posted
A very helpful soul has offered his services in regards to my Volumetrics page . . . I've added over 20 ships to it, though I haven't finished modifying the other text yet and thus the old version is all that's on the site.
One of the new additions is the NX Class. 199,505 cubic meters. This doesn't seem to mean much, until you skim up the list and note that the Constitution Class is 211,248 cubic meters!
The NX Class is thus disturbingly big compared to the Constitution. She has about 94% of the volume of the Constitution, which is bad enough. However, if you add to that the fact that her nacelles take up far less percentage of that volume, you come to realize that the useful internal volume of the NX Class is actually greater than that of the later Connie!
Fortunately, the NX has a crew of just 80 instead of the 203 of the 2250's Constitutions. This allows us to assume that the ship's inner mechanics . . . propulsion, life support, et cetera . . . actually take up a far greater percentage of the available volume than on the later ships.
Nonetheless, a less-voluminous design would've been preferred.
Also to appear in the revised list is Deep Space Nine. One of the more interesting questions, of course, was how large to make the station . . . 1097 meters? 1350? 1451.82? 2000?
I opted for a compromise position of 1275 meters, which falls between 1100 and 1450 and is close enough to 1350 to satisfy those who accept that value. Maybe off-the-wall, but it's all Stipes's fault.
That done, the value we obtained for the station's volume was 28,601,800 cubic meters . . . the equivalent of 135 Connies, almost 12 Sovereigns, or just under 5 Galaxies.
(Or 53% of a Star Destroyer)
Also potentially of interest would be the masses. As noted previously, I get low-end estimates of mass from the Doctor's 700,000 ton comment, and higher-end masses from Scotty's million ton comment. Between these two extremes, there ought to be the truth.
DS9's mass falls somewhere in the range of 32,000,000 to 110,500,000 metric tons. I would say that it should probably be on the lower end due to the lack of warp systems, but this is the same station which features duranium conduits with walls two meters thick in some places, as noted in that Tosk episode.
Though it's a little iffy to use the same range on the NX Class, nevertheless I've done so. The range would be 223,000 to 771,000 metric tons . . . probably on the higher side of that, given the closer temporal proximity to the Constitution from which Scotty's "nearly a million" tons arose.
Thoughts? Reactions?
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posted
Umm...the NX-class is shorter than the Constitution, and the Connie is several decks taller. And the Constitution has two hulls...so how the heck does the NX have almost as much volume?
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posted
Manticore: Overall length and height are sort of meaningless when you compare volumes. Particularly with a Connie, a lot of the length is from those nacelles and a lot of the height is from the neck. They add very little to the volume.
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posted
That is true, but I still find it hard to believe that the concavity of the top of the nx's saucer add that significantly, significantly enough to counter the secondary hull of the Constitution.
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posted
The saucer of the NX is also a fair bit larger then that of the Constitution even though the overall length of the ship is shorter. Couple that with the convex rather then cancave shape, and the two "outriggers", and that nearly makes up for the entire stardrive section.
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posted
No worries, Manticore . . . I've found a few of the results really weird, myself. Yet, when I've sat back and looked, I could see how it worked out just fine. (For instance, I was stunned at first by the idea that the increase in volume from the Excelsior to the Excelsior B-type was about half a Constitution, but if you look at pics of the ships it's easy to see that even the engineering hull wings of the E-B are about the same volume as the entire engineering hull of the E-A, with the enormous impulse things on the saucer adding lots of additional volume.)
One thing the other gentlemen haven't covered (forgive me if I'm mistaken) is that ventral undercut on the saucer of the Constitution, which robs the saucer of a great deal of potential volume . . . about enough to completely remove either a few of the saucer ventral decks, or to remove the saucer's width advantage, especially on the E-A.
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posted
I still have problems with a couple of your assumptions as to mass, though. First, we have no way of knowing if the materials used to construct starships remained constant between the different eras, so it may not be possible to simply "backdate" Voyager's mass figures for use in TOS (or Enterprise, for that matter). I also think the Voyager mass figure tends to inflate other ships' masses excessively in cases; for example, it gives a mass for the Galaxy class thats more than thirty percent greater than the figure given in the TNGTM.
Second, I'm really leery about accepting the "gross tons" estimate as being anywhere near accurate. By the definition you post on the page, it's clear the writer of the script either had no idea what the term meant, or no idea of the size of the Enterprise. The estimate is so far out of whack that I'd be tempted to toss it entirely; it's on a par with the line from "The Squire of Gothos" which implies TOS takes place in the 28th Century.
Finally, I'm curious why you didn't even mention the 190,000 ton mass generally accepted for the Constitution. Since that comes from "The Making of Star Trek" (and, ultimately, from the Trek writer's guide), I should think it at least merits some discussion (if only to state why you disagree with it).
