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non-canonically, my theory is that the USS Kelvin is a Saladin Class variant. All you would have to do is remove the dorsal nacelle and add a navigational deflector to the center bottom of the saucer and you would have a dead ringer Saladin Class starship.

I am thinking that it could be possible that the Saladin Class could have pod like capabilities much like a nebula class. Though to create a combination shuttlebay/navigational deflector pod of that size in large numbers would be impractical. Maybe there were a number of Saladin Class starships that went into dry dock for a permanent refit. The USS Kelvin was one of those Saladins that was chosen for the refit. Judging by the size of the navigational deflector and if the majority of the dorsal nacelle is a shuttle bay the USS Kelvin's role would of been for sensor AWACS and reconnaissance, as well as a supply and support ship.

What do you think?

Edit: Changed canonically to non-canonically, thanks Tsukiyumi.

Welcome ot the site.

An interesting theory. It's possible, but it's just as possible for the design of the Kelvin to be based on the Saladin.
I guess we'll just have to wait 'till it comes out to know for sure.

I will also welcome you ot the site.

One problem with the theory: the Saladin isn't canon; the Kelvin shortly will be.

It isnt actually half as bad looking as i was expecting it to be.

I still say it looks like an upside down Connie.

maybe i missed it earlier, but what is the significance of the Kelvin?
I'm assuming it's in the new ST movie, but for what purpose?

To get blown up?
Thats my guess.

Lt. Staplic wrote:maybe i missed it earlier, but what is the significance of the Kelvin?
I'm assuming it's in the new ST movie, but for what purpose?

Kirk's parents are on board and it gets destroyed. So far, that's all we know.

Aye, that's all that's been indicated to us. It is apparently destroyed by Nero, for reasons now unknown. Presumably, this is the establish a motive for Kirk hating Nero. It'll be interesting to see how much the ship appears. It seems like they've put way too much effort into developing the ship and putting it in the trailers for it to just be on-screen for five minutes before going boom.

Wouldn't be the first time. Look at all the new ship designs for FC that we saw for only a few minutes.

True, but did any of those ships get 3-D renders, with entire pages of an official website devoted to it and its crew?

Good point.

I did some calcs on it; the central band of the saucer has two decks in it, so let's assume a deck is 3.75 meters tall... that makes the scale of the image I posted 1.6 pixels to the meter. Which means :

Length overall : 436.9 meters
Height overall : 104.4 meters
Beam : 228 meters
Saucer diameter : 228 meters
Engineering hull diameter : 30.6 meters
Engineering hull length : 173.75 meters (including deflector)
Nacelle diameter : 33.75 meters
Nacelle length : 310 meters

That's waaaay bigger than I expected. If we took the deck height down to 3 meters the figures would drop to :

Length overall : 349.52 meters
Height overall : 83.52 meters
Beam : 182.4 meters
Saucer diameter : 182.4 meters
Engineering hull diameter : 24.48 meters
Engineering hull length : 139 meters (including deflector)
Nacelle diameter : 27 meters
Nacelle length : 248 meters

That seems better, but still well on the large side. Here's a 350 meter Kelvin next to the TOS Connie :

Eh? How does that work? The original Connie is pretty consistently descibed as 289m. Is there evidence to suggest that it was actually considerably smaller?

EDIT: Forget that. I misread the Kelvin's length as 250m.

Well, either the scaling has gone to hell, or the "new" Enterprise is going to be bigger.