Enterprise-D Virtual Tour

[McAvoy]

Enterprise fully 3D

Impressive. There is promise but like a lot of fan products this big they usually do not get finished.

[Graham Kennedy]

Good lord, the main shuttlebay complex is gigantic! In fact, the entire thing is gigantic. It really brings home how little of the E-D we really saw during TNG. Just imagine what a Trek made in 20 or 30 years will be like, when virtual sets will be easy to do and indistinguishable from the real thing... seeing genuinely new and different areas of the ship all the time.

And the E-D has stairwells? In all of TNG I don't think we ever once saw a stairwell. And there's a little ramp up to the bridge from deck 2... interesting idea.

[McAvoy]

Makes sense. Not efficient to go down a ladder in the Jeffreys tube when the turbolifts went out. Not that hard to secure either.

It would only be a space issue which isn't a even close to being a deal on a GPS.

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah, it makes good sense. Just feels a bit weird to see. In the Connie we would see ladderwells from time to time, which looked very Naval. A stairwell looks amazingly huge and luxurious in comparison. No wonder people would compare it to a cruise ship if it has these all over the place!

[Atekimogus]

Actually....it hits home how much space is wasted on about 1000 people on such a huge ship. In actual service I could well imagine that they completely shut down 3/4 of the decks and only use them when necessary, eg transporting colonists, evacuations etc. etc.


It also hits home how little of the actual crew we see. Just operating the shuttle bay - for example - I'd imagine you get all kinds of important folks, flight deck officiers etc. Transporter Chief? In the series he is one guy operating one of the smallest transporter rooms on the ship. In "reality" he would oversee close to a hundred transporterpads and the whole transport/supply logistic of the ship.


When all is said and done.....setting the show on this huge ship in the 80s was probably a bit too ambitious. If you read the TNG Technical Manual (which was actually created partly for the writers to get familiar with the ship) it's always sad to see how much potential was wasted and how much of the ships capabilites we never see and are never used. The GCS are so much more capable in theory than on the show due to production costs.


Real shame they blew her up....considering the lifespan of the ship...you could easily make another show on her 30years later...with modern CGI sets.

[McAvoy]

I think the number 1000 was given because they knew the ship was huge and just didn't have the money to fill the sets.

Naval ladders as in stairwells, usually only take up about 8 feet by 3 feet of a deck's floor space. From experience they are fine for one person going down or up at a time. Never both. Also it's pain in the ass to carry something up or down.

A ship like the E-D I can see the idea of having what we would consider traditional stairs.

[Graham Kennedy]

I've said for years that they vastly underestimate just what you could fit on a ship like this. If the GCS was crewed to the same standards as a modern destroyer, it would accommodate a crew in the hundreds of thousands.

[McAvoy]

I can tell you that even on a carrier the size of a Nimitz and with the full 5500 people on board it isn't that crowded. That also includes that vast open space in the hanger deck.

You could almost fit the entire enlisted complement in the hanger bay.

E-D could easily have 5,000 people and still seem like it's sparse.

[Jim]

The three shells was the best part of the entire video/tour.

However, I did like the lounge with the seats facing over the cargo/shuttle bay so crew could take in the great and exciting view.

[Mikey]

A couple of thoughts occur to me right off the bat:

a) Holy hopping snot, there are a lot of lounges.

b) methinks having powered doors leading to the escape pods is not the best engineering decision of the design process.

[Atekimogus]

A couple of thoughts occur to me right off the bat:

a) Holy hopping snot, there are a lot of lounges.

Hahaha...I had the exact same thought. Like..how many bars and lounges does one need? Do 1000 peole with access to holodecks don't have any OTHER spare time activity than going for drinks which don't even make you drunk? Hey..at least the E-A had a bowling alley......

But I guess the problem is indeed that they completely underestimated the size of the damn ship, so when making blueprints you probably end up with LOTS of non-essential space...which are then labeled as lounges. (Actually..I think I remember an interview with Probert (on the now defunct Drexlers blog) where he said he designed the whole outer rim of the saucer as lounge space for people to celebrate private parties and such. Still...I would imagine most of it will be emtpy most of the time.

Let's assume you have 1200 people. Let's be generous and say 600 are civilians, kids and spouses. Three shift rotation means around 200 are on duty, leaving 1000 people to "crew" those facilities. But then I'd imagine even the civilians do something to keep them busy, kids are in school or kindergarten and the spouses..well they are teachers or something else...so I guess the number of people with free time on their hands never exceeds anything around 600-800....now those will also sleep so I guess we can cut the number to around 400 people with free time at any given time.

Each lounge era can hold at least 10 people comfortably (with nothing better to do than drinking and playing 3d chess...boring future indeed) so you only need 40 such lounge eras assuming nobody does anything else in their free-time...like just staying at his luxurous quarters reading a book or playing an interactive novel or watching an non-interactive screenplay (we call them videogames and movies nowadays..but in the future they don't exist anymore......which is nonsense of course since humans are the storytelling ape and as such those mediums will never cease to exist).

Actually...it is kind of eery....you could walk the corridors of this ship for minutes..maybe hours....and never encounter another lifing being, lol.

Idk....maybe they have all these lounges just as crash collapsible zones in case of a photon torpedo hit..

[Captain Seafort]

b) methinks having powered doors leading to the escape pods is not the best engineering decision of the design process.

Are you surprised? This is the infamous Galaxy class we're talking about. They use active systems for everything.

[Mikey]

b) methinks having powered doors leading to the escape pods is not the best engineering decision of the design process.

Are you surprised? This is the infamous Galaxy class we're talking about. They use active systems for everything.

IDK, I thought maybe since it was fan-made there's be a bit of rationality.

[Captain Seafort]

IDK, I thought maybe since it was fan-made there's be a bit of rationality.

I see as a conscientious effort to keep within the spirit of the original.

[Graham Kennedy]

So what could we envisage as a realistic interior, given the ship size and 1,000 crew?

First off, I'd say the quarters we see on the show are far too conservative. We hear in Lower Decks that Ensigns share a room; screw that, every officer and even ever Enlisted crewmember should have their own room. Senior officer's quarters should be more like a suite of rooms... bedroom, lounge, office area, dining room.

Every recreation area imaginable. Gymns, swimming pools, bowling alleys, theatres, sports arenas... an opera house!

LOTS of spare rooms. Including barracks-style accomdation for emergency evacuations. The ship should comfortably be able to transport at least 50,000 people for emergencies. And way more medical areas - not "sickbay", but 50 sickbays; an entire mobile hospital that can turn up at the scene of a disaster.

An industrial-scale replicator and gigantic bulk matter store; the GCS shoulld be a mobile factory capable of producing more or less any small to mid-size item in massive numbers. Earthquake? Replicate and beam down 100,000 modular shelters in hours. Equipment for dealing with every kind of crisis, and on a massive scale.

Diplomatic facilities. Lounges are great, but also big conference halls. Massive communications facilities, such that fifty ambassadorial staffs can each have their own dedicated comm centre. Essentially, the GCS should be able to host the entire UN, down to every last delegate and every last personal assistant, secretary, researcher and aide, along with all the facilities they need to do their thing.