over on trekmovie.com they have put up a very good size chart for the new ships. go have a visit and read the article and in the mean time here is a quick profile size chart between the new ship and the “E”,,, way cool to really get a size down numerically of the new bad boy!!!
here's the page
here's a quick rough to get a good feel of the mass of the new ship,, Awesome!!!
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
Ok John, I might as well be the first to ask..
Sooooooooo, IS this the FINAL SCALE ???????
LOL…
Honestly, while I understand some peoples ” frustration ” with
wanting an accurate scale this whole thing has ballooned WAY out
of proportion on the Boards out there ! 😦
I know QMX was given one size for ” their ” prototype and
Round 2 given another. Lets hope they lay it to rest so the
guys on all the Boards out there stop fighting ! 🙂
these figures are what was tossed around in the planning stages so without a direct confirmation from ILM or Bad Robot you can give or take a hundred feet of 2357 and your just about right!
It’s good to hear that the large size was present early in the planning stages. Lots of people have been debating the actual size of the ship for some time now, and there seems to have been a running debate whether the ship was originally designed more line with the original 1701, and then ‘supersized’ later by JJ. Sounds like that wasn’t the case!
Hey john do you have more sketches on the work you did for the movie? I find them fantastic!
Great Job!
I’ll put them up soon, working with the trekmovie.com on those as we speak and a web site too.
*Gets the popcorn and waits for the Rabid trek fans*
I’m not gonna get stroppy like some people, but the old girl will always be 300’ish metres to me 😛
Btw John, do you know if it was intended for her to be so big from the get go? I get the impression that she was designed to be the same size as her predessors and then got scaled up afterwards, since so many of her features work for a regular sized version? Regardless of her size, I’ve really fallen for the design 🙂
She was always planned to be a huge ship,, No scaling up and the original TOS wasn’t even used as a measuring rod,, They set out to make a big ship, drew up the concepts , set a rough figure of measurement and then went for it!
John, if that’s the case, I have to ask… Why not only do so many details of the ship;’s design recall the TMP version of the ship, but are sized as if the ships were generally comparable in size? Even the bridge shot from outside the windows about fits that. The only thing that’s seriously out of place is the over-sized Engineering “set”. I would never even have imagined she was so immense, based on what I saw on the screen.
That’s why so much of this size information rings false to me. Not only is it yet another slap in the face at the design history that we had for so many years, but it doesn’t even match what the movie seemed to be showing us.
Sometimes it feels like every new “revelation” about this new “alternate continuity” just makes me dislike it more. I guess it’s just as well that they insulated all the rest of Trek from it.
damm that is a small ship
Right – that wasn’t me. I sent my colleague Adrian the link and it must’ve included my screen-name so when he posted it used my name…
I agree that there are some scale issues that make the ship look more TMP-era size – the windows on the primary hull (same configuration as the refit too), the port Kirk’s escape pod was ejected from (especially when we see the pod on the surface of the ice planet).
The problem is, we really have nothing ‘known’ to compare the ship with – spacedock is new, as are the other ship designs. And without a visual comparison everything is just guess-work…
I’m not sure I got the feel of her being that size on screen, especially as the outer saucer rim looks 2 decks deep with portholes at that sort of scale. It was only when we saw the hanger deck interior that the scale struck me as that huge. For me the various details on the outer hull (apparent deck/floor hieghts derived from porthole postioning, docking ports and size of the portholes themselves) don’t appear “fine” enough to convey that scaling, unlike the E E of John’s of which it is very apparent the scale from such detailing. Does make the ship more dramatic, awesome and powerful at that scale though, it has to be said! Not completely sold on the styling though…But the film is so absurdly enjoyable I didn’t care whilst watching it!
I am not a rabbid fan, but I have to say that the size is just ridiculous…
I agree with Suricata. I will always feel she was meant to be in line with the TOS E…
That’s really big. Thanks for the comparison chart. (The Enterprise-E is my favorite!)
If the Abrams Enterprise is bigger than the Sovereign Class 1701-E… just how enormous would the Abrams version of 1701-E be then?! Super Star Destroyer size?
I’m so glad you posted this.
There’s a really, REALLY bad ‘comparison’ that makes the new ship look 2-3 times larger than a Galaxy Class. *rolls eyes*
I still vividly remember ‘discussions’ in high school (70s) with some actually declaring without a doubt the TOS Enterprise (We didn’t call it TOS then…) was, in fact, 5 miles long.
