Technically speaking, the Oberth is a violation of the Treaty of Algeron. The decks that you see on the blueprints are not in the warp struts, but rather in the neck. Neck? What neck? There's no neck there. Ah, yes, well, you see, there is a neck between the saucepan-lid section and the boat section...but it's cloaked. The Romulan empire is planning to give the Federation a whole bunch of static about having developed an entire ship class around a permanent partial cloak covering only about 15% of the ship's surface, and I'm sure they'll get around to it someday...when they can stop laughing.
If the Miranda class is the red shirt of Starfleet, then the Oberth was the civilians menaced by the monster of the week, if not outright the ones killed off screen, and the design is part of the reason why.
I hate this class but I'm still going to play Devil's advocate on this. Inside those "struts" would be structural voids. I've been aboard a lot of Mississippi river tugs and have seen these kind of near useless spaces put to use. On a starship, it would be a great place to store rarely used spare parts (and then forgotten), emergency rations, and other rarely used items that you just want out of the way and aren't worried about getting at quickly. You wouldn't want to live there but it could be put to use and have "decks."
Plus the fact that transporter technology means that no matter where it is on the ship it's not hard to get at. If you can see it on internal sensors you can transport it.
@@ericisprobablyfullofshit7797 Funny enough, canonically these ships are built with an alloy that stops transporters from working. So figure that one out.
@@Ishlacorrin Hmm... no. Transporters work through ship hulls just fine. Just watch any episode with a hostile boarding or people being rescued from hostile ships. It's SHIELDS that stop transporters. Transporter pads are more a courtesy than a necessity.
@@Ishlacorrin Even If that's the case, they've improved the transporter enough by _TNG_ that they have absolutely no problem beaming aboard; an _Oberth_ shows up in the first post-pilot episode, "The Naked Time" and they didn't shuttle over.
I suspect the artist who created the deck layout graphic was never shown the 3/4 view of Oberth, and assumed the standard Federation single neck (a la Enterprise) or chonky neck a la Excelsior connecting the two hull sections, not knowing (or utterly forgetting) the whole ridiculous empty space and skinny angled pylon thing (the way we all wish we COULD forget).
That's how I always thought of it. That bottom section was intended to carry a sensor suite better than a Constitution. But in a much more economical to operate hull.
It's actually a terran design, not one of Federation making. The lower pod is meant to house prisoners in agony booths. Keeps the crew safe from escape-attempts and it keeps the noise from all pained cries at a tolerable level.
@@frankm.2850the smarter members if the terrans saw how there method wasnt working due to absolutely everyone being a sociopathic monster and hopped ship to the normal universe where they infiltrated star fleet and founded section 31 so they could balance out the ruthless sociopathic tendencies with the federations self righteous letting the federation be the face well they got shit done in the background. I mean not really but whatever
I think the initial concept for the Constitution class ship was that the saucer section was a flying saucer that could land on planets. The rest of the ship was the faster than light travel engine, which detached and stayed in orbit while the saucer landed. Sadly the original series didn't have the budget for a saucer separation special effects, so they invented the transporter effect.
I think the way the O-Berth Class works is to be a Berth for tiny Shuttle Pods. Those weird rectangular holes on the four quarters of the "Saucer" are the Shuttle Bays and the crew use the Shuttles to get between the Upper Command/Research section and the Lower Engeneering/Cargo section. And all those "Compartments" in the "Pylons" are the tiny Capsule Hotel type Bunk "Berths" that serve as the Crew's Beds/Quarters reached through Jeffries Tubes rather than Lift Shafts. See, the O-Berth has Berths all over. :D
Okay. First off is it possible that the 2D screen is misleading? Those are not decks in the pylons or struts, but equipment spaces? That makes at least a little sense. As to the design. I don't think to blame the designer. I see a reverse Pentagon Wars scene here. "Well sir we have this nice tucked in version where all decks are easily connected." "Never be allowed. We have to keep the theme. Drop that engineering section down like the classic ships. Keep the warp core from the civilians." "Alright sir, but we will need to install a neck piece to allow the crew to move between sections." "No no we can't have that. Then it begins to look like a warship. Scratch the neck." Liaison returns to the design office. "But the crew will be divided in half with no way to get to each other." "You don't have to buy it, just draw the stupid thing." That is my take on implicitly bad designs. They ran it through a committee that had no ship experience.
Probably... but we can.... fudge logic into the current version the artificial gravity is at a diagonal in just the pylons So there is room for plenty of decks that are all a hallway in thickness.... nor would jeffrey tubes be at a diagonal for they would all be vertical with respect to local gravity, or even have 0g for the pylons
Oh god this is now headcanon. The only one it fits more directly is the Spehss Muhreenz Repulsor tanks. "So in summation, what you have before you is a troop transport that can't carry troops, a skimmer that's too heavy to clear any terrain worth mentioning... and a quasi-tank with less armour than a Land Speeder but with enough firepower to take out half of Macragge City?"
A interesting bit of trivia is besides using victurium alloy for the interior bulkheads, the main hull was composed of explodium. Starfleet experimented with a lot of different materials, for example the Intrepid class was built out of weeklonium, which would reset to it's default condition every week.
methinks whichever intern "made" the interior maps wasn't told that the "neck" of the ship was actually 2 support struts reaching off the boat-hull and up diagonally towards the covered plate on a serving tray.
Pretending for a moment that there are no decks on the arms, I see this having a single advantage useful only for a science ship: a containment zone for hazardous labs in the boat section. Since the warp and impulse drives are on that command section up top it might survive a catastrophic experiment failure.
As a very young kid I remember liking the funky aesthetic. But I had no clue it was supposed to be THAT SMALL. (though that helps explain how it got one-shot so easily) It felt totally absurd BEFORE you brought up that there's supposed to be decks in those flat arm things. Wow.
