As best as anyone knows and is willing to tell, what was the mass of TOS Enterprise and how much did the mass increase after TMP refit entered service?
Thanks!
JDW
Thanks!
JDW
Mass of the Constitution class Enterprise?
- Thread starter James Wright
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Fan works traditionally assume either 170,000 or 190,000 tons for the TOS ship and 210,000 tons for the refit, supposing that the starships are like today's seagoing ships, just sailing in space.
However, there's no definite reason to believe in these numbers. The mass could have gone down in the refit just as easily as up: the new engines are slimmer, after all, and the secondary hull, while larger, is shown to be mostly hollow now.
And Scotty did say the ship massed nearly a million "gross tons" (an expression used interchangeably with "long ton" or 1016 kilograms, but never with "gross register ton" which is a measure of volume) in "Mudd's Women". So a figure of 750,000 tons or higher would be much better a fit here.
We could argue that the ship largely resembles a seagoing vessel (steel hull, some machinery), giving the 190,000 ton and 210,000 ton figures, but then also introduces some futuristic components with much greater mass - say, the warp engines. It wouldn't sound too odd a naval tradition if some sources gave the mass of a starship with her warp coils, some without; much stranger traditions abound today.
The Voyager, a ship of basically the same size, built something like 150 years later than Kirk's original ship, is explicitly given a mass of 700,000 tons. One might assume this is down from Kirk's ship, not up, as materials technology has improved. Also, Janeway's warp engines are smaller than Kirk's, so that might account for a decrease in mass from the figures exclaimed by Scotty... Sure, the Voyager could also be markedly heavier than the Enterprise, by some rationale or another.
Timo Saloniemi
However, there's no definite reason to believe in these numbers. The mass could have gone down in the refit just as easily as up: the new engines are slimmer, after all, and the secondary hull, while larger, is shown to be mostly hollow now.
And Scotty did say the ship massed nearly a million "gross tons" (an expression used interchangeably with "long ton" or 1016 kilograms, but never with "gross register ton" which is a measure of volume) in "Mudd's Women". So a figure of 750,000 tons or higher would be much better a fit here.
We could argue that the ship largely resembles a seagoing vessel (steel hull, some machinery), giving the 190,000 ton and 210,000 ton figures, but then also introduces some futuristic components with much greater mass - say, the warp engines. It wouldn't sound too odd a naval tradition if some sources gave the mass of a starship with her warp coils, some without; much stranger traditions abound today.
The Voyager, a ship of basically the same size, built something like 150 years later than Kirk's original ship, is explicitly given a mass of 700,000 tons. One might assume this is down from Kirk's ship, not up, as materials technology has improved. Also, Janeway's warp engines are smaller than Kirk's, so that might account for a decrease in mass from the figures exclaimed by Scotty... Sure, the Voyager could also be markedly heavier than the Enterprise, by some rationale or another.
Timo Saloniemi
To be honest, the Enterprise weighing in at a million tons sounds a bit ridiculous.
The best way to go about it would be to find the volume of the ship and see how it compares to modern naval vessels. Then from there you'd figure out how much less the Enterprise would weigh due to more advanced engineering techniques...
I'd figure even 190,000 tons is a bit heavy actually.
The best way to go about it would be to find the volume of the ship and see how it compares to modern naval vessels. Then from there you'd figure out how much less the Enterprise would weigh due to more advanced engineering techniques...
I'd figure even 190,000 tons is a bit heavy actually.
The volume of the TOS Enterprise is about 210,000 cubic meters or so at the commonly accepted 289-meter length. Voyager is about 625,000 cubic meters. So TOS Enterprise would float at 190,000 metric tons, but it's a sensible figure for this volume; Voyager's mass was given onscreen as 700,000 metric tons, so we'd have to accept this more advanced ship is more densified, something with which I have no problem at all given the idea in the technical manuals and such that densified warp coils (a significant percentage of the ship's overall mass) are more capable.
A Galaxy-class ship is a little over 5,800,000 tons and I believe the Whitefire blueprints reflect Probert's suggested mass figure of 5,000,000 tons. The density ends up pretty similar to what the TOS Enterprise would have at 190,000 metric tons, and the slightly lesser density of the Galaxy makes sense based on its large available spaces for civilians and so forth.
I don't put too much stock in Scotty's "million gross tons" line any more because I don't think it was especially well researched and, in light of later Treks, I can't think of a reason why the TOS Enterprise would be so much more dense than the later ships. I could think of some, but don't have a very compelling reason to do so.
