awkward/narrow spaces into account. Because of the way the Constitution class was (re)built, there's a physical limit to how large its main reactor can be and how it can be integrated to the ship; installing some of the newer drive cores might come at the cost of closing off part of the cargo bay or sacrificing some other features without which the ship is barely functional.

It could very well be that the external/secondary hull of the original Constitution was the design's only real selling point: since at that point the reaction occurred in the nacelles completely, the engine room could still be in the saucer section (where it would normally be for 22nd/23rd century ships) and still be physically isolated from the actual engines. The secondary hull would add the advantage of carrying lots of shuttles, cargo, probes, lab equipment, ion pods and other goodies that an exploration vessel needs; the TOS Constitution would be very efficient that way, until technological trends in weapons technology and starship design necessitate a more direct transfer path from the engines to the rest of the ship. For some reason, attaching the nacelles directly to the saucer section isn't doable (the primary M/AM reactor is too large to fit in the saucer?) so the TMP refit was both an innovative workaround and a technological dead-end.

 

[blssdwlf]

At the point of impact, yes. However:

IF it was significantly brighter than the torpedo itself, which -- judging by the illumination on the bridge dome -- it was not.

We have an example of what it would look like with a small light source between the impulse drive and bridge module

No, YOU have a GUESS at what it would look like in that position.

No, WE have an EXAMPLE of what it would look like in that position as shown in a screen capture of a spark at a later frame.

This contradicts the fact that the actual reflection from the torpedo is not present except where it is VERY close to the

We are not looking for a reflection but illumination from the torpedo explosion. Because the initial frame of the explosion doesn't illuminate the front of the impulse deck then the explosion point cannot be between the impulse deck and bridge. What we're seeing is glare and the explosion point is to the port side of the impulse deck.

The mission is to act as a deterrent. If they try anything AT ALL, the mission has failed.

Not exactly. Escort missions is part deterrent and also part keeping the target safe. Starfleet command signed off on them for the mission so to them they considered the ship capable of performing the mission.

SPOCK: We have volunteered to rendezvous with the Klingon vessel that is bringing Chancellor Gorkon to Earth, and to escort him safely through Federation space.
​

They didn't change the PREMISE at all. Nothing contradicts it and all of Spock and Gorkon's dialog is fully consistent with it, especially his greeting "Face to face at last!" in the transporter room.

Gorkon's saying "Face to face at last" to Captain Spock. The line where you say that Gorkon requested Kirk and crew isn't in the movie and thus the premise was changed to Spock volunteering Kirk.

Being returned to space dock to be decommissioned is a pretty big sign of obsolescence, especially since this is the same fate intended for its only known sister ship half a decade earlier.

Or Starfleet habitually decommissions ships that suffers damage in a battle and doesn't want to pay the insurance bill

We don't know what the reason is for her to be decommissioned.

So does my boss' car if you're not looking too closely at it.

That's not the description you gave it. You called it a "1993 Dodge Charger my boss still drives around sometimes: it's such a rusty old piece of shit you couldn't sell it for a candy bar"

That says the car obviously looks like it's obsolete and falling apart. The E-A never exhibited that.

Compare the TFF Enterprise to its TUC incarnation and then think to yourself what the word "miracle worker" really means. What's more, look very closely at the TUC Enterprise: exposed pipes and conduits in the ceilings, exposed machinery and poor lighting in the torpedo room, safety grates, warning labels, and -- for the first time on a ship

What's the problem? Various versions of the TOS/TMP Enterprises had that and it's not poor lighting but mood lighting.

named Enterprise -- hot-bunking. These are things we've never seen before on a starship and we never see again afterwards;

Did we see two people share the same bunk? All I recall was that they had bunks like the Excelsior did as seen in "Flashback".

it's entirely possible that the ship's condition hasn't actually improved all that much since TFF and that it remains as functional as it is only the extensive shipwide application of jury rigging which in the mean time has forced half the crew out of their quarters. Some of the new equipment they'd be asked to carry might be literally too advanced to actually integrate with their systems and would require whole sections of the ship to be converted into equipment bays just to house them.

Or OTOH, the ship's like any normal Starfleet ship.

But that's the rub isn't it? The old Reliants and Excelsior(s) in TNG/DS9 don't really change their shapes. They just accommodate the new technologies. The Soyuz class also got retired but she also has about the same or slightly more volume than the Reliant. So pinning it to a technological reasoning is alot harder without more specifics.

Not really. The original Constitution design was built with what appears to be VERY old technology, none of which reappears in operational starship designs of the 2280s.

I'm not talking about the original Constitution design as it's obvious Starfleet switched to newer technology resulting in the TMP Enterprise. I'm talking about ships that appear to be of contemporary design to the TMP Enterprise like the Reliant where they were able to be upgraded internally.

The parallel is very fitting for, say, the Albany class guided missile cruisers which were built as gun platforms and later reconfigured (and THOROUGHLY rebuilt)

Going from TOS E to TMP E is not the same. The Baltimore to Albany conversion (and most others like it in the US Navy) never replaced the hull. Yes they swapped the superstructure and most of the guts, but it's still floating on the same hull. The TOS E to TMP E pretty much is a new build as there isn't anything left over from the original ship. The spaceframe is different, the internal framework, the whole works.

Your Albany-class parallel is closer to a Reliant to Soyuz conversion.