To answer the question regarding why the enterprise was not the named class ship, you have to reference US naval history and the Yorktown class carriers; Yortown, Enterprise, and Hornet. Of the three Yortowns only Enterprise survived the entirety of the war and for a time was the only operational carrier in the Pacific, 20 battle stars, 911 aircraft kills, 71 ships sunk, 192 ships damaged. After the war despite efforts to turn her into a museum she was sold for scrap and sent to the breakers. I strongly suspect that the Enterprise in Star Trek was an homage to the men and the ship that fought for the fate of a nation.
All of that is true. None of it explains why it wasn’t the ship of its class in OG, TNG, etc. Why *wouldn’t you name the first ship, and thereby the class after such a prestigious vessel if you were trying to honor its legacy?
@@Vessekx honestly? Probably because they wanted to imply a much larger collection of ships out there doing the same thing. And the fact that this way they can recycle the Starship Enterprise references in all of their advertising and marketing campaigns. The ship might change. The seasons change. The actors change. But the name remains eternal
@@Vessekx I'm just glad they didn't, because they'd keep deciding that they had to have all the _Enterprises_ the class ship. Or, alternately, that whole 'that's not really the _Enterprise"_ thing would have been even worse.
I generally appreciate the Starfleet design philosophy, because on paper, the ships are designed more like spacecraft than ocean vessels (that is, craft are the sum total of their functional components in their ideal configuration, with the minimum connecting tissue holding them together.) I just wish that the reasons behind that philosophy remained in canon. At some point it was established that the warp nacelles worked via a connecting energy field, which is why they're always paired, with nothing between them. And the habitation section being separate from the drive sections makes sense, so you can eject the saucer for battle, and leave the civilians and the exposed bridge behind... But then things like the Defiant or Oberth class come around, where the warp engines have hull between them, or the Saladin and Federation classes, where the nacelles aren't paired... And there come countless battles where they keep the saucer attached... It's like the Captains and the writers don't know why their ships are built like they are. The design philosophy loses all meaning.
Wasn't the detachable saucer just a gimmick that was introduced for the Galaxy class and seldom used? I don't think it really factors into the original design philosophy of Federation ships. But then Next Gen also leaned heavily into the whole community floating through space thing, with even the kids along for the ride. So I guess they thought that having some way of leaving the minors out of the combat situations would be beneficial (instead we'll leave them floating in a massive, non-warp capable life boat somewhere in the general vicinity). Prior to that their ships still had a lot of non-combat personnel but at least they were typically grown ups who probably signed the relevant release forms.
The paired nacelles with nothing in between them was never necessary for the warp field. Thats why many non-starfleet designs don't have it that way (In fact, Starfleet is the only faction that uses that design for most of their ships). Canonically, that design increases warp efficiency with the particular version of warp engines that Starfleet uses. Many other factions are willing to use less efficient designs, often just so they can have more compact ships. This is actually the case with the Defiant, which is much less efficient on energy use at high warp speeds than the Galaxy class. If you look at many of the non-starfleet ships, you don't see nearly as much of the nacelles with nothing between them design.
@@milamberarial Romula warbirds, Klingon Birds-of-prey, and a variety of ships have line-of-sight between nacelles, so it isn't exclusively starfleet. As for the rules, I was mainly referring to the ones discussed here ua-cam.com/video/Au9UeLfI6TE/v-deo.html which I think were established internally during filming of the first motion picture, mentioned in later interviews, and promptly ignored by everyone. The whole "efficiency" angle seems like another retroactive cop-out to me. I think we all would've preferred harder rules.
@@codymartinson9518 SOME of those ships do. Birds of Prey in fact do not have external nacelles at all. There entire warp engine assembly is completely internal to the rear of the ship. Warbirds have multiple designs, some of them have space between the nacelles and some of them don't. Ferengi, Cardassian, Breen, and most non-major faction ships don't adhere to the "nacelles with nothing between them" design aesthetic. In fact, most merchants and other civilian ships shown don't. The idea that you "must" have nothing between the nacelles didn't match up with most of the non-Starfleet ships even in TOS. It was used as an excuse for why Starfleet used that design aesthetic, and it was never worded well since there were already so many ships that had warp but didn't match that idea. The efficiency angle isn't a cop-out, it was an attempt to fix a bad idea that was dead before it was stated. The idea that it was REQUIRED for warp travel was the retroactive idea, since as you mentioned wasn't even out there until the first motion picture.
My understanding was that lower pod was supposed to be the warp drive but that went out the window with the script writers. And if you think that's bad look at the turbo lifts in Discovery, They only work if Starfleet gained time lord tech.
@@WhiteScarsEmo The original design of the Nebula class was supposed to be like that. Whoever worked for the show came up with it and envisioned it as a sort of "AWACs" type ship. That's why the first time you see one one screen it has a large disc shaped object on top.
ST has never been good about keeping any sort of scale for their ships. Even my beloved Defiant morphs in size wildly. Honestly, timelord tech would be better... In ST the things don't even stay the same size on the outside.
@@WhiteScarsEmo That probably IS it's main intended function, but by the time of that (TNG era) cutaway, it seems like they miniaturized that, somewhat, to allow more lower decks and storage, even crew spaces. Plus a mini shuttle bay at the back. In theory the extra tall deck atop the lower hull could be a fuel tank, but then it's so separated from the main warp housings.
Not to mention they stuck the part of the ship where its squishy crew lives right between the two massive radiation emitters called warp nacelles. Which canonically are positioned away from the body of a ship due to the radiation. And this is not just a federation thing all species in star trek moves the nacelles as far from the crew as possible so its unlikely there is a drive especially at this time that solves this problem.
