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USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

Except that if the ship's too small for the needs of the design it just looks cramped. There's a balance somewhere, but either way it isn't going to prevent me from sleeping.
 
Look again. I thought they were triangular too but after reading your post I went back and I think it's quite probable that they are in fact rectangular. In fact, if you look at the fan model above you can see how they might look triangular from both angles.

What I don't understand is how the hell this artist noticed that.

I think I'm gonna need to have a better view to be convinced either way. Like I said, crisp clean FX didn't seem to be what they were going for. I'm leaning towards triangular since that's what the original had for the never seen landing struts.
 
I think I'm gonna need to have a better view to be convinced either way. Like I said, crisp clean FX didn't seem to be what they were going for.

Yeah I figure the model wasn't ready for her close up yet. Hopefully we'll get a much better look at it come next season.
 
There's going to come a point where I'm just going to ignore any and all CBS scale numbers that were created after 2017 because damn, these guys have size issues and it shows.

289 meters is just fine. It worked for fifty years. Put down the crack pipe and stop thinking everything in outer space is cooler if we make it twice as big.
But you said it yourself, the shuttles won't fit:lol:
 
I cannot believe anyone gives a shit if the ship is 940ft long or 2500ft long. In what way does it take away from the enjoyment of the show either way? "Bridge windows!!!!11111one one....GRRR." What the hell difference does it make? Have a bridge window? Fine. Don't have one? Fine.

I swear Trekkies get caught up on the most trivial shit I've ever seen.
 
I cannot believe anyone gives a shit if the ship is 940ft long or 2500ft long. In what way does it take away from the enjoyment of the show either way? "Bridge windows!!!!11111one one....GRRR." What the hell difference does it make? Have a bridge window? Fine. Don't have one? Fine.

I swear Trekkies get caught up on the most trivial shit I've ever seen.
It's always fun trying to figure out how everything's supposed to fit inside.

I only just learned, thanks to another size thread in the Tech forum, that the upper windows on the classic Enterprise-A saucer rim are about knee-to-hip height if the ship was 1000-foot long as it's supposed to be. All these years and a million Starship Size Argumentthread diagrams, and I never noticed that before. And it fascinates me.
 
It's always fun trying to figure out how everything's supposed to fit inside.

I only just learned, thanks to another size thread in the Tech forum, that the upper windows on the classic Enterprise-A saucer rim are about knee-to-hip height if the ship was 1000-foot long as it's supposed to be. All these years and a million Starship Size Argumentthread diagrams, and I never noticed that before. And it fascinates me.

Sure, that stuff is fine. I'm talking about people who let a ship that's 2500ft or has a bridge window ruin the entire experience for them. Yeah, ship trivia can be fun, and it's enjoyable. It's the belly aching over ship lengths and bridge windows that absolutely perplexes me. I mean, it actively makes people ANGRY. Like angry over the length of a fictional ship? What?
 
Sure, that stuff is fine. I'm talking about people who let a ship that's 2500ft or has a bridge window ruin the entire experience for them. Yeah, ship trivia can be fun, and it's enjoyable. It's the belly aching over ship lengths and bridge windows that absolutely perplexes me. I mean, it actively makes people ANGRY. Like angry over the length of a fictional ship? What?

It doesn't "ruin" the entire experience. The experience was pretty weak to begin with, this is just one particular issue where that manifests.

The new Jupiter 2 from "Lost in Space" has size issues that make the Enterprise look benign - the outside model of the ship (as well as the Chariot) is vastly smaller than the inside. It doesn't work in any way, it's like that small shuttles on Star Trek that are bigger on the inside, turned up to eleven. The show is still pretty good and enjoyable. And in the grand scheme of things, one at least gets a good feel for what size the creators had in mind for their ships.

DIS first season was pretty weak. Not exactly bad, it's still one of the better shows around. But it was massively disappointing compared to the expectations a series with "Star Trek" in the title awakens. And ship size is just one more issue where it's obvious the creators don't really know what they're doing.