Let's get into specifics: Enterprise' refit featured
- a brand new warp drive
- a new power grid that channeled engine power into the phaser banks
- new torpedo launchers
- new deflector shields
- new sensors
- new computers
- new shuttle/cargo bay configuration
- new impulse engines
- a different hull plating configuration.

Not just new hull plating but a new spaceframe that has none left of the original. It's a new ship in the guise of a redesign.

That's nine new features fitting into a spaceframe that was never originally DESIGNED for any of them.

That would be true if it was still the original TOS spaceframe. Since it is not, then the new TMP spaceframe was designed for the new technology.

Meanwhile, the Mirandas and Constellations were built with those basic systems in mind.

Sure.

The most obvious difference between them is the lack of the large secondary hull separate from the saucer; this modularity may actually be a severe handicap in the new engine configuration, especially if you take Probert's design intent literally (the intermix is just a large power transfer conduit) in which case the location of the

That's an interesting argument but many of these issues also crop up on the other, later generation ships and some don't appear to plague the TMP Enterprise.

main reactor is prohibitively far from the impulse engines AND the warp drive and is a source of both power loss

I'm not aware of the main reactor being so far away from either impulse or warp drive on the TMP E to have been an issue.

From doing a quick review of the Reliant, the main reactor should be right next to the impulse engines but the power conduits to the warp nacelles are almost as long as the TMP E's and the Reliant's warp pylons are thinner.

The Constellations have apparently the shortest run from main reactor to impulse and warp drives.

The Excelsior OTOH has a much longer run than any of those ships.

AFAIK, the only generation of ships that ever had issues with power conduits or power couplings were ships from ENT, TNG, DS9 and VOY.

AND severe occupational hazard for the crew (longer conduit means more radiation leaks and more that can go wrong). At the same time,

That's why I'm assuming that the power conduits go through the engineering hull and not the primary hull to only expose radiation to the engineering crew?

Constitution's saucer is too small to support all the hardware of the Matter-antimatter reactor and the power conduit would still be way too long even if you moved the reactor into the impulse deck or the neck of the ship.

Isn't that the case with the Reliant and Constellation? The reactor is in an enlarged or add-on hull and not in the saucer itself.

Still worse, the layout of the power systems means that the main reactor -- at the bottom of the secondary hull -- has to transfer all of its power past the torpedo launcher and up to the impulse deck before it ever gets anywhere near the phaser banks; damage to the impulse deck will therefore cut off phaser power, and radiation leaks in the intermix might disable the torpedo launcher as well as cut off any access between the saucer and the engineering section.

I think that's going to be a problem with the Reliants and Excelsiors as well. The Constellations not so much.

Other reasons too, but you get the idea: just the BASIC SHAPE of the constitution class makes a very poor fit for the new engine design and potentially hinders risk-management and damage control efforts in a fundamental way. Even the exposed/bulging torpedo deck in the neck of the ship could easily be interpreted as a tactical liability; the Mirandas move it into an apparently removable pod (and is therefore probably fully automated) where it won't be affected by anything happening elsewhere on the ship;

Sure it could be a tactical liability but when the Reliant's pod exploded, it killed almost everyone on the bridge so having the torpedo pod that close to the bridge could also be a liability as well.

the Constellations move them to the nacelle pylons, safely isolated from the hull.

Yeah I think the Constellations has a safe placement of the torpedo launcher, although having it explode so close to the warp nacelles doesn't sound ideal.

In either location, it's also a safety feature in case of accidental torpedo detonation; the Mirandas could survive that kind of accident while a Constitution would likely be blown in half.

On the Reliant's yeah, I think most will survive except for the bridge crew and the engineering crew (which are directly below the pod.)

For the Constitution, the saucer and everyone in there would probably be okay as they're blown clear from the engineering hull The engineers probably won't be so lucky.

Starfleet would be looking at ALL of these things and realizing that if you were to change the design to eliminate these issues, it wouldn't be Constitution class anymore, it would just be a franken-Miranda or a butt-ugly Constellation class. Or this thing. Ultimately this means the "secondary hull" Y-shaped configuration for starships comes to require either a much different engine design (see Excelsior's "humpback" which probably contains a reactor core of some kind) or a much larger ship altogether.

Do the Excelsior MSDs show a reactor there in that hump? IIRC I've not seen that before.

Those are good examples but they're because of financial reasons and not technological.

Technology has an element of feasibility too. If you have an infinite amount of resources, ANYTHING is technologically possible, but not anything is feasible for the resources you are willing to expend.

I think if you applied your same arguments to the Reliants, Constellations and Excelsiors you'll find that they could all suffer from the same issues you have with the TMP Enterprise. It doesn't appear to be just a technology issue but other factors like economics, or politics. Or in earlier threads, the Constitution might not have had enough cargo space for the post-TUC Starfleet whereas the Reliants, Constellations and Excelsiors did have more space.

 

[Robert Comsol]

I noticed you were talking about the "riddle" where the M/AM reaction takes place in the intermix chamber coil, do I presume correctly?

According to the Kimble cutaway and Mr. Probert's cross-section the antimatter pods are located at the bottom of the engineering hull (seems to support the notion of "That Which Survives" that some of the antimatter was located at the bottom from where it could be ejected if the need arises).

Since we unfortunately do not have these Mike Minor "reactor pods" (rather reminiscent of TNG's warp core) the question is where the matter reactants are fed into the chamber coil to join the antimatter for annihilation, correct?