Despite what the deck diagram shows ive always imagined the Oberth class pod section was uninhabited except when they need to perform maintenance. There are no windows on the secondary hull or the pylons so i think the model designer meant them to be uninhabited. There is an airlock on the side of the secondary hull but i imagine its for access while in spacedock.
The Oberth idea would almost work if the bottom hull was a droppable/swappable cargo container. edit: Oh, there is apparently one version that does just that.
Yeah, from my understanding, this was actually part of their purpose, to be easily adaptable to multiple mission parameters, everything that was actually important was in the enlarged saucer section and the bottom would be... well, whatever the mission demanded it would be
I think the best way to think of this is that this is a truck carrying a cargo pod and the canoe part has additional systems to aid the range and the top part is the startship - the pontoon however also does contain the main warp core *and a hidden main deflector - but the whole thing can be ejected in theory. But yeah that there is only access to the secondary hull by Transporter or a retractable tube is VERY SILLY. But if you think of it as like a truck - you can't get into the trailer from the cab when the truck is moving either.
I'm surprised and impressed that you got though a whole video on the Oberth without mentioning one of its most famous attributes. *EXPLOSION* Ignore that, must have been a glitch in the matrix.
On other drawings, that rear "deck" is a shuttle bay, thus it would be several times taller than a person, meaning the connecting pylons could be thick enough for a turbo lift...or more likely, jeffery tubes. Also, that drawing showed that only one small area of the bottom was pressurized, the rest was unpressurized, not areas people would commonly need to work nor live in...so traveling down to the lower hull wouldn't be something they would do a lot.
FASA a few years ago was given the license to do a Star Trek boardgame and RPG, Their explanation of the Oberth was that the secondary hull was isolated science labs and the only way to access them was via transporters, and if you think the oberth was weird check out some of the FASA designs. :)
I can definitely understand the reason those ships from the older movie look so odd - they basically put the models together with what ever junk they had laying around at the warehouse. Leading them to look like plastic toys.
Ive always figured either the turbolifts ran on a track on the exterior of the pylons, or the tube extended between the two halves when in use. It 'makes sense' in that it would allow quicker seperation in an emergency, albiet in that same emergency it would be far more likely to break down... but given the..... odd..... desifn choice that fits too.
Hey, maybe they applied local gravity in these sections, so they don't feel slanted? That would still make awfully narrow rooms, but hey, maybe it's bunks, a bit like the Japanese capsule hotels, or just storage area for assorted supplies? Turbolifts could act like something in Tom Scott's "An Elevator That Actually Goes Sideways" - and if they are messing with gravity, they could make tubes that act as slides (in both directions, each with own gravity) and in case artificial gravity fails, they'd have a rail to pull yourself along.
Usually those long nacelles are the field emitters for the warp drive. So if the oberth can seperate, it now has a sction with a warp core and one section with warp field emitters and neither of the parts can do FTL travel. That is even WORSE than having the engineering and combat section be FTL capable and the civilian escape pod stays at sublight (and looses most of it's shield capacity since canonically the warp core also supplies most of the energy to the ship)
I honestly still prefer the explanation that the "boat section" is a mission-specific detachable pod (in this case, the Grissom was surveying the Genesis Planet, so it's a planetary sensor array) that's not meant to have people in it at all. Out-of-universe, you'd think if they were going to repurpose the model they could've at least ditched pylons and connected the two parts of the ship directly and just called it the "non-Starfleet" variant of the ship.
Functionally, a turbo-lift could be done. However, the rest of the support structure is a combination of a jefferies tube and void/cofferdame. The idea is that the upper section is the command section and is strictly an impulse drive system and the lower section is crew quarters/engineering with the warp engines. It isn't a bad design, but it is not very efficient.
Just imagine getting assigned to work in the pylons... Stuck working in an office that's so narrow you can't even turn your chair around and that's generous if the rooms are aligned to the angle or the struts rather than having an angled roof and floor to make the room a massive hazard.
I thought the "lower" was a detachable mission specific pod/cargo. Like the CH 54 Tarhe could carry. As such, VERY little back and forth would be needed. (or even wanted) Still doesn't excuse putting decks in a power coupling strut.
Since these were science/scout ships I always assumed that the boat section was a big, unmanned AWACS dish with all the sensor technology. The decks shown in the schematic are there for maintenance purposes and are normally accessed at a starbase or via the Jefferies tubes in the field.
Hey Dockmaster! Just started following your content recently. Genius material! In previous conversations had elsewhere, I have tried to find the middle ground in the debate- Starfleet: Military or not. The middle ground that I suggest is to call Starfleet a 'uniformed service'. While terminology ultimately makes little difference one way or another, I'd love to see your take.
I'm pretty firmly in the camp of, "They're military, everyone knows they're military, they know they're military, and they're just playing silly games to maintain their unjustified sense of moral superiority." ua-cam.com/video/IPjF8h3ZcS8/v-deo.html
In all my 25+ years of trek-DOM I never thought the front of the nacelles were busard scoops. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about all of the 400000000 ways the ship can power itself. Oh, and the whole, deflector and warp bubble thing adds to my confusion.
The blinky lights in the warp nacelle was an attempt to convey mechanical activity in the engines w/o resorting to sparklers and smoke coming out the back that'd been used since the earliest Flash Gordon serials.
1) Worrying about the turbolift shafts and decks on an Oberth. 2) Discovering that the turbolifts on a Crossfield travel through a Bladerunner cityscape.
