TOS Turbolift

[Christopher]

At one point, back when I envisioned my original science fiction universe as more Trekkish with a focus on exploration starships, I put a lot of thought into the design of those ships. And one idea I had for a really big, Enterprise-sized starship I had was that it would have ramps from deck to deck, and that the crew would have the option of getting around by bicycle.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I attended a sprawling, one-story suburban elementary school. A corridor with classrooms on both sides stretched north for about 270 feet. Then it turned right and went east for 200 feet, then another right turn and it heads back south for 200 feet more (the C-shaped building is wrapped around a courtyard).

It's a lot of hallway, but installing an indoor trolley car never occurred to anybody. That would have been a hilarious idea. The principal was an old lady, especially to me back then, and she got around the whole building just fine on foot.

I've found that looking at floor plans and deck plans somehow puts an exaggerated picture of distances in my mind. It happened when I had a scale plan view of my first apartment: I measured my furniture, but the place still seemed smaller when I walked in the door.

The Enterprise-D and the "JJ" Dr. Seuss Enterprise are cases where, without cars, you'd have to sleep and eat near your job, but Kirk's ship is very walkable.

 

[GNDN18]

They were all in the bowling alley at 19:00

I'm sorry, but there'll be no ice cream for you tonight.

 

[scotpens]

I'm certainly no fan of DSC's absurd turbolift interiors, and choose to interpret them as adaptational artistic license rather than in-universe reality. To be fair, though, the TOS Enterprise was about the size of an aircraft carrier such as its namesake CVN-65, but had a crew complement less than one-tenth its size (430 vs. 4600). So it canonically did have a whole lot more space than it really needed.

Not necessarily. The TOS Enterprise was comparable to a contemporary U.S. Navy carrier only in terms of overall length. A carrier, or any ship for that matter, is a single hull whereas the Enterprise is a dispersed structure: a saucer, a smaller tapered cylinder, three skinny pylons, and two engine nacelles that presumably contain no crew spaces. I haven't actually calculated the usable interior volume of the TOS-E, but I'm sure it's a fraction of that of CVN-65.

 

[XCV330]

At one point, back when I envisioned my original science fiction universe as more Trekkish with a focus on exploration starships, I put a lot of thought into the design of those ships. And one idea I had for a really big, Enterprise-sized starship I had was that it would have ramps from deck to deck, and that the crew would have the option of getting around by bicycle.

I used to be the network engineer at a wallpaper factory that had warehouses, offices, production facilities all laid out horizontally. the easiest way to get around was by those Worksman industrial bicycles and tricycles.

 

[Metryq]

Jesus. I wonder where there'd be room for all that deckless space.

"Yes, it's true. This ship has no deck."
—Dr. Peter Venkman

 

[Christopher]

I haven't actually calculated the usable interior volume of the TOS-E, but I'm sure it's a fraction of that of CVN-65.

I doubt it's as little as a tenth of it, though. And the volume of the Galaxy class is surely substantially greater than that of a carrier, but it still has less than a quarter of a carrier's complement.

 

[Ssosmcin]

It's a lot of hallway, but installing an indoor trolley car never occurred to anybody.

Perhaps it did. Then a few seconds later, the visions of injured children jumping and falling off the trolley or, worse, getting run over, made the idea something of a recurring joke in the teacher's lounge.

 

[scotpens]

It's a lot of hallway, but installing an indoor trolley car never occurred to anybody. That would have been a hilarious idea.

Perhaps it did. Then a few seconds later, the visions of injured children jumping and falling off the trolley or, worse, getting run over, made the idea something of a recurring joke in the teacher's lounge.

Yeah, that idea sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

 

[Phaser Two]

I used to be the network engineer at a wallpaper factory that had warehouses, offices, production facilities all laid out horizontally. the easiest way to get around was by those Worksman industrial bicycles and tricycles.

You mean that people didn't just breezily saunter over to where they needed to go, because they were in good shape and could use the workout, as opposed to the outrageous expenditure on the bikes and trikes? Amazing. And can I assume that this was a wallpaper factory that was not routinely involved in emergency situations involving combat with enemy wallpaper factories, which might otherwise have hastened the need for an efficient intrafactory transportation system? Makes you wonder what a warring wallpaper factory would do.

 

[Christopher]

Makes you wonder what a warring wallpaper factory would do.

Coordinate with the carpet bombing?

 

[Phaser Two]

Coordinate with the carpet bombing?

Would the munitions in question match the drapes?

 

[danellis]

Well, that is a ridiculous waste of space. Back in the day, even Roddenberry said the original Enterprise corridors were only as wide as they were to fit the camera equipment....

I guess that depends on how the ships are actually made out.

With all the deck plans that get produced, the starting assumption is always that the ships are full of horizontally laid out decks, and each deck is filled with lots and lots and LOTS of little rooms, like a very wide skyscraper.

