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Very cool. Graham.

Atekimogus wrote: Hehe...the first time I saw this picture I assumed they are walking on the secondary hull and the fins are the beginnings of the nacelle-support-pylons!!
Well, I guess I was a tiny bit wrong there

Wait, they're actualy on top of the nacelle? Holy shit!

When I saw this scene in the IMAX:



I was sold on the 700+ meter size. When he starts heading for it, it's obviously gigantic.

The killer for me in that scene was that some of the fore-ground machinery is a combined cycle gas turbine powerplant. That gave me an instant point of reference for the ship and it has to be enormous then.

Tyyr wrote:The killer for me in that scene was that some of the fore-ground machinery is a combined cycle gas turbine powerplant. That gave me an instant point of reference for the ship and it has to be enormous then.

Dude! That may be the single nerdiest thing I've ever read! Congrats!

Rochey wrote:Wait, they're actualy on top of the nacelle? Holy s**t!

Yes! That pic I posted is NOT the engineering hull, that is the rearward top of one of the nacelles.

GrahamKennedy wrote:

Tyyr wrote:The killer for me in that scene was that some of the fore-ground machinery is a combined cycle gas turbine powerplant. That gave me an instant point of reference for the ship and it has to be enormous then.

Dude! That may be the single nerdiest thing I've ever read! Congrats!

Why thank you.

If you look directly to the right of the Enterprise's deflector dish that's the stack of the heat recovery steam generator. Depending on the size of the unit it's between 40 and 70 meters high. I'm a powerplant engineer by trade. Coal fired units for the most part but I work around gas turbines too.

Here's a fun canonical fact :

The new Enterprise is at least 16 times faster than the TMP refit one. Probably more.

Proof.

Didn't Abrams say somewhere that they threw stuff in there like this purposely for ambiguity?

Yup. Read the article; that figure assumes the ship took about as long as possible to get there.

GrahamKennedy wrote:The new Enterprise is at least 16 times faster than the TMP refit one. Probably more.

I think ENT killed travel times for good with their 4 days to Kronos. I mean, during the great age of sail - from which Roddenberry drew inspiration - a transoceanic voyage would take weeks, but again and again we have people traveling to different stars within just a few days or hours? And I know it's nothing new - we've had similar absurdities in STVI and FC, both good movies. But I think it really detracts from the sense of immensity and isolation that should be there.

Lazar wrote:

GrahamKennedy wrote:The new Enterprise is at least 16 times faster than the TMP refit one. Probably more.

I think ENT killed travel times for good with their 4 days to Kronos.

Not hardly. There have been many such examples throughout Trek, some far more egregious - Kronos in four days hardly compares to getting to the Galactic Core in seven hours in STV, for instance.

And in fact, apart from a few nits here and there Enterprise was actually pretty good about speeds and distances. They referenced how far they were from Earth quite often, and generally had it about right given how long they had been going for.

I mean, during the great age of sail - from which Roddenberry drew inspiration - a transoceanic voyage would take weeks, but again and again we have people traveling to different stars within just a few days or hours? And I know it's nothing new - we've had similar absurdities in STVI and FC, both good movies. But I think it really detracts from the sense of immensity and isolation that should be there.

Yes, it does. But at the same time, responding to some urgent threat and taking six months to get there has problems of its own in terms of pacing and drama. For instance in the case of Trek XI, it wouldn't be credible that Starfleet could mount a disaster relief mission to a natural disaster on Vulcan if that mission took say a month to get there. By that time pretty much anybody who was in danger would be dead anyway.

Then at the very least be consistant about it, if your ships are fast so be it, but then dont make them slow next week to add drama.

Personally I'm a fan of slower ships as IMO it creates more drama not being able to be anywhere you want with in days or weeks.

I'm in favor of slower ships as well. It adds some feeling of being out there if the trip home takes months. If you can zip back to momma in a couple hours or a few days at most it doesn't really feel like you're way out on the frontier. I can see where it can cause story problems if you want to have the E-E go from the Romulan NZ to earth in a few hours but that seems more like the writer's fault for stuffing the E-E out on the NZ to begin with.

I don't let it bother me too much, but when I write it takes a damn long time to get places.

I definitely agree they should be more consistent about these things!

I wonder if this is a deliberate thing now, that they are going to make the films about what happens when you get there rather than what happens on the way. Journey times of minutes or hours typical from now on? Could be interesting...

I'd guess so, slow travel times work well for a TV show but no for movies.

GrahamKennedy wrote:I definitely agree they should be more consistent about these things!

I wonder if this is a deliberate thing now, that they are going to make the films about what happens when you get there rather than what happens on the way. Journey times of minutes or hours typical from now on? Could be interesting...

You have this right, it's about the action and not about how you got to it. Interesting indeed. Now I just wonder what the Future holds, if the Trek XI Constitution Class is 1100 Meters (Bigger than a Galaxy or Sovereign Class ship) what will the next generation ships be like? I am also wondering if Old Spock Prime will try an attempt to restore the time line back to One he went through. Lots of ideas are now open since the reboot and the 1100 meter Constitutions came out