Artists and designers have used for the golden ratio for elegance, balance and aesthetics in design since at least the Renaissance, and possibly even as far back as ancient Greece and ancient Egypt. If the vision of Gene Roddenberry for Star Trek continues on course, the design of future starships will also be based on the unique and timeless proportion of Phi, 1.618, the Golden Ratio.
Roddenberry turned to Matt Jefferies, an aviation and mechanical artist, with his request to “design a space ship unlike any other, with no fins, rocket exhaust trails, powerful and capable of exceeding the speed of light with a crew of several hundred on five-year mission to explore unknown galaxies in outer space.”
Jefferies started with a blank page and a marker, and with a very pragmatic design ethic. He reasoned that “a starship’s engines would be extremely powerful and potentially dangerous, and positioned them far away from the core of the ship, with the added benefit of modular design so that they could be ejected quickly in an emergency.” His design documents revealed that he was also a very exacting designer. He specified the dimensions on his designs to the 1/10000th of an inch. This was clearly beyond any practical level of accuracy in the construction of the small-scale models used on the Star Trek set and indicates that he was working with a mathematical precision based on geometric formulas and relationships.
Given the elegance of its design, it’s not too surprising that golden ratio relationships are incorporated into the design of the USS Enterprise, in its overall dimensions and in the details of the small design features, as revealed in the illustrations below.
Each image below features a grid overlay from PhiMatrix, in which each line is in golden ratio proportion to the ones on either side of it.
Note in the next three images how the tapering of the rear section of the Enterprise is based on Golden Ratios of the outside width, center line and inside width of the propulsion units:
Even the finer details of the design reflect an attention to detail in applying the golden ratio:
The golden ratio also appears in the front view of the Enterprise:
The side view of the Entreprise also reflects golden ratios:
With Star Trek set in the 23rd century, The USS Enterprise may “boldly go where no man has gone before,” but its design reaches back to the earliest design creations of civilization and the mathematics of design found throughout nature.
Thanks go to Kevin Muldoon for his article “The Geometry of Starship Design – Star Trek” which inspired this article and the search for additional golden ratios in the Enterprise.
Golden ratio grid lines created with PhiMatrix
Other references:
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/uss-enterprise-space-cruiser-sheet-1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Jefferies
http://www.mattjefferies.com/start.html
http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/1701_dimensions.pdf
http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/history/1701-33-inch.html
http://designbygeometry.blogspot.com/2011/09/blog-post.html
http://designbygeometry.blogspot.com/2011/10/federation-constitution-class-heavy.html
http://www.shawcomputing.net/racerx/trek_stuff/jefferies_1964.pdf
2013-04-06
I very much enjoyed your article entitled, “Design of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise”. I agree with most of your taste in starship design, however, it is also a very unrealistic design. In fact, there is a guy who claims to be an engineer who thinks he can build the starship USS Enterprise on his website:
http://www.buildtheenterprise.org
Personally, I think this guy is a quack because as iconic as the original USS Enterprise starship design is, unfortunately, it is a poor and ridiculous design from an aero engineering perspective. It is unbalanced, front heavy, it has no room for propellant, no rotating sections to provide artificial gravity, and most important of all, it has no heat radiators. Every starship, no matter how advanced must have heat radiators or it will cook up the crew and fry them to death. Although Matt Jefferies knew a lot of about aviation, he did not know anything about aero engineering. In terms of a sci-fi spaceship becoming a reality, the spaceship Discovery from 2001 or the spaceship Leonov from 2010 seems more likely.
Keep up the great work!
Best regards,
Julian Schecter
Julian, I disagree with you on one point. As a pilot and aviation illustrator, Matt Jeffries understood the basics of aeronautical engineering. His design of the Enterprise reflects this. He clearly designed it to look impossible with current technology, yet giving the viewer the feel that it was engineered using future science we can only speculate about now. Heck, it goes faster than light and has artificial gravity and a teleportation device! Those crazy cantilevered warp nacelles on slender pylons could be assembled in space, but what keeps them from breaking off? ST:TNG explicitly discussed this with inertial damping and structural integrity fields.