In spite of the fact I still have the paperback ‘The Making of Star Trek’ that shows it overlayed with an aircraft carrier.
Me. I’m glad we have another design to geek over.
Rob
HA!! Suricata, I’ve got my popcorn, too! It really doesn’t bother me what the size of the ship is, and I liked the lines the first time I saw it. Though I will *always* like Ryan’s earlier design. 🙂
Seeing it next to E-E, I don’t think it looks so big, although I know it’s much bigger than the TOS Lady, herself.
I have a real busy day and you go to town posting too much cool stuff to look at, you prolific poster, you!
So, if there was no physical miniature work, what did Kerner Optical do on the movie? The articles I’ve read say they did the pyro digitally as well, so that doesn’t leave much else that could be in Kerner’s court, even though they do have a screen credit from what I’ve read.
With all due respect I doubt that the very model of the ship was laid out to that large from the start. To me it looks like it was designed at 300m, and some time later someone thought it would be cool to scale it up to rival a Star Destroyer or something, but without making substantial changes to the ship (only the windows would be quite small on a 300m ship). There is a lot of evidence that, in spite of everything, at least some people working in the production went with the 300m size. Sorry to cast doubt on the official figures. It just looks like a duck, it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise_comment.htm#size
Don’t worry, Bernd. You are casting no doubt whatsoever, so no need to apologize. 😉
Bernd,
John worked on the movie, he’s said the ship was planned to be large from the get-go, how much more black and white do you need this to be? You need a contract written in blood or something?
it was all over the place in scale when I was there and there was never a version less than 3000 feet in the talks. I was done in October of 07 and the size had not been defined as of yet but it was monstrously huge in all the talks when they were trying to work out the deck counts,,, this one is still a big mystery and I am sure once the actual figure is announced no one will buy it with all the cross talk going on!!!! HAAA!
Well with that size comparision shot of the ST XI , as compared to the Ent-E , means to me that my Playmates ST XI Enterprise is nearly in scale with my AA Enterprise E , which is a bit odd to me , but i’ll get used to it …eventually . LOL 😀
John, you have made, and destroyed, some people’s day. 😉
So, the new “official” number is within ~100m of the Interactive Tour number…interesting. I could live with this slightly smaller ship than the 762m from IT, but I’d prefer the IT number to give as much “wiggle room” as possible to fit that shuttlebay in properly.
Well, the figure sounds about right. ~15 meters less then what I thought it would be, but still well within tolerances for the overwhelming on-screen evidence we have in the movie.
Now it’s just a matter of arguing the old Enterprise was originally supposed to be at least as large as well… 😉
There are still fans arguing over whether The Original Series NCC-1701 was 947 feet long or over 1000 feet long…
I really don’t see why the size has to be such a big issue… and why people think there has to be a universal size for windows: can’t they tell the difference between “proportion” and “dimension”?
I agree with Ron Moore’s assessment in one early article about the new movie and the need to ‘reboot’ the franchise: writing for the show was creatively bankrupted by the weight of so-called ‘canon.’ Writers’ and designers’ imaginations are stifled, and they’re forced to fit into a heavily-restricted mini-verse.
It’s ridiculous: you can’t even draw a starship window without it conforming to some predefined size! It’s okay to imagine Star Trek, but it has to be imagined in a specific way! Or else the Star Trek: Thought/Mind Police will get you!
The irony of all this is that for a show that supposedly holds up the virtue of exploration and diversity, the practice of so many of its fans is actually conservatism and conformity.
Shatner was right: It’s just a movie; get a life!
Kudos to John E and all those who try to be truly creative and imaginative and push them beyond boundaries, and like to share them with others! Now, that’s a real LIFE!
Well, nice to see that we starting get a definite number with the A-Enterprise. And she’s slightly longer than your baby.
But they sure about the length of the Drilling cable being 5 miles? Seemed to be longer with the Narada being in low orbit and the end of the drilling platform being like somewhere between 10,000 to 20,000 feet in the air. (With Vulcan’s atmosphere being thinner, you think they need their helmets).
Poor John. His wonderful blog is about to get overrun by the “NO ITZ NOT THAT BIG IT WUZ DESIGNED AT 300M AND SCALED WRONG!!!!” crowd.
I’m completely satisfied with 2357 feet. This discussion should be over. Thanks for sticking your neck out, John!
