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The New USS Discovery....

This. as well as the very thick connecting neck.

They remind me a bit of skybridges.

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Alright, I'll stop.
 
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Your image broke.
Figures. Now I have to move the image to a different server just because Google Drive doesn't want to play nice. This is like explaining a joke. It's a picture of the Golden Gate bridge surrounded by fog so it looks like it's poking above the clouds ... skybridge.
 
Figures. Now I have to move the image to a different server just because Google Drive doesn't want to play nice. This is like explaining a joke. It's a picture of the Golden Gate bridge surrounded by fog so it looks like it's poking above the clouds ... skybridge.
Well, I like it :)
 
That's an interesting question, one that I honestly would love to see explored. The Constitution class was labeled a lot of things, including a "cruiser" but its main purposed was more independent exploration. The ships seem to rarely function within a lager fleet or flotilla, but still relied upon established bases for support.

The Discovery might function even more independently, with greater variety of auxiliary vehicles for mission flexibility.

It would be nice to more than one type of starship in a fleet :D
That's kind of the problem, though. In TOS, we really only ever saw the Connies as main ships-of-the-line. There are tiny other little boats out there, sure, which were fleshed out in the remastered series, and other ships were mentioned (that were largely other Connies), but no other kinds of capital ships were actually seen, at least not until TAS. And always with the clichéd "Enterprise is the only ship in the quadrant" nonsense, even up to TMP and TWOK (seriously, that line was used in both films)! It would stretch credibility for Discovery to have the metric ass-ton of ship designs that TNG and DS9 showcased, particularly if they're not starting off on a war footing. Just wouldn't make sense.
 
EC Henry comes out with another great video: Why saucer cutouts?:

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i was thinking exactly that when I saw the original grooves.

Imagine scenes being filmed of people looking out of the window and seeing another part of the saucer - brilliant for scale.
 
I can imagine someone watching another crew member taking a sonic shower across the gap!

Everyone in the utopian Roddenverse is a perv... :lol:
 
The fx for looking outside the windows will be amazing. I tried telling that to someone on fb... But no, cutouts are against Canon. Lol
i was thinking exactly that when I saw the original grooves.

Imagine scenes being filmed of people looking out of the window and seeing another part of the saucer - brilliant for scale.
 
It's like people who bitch about the bridge viewscreen being windows in the JJ movies. Who cares? What difference does it make?
 
It's like people who bitch about the bridge viewscreen being windows in the JJ movies. Who cares? What difference does it make?

Because it's a point of structural weakness in an important section of the ship. And it provides less information than a screen to the commander of the ship. Mostly, it's there just to be kewl and retro, which makes it annoying but not a deal-breaker. Meh.
 
There are so many glaring structural and design weaknesses and defects to the TOS version of Enterprise that I'm shocked the show ever developed such a devoted following of techies. :guffaw:

The window viewer in the nuTrek movies is not at all "retro;" it's a far more advanced and sophisticated design than any of the oldTrek viewers -starting with the viewer on the bridge of Kelvin.
 
Because it's a point of structural weakness in an important section of the ship. And it provides less information than a screen to the commander of the ship. Mostly, it's there just to be kewl and retro, which makes it annoying but not a deal-breaker. Meh.
But sticking the bridge in plain sight in the most visible and easiest to shoot location is good design?
 
Because it's a point of structural weakness in an important section of the ship. And it provides less information than a screen to the commander of the ship. Mostly, it's there just to be kewl and retro, which makes it annoying but not a deal-breaker. Meh.

I was okay with the main viewscreen as a window, figuring it should be possible by the 23rd century to make transparent areas as strong as opaque. But then in Star Trek Beyond, Kirk and Chekov used hand phasers to shatter the main viewer to escape their pursuers.
 
I was okay with the main viewscreen as a window, figuring it should be possible by the 23rd century to make transparent areas as strong as opaque. But then in Star Trek Beyond, Kirk and Chekov used hand phasers to shatter the main viewer to escape their pursuers.

Well, that makes total sense in the context of established "treknology." It's been a thing on the part of the designers ever since TNG that these ships actually maintain their structural integrity mainly as a function of the aptly-named "structural integrity fields." Therefore, components that would be impenetrable while the ship's systems are up and functioning might well have relatively conventional material properties when most major power systems are damaged and off-line.

Which, FWIW, also neatly renders some of the criticisms we've been making here of the TOS ship irrelevant. The point being that all these designs share the same classes of design idiosyncracies and what functions as an excuse for one functions as an excuse for all.
 
Well, that makes total sense in the context of established "treknology." It's been a thing on the part of the designers ever since TNG that these ships actually maintain their structural integrity mainly as a function of the aptly-named "structural integrity fields." Therefore, components that would be impenetrable while the ship's systems are up and functioning might well have relatively conventional material properties when most major power systems are damaged and off-line.

Which, FWIW, also neatly renders some of the criticisms we've been making here of the TOS ship irrelevant. The point being that all these designs share the same classes of design idiosyncracies and what functions as an excuse for one functions as an excuse for all.

I still agree with DrCorby (and others) that the design was stupid. It unnecessarily complicates matters. Keep the bridge full enclosed without windows (even the glass dome on top) and then you have full control of interior lighting in a place where everyone needs to see clearly.

Putting it on top of the ship *might* make sense for a couple of reasons. First, you're not designing ships whose principle role is one of combat, so easy access to a 'bridge module' as proposed in the TNG tech manual could be a higher priority than submerging the structure in the center of the ship where it can't be easily swapped out. Additionally, if you keep the ship with the bridge on top angled so that the bulk of the vessel is between you and your enemy, there's even more protecting it than putting the ship's bridge in the middle.

Even so, does it matter where the bridge goes when you're dealing with the kinds of weapons we see regularly in Trek?

The best solution would be a consensual, virtual bridge located in a computer and accessed through 23rd century virtual and/or augmented reality. Each bridge officer could then reach it from any where on the ship just by 'jacking in'.
 
No, the bridge on top makes no sense, if we are talking tactics. Modern naval vessels do so because they need to be able to see far, and is tactically beneficial. But, starships operate with a wide variety of sensors at their disposal that make a window outside irrelevant to the design.

So, I will not object to support struts on the saucer if the Bridge at the very top is considered sound design.

Also, Oberth class.
 
And even with modern military vessels, weapon control is inside the ship instead of being on the bridge.
 
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