Another thing possibly worth mentioning for the heck of it: the 190,000 tons figure for TOS Enterprise appears in the Franz Joseph works, and as their admirers always point out, Roddenberry was OK with these at the time. FJ intentionally deviated from the show on a number of things in his publications, and if you want to count heading away from possible implications of Scotty's line among them, that seems to be a defensible decision.
A Galaxy-class ship is a little over 5,800,000 tons and I believe the Whitefire blueprints reflect Probert's suggested mass figure of 5,000,000 tons. The density ends up pretty similar to what the TOS Enterprise would have at 190,000 metric tons, and the slightly lesser density of the Galaxy makes sense based on its large available spaces for civilians and so forth.
I don't put too much stock in Scotty's "million gross tons" line any more because I don't think it was especially well researched and, in light of later Treks, I can't think of a reason why the TOS Enterprise would be so much more dense than the later ships. I could think of some, but don't have a very compelling reason to do so.
Another thing possibly worth mentioning for the heck of it: the 190,000 tons figure for TOS Enterprise appears in the Franz Joseph works, and as their admirers always point out, Roddenberry was OK with these at the time. FJ intentionally deviated from the show on a number of things in his publications, and if you want to count heading away from possible implications of Scotty's line among them, that seems to be a defensible decision.
Well, I figured I might weigh in on this subject...
The rationale is that naval vessels are really the only modern equivalent to very large long term habitats that we have to draw on. And their basic design of open, livable volume for the crew's daily life mirrors that of a starship's. And in any study of this type one is comparing the amount of the ship's volume used for the outer surface, inner structure, bulkheads, desks and equipment to the volume left open for the crews environment.
The fact of the matter is that people spend very little time in tanks. People spend very little time in aircraft. People spend very little time in just about any other vehicle that might work for a comparison today. But people live for long periods in naval vessels.
For my studies I used the Ohio Class submarine. It has to support a large crew in an inhospitable environment for extended periods... and it had an easy shape to calculate a volume estimate.
I treated the Enterprise as largely a series of truncated cones and added up all the volumes to get a volume estimate. The equation I used was this one...
Where r is the large radius, t is the thickness of the truncated cone, and θ is the angle of the walls from vertical. My earliest estimate was 131,800 tons... but I was playing with very broad figures (as in shapes) in that one as I recall.
So I wouldn't be surprised if Jefferies made a similar mass calculation to the one that I plan on doing as it is easy enough to perform with pencil and paper.
Not really.
The rationale is that naval vessels are really the only modern equivalent to very large long term habitats that we have to draw on. And their basic design of open, livable volume for the crew's daily life mirrors that of a starship's. And in any study of this type one is comparing the amount of the ship's volume used for the outer surface, inner structure, bulkheads, desks and equipment to the volume left open for the crews environment.
The fact of the matter is that people spend very little time in tanks. People spend very little time in aircraft. People spend very little time in just about any other vehicle that might work for a comparison today. But people live for long periods in naval vessels.
For my studies I used the Ohio Class submarine. It has to support a large crew in an inhospitable environment for extended periods... and it had an easy shape to calculate a volume estimate.
I treated the Enterprise as largely a series of truncated cones and added up all the volumes to get a volume estimate. The equation I used was this one...
Where r is the large radius, t is the thickness of the truncated cone, and θ is the angle of the walls from vertical. My earliest estimate was 131,800 tons... but I was playing with very broad figures (as in shapes) in that one as I recall.
Well, Franz Joseph's work started around 1973... but the mass estimate of the Enterprise was already being given out by the studio as 190,000 tons as early as January of 1965 (a little more than two months after the overall dimensions of the Enterprise were changed to their final figures).
So I wouldn't be surprised if Jefferies made a similar mass calculation to the one that I plan on doing as it is easy enough to perform with pencil and paper.
I'm sorry but defining a starship as a habitat with some added functionality stretches credibility beyond the breaking point for me. Habitation would be the least of the functions of that sort of a construct!
There's a whole section in those ships called "engineering hull", supposedly dedicated to one of the more important functionalities. An interstellar propulsion system should not be treated lightly IMHO... Granted that it may be relatively compact on things like shuttlecraft, but it does command much of the total volume. And it's not likely to be comparable to a "habitat" in any way, unless we believe in the hamster-wheel theory of warp propulsion.
Timo Saloniemi
There's a whole section in those ships called "engineering hull", supposedly dedicated to one of the more important functionalities. An interstellar propulsion system should not be treated lightly IMHO... Granted that it may be relatively compact on things like shuttlecraft, but it does command much of the total volume. And it's not likely to be comparable to a "habitat" in any way, unless we believe in the hamster-wheel theory of warp propulsion.
Timo Saloniemi
This is not surprising. If you are asking for the concepts to be broken down further to a level at which you might understand, please say so.