That’s why Suricata and I grabbed our popcorn and pulled up a chair! 🙂
It’s not been much of a show so far, though.
Well, we’ve seen Shock, Denial and Anger… guess we’ve moved into the Bargaining phase! “I now accept it’s over 700 meters… but you didn’t mean to do that originally, right?” 🙂
Thanks for sharing John, I’m another who’s completely satisfied by the official numbers. As much as I respect Bernd, I have to shake my head when one of the problems for a 2300′ E is that it disagrees with Old Trek.
Back to teh happyz, did you help design the other Starfleet ships? I especially liked the one with two dorsal engineering hulls and two ventral nacelles. Was there any discussion about starship engineering principles, or was it all just what looked cool and “Federation-ish?” Oh, and I loved the engineering sets, but never got a sense of what did what. I might be too used to Old Trek engineering sets, but engineering has to have more than pipes, right? Even the Typhoon’s pipes lead to stuff! http://englishrussia.com/?p=2525
Knowing John, it will be a while before he checks this thread so I thought I’d just let you know that he came to the production show late and worked on shuttles (many of them not shown), the Police hoverbike and some other fun stuff, including the shipyards.
Hopefully we’ll be able to see more soon on the other site when it’s all coordinated with trekmovie.com and ready.
Maybe tomorrow he’ll check in with the full scoop.
Hi John!
This seems a rather contentious page to de-lurk on, so I’ll preface by saying thanks for all the great designs you’ve turned out for us over the years!
Re: this size issue, the navel-gazing at TrekMovie.com (any my love of old BEST OF TREK articles) compelled me to write a little off-the-cuff attempted fanon to help soothe a few feathers. It seems, at least in some measure, to have helped. Perhaps you (and maybe Bernd 😉 ) might enjoy:
EXCERPTED FROM PROCEEDS OF THE STARFLEET CORPS OF ENGINEERS BIANNUAL CONVOCATION, STARDATE 2260.6.1
“Prior to the Kelvin Incident, starship design had been running up against what seemed to be an insurmountable utmost size limit. Failure to heed it resulted in dangerous structural deficiencies — the oversized Kelvin class, a most eggrecgious example, tended towards structural integrity failure at high stresses. As a result, Starfleet design doctrine had revamped in the 2230s, adopting a rigorous program of downsizing to avoid this. The foremost casualty was the in-development Constitution Class, whose initial conceptualization had called for a ship of over 900 meters in length. The post-revision plans, though retaining the overall spaceframe, had radically downsized the frame in deference to these subspace stresses, with the disappointed structural engineers provisionally and begrudgingly settling at a final scope that was almost a THIRD their original size. The ships would suffer dreadfully in terms of power, sophistication, and in the amount of specialized personnel and equipment they could carry — and their complement of support craft, especially, would have to be drastically reduced.
All this changes, however, following the Kelvin Incident. A mysterious five-mile-long craft (rumored to be Romulan, though Starfleet never confirms this) engages and destroys the USS Kelvin… but not before the Kelvin is able to obtain extensive external and (courtesy of the late Catain Robau) internal sensor data. Most critically, the survivors bring back data on an internally propagated energy field generated by the intruder ship that, according to the scans, is absorbing MILLIONS of kilodynes of structural stress. Jubilant Federation engineers are able to reproduce the technology, which they dub a “structural integrity field”. [nb: as the Narada had just emerged from a wormhole, it’s SIF might’ve been powered WAY up, rendering analysis all the easier.] Immediately putting the discovery into practical use, the engineers are freed of the previous size constraint. Several designs in progress are reverted to their earlier, larger original sizes – including the Constitution. Though this double refactoring of the plans delays inception of the class by over a decade, the trade-off as deemed worthwhile, given what is gained in the larger, more capable design. (Starfleet brass, meanwhile, reeling from the Kelvin’s handy defeat by the intruder ship, mauy have other, more militaristic purposes in mind for the upscaled class….)
[and just for additional retcon fun]
Other results of the Kelvin Incident were less positive, however: serving as Assistant Chief Engineer on the Kelvin was T’Doofa, a regular remote correspondent to various prestigious starship engineering publications. Her loss in the disaster cuts short her highly influential series of articles outlining her iconoclastic theory of Starship Interior Design, BPCAS (Bright, Primary Colors, Angular, Simple.) Based in part on the prevalent “look” of the Vulcan homeworld, this design ethos advocated plain, untextured surfaces, discreetly camouflaging working parts behind simple bulkheads, using colored lighting to influence mood, etc. Her death throws the continued growth in popularity of this previously rising design philosophy into serious doubt…”
I loved reading that on TrekMovie, thanks for reposting it!
