Refit Enterprise Torpedo bay - Launcher

[James Wright]

Does anyone know how many decks the torpedo bay and launchers take up?
Being at the base of the connecting dorsal, if the launchers and bays were removed what would the height of the dorsal section be?

 

[T'Girl]

At least two decks, the launcher deck and above, the magazine. Given that the neck isn't very wide above the launcher, the magazine might be two decks, for a total of three.

 

[sojourner]

Try here for some deckplans:
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints-main2.php

As to the second question, um, the same height? they would just use the area for something else?

 

[James Wright]

Remember the Constitution class variant from the DS9 tech manual? I'm working on a variation without the torpedo bays, launchers and torpedo exhaust located on the dorsal, thus making the dorsal shorter.

 

[Pauln6]

Check out this thread too: http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=92307&page=28

I think that there is a problem fitting two torpedo launchers as seen in TWoK in the confined space so you either have to assume there is only one launcher or make the area much smaller. I think two decks is correct, one where the torpedoes are stored and armed and one below where they are loaded into the luanchers.

 

[Omega_Glory]

In Trek VI the Enterprise had 96 torpedos in the magazine. You would need enough space to store them safely plus a couple of decks for the launcher assembly.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

The thing I don't get about the Refit Enterprise and the TOS Enterprise is the repositioning of the torpedo tube in the neck. Having it in the saucer is way more practical -- in the event of a saucer seperation/emergency evacuation, you'd still have phasers and torpedoes. With the Refit Enterprise you just have phasers, and if TMP was right, the phasers derive their power off the warp-engines which would give you NO weapons.

In at least one episode of Star Trek: TOS, Captain Kirk made a reference to Torpedo-Tubes 2 and 6, which indicates the vessel should have six torpedo tubes.

 

[Forbin]

There's a pretty definitive line right above the launcher fairing. I think you're safe cutting it off right there. The kitbashing police won't come for ya.

 

[Ablative_Oberth]

The "neck" launcher could be the torpedo prep and arming area... One prep system feeding two launch ports.

Prepped torps could be carried above to a launcher below the bridge, or in the saucer rim, or where the lower dome is located... use your imagination. Don't limit yourself to "canon" because then you limit yourself. This is not a religion.

I took the warp-power thing to mean that the phasers derived most of their power from the warp core in normal operation, and the bypass they rigged already existed it was just non-functional. A bypass that allows them to switch to the impulse engines or batteries as needed.

 

[James Wright]

The thing I don't get about the Refit Enterprise and the TOS Enterprise is the repositioning of the torpedo tube in the neck. Having it in the saucer is way more practical -- in the event of a saucer seperation/emergency evacuation, you'd still have phasers and torpedoes. With the Refit Enterprise you just have phasers, and if TMP was right, the phasers derive their power off the warp-engines which would give you NO weapons.

In at least one episode of Star Trek: TOS, Captain Kirk made a reference to Torpedo-Tubes 2 and 6, which indicates the vessel should have six torpedo tubes.

There may still be a torpedo bay and launcher located in the saucer of the refit Enterprise, we just never heard of or saw it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think there's room for extra torpedo launchers on the TMP Enterprise in the housing above the lower sensor dome, roughly where they launched from in TOS. Those bits to the sides may even be port and starboard launchers.

Kinda hard to explain why they never got used, though.

 

[Mr Silver]

If we go by there being 2 forward torpedo bays, then we can assume that they are a part of the same deck, like KingDaniel said, there is likely to be room for extra launchers should the need arise, perhaps during a war, if the torpedo bays are destroyed, then maybe redundant areas can be converted into emergency Torpedo Bays

 

[Ablative_Oberth]

I think there's room for extra torpedo launchers on the TMP Enterprise in the housing above the lower sensor dome, roughly where they launched from in TOS. Those bits to the sides may even be port and starboard launchers.

Kinda hard to explain why they never got used, though.