Fortunately the makers of Trek designed this stuff with the very concepts that you can't seem to comprehend. Which means that your broken ability to comprehend what was put forward has little baring here.
Something that you may want to note in the future is the original terms used by the designers... "primary hull" and "secondary hull". And the general amount of space set aside for engineering equipment in the secondary hull could be envisioned as equivalent space given to propulsion equipment on modern naval vessels (again, I doubt you'll comprehend any of this, but I'll include it on the off chance), and the primary equipment for warp on the Enterprise is the nacelles... which are outside the ship.
And if we look at TMP, the interior of the secondary hull has even more open space than the TOS version... which was something you noted earlier (your own credibility stretching to the breaking point?).
But if you need some help to get past your limited hamster-wheel theory of naval propulsion, I'd be happy to take the time to point out example after example of ships with large dedicated areas for power and propulsion. Though I am a little surprised that you consider vessels like the Ohio Class submarines to be little more than a habitat.
Why the insulting tone? I just wanted to point out that to date, no spacecraft has even remotely resembled a habitat or a naval vessel in terms of space or mass allocation; that none of the projected interstellar vehicles would do that, either; and that if the creators of the TOS vessel worked from the assumption that their starship was a house or a naval vessel flying through space, they weren't demonstrating engineering knowledge, but imagination - and a somewhat limited sort of that, considering.
None of that is conclusive in any way - and that's pretty much the point. To try and be conclusive about starships is the pinnacle of arrogance.
That said, we know the layout of some parts of the interiors of the various starships - it's a simplistic horizontal deck layout that doesn't make any sense in terms of today's engineering, but no doubt is the best possible solution in terms of 23rd century construction. But as said, a large percentage of the ship's volume is left unexplored - namely, the part dealing with propulsion. And it is hardly a stretch to assign some noticeable mass to this part, although one might of course also argue that the futuristic technology that allows for FTL travel also has the futuristic property of being virtually massless.
Timo Saloniemi
None of that is conclusive in any way - and that's pretty much the point. To try and be conclusive about starships is the pinnacle of arrogance.
That said, we know the layout of some parts of the interiors of the various starships - it's a simplistic horizontal deck layout that doesn't make any sense in terms of today's engineering, but no doubt is the best possible solution in terms of 23rd century construction. But as said, a large percentage of the ship's volume is left unexplored - namely, the part dealing with propulsion. And it is hardly a stretch to assign some noticeable mass to this part, although one might of course also argue that the futuristic technology that allows for FTL travel also has the futuristic property of being virtually massless.
Timo Saloniemi
No insult intended... just noting that anyone who would equate a house with a naval vessel might require more hand holding on tech issues than the normal person. You shouldn't be embarrassed by this shortcoming... it is just a fact of life for you.
See, while you don't see it, the rest of us know that naval vessels undergo large amounts of structural stress... far more than, say, a house.
But yes, I totally agree that no spacecraft has ever had these proportions... but then again we have almost no spacecraft and not a single example of a spacecraft that is designed to support dozens (or hundreds) of people for extended periods. What we do have are submarines which are design to support dozens (or hundreds) of people for extended periods in an extremely hostile environment.
But again, your shortsightedness is not uncommon. There were people back in the 1870's who thought that the Nautilus stretched credibility beyond the breaking point.
For Star Trek, we are given futuristic propulsion systems that take up a given amount of space and do certain functions... beyond that they are black box items that we can not know the workings of. The rest of the overall design of the ship can best be equated to the largest vessels which support the most people under the most stressful conditions we have today.
But please don't be embarrassed or insulted that you don't get this.
Umm, how did you end up thinking that I equate house with ship? That was the very point I was trying to make - that different things aren't similar. Rather elementary, I'd argue.
None of the arguments you make can serve as objective support for the idea that starships should share design features with naval vessels. It may be how they are portrayed in Star Trek, or it may not. But it isn't valid to argue that because you feel they should be portrayed that way, or because Jeffries felt that way, they now have to be interpreted as being portrayed that way.
Onscreen, we see these ships fly around at fantastic speeds, and burrow into mountains, and shrug off antimatter explosions while getting pierced by futuristic cannonballs. Onscreen, we also hear two datapoints on how much mass there is in these beasts. Now, it just plain isn't worth listening to the sort of "analysis" of this situation where 50% of the data is dropped as unappealing, and some sort of filler is dragged in from other sources to compensate.
Timo Saloniemi
None of the arguments you make can serve as objective support for the idea that starships should share design features with naval vessels. It may be how they are portrayed in Star Trek, or it may not. But it isn't valid to argue that because you feel they should be portrayed that way, or because Jeffries felt that way, they now have to be interpreted as being portrayed that way.
