Stats/Information on the new Enterprise

[Atekimogus]

If I could slip in here, I have a question...why is it, exactly, that the increased size of the Enterprise is such a sore issue?
I ask out of pure curiosity, because I really don't see why it is such an issue.

Me neither. I would understand if they were discussing the aesthetics of the new ships since those are rather questionable but size?

I would suggest that every culture who has mastered warp speed, transporters etc. is rather ambivalent about ship sizes. They design them to do a job and build them as large as needed, point. They could probably slap some warp drives onto a spacedock if they want to, but since it is not needed and probably inefficient as hell they don't build spacedock sized ships.

And if one comes to terms that the original TOS Enterprise might not have been the very largest ship in known space or even in starfleet it is also rather easy to accept the kelvin.

[Tyyr]

But the way it actually happened, the huge size is in no way reflected in the design.

Do you have anything but missing windows to support this assertion?

[Captain Seafort]

I would suggest that every culture who has mastered warp speed, transporters etc. is rather ambivalent about ship sizes. They design them to do a job and build them as large as needed, point.

There are, however, cases where we see either that increased size is considered an advance (the Ex and the GCS), or that greater size would be an advantage (the E-nil and GCS - if a ship's intended to be a long-range explorer, especially the GCS with it's almost GSV-like concept, then the bigger you make it the better).

They could probably slap some warp drives onto a spacedock if they want to, but since it is not needed and probably inefficient as hell they don't build spacedock sized ships.

Or, far more likely, they don't because they can't. The GCS in particular would benefit from greater increased size, but instead Picard was "in awe of it's size and complexity".

And if one comes to terms that the original TOS Enterprise might not have been the very largest ship in known space or even in starfleet it is also rather easy to accept the kelvin.

We know for a fact it wasn't the largest known ship - look at the Fesarius. The distinct implication, however, was that it was the largest ship. This is supported by the awe expressed regarding the Excelsior, and the E-nil's role as a long-range explorer. That's a job where the bigger the ship is, the better it will perform the role.

[Captain Seafort]

Do you have anything but missing windows to support this assertion?

He's got as much solid evidence as the five-mile SSD. I can see this turning into Trek's answer to that fiasco.

[Atekimogus]

There are, however, cases where we see either that increased size is considered an advance (the Ex and the GCS), or that greater size would be an advantage (the E-nil and GCS - if a ship's intended to be a long-range explorer, especially the GCS with it's almost GSV-like concept, then the bigger you make it the better).

Not necessarily. If they are designed to operate with 400 or 1000 people than they have the exact perfect size. Altough my all time favourite ship is the GCS I always thought it is rather huge given their crew size and their mission. I think it was in one DS9 episode where an old friend/rival of BAshir describes the "exciting" life on a nebula class starship on a cartography mission which got me thinking...if you are not the hero-ship of a show, what on earth are 1000 people doing the whole time? No wonder ten forward is so popular. (Also, I don't know about the GSV-concept....it stands for.......?:))

But I digress, my point is that given the technology they have I find it FAR more likely that the limiting factor for shipsizes is not necessarily the ability to "build" the frames and ships, but rather warp-drive efficiency.

Or, far more likely, they don't because they can't. The GCS in particular would benefit from greater increased size, but instead Picard was "in awe of it's size and complexity".

Is that an exact quote from somewhere? Can't remember. No matter, the reason they don't do it is probably more because to power such a thing with current technology they would burn through antimatter like no tomorrow and even in star trek utopia they have to deal with limitied resources, antimatter probably one of the more precious. So they could have probably built a ship the size of a romulan warbird, but they probably would loose effiency and top speed and with 50% of the personell already civilians or sitting on their arses doing nothing most of the time they probably thought it wouldn't be worth it.

The distinct implication, however, was that it was the largest ship. This is supported by the awe expressed regarding the Excelsior, and the E-nil's role as a long-range explorer. That's a job where the bigger the ship is, the better it will perform the role.

Ok on one hand that makes sense but I don't think you really want a long range explorer "as big as possible", you want it "as small as possible" while beeing able to perform the mission, in this case five year missions with minimum support.

Let us assume the Kelvin had a similar role but is about 30 years less advanced. So maybe that is the reason she is rather big, because to fullfill the mission she had to carry with her all kinds of equipment and stuff which by the time of the constitutions is far smaller, more efficient, takes less space and/or is easily replenished via onboard facilities. Huge amounts of shuttles? Transporters are far better. Provisions for up to five years? Food replicators. Tons of onboard fuel? Bussard collectors etc. . just a few quick ideas. which might help accept that altough the constitutions are far superior explorers, the old kelvins needed that much more space just to do a similar job.