Bob

 

[Praetor]

Even if the reaction takes place in the nacelles instead of the "bottom" of the shaft where Probert put it (and I prefer to think of it that way, personally) that still means the power transfer has to travel through almost the entire ship before it gets to the impulse deck, which is also where it would be converted into electrical power to be consumed by the rest of the ship. That's a VERY long route with lots of potential failure modes IMO.

Generally, I agree - I guess my point was moreso that we see similarly perceived failure points that don't seem to really be an issue: skinny nacelle struts and necks, heavily exposed bridges, and the like.

The Mirandas have the benefit that the nacelle pylons are short and there's not much hardware between the pylons and the engineering section. Depending on the internal layout, there might actually be NONE: the plasma conduits would run straight to the impulse engines in a sealed channel, protecting the crew from any radiation exposure. The first and only time the conduits share an an environment with the hull is main engineering; after that, it's all conventional electronics. The Constellations have this feature as well: the engine room is probably right at the back of the saucer, so the plasma conduits wouldn't get anywhere NEAR the inhabited sections of the ship.

Generally agreed.

The added safety benefits are potentially enormous, especially considering the carnage experienced by the trainees when Khan popped the intermix chamber in TWOK. For one thing, a Constellation class would have a forked power conduit so you wouldn't be able to hamstring the entire ship at a single point of failure; perhaps more importantly, the crew's work spaces aren't anywhere near those power conduits, so shooting at them won't put half the engineering department in sickbay with plasma burns.

My main problem with this, is that we don't exactly know what the cause of the carnage was - was it a design weakness, or was it that Khan had the element of surprise? I think you're supposing that it was more related to design vulnerabilities, but I don't think the evidence supports it.

Maybe not. Exclesior is a much larger ship with a very different engine design. Depending on your interpretation of the "transwarp" experiment, it could be that the impulse engines have their own reactors (housed beneath the crystals) because the new transwarp drive can't directly supply useful power to other ship's systems.

But, if as defined by Mr. Probert the purpose of the deflection crystals is to deflect warp power directly into the impulse engines, what's the point of having deflection crystals where the warp core doesn't connect to the impulse engines?

I don't think that would make a lot of sense, considering it would mean the TNG-style warp core was in use for over 70 years with no change; that would mean SEVERE technological stagnation for Starfleet (OTOH, it might as well confirm that Excelsior's transwarp drive is now the standard engine configuration for the 24th century).

Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be exactly the same, just be the same in concept and arrangement, similar to how the Ford flathead V8 remained unchanged for so long.

If it is, though, this too indicates the problem with the Constitutions: the hull is too thin to safely house the new multi-level reactor design, especially since it would require a pretty impressive amount of deuterium and antideuterium to operate normally. That retrofit would make the neck of the ship even MORE vulnerable, since any damage to that part of the hull could potentially destroy the entire vessel instead of simply irradiate the crew.

Hm, you're probably right there. Even if the new style reactor was installed, it could have proven problematic and ultimately undesirable.

It could be that, but looking back on naval vessels of the real world it occurs to me that it might be as simple as their SHAPES. Constellation and Miranda class ships keep their engine rooms very close to their saucer modules and there isn't a lot of hardware between the saucer and the nacelles. Apart from making the TMP-style intermix a lot easier to use on those ships, it might make it a lot easier to swap those drive systems out for NEWER engine designs without having to take the ship's awkward/narrow spaces into account. Because of the way the Constitution class was (re)built, there's a physical limit to how large its main reactor can be and how it can be integrated to the ship; installing some of the newer drive cores might come at the cost of closing off part of the cargo bay or sacrificing some other features without which the ship is barely functional.

On this front, I do tend to primarily agree with you.

It could very well be that the external/secondary hull of the original Constitution was the design's only real selling point: since at that point the reaction occurred in the nacelles completely, the engine room could still be in the saucer section (where it would normally be for 22nd/23rd century ships) and still be physically isolated from the actual engines. The secondary hull would add the advantage of carrying lots of shuttles, cargo, probes, lab equipment, ion pods and other goodies that an exploration vessel needs; the TOS Constitution would be very efficient that way, until technological trends in weapons technology and starship design necessitate a more direct transfer path from the engines to the rest of the ship. For some reason, attaching the nacelles directly to the saucer section isn't doable (the primary M/AM reactor is too large to fit in the saucer?) so the TMP refit was both an innovative workaround and a technological dead-end.

Quite an interesting take... I don't one-hundred percent agree, but I think this line of reasoning has a great degree of merit and is possibly close to the "truth."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

We have an example of what it would look like with a small light source between the impulse drive and bridge module

No, YOU have a GUESS at what it would look like in that position.

No, WE have an EXAMPLE of what it would look like in that position as shown in a screen capture of a spark at a later frame.

The spark is considerably brighter than the torpedo impact and is reflected by a larger portion of the hull. It remains a guess on your part that the two have similar illumination characteristics.

Anyway, I'm not going any further into this until you can explain why both the moment of impact flash manages to light up the starboard side of the bridge dome if the impact point itself is on the port side.

We don't know what the reason is for her to be decommissioned.

The reason is pretty self evidence, considering they replaced the ship with the Enterprise-B only a year later.

That's not the description you gave it. You called it a "1993 Dodge Charger my boss still drives around sometimes: it's such a rusty old piece of shit you couldn't sell it for a candy bar"

That says the car obviously looks like it's obsolete and falling apart.