I always pictured this as some type of general service work ship / small patrol ship / police ship that they slapped a model on for whatever mission... and for the science model I assumed it needed to be kept away from the engines a bit via interference to whatever they are recording or collecting data on
The original enterprise tos was designed after the saucer from Forbidden Planet, with landing gear that came out of the saucer. Then they placed a lower deck cylinder and 2 warp cylinders
Absolutely. If they had run with that concept, and thought about how they might attach to the upper section in a reliable, consistent way that didn't involve spindly arms with no space in them, the ship class would have been all kinds of interesting. Kind of like the Star Trek concept of the US Navy's Littoral Combat Ship... only it would probably work.
Thinking about the idea a little more ... the top-only Oberth is basically a complete starship. Which (to me) resembles the TOS-style Romulan Bird of Prey. The one which off-screen lore claimed the Romulans built by copying stolen/captured Federation technology.
@@pwnmeisterage Oh, now that's a fun idea. I think the BoP appeared in TOS, though, which technically predates the Oberth. Could have been a predecessor to the class, though?
@@SacredCowShipyards Miranda-class (then known as Reliant-class) was the refined version of an earlier "Anton-class". So maybe Oberth-class was developed from something earlier. But I honestly don't know. There's no lore, the thing didn't exist before it appeared in the movies.
If the Obeth had been doubled in size then I think the turbolifts just abour squeeze through the pylons... I guess during design someone got the memo that resources were needed for the Excelsior and had to scale the Obeth's design back to get the ship concept off the board... and they never bothered to scale it up again.
Tribbles, tribles are more than happy with weird shaped spaces. And just asking here but is it confirmed that the warp core is in the lower hull ?. Because if the whole warp core and the crew living spaces were in the upper hull the lower half could be just a giant pod that could contain whatever "mission module" was required: from cargo pod to giant sensor pod. Like a "inverted nebula" class if you will on the very cheap.
It would make more sense if the Oberth was like a AWAC and that lower section was not manned as was some giant sensor pod or experimentation pod. Maybe some ladders could access it but it could be disconnected and left while the ship goes somewhere else.
I’ve always figured the struts had to have zero-g personnel tunnels running through them since if you don’t want gravity in a section, you don’t put grav plates in the area or else you just turn them off. Otherwise you’ll need a “wired” transporter set up, where there’s a pad at the top, a pad at the bottom and you just zip through the hardwired system rather than through empty space like normal ship to ground transport.
Seems to me that it would have made sense if the lower section was mostly a deflector array and all other functional parts of the ship be relegated to the upper section. Considering how often they do something experimental with the navigational deflector in Star Trek, it would make a little more sense and at least somewhat justify the odd configuration.
I suspect the turbolift cars might have to be mounted at 90 degrees to the usual gravity direction- people inside as thus essentially laying down. Unless the decks are unusually tall otherwise (they can have crawl spaces - so who knows).
Head Canon? The decks are small crawl spaces. The arms have a sloped ladder and a slide. Because slides are fun! Not sure how to get sensitive chemicals up or down. Also not entirely sure why you have a massive flat deck in the middle. Frankly I would intergrate the two components, seal the core section and install it as a massive hanger bay and deploy a hundred fighter/cargo/exploration craft. And a dozen Minivans to come and go from and get actual work done!
I've been on SWATH hulled ships, we pack a lot of machinery into the pontoon parts, not full on decks due to the size, but storage, CHT system, Fan rooms, And on one ship the Gym was in the pontoon. I've always just looked at star trek stuff as akin to modern SWATH ships. Our ship diagram even showed the pontoons with deck delineations, I suppose if you didn't know what a SWATH hull ship was one could presume that they were normal decks based off the oneline diagrams. But I doubt the startreck people put that much thought into it.
What I have always wondered is why is there gravity in the jeffries tubes? Do they not realize how easy it is to traverse those types of passages in micro gravity at least compared to ladders?
The Oberth is probably one of the most studied Star Trek ships because of its ridiculous design. I have been in forums that had people going so far as to make accurate 3D models of it from screencaps and use them to figure out what could be in those struts for instance. A turbolift could not possibly traverse it with anything like a vertical orientation, it would have to go fully on its side like a soda can in a vending machine rolling down a chute to fit through it, but then again turbolift cars have their own gravity independent of the ship's gravity while in transit so that is probably not an issue. There are obviously no decks there, though there could be some storage, and there is probably machinery besides the turbolifts, conduits, and jefferies tubes and whatnot (for instance the ship probably uses Klingon style grill scoops instead of the Constitution style big glowing bussards since you can see there is nothing but smooth metal on the front of the nacelles).
I always figured the lower hull was unmanned from the lack of windows. Star Fleet always puts windows in their manned spaced. Given the ship's mission and the textures shown, I figure it's a sensor pod.
I always thought the first ship of the class was the prototype (1700 Constitution) then the immediate proceeding ship (1701 Enterprise) was the flagship of that class. Could be wrong though.
They did have some pretty solid reasoning for the dinner plate/hot dog bun/two hot dogs motif, and real scientists, some of the best in history had input into this, including Carl Sagan. The dinner plate was where people would actually live. The hot dog bun was where the dangerous stuff was kept. The reactors, engines and stuff...stuff that could potentially go really wrong and endanger people if their living space was too close. The two hot dogs are the warp nacelles and they had a few rules to govern them: 1. They put out a f***ton of radiation, so they wanted those well away from people. 2. They had to be in view of each other and they had to be an even number, otherwise they wouldn't work. And it's fine! These ships are not exo-atmospheric so there is an unbelievable freedom to make a space ship any shape you want. No matter how absurd the shape is, it can be done in space. Then the Gene Roddenberry got booted out by Paramount because The Motion Picture didn't make as much profit as Paramount thought it should, and immediately started breaking all of these rules. The science may have been speculative and the results may have looked absurd, but there was still real science in the original Star Trek. In more modern Star Trek, that science based design is still there because it's tradition, but they don't follow the rules anymore and a lot of ships just end up being magic. Odd numbers of hot dogs, or only one hot dog. Dinner plates too close to the hot dogs and hot dog buns. No apparent ways to move between decks (et al. the Oberth class). And we know what you say about magic.
