[uss_columbia]

One thing I've wondered about is the deck spacing on the 11 footer. If we measure the vertical distance between windows how does that compare to 947 feet? What is the deck height in real world scaled to that?

On Phil Broad's web site, there are some images correlating the windows. You'll find them here: http://cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/STEnterprise/EnterpriseRenderings/EnterpriseRenderings.htm. Note: some of them show the hypothetical 1/96 ship and others 947' ship. On the one with deck layout and windows, I don't know if his deck thickness numbers are based on the 947' ship or the larger ship.

You can also see his interpretation of the deck spacing compared to the TMOST cross section in this thread. (Here he's using a 947' ship for sure.)

 

[Steve Mavronis]

On Phil Broad's web site, there are some images correlating the windows.

Thanks for reminding me about that. I should mention that I love his renders on the shuttlecraft hangar. He gives a nice interpretation of the forward end we never saw.

 

[Captain April]

Oh, I see. Those curves are more like the 11-footer. You can get a good view of the 3-footer's flatter curves in this picture.

To bring up a previous point, in that pic, it's quite clear that the three-footer didn't get the larger bridge dome.

 

[Captain April]

On Phil Broad's web site, there are some images correlating the windows. You'll find them here: http://cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/STEnterprise/EnterpriseRenderings/EnterpriseRenderings.htm. Note: some of them show the hypothetical 1/96 ship and others 947' ship. On the one with deck layout and windows, I don't know if his deck thickness numbers are based on the 947' ship or the larger ship.

You can also see his interpretation of the deck spacing compared to the TMOST cross section in this thread. (Here he's using a 947' ship for sure.)

Who wants to tell Phil that the smaller model was 33 3/4", not 48"?

 

[uss_columbia]

^ I already teased him a little in my 3-footer thread. Note that the page title (in your browser title bar, probably) says 14 foot when you click it!

 

[uss_columbia]

To bring up a previous point, in that pic, it's quite clear that the three-footer didn't get the larger bridge dome.

Yup. Unless it originally had it, and that's one of the things Roddenberry wanted changed back when Datin first delivered the model. Hard to imagine the 11-footer builders not getting the memo, though. (Datin did the mods to the 3-footer and was the interface with the guys doing the 11-footer. I suppose it could have been a mistake they didn't have time to correct before The Cage, but I'd imagine they would have had time before WNMHGB. It's a mystery to me.)

 

[uss_columbia]

MGagen (if you're tuned in), when you corresponded with Mr. Datin, did you happen to ask him if he recalled what any of Roddenberry's requested changes were?

 

[starseeker]

The "squashed soccer ball" shape actually can work and has an interesting feature: Because each section revolves around the central axis, the door sections separate as the doors open, giving room for the sections to slide past each other. Also, they could come together to present a nearly seamless outer surface, rather than the stair stepped one necessary with a spherical door. Here's a study drawing I made back in early '04 to illustrate the point:

That is cool!
However, making it work it still doesn't reconcile the quarter sphere hangar bay doors that MJ shows in his cross sections with what appears on the back of the miniature.
And on the hangar bay miniature, the doors appear very much to be spherical as they open. Tho from the pov the perspective can be misleading.
But at least after this I know that MJs bridge fits exactly as he shows it. And correcting a couple scale mistakes I made in photoshop, I know that his hangar bay fits to scale as he designed it. So I'm now thinking that he really did design this thing w/o Irwin Allen contradictions.
[Edit] And now I'm backtracking on the whole elliptical shape. Was it in fact real? As I go back over pictures of the 12' miniature's hangar bay doors, I see no evidence that they were elliptical at all. If that control room or whatever it is isn't centered on the axis of the door, then the miniature's could be spherical, which would make sense from a modeler's (Datin's) pov, as it would have been easier to make. MJs ext ship drawings do show an ellipse, but the drawings are very sketchy as to the interface between ext and int. His drawings (the ones I have anyway) of the int of the shuttle bay are either distorted or (I don't believe) not accurate, none of the lines are parallel. It's sort of a side view of forced perspective., everything narrowing as you get closer to the doors. It's possible that on the fairly crudely reproduced ext views (Making of ST book) that there was some sloppiness in the drawing or distortion in the repro, I suppose.
Way OT for this thread: What shape do you think those doors really were?

