It’s too famous to be wrong.
The Excelsior - uncovering the design
- Thread starter yotsuya
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In other words...you don't have a citeable source that this is in fact why Paramount filed patents. You are assuming based on your reading of the law. Thanks.
Jesus, has this thread moved into an episode of Law & Order SVU or something? Who fucking cares about patents? I want more deck plans!
I can only help you so far in that regards. I am only planning on going as far as the cross section. The details of each deck are not part of the scope of what I am doing. And the cross section only applies because it includes a number of details important to the exterior and that the internal layout makes sense for a 467 scale exterior.
Yup, there is only one reason for Paramount to file those patents. It is not really an assumption but an educated guess. If you can come up with another reason for them to file patents, by all means share. I don't think another reason exists.
I'm not sure why Maurice cares if it is the logical reason vs. having documented proof it is the reason. Logical works for me. It is better than he hearsay and rumors we sometimes get for things that later prove to be wrong.
Had anyone given thought to window size? On a 467m Excelsior, I'm pretty sure they'd be postage stamp size.
For the 467 length, the windows are about 80% the size of the TMP Enterprise. So about 20 inches in height instead of 24. Using a 543 length (which I think fits better but isn't canon) they would be roughly the same size.
So hardly postage size, though a bit smaller.
Windows are points of weakness in a ship's hull, either when it comes to random space garbage or full-on kinetic combat. The designers of Excelsior took this account and made them smaller. Not a problem in-universe or IRL and totally plausible.
I don't believe that it's been canonically established that this is so in the Star Trek universe.Windows are points of weakness in a ship's hull, either when it comes to random space garbage or full-on kinetic combat. The designers of Excelsior took this account and made them smaller. Not a problem in-universe or IRL and totally plausible.
"Transparent aluminum" was a topic in TVH, but whatever its specific properties were, that wasn't a subject. Nevertheless, I took the implication to be that it was far less destructible than at least ordinary glass. Whether it was as strong etc. as other nontransparent metals or had properties besides its transparency basically similar to aluminum, those are open questions. I think it's reasonable to assume that future iterations of transparent aluminum were made to be even stronger than the first, and that down the line other transparent alloys were discovered as a result of studying it.
I'm not up on Trek tech metals, but I know there are supposedly super-strong alloys that starship hulls are made out of, with strengths supposedly far beyond real world metals. Whether the same applies to transparent hull material, I don't know, but I don't see any reason to assume such material isn't also super-strong, possibly even to the point of being on par with the nontransparent hull material.
Canonically, the Kelvin was a Prime Universe design that incorporated transparent material on the bridge itself, so that's a point in favor of the idea, that at least canonically (and regardless of whatever your opinions are of nuTrek), windows aren't per se a hull weakness.
Any time you have a change of materials in the hull, it can result in a weakness. It does not mean the materials are weaker, only that the complete change from one material to another causes a design weakness. So smaller is better. Size and shape can impact that, as can other design factors. We only have the materials detailed for the Galaxy Class in the TNG Tech Manual. We can assume that the materials were similarly state of the art for the TMP era and the TOS era. TOS had larger square windows. This would be a weaker design, but other factors such as hull material could mitigate that and specific hull layers and unseen structure. TMP features a new hull type (white and apparently unpainted vs. the TOS Gray) which might have different design requirements. In TNG we get a wide variety of windows from round to long to square. Some of these are likely design aesthetics and some are engineering necessities. It all depends on what is needed and wanted in the design.
I'm not persuaded for the increase in size of any of the designs because the existing ones are quite large to begin with. Most people can't really conceived how large these starship designs are and what a massive volume they have.
Precisely this.
Regarding TMP, I recall someone saying something about the new refit hull, as well as the Vulcan shuttlecraft (can't remember if it was Rick Sternbach or Andy Probert, or maybe it was even Doug Trumbull), that the hulls were made of interlocking parts, and of a new kind of metal design, which is what gives the "aztecking" texture and pearlescent colors to the hulls. No actual paint (except for pin-striping, pennants and other livery), but just metals of different types. The shuttle metal colors were darker and browner because they were mined and refined on Vulcan, rather than the lighter materials from Earth that were used in E-Nil's refit. My memory is foggy on this, but I think it was the general gist of things back then. The texturing and panels were inspired by the Space Shuttle's ceramic tile design and gave the ships a more realistic appearance and scale.
