TOS Enterprise Bridge Scale

[Cary L. Brown]

Shaw's preliminary findings in his structural survey of the model indicate that the pilot dome is big enough to accommodate a forward facing bridge, even at the traditional 947' length.

And the subsequent picture above is still of the production dome, and therefore doesn't prove a damn thing.

CRA. I MADE THAT DOME. I know what dimensions I used in making it. It has the base diameter of the "Cage" bridge, but the height of the "TOS" bridge, as I stated. And I did that for the reasons I stated.

What MY top-down bridge section view from a few posts up proves is that it's impossible to put the lift tube offset without having it protrude beyond the "dome" outer wall. And that it's impossible to do that even if the "dome" was a perfect cylinder, no less. The only way you can do this... having an offset lift tube... is by doing what you've done, and shifting the bridge down by a full deck height.

It's worth pointing out that you also need to consider the mechanics of the lift cars themselves. The floor of the lift car must be coincident with the deck. In order to place lift cars inside the structure and not have them passing through the adjacent decks and not just the deck they're traveling along, you need to keep a very shallow floor. Here, if you recall, was the lift car design I ultimately arrived at. (Nnote that, except for Deck 1, these cars would actually be stopping at stations to either side of the tube... I'm just showing them in-line to demonstrate the relationship of the cars, and their related tube structure, to the deck structure.)

 

[Shaw]

Shaw's preliminary findings...

Well, I generally hate to get involved in these arguments because neither side is going to change their minds. But what I can add to the discussion is a historical perspective of what might have been happening 45 years ago behind the scenes of The Cage.

By November 7, 1964 Matt Jefferies, who was a junior member of the art staff, had to answer to at least three people above him (Gene Roddenbery, Pato Guzman and Franz Bachelin) and was just happy to be employed, had just finished the final plans for the models (though I believe Richard Datin had already contracted out the lathing of some of the parts a few days earlier based on the preliminary plans he was given before November 4th).

The plans for the bridge should have been finished by this point and construction of the bridge set may have already started (as shooting was schedule to start on November 30th). The only good construction reference for the bridge is a cross-section of a standard station, no pre-WNMHGB floor plans have survived that I know of. But the bridge set and the bridge of the 33 inch model seem designed to fit together to show the scale of the ship (specially as originally Jefferies didn't want windows), but odds are that on paper the turbo lift and main display were in line with each other at that point.

Who overrode those original plans?

I don't think it matters much at this point, Jefferies needed to compromise to make sure he kept getting a pay check. And he might not have even seen the shuffling of bridge sections until late in November.

What is interesting is that the shape (diameter and height) of the bridge dome of the 11 foot model is different from the 33 inch model. Considering that the 11 foot model was started more than a week after the filming of the bridge crane shot (model construction started on December 8th), the changes might have been Jefferies attempting to compensate for the re-arrangment of the bridge design. The changes in size (if done, would have been rushed) weren't enough to keep the lift from poking out of the side of the dome... and the exterior lift feature couldn't be moved as the 11 foot model (even at this early unlit stage) was only designed to be filmed from one side and had to stay symmetric.

What are we talking about size wise?

At the original Jefferies size (primary hull diameter of 417 feet) we get this...

I firmly believe Jefferies wanted a forward facing bridge... and I'll always have my drawings rotated about 35 degrees off center (so that it fits). Jefferies had to live with compromises, so I can live with them too.

And as pointed out in every discussion, the Enterprise isn't flown by feel. If direction was really an important aspect of helming the Enterprise, all the chairs on the bridge would have been fixed to the floor with seat belts.




I now return you to our 1,386th installment of No, No... the Bridge Was This Way, already in progress.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I am not for or against any ideas posted here either the accepted canon or members personal preferences. I am looking for ideas and the considered thoughts of you all.

