That's not true... the saucer section was practically the last design element that finalized the look.
The Enterprise is the oddest design is sci-fi
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That's not true... the saucer section was practically the last design element that finalized the look.
It's still a flying saucer. The first time I saw it that's what I thought.
I don't deny that, I mention that element in my post that you didn't read but replied to, i said it's a combo of classic sci-fi shapes including the flying saucer. But all together the Enterprise is beyond that, it sure as hell ain't the Jupiter 2.
I'd say Star Wars ships like the Falcon are odder, they aren't symmetrical. Star Trek's ships generally are.
Not sure whether anything needs to be symmetrical in space. Or sleek for that matter. Surely if you need to stick an extra bit at a specific point then there's no reason why you shouldn't. As TV show designs go, it's a classic, no doubt, but it doesn't make much sense. I don't think it's the oddest though.
I think it makes a lot of sense. The Enterprise design is what started the blueprint craze because poeple loved that there was function rather than mere form... the 1701 has both form and believable function, a lot of thought was put into it's design and how it all works.
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On sleekness, I agree with you. However, for symmetry, I'd say there is some importance in having at least a degree of symmetry, since that way the ship itself is balanced, so there's no oddities between the centre of mass and the thrust, i.e. creating a situation where engines have to account for the craft's 'lopsidedness', or otherwise list in a certain direction while trying to fly in a straight line.
Since there's no resistance why would this be a problem?
To me, the Enterprise always looked like something that took full advantage of being built in space rather than on Earth.
Oh, wait...
Yup. Can you imagine the energy costs of maintaining massive anti-grav fields to stop the thing collapsing under its own weight and to let people work on the thing, let alone the cost of tractoring it into space without the thing buckling. Dumb as Iowan hay.
^^ All true... and besides, from cars to planes to even toasters, symmetry is very important element of good design. It's not mandatory of course, but as a balance minded race, us humans prefer something visually symmetrical on a subconscious level, it's more pleasing to our eye and brain... more organized, less chaotic.
Without knowing how to quickly add a picture, this may be a bit of a difficult explanation.
Say you have a ship that start symmetrical, with the engines providing a thrust that's either along the ship's mass axis (line of symmetry) in the case of a single engine, or parallel to the ship's mass in the case of 2+ engines. In this configuration there's no problem, because the thrust is applied equally. This equals an application of force along only one axis, say x.
Now say you start making one side more 'massive' (I suppose to use the technical term), without changing the placement, or power of engines if it's got more than one. What you end up with is now a variation of how the force (thrust) is applied to the ship, i.e. it no longer just has a force applied on the x axis, it also has a force applied to the y axis. If the thrust is constant, you no longer have a ship that travels in a straight line (nominally along one of it's axis), you now have it also constantly changing its heading.
Terrible explanation from the sounds of it, but that's the best I can do
Hopefully someone can clarify.Spaceships in movies and TV had been basically rockets or disks. Spheres had been in illustrations for the pulps.
The Enterprise design conspicuously avoided total commitment to the saucer (despite Deckard's idiosyncratic reaction) as most people note the secondary hull and the nacelles immediately. The nonaerodynamicism suggests really being in airless space. The spindliness of the nacelles suggests weightlessness, even that something other than rockets are moving the thing. Putting the shuttle bay at the rear of the secondary hull also denies simplistic expectations of a massive rocket engine.
Most "improvements" since go towards increased aerodynamicsim to suggest speed and increased strength to suggest ability to stand up to gravity and thrust. Both of these are backward steps. The original Enterprise design was not hard science in the sense that it was some dreary technical manual. But it was more scientific in its acceptance of space as an airless, microgravity environment with unknown methods of propulsion. (Which really is more like genuine "hard" sf which is rarely the engineering essays science illiterates like to set up as a straw man their superior literary and dramatic sensibilities reject.)
But most of all, the original Enterprise design avoids simplistic visual phallicism. Or flying saucers, with all the UFO religious imagery that entails. Yes, UFOs are a modern species of religion, just like Scientology.
In short, the original Enterprise design was one of the things that made Star Trek so brilliant, even if it borrowed lots of stories from old print sf.
The Enterprise design conspicuously avoided total commitment to the saucer (despite Deckard's idiosyncratic reaction) as most people note the secondary hull and the nacelles immediately. The nonaerodynamicism suggests really being in airless space. The spindliness of the nacelles suggests weightlessness, even that something other than rockets are moving the thing. Putting the shuttle bay at the rear of the secondary hull also denies simplistic expectations of a massive rocket engine.
Most "improvements" since go towards increased aerodynamicsim to suggest speed and increased strength to suggest ability to stand up to gravity and thrust. Both of these are backward steps. The original Enterprise design was not hard science in the sense that it was some dreary technical manual. But it was more scientific in its acceptance of space as an airless, microgravity environment with unknown methods of propulsion. (Which really is more like genuine "hard" sf which is rarely the engineering essays science illiterates like to set up as a straw man their superior literary and dramatic sensibilities reject.)
But most of all, the original Enterprise design avoids simplistic visual phallicism. Or flying saucers, with all the UFO religious imagery that entails. Yes, UFOs are a modern species of religion, just like Scientology.
In short, the original Enterprise design was one of the things that made Star Trek so brilliant, even if it borrowed lots of stories from old print sf.
I always thought that the bridge location on top of the saucer with a large window on top was supposed to emphasize the belief that it was primarily a ship for peaceful exploration instead of a military vessel. If it was meant to be militaristic, they could have easily put the bridge within the body of the hull instead, just like the battle bridge in the later incarnations.
From what I can tell ,in the ST future gravity manipulation is as common as running water is today. Not really seeing a cost problem.To me, the Enterprise always looked like something that took full advantage of being built in space rather than on Earth.
Oh, wait...
Yup. Can you imagine the energy costs of maintaining massive anti-grav fields to stop the thing collapsing under its own weight and to let people work on the thing, let alone the cost of tractoring it into space without the thing buckling. Dumb as Iowan hay.
Note that in IAMD the Defiant's aft phasers are mounted over the shuttle bay doors, and have a good upward firing angle as long as the target isn't behind the nacelles.
I'm not so worried about photon launch tubes being blocked by the structure. Presumably torpedoes can just maneuver around the ship in a second or so -- note that on a modern warship everything just launches straight up and then heads for the target.
Though that does raise the question of why ships need aft torpedoes in the first place.
Yeah you gotta put the design in the proper cultural context. Before the Enterprise, the good guy spaceships were largely all the same phallocentric Buck Rogers model. Roddenberry was sending a deliberate message with his spaceship design, which carried over to the themes of TOS.
Remember, not only did Roddenberry eschew phallocentrism, he also utilized an "alien" spaceship model - flying saucers were the "other guys," you know, the space commies.
The Enterprise design brilliantly thumbs its nose at all the then-current conventions of mass market sci fi.Similar threads