I am absolutely in love with the new Enterprise design, but I have to admit that I’m having trouble accepting the 2,357 foot (718.4 meters) size. All of the exterior details, from the size and placement of the windows to the airlock hatches, imply that the ship may be just a little larger than the TMP Enterprise, but nowhere near the size of the Enterprise-E. It seems to me that they chose these particular details as specific reference to the earlier designs (i.e. same window shape = same window size). The only visual evidence that the ship might be much larger is the huge size of the hangar bay and the sprawling interior shots of Engineering.
I fully understand that this is really much ado about nothing (we are, after all, talking about a fictional starship) but, at least for me, proper scaling of these ships is an important part of the “reality” of this film. JJ Abrams had said repeatedly that he wanted this Trek to feel more “real” than the previous films. To me that includes nailing down a proper and realistic size for the Enterprise. Heck, that was one of the main reasons for Kirk’s and Scotty’s fly-around of the refit Enterprise in TMP; for the first time the ship was given a human scale, and it instantly made it seem that much more real.
If I stand next to a docked aircraft carrier or cruise liner I can see how big it is and judge its scale by the visible details. If I then go aboard I can discern how its internal arrangement configures to its exterior shape. The interior will conform to the exterior because the ship is real. The designers of fictional spaceships shouldn’t be held to any less stringent rules simply because what they are designing doesn’t really exist. In the context of the film the ship is real, so the rules should still apply.
Let me put this another way. You’re watching an action film and the good guys have just discovered that the bad guys are planning some nefarious deed all the way across town. The good guys need to get there fast to avert the disaster so they jump into their high performance sports car and race off to save the day. You’re shown various shots of the sports car careening through city streets, narrowly averting pedestrians, other cars, and the ubiquitous vendor carts that always seem to be in the way. But when we see the car’s interior, the good guys are obviously driving some kind of recreational vehicle like a Winnebago. There’s even a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a small breakfast nook clearly visible behind them. Are you going to say “well, it’s just a movie so it doesn’t matter,” or will you say “wait a minute, that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,”?
I’m not trying to disparage any of the amazing artists who worked on the new Trek film. I really did enjoy it and I appreciate how much planning went into it, but I’m just not sold on the stated size of the new Enterprise and I would like to hear some explanation as to how they came up with that scale. After all, I’m a Trek fan and I’m not happy unless I’m being nit-picky. 😉
The Gizmodo blog size of 2379.75 feet appears to be authentic likewise, since it allegedly came from a source at Bad Robot, so we’ll have to wait and see. It’s good that the numbers are slowly converging, though.
I guess just because it is official and scaled this way by ILM doesn’t mean it was the original design size.
Yes, it does, actually. Unless you’re calling John a liar. And if not, why would they mislead him? He was tasked with designing the shipyard, I imagine knowing the size of the ship would be somewhat important when designing its construction facility.
Of course no offense to anyone, especially not Mr Eaves. I just meant that whoever made that decision at ILM might not have been the same guy who actually designed the new Enterprise.
I’m not touching the Enterprise size debate with a 20 foot pole. 😉
I am, however, curious about the size of the rest of the fleet. (particularly the Kelvin) Has anybody seen any official numbers on any of those ships?
Wow! I didn’t think it’d be THAT big, but it was certainly clear from the ‘Under Construction’ ads that the saucer was a lot thicker. Nice to see an almost kind of final number on there.
And it means they can fit that big Engineerng set as well as the shuttles in nicely 😉
I love the shots of the ship yards. Never had the pleasure of seeing a Carrier up close. Not trying to be a downer but some of the interiors looked so shiny and others like engineering just looked like a sewage treatment plant.
I have no problem with the ship being that huge. For me (and many others) the problem/confusion is that the detailing seemed to strongly suggest a significantly smaller scale ship.
Here’s a few examples:
1. Refit Style bridge
2. Refit style windows & placement in saucer rim
3. Refit style docking ports & placement
4. Kirk’s escape pod ejection, and relative size seemed to suggest the port was a similar size to the Refit ports. I’m now calculating them at 14-15ft.
