What would you change about the TOS Enterprise?

If you could go back in time and talk to Matt Jeffries or someone in the model-building department, what relatively small thing would you change about the original series Constitution Class Starship? (and/or any other starfleet ship of the era that uses the saucer+nacelle+engineering configuration, such as exist in the Technical Manual.)

The only thing I would change is have the Impluse Engines mounted on the spine of the neck section, rather than the saucer. The Impulse Engines work on the same principle as rocketry, which means they will cause an extreme torque if mounted forwards almost direct above the center of mass. Unless most of engineering is actually filled with reaction wheel spam, or the Enterprise is wasting RCS Manuevering Thrust on counteracting the torque, the current placement of the Enterprise' impulse engines is senseless. It would not be too bad for some ship designs such as the Saladin class (The one with the single nacelle), where the torque would be low enough it would be sensible to simply vector the thrust like jet engines do.

So instead of all of that complexity, I would turn the impulse engines 90 degrees (horizontal to vertical) and mount them midway on the neck. Thrusting right into the center of mass with only small amounts of torque that could be fought with vectoring.

And honestly that's ALL I would change. Nothing else bothers me other than this thrust asymmetry. I've drawn a picture of the Enterprise with the neck-mounted impulse engine, and it doesn't look bad at all.

So what would you change? Or do you think the TOS Enterprise is a perfect classic that must never be changed at all?

 

If the warp engine nacelles are by volume heavier than the average for the rest of the ship, then the impulse engines are located in the center of mass for the longitudial axis.

The warp coils, them be heavy.

 

Not one damned thing. It was an inspired and lovely executed piece of design.

It broke convention when it was new and in some respects it still does given how the industrial aesthetic has taken over visual SF since Star Wars.

And unlike variations of the concept since in subsequent series and films it's a nicely balanced design with very few awkward angles. While I do like the TMP refit there are things about it that bug me. And after the original and refit I find the subsequent 1701 B, C, D, E and J variations to be largely fails in design. The 1701D gets a bit of a pass because of familiarity, but it's terribly unbalanced and has some truly poor angles to it. The JJprise is a whole other level of disaster in design.

Any problems with the TOS E model or interior sets are directly attributable to limits of budget and television production resources of that time rather than conception and intent. Mind you sometimes limitations can lead to real creativity. The transporter came into being because they realized how problematic it would be to show such a large vessel landing. Consequently we got one the slickest f/x (in look and sound) in the SF visual medium that still looks good today.

Not being able to show the ship whizzing around like a fighter jet was a limitation that actually helped sell the idea of this massive starship operating in space.

So if there's anything I would change it would be to allow TOS to have had a bit more budget. Another ten to twenty thousand bucks per episode could have gone a long way. It could have allowed them to dress up the sets more as well as possibly given them the means to display more ship designs.

 

I somehow heavily doubt they would be massive enough to make a difference. And that would also mean they would have to outmass the rest of the ship by a huge factor. Those warp coils would have to be made of osmium or something. The Nacelle Struts certainly wouldn't be able to keep the nacelles on if they were more massive than the engineering section.

 

Beef up the paper thin and fragile looking neck and nacelle pylons.

 

Can I also say nothing? Because that's what I'd change.

And I think the engineering section being mostly hollow and the nacelles being mostly solidly packed with engines would make them more massive than they look from a sight comparison.

I also wonder if the ship's artificial gravity would nullify any torque problems, the center of mass could be anywhere they want it to be, right?

 

^ This 1,000,000 times...

The original ship looks like a starship, not overwrought like that thing from ST 2009.

It looks pragmatic - and yes, I assume that the materials are strong enough to justify those thin pylons and struts.

Another reason not to worry about where the impulse engines are, are they really "thrusters" aka rockets, or are they something else?

 

I agree, pretty perfect as is. I would probably only quibble with the depiction of the phaser and photon torpedo banks, which should have been modeled as clearly obvious.

 

The horrendous interior design?

I'd get rid of all the bright, orangey red that seemed to be used everywhere, as well as the other overly bright primaries.

 

Hardly "massive," I once hung my model of the E from the ceiling by it's bow. In order for it to hang straight, all it took was a five pennies in each of the forward caps of the two nacelles.