It IS obsolete and falling apart. It just doesn't LOOK that way unless you look at it closely.

Did we see two people share the same bunk? All I recall was that they had bunks like the Excelsior did as seen in "Flashback".

Not exactly the same bunk, but after they find one of the gravity boots in the locker of "Crewman Dax", there are fifteen people standing with Spock and staff. Ten of them are enlisted crew, the other four are Spoock, Uhura, Chekov and Mister Tibbs (Valeris is off screen). Behind the crewmen on the right we see three bunks (one of the noncoms is sitting on the top bunk).

We know why the senior officers are there, but why are the noncoms hanging around? It's pretty obvious: because this is their quarters.

We don't see a lot of the room here, but since this is the standard "crew quarters" set that TMP and TNG both used on the show, there should be enough space on the left side (off camera) for two or three more bunks. Add Crewman Dax and an unknown number of noncoms currently on duty elsewhere, then this one room is home for twelve different crewmen. In fact, depending on their watch schedule, there could be another five crewmen other than Dax assigned to this room who weren't involved in the search because they at their regular duty stations (thus the rest of the crew is searching the ship in their off-watch time).

But even if you assume the ship is NOT hot bunking... why, all of a sudden, is the Enterprise fitting three racks in crew quarters when it's actual crew complement hasn't changed at all? We already know the enlisted men on the TOS ship all had their own quarters (Janice Rand in particular) as did the crews on the much more primitive NX-01. Three racks in a single room would seem to be an unusual situation aboard a starship, and the hot-bunking implied in this scene would be HIGHLY unusual. The most likely explanation, IMO, is that extensive repairs and modifications to keep the ship up to date has taken up a larger and larger portion of its internal space and forced more than half of the crew out of their normal quarters.

I'm not talking about the original Constitution design as it's obvious Starfleet switched to newer technology resulting in the TMP Enterprise. I'm talking about ships that appear to be of contemporary design to the TMP Enterprise like the Reliant where they were able to be upgraded internally.

The problem with this claim is that the ships contemporary with Enterprise were never upgraded internally. It seems that Stargazer and possibly Lantree received a few new consoles and some systems as part of its LCARS conversion, but we have no idea when that conversion was done or why or even HOW. It's not as if we saw the rebuilt USS Reliant running around with the fleet in DS9, now is it?

We never got to see the bridge of the Repulse at all, but this ship as well as the Lantree are both seen functioning as courier/transport ships, basically ferrying people and material from one place to another. It's highly unlikely they have the chops for a full-fledged exploration mission like the (arguably much newer) USS Hood.

Going from TOS E to TMP E is not the same. The Baltimore to Albany conversion (and most others like it in the US Navy) never replaced the hull. Yes they swapped the superstructure and most of the guts, but it's still floating on the same hull.

Here you run into the problem that space ships are not boats. The "hull" of a spacecraft is analogous to the main pressure vessel that keeps in the atmosphere and houses the ship's habitable volume. Since the TMP Enterprise is said to be a "refit" and not a brand new starship, that means something of the original was left in the design. It obviously wasn't the "spaceframe" as such because the new ship has a different shape as the old. But the pressure vessel -- IRL, a fairly expensive and difficult component to build -- could easily have been preserved, with Starfleet replacing the outer hull plating, nacelle pylons and other internal/external components while slightly modifying the pressure hull.

IOW: avoid "two dimensional thinking." The superstructure is "anything on top of the hull," and on a space ship, "on top" is simply "outside."

The TOS E to TMP E pretty much is a new build as there isn't anything left over from the original ship.

If that was the case, they wouldn't have called it a refit, and the TMP Enteprise would already be the Enterprise-A.

Isn't that the case with the Reliant and Constellation?

No. Constellation, for example, has a five-deck saucer and a big chunk of space between its impulse engines that could house the reactor in its entirety (assuming the same powerplant as the Constitution class). Miranda's aft section is also about five decks thick and the space between its shuttle bays is almost as wide as the Enterprise's secondary hull. While it may seem like they end up having the same volume, the cylindrical secondary hull actually gives you less USEFUL volume with the same dimensions.

Sure it could be a tactical liability but when the Reliant's pod exploded, it killed almost everyone on the bridge

Actually, the explosion on the bridge happened immediately after Kirk's torpedo hit their port nacelle. It seemed to affect the engineering compartment as well, but we don't really know why.

On the Reliant's yeah, I think most will survive except for the bridge crew and the engineering crew (which are directly below the pod.)

The engineering crew also survived just fine. Again, after the pod was destroyed Kirk turns his attention on the port nacelle; phaser blast there, and we see Khan's crew falling over railings in engineering. Then the torpedo strike, and the bridge explodes.

Compare with what would have happened to the ENTERPRISE if the torpedo bay had exploded in such a way. Apart from potentially decapitating the entire ship, the intermix chamber runs BETWEEN those tubes, and the torpedo deck is not more than six meters above main engineering. If the explosion didn't destroy the ship outright, it would have killed most of the crew and ruined any hope of repair.

For the Constitution, the saucer and everyone in there would probably be okay as they're blown clear from the engineering hull

That scenario has a history of not working very well for starships.

I think if you applied your same arguments to the Reliants, Constellations and Excelsiors you'll find that they could all suffer from the same issues you have with the TMP Enterprise.

