Well in space they can go for some truly touchless paint jobs I would imagine painting is done at starbase facilities and not out in the field though. If we take in account the 11' model where she has weathering then it would suggest that Kirk and Pike never kept up with repainting the ship. However, I don't believe the weathering was visible on screen though.
Does beg the question: what exactly would cause weathering on a starship? Maybe enemy weapons fire where some of the energy is getting through to the hull?
Weapons fire would fall under battle damage effects, IMHO. Weathering on a starship could be from space rock impacts, scorching from atmospheric entry and/or ion storms or from exposure to the elements in an planetary atmosphere. The Enterprise has had to deal with atmospheric re-entry, space amoeba innards, meteors/asteroid debris from the Doomsday Machine episode and ion storms. The 11's weather pattern on the top of the saucer and bridge has a circular uniformity from the center with a more pronounced weathering around it where it flattens out. The leading edge of the saucer has some small directional weathering.
Just like a paint job on a miniature is more stark in person than it is on film the weathering effect is much the same. Onscreen the weathering was very muted to the point of near invisibility. In person it was much more apparent. So it comes down to whether you want your recreation to look more like it does onscreen or more like it does in person.
I would imagine that radiation encountered in space would have an impact. Even NASA has to account for this.
The question was asked: if repairs can be done from within the ship why would a workpod be needed? What if the ship sustains physical damage that cannot be accessed from inside? I’m also wondering about the shuttlecraft numbering system. In The Making Of Star Trek it’s referenced the Enterprise has seven shuttlecraft, and we interpret that as seven Class F shuttlecraft. This does line up with he Galileo being registered NCC-1701/7. But over the years it looks highly unlikely the ship carries seven such vehicles aboard as there isn’t enough room. They must have realized this back in the day because in “The Omega Glory” they establish a Constitution-class ship has four shuttlecraft. That seems much more reasonable given the space available aboard a 947ft. ship. But now having Galileo registered as NCC-170/7 rather 1-4 doesn’t line up anymore. In TOS we only know the Galileo’s registry. Although we hear the Columbus mentioned we never see its registry because they just reused footage of the Galileo. Much later in TFF we see the Copernicus (sporting a new design) and its registry is 5, and this could or has been retconned into TOS, but that doesn’t count here just as whatever TOS-R showed doesn’t count either. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no list was ever drawn up of possible shuttlecraft names. “The Galileo Seven” is the only time names of shuttlecraft were ever referenced. After that they were just referenced as shuttlecraft. In my own drawings when working up plans for the Class F I eventually opted for Galileo, Columbus, Copernicus and Magellan—two astronomers and two explorers. Mind you thats not set in stone, but just what I thought reasonable. But even so why a registry of 7 when there are supposed to be only four shuttlecraft as complement? Possibly in Season 1 they still thought it was possible to berth seven shuttlecraft aboard, but more likely they chose 7 because it was easier when making up the markings for the vehicle because you just needed an extra 7 from 1701. Pretty much like what they did later for the Constellation and its registry 1017 being a rearranging of 1701. One explanation could be that as shuttlecraft were lost over the years the replacements were numbered sequentially higher. So the Galileo could be the seventh shuttlecraft the Enterprise has had since it launched. The problem with that explanation is later the Galileo II is also registered 1701/7 rather than 1701/8. So while reasonable it doesn’t work based on what we see. But what if the Enterprise has other smaller auxiliary craft to make up a total of seven small craft aboard ship? So four shuttlecraft and three workpods?
A. I can squeeze seven shuttlecraft on the 947 foot Enterprise (but the hangar bay extends under the engine pylons.) B. The Enterprise is never at its full allotment of shuttlecraft. Zero in The Enemy Within; One most times; Two during The Galileo Seven; etc.
Yeah, I could easily put 6 in the hangar bay below the flight deck and have one on the flight deck (24' shuttles). Upsized 28' shuttles only 3 below and 4 above. But @Henoch is correct in that we don't ever see a full compliment of shuttles on the Enterprise or her sister ships. As to exterior repairs I would imagine crews in spacesuits if it was an emergency otherwise they'd head to the nearest starbase.
You can pack things in like sardines, but you need a realistic way of shuffling them around without much trouble. And TOS didn’t show us a ship where things are packed in with no room to spare. I can also accept that there is no easy rationale for how the shuttlecraft are numbered.
Since the deflector should be keeping space weather and debris off the hull, I'd suggest that it is not "weathering" but discoloration caused by the normal operation of the shield grid or structural integrity field. Similar to the heat discoloration on the chrome pipes of a motorcycle.
What about a larger space suit. Something that creates a much larger reach, and power for an individual user.
We do see weathering on the shuttle in "Galileo Seven" after the emergency landing (darkened bottom of nacelles). In "The Way to Eden" on the other hand the shuttle is very clean with almost no weathering showing. That's pretty good attention to detail on the TOS production crew. @JR TREK - oxidation of metal would be interesting if it was bare metal but the Enterprise is painted. I guess it could be thermachromic paint. Personally since weathering isn't visible on screen I wouldn't have any weathering effects on the Enterprise. Maybe for something super large and unwieldy but why not a portable tractor/repulsor beam emitter instead? In "The Changeling" Kirk and Spock had no trouble in using handheld antigravs to move a 500 Kg (1,100 lbs) object around.
“But what if the Enterprise has other smaller auxiliary craft to make up a total of seven small craft aboard ship? So four shuttlecraft and three workpods?” That’s certainly the way I approached it on my cross section. I only showed one Class F shuttlecraft, a larger one based on Jefferies original design, a smaller one based on his Phase II design, and the rest various work craft based on Jefferies‘ sketches. Plus a bottle suit. The idea being, each of those shuttles has a particular role - the Phase II shuttle is non-warp for ship to surface. The big, original design shuttle is long range and warp. The Class F does it all. Ship to ship, ship to surface, and if you add the nacelles it becomes a short-mid range warp shuttle. Depending on the parameters of the mission, the ship might carry all of one type or a mix.
If Starfleet follows the Navy example, the 7 on the Galileo might not have anything to do with being on the Enterprise. Could be just the unit number of the deployed craft. In the Navy, the air-det and not the ship numbered the aircraft. The UH-46s deployed with us on our last Westpac carried the unit numbers 72 and 73. And it was standard practice to id the aircraft when deployed by painting the ship's name on the fuselage: unit 10 assigned to the USS Camden But the Camden is not carrying ten UH-46s. So the Galileo might carry the number NCC-1701/7 on the Enterprise but if it had been deployed to the Constellation instead, its number would have been NCC-1017/7. That would free one from the need to come up with seven craft and also explain "The Enemy Within" (no shuttles deployed during that mission.)
What if the UH-46s had instead been numbered “AOE-2/1”, “AOE-2/2”, etc? That is more analogous. “NCC-1701/7” makes it pretty clear the craft is a subunit of the ship, not the fleet. It should also be pointed out that when tail codes were introduced towards the end of WW2, they were unique to each carrier. It wasn’t until later that changed and they were made to designate air groups. The guys making Star Trek would have been familiar with the WW2 practice.
What if the guys making Star Trek served on a WW2 battleship or cruiser that had float planes? Those aircraft wouldn't have received any tail codes.
The unit numbers aren't tail codes. In my previous post, the referenced USS Camden helo has a tail number of 153412. That number identifies the individual aircraft and would not change if the aircraft was transferred to another squadron (think VIN). Edit to add: The tail code on that helo is SA which was the code for HC-3 (Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 3. Now HSC-3)
Alternative theory, just for fun: The Galileo carries 7 passengers, so maybe the "7" suffix refers to that?