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quote:Originally posted by Woodside Kid: I still have problems with a couple of your assumptions as to mass, though. First, we have no way of knowing if the materials used to construct starships remained constant between the different eras, so it may not be possible to simply "backdate" Voyager's mass figures for use in TOS (or Enterprise, for that matter). I also think the Voyager mass figure tends to inflate other ships' masses excessively in cases; for example, it gives a mass for the Galaxy class thats more than thirty percent greater than the figure given in the TNGTM.
That sort of thing is the very reason I gave both the small Voyager-based mass and the large Constitution-based mass.
That said, the Voyager masses are still remarkably low. For instance, if you reduce the mass of the Enterprise-D by 30%, the density of the ship becomes less than that of water. In other words, the saucer section would float. (It's pretty close to water as it is now.)
quote:Second, I'm really leery about accepting the "gross tons" estimate as being anywhere near accurate. By the definition you post on the page, it's clear the writer of the script either had no idea what the term meant, or no idea of the size of the Enterprise. The estimate is so far out of whack that I'd be tempted to toss it entirely; it's on a par with the line from "The Squire of Gothos" which implies TOS takes place in the 28th Century.
To each their own. To my thinking, there's a vast difference between throwing out a contradiction like your Gothos example versus throwing out the one data point about the Enterprise's mass because it is felt to be "out of whack". In other words, there's no whack for the value to be out of.
quote:Finally, I'm curious why you didn't even mention the 190,000 ton mass generally accepted for the Constitution. Since that comes from "The Making of Star Trek" (and, ultimately, from the Trek writer's guide), I should think it at least merits some discussion (if only to state why you disagree with it).
My site is inflexibly based on the canon. There was no reason to mention old non-canon info, and it had not served as the basis of any canon data.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Finally, I'm curious why you didn't even mention the 190,000 ton mass generally accepted for the Constitution. Since that comes from "The Making of Star Trek" (and, ultimately, from the Trek writer's guide), I should think it at least merits some discussion (if only to state why you disagree with it).
My site is inflexibly based on the canon. There was no reason to mention old non-canon info, and it had not served as the basis of any canon data.
You didn't read his post, though -- he's saying it comes from the writer's guide, which is pretty darn close to canon. If you're that inflexible, then your analyses could be next to useless. (No offense intended.)
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posted
I'm not getting into a canon debate. I'll simply say that, far from being useless, the analysis is based on what the writers chose to put in the show . . . obviously, it is contrary to what was in the guide. That is what I said, and if that indicates a lack of reading of his post, my apologies, but I think my reading of his post was just fine.
If there are some who feel that the writer's guide should take precedence, that is of course their choice. However, I don't see the rationale for such a policy. If there are some who feel that the writer's guide, which evidently was ignored, is worthy of mention . . . well, that's their choice, too. But it isn't mine, nor do I see why it should be.
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posted
My point is that you don't give any credence to the writer's guide figure at all -- you don't give anyone else a chance to consider the calculations, because you've tossed them out already.
quote:the analysis is based on what the writers chose to put in the show . . . obviously, it is contrary to what was in the guide.
Perhaps. Or perhaps there's a whole lot less organization in writing a television show then there appears. I can tell you from personal experience that Trek writers are always willing to pull facts out of their asses when the story requires it, rather than go searching through series manuals and guides to find the appropriate figure.
You should at least consider the "190,000 MT" figure alongside the "million tons" figure...
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: My point is that you don't give any credence to the writer's guide figure at all -- you don't give anyone else a chance to consider the calculations, because you've tossed them out already.
I didn't toss them out. They simply weren't invited to the canon-only party.
quote:Or perhaps there's a whole lot less organization in writing a television show then there appears.
Of course, but that's what we have to work with.
quote:You should at least consider the "190,000 MT" figure alongside the "million tons" figure...
It gets just the same amount of consideration as the Tech Manual masses, or the data given for DS9 in "The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine".
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
It's all very well and good to make this a "canon-only" party, but if that's the case, where do you get the starship dimensions from? I don't remember any on-screen mention of length data other than Picard's line about the E-E being almost 700 meters long. If "canon = on-screen", then virtually everything you have would have to be chucked. If it doesn't, then how do you justify what you do and don't include?
My point in comparing the "Gothos" line and the "gross tons" is that both seem to be instances where the writer didn't have an adequate grasp of what he was talking about. Your own page shows that the use of the "gross tons" term is flat-out wrong. If we have to accept something even though it seems to be nonsensical, then we're stuck with a refit Constitution class that's 78 decks high.
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