Then things like this started to add up. There’s an ILM article on StudioDaily.com that has the comment “Although it stayed true to form, the Enterprise grew from 1300 feet to 2000 feet in length”, which seemed to suggest that that the initial CG model was done at one scale, then scaled up later.
(http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/Reinventing-Star-Treks-VFX_10905.html)
Add that with the “normal” TMP style bridge at the top of the saucer, I had theorized that with a forced upscale during the production they had to use the “light slot” for the placement of the bridge. I would have liked to of seen the bridge set scaled up as well to match, and truly have made it a massive command center, and have it back in it’s “normal” location.
By just adding some extra detailing, such as windows in the saucer rim to visually reference that there could be 3-4 decks would have gone a long way to alleviate the confusion. Though right now I’m
When I had thought that an up-scaling had happened from the fore mention of 1300ft, I threw together this comparison graphic: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3385/3610833910_651ced65a6_b.jpg
Mr Eaves, just a question: Since the ship has the detailing that I mentioned, could a new director come in and do a “downsizing”? (To raise Starfleet’s CAFE/MPG standards………..lol)
To whomever that moderates, I had entered in the wrong email address in me prior post. The correct one is embedded with the the heard to this post. Sorry for the mistake.
I’m not getting into it save to post the comparison I made back when Gizmodo did their piece on it:
I am also going to say that I think this is a little big, but at least we have Eaves here to talk to us about it and calm us down….
What can I say? I love the new design, and at this point I don’t give a fetid dingo’s kidney about how big the ship is supposed to be.
The bridge was far, far larger than the refit, and the relocation of it to the A/B decks makes sense.
The interior of the engineering & shuttlebay areas was never an issue for me either…I simply assumed that everything outside of the saucer wouldn’t need to be all gyprock and shag carpet because of the industrial nature of what was going on in there. In fact, I envisioned the secondary hull to be an essentially hollow cylinder packed with machinery, workshops, cargo bays, and the shuttle launch/recovery area. Traditional “decks” would only be present where needed.
Maybe some of the backlash is because we simply don’t have the massive amount of well-established trivia to rely on. Like the fandom in early 1980, we’re in the peculiar position of having to make it up as we go along again… 🙂 (BTW, that’s a GOOD thing if you ask me…nothing better than SF that makes you fire up the imagination again!)
Thanks for the info John, and I look forward to more behind the scenes anecdotes and details in the coming months.
“My God!” she big, bigger than I thought.
I as I mentioned in your eariler blog, that I could not see the Ent being built on Earth than transported into space. But I was think about the TOS Ent which is what 300m?
This thing would need a fleet of tugs to get it off the ground, and they used anti-Gav’s the force needs would cursh the ground under it as it lifts off.
All well Kirk’s Enterprise will always be the TOS and TMP version to me.
I am not satisfied with this scale, but I gonna have to accept it. What should I do? lol And we all have to consider it’s a new time line, everything changed. It never stopped to be Star Trek, but it’s a new Star Trek. I’m happe that Star Trek lives on – in another way I would prefer, but it lives on!!
Bigger isn’t necessarily better.
To quote Nigel Powers, “it’s not the size, it’s how you use it”.
Put me down as another one who doesn’t think the details don’t match the scale. I’d have preferred a ship closer to the original size, but windows reflecting more decks and careful reconsideration of the refit details would work well too. The final result … looks like a disappointing kludge.
But even more distressing to me … the Narada’s drill cable was only five miles long? That makes no sense whatsoever. We saw Kirk, Sulu, and the Redshirt skydive from space to a platform suspended on the end of the cable. The characters could breathe on that platform. That cable would have to have been at least forty to fifty miles long for that kind of range in pressure.
I liked this film at first, but the details aren’t holding up to any sort of scrutiny.
I’m not sure why the powers that be would want the ship that big. The only ones who seem to care are folks like us. With everything that has been changed (a lot for the better), why can’t they give us this ship in the scale and dimensions that most of us want.
When a model of this ship comes out, I’m going to build her as if she was 300m…and with RED Bussard Collectors and red pin stripes!
I know, I know…it’s only a pretend space ship in a pretend movie in a pretend alternate universe. However, those of us who are Trek fans and geared more towards the technical end tend to have expectations.
As for the design of the new Enterprise…thumbs-up here.
well, I guess they never figured people would get this upset over something as trivial as the length of the ship. As for doing what “fans want” well, I don’t think any studio would gamble millions of dollars on what a small group of tech-minded fans want. I don’t care how big the ship is myself, I only care that the ship is self consistent and logical at its given scale, which the new movie design most certainly is.