I did that already. The fact of the matter is they wouldn't have this problem because they would have been designed from the outset to mitigate it. Reliant, in particular, appears to be a ship that was specifically designed around an intermix-style power system so that the power conduits can run straight to the nacelle without going past anything that people are likely to care about; if they run skin-deep along the bottom of the hull, they would be able to pass right through those two "vent" structures on the belly (sometimes thought to be navigational deflectors) while avoiding both the main saucer section and any part of the ship's internal environment. The Excelsiors would avoid this issue also by moving their reactor components into the bulge.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

My main problem with this, is that we don't exactly know what the cause of the carnage was - was it a design weakness, or was it that Khan had the element of surprise? I think you're supposing that it was more related to design vulnerabilities, but I don't think the evidence supports it.

It's not design vulnerability so much as the fact that Khan specifically aiming at the horizontal intermix chamber, which just happened to be right in the middle of the engine room. Popping the intermix chamber flooded the room with all kinds of irradiated nastiness that the engineers would probably prefer to avoid (and is probably the whole reason they wear radiation suits while on duty).

If the intermix chamber had been somewhere OTHER than the engine room, the crew would not have been so directly exposed to its immediate effects. More importantly, enemy phaser attacks are hardly the ONLY thing that can go wrong with the warp drive (hence, again, the radiation suits).

But, if as defined by Mr. Probert the purpose of the deflection crystals is to deflect warp power directly into the impulse engines, what's the point of having deflection crystals where the warp core doesn't connect to the impulse engines?

Probert didn't design the Excelsior, so those "Deflection crystals" may or may not have anything to do with the intermix in the first place. I'll also point out that those crystals are entirely absent on the the Enterprise-B/Lakota design. I'll further point out that Probert DID include them on his more recent Enterprise-C model, where he specifically identified them as fusion reactors.

 

[Robert Comsol]

But, if as defined by Mr. Probert the purpose of the deflection crystals is to deflect warp power directly into the impulse engines, what's the point of having deflection crystals where the warp core doesn't connect to the impulse engines?

Probert didn't design the Excelsior, so those "Deflection crystals" may or may not have anything to do with the intermix in the first place. I'll also point out that those crystals are entirely absent on the the Enterprise-B/Lakota design. I'll further point out that Probert DID include them on his more recent Enterprise-C model, where he specifically identified them as fusion reactors.

"Intermix ready. Impulse power at your discretion." Didn't Scotty clearly suggest in TMP that the intermix chamber coil could also power the impulse drive?

The thing I still don't get entirely about the Enterprise-D are the separated deuterium tanks, some for fusion and impulse power, some for M/AM reaction and warp power.

I rather think the TMP Enterprise is of beautiful simplicity: deuterium is mostly near the impulse engine section.

Sent antimatter up the intermix shaft and the M/AM annihilation will occur near the impulse delection crystal, giving you greater impulse power than just nuclear fusion.

Send matter down the intermix shaft and have it meet the antimatter will create the energy you can route to the warp nacelles.

In case of saucer separation / "Khan damage" the ship has to rely entirely on nuclear fusion in the impulse engine block.

Destroy the impulse deflection crystal / "Khan's damage" and you have no longer "greater" but just average impulse power.

Just my 0.02 cents

Bob

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But, if as defined by Mr. Probert the purpose of the deflection crystals is to deflect warp power directly into the impulse engines, what's the point of having deflection crystals where the warp core doesn't connect to the impulse engines?

Probert didn't design the Excelsior, so those "Deflection crystals" may or may not have anything to do with the intermix in the first place. I'll also point out that those crystals are entirely absent on the the Enterprise-B/Lakota design. I'll further point out that Probert DID include them on his more recent Enterprise-C model, where he specifically identified them as fusion reactors.

"Intermix ready. Impulse power at your discretion." Didn't Scotty clearly suggest in TMP that the intermix chamber coil could also power the impulse drive?

The thing I still don't get entirely about the Enterprise-D are the separated deuterium tanks, some for fusion and impulse power, some for M/AM reaction and warp power.

I rather think the TMP Enterprise is of beautiful simplicity: deuterium is mostly near the impulse engine section.

Sent antimatter up the intermix shaft and the M/AM annihilation will occur near the impulse delection crystal, giving you greater impulse power than just nuclear fusion.

Send matter down the intermix shaft and have it meet the antimatter will create the energy you can route to the warp nacelles.

Probert implied that the actual reaction took place at the very bottom of the shaft and could be transferred to either the impulse engines or the warp drive through those conduits. The "matter above, antimatter below" interpretation comes out of TNG+ but isn't reflected in the design of the actual ship, especially since the horizontal intermix isn't physically all that different from the vertical one.

In case of saucer separation / "Khan damage" the ship has to rely entirely on nuclear fusion in the impulse engine block.

Destroy the impulse deflection crystal / "Khan's damage" and you have no longer "greater" but just average impulse power.

Actually, it seems to be the case that the "Khan damage" was to the horizontal shaft which cut off the conduits from the warp nacelles. If you take the interpretation that the matter/antimatter reaction takes place in the nacelles, this makes perfect sense, as the reactor at the bottom of the shaft would then be a separate, smaller matter/antimatter reactor (the ship's APU, hence "auxiliary power"). Smashing the deflection crystal would prevent the impulse engines from using that power effectively, while cutting the horizontal intermix would separate the entire system from the main power plants in the nacelles.

 

[Praetor]

It's not design vulnerability so much as the fact that Khan specifically aiming at the horizontal intermix chamber, which just happened to be right in the middle of the engine room. Popping the intermix chamber flooded the room with all kinds of irradiated nastiness that the engineers would probably prefer to avoid (and is probably the whole reason they wear radiation suits while on duty).