IMO it would have been best to not actually give specific numbers for their ships at all. But have one for themselves, which they can look at for reference when writing the show, but still have some creative freedom to add or subtract a level or a shuttlebay should the story ask for it. As it is, it's a mess, where they are completely off, and try to retroactively work around it by cheating with the sizes of already established ships or, even worse, real-life objects like the viewscreen or the shuttlebay doors.

The biggest problem with DIS' size issues isn't that they exist at all. ALL Trek shows have size issues - they're entertainment, not a documentary. The problem is that relative sizes to each other don't fit. Nobody thought about how this ship behaves towards it's peers. They just created a design - massively oversized it, because that's the most recent trend in Trek since JJ Abrams - and then tried to fit a square pig into a round hole.

It's not so much that it makes angry. There are by far more relevant issues to be angry about than a mediocre tv series. But it's kinda' frustrating. That the more and deeper a look one takes, the more obvious it becomes how everything makes no sense. While in good fiction it's usually the other way 'round: The closer you look, the more layers should be visible. Not cracks.
 
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It's always fun trying to figure out how everything's supposed to fit inside.

I only just learned, thanks to another size thread in the Tech forum, that the upper windows on the classic Enterprise-A saucer rim are about knee-to-hip height if the ship was 1000-foot long as it's supposed to be. All these years and a million Starship Size Argumentthread diagrams, and I never noticed that before. And it fascinates me.

Sure, that stuff is fine. I'm talking about people who let a ship that's 2500ft or has a bridge window ruin the entire experience for them. Yeah, ship trivia can be fun, and it's enjoyable. It's the belly aching over ship lengths and bridge windows that absolutely perplexes me. I mean, it actively makes people ANGRY. Like angry over the length of a fictional ship? What?
The immortal Enterprise 1701 size argument always makes me nostalgic for 2009, its funny really for the most part the official size numbers for the prime universe Enterprise 1701 were always taken at face value, its only since the rise of HD and the kelvin universe Enterprise 1701 was introduced that real questions have started to be asked.

It comes as no surprise that the prime 1701-A also needs to have its official size scaled up as well.

For me I always felt the original ToS 1701 was a bit on the small side but I can fully understand how that would happen due to it being originally created in the 60's and at the time no one really cared one way or the other about the size.

I really am looking forward to seeing just how much they scaled the Enterprise up in Discovery, they had to do it to make everything fit and long gone are the days when it could just be ignored like in the 60's-80's.

Some get angry over it because they don't like change and cant accept it, I grew up in the 80's with the films and the 1701-A and it was a product of its time just like the original was, I don't really have a problem with scaling up the ship so that it can pass scrutiny in the age of HD resolution.

As always idealism falls to reality in the end. :shrug:
 
The immortal Enterprise 1701 size argument always makes me nostalgic for 2009, its funny really for the most part the official size numbers for the prime universe Enterprise 1701 were always taken at face value, its only since the rise of HD and the kelvin universe Enterprise 1701 was introduced that real questions have started to be asked.

It comes as no surprise that the prime 1701-A also needs to have its official size scaled up as well.

For me I always felt the original ToS 1701 was a bit on the small side but I can fully understand how that would happen due to it being originally created in the 60's and at the time no one really cared one way or the other about the size.

I really am looking forward to seeing just how much they scaled the Enterprise up in Discovery, they had to do it to make everything fit and long gone are the days when it could just be ignored like in the 60's-80's.

Some get angry over it because they don't like change and cant accept it, I grew up in the 80's with the films and the 1701-A and it was a product of its time just like the original was, I don't really have a problem with scaling up the ship so that it can pass scrutiny in the age of HD resolution.

As always idealism falls to reality in the end. :shrug:

I think, back in the day, the consesus was not to take the official numbers at face value, but with a grain of salt to give a broad range of the ship. Remember: There is no canon source for the official length. It's all non-canon sources.

Also, it quite didn't mattered that much: There was usually only one ship at the same time on screen anyway, and if there were two, it usually jus gave a borad size comparison ("bigger", "WAY bigger", or "smaller"). And those made generally sense visually and in-context.