Cary L. Brown :But I know I, personally, hate having people walk into the room immediately behind me, where I can't seem them. (I've had enough real-world experience that I'm the guy who always picks his seat in the restaurant so he can see the entrance and has his back to the wall!).

totally agree with you there.. I never sit with my back to a door. and I would agree
that the orignal intent was to have the turbo lift travel down the shaft behind the bridge. but I would say that due to the needs of shooting the show compromise's had to be made every day.. and orignal intent was or had to be thrown out the window.
never expecting that fans would be so interested in what made things work and what did not..


for me its a pet peeve.. I don't like the idea .. yet I accept that the way it is or its seen to be... perhaps the problem is for many is like a pilot trying to fly a 747 when seating 36 degrees to the port "lol" or driving a car and we are projecting these thought into the bridge design.. thus causing this dilemma.

like a modern Submarine the helmsman and the Planesman sit facing forward in an enclosed shell where as older subs were on the side.. and I think a submarine is the
closest reference we would have to a star ship in space.

just a thought

That's exactly the way I look at it.

The "main viewscreen" is, primarily, the "computer monitor" for the helmsman's workstation. It is not a window. And, since you have "inertial dampening fields" and you never see stuff sliding off tables or people being tossed out of bed due to course corrections (though you do from weapons hits... which only demonstrates that the IDF has limitations and isn't "perfect", though more than sufficient to counter any manuvering-based accelerations), it's safe to say that the guys on the bridge wouldn't be able to "feel" the movement of the ship.

There is no need... absolutely NONE... for the crew to face in any specific direction in order to operate the vessel. The rationale behind thinking in these terms is similar, really, to the mental image some folks have that if you were "standing on top of the nacelle" you might slip "down" the side and fall off. It's all about applying familiar, yet inapplicable, preconceptions.

Sub drivers actually CAN feel the movement of the boat... albeit the accelerations are normally so small that they can "barely" feel it. An IDF on a starship would render even that moot.

 

[TIN_MAN]

CRA wants it to be a subspace transceiver antenna, since a forward facing bridge would place the communications station adjacent to the nub. If I were to accept the forward facing bridge (which, honestly, I don't really) then I would make it a turboshaft after all next to the bridge one that is used to hard dock to a matching female turboshaft at a base, that way the ship could be boarded by turbolift in addition to just transporter or shuttlecraft. Of course, there could also be a secret concealed gangway door on the port saucer edge like the TMP ship to handle walk-ins too. Maybe. But there was no such feature on the model.

--Alex

Interesting ideas .. I would be keen on the "Hard Dock" idea
or a gang way...

I also favor the "Hard Dock" idea as it also lends itself to the old idea that the turbo lifts can act as 'life boats' and that the bridge lift is one of the (perhaps several?) places where lifts can exit directly out of the ship in emergency evac situations. Thus giving us two good "in universe" reasons for why the top off the lift shaft would be exposed, which seems to be a stumbling block for some fans.

As for a TMP style dock on the port side rim, since the port side of the model was never detailed or shown, and what few details spill over to the port side near the center line indicate that the ship was not intended to be 100% symetrical in every detail, I think this is a place where a little artistic liscence is completely acceptable.

As for the orientation of the bridge interior...

We know Jefferies original intent was that the bridge interior face directly forward and in line with the ships center line, and (as he also intended) allowing perfect alignment of interior alcove and external "nub" at the top of the shaft, and since we "know" moving the T/L alcove for "dramatic reasons" by TPTB, already screwed with his original intention, which then led directly to the "mismatched T/L problem" we see in 'The Cage' zoom in shot, it's therefore the "fault" of TPTB that this discrepancy exists, and from a strictly technical POV, it is what it is, a mistake, and it is their mistake, so the question for us trek tech fans becomes then, "what to do about it"?