If the intermix chamber had been somewhere OTHER than the engine room, the crew would not have been so directly exposed to its immediate effects. More importantly, enemy phaser attacks are hardly the ONLY thing that can go wrong with the warp drive (hence, again, the radiation suits).

Ah, okay - you're speaking more about dangers to the crew, rather than dangers to the ship's destruction? Along the lines of engineers working on a nuclear wessel (er, vessel) with inadequate radition shielding versus ones working on one with proper shielding?

Probert didn't design the Excelsior, so those "Deflection crystals" may or may not have anything to do with the intermix in the first place.

I'll give you that one - the ILM boys may've just copied it. And she didn't get two of them until TUC.

I'll also point out that those crystals are entirely absent on the the Enterprise-B/Lakota design. I'll further point out that Probert DID include them on his more recent Enterprise-C model, where he specifically identified them as fusion reactors.

The latter is particularly interesting, perhaps we shoudl assume that deflection crystals somehow played a part in fusion reaction, rather than in the intermix, and that later advancements removed the need for them in later models.

But I'm afraid you're mistaken on the Ent-B/Lakota, unless you're saying the "Gens" MSD didn't have them?

"Intermix ready. Impulse power at your discretion." Didn't Scotty clearly suggest in TMP that the intermix chamber coil could also power the impulse drive?

The thing I still don't get entirely about the Enterprise-D are the separated deuterium tanks, some for fusion and impulse power, some for M/AM reaction and warp power.

I rather think the TMP Enterprise is of beautiful simplicity: deuterium is mostly near the impulse engine section.

To be fair, the big tank is also near the main impulse engine, being directly below it... just not near the saucer ones. It would make sense that the impulse engines probably use less deuterium, and therefore the designers chose to put a big main tank in the secondary hull where both the main impulse engine and the warp core could use it. Plus, since saucer separation is apparently a somewhat auxiliary maneuver, it makes sense those engines would use auxiliary tanks.

Sent antimatter up the intermix shaft and the M/AM annihilation will occur near the impulse delection crystal, giving you greater impulse power than just nuclear fusion.

Send matter down the intermix shaft and have it meet the antimatter will create the energy you can route to the warp nacelles.

This is somewhat similar to what I'd been thinking lately, although I'd guessed the reactor to be down at the bottom, the reaction energy travels upward, and then is "deflected" back down by the crystal to start the cycle again, like a loop. Energy can be bled off either at the top through the crystal, or at the midpoint in engineering.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But I'm afraid you're mistaken on the Ent-B/Lakota, unless you're saying the "Gens" MSD didn't have them?

I don't consider those tiny grey features to actually be "deflection crystals" as such since they aren't illuminated at all and are physically different from the feature they replaced (no sunken cowling around them).

 

[Robert Comsol]

Probert implied that the actual reaction took place at the very bottom of the shaft and could be transferred to either the impulse engines or the warp drive through those conduits. The "matter above, antimatter below" interpretation comes out of TNG+ but isn't reflected in the design of the actual ship, especially since the horizontal intermix isn't physically all that different from the vertical one.

I reread the interview prior to posting. Andrew Probert admitted that he hadn't thought the concept through, especially where the matter is injected. Looks like he somehow left it to us to come up with a good explanation.

The problem I have with the reaction chamber below is this view down the shaft to the bottom in TMP. Is there still place for a reactor? Does the graphic on the left panel give us any clues?

Actually, it seems to be the case that the "Khan damage" was to the horizontal shaft which cut off the conduits from the warp nacelles.

I thought the crippling damage was that Khan had taken out the "main energizer" necessary to make any use of the M/AM plasma.

In contrast the Enterprise had crippled Reliant's impulse deflection crystal (somehow affecting warp performance?), so both ships ended up with a compatible impulse speed.

Since we didn't see the intermix shaft in ST II extending to the bottom, I won't exclude the possibility that there may have been a Mike Minor reactor pod just below the main deck (would explain the "main energizer" nearby).

On the other hand, the crippling of Reliant's impulse deflection crystal and loss of warp capability could suggest that M/AM reaction took place near the crystal, but then again she may have been of the same built as the TMP Enterprise while the TWOK Enterprise featured a new upgrade.

This is a very complicated issue.

Bob

 

[blssdwlf]

I did a quick comparison of the power conduit paths from the main reactor to the nacelles to see how 3 of Crazie Eddie's hypothesis holds up. None hold up under examination but the 3rd does suggest that sufficient cargo space - the one common thing among the ship classes that survive into TNG's time is one of the likely factors for their longevity, IMHO.

1. "Prohibitively far" from each other
a. Constitution: 396' reactor to single nacelle
b. Reliant: 326' reactor to single nacelle
c. Excelsior: 616' reactor to single nacelle

The Excelsior is the worst in distance. The Reliant the best.

2. "Occupational hazard for the crew" as in more length = more danger to radiation
*The Excelsior and Constitution limit power conduit exposure to Engineering hull and neck. Reliant runs into the single hull. Constellation also is connected to the single hull.
a. Constitution: 186' reactor to warp pylons. 262' total if include to impulse deck
b. Reliant: 562' reactor to warp pylons.
c. Excelsior: 366' reactor to warp pylon hump. 470' total in include to impulse deck

The Constitution is the best as the warp pylons compose of most of the conduits. Reliant is the worst because of the short pylons and most of the conduit running internally to the main hull.