Being stationed on an Oberth class for "The rest of your natural life" will greatly shorten that life expectance. I think 20th century aircraft carrier flight deck crew life expectancy is longer. In my head cannon, 2 Jefferies tubes per pylon, one fore and one aft with AG plating turned off, with ladder rung/handrails. Forward one for travel up, aft down. The remaining spaces are to accommodate power and other utility conduits, much like shaft alleys. Would have loved to have the grav turned off doing shaft alley patrol watch on Nimitz class. AKA Remedial PT for the overweight. So, Shaft alleys are on deck 6, down near the keel. They are only accessible from Deck 2, next deck below the hanger deck. Each deck is 10 feet. The access is a vertical ladder of FOUR DECKS. Three sections of shaft alley per shaft. One watch covers 2 of the 4 shafts. Each shaft alley must be inspected every hour. SOoooo, 4 decks down and back up, 3 per shaft, 2 shafts, EVERY HOUR. Four or six hour watches, twice a day depending on manning levels. Anyone doing that for a couple of weeks can skip leg day for the next decade.
Oberth Class just includes the table the dinner plate, hot dog bun and hot dogs were laid out on. Oh, and the hot dog bun was switched out for a bratwurst.
I appreciate the Enterprise not being the class ship. It makes her special for being her, and for having her crew, not for being the first. Also, something something, never buy the first one, as you say in the Firespray/Slave I video.
When I first saw the Oberth on screen, as a young teenager watching "The Search for Spock" in theaters, I *loved* it. I loved it's weird futuristic design and odd, sleek shape. It was only in recent years when I saw fan criticisms of the design online, and then looked at it up close myself, that I started to really see the flaws Still, *some* of them can be explained away. And some may be based on fan assumptions - and mistakes made by the TNG folks - that are just wrong. For example, I had always assumed, until TNG, that the lower hull was NOT designed for habitation. That was all in the upper hull. The lower hull would have the navigational deflector, specialized sensors (LOTS of sensors, it's a science vessel) pre-configured probes, fuel storage, and cargo that isn't needed to be accessed while in flight. There would be some pressurized areas, but those would be reached by, well, a ladder in a Jeffries tube. (Having the ladder at an angle to the gravitational field would actually make it safer, because if you let go of the rungs you would just slide "downards". In fact, you could even imagine some engineers putting in, well, a *slide* next to the ladder, to get to the bottom quicker. Also, I assumed that the bottom hull...the "boat"...could be detached, and it was just ONE kind of specialized hull modules that could be attached for certain missions. Yes, you COULD redesign the lower hull for habitation...if you really *wanted* too. And it seems that's what the TNG folks did. But then you gotta add those weird ball-shaped turbolifts that some fans have designed for the Oberth. The REAL issue with the Oberth is that the "window" arrangements make NO sense, unless this ship is MUCH bigger than we think...closer in size to how it appeared in TNG's "The Naked Now", where it was really shown much bigger than it should have been...as opposed to it's size in the closing scene of "Generations", where it was shown as possibly *smaller* than it should be. Either that, or those windows *aren't* windows.
OK, so the secondary hull of the Oberth class is for fitting out experimental technologies for future starship design, or special science packages. the Primary hull, or upper region is for crew habitation. Should one require access to the secondary hull, it would be via transporters, or via crawl spaces, stairs and ladder access, but generally there's little need to go down there, since there's an absence of windows too. It's like the old J class cargo freighters from Enterprise - yes you can gain entry to the modules, but the actual ship is just the small frontal section.
While that would make... at least more sense than what they did, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a massive section of the ship - in fact, likely the majority by both mass and volume - functionally inaccessible without significant effort. At the very least, damage control becomes /very/ difficult in those kinds of circumstances, and while the Oberth definitely isn't a ship rated for even a dustup, it could be examining things - say, comets - that could potentially damage it. Unfortunately, most of the deck plans I've seen of the Oberth place its Main Engineering down there, since its deflector dish is also down there, and that would require constant manning and an easier, more reliable method of getting there.
It makes little sense as it is shown to have a shuttle bay there. So you would typically want to use it in circumstances where teleporters might be unreliable.
The Oberth class was designed to be modular. The lower pod can be replaced with cargo, survey, recon or a number of other pods. Most of the pods were fully automated.
About the turbolifts, I have never understood how the artificial gravity of a Starfleet ships work, for all I know the lift can have their own gravity field and keep inside verticality all the way for the security and comfort of passengers.
What bugs me the most, not counting the general Starfleet design philosophy, is the Oberth could easily make sense with some very slight changes. Just making the struts 2.5m thicker would negate 50% of the criticism, and it would make the ship look better. I love Starfleet's iconic ship design ethos. It looks neat. I even like the design concept of the Oberth, but it's trying to keep the same silhouette lines as a ship 4x it's size. As for the MSD profile, the struts probably have Jefferies Tube-esque maintenance causeways for repairing EPS conduits and heat management systems. That said, the hull plating is probably thin enough that a slight power overload would rip the strut clean off the ship. Beef this piñata up a bit, and you got a creative take on Starfleet's design philosophy that isn't a paper maché coffin with FTL.
All the STIII people had to do was stick a vertical “neck” in the middle and the ship would have been fine. The ship from Lower Decks makes this same mistake, though in that case the goofiness may have been intentional.
That... Thing is probably as 2 different ships constructed The upper part is created for battle and to engage fast etc... And the lower part functions as storage or civil transport part that could split apart from each other for example surprise attacks so that the storage unit could fly away while the upper part fights. Or that it works like a hyper jump ring from star wars with the lower part as main engine. The federacy is big maybe they have ant or slime crew members that could live there perfectly. Maybe it's finally a ship for people that were torn apart in the transporter but survived it barely somehow.