 

[Captain April]

Once again, the drawing in TMoST is of a forced perspective miniature set, not of a full size hangar deck.

 

[uss_columbia]

MJ's hangar drawing seen in TMOST with the nonparallel lines you point out is of the miniature, which was built this way to allow the camera to peer into the oversized opening. That same "distortion" could affect the shape of the doors on the hangar deck drawing/miniature. (I don't have access to the diagram right now.)

I think the "real" doors are probably the elliptical shape whereas the models may have used a spherical section for construction convenience. (The control room detail is different between the 11-footer and the 3-footer, BTW, the 3-footer lacking the cylindrical part that "touches" the doors.)

It's hard to say from photos whether the doors on the models are sperical sections or have some eccentricity. "One of these days," I'll 3D-model it with varying eccentricity and see what fits the photos best.

 

[uss_columbia]

^ It occurs to me that we Star Trek fans have "varying eccentricity" of our own, just not in the mathematical sense. :lol:

 

[Captain April]

That is cool!
But at least after this I know that MJs bridge fits exactly as he shows it.

Does it?

And I'm not just being snarky here, I'm trying to make a point.

Except for the cross-section, which tends to indicate a lowered bridge (and only eight decks, btw), no MJ drawing depicts the relationship between the interior of the bridge and the exterior hull. For that matter, there's no contemporaneous drawing that specifically identifies that tube on the back of the dome as the turbolift housing. It's not until the blueprints in the mid 70's that this concept gets codified.

So one cannot say definitively, based upon the available material produced at the time or from interviews, which direction he intended the bridge to face. The fact that he never "corrected" the other folks on set who believed that the bridge faced forward, and the illogic of facing a ship's bridge 36 degrees to port, tends to imply that he thought the bridge faced forward as well (I'm still waiting for a response from Mike Okuda to see if this subject ever came up during his discussions with Jefferies; the issue of possible influence from "The First Spaceship on Venus" came up, so why not this?).

 

[aridas sofia]

His cross section shows the turbolift shaft rising straight up to the bridge. I was going to cheat the bridge down a bit more to get it to face forward, but it would require ignoring his deck placement AND that tube. Too much for me -- he is clearly showing it off-centered.

 

[starseeker]

[QUOTE For that matter, there's no contemporaneous drawing that specifically identifies that tube on the back of the dome as the turbolift housing. It's not until the blueprints in the mid 70's that this concept gets codified.

[/QUOTE]

True. But the mid-70s codification was in ST Phase 2, where Matt Jeffries himself put two turbo lift shafts on the ext of the E, called them such (at least so shows/says the P2 book/references), and they do match perfectly the placement they'd have compared to the P2 bridge blueprint if the saucer was approx 417' in diameter.
But perhaps MJ completely revised his bridge placement/design ideas from P1.

 

[uss_columbia]

The cross section of which aridas sofia spoke is just such a contemporaneous drawing. It may not spell it right out in large type, but the implication is strong.

 

[Captain April]

His cross section shows the turbolift shaft rising straight up to the bridge. I was going to cheat the bridge down a bit more to get it to face forward, but it would require ignoring his deck placement AND that tube. Too much for me -- he is clearly showing it off-centered.

He's showing how big the ship is, that's all. A detailed schematic, that ain't.

 

[Captain April]

The cross section of which aridas sofia spoke is just such a contemporaneous drawing. It may not spell it right out in large type, but the implication is strong.

It doesn't show what happens to that lift away from the centerline, now does it? And we have seen a couple of instances where the turbolift moves sideways before opening onto the bridge, now haven't we, kids?

 

[Griffworks]

Watch it w/the condescending "kids" stuff please, CRA.... Let's not send this thread in that direction. It'll mean a Time Out for 10 days, minimum, and get the thread locked.

 

[uss_columbia]

Let's play a little game of "which is more likely."

Is it more likely that Jefferies intended the lift orientation that

A) hangs the lift almost entirely out into space
​

or

B) almost perfectly fits it in the tube?
​

 

[uss_columbia]

What the heck:

C) drops the bridge below the dome

D) sizes the ship up dramatically

(Note: the ship size is increased just enough for the lift to clear the dome with reasonable wall thickness. A variation could shift the bridge in the bow and starboard directions and scale the ship up less.)