Star Trek Shuttles

[Crystalline_Entity]

I think if I were trying to use a Star Trek ship in GURPS I'd start with the volume rather than mass. We know how long (roughly) most starships are (though there are inconsistencies!) and so can estimate a volume and can check it because we know how many decks a given starship has (the common ones anyway), and how tall a human is. With mass I get the feeling the writers of each episode just made up a number, so I'd take it with a pinch of salt. Though given that GURPS Spaceships is a mass-based system there's always going to be some error in conversion. Star Trek isn't consistent itself so I think you just have to come up with something which "feels" right.

Edit: If it's any use a while ago I discovered a webpage with guesses at volumes of starships from Star Trek and Star Wars here

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

With mass I get the feeling the writers of each episode just made up a number,

It's all made up but with the TOS Enterprise (NCC-1701)they just decided it was the same length as the 1960s USN nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise but 2x as massive even though it carried a little lass than 1/10th the crew.

If we go all the way back to FASATrek one of the developers has said that they took the 190,000 ton figure for gospel and then took the Official deck plans and tried to allocate that mass with their design system.

They ran ort of stuff to spend mass on by about 20,000 tons and just put the rest into the warp engines which were then listed as 170,000 tons in the design system. Neutronium shielding or something. At least it explains why the secondary hull has so little effect on the ship's center of mass. :)

The odd thing is that there was an Enterprise (NX-01) episode where they used the corridors in the nacelles as a radiation shelter (while the warp engines were offline) because they had massive shielding.

So I wouldn't go to all the trouble of the volume-based approach. I have no idea of the densities involved.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

Edit: If it's any use a while ago I discovered a webpage with guesses at volumes of starships from Star Trek and Star Wars here

I've been using The Starfleet-Museum for ship stats and blueprints in my Star Trek games.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

Edit: If it's any use a while ago I discovered a webpage with guesses at volumes of starships from Star Trek and Star Wars here

I wouldn't use a vs site for a reference, personally: the creators tend to get too wrapped up in the argument, and become rather biased.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

Neither. Both. The Million Gross Tons figure was pulled from a throw-away line in one of the episodes. The 190,000 metric ton figure was pulled from the (semi-official, but not really) Star Trek Tech Manual. Neither one necessarily likes up with the reality of the show, let alone the reality of how massive the Enterprise should be.

ISTR reading somewhere that at least some of the mass numbers that the production staff sometimes threw around were based on the Apollo Command Module density...which is actually relatively high because there was little in the way of empty space in the ACM. But they applied that same density to the larger ships of the Federation, and got rather high mass numbers.

But whether that story is true or not I do not know.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

ISTR reading somewhere that at least some of the mass numbers that the production staff sometimes threw around were based on the Apollo Command Module density...which is actually relatively high because there was little in the way of empty space in the ACM. But they applied that same density to the larger ships of the Federation, and got rather high mass numbers.

But whether that story is true or not I do not know.

Not True for TOS. There length and mass numbers derived from the CVN Enterprise to NCC-1701 Enterprise in the way I said. It was well known at the time.

The Apollo Command Module wasn't tremendously dense. At least it floated by itself. It was n't very stable in the water without help but it did float.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Not True for TOS. There length and mass numbers derived from the CVN Enterprise to NCC-1701 Enterprise in the way I said. It was well known at the time.

The Apollo Command Module wasn't tremendously dense. At least it floated by itself. It was n't very stable in the water without help but it did float.

It would give relatively high density if scaled up, though. A larger vessel, with more open space within it, wouldn't reflect it very well.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

It would give relatively high density if scaled up, though. A larger vessel, with more open space within it, wouldn't reflect it very well.

Depends: it was also relatively flimsy, to save mass. A ship with more open space but thicker scantlings might balance out close to the same density. Really, there are too many variable to say.