Technically speaking, the Oberth is a violation of the Treaty of Algeron. The decks that you see on the blueprints are not in the warp struts, but rather in the neck. Neck? What neck? There's no neck there. Ah, yes, well, you see, there is a neck between the saucepan-lid section and the boat section...but it's cloaked.
The Romulan empire is planning to give the Federation a whole bunch of static about having developed an entire ship class around a permanent partial cloak covering only about 15% of the ship's surface, and I'm sure they'll get around to it someday...when they can stop laughing.
Best explanation yet!
If the Miranda class is the red shirt of Starfleet, then the Oberth was the civilians menaced by the monster of the week, if not outright the ones killed off screen, and the design is part of the reason why.
I hate this class but I'm still going to play Devil's advocate on this. Inside those "struts" would be structural voids. I've been aboard a lot of Mississippi river tugs and have seen these kind of near useless spaces put to use. On a starship, it would be a great place to store rarely used spare parts (and then forgotten), emergency rations, and other rarely used items that you just want out of the way and aren't worried about getting at quickly. You wouldn't want to live there but it could be put to use and have "decks."
Plus the fact that transporter technology means that no matter where it is on the ship it's not hard to get at.
If you can see it on internal sensors you can transport it.
Further, why does down have to be in any given direction? Gravity plating makes a floor in any direction. Down dosen't have to be down.
@@ericisprobablyfullofshit7797 Funny enough, canonically these ships are built with an alloy that stops transporters from working. So figure that one out.
@@Ishlacorrin Hmm... no. Transporters work through ship hulls just fine. Just watch any episode with a hostile boarding or people being rescued from hostile ships. It's SHIELDS that stop transporters. Transporter pads are more a courtesy than a necessity.
@@Ishlacorrin Even If that's the case, they've improved the transporter enough by _TNG_ that they have absolutely no problem beaming aboard; an _Oberth_ shows up in the first post-pilot episode, "The Naked Time" and they didn't shuttle over.
I suspect the artist who created the deck layout graphic was never shown the 3/4 view of Oberth, and assumed the standard Federation single neck (a la Enterprise) or chonky neck a la Excelsior connecting the two hull sections, not knowing (or utterly forgetting) the whole ridiculous empty space and skinny angled pylon thing (the way we all wish we COULD forget).
The tiny compartments inside the pylons are where the House Elves live.
It is a ship for changelings like Odo - they just flow down those angled tubes ;-)
GO WITH THE FLOOO DUUUUUDE🤣
They have transporters.
I would like to see that tbh
@@ericisprobablyfullofshit7797 which are massively power hungry.... not really practical for day to day movement around a ship.
They should have written the Oberth class to be a cargo hauler with a secondary hull not normally accessible in flight.
That's how I always thought of it. That bottom section was intended to carry a sensor suite better than a Constitution. But in a much more economical to operate hull.
It's actually a terran design, not one of Federation making. The lower pod is meant to house prisoners in agony booths. Keeps the crew safe from escape-attempts and it keeps the noise from all pained cries at a tolerable level.
Makes sense. But then how do you explain it existing in the Prime universe as well? (And yes, I know this isn’t a serious comment.)
@@frankm.2850the smarter members if the terrans saw how there method wasnt working due to absolutely everyone being a sociopathic monster and hopped ship to the normal universe where they infiltrated star fleet and founded section 31 so they could balance out the ruthless sociopathic tendencies with the federations self righteous letting the federation be the face well they got shit done in the background.
I mean not really but whatever
I think the initial concept for the Constitution class ship was that the saucer section was a flying saucer that could land on planets. The rest of the ship was the faster than light travel engine, which detached and stayed in orbit while the saucer landed.
Sadly the original series didn't have the budget for a saucer separation special effects, so they invented the transporter effect.
I think the way the O-Berth Class works is to be a Berth for tiny Shuttle Pods. Those weird rectangular holes on the four quarters of the "Saucer" are the Shuttle Bays and the crew use the Shuttles to get between the Upper Command/Research section and the Lower Engeneering/Cargo section. And all those "Compartments" in the "Pylons" are the tiny Capsule Hotel type Bunk "Berths" that serve as the Crew's Beds/Quarters reached through Jeffries Tubes rather than Lift Shafts.
See, the O-Berth has Berths all over. :D
Okay. First off is it possible that the 2D screen is misleading? Those are not decks in the pylons or struts, but equipment spaces? That makes at least a little sense.
As to the design. I don't think to blame the designer. I see a reverse Pentagon Wars scene here. "Well sir we have this nice tucked in version where all decks are easily connected." "Never be allowed. We have to keep the theme. Drop that engineering section down like the classic ships. Keep the warp core from the civilians." "Alright sir, but we will need to install a neck piece to allow the crew to move between sections." "No no we can't have that. Then it begins to look like a warship. Scratch the neck."
Liaison returns to the design office. "But the crew will be divided in half with no way to get to each other." "You don't have to buy it, just draw the stupid thing."
That is my take on implicitly bad designs. They ran it through a committee that had no ship experience.
Probably...
but we can.... fudge logic into the current version
the artificial gravity is at a diagonal in just the pylons So there is room for plenty of decks that are all a hallway in thickness....
nor would jeffrey tubes be at a diagonal for they would all be vertical with respect to local gravity, or even have 0g for the pylons
I actually managed to find a Terran Empire version that makes sense 🤣
Oh god this is now headcanon. The only one it fits more directly is the Spehss Muhreenz Repulsor tanks.