But no matter, given the numerous canonical events where ships were simply scaled up or down in size (like the bird of prey) without appearent inuniverse problems I don't really understand all the fuss about the size of the ship. They obviously solved the problem of the nacelles not ripping off from ridiculously fragile support pylons every time they accelerate to half impulse, scaling the ship up by factor two seems a rather trivial exercise in comparison imho.

[Tsukiyumi]

Let us assume the Kelvin had a similar role but is about 30 years less advanced.

Similar role to the original Connie, you mean? Sorry, I'm a bit off lately.

[Captain Seafort]

Not necessarily. If they are designed to operate with 400 or 1000 people than they have the exact perfect size. Altough my all time favourite ship is the GCS I always thought it is rather huge given their crew size and their mission.

It's mission is long-range exploration (although the E-D seemed to do damn little of it). A bigger crew means you have greater reserves to cope with illness, injuries, deaths, etc, and can even afford to leave colonisation or scientific parties behind on various worlds. The greater the size means greater fuel reserves, more space for equipment and supplies, and room for machine shops and the like which would allow you to repair the inevitable wear and tear more effectively.

Also, I don't know about the GSV-concept....it stands for...

General Systems Vehicle. It's from the Cultureverse, and is effectively a spaceborne city - the bigger examples are about 200km long. The fact that there are families on board suggests strongly that the GCS is an attempt to follow the same basic concept.

But I digress, my point is that given the technology they have I find it FAR more likely that the limiting factor for shipsizes is not necessarily the ability to "build" the frames and ships, but rather warp-drive efficiency.

Why? Increasing power once you've got a big enough hull is relatively simple - just add more engines. Increasing the size of the ship is the really tricky bit, because while the strength of a given piece of the ship's structure increases in proportion to its cross-section, its mass increases in proportion to its volume. This means that simply increasing the size of a given design will make it weaker. To increase size while retaining strength you have to have stronger materials, a greater proportion of the ship devoted to bracing (which would further increase mass, adding to the problem), or fancy engineering tricks.

Is that an exact quote from somewhere?

Picard's opening log entry in Encounter at Farpoint

No matter, the reason they don't do it is probably more because to power such a thing with current technology they would burn through antimatter like no tomorrow and even in star trek utopia they have to deal with limitied resources, antimatter probably one of the more precious.

Possible, but that problem would be alleviated by not driving the ship as fast.

Huge amounts of shuttles? Transporters are far better.

They're more convenient. I wouldn't say "better" given the number of this that can interfere with them. In this case, the neoE also had huge numbers of shuttles, demonstrating continuity of doctrine.

Provisions for up to five years? Food replicators.

Which the E-nil didn't have, and which require stocks of raw materials in any event

Tons of onboard fuel? Bussard collectors etc.

For normal matter sure. Antimatter, as you've already pointed out, is a different kettle of fish altogether.

altough the constitutions are far superior explorers, the old kelvins needed that much more space just to do a similar job.

And therefore would the Connies not be even better if they were the same or greater size, especially given that this was during the Klingon Cold War, and bigger means more weapons, better armour/shields, etc?

But no matter, given the numerous canonical events where ships were simply scaled up or down in size (like the bird of prey) without appearent inuniverse problems I don't really understand all the fuss about the size of the ship.

No apparent problems apart from the issue that the large BoP designs had disappeared by the time of the Dominion War, and we only saw the really big ones once. This suggests that they did encounter problems, and scaling the design up is a likely cause. Quite apart from that, these larger designs appeared a good eighty years after the original design, while the neoE is extant in the same time period as the E-nil.

[Atekimogus]

It's mission is long-range exploration (although the E-D seemed to do damn little of it). A bigger crew means you have greater reserves to cope with illness, injuries, deaths, etc, and can even afford to leave colonisation or scientific parties behind on various worlds. The greater the size means greater fuel reserves, more space for equipment and supplies, and room for machine shops and the like which would allow you to repair the inevitable wear and tear more effectively.

All true, but given that Voyager was able to overcome all those problems with a moron as captain one could argue that they do already pretty well in the self repair-manufacture department. But I agree on the general principle with you.