The "bay" on the neck serves as a loading bay, prep area and final checkout point for the weapons.

Also considering the Enterprise was meant to boldly go and discover new and interesting stuff this "expanded" launch bay could be where they prepped mulit-mission probes, remote sensory satellites and whatever else they might need for a mission.

In times of war however, those things were left home and the probe storage was handed over to weapons storage.


As for the proposed upper launchers... To be honest we never got to see a Connie (refit or otherwise) really open a can of full-scale whoop-ass on a target.... multiple torp launches and phaser beam deployments.

We only ever got to see the Galaxy Class Enterprise-D open up with multiple banks in Best Of Both Worlds.... I'm assuming the Connie could do the same thing.

 

[Mr Silver]

As for the proposed upper launchers... To be honest we never got to see a Connie (refit or otherwise) really open a can of full-scale whoop-ass on a target.... multiple torp launches and phaser beam deployments.

We only ever got to see the Galaxy Class Enterprise-D open up with multiple banks in Best Of Both Worlds.... I'm assuming the Connie could do the same thing.

Well we did see the Connie-Class Enterprise open up a can of whoop-ass on the Reliant in TWOK, however i'm with you on us not seeing a full scale whoop-ass

It stands to reason that the Connie Class has the ability to fire phasers from a 360 degree targetting radius (similar to what we saw in BOBW, where the Ent-D fired phasers in a circular pattern at the Borg Cube)

As for Torpedos, well we know they have a standalone navigation system and are programmed to adjust to intercept if the target makes corrections to avoid

 

[Ablative_Oberth]

I always got the impression that Kirk was holding back on the Reliant and that he could have destroyed the Reliant in the nebula if he had been so inclined... After all they took off a nacelle *chop* no problem.

Then again the strain of that limited "ass-kicking" may have been what stressed the engines to the breaking point...

As for the proposed upper launchers... To be honest we never got to see a Connie (refit or otherwise) really open a can of full-scale whoop-ass on a target.... multiple torp launches and phaser beam deployments.

We only ever got to see the Galaxy Class Enterprise-D open up with multiple banks in Best Of Both Worlds.... I'm assuming the Connie could do the same thing.

Well we did see the Connie-Class Enterprise open up a can of whoop-ass on the Reliant in TWOK, however i'm with you on us not seeing a full scale whoop-ass

It stands to reason that the Connie Class has the ability to fire phasers from a 360 degree targetting radius (similar to what we saw in BOBW, where the Ent-D fired phasers in a circular pattern at the Borg Cube)

As for Torpedos, well we know they have a standalone navigation system and are programmed to adjust to intercept if the target makes corrections to avoid

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Ablative Oberth,

The "neck" launcher could be the torpedo prep and arming area... One prep system feeding two launch ports.

Possible, but there aren't any visible launch tubes on the saucer though. The torpedo tubes are rectangular in shape and are fairly recognizable.

Prepped torps could be carried above to a launcher below the bridge, or in the saucer rim, or where the lower dome is located...

I suppose you could, but why would you carry the torpedo up the neck of the ship, which would take up space in the neck, down various parts of the primary hull to it's launcher? I think it would be more practical to just have a magazine in both hulls, especially if you had to separate the ship you wouldn't have any torpedoes to work with

I took the warp-power thing to mean that the phasers derived most of their power from the warp core in normal operation, and the bypass they rigged already existed it was just non-functional. A bypass that allows them to switch to the impulse engines or batteries as needed.

The bypass was rigged by Captain Decker, largely at his own initiative. The ship wasn't originally going to have it. Personally I think that was just a plot device so they couldn't use phasers to shoot that asteroid that got into their path


James Wright,

There may still be a torpedo bay and launcher located in the saucer of the refit Enterprise, we just never heard of or saw it.

