TOS Class F...

[MGagen]

With the cylindrical interior, I was able to leave a small room behind a door in the starboard alcove that suggests the area the honor guard was waiting in before welcoming Sarek and Amanda on board. Of course, the camera has to shoot the scene from outside the ship's hull, looking in. Ah, well.

If the forward door you're considering is aligned with the center of the bay, give some thought to what might be behind the center of the forward bulkhead. I figure it's that large, glowing tube assembly visible behind the mesh in Engineering. That's why I put my doors on either side and left the center unused.

I wish they had depicted a low ceiling over the full sized shuttle in those boarding/unboarding scenes. It has always made more sense to me that they would leave the cavernous flight deck in vacuum most of the time and lower the shuttles down to the real hangar a deck below. That way they wouldn't waste so much atmosphere every time they launched a shuttle. CBS digital could have given us a real hangar deck with the other shuttles and maintenance facilities visible in the background. How cool would that have been?

M.

 

[Warped9]

The terms used throughout Trek have always been tossed around casually and inconsistently. That's why I think of the familiar area as the flight deck and the service area below as the hangar deck.

I do like the idea of two access points onto the flight deck.

The alcoves actually don't make much sense to me other than they add to the deck's appearance. When I designed the flight deck for my own 29th century version of the starship I made the alcoves large so that two shuttlecraft could be parked in each. The area that was actually depressurized was a much smaller chamber (with transparent walls) at the rearmost part of the bay.

Alas it can't be done that way here.


Also something else I can't really reproduce here (well I could, but it wouldn't look right). Onscreen the windows of the observation deck were much too brightly lit. For a more realistic look the observation deck would never look that way.

 

[Warped9]

Some might be familiar with this drawing found in The Making Of Star Trek and I wanted to see what it could tell us.

It's a bit of a challenge to get accurate measurements from this using the scale bar on the drawing, but I think I've been able to get some decent approximations to see what MJ drew here.

The crewman shown came out to 5.98 feet. If I allow for the fact that it's difficult to get something truly precise from this drawing I think it's safe to say the crewman is meant to represent someone 6 ft. tall. From that the ceiling of the observation deck is 7.95 ft. or probably meant to be 8 ft. It certainly isn't the 10 ft. ceiling we see onscreen in "The Conscience Of The King." Note that I made the ceiling of my observation deck 8 ft. as well.

The shuttlecraft pictured comes out to a shade over 22 ft. so I think it's safe to assume that MJ used the 22 ft. mockup for reference. At the time this was drawn the shuttlecraft's interior set might not have been built yet so it was safe to assume a smaller shuttlecraft was planned. But that thinking had to be reconsidered once the mockup and the interior set were finally built. It would be very interesting to know the finer details of the shuttlecraft's design and construction as well as the dates when these drawings were made and when the mockups were built.

The length of the flight deck in this drawing comes out to over 121 ft. That's nearly forty feet more than my hangar design! Or basically 145 percent larger in length. That's a very large difference and would definitely push the forward wall and observation deck well under the support pylons.

The height of the flight deck shown is a shade over 38 ft. That is 8 ft. taller than my version, but given the deck is 145 percent longer then that can explain the difference given the conical shape of the flight deck. Of course the width of the deck would also be correspondingly wider than mine given the same reason for the difference in hieght.

So the main differences between this drawing and what I've done are the deck's length, the consistent ceiling height of the observation deck (because in the drawing it's shown in a forced perspective manner) and the fact we see a representation of the 22 ft. mockup rather than something representing a more realistically sized craft.


I would really like to know when MJ did his drawings. When did he draw the shuttlecraft seen in TMoST? When did he draw the cutaways of the hangar deck? And when did he draw the cross-section of the Enterprise? While I don't know the exact date we do know he drew the hangar cross-section for the Phase II refit several years later after TOS and it's consistent with his cross-section of the TOS E.


Here is another comparative look. Using the height of the observation deck as a close common baseline I've superimposed my hangar layout over the MF drawing.



Some things jump out. The drawing is unquestionably a presentation of a forced perspective miniature. There's no other way to explain why the observation deck and control towers get smaller as it transitions from fore to aft. If the observation deck and control towers had been kept constant (as it appears they were built in the actual miniature set) then there's little difference between the initial proposal and what I've built. One distinctive difference is the shape or cross-section outline of the observation deck. This initial concept was changed to something a bit simpler when the miniature was built and I followed what we actually saw onscreen in regard to that.