General Systems Vehicle. It's from the Cultureverse, and is effectively a spaceborne city - the bigger examples are about 200km long. The fact that there are families on board suggests strongly that the GCS is an attempt to follow the same basic concept.

Well I don't know how viable such a concept would be. As space colony, why not. As ship moving from system to system all I can say is that everytime the E-D relocated to another system on a wild goose hunt or for very small reasons I always wondered how pissed huge portions of the crew must be that the have to interrupt their work because the captain feels like chasing one person. I mean they routinly relocate huge resources and manpower for no good reason at all which makes me wonder how essential a large portion of the crew actually is to their mission and if all they do is onboard science or whatever why don't they stay on a planet or starbase?

But I digress, my point is that given the technology they have I find it FAR more likely that the limiting factor for shipsizes is not necessarily the ability to "build" the frames and ships, but rather warp-drive efficiency.

Why? Increasing power once you've got a big enough hull is relatively simple - just add more engines. Increasing the size of the ship is the really tricky bit, because while the strength of a given piece of the ship's structure increases in proportion to its cross-section, its mass increases in proportion to its volume. This means that simply increasing the size of a given design will make it weaker. To increase size while retaining strength you have to have stronger materials, a greater proportion of the ship devoted to bracing (which would further increase mass, adding to the problem), or fancy engineering tricks.

All true, it is just that to me this seems rather easy if you consider that they have mastered gravity and FTL flight etc. It appears to me like quoting the difficulty a culture has developing the wheel after they already built a steam engine.

Picard's opening log entry in Encounter at Farpoint

Wow...good memory, respect .

Possible, but that problem would be alleviated by not driving the ship as fast.

Ah well, they seem to be huge suckers for speed, at least I got the impression that the most important measure of a ships technological advancement is sustained top warp speed but I could very well imagine huge transport ships with a rather low warp speed.

Huge amounts of shuttles? Transporters are far better.

They're more convenient. I wouldn't say "better" given the number of this that can interfere with them. In this case, the neoE also had huge numbers of shuttles, demonstrating continuity of doctrine.

True, but it would allow you to cut back on hangar space if you compare the 20+ shuttles of the kelvin to the four of the Enil and if you consider all transporters on the nil they are still much faster in moving personell or material. As for interference I would propose that a "hero-ship" with only shuttles as means of transport would experience just as much shuttle crashes as transporter malfunctions. (hint at DS9) As for the neoE shuttles I do not have a good reason for it except that their transporter technology seems to be behind the Enils transporters. Reminded me more of the transporters from Galaxy Quest:).

And therefore would the Connies not be even better if they were the same or greater size, especially given that this was during the Klingon Cold War, and bigger means more weapons, better armour/shields, etc?

Well you fly into a system and look what is there. Aside from beeing a job a probe could handle I would assume you arrive at a point very adding size doesn't account for much. You have one high energy physics labs doing their thing and you gain nothing by adding a second, for example except ongoing research which would be independent from where you are which would beg the question why to add it on a ship.

So you have a set of equipment providing you with the ability to deal with most expected things and if said equipment gets smaller so are the ships. Considering that runabouts and the defiant were routinely used in that capacity would be a hint that the job is not as hard as one would think.

Considering the military side, you are absolutely right though. One reason could be that the klingons were unable to built bigger ships because of resources and the UFP had basically the same problem because they had to cover a much larger era of space which would prohibit them from building a few real huge ships. (Which in the starfleet universe they did nevertheless but seldom deployed them). Not canon at all, just saying I could imagine a few good reasons why they didn't go for the biggest design available.

No apparent problems apart from the issue that the large BoP designs had disappeared by the time of the Dominion War, and we only saw the really big ones once. This suggests that they did encounter problems, and scaling the design up is a likely cause. Quite apart from that, these larger designs appeared a good eighty years after the original design, while the neoE is extant in the same time period as the E-nil.

Ok, let us ignore the BoP. But what about the extreme thin and unstable connections of the Enterprises neck section and support pylons. Build with today materials the thing would fall apart without moving it. Considering the stunts the Enil pulls during her time I would assume the SIF or the materials are of such a quality that a simple scale up is maybe not optimal, but possible. So the movie E and the neo E share basically the same saucer on the outside. I have no problem with that since we don't know the internal layout etc.

An egg is an egg no matter what. Some are smaller and tougher, some are bigger, but that doesn't mean that the optimal form for an egg changes somehow to a cubicle just because it reaches a certain size. Same for the saucer, it seems it was the most efficient design of that era for reasons unknown (maybe warp field efficiency) so if you want to build a bigger ship it stands to reason that it would look rather similar.