People say that the windows are too big, as are the hatches. Do some analysis and you’ll find they are not wildly overscaled at all – the windows are generously sized, but not inconsistant with what we’ve seen in the TNG era. (the interior sets had very undersized windows in most cases compared to the scale dimensions on the exterior model, but that’s just a production expedient, not a careless oversight)
As for the hatches, they are somewhat bigger than we’ve come to expect from Trek ships, but I reckon this is a good thing – now the hatches actually look suitable for cargo handling. They obviously have the ability to launch escape pods too (I imagine there’s some sort of rack with pods on that can be lowered in line with the hatch to shoot the pods out)
*sigh* I still think that ship is ugly as sin.
A pre-emptive sorry-in-advance to any hotheads who take that personally and throw an angry fit because I expressed an opinion.
WOW! I wonder how big that would make the GALAXY class of NU-TREK!
The idea of building a ship the size of the original Enterprise on the ground was ludicrous enough. Building one bigger than the Enterprise-D on the surface? That’s beyond idiotic.
And since John’s not the designer, I have no qualms about saying that it’s hideous as well.
Did Geoffery Mandel’s comparison chart look anything like this?
Yes the new movie was fun, it had had exitment action and great visuals and it was what is was, and most of the general public liked it hence the 300 million plus world wide gross. But lets face it, It wasent STAR TREK. As for the Enterprise: The ship being build on the ground. It being bigger the the 1701-D, The brewery for an engine room, the shuttlebay interior, come on, you can tell that the producer’s did not care about design logic, or Trek Cannon they just wanted that whiz-bang cool look to please the 14 year olds at the movie megaplex. I am sure John did what he could, I have met the man several times and know him to be a great and commited Trek fan and a great artist! I love his designs for the shipyard in the other post, anazing stuff.
Let’s hope they listen to more of your design ideas in Star Trek 2 🙂
Paul F.
Well. That’s cool and all, but I’m really still going to sit here with my fingers in my ears going “LALALALA” and pretend she’s around 300 meters long, at least until someone makes Chris Pine specify an exact length in the sequel 😉
Given that ‘nothing’s the same anymore’ (to quote my favorite B5 commander), a Galaxy Class AbramsTrek ship might be a lot smaller, since it’d probably have warp engines the size of walnuts (not because it is something Kirk mused to Scotty about in RETURN TO TOMORROW, but because the Abramsdesigns will have been on steroids so long that the ship-testicles will have shrunk as a result.)
Funny about the new E — some people love it, some people hate it…though it seems like I’ve heard more hate than love. I think it’s a decent design (except for the nacelles which I don’t care for at all), though personally I’d have liked to see something closer to the original version.
I’m not necessarily completely opposed to the idea of a huge Enterprise..I kind of liked the idea at first, the thing is, I’m not sure it makes sense. If you put the changes to the E design down to the telemetry brought back by the survivors of the Kelvin incident (and maybe other effects of the incident) I have to ask — did the data from one relatively brief encounter really produce enough of a technological watershed to produce a ship several times larger than the original (i.e. prime universe) one? I guess you could say it could’ve but it just seems much more plausible that (again, relatively) small changes occurred leading to substantial revision of the class.
I’ve seen several attempts to work out the size of the new Enterprise and one put it a bit larger than the refit (450 meters as I recall) and a few of the details seemed to match up — the torpedo launcher was of similar size to the one on the refit Enterprise as were the docking ports. I’d also point out that in the shot of the E under construction there are what could be two workers standing just below the launcher and that to me would seem to argue for the smaller size. And — not that this is evidence — but it just looks like it’s around the old size, I’d think there’d be more windows if it were substantially larger. I don’t get why Abrams et al would want to make the ship 2000+ meters long, I’m not sure what it brought to the story..certainly the size didn’t play any real part in this particular movie.
Of course in the end it’s not all that important…I hope it’s *really* in the ballpark of the original (after all, the reason that there’s even a discussion is because nothing in the film firmly established the ship’s size) but it doesn’t sound like the direction the official sources are headed in.
300 meters was always stupidly small for a starship anyway…
On my offline working version of my site I have an Enterprise comparison chart which includes the new E as about the same size as the original Enterprise and E-A.
