2009 Enterprise - How big is it?

[Owen E Oulton]

OK. ILM says the new ship is anywhere from 2300 to 3000 feet long. The most definite answer seems to be about 735m long. I don't buy it. The details are the same proportions as on the Enterprise-A. I'm of the opinion that the ship is about 300m long... Look at this image and see what you think.

http://coldnorth.com/owen/images/2009ENT.jpg

[Cut]

I am with you on this, Owen!

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Apparently the official answer is "stupidly big."

[mechascorpio]

I guess I'm missing what the big controversy is over the size. If the two 1701's dont' co-exist in the same universe/reality as each other, what difference does it make? Why is 700+ meters any less valid than 300 meters?

I've seen people in other forums say "If it was only twice as big, I wouldn't have a problem, but this is stupid". Why? Seems to me if it were 350 meters that would be as inexplicable as 900 meters. Is it because it's bigger than the Galaxy class, and that's offensive?

One of the funnier things I've read is people saying, "Ridiculous. If it's that big there's no way you could get it from the ground into orbit." Because, after all, we know how much easier it is to get 190,000 metric tons into space as opposed to 495000 metric tons.


EDIT - Just got a reply from Bob Orci over at TrekMovie.com. He tells me that the so-called "Supreme Court" at Bad Robot will be releasing an official statement on the specs of the Enterprise and the Kelvin "soon". They're doing a Q&A there, I asked about the Enterprise and the Kelvin, so hopefully next week we'll know (for better or for worse).

[Pericles]

I guess I'm missing what the big controversy is over the size. If the two 1701's dont' co-exist in the same universe/reality as each other, what difference does it make? Why is 700+ meters any less valid than 300 meters?

Ships go through design evolution. Under normal circumstances, you have to have a 300 meter long ship before you develop the skills to engineer a 700 meter long ship. Even counting the fact that Abrams has created a new timeline, the pre-TOS engineering hasn't changes yet.

Spock Prime could easily say "You know the timeline is already hosed, so I might as well give the Federation a real boost and get a gig at Utopia Planitia and show them how to build the Sovereign and the Defiant now, so when the Borg show up, this time at Wolf 359, we can hand those clanking bastards their collectivized asses."

However, Spock Prime hasn't had time to do so yet, thus it stands to reason the Abrams Enterprise has to be roughly the size of the TOS Enterprise due to the limitations of the era's technical abilities.

[mechascorpio]

Ships go through design evolution. Under normal circumstances, you have to have a 300 meter long ship before you develop the skills to engineer a 700 meter long ship. Even counting the fact that Abrams has created a new timeline, the pre-TOS engineering hasn't changes yet.

But the very existence of the Kelvin -- crew of at least 800 -- before Nero's arrival means one of two things. Either they had developed those skills pre-TOS, or the movie is really a reboot.

Although I do have a fiction theory about ripples in a timeline traveling backwards as much as they do forward, which I'm using in my game plans.

[C5]

All of this supports the theory that the universe from the new movie is not the same universe as the "old" Trekverse, even before Nero's alteration to the timeline.
Maybe is it the universe where the end of the 21st century happened as "predicted" in TOS, with missions to Saturn in the 90s...

[Tobian]

Actually, as an interesting point of note:

Nero traveling back in time, with spock following him, means that the future as we know it will not exist, which includes: The plot of First Contact, Kirk saving Edith Keeler, The plot of the Voyage Home.... and a few dozen other episodes etc...

This means that the past has changed too, because the future changed, because of the sheer number of interferences into it by our crews. That doesn't mean those things didn't happen, but it would mean they would have happened differently, because everyone is different. So by changing the future, you have also irerevocably also changed any past event which the people of the future have interfered with!

And this is the problem with time travel episodes!

For all we know, the future (Simon Pegg)Scotty gave them the chemical properties of Transparent Aluminium AND Duranium alloy in their version of the Voyage home, which would have changed materials science immeasurably by their future!


With regards to the Nu-Enterprise versus the Refit, which it mostly matches (the original model wasn't very detailed so it's harder to get scale comparisons) - the problem with the Refit Enterprise is that, with the exception of the shuttle bay, all the sets they built for TMP were not very well fitting inside that ship, and everything is a very tight squeeze: If the saucer is 1 deck thick, where it undercuts, would anyone like to tell me where the massive 2-4 storey rec deck fits exactly? The point I am making is that is it the new enterprise which is too big, or the old one which was too small for it's intended purpose? All the sets fit inside the new Enterprise without tardis technology

[Pericles]

Although I do have a fiction theory about ripples in a timeline traveling backwards as much as they do forward, which I'm using in my game plans.

I won't say that is impossible, after all, this entire discussion is about make believe, but I think your theory has more fudge in it than a half a dozen Baskin Robbins franchises.

[mechascorpio]

I won't say that is impossible, after all, this entire discussion is about make believe, but I think your theory has more fudge in it than a half a dozen Baskin Robbins franchises.

ROFLMAO! I'm going to have to add that to my sig!

"Canon" has always required a lot of fudge.

[Meteo]

I guess I'm missing what the big controversy is over the size. If the two 1701's dont' co-exist in the same universe/reality as each other, what difference does it make? Why is 700+ meters any less valid than 300 meters?

I've seen people in other forums say "If it was only twice as big, I wouldn't have a problem, but this is stupid". Why? Seems to me if it were 350 meters that would be as inexplicable as 900 meters. Is it because it's bigger than the Galaxy class, and that's offensive?

One of the funnier things I've read is people saying, "Ridiculous. If it's that big there's no way you could get it from the ground into orbit." Because, after all, we know how much easier it is to get 190,000 metric tons into space as opposed to 495000 metric tons.


EDIT - Just got a reply from Bob Orci over at TrekMovie.com. He tells me that the so-called "Supreme Court" at Bad Robot will be releasing an official statement on the specs of the Enterprise and the Kelvin "soon". They're doing a Q&A there, I asked about the Enterprise and the Kelvin, so hopefully next week we'll know (for better or for worse).

Pih, I don't need Orci, I can take what I saw on screen, add a few details here and there, some of them from older Trek, and come up with a somewhat workable set of specs for the Ent and the Kelvin in the process.

...And I measured the windows on all of the ships, so if the STXI Enterprise is at 700 meters, then the decks would have to be around 7-8 meters high. Doesn't seem to match up with the size of the corridor in the movie, which appears to be the usual 3.3 meters in height.

[Tobian]

You're making an assumption that there are windows on every deck. Even on the Refit the windows would have to be both tiny, and in really odd places for it to make sense: I.e. on the rim you'd have windows near the floor on the upper deck, and near the roof on the lower deck.

Also how do you rationalise the huge size of the engineering bay and the massive size of the shuttlebays seen in the film, which would have to be twice the size of those seen in the refit?

[Meteo]

Fine about the refit windows. I'll also check the shuttlebay and Engineering for a couple days, see how well they work...

[UFC465537]

A while back I did a 3-view schematic of the Kelvin (because I was laid off and I had some serious time on my hands...). Using the images available from the Intel site, it looked like the rim of the saucer was 2 decks high. I asked around, and the concensus was that a deck averaged 2 to 2.5 meters in height. Based on that, the Kelvin came out to 308 to 385 meters (I went with the 2.5 meters for the image).

Granted, it's not gospel or anything, but the Kelvin is quite a big ship. I would expect, using the same criteria, that ENT XI is around 300 m, maybe a bit more.

[Tobian]

Even if you ignore the giant internal sets, the regular internal sets were WAY bigger than 2.5m high. The original Constitution was 3.4 m / deck as was the Galaxy (approximately), So your figure needs to be bigger than that!