[Graham Kennedy]

3) The shuttlebay and torpedo launcher, which at 366m would be exactly the same size as on the original Enterprise refit
4) The window rows, which would leave *exactly* every second deck without a window on a huge Enterprise
5) The docking hatches. They would measure some 4m on the huge Enterprise.
6) The bridge dome. There would be two full decks above the bridge on the huge ship. Why?

See this is where I get confused. There is NOTHING in that list that supports a particular size for the ship. At most, that is a list of conclusions that you personally do not like.

The torpedo launcher would be the same size as on the original if the ship were 366 m long. Okay. So what? All you are really saying here is that if the ship is smaller the torpedo launcher would be smaller, which is kind of obvious. I could just as easily claim that if the ship is large then the torpedo launcher would be large... so obviously the ship must be large. It's not just a bad argument, it isn't even an argument at all.

Window rows would leave every second deck without a window. Yes, agreed. Why is this a problem? Does putting windows on every second floor violate the laws of physics in some way? You refer to it later as "moronic", but this is a purely emotional statement that says nothing factual. Frankly, I think it is arguments like this that make some people characterise you as searching for arguments to justify what you want to believe, rather than going where the evidence leads.

Docking hatches would be big. Okay. And?

A very deep bridge dome. So what? They put a very big sensor system up there for very long range high resolution performance. Again, how is this even an argument?

I am well aware that our approaches are different. But with all due respect, DITL criticizes errors or bad decisions of the Star Trek production just as well.

I criticise, yes, within the real world context. I'll openly call many ideas stupid. The difference is that I recognise that we're stuck with those ideas no matter what, and I go with them and try to explain them as best I can within the 24th century parts of the site. Hence whilst I freely admit that a 600+ metre bird of prey is pretty silly, and criticise it in my comments on the ship, it is nevertheless right there on the site, because it's right there in canon. I will very, very rarely over-ride canon simply because I think it's dumb. (I hesitate to say never, but offhand I can't think of an occasion.)

I am just a bit more consequential at EAS when I dismiss *a few* things that simply can't be true to make the rest fit even better.

I would say that in many cases you dismiss what CAN be true, but is just unlikely.

Also, in many cases it is debatable anyway what are facts and what are just interpretations (even MA has issues with that), and if visuals really supersede everything else. The fruitless debates with a certain M.W. on a topic that must not be mentioned are a good example how far the very basic criteria may be apart. I'm sorry to say that the discussion with some supporters of the Huge Enterprise sadly reminds me of this guy's tactics.

You know if Kirk or Pike had ever once said "This ship is a thousand feet long", then to me that would have settled the issue completely, and ALL of the visual evidence could go hang.

But they didn't. And from what I've seen, the bulk of the evidence we do have points one way.

[Sionnach Glic]

Docking hatches would be big. Okay. And?

Without jumping on the bandwagon here, the docking hatches being large is actually quite logical. You don't want to have to use a shuttle or transporter to move every last bit of cargo or machinery to or from the ship. That's far too inneficient. Large docking hatches would allow the crew to move bulky cargo onto or off the ship easily.

[Tyyr]

Also, once you figure into the fact that you have to have some structure and support on a docking tube it wouldn't be only 2m high inside, more like 1.5m, which would be awfully cramped for anyone not crawling on their hands and knees, forget trying to push a cart or anything through it.

[Captain Seafort]

The latest from EAS. Analysis to follow tomorrow. In the meantime, goodnight all.

[Mikey]

Good analysis, Tyyr. I had asked Bernd what was wrong with a 4m hatch, and never got an answer.

[stitch626]

The latest from EAS. Analysis to follow tomorrow. In the meantime, goodnight all.

I do see a few problems with his bit... analysis when I have more time (probably shortly after Seaforts).

[Atekimogus]

The latest from EAS. Analysis to follow tomorrow. In the meantime, goodnight all.

Now that is a way to overthink something. Sure there are plotholes and inconsistencies but imho not more as in other startrek productions or your average VOY or ENT episode.

About the point on building ships planetside which he claims is never seen: I do believe we see a picture of Utopia Planetia showing us a Galaxy saucer which is build on the surface of Mars. Sure Mars has probably a bit less gravity, but a planet nonetheless. (Now iirc the showed the picture in another multiverse but since Worf didn't object I guess we can use it)