Given the populations these ships all seem to have, is it *this* that's very wasteful? There was a video shared on another thread recently that estimated the habitable decks of the Enterprise-D as 827000m2. That equates to nearly 83Ha, or more than 200 acres. (WolframAlpha equates it to nearly twice the size of Vatican City).

I work in housing development in the UK. A typical medium-to-low-density development (so all 2-storey, a mix of 2, 3, and 4, bed houses) work get plotted at about 13 or 14 houses per hectare. A higher-density scheme (predominately apartments, some houses; so more likely to ) would typically be about 50 dwellings per hectare. Those figures account for roads, parking, playgrounds etc.

Multiplying the figures together, that would give 1,079 to 1,162 dwellings at low density, or 4,150 at the higher density. The ONS report for 2020 gives the average family size as 2.4. Suggesting a population of 2590, 2789, or 9960, respectively.

Even the lowest of these are many times the 1,012 population of the Enterprise-D as repeatedly stated on screen.

Would a better understanding of the internal arrangement of the Enterprise to be a series of rooms, or more likely collections of rooms that are "floating" within the frame formed by the hull. In that context, would the turboshaft network as depicted in Discovery make more sense, and be "less wasteful" for a perspective of not using unnecessary materials?

dJE

 

[BK613]

Would the munitions in question match the drapes?

Does give the phrase "decorated for valor" another dimension.

 

[Christopher]

Would a better understanding of the internal arrangement of the Enterprise to be a series of rooms, or more likely collections of rooms that are "floating" within the frame formed by the hull.

I'm reminded of the design logic of the title ship in Andromeda. Since that show was created with plausible physics in mind, they didn't have force-field barriers and combat was fought more with kinetic projectiles than beams. And the projectiles moved at relativistic speeds, so there was no way to block them; they'd just tunnel right through the ship in an instant, turning into an expanding cloud of vapor that carved a widening cone through the ship.

So the ships were designed to be very spacious, and in combat, the crew would concentrate in assorted small areas throughout the ship, so most of the ship was empty and the odds of any inhabited compartment getting hit were low, and if it did, you'd only lose a small percentage of the crew. And the unpopulated areas were purged of atmosphere so the shock and heat from the impacts wouldn't propagate through the ship.

Of course, in Trek you have deflectors and energy weapons, but there might still be something to the logic of spreading out the crew through a large volume to reduce the odds of getting hit. But there are still things that work against that, like keeping the entire interior pressurized and putting the bridge right on top of the ship where it's easy to aim at.

In that context, would the turboshaft network as depicted in Discovery make more sense, and be "less wasteful" for a perspective of not using unnecessary materials?

Maybe the version seen in season 2 and Short Treks. But the version seen in season 3 is pretty clearly larger than the entire ship and is full of needless cluttery bits that serve no imaginable purpose. It was like the pointless trap corridor in Galaxy Quest -- why the hell is this even inside the ship? (Fortunately, there was no sign of it in season 4, which managed to keep its VFX absurdities relatively restrained compared to previous seasons.)

 

[TIN_MAN]

@ Mytran, Interesting about there being no horizontal light bar for the turbolift in the first season, I did not know that.

This would explain why the script notation in“TCM” indicating that Kirk’s turbolift slowed down and began to move horizontally (which is also in Blish’s adaptation of this episode) for the scene where Kirk takes a turbolift from sickbay to the bridge, but changes his mind along the way, and heads to his cabin instead, was not filmed as indicated.

Since this was the first regular production episode produced (but not the first aired) the intent of the note was, no doubt, to clue the audience in on the idea that this was no ordinary elevator?

Anyway, I had always just assumed that it had been filmed, but ended up on the cutting room floor, but now I can see why it wasn’t filmed as scripted.

 

[Phaser Two]

Does give the phrase "decorated for valor" another dimension.

 

[publiusr]

I like the idea of the turbo lift cars being lifeboats in a pinch.

 

[Forbin]

I once overlaid a top view of the TMP Refit on the building I worked in. The building was about a million square feet. IIRC, it was 1300 feet long by over 400 feet deep. The depth being roughly equal to the width of the Refit's saucer. You could walk that 400 feet in roughly one minute. I often wished I had a Segue to travel the lengthwise corridors, but that saucer-width walk was nothing.

 

[Richard Baker]

One thing that bothered about the insides of the turbolift shsfts ee saw in ST-V and in 'Disaster' TNG, namely why is there gravity in that shaft at all?
The natural condition of the ship is no gravity, gravity is present through controlled technology, gravity plates built into the decks and operated by the ship's computer systems. The only place you could put the gravity plates is at the base of the vertical tube, but why?
This would mean you are going to make extra effort to build and power something which would result in making the moving turbolift car have a more difficult job.
Since gravity is created intentionally and in a controlled fashion (ask the Gorn), not having it in certain areas of the ship would make things easier. No gravity in the shafts?- then dock the cars and by opening the doors you have the free float crew system mentioned earlier. No thruster boots or French songs needed.