"So in summation, what you have before you is a troop transport that can't carry troops, a skimmer that's too heavy to clear any terrain worth mentioning... and a quasi-tank with less armour than a Land Speeder but with enough firepower to take out half of Macragge City?"
Nah its just the decks are incredibly high , like in old european jewish houses so the pylons are more than 10 meters wide :)
A interesting bit of trivia is besides using victurium alloy for the interior bulkheads, the main hull was composed of explodium.
Starfleet experimented with a lot of different materials, for example the Intrepid class was built out of weeklonium, which would reset to it's default condition every week.
Oh, is that the material they build all their computer consoles out of?
methinks whichever intern "made" the interior maps wasn't told that the "neck" of the ship was actually 2 support struts reaching off the boat-hull and up diagonally towards the covered plate on a serving tray.
Pretending for a moment that there are no decks on the arms, I see this having a single advantage useful only for a science ship: a containment zone for hazardous labs in the boat section. Since the warp and impulse drives are on that command section up top it might survive a catastrophic experiment failure.
There's..something aboard...its killing us...cut us loose... CUT US LOOSE!
As a very young kid I remember liking the funky aesthetic. But I had no clue it was supposed to be THAT SMALL. (though that helps explain how it got one-shot so easily) It felt totally absurd BEFORE you brought up that there's supposed to be decks in those flat arm things. Wow.
To answer the question regarding why the enterprise was not the named class ship, you have to reference US naval history and the Yorktown class carriers; Yortown, Enterprise, and Hornet. Of the three Yortowns only Enterprise survived the entirety of the war and for a time was the only operational carrier in the Pacific, 20 battle stars, 911 aircraft kills, 71 ships sunk, 192 ships damaged. After the war despite efforts to turn her into a museum she was sold for scrap and sent to the breakers. I strongly suspect that the Enterprise in Star Trek was an homage to the men and the ship that fought for the fate of a nation.
All of that is true. None of it explains why it wasn’t the ship of its class in OG, TNG, etc.
Why *wouldn’t you name the first ship, and thereby the class after such a prestigious vessel if you were trying to honor its legacy?
@@Vessekx honestly? Probably because they wanted to imply a much larger collection of ships out there doing the same thing.
And the fact that this way they can recycle the Starship Enterprise references in all of their advertising and marketing campaigns.
The ship might change. The seasons change. The actors change. But the name remains eternal
@@Vessekx I'm just glad they didn't, because they'd keep deciding that they had to have all the _Enterprises_ the class ship. Or, alternately, that whole 'that's not really the _Enterprise"_ thing would have been even worse.
I generally appreciate the Starfleet design philosophy, because on paper, the ships are designed more like spacecraft than ocean vessels (that is, craft are the sum total of their functional components in their ideal configuration, with the minimum connecting tissue holding them together.) I just wish that the reasons behind that philosophy remained in canon. At some point it was established that the warp nacelles worked via a connecting energy field, which is why they're always paired, with nothing between them. And the habitation section being separate from the drive sections makes sense, so you can eject the saucer for battle, and leave the civilians and the exposed bridge behind...
But then things like the Defiant or Oberth class come around, where the warp engines have hull between them, or the Saladin and Federation classes, where the nacelles aren't paired... And there come countless battles where they keep the saucer attached... It's like the Captains and the writers don't know why their ships are built like they are. The design philosophy loses all meaning.
Yes, it is very annoying if a universe isn't consistent with itself.
Wasn't the detachable saucer just a gimmick that was introduced for the Galaxy class and seldom used? I don't think it really factors into the original design philosophy of Federation ships. But then Next Gen also leaned heavily into the whole community floating through space thing, with even the kids along for the ride. So I guess they thought that having some way of leaving the minors out of the combat situations would be beneficial (instead we'll leave them floating in a massive, non-warp capable life boat somewhere in the general vicinity). Prior to that their ships still had a lot of non-combat personnel but at least they were typically grown ups who probably signed the relevant release forms.
The paired nacelles with nothing in between them was never necessary for the warp field. Thats why many non-starfleet designs don't have it that way (In fact, Starfleet is the only faction that uses that design for most of their ships). Canonically, that design increases warp efficiency with the particular version of warp engines that Starfleet uses. Many other factions are willing to use less efficient designs, often just so they can have more compact ships. This is actually the case with the Defiant, which is much less efficient on energy use at high warp speeds than the Galaxy class. If you look at many of the non-starfleet ships, you don't see nearly as much of the nacelles with nothing between them design.
@@milamberarial Romula warbirds, Klingon Birds-of-prey, and a variety of ships have line-of-sight between nacelles, so it isn't exclusively starfleet. As for the rules, I was mainly referring to the ones discussed here ua-cam.com/video/Au9UeLfI6TE/v-deo.html which I think were established internally during filming of the first motion picture, mentioned in later interviews, and promptly ignored by everyone.
The whole "efficiency" angle seems like another retroactive cop-out to me. I think we all would've preferred harder rules.
@@codymartinson9518 SOME of those ships do. Birds of Prey in fact do not have external nacelles at all. There entire warp engine assembly is completely internal to the rear of the ship. Warbirds have multiple designs, some of them have space between the nacelles and some of them don't. Ferengi, Cardassian, Breen, and most non-major faction ships don't adhere to the "nacelles with nothing between them" design aesthetic. In fact, most merchants and other civilian ships shown don't. The idea that you "must" have nothing between the nacelles didn't match up with most of the non-Starfleet ships even in TOS. It was used as an excuse for why Starfleet used that design aesthetic, and it was never worded well since there were already so many ships that had warp but didn't match that idea. The efficiency angle isn't a cop-out, it was an attempt to fix a bad idea that was dead before it was stated. The idea that it was REQUIRED for warp travel was the retroactive idea, since as you mentioned wasn't even out there until the first motion picture.