My advice (FWIW) would be to avoid over thinking the problem and taking things to such lengths that you end up rearanging things even further and making things worse than they already are. Since the deviation from Jefferies "original intent" was the "fault" of the producers, and all we can do is make the best of a bad situation, I offer these simple alternatives for your consideration.

keeping in mind that "The Cage" zoom in shot is only a SFX shot (and a poor one at that) and therefore does not represent a "true" relationship between the interior and exterior of a "real" structure, it's perhaps best not to use this as "proof" of anything, its "onscreen canon" status notwithstanding? Even taking it at face value, at best, it only tells us what the "pilot era" enterprise looked like and says nothing "canonicly" about the later "production era" version (of any ship) with the lowered dome. For that we need to turn to the library computer scene from ST:TMP, which I mentioned in my above post, this clearly shows a TOS bridge with a 36 degree offset, so at least some TOS era bridges must have had this layout. So, how to reconcile this "canon vs canon" issue?

One way is to "pretend" that, (A) despite what we see in "The Cage" the bridge interior is actually at the bottom of the dome and this could allow (possibly?) for a configuration like we actualy see, with an interior T/L alcove displaced from the exterior housing, and then we could assume that it was later altered (due to interior space limitations) to match the layout from TMP display? Another way is to "pretend", dispite what we see that (B) at this time the T/L was really behind the Captains chair allowing for the forward facing bridge (and was later modified). Or (C) "pretend", dispite what we see, that the Turbo lifts line up and the interior is 36 degrees to port, and was later modified by simply removing the lower (modular?) half of the dome. (this was easier to "pretend in the original "crude" SFX with its +/- 15 degree offset.) Since all three options involve some artistic interpretation, and do not exactly match what we actually see, none are strictly "canon", but at least option (C) above is consistant with the ST:TMP "canon".

Another option, assume that the ship(s) "as built" match Jefferies original intent, which, for lack of a better term, I'll call "Reliant style" and that it is the "Captain's discretion" that detemines the layout of a given bridge interior. In the case of the Enterprise, we could say that it was Captain Pike's preferance that we see in "The Cage' era and that presumably, when Kirk took over, he didn't really give a damn, so he left it the way it was? Although he may have experimented with other orientations, as evidenced by the slightly different position of the Com Con as was seen in the second Pilot ep.? (Coincidently, with about the same +/-15 degree "rotation" we see in in the "imperfect" original "Cage" soom on shot!)

I hope this helps, good luck.

 

[Taranis]

thanks for all the suggestions and observations.. some very interesting ideas
thrown in too.

my orignal question was what size is the bridge or the diameter of the bridge.
(I have asked the gut that made Star Ship Farragut just as a matter of interest)


I had no idea it would open such a debate (or perhaps I should have) ...
I have been looking at the works posted my you all .
(or as much as I can given my time) incredible stuff my complements to you.

there is never going to be a meeting of minds on the subject and looking
at the recent post by Shaw I think if I was to build it as I would like if
would be compromise all roundto make my view fit

So as I planed a canon version I will work in that direction and
build it to the best of my ability or lack of it

then I will build it as I would like it to look.... for my own interest.

I have some interesting measurement posted by Mytran and
Captain Robert April and the added info by David Shaw here and
saved it for future reference and the other prints of Casimiro and
Sinclair to ponder over. never mind the tons of images
from web at large ..

I have all the relevant info and by Friday I not going to have an Internet connection..
as I am moving to Spain .. so as I will disappear for a while you know why

 

[JJohnson]

This is easy. The turbolift is directly on the centerline, but offset on the bridge, so, therefore, the bridge is rotated on its axis. I wish that weren't the case, but that's what the evidence says. If I could do anything, I would put two turbolifts on the TOS bridge and keep outer symmetry by having two turbolift pods, so that the bridge could face forward and still be symmetrical. But, we can't do anything about it now.

 

[Mudd]

Zombie thread!

 

[StarCruiser]

Careful - reanimating threads can be hazardous to your health!

 

[Ronald Held]

I am surprised this one rose from the dead.

 

[Unicron]

It's probably best to left sleeping threads lie.

 

[Wingsley]

I don't know about that. It's really interesting to see this one rise to the top again. It's like a history lesson of donnybrooks past.