A baby warp drive, optimized for sublight travel.

 

The only thing about the TOS E I would change -- maybe -- is the main sensor-deflector dish. It looks like, well, a dish antenna, and I thought it was a bit anachronistic (for a starship centuries in the future) even back then. The recessed deflector on the Refit and subsequent designs was an improvement.

Which, of course, is irrelevant to the hypothetical "real" Enterprise. Most plastic model kits of airplanes with tricycle landing gear need extra weight in the nose to sit properly on their landing wheels. That doesn't mean the real planes are tail-heavy.

 

^^ MJ's initial concept was to have some sort of dome arrangement instead of the dish antenna, but he was overruled by someone who wanted more visual detail.

 

I would give it a little more surface detail, mainly just some features that are evident airlocks or other hatches, as well as the weapons being actual surface details. Other than that I'd leave it alone.

--Alex

 

I think it has been established that impulse engines are rocket engines. At any rate, acceleration-based engines are required for space operations even with an FTL-translation-based engine like the Warp Drive, and propellentless acceleration-based are far less feasible than warp drives. They break conservation of energy, which is far worse than speed-of-light, considering the fact that space can already make things appear to move apart faster than light already, such as in the early universe.

Warp Drive is a workaround of the system, Propellentless Accellerators are cheats. Therefore if you want to work with accelleration, which you do unless you want to be travelling several hundred kilometers per second relative to the planet when you drop out of warp, you have to have propellent. YOu can do the calculations if you want to figure out how much propellant mass is needed for your specific impulse, but if your specific impulse is too high you're getting into the realm of godlike powers to manipulate planets into dyson spheres and the likes. Warp Drive reactors use a relatively small matter-antimatter reaction. Very powerful, but not that powerful. I do suspect there is no shortage of propellant aboard the Enterprise given how much delta-v it would need. In the realm of real world tech, the Nuclear SaltWater Rocket and the Orion Nuclear Pulse Rocket are the only engines powerful enough, and even then they'd need plenty of propellent space. I'm perfectly content saying that impulse drives are handwaved as "future tech," as long as they are propellent-driven accellerators. Plus I'm pretty sure the technical manual says the Impulse Drive is a rocket-like system.

 

MJ said he wanted to keep the exterior as clear from what we today would call "greeble" as possible, because he suspected you'd still want to keep the ship all neatly packaged and tidied up and something like that.

The only surface detail I'd have liked to see is clearly modeled phaser banks and photon torpedo launchers.

 

I understand that. But for my purposes, I would like to have obvious means of ingress/egress in case the transporters break down.

--Alex

 

Same here. The original is a classic.

 

Really? I'd thought it was pretty clear the ship moves by some semi-magical, reaction less method like the Dean Drive.

 

One detail I'm not crazy about is the external cylinder-shaped piece at the back of the bridge housing. That's what led Franz Joseph to off-set the bridge interior 36 degrees to port.

So I would eliminate the fixture that FJ took for turboshaft housing, and replace it with a roomier and more general structure that cradles the aft side of the bridge exterior.

And if I did one more thing I would scale the 1701 up a little, maybe make it 10 percent larger, to get more room inside.

 

Steve Neill is building a 66 inch Enterprise for a museum and it comes with interior shuttlebay and rooms with little people. Instead of the usual backlit windows. One thing is very apparent. The windows are too big. And the shuttlebay is too small.
So I would also scale up the ship a little bit.
Also I'd loose the undercut to the primary hull or at least make it smaller. It causes the loss of most of a deck for no real reason.
And if I were MJ iI would have someone spend a day with a scribing tool and some fine marking pens too add some really fine surface detail to the hull. He knew that the model would be shot on 35 MM film and that detail would show up. Details such as those vents the cloud creature could come through. And covered docking ports and RCS thrusters that are also covered. The X-15 program at the time had them. Not to mention the Apollo and other space capsules. Also covered windows (shutters). We are shown that some of the windows have them and are closed.
And as previously mentioned, the spire on the nav deflector.
Some small lights could be added to the warp nacelles. Like the inboard grilles like is seen on later ships. And the round globes on the back end could have some edge lighting.
And some more navigation lights on the nacelles and secondary hull.