My understanding was that lower pod was supposed to be the warp drive but that went out the window with the script writers. And if you think that's bad look at the turbo lifts in Discovery, They only work if Starfleet gained time lord tech.
The ship designs in STD work on the same principle as Bethesda Physics... because the guy in charge said they do. O.o
When I saw this as a kid, I always thought that lower pod was some super powerful sensor array, like an AWACS. No engineering, no quarters.
@@WhiteScarsEmo The original design of the Nebula class was supposed to be like that. Whoever worked for the show came up with it and envisioned it as a sort of "AWACs" type ship. That's why the first time you see one one screen it has a large disc shaped object on top.
ST has never been good about keeping any sort of scale for their ships. Even my beloved Defiant morphs in size wildly. Honestly, timelord tech would be better... In ST the things don't even stay the same size on the outside.
@@WhiteScarsEmo That probably IS it's main intended function, but by the time of that (TNG era) cutaway, it seems like they miniaturized that, somewhat, to allow more lower decks and storage, even crew spaces. Plus a mini shuttle bay at the back.
In theory the extra tall deck atop the lower hull could be a fuel tank, but then it's so separated from the main warp housings.
One of the reasons i love lower decks
Is it finally explains this class (it served the same purpose)
I love your channel for a variety of reasons. In many ways you're the "Tex talks Battletech" of deep space.
I really should watch some of his videos, given how many times y'all have compared me to him.
@@SacredCowShipyards You even sound a bit a like. But yeah the style reminds me of him, all the shit posting interspersed between the "facts" :)).
Not to mention they stuck the part of the ship where its squishy crew lives right between the two massive radiation emitters called warp nacelles. Which canonically are positioned away from the body of a ship due to the radiation. And this is not just a federation thing all species in star trek moves the nacelles as far from the crew as possible so its unlikely there is a drive especially at this time that solves this problem.
Fun fact. For a period in WW2 the flag ship of the Pacific Fleet was the USS Texas(BB-35), a New York class battleship.
Excelsior Class: Dinner plate, upside down slipper. and two Hot Dogs
Despite what the deck diagram shows ive always imagined the Oberth class pod section was uninhabited except when they need to perform maintenance. There are no windows on the secondary hull or the pylons so i think the model designer meant them to be uninhabited. There is an airlock on the side of the secondary hull but i imagine its for access while in spacedock.
The Oberth idea would almost work if the bottom hull was a droppable/swappable cargo container.
edit: Oh, there is apparently one version that does just that.
Yeah, from my understanding, this was actually part of their purpose, to be easily adaptable to multiple mission parameters, everything that was actually important was in the enlarged saucer section and the bottom would be... well, whatever the mission demanded it would be
The Bynars could fit on those weird sized decks. They where only in one episode of TNG. Great video!👍
I think the best way to think of this is that this is a truck carrying a cargo pod and the canoe part has additional systems to aid the range and the top part is the startship - the pontoon however also does contain the main warp core *and a hidden main deflector - but the whole thing can be ejected in theory. But yeah that there is only access to the secondary hull by Transporter or a retractable tube is VERY SILLY. But if you think of it as like a truck - you can't get into the trailer from the cab when the truck is moving either.
I'm surprised and impressed that you got though a whole video on the Oberth without mentioning one of its most famous attributes.
*EXPLOSION*
Ignore that, must have been a glitch in the matrix.
I imagine creative use of Gravity plates, Jeffries Tubes, and a fun Water Park aesthetic.
On other drawings, that rear "deck" is a shuttle bay, thus it would be several times taller than a person, meaning the connecting pylons could be thick enough for a turbo lift...or more likely, jeffery tubes. Also, that drawing showed that only one small area of the bottom was pressurized, the rest was unpressurized, not areas people would commonly need to work nor live in...so traveling down to the lower hull wouldn't be something they would do a lot.
This channel is pure gold. You've earned yourself a patron.
... But only if you let me in on that sweet cube money.
We don't offer delivery.
(Also thanks.)
FASA a few years ago was given the license to do a Star Trek boardgame and RPG, Their explanation of the Oberth was that the secondary hull was isolated science labs and the only way to access them was via transporters, and if you think the oberth was weird check out some of the FASA designs. :)
Cue the, "There are two wolves inside of you. Sorry for the transporter accident," joke.
And the smallest bridge i've ever seen in a star trek ship.
Makes the defiant's bridge massive by comparison.
It is actually smaller than the defiant. Apart from height. (The whole ship I mean)
I can definitely understand the reason those ships from the older movie look so odd - they basically put the models together with what ever junk they had laying around at the warehouse.
Leading them to look like plastic toys.
Ive always figured either the turbolifts ran on a track on the exterior of the pylons, or the tube extended between the two halves when in use.
It 'makes sense' in that it would allow quicker seperation in an emergency, albiet in that same emergency it would be far more likely to break down... but given the..... odd..... desifn choice that fits too.
The struts house Starfleet's experimental fluidic transit technology, also known by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, as the Slip 'n Slide.
3:50
whaddayamean? thats just me carrying a big cat litter box while my cats stare in concentrated indifference
Hey, maybe they applied local gravity in these sections, so they don't feel slanted? That would still make awfully narrow rooms, but hey, maybe it's bunks, a bit like the Japanese capsule hotels, or just storage area for assorted supplies? Turbolifts could act like something in Tom Scott's "An Elevator That Actually Goes Sideways" - and if they are messing with gravity, they could make tubes that act as slides (in both directions, each with own gravity) and in case artificial gravity fails, they'd have a rail to pull yourself along.
It was always fun to play the Oberth in Starfleet Academy for the SNES and try to fight anything in the simulator.
Usually those long nacelles are the field emitters for the warp drive.