The other thing that jumps out to me is how vast this set looks in order to convey the idea of a huge empty area. If we can assume (for now) that MJ drew his Enterprise cross-section after he drew this then he evidently reconsidered his thinking regarding the hangar deck. There are also details about this drawing that don't gel with the appearance of the 11 ft. Enterprise as it was built. The same applies to the other drawings of the Enterprise seen in TMoST. Why these discrepencies when MJ should have obviously been quite familiar with the details of the ship he designed and was built based on his plans?

In extent it really looks like Franz Joseph modeled his Constitution-class drawings at least partially on the drawings in TMoST (ditto the shuttlecraft and hangar deck) rather than what was actually built for the show. And I never understood why FJ used an entirely different font for the ship's markings rather than the original Airborne font.


And here is a look at my current workspace. in SketchUp.

 

[Mytran]

Elsewhere on the BBS, I seem to recall the original model measurements being unearthed. The length was 122" at a scale of 1 inch per foot, so it seems that this side view drawing was taken almost exactly
I'm glad they ditched the FP observation gallery though, it would have made for some odd scenes as the shuttle departed!

Incidentally, if you match up the distance between the forward wall and the doors of the Flight Deck cutaway against the classic MJ cutaway, the ship comes out at around 1,350 feet long. I don't know how this would change if the cutaway were in the form of the final series model, but it is clearly a much more gigantic Enterprise!

(click for full size)

 

[Warped9]

Yes, I saw that online somewhere. Someone upscaled the ship to fit that hangar drawing. But I think its pretty clear the hangar drawing was meant to represent the exaggerated miniature set and not the "real" hangar. And MJ knew that because he drew it distinctly smaller for his Enterprise cutaway.

 

[Warped9]

With the cylindrical interior, I was able to leave a small room behind a door in the starboard alcove that suggests the area the honor guard was waiting in before welcoming Sarek and Amanda on board. Of course, the camera has to shoot the scene from outside the ship's hull, looking in. Ah, well.

If the forward door you're considering is aligned with the center of the bay, give some thought to what might be behind the center of the forward bulkhead. I figure it's that large, glowing tube assembly visible behind the mesh in Engineering. That's why I put my doors on either side and left the center unused.

I wish they had depicted a low ceiling over the full sized shuttle in those boarding/unboarding scenes. It has always made more sense to me that they would leave the cavernous flight deck in vacuum most of the time and lower the shuttles down to the real hangar a deck below. That way they wouldn't waste so much atmosphere every time they launched a shuttle. CBS digital could have given us a real hangar deck with the other shuttles and maintenance facilities visible in the background. How cool would that have been?

M.

I've been thinking about this. The room we see when they enter to board the shuttlecraft is always plain and empty--because, of course, they couldn't afford to show us anything else. If it was the flight deck we should have been able to see familiar details of the deck. If it was the hangar below then we should have seen a lower ceiling and even parked shuttlecraft.

I think the intent of the shot was to show us the flight deck with the shuttlecraft rotated sideways for arrivals or departures. Still, I'm thinking of what is ahead of that forward wall. If the doorway is on the next level down than no real problem, but on the secondary hull's centreline it's a concern.

So I think I'm going to muddy the issue. The flight deck will have two entrances, one on either side of the centreline and one entrance below to the hangar/service bay on the centreline.

 

[Warped9]

Actually on further reflection I have to wonder. The observation deck along the forward wall is already intruding a bit under the support pylons. So it's not like Main Engineering could be right up against the flight deck's forward wall anyway.And so there could be a small corridr under the observation deck.

 

[MGagen]

My idea is that the conduits behind the mesh in Engineering extend up the centers of the pylons. But the pylons, themselves, have bracing structure on either side of these details. This allows the hangar to extend a bit under the pylons, but not impinge on the conduit space. Alas, this arrangement leaves no room for a corridor between the forward bulkhead and the engineering space.

Of course, that is all based on an assumption about the conduits. YMMV.

On the subject of the TMOST drawing as a plan for a force-perspective miniature set: I believe I was the first to propose this possibility back in 2002. The drawing certainly does have forced perspective features. However, according to Richard Datin, the miniature set was built without such features. I was forced to conclude that the drawing was a preliminary proposal for a miniature set; but that the design was changed before it was built. No one thought anyone would catch on to this detail when they put it into the Writers' Guide and TMOST.

The only true scale drawings we have from MJ are the whole ship cross section in TMOST, and the much more detailed cross section of the Phase II refit. Those areas look much more like what you (and I) have come up with.

M.

 

[Warped9]

Agreed. I've since put an entrance to the flight deck on both sides of the forward wall and I'm now starting to build the lower service hangar.