Onscreen, we see these ships fly around at fantastic speeds, and burrow into mountains, and shrug off antimatter explosions while getting pierced by futuristic cannonballs. Onscreen, we also hear two datapoints on how much mass there is in these beasts. Now, it just plain isn't worth listening to the sort of "analysis" of this situation where 50% of the data is dropped as unappealing, and some sort of filler is dragged in from other sources to compensate.
Timo Saloniemi
You said...
"... and that if the creators of the TOS vessel worked from the assumption that their starship was a house or a naval vessel flying through space, they weren't demonstrating engineering knowledge, but imagination - and a somewhat limited sort of that, considering."
Actually the argument is that we don't have anything to make a better comparison with... Rather elementary, I'd argue.
The size and mass of the TOS Enterprise was set in late 1964. I wouldn't consider Scott's statement as anything more than hyperbole (as it was actually the writers not reading the writer's guide carefully enough).
But beyond that... we were given what we were given. The best real world equivalences are naval vessels (and not houses) and the fact that you can't get that... well, that is your problem. And again, don't be embarrassed by it.
Also, no one is asking you to listen to anything, you could move onto something else... like Lost in Space.
Don't try to be cute here when you fail elementary logic.
I mean, it's not as if it would be intellectually self-promoting to claim that when A (house) and B (ship) are listed as not C (starship), then A must be B. Please try to think before you type things like that.
You don't score any more points by claiming that because we have no good point of comparison for A, any point will serve as A. Not even as "point of comparison for A", but outright A.
Okay, feel free to persist with your world that is 50% Star Trek, 50% Shaw. It would just help your image quite a bit if you didn't try to push the impression that this 50% Shaw is somehow more compatible with Star Trek than all other venues of speculation are.
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, it's not as if it would be intellectually self-promoting to claim that when A (house) and B (ship) are listed as not C (starship), then A must be B. Please try to think before you type things like that.
You don't score any more points by claiming that because we have no good point of comparison for A, any point will serve as A. Not even as "point of comparison for A", but outright A.
Okay, feel free to persist with your world that is 50% Star Trek, 50% Shaw. It would just help your image quite a bit if you didn't try to push the impression that this 50% Shaw is somehow more compatible with Star Trek than all other venues of speculation are.
Timo Saloniemi
Sadly the only person to bring up a house was you and you said...
Please try to think before you type things like that.
As for my image, it is secure. But it is funny (in a sick way) that you are so worried about it.
And again, don't be embarrassed by this... just spend a little more time thinking before posting (though I would imagine that would significantly decrease your posting).
"... and that if the creators of the TOS vessel worked from the assumption that their starship was a house or a naval vessel flying through space, they weren't demonstrating engineering knowledge, but imagination - and a somewhat limited sort of that, considering."
As the creators never insinuated a house as an equivalent structure we are left with only one conclusion... you believed it was an equivalent structure.Please try to think before you type things like that.
As for my image, it is secure. But it is funny (in a sick way) that you are so worried about it.
And again, don't be embarrassed by this... just spend a little more time thinking before posting (though I would imagine that would significantly decrease your posting).
I never understood the constant citation of that line as a 'defense' for the 'million gross tons' argument, to be honest. After all, in that very episode, we learn that Lithium Crystals (which were admittedly new tech at 1966 and sounded very 'futuristic') are the sole batteries that power the entire ship, right? And they do so through 'lithium circuits'. No impulse drive. No matter/anti-matter engine. None of this fancy 'di-lithium' anywhere.
In an episode where pretty much everything about the ship is established to be outright wrong later, why is this still held up despite also being retconned in the technical guide for the show?
In an episode where pretty much everything about the ship is established to be outright wrong later, why is this still held up despite also being retconned in the technical guide for the show?
How can a starship without an engineering hull have more mass than a starship with an engineering hull?
Example, Constellation class vs Constitution class!
Thanks,
JDW
Example, Constellation class vs Constitution class!
Thanks,
JDW
Um...not quite. The dialogue made it pretty clear that the ship's power was run through the crystals, not that the crystals were the source of that power.
For references that the crystals were the power source, look to "The Alternative Factor".
Because unlike the aforementioned "TAF", "Mudd's Women" is a decent episode.
Actually, the dialog goes both ways. It's pretty clear that, by this time, they hadn't nailed down their tech just yet. Pity, then, that this episode has so much of it in dialog.
Please... no...
It is a good episode. I just meant that it (along with most of the 'first 13') shouldn't be held up as 'canonical' tech stuff, since none of it, actually, really is.
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