posted
Hm... Here's another way to get the volume. Get a scale model of the ship. Get a graduated cylinder. Put water in the cylinder. Put the model in the water. See how much water is displaced. Multiply this by the scale of the model. :-)
------------------ "Alright, so it's impossible. How long will it take?" -Commander Adams, Forbidden Planet
posted
They use the water dislacement method to figure out the volumes of dinosaurs. Solid plastic models are usually used. If you did the same thing with starships, you would need to fill it with some sort of heavy material and seal it. The water needs to be kept out or else the model wouldn't displace any water and it needs to be filled with something or else it would float. I actually tried to do this and it was a mess. I found that making a model in plasticine (oil-based clay) is easier and drier. You don't need to make the whole ship, or even a half. For a ship with a circular primary hull, just make a pie-wedge-shaped section. The clay model is built on a photocopy of a blueprint. You then destroy the model, shape it into a cube or rectangular solid, measure the edges and multiply. This method is more accurate than using water.
By the way, remember that since we're working in three dimensions, you need to muliply the volume of a model by the cube of the scale. This means if the scale is 1/1270, you need to multiply the model's volume by 1270 x 1270 x 1270.
------------------ When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
posted
By the way, I just played around with the measurements of the Saber-class and found that a crew of 40 is too small for a class that size. Saber-class is almost twice the size of the Defiant, yet both classes have the same crew complement. Hmmm....
------------------ Logic is the beginning of wisdom
posted
Saboc: Yes. What's your email address? It's not visible on your profile. By the way, I don't have the file at my office, I have to get it from home.
------------------ When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
posted
Years ago, I used to draw ships for Traveller (a primitive Star Wars-type role playing game). The ship's size was measured in tons of liquid hydrogen. I did some calculations and determined that the game designers had used 27 cubic meters per ton of displacement as their standard.
I would then use that displacement as a guide to how many cubic meters the ship itself would displace. I then drew a design that displaced that much volume, taking care that the shape would allow decks of fairly uniform height. Living space, as was all the internal equipment was defined in tons of displacement. For equipment that required someone to be inside it when it was operating (the bridge, for instance), I arbitrarily assumed that the average such unit would be composed of 50% equipment plus 50% room for operators. At higher tech levels, the smaller size of components was offset by adding more equipment for additional capability, so the ratio remained the same. In the example of the bridge, given above, not all the equipment would be located on the bridge, but at remote locations throughout the ship (sensors and life support, for example).
Once I had calculated the relative volumes of equipment and crew space, I drew in the equipment, then divided the ship into decks of a standard height (3 meters, 1/2 meter of which was deck/overhead/outer hull material. The outer hull was 1/4 meter thick (about 10") while the inner decks were 1/2 meter thick. All equipment interconnects were routed through the decks, mostly along the corridors. Some walls also contained equipment, if only to interconnect systems on different decks.
When I was done, I had a 3-view drawing of the ship (Front, side, top) plus several sheets showing the internal layout of the vessel. The crew complement was determined by a complicated table that assigned a certain number of crew members per ton of displacement or per item of equipment. In retrospect, I suppose higher tech level equipment ought to have required fewer maintenance personnel, but it wasn't a really bad system, since it allowed you to calculate how big your proposed ship was, what it could do, and how many people it required to operate at maximum efficiency. I was satisfied if my calculations came within 10 percent of projections.
When FASA came out with their starship designing supplements for the Star Trek game, it was awful. You really needed a spreadsheet program to properly design a ship. I eventually hijacked the Traveller system and modified it so you could design a "known" UFP starship and get ballpark figures that were close to what they ought to be. Are there any starship design programs or rules for the current crop of Star Trek role-playing games?
posted
The whole thread started with a question about crew complements in the DS9TM. I bet these figures are as arbitrary as the rest of the technical specs and the author obviously didn't spend half the time for it that I need to read through and think about them. Just look at the ship masses. Isn't the mass of a Nebula supposed to be *much* higher (multiple times) than of an Excelsior and about the same as of a Galaxy? I guess whoever conceived the specs was thinking one-dimensionally and scaled everything roughly with the ship lengths. Nevertheless, I don't think that everything (mass or crew complements) rises with the third power, maybe the second power is reasonable.
BTW, the Galaxy seems to have the most room per crew member by far. The TNGTM says somewhere that 110 square meters per crew member are available, and my rough estimation confirms it.
------------------ "When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." A somewhat different Janeway in VOY: "Living Witness" Ex Astris Scientia
posted
I originally started thinking about ship displacement (and eventually, complement) when I someone told me that Intrepid displaced nearly 1 million tons and that Galaxy was about 4 million. The Starfleet Technical manual and other TOS and movie era tech books say that TOS Enterprise displaced about 200,000 tons. Such a difference in weight for ships of roughly the same length (TOS Ent and Intrepid) seemed unlikely.
Baloo, your method seems rather too complicated for my purposes. As I recall, Traveller is a kind of role-playing game, right? So internal layout of ships is part of the game environment. As a noncanon ship designer, I have only a vague idea of the internal arrangement of my ships. I only calculated weights and densities on the basis of components so that I could come up with a single number for ship displacement.
Working backwards from numbers given in the SFTM, I calculated the TOS Enterprise to have the following densities (in tons per cubic meter): primary hull and neck, 0.757; secondary hull + nacelle pylons, 0.993; Nacelle (each), 1.286; whole ship, 0.964. These densities are probably near that of present war ships and would allow starships to float. Note that as hulls or components get more "mechanical" they get more dense. Also as ships become more technolocially advanced, they might use lighter materials and other means, such as the SIF, to hold the ship together. As a result, the ship would become less dense. I have calculated the EntA primary hull to have a density of about 0.598 t/m3. I woulld expect that Galaxy would be even less dense.
As I mentioned earlier, each person on TOS Ent needs about 440 cubic meters. This is not the actual living space, but the amount of hull space, usually filled with equipment and fuel, to support one crewman. I have no idea how large a crewman's actual quarters would be. I'm satisfied with this level of detail.
------------------ When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
posted
Isn't the crew compliment based on what needs to be done on the ship? I mean, the engineering room of the Ent-D looks about as big as in the Intrepid, right? So we don't need eighty more engineers just because we CAN stash'em away somewhere on the ship. Like, "Ensign Blah to engineering, do you need assistance? -NO!! Don't come down here, we don't want any more people here! Go diagnose the deflector-grid or something!!!"
------------------ -You're crazy!!! -I thought I was pisces!
But seriously, a larger ship needs more engineering personnel, if there is more equiment to be maintained. The Galaxy's engineering room may not be that much more roomy than that of an Intrepid, but there are a lot more systems to maintain, especially life support, etc.
--Baloo
------------------ It is less important that you agree with me than it is for you to to understand what I'm saying.
posted
Baloo, I agree that larger ships need larger crew but what about Akira-class and Norway-class? According to their physical measurements, they are almost equal in size..but the Akira has 500 officers and crewmen while the Norway only have a 190-crew. I am so confused... It is now obvious to me that majoring in psychology does not make you any psychologically healthier. In fact, it makes you a bit more psycho then before you major in it...
------------------ Spend all your time waiting for a second chance, a break that would make it ok...
posted
Yes, I've heard that psychiatrists are much more likely than other doctors to commit suicide or to be substance abusers. Supposedly, people become psychiatrists (or psychologists) because they are already slightly screwed up in the head (not a technical term). Present company (possibly) excepted.
------------------ When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum
Printer-friendly view of this topic
