Post by Dimitris on Oct 10, 2003 7:16:17 GMT -5
The Sovereign class Enterprise-E was designed for "Star Trek : First Contact" by John Eaves, with assistance from Rick Sternbach and Herman Zimmerman. Eaves had this to say regarding the new ship :
Eaves : "I wanted a sleek, very fast ship with favourite elements from all the starships that had gone before, especially Bill George's Excelsior. Everyone knows the basic shape; the saucer section, the body, the two nacelles. They've been arranged so many times in so many beautiful ways, I thought 'well how will I approach this?'. I decided to start with a really sleek design. While all of the Enterprises were beautiful, none of them had a really streamlined, 'warp speed' look. We have the 'cadillacs' of starships; I wanted a porsche."
The Sovereign certainly looks sleek and fast as hell - we don't have any idea of the ship's top speed but I tend to rate it as one of the fastest in the fleet. This would give it a top speed well above warp 9.9 range, to match the Warp 9.975 maximum cruise speed of the Intrepid class.
The Sovereign's length is given by Picard in "First Contact" as "almost 700 metres". The Encyclopedia lists it as 680 metres on the illustration of the various Enterprises (3rd edition, page 138). This is the figure I have gone with for the Sovereign for the purposes of this website. Assuming this length is correct, the following table gives some figures for various components of the ship :
Component Size
Overall Length 680 m
Beam 242.2 m
Height 84.75 m
Length of Nacelle 323.4 m
Maximum width of nacelle 32.7 m
Maximum height of nacelle 32.4 m
Span of nacelles 214.3 m
Engineering hull height 54.3 m
Engineering hull length (from front of quantum tube housing to back of hull) 384.7 m
Length of Saucer (bow to back of impulse engines) 332 m
Width of saucer 242.2 m
Height of saucer (excludes quantum torpedo housing) 38 m
Diameter of deflector dish 22.5 m
The ship is fitted with 196 escape pods. These were of a new design with a near-triangular hatch cover rather than the older square hatches used on the Galaxy class. The same hatches were used on all of the new ships designed for First Contact. The Enterprise-E pods were used in First Contact, to evacuate the crew to an island on Earth. Presumably either the pods are capable of returning to orbit and re-docking with the ship, or the ship beamed them back into space and tractored them back to their places when we weren't looking.
There are 24 decks on the Enterprise-E, according to Picard in "First Contact". However, the same movie features a reference to deck 26 and Nemesis contains a reference to deck 29! The ship schematic on the bridge shows 24 decks to be the correct figure, so something funny has presumably gone on with the deck numbering system somewhere.
Between Insurrection and Nemesis, the basic structure of the Sovereign went through some minor changes. If we put diagrams of the original and revised sovereign next to one another we can see the differences.
Details analysis at : ditl.org/index.htm?daybody=/articles/datsovereignchanges.htm
Eaves : "I wanted a sleek, very fast ship with favourite elements from all the starships that had gone before, especially Bill George's Excelsior. Everyone knows the basic shape; the saucer section, the body, the two nacelles. They've been arranged so many times in so many beautiful ways, I thought 'well how will I approach this?'. I decided to start with a really sleek design. While all of the Enterprises were beautiful, none of them had a really streamlined, 'warp speed' look. We have the 'cadillacs' of starships; I wanted a porsche."
The Sovereign certainly looks sleek and fast as hell - we don't have any idea of the ship's top speed but I tend to rate it as one of the fastest in the fleet. This would give it a top speed well above warp 9.9 range, to match the Warp 9.975 maximum cruise speed of the Intrepid class.
The Sovereign's length is given by Picard in "First Contact" as "almost 700 metres". The Encyclopedia lists it as 680 metres on the illustration of the various Enterprises (3rd edition, page 138). This is the figure I have gone with for the Sovereign for the purposes of this website. Assuming this length is correct, the following table gives some figures for various components of the ship :
Component Size
Overall Length 680 m
Beam 242.2 m
Height 84.75 m
Length of Nacelle 323.4 m
Maximum width of nacelle 32.7 m
Maximum height of nacelle 32.4 m
Span of nacelles 214.3 m
Engineering hull height 54.3 m
Engineering hull length (from front of quantum tube housing to back of hull) 384.7 m
Length of Saucer (bow to back of impulse engines) 332 m
Width of saucer 242.2 m
Height of saucer (excludes quantum torpedo housing) 38 m
Diameter of deflector dish 22.5 m
The ship is fitted with 196 escape pods. These were of a new design with a near-triangular hatch cover rather than the older square hatches used on the Galaxy class. The same hatches were used on all of the new ships designed for First Contact. The Enterprise-E pods were used in First Contact, to evacuate the crew to an island on Earth. Presumably either the pods are capable of returning to orbit and re-docking with the ship, or the ship beamed them back into space and tractored them back to their places when we weren't looking.
There are 24 decks on the Enterprise-E, according to Picard in "First Contact". However, the same movie features a reference to deck 26 and Nemesis contains a reference to deck 29! The ship schematic on the bridge shows 24 decks to be the correct figure, so something funny has presumably gone on with the deck numbering system somewhere.
Between Insurrection and Nemesis, the basic structure of the Sovereign went through some minor changes. If we put diagrams of the original and revised sovereign next to one another we can see the differences.
Details analysis at : ditl.org/index.htm?daybody=/articles/datsovereignchanges.htm