Back to the main point of the article, Jeffries’ Enterprise is also graceful looking, and I might add, American looking. Its shapes are reminiscent of American aircraft, especially of the WWII era (e.g., the streamlined B/C deck and the astrodome over the hangar doors). Also it’s painted gray with block lettering like a US Navy ship. I had read Kevin Muldoon’s article before (his treatment of the Klingon battlecruiser is also interesting) and found it somewhat convincing. My reservation is that there is some cherry-picking in the choice of features to compare with golden rectangles. The golden ratios in the overall proportions of the plan view can’t be an accident, though. Jeffries didn’t follow sacred geometry slavishly, but clearly incorporated it following his own aesthetics (and Gene Roddenberry’s). They shared aesthetics and personal experiences that made them regard the Boeing B-17 as a thing of beauty, and the Enterprise touches that sense of beauty.
Hello Ed! My apologies for the late reply. Yes, it is true that the late-great Matt Jeffries was an accomplished pilot and aviation illustrator, but he had no knowledge of aero-space engineering, it’s a completely different beast. As I stated previously, unfortunately, the starship Enterprise is an unrealistic design from an aero-space engineering perspective. However, you don’t have to take my word for it, check out the following quoted statements between BTE-Dan, the engineer who created a website entitled, “Build The Enterprise” and Jim, an aero-space engineer regarding the starship Enterprise design and why it would never work:
“BTE-Dan
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Building The Gen1 USS Enterprise, Really
« on: 05/08/2012 01:33 AM »
And now for some fun thinking outside the box about what we could do in space when ignoring the issues of politics and funding …
The BuildTheEnterprise (BTE) website describes how to build the first USS Enterprise spaceship, based on technologies within our reach, over the next twenty years.
It has 1g gravity, shielding for missions away from earth, can hold a 1000 people, and can enable the building of large underground bases on Mars and the moon also with 1g gravity. So what are we waiting for?
http://www.buildtheenterprise.org
Cheers,
BTE-Dan”
“Offline Jim
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Re: Building The Gen1 USS Enterprise, Really
« Reply #14 on: 05/08/2012 01:41 PM »
Quote from: BTE-Dan on 05/08/2012 12:44 PM
But also, I challenge anyone to show that what I proposed on the BuildTheEnterprise site can’t be done from a technical point of view.
It can’t, period. It can’t meet the requirements you impose on it.
The structure and design is totally wrong for the task.
it is unbalanced
it has no room for propellant.
it has no radiators
The propulsion system can not meeting the 90 day to Mars requirementl
The “magnetically suspended gravity wheel” which I take to mean a centrifuge, is in the wrong plane for control of the vehicle.”
If you care to check out the full discussion in detail, check out the Nasa Spaceflight.com Forum link:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=28821.0
Julian, you seem to have missed my point. Jeffries designed the Enterprise to look like it’s not possible with our current technology, not because he didn’t know any better. He did know better.
And pilots do have a basic knowledge of aeronautical engineering. It’s required study to get a Private Pilot license (unlike a driver’s license, which in the US anyway doesn’t even require higher brain function). The engineering part of ground school is not nearly as extensive as what I learned getting a BS in Aeronautical Engineering, but for you to say that Jeffries had no knowledge of it is an unfounded assertion that frankly insults his memory. It also implies that you need an aerospace engineer’s knowledge to be qualified to discuss the subject. In that case, may I ask whether you are qualified to discuss it?
As for BTE-Dan, I totally agree with you that what he was doing (past tense because his website is gone now) was total nonsense, placing form before function He might as well have been “designing” a spaceship that looks like the Statue of Liberty, except that it wouldn’t have gotten gullible idiots to give him money.
Ed,
Good to hear from you! 🙂 You misunderstood me when I said that Jefferies had no knowledge of aero engineering, I said that he had no knowledge of “space aero-engineering”, which is completely different from aero engineering. Plus, I have taken the liberty of reading up on his profile on Wiki and there is no indication of him having knowledge in space aero engineering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Jefferies
For the record, it was not my intention to insult or dishonor his memory, I am merely pointing out the fact that there does not seem to be any evidence that he was knowledgable in space aero engineering, compared to his aero engineering background, that’s all, it is not in my nature to insult anybody. Now, if you can prove me wrong on this by providing the necessary information, I will apologize accordingly and admit defeat.