By that logic, if that's all there is to it, then the deflector dish represents a weakness in the hull that is far more critical than that that results from any window.
Except that the dish is an apparatus attached to the hull, not the hull itselfBy that logic, if that's all there is to it, then the deflector dish represents a weakness in the hull that is far more critical than that that results from any window.
This. I wish we could all just agree that Gene Roddenberry was just wrong to suggest the TOS-E was 300ish metres long. Wasn't it just written in pre-production notes? Since it's never been stated on screen, all it will take is a current writer to canonize its actual length of 450m! (sounds like a plan for Strange New Worlds).
The Disco S2/SNW Enterprise is already scaled at 442m.
Yes, the Disco/SNW version works nicely for me. The TOS-E has so few external scaling features that you could make it virtually any size, within reason.
The main problem with this is the TMP refit is more clearly designed for 305 m/1000 ft, even though some features, such as the Rec Deck and hanger bay complex, would work better in a larger ship.
The main problem with this is the TMP refit is more clearly designed for 305 m/1000 ft, even though some features, such as the Rec Deck and hanger bay complex, would work better in a larger ship.
It is on screen Canon in Discovery, the last episode of the first season, that the Enterprise is 289 meters long. It is readable on screen. Also, in the Enterprise incident, there is a drawing represented on screen with a scale next to it. On the Blu-ray that scale is legible. This is the exact same drawing that was printed before that episode aired in The Making of Star Trek. So even when the episode aired anyone with the book could open the book and see it's the same drawing and see the scale and figure out exactly how long the enterprise was, or turn to a previous page and look at the dimensions listed on that drawing. Matt Jeffries set the scale of the TOS Enterprise to 947 ft long. Matt Jeffries combined with Richard Taylor, set the motion picture enterprise at 1,000 ft long. That is the canon scale. And in the Next Generation those ships at those sizes along with the Excelsior class, Ambassador class, Galaxy class, and the nuclear carrier Enterprise CVN-65, are all shown in scale to one another. So these dimensions are canon. And in terms of the motion picture Enterprise, we know it is canon because we have multiple shots of the ship in scale with human figures on the inside and outside.
These scales were not arrived at randomly. The are set to be able to contain the ship each designer envisioned. One of the problems arises from what they did in TNG with crawl spaces all over the ship. That is a TNG era thing that those ships were designed with and don't apply to the TOS or TMP era. Also it is well known that they rarely build anything in Hollywood to a precise scale. Some sets are built large so there is enough room for production, and some are built small due to space or budget. Some sets are built in forced perspective and others with paintings so they seem bigger. Star Trek has played with all of those and more, including redressing sets to serve other purposes. There seems to be an obsession with ignoring these well known practices in favor of changing what the production team set solidly. 289 meters is huge. It gives more than enough space for everything we see in TOS whether we try to cram 11 decks in the saucer or only 8.
I'm sticking with the canon lengths. And they are as canon as anything else.
These scales were not arrived at randomly. The are set to be able to contain the ship each designer envisioned. One of the problems arises from what they did in TNG with crawl spaces all over the ship. That is a TNG era thing that those ships were designed with and don't apply to the TOS or TMP era. Also it is well known that they rarely build anything in Hollywood to a precise scale. Some sets are built large so there is enough room for production, and some are built small due to space or budget. Some sets are built in forced perspective and others with paintings so they seem bigger. Star Trek has played with all of those and more, including redressing sets to serve other purposes. There seems to be an obsession with ignoring these well known practices in favor of changing what the production team set solidly. 289 meters is huge. It gives more than enough space for everything we see in TOS whether we try to cram 11 decks in the saucer or only 8.
I'm sticking with the canon lengths. And they are as canon as anything else.
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