3. Upgrade friendliness (or future increases in size of hardware)
a. Constitution: Increased reactor facilities could reclaim cargo bay area. (This will lead to reduction in cargo space.)
b. Reliant: Increased reactor facilities could expand into cargo/shuttle bays. Note: warp pylons are almost half as thin as Constitution indicating a possible max limit increase in power transfer to warp nacelles.
c. Excelsior: Plenty of room to expand.

Constitution is the worst as it loses the cargo space of a limited volume engineering hull. Reliant is the most flexible due to her boxy nature. Excelsior has significantly more volume.

Note: I haven't had time to take a look at the Constellations.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The Excelsior is the worst in distance.

Unless, of course, the main reactor is in the pod between the nacelle pylons.

The Excelsior and Constitution limit power conduit exposure to Engineering hull and neck. Reliant runs into the single hull.

And Reliant's hull configuration means the conduits do not need to run directly through the engine room in order to reach the nacelles. Arguably, they do not even run through an inhabited section of the ship since the shuttle bays and their machinery are located in that area; radiation leaks in that case would only affect the relatively empty aft compartment and would be that much easier to contain (meanwhile, most of the engineering spaces are FORWARD of both the reactor and the conduits and can likewise be isolated from them in the event of an incident).

So without having to babysit a potentially troublesome power transfer fork point, Reliant can keep its engine room just aft of the saucer like a normal starship, allowing for some degree of survivable radiation containment in the event of an accident.

 

[blssdwlf]

No, YOU have a GUESS at what it would look like in that position.

No, WE have an EXAMPLE of what it would look like in that position as shown in a screen capture of a spark at a later frame.

The spark is considerably brighter than the torpedo impact and is reflected by a larger portion of the hull. It remains a guess on your part that the two have similar illumination characteristics.

The spark is actually placed between the impulse deck and bridge module and is lighting up the front of the impulse deck as EXPECTED. The torpedo explosion frame does not have that characteristic and cannot be where you think it is.

Anyway, I'm not going any further into this until you can explain why both the moment of impact flash manages to light up the starboard side of the bridge dome if the impact point itself is on the port side.

At the initial explosion frame it's glare. The 2nd frame of the explosion is gas as you can also see it wrap around to the bridge port side. Until you can explain why the 1st frame doesn't light up the impulse deck you can't prove it exploding between the impulse deck and bridge.

The reason is pretty self evidence, considering they replaced the ship with the Enterprise-B only a year later.

That doesn't tell us anything beyond that they had planned another ship with the Enterprise name.

It IS obsolete and falling apart. It just doesn't LOOK that way unless you look at it closely.

Ah. It's just when you described it as a "rusty old piece of shit you couldn't sell it for a candy bar" it describes something that easily appears falling apart and rusted out and not something that would require close inspection.

Not exactly the same bunk, but after they find one of the gravity boots in the locker of "Crewman Dax", there are fifteen people standing with Spock and staff. Ten of them are enlisted crew, the other four are Spoock, Uhura, Chekov and Mister Tibbs (Valeris is off screen). Behind the crewmen on the right we see three bunks (one of the noncoms is sitting on the top bunk).

We know why the senior officers are there, but why are the noncoms hanging around? It's pretty obvious: because this is their quarters.

I thought it was just as obvious the extras noncoms were part of the crew assigned to search for these boots and they were standing around out of curiosity.

But even if you assume the ship is NOT hot bunking... why, all of a sudden, is the Enterprise fitting three racks in crew quarters when it's actual crew complement hasn't changed at all? We already know the enlisted men on the TOS ship all had their own quarters (Janice Rand in particular)

Janice Rand is the only noncom that we know in TOS that had her own cabin and she was Kirk's assigned yeoman. Did we see other noncoms have their own room or was it just a perk of being the Captain's Yeoman? On the same vein, why does Excelsior also have the bunking rooms? She's a bigger ship with far greater volume but her crew is what, 100-300 more than Enterprise's?

as did the crews on the much more primitive NX-01. Three racks in a single room would seem to be an unusual situation aboard a starship, and the hot-bunking implied in this scene would be HIGHLY unusual. The most likely explanation, IMO, is that extensive repairs and modifications to keep the ship up to date has taken up a larger and larger portion of its internal space and forced more than half of the crew out of their normal quarters.

Or a simpler explanation is that noncoms normally get bunks.

The problem with this claim is that the ships contemporary with Enterprise were never upgraded internally. It seems that Stargazer and possibly Lantree received a few new consoles and some systems as part of its LCARS conversion, but we have no idea when that conversion was done or why or even HOW. It's not as if we saw the rebuilt USS Reliant running around with the fleet in DS9, now is it?

How do we know they weren't upgraded internally beyond a few panels? If the panels were converted, what's to stop them from upgrading systems all the way into TNG/DS9? If you look at the Lantree, her small crew would suggest considerable changes in order to not need the large crews of the movie period.

We never got to see the bridge of the Repulse at all, but this ship as well as the Lantree are both seen functioning as courier/transport ships, basically ferrying people and material from one place to another. It's highly unlikely they have the chops for a full-fledged exploration mission like the (arguably much newer) USS Hood.

According to "Tin Man", all the Hood ever does is go back and forth between starbases We're not given a good look at the Repulse or the Hood so it's unknown if the two ships were or were not capable of the same missions.