Unlikely, the torpedo-tubes are rectangular in shape and are of a specific size and are fairly recognizable


King Daniel,

I think there's room for extra torpedo launchers on the TMP Enterprise in the housing above the lower sensor dome, roughly where they launched from in TOS. Those bits to the sides may even be port and starboard launchers.

I suppose one could make an argument for that. The size of the spot-lights in that cruciform housing aren't the right size for a torpedo tube, though I suppose the tube could be divergent in shape, widening out from where the torpedo exits. Still, the set-up seems a bit odd.

Until TWOK, the attitude was that if a torpedo needed to be fired at a rear target, the torpedo would be fired, and would then swing around and go at the target from behind. You wouldn't need side or rear-launchers, the forward launchers would do just fine.

Kinda hard to explain why they never got used, though.

Good point

 

[Timo]

The size and shape of torpedo tubes on the NCC-1701-A and the Reliant should not limit our speculation much. After all, we know that the same size and shape of projectile was shot out from differently sized and shaped holes in ENT, from invisible holes in TOS, and from a much larger and differently shaped hole in TNG, then again from a much smaller little slit in DS9. Even the torp tubes of the Excelsior didn't exactly conform to the "standards" of the TOS movie era.

It wouldn't thus be at all unlikely for NCC-1701-A or NCC-1701 refit to have additional torpedo tubes shaped and sized differently from the neck ones. Perhaps Starfleet just added the neck launchers without removing the saucer and secondary hull ones we saw in TOS and ENT? Adding of these launchers would of course be done for a reason - most probably because they were superior to the stuff that was already onboard. So it would only be natural that our heroes would use the new neck launchers exclusively unless forced to resort to second-rate hardware.

And nothing in the TOS movies would force them. Even in ST2, one of the powerful new neck launchers remained operational, so there'd be no reason to fire the supposed older launchers in the saucer (although we might have seen them being prepped for that fight, as possibly indicated by some signage...).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

...Even in ST2, one of the powerful new neck launchers remained operational, so there'd be no reason to fire the supposed older launchers in the saucer (although we might have seen them being prepped for that fight, as possibly indicated by some signage...).

A simple statement, yet it corrects so much!

 

[Omega_Glory]

The size and shape of torpedo tubes on the NCC-1701-A and the Reliant should not limit our speculation much. After all, we know that the same size and shape of projectile was shot out from differently sized and shaped holes in ENT, from invisible holes in TOS, and from a much larger and differently shaped hole in TNG, then again from a much smaller little slit in DS9. Even the torp tubes of the Excelsior didn't exactly conform to the "standards" of the TOS movie era.

It wouldn't thus be at all unlikely for NCC-1701-A or NCC-1701 refit to have additional torpedo tubes shaped and sized differently from the neck ones. Perhaps Starfleet just added the neck launchers without removing the saucer and secondary hull ones we saw in TOS and ENT? Adding of these launchers would of course be done for a reason - most probably because they were superior to the stuff that was already onboard. So it would only be natural that our heroes would use the new neck launchers exclusively unless forced to resort to second-rate hardware.

And nothing in the TOS movies would force them. Even in ST2, one of the powerful new neck launchers remained operational, so there'd be no reason to fire the supposed older launchers in the saucer (although we might have seen them being prepped for that fight, as possibly indicated by some signage...).

Timo Saloniemi

Or it could be that the saucer launchers were removed and the neck launchers are muliti-shot affairs that are capable of firing the same number of torps as the six tubes in TOS. This would make the most sense as the Const-refit is a higher tech ship and does fire more than one torp at a time from a single tube in ST:III.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Well personally if I would have designed the TMP Enteprise I would have designed the Torpedo tubes as being cylindrical and went from there. Four in the underside of the saucer and two in the neck.

To retcon the TOS Enterprise having six tubes as well I would have simply explained that there were two tubes in the neck stacked one on top of the other either covered by doors, or simply not explained any further. That way you wouldn't have less tubes on the saucer on the TMP design than the TOS design