On a side note, I agree with you in regards to Dan being, shall we say, misguided? On one hand, I applaud him for thinking outside of the box and having a vision, but on the other hand, for him to think that he can build the starship Enterprise in real life is foolhardly to say the least. You having an Aeronautical Engineering background would agree that most sci-fi starships are unrealistic, they do not subscribed to the notion of “form follows function” and that is certainly the case with the starship Enterprise. I remember the time when I assembled my own starship Enterprise A model kit and when I attempted to place it on it’s stand, it tipped forward! LOL!
Anyway, a more realistic spaceship that can be build today (if money was no object) would be the Discovery from “2001: A Space Odyssey” or the Leonov from “2010: The Year We Make Contact”.
What do you think?
Absolutely none of that matters. It doesn’t need rotation for gravity, because it uses audiovisual gravity plates. It doesn’t need room for propellant, because it doesn’t burn conventional fuel.
It’s a futuristic vision of a ship that uses technologies that don’t exist yet. It’s an unrealistic shape for a ship made *now*, but it’s a perfectly reasonable shape in that particular fictional future, using the myriad fictional technologies in the show. It has no need to look like a ship that would make sense in an age where the furthest we’ve gone is the moon, and we rely on rockets with chemical propellant to get around. It’s set in a world with inertial dampeners, structural integrity fields, teleportation, and faster than light travel.
There wouldn’t be torque stresses on the nacelles because they don’t generate thrust. The impulse engines, which (kind of?) do are located at the back of the saucer, the most structurally durable section of the ship.
Also, “no rotating section for artificial gravity.” One of the tropes of Star Trek and all sci fi since is an artificial gravity field generated from the floor. Babylon 5 used rotation on the B5 station, but went back to artificial gravity fields for Minbari ships.
SciFi shows and movies are shot on Earth, so simulating weightlness and/or gravity from rotation, while possible, is not the easiest thing in the world. The closes we came was Apollo 13, which used a zero gravity plane for some zero g shots on the spacecraft. When movies and shows can be shot on location in orbit, there will be more accuracy. Until then, just let it go.
Chère homme de sciences comme la semences bien semé pousse grâce à la chaleur.
Comme le jour se lève et se couche pour laisser la place à la nuit.
Seul Dieu n’a aucun regret d’avoir créé tout forme de vie existantes.
Les chercheurs cherche les ingénieurs sont ingénieux.
Si pour vous ils est facile de construire l’Arche de Noé avec seul équipage ( l’élite ) alors faites dont chère amis et ne vous retourner pas à l’endroit d’où vous êtes venu.
Good thing aeronautics plays no importance in the vacuum of space. Too many wrongly assume there is gravity and drag in space…sorry, no. Nothing to work against…no need for inertial dampers, or banking during turns…nothing. Gravity does not exist where there are no planetary bodies to effect routine spaceflight. Since we can only relate to effects we live with daily, separating our planetary existence with a space based flight, where gravitational effects are negligible to non existent. Space travel holds the biggest danger for human travel, due to solar radiation….Xrays, Gamma rays and so on…also add micro meteorite impacts…space debris that travels so fast, and most are grain of sand size, are greater threats than speed. Space travel holds dangers far greater than anything we face on Earth, and most, are fatal.
Inertia is a product of mass and changes in velocity, not gravity. Accelerate to quickly, even out of the influence of a gravity well, and your inertia will fight the acceleration, and the outcome is that you will become a meat puddle squashed into the end of the room pointed away from the direction you’re accelerating towards. You would either have to accelerate slowly enough that this doesn’t happen (the current method), or find some way to remove inertia from the picture (the Star Trek method).
The Enterprise was specifically designed to be entirely free of the requirements of operating under the effect of having weight or in an atmosphere. Obviously there’s a lot of technobabble on top of that but when you look at the Enterprise you should see a ship that truly belongs only in outer space.
(and to J.J. Abrams most certainly not underwater)
And I suspect that while we worry about heat now, by the time we have warp drives and transporters we will be scratching every bit of efficiency we can out of our technology – including the thermal equivalent of modern hybrid cars’ regenerative braking. “This object generates heat!” “That’s great, hook in these couplings and we’ll convert that heat to electrical energy to drive this other system.”