Day 3 "Beginning the process"

Before you can start any project of this nature, you have to have a set of accurate blueprints. Before you can lay out a set of blueprints, you have to have accurate data to go on. Matt Jeffries gave the dimensions of the ship as 947ft long and superimposed a top view of the starship over the CV 65 Aircraft Carrier and this pretty much checks. The actual Starship model resides at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. That seems like the best place to start, with the actual physical model and dimensions. http://www.nasm.si.edu/visit/concessions/shops/enterprise.cfm
On that page you find the dimensions as stated by the Smithsonian staff. Since the had information direct from Paramount, I'd say that settles any dimension dispute. I'm not going to get into the various theorys of what scale was used, or why it was 11' feet long, or any of the rest. For the topic of this blog we will use the data given by the experts and will not engage in an excersise in futility and attmept to rationalize a theoretical ship from a 40 yr old television show. We want to deal with the real model and factual dimensions. There's more information here.. http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19740668000 . And here is an X-Ray of the engineering hull. http://www.nasm.si.edu/imagedetail.cfm?imageID=2210 There was much more available at one time, fortunaely I saved every bit of data that was published on the site. Unfortunately, without permission I cannot reproduce that data here until I get permission from the staff at the Smithsonian. This model has been through several different versions and has had more than one *restoration*. I wont take the time to detail all of that here, but will instead go through the references for the production version of the craft and will later get into the separate screen versions. There are a number of helpful photos here http://www.cloudster.com/sets&vehicles/STEnterprise/SmithsonianMiniature.htm . Phil Broad has done a fine job of documenting a lot of information here. http://www.cloudster.com/sets&vehicles/STEnterprise/EnterpriseTop.htm#11foot Check all of the links and enjoy.