Here you run into the problem that space ships are not boats. The "hull" of a spacecraft is analogous to the main pressure vessel that keeps in the atmosphere and houses the ship's habitable volume. Since the TMP Enterprise is said to be a "refit" and not a brand new starship,

Both Decker and Scotty state that the Enterprise was redesigned and refitted. Most if not all of the ship was redesigned so you can't really say the ship was not designed for the new technology.

that means something of the original was left in the design. It obviously wasn't the "spaceframe" as such because the new ship has a different shape as the old. But the pressure vessel -- IRL, a fairly expensive and difficult component to build -- could easily have been preserved, with Starfleet replacing the outer hull plating, nacelle pylons and other internal/external components while slightly modifying the pressure hull.

It would be quite illuminating if you can show how this pressure vessel would work going from the TOS and TMP versions.

No. Constellation, for example, has a five-deck saucer and a big chunk of space between its impulse engines that could house the reactor in its entirety (assuming the same powerplant as the Constitution class). Miranda's aft section is also about five decks thick and the space between its shuttle bays is almost as wide as the Enterprise's secondary hull.

You had said that a Constitution's saucer would be too small to fit a main reactor and I agree and question wouldn't that be the same for Reliant and/or Constellation. In the Reliant's case it would be same problem and they had to build an extended hull to accommodate that and the shuttlebays. The Constellation just enlarged the saucer height-wise to get it to fit.

While it may seem like they end up having the same volume, the cylindrical secondary hull actually gives you less USEFUL volume with the same dimensions.

Of course, boxy gives you more volume in that case.

Actually, the explosion on the bridge happened immediately after Kirk's torpedo hit their port nacelle. It seemed to affect the engineering compartment as well, but we don't really know why.

The engineering crew also survived just fine. Again, after the pod was destroyed Kirk turns his attention on the port nacelle; phaser blast there, and we see Khan's crew falling over railings in engineering. Then the torpedo strike, and the bridge explodes.

I re-watched it and you are correct. NM about the torpedo pod being a danger to the crew.

Compare with what would have happened to the ENTERPRISE if the torpedo bay had exploded in such a way. Apart from potentially decapitating the entire ship,

It might not be so bad. Reliant's torpedo pod exploded but it stayed attached to the rollbar. And the rollbar didn't seem too damaged. Enterprise's neck is thicker than the rollbar so it might not be as bad.

the intermix chamber runs BETWEEN those tubes, and the torpedo deck is not more than six meters above main engineering.

Well I doubt the intermix chamber runs between the tubes simply because the intermix chamber in the engineering hull is further back because of that forward corridor we see in TMP.

The other thing is that we do see the torpedo bay explode from the port side and it didn't kill Scotty down below or catastrophically effect the intermix chamber or the starboard torpedo bay.

I think if you applied your same arguments to the Reliants, Constellations and Excelsiors you'll find that they could all suffer from the same issues you have with the TMP Enterprise.

I did that already. The fact of the matter is they wouldn't have this problem because they would have been designed from the outset to mitigate it. Reliant, in particular, appears to be a ship that was specifically designed around an intermix-style power system so that the power conduits can run straight to the nacelle without going past anything that people are likely to care about; if they run skin-deep along the bottom of the hull, they would be able to pass right through those two "vent" structures on the belly (sometimes thought to be navigational deflectors) while avoiding both the main saucer section and any part of the ship's internal environment.

Those power conduits are still in the hull though. It's not any different than the Enterprise's horizontal shaft going to the nacelle pylons except that there's alot more internal piping on the Reliant.

The Excelsiors would avoid this issue also by moving their reactor components into the bulge.

Is there any indication that they were designed that way though?

 

[blssdwlf]

The Excelsior is the worst in distance.

Unless, of course, the main reactor is in the pod between the nacelle pylons.

Is there any evidence to support this?

The Excelsior and Constitution limit power conduit exposure to Engineering hull and neck. Reliant runs into the single hull.

And Reliant's hull configuration means the conduits do not need to run directly through the engine room in order to reach the nacelles.

The conduits need to run off the vertical intermix from the engine room so I'm not sure how they wouldn't interface with the engine room.

Arguably, they do not even run through an inhabited section of the ship since the shuttle bays and their machinery are located in that area; radiation leaks in that case would only affect the relatively empty aft compartment and would be that much easier to contain (meanwhile, most of the engineering spaces are FORWARD of both the reactor and the conduits and can likewise be isolated from them in the event of an incident).

The horizontal conduits of the Enterprise don't run through an inhabited part of the ship either. The isolation door kept the engineroom in TWOK from getting irradiated as well. What advantage does the Reliant's setup have again?

So without having to babysit a potentially troublesome power transfer fork point, Reliant can keep its engine room just aft of the saucer like a normal starship, allowing for some degree of survivable radiation containment in the event of an accident.

Which isn't any different than the Enterprise or Excelsior.

 

[Robert Comsol]

I remember having taken some pounding for suggesting that Reliant's roll-bar pod might contain the antimatter for warp drive.

I just accidentally found an early design proposal for the Reliant.

Bearing in mind that the Official TMP Blueprints identified the front structures of the nacelles as "space-energy/matter sinks (acquisition)", i.e. intakes for space hydrogen aka matter reactants for M/AM annihilation, I'd say my idea wasn't that farfetched.

Matter comes in from the top, antimatter from the pods below.

Bob