 

[Mytran]

I think interpreting the room we saw onscreen as a lower hangar deck solves more problems that it creates and certainly requires less "squinting" at the TV to make it work! The room is also nicely spacious (8 guards stand shoulder to shoulder) and there is certainly space to park extra shuttles there, even if it is currently empty.

The lack of a low ceiling is of concern, although some interesting details are visible at the top of the wall if you freeze frame just right:


(click for full size)
I have yet to confirm exactly what that strip is. However, can't the tall wall in general can be treated the same as the other tall walls on the TOS sets? i.e. taken as a necessity of 1960s filming and not the height of the wall on the "real life" Enterprise.

 

[Warped9]

Nice catch!

 

[Albertese]

....

The lack of a low ceiling is of concern,
....

Now that I'm thinking about this, why is this a concern? What makes it mandatory that the hangar below the flight deck has to have a ten-foot-high ceiling? Wouldn't you want more space to allow comfortable access to the tops of these craft? Especially if these things are modular units which can be readily assembled/disassembled as some have assumed.

I don't have time just now to work it out on a correctly scaled profile of the ship, but I just did a quick little pencil sketch on the side of a model of the TOS E I currently have next to me and it seems like there's room for a pretty generously sized hangar area; even accounting for the pylons and the fan-tail concavity.

I don't see any objection to allowing the hangar to be a tall space as well. Help me out, here....

--Alex


EDIT:

Turns out I did have a few more minutes than I thought.

I banged this out using the Sinclar blueprints. Green area is the flight deck, and the blue area would be the hangar, the two orange lines would be (roughly, I didn't measure anything) the travel area for the elevator. The gray areas below would be for machinery and the orange areas would be "normal" height decks. The red area is the Engineering area, which is itself shown with a hi-bay ceiling. Making the hangar a hi-bay that's 50% taller than the normal decks is certainly doable and would match well with the engineering space we see in all three seasons. Again, I didn't have time to really work out the scale, so this is very much an estimate, and I didn't have time to make an appropriately scale shuttlecraft, so I don't really know if this agrees with that, but it's really just to show the concept in my head...

--AM

 

[Warped9]

^^ Because of the space restriction. The elevator can go down only so far because of the fantail cutout on the exterior hull. To counter this would mean moving the elevator further forward which would mean crowding the forward wall and observation level of the flight deck.

 

[Mytran]

The only limitation that I can really see is the elevator turntable that connects the Flight Deck to the Hangar Deck. According to Warped9's cutaway and assuming that the elevator is vertical (instead of zig-zag), then the concavity of the aft hull would preclude a much deeper room that 10'.

One solution might be to extend the Flight Deck under the pylons (thus relocating the turntable further away from the concavity)

On the other hand, maybe the Hangar Deck is solely for shuttle storage, and all assembly is maintenance is actually done on the Flight Deck above. This would require it to be pressurised, of course.

 

[Warped9]

"Low" is also a relative term. By "low" for the lower hanger I mean 10 ft. because the shuttlecraft is about 9 ft. plus in overall height. So I've already allowed for a 10-11 ft. ceiling or thereabouts. Taller than that means moving the elevator and likely the flight deck's forward wall and the observation deck as well.

When I was first laying this out I accounted for the ceiling height (as well as the deck thickness) I needed below.

 

[ancient]

Personally, I don't even know if it's worth it to put engineering up against the front of the hangar just to decrease the amount of conduit spaghetti between engineering & the nacelles. The TMP Enterprise was really the only time the main core fit into a ship with any grace.

The ENT-D conduits had to deal with those curved pylons, the NX was a total spaghetti case thanks to the design, and even the Defiant of all ships had an engineering set that implied at least (2) 90 degree turns! I'm not even sure how Voyager was supposed to work.

 

[Warped9]

I'm not worrying much about Main Engineering and I'm certainly not going to be detailing that. I've finished the flight deck and I'm presently rendering some images to share. Next work is to start modeling the lower hangar service bay.

 

[aalenfae]

Adding a tiny angle to the elevator frees up a lot of potential space.

 

[Warped9]

Adding a tiny angle to the elevator frees up a lot of potential space.

You have to remember before you start descending at an angle you have to come straight down first so that parts of the shuttlecraft clear the opening. Then you could proceed at an angle.

But given I've already accounted for the room needed I should be fine coming straight down.

 

[Warped9]

First look at the finished flight deck...unless I've forgotten something which eludes me at the moment.



I'm making some other images to share and then I'll move onto laying out the lower hangar service deck.