It's only since JJ Abrams that the sizes have gone so much off the rails. He liked the sizes of Star Wars, thus the Enterprise became more of a star destroyer, than the equivalent of a real-life aircraft carrier.

DIS only follows suit. But has the additional problem that it's officially set in the "classic" timeline, and now we have a weird science vessel, with one quarter of the crew count of the Enterprise, that suddenly is faster, more maneuverable, massively better armed and ridiculously bigger than the legendary top-of-the-line ships of that era.
 
I cannot believe anyone gives a shit if the ship is 940ft long or 2500ft long. In what way does it take away from the enjoyment of the show either way? "Bridge windows!!!!11111one one....GRRR." What the hell difference does it make? Have a bridge window? Fine. Don't have one? Fine.

I swear Trekkies get caught up on the most trivial shit I've ever seen.
The only group I've seen come close are "fans" of the Disney amusement parks. :wtf:
 
I think, back in the day, the consesus was not to take the official numbers at face value, but with a grain of salt to give a broad range of the ship. Remember: There is no canon source for the official length. It's all non-canon sources.

Also, it quite didn't mattered that much: There was usually only one ship at the same time on screen anyway, and if there were two, it usually jus gave a borad size comparison ("bigger", "WAY bigger", or "smaller"). And those made generally sense visually and in-context.

It's only since JJ Abrams that the sizes have gone so much off the rails. He liked the sizes of Star Wars, thus the Enterprise became more of a star destroyer, than the equivalent of a real-life aircraft carrier.

DIS only follows suit. But has the additional problem that it's officially set in the "classic" timeline, and now we have a weird science vessel, with one quarter of the crew count of the Enterprise, that suddenly is faster, more maneuverable, massively better armed and ridiculously bigger than the legendary top-of-the-line ships of that era.
I think it all started with Star Trek TNG and all the technical books that have been released since then, I have never really had an issue with larger ships as lack of room is hardly a problem in space so there shouldn't really be an absolute upper limit on ship sizes beyond the size required to fulfil a set of functions.

With an exception perhaps in regards to amount of time required to build which is ultimately decided by technology level and available manpower, with an absolute hard ceiling being power generation capabilities and engine power, but even that can be got around by simply adding more power sources and engines as we see with the Borg ships and their extreme redundancy.

There is no real true upper limit, as technology improves the ship requires fewer crew to maintain and run the ship which then provides more space in a given design for personnel/hardware expanding the available tasks that the ship can perform.

I am ignoring the issue of oxygen needs as it is not really referenced at all and I would expect that to be solved or they wouldn't be in deep space in the first place, yet in many ways that would be the biggest blocker of all if the technology to artificially produce oxygen didn't exist, using gas bottle or tanks of any size would simply be out of the question.

Just imagine how great a jump the introduction of replicators would be in real terms, no more need to set aside huge amounts of cargo space just for food and water which would then mean the number of additional skilled personnel could be increased greatly and the amount of time away from base would go up exponentially.

I don't see an issue with the whole matching of a Star Destroyers dimensions, even if the Enterprise did match such a ship in length it wouldn't even come close in equalling the tonnage or internal volume available within, not to mention a large part of a Star Destroyers rear area is engine alone.

A Star Destroyer (or a Battlestar even) has far more in common with an Aircraft Carrier than it ever would with anything in the Star Trek domain, which is why I consider both a Star Destroyer and a Battlestar to be a far more likely future for human space exploration than anything in Star Trek (ignoring the force obviously), for me the ships in Star Trek are very much a matter of style over substance with Starfleet ships being particularly guilty of this with an honourable mention going to the Defiant class for being short and to the point with very little wasted space.

It doesn't stop me enjoying the TV shows and films at all but it just means that Star Trek is less grounded in a potential future reality than shows such as Star Wars (ignoring the force obviously), BSG and B5 are.

If I had a real bone to pick with the ships shown in Star Trek (which I really don't) their increasing size would not even be on the list.
 
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