I wouldn’t have a problem with this ship being bigger than the Sovereign-class, except that the external details just don’t seem to support this.
They work out pretty well at the 715-762m ballpark.
I was just pondering the new/official size of 700+ meters, in relation to the visual details. I’m thinking that the confusing/smaller scale details were done that way on purpose in order to give future directors the option to scale the ship differently. Depending on storyline requirements and visual aesthetics desired by the director.
JJ did state that he doesn’t want the NuTrek to be tided down by any excessive canon, and this could be his way of setting the new “nonstandard”.
There seem to be far too many visual bits of evidence that support the new Enterprise being closer in size to the refit-Enterprise:
* The proportion of the bridge section to the diameter of the saucer. (upside-down pull back)
* Size of the viewscreen “window” compared to bridge section. (upside-down pull back)
* The shuttlecraft only barely squeezing out of the hangar bay doors. (Pike and company leaving for the Narada)
* The two docking ports on either side of the ship, compared to the size of Kirk’s “mutany pod” that we see shooting out of one of them.
* The saucer rim windows and concentric lines that are nearly IDENTICAL to the ones on the refit-Enterprise
* The size of the workers welding on top of the warp nacelles. (teaser trailer)
Combine all of this evidence to the contrary, with he notion that…. I mean, why would this ship be so large @500+ feet) to begin with?? I love ya John, and I deeply respect what you and Richard Holcomb have done for this film and the franchise as a whole..
..but honestly, 2,357 feet? How do you figure?
only because these are the figures coming from ILM!!!! SOORY nothing is confirmed but this is what Keep’s coming out!!
I’ve looked at the profile diagrams (the ones I assume are official), crunched some numbers, and you get the ship making a lot more sense at 600 – 700m than it does at 300. Seriously, you can’t tell just by looking at the film a few times. If you sit down and measure everything though, everything fits. Nobody will believe the numbers, oddly, preferring to believe fleeting glimpses obtained in theater screenings… but I guess the ship’s configuration and design are ultimately what that viewer wants them to be.
This image was posted at Trek BBS, its not mine, I independently verified its accuracy for my own interest though and I arrived at the same conclusions.
The size of the XI Enterprise and the whole debate itself seems rather Freudian to me. The language being used is funny that it can all be used as an on going running joke….lol.
“No its just as big as the 1701-E!”
“No its not its smaller”
“Just look at it. Its huge!”
Seriously?
I was just notified of this:
http://www.startrekmovie.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8359
If this is true, it pretty much confirms all of my suspicions. 😛
Yes, but it depends on how far they’re willing to go with the new scale, and for that we need to wait for more evidence. The Defiant isn’t 560 feet long because despite what almost everyone (and I mean almost everyone close to official sources) said back then, the production never could work out an interior that makes sense with it, with countless episodes supporting a smaller MSD, even if the VFX supervisors did want it bigger. However, if the future movies should add more evidence for the bigger Enterprise and make a smaller scale impossible, there will be no way around it.
That’s why at this point I’m not ready to dismiss the newer, larger scaling figures — it all depends on future evidence.
There’s a Star Trek article in Cinefex #118, with this quote from ILM Art Director Alex Jaeger: “The reconfigured ship was a larger vessel than previous manifestations– approximately 1,200-feet-long compared to the 947-foot ship of the original series. Once we got the ship built and started putting it in environments it felt too small. The shuttle bay gave us a clear relative scale — shuttles initially appeared much bigger than we had imagined — so we bumped up the Enterprise scale, which gave her a grander feel and allowed us to include more detail.”
BINGO! Finally some conformation about the upscale/super-size. This also seems to confirm the ship may have still been at 1,200ft when the EFX were done for the construction sequence.
Now I wonder if this may be leaving a loophole for the ship to be scaled back down.
We’ll just have to wait and see how the evidence develops. If they start adding more decks canonically based on the larger size, creating onscreen cutaway diagrams and blueprints, creating more VFX shots with such a figure in mind, then there’s no way. Alex Jaeger doesn’t strike me as someone who would scale it up without worrying whether it will make sense internally in the end; it looks like they deliberately chose the factor of two in order to allow them to insert decks in-between. However, it all depends on which way they’ve chosen to go in the long run; the evidence is being released quite rapidly, so I hope we won’t have to wait long for an unambiguous answer.
Educational post! About time somebody that knows what they are talking about and can also produce exellent content for us the readers. Definitely looking forward to your next offering.