Ex Astris and DITL both had NX shuttlepod length guesses (6m and 7m, respectively, with uncertainty expressed in both cases).
Though we don't have official orthographic five-views of the CGI, it nevertheless seemed odd that a vehicle so often surrounded by people of known height should be so mysterious.
So, I tried to do some measuring. Starting with the structure of this low-poly model, altering the proportions and heavily reworking the nose, windshield, and upper rear* (the model as built relied heavily on texturing to 'cheat' the appearance of correct structure), I tried to make the vessel correspond fairly well to Raul Quiles' five-view here and to my own eyeball appraisal, notably and especially a few comparisons to folks standing around the door.
Thus, I think I have a different answer as to the ship's length, being about 8 meters.
(* I still have work to do on the area of the engine top if I wanted the model to look more accurate to the canon vessel, but it'll do for this purpose.)
The SketchUp model itself can be made available by request.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Looks a bit small, frankly. The width seems too small for the interior- nothing new with Trek in that though.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Looks okay to me, about three SketchUp-dudes wide from door to door, not counting hull curve. What do you think it should be?
Posted by Amasov Prime (Member # 742) on :
6.9 meters, according to the new tech manual (see my other thread). But it's just from memory, I can check if you want.
Edit: BTW, they build a full scale model of the thing. Should be easy to find out that way. Why still has some connections? (I guess since Okuda 'produced' the above book - or whatever you call it in the literature world -, the 6.9m figure should be accurate in terms of the real-world model, not the CGI. If there's a discrepancy between the two.)
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
I was under the impression that the shuttlepod was a bit less than 2 meters tall (it looks so in "Strange New World"), so I decided it was 6m long (it may also have to do with the inaccurate drawings I only had at that time).
After a re-examination I have to agree with the size of the manual. The shuttlepod appears to be a bit more than 2 meters high (as can be seen in "Breaking the Ice" in a direct comparison with Mayweather and Reed, where it is on some sort of pedestal making it appear some 10cm taller). But without the pedestal it is 2m, so the length is 7m according to the CGI model from Drex Files http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/scans/drex/nc05-views.jpg (whose underside is flat, as is the underside of the full-scale shuttlepod without any pedestal).
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Ooh, cool . . . I need to confirm the proportions of my funky model against better ones.
At the proportions mine has, a 6.9m shuttlepod would be 1.82m tall.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
It's either 120 or 150 meters long, although it was designed to be 170 meters.
Oh wait: that's my default size-debate response.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Okay, so about three and a half years later, I finally got back to messing with this.
Measuring the pixels of the Drexler render from the EAS link provided, I find the ship to be 829 pixels in length and 224 pixels of hull height (i.e. not including the upper docking collar, which adds just 8 or 9 pixels).
In other words, the shuttlepod length to height is 829/224 or almost exactly 3.7 times as long as it is tall (or 0.27 going the other way).
So if the shuttlepod fuselage is 2 meters tall, then the length is 7.4 meters. If it is 1.8 meters tall, then it is 6.66 meters long. Or, working backwards, if we start with a length of 6.9 meters, then the height officially ought to be 1.86 meters, give or take.
However, we all seem to be in agreement that the shuttle is somewhere in the 2m tall range. But, in pondering this just now I found pictures like this one of Trip (I think) from "The Xindi" and this one of some dude. I'm wondering if perhaps the 2m height estimate is a bit on the tall side.
Anthony Montgomery, for instance, is 5 feet 10 inches (1.8 meters), so there would need to be about eight inches of shuttlepod over his head when standing beside it, and if the pedestal landing leg extensions Bernd mentioned really add 10cm (about 4 inches), then we're talking a solid foot. I don't think that's what we see, and when we're just eyeballing it anyway a little change goes a long way.
Below are a couple of possibilities using the model, which I have modified a bit again, stretching and skewing to match the side view Bernd provided from Drexler. I still have to heavily rework the aft section, and would really have to rework the whole thing to accurize it.
The first would be a 2m fuselage, resulting in a 7.4 meter shuttlepod. The little dude is 1.75 meters tall . . . and although this could be considered close by eyeball, I don't think it's right. For one, his head barely meets the top of the door of Drexler's render.
So here we are with a 1.9m fuselage and a total length of 6.9 meters, give or take. The dude looks a little more right when compared to the pod, but that could just be me. (And don't fret if the width looks off . . . I didn't modify it yet.)
In short, yes Virginia, a 6.9m shuttlepod seems pretty good.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
(I guess since Okuda 'produced' the above book - or whatever you call it in the literature world -, the 6.9m figure should be accurate in terms of the real-world model, not the CGI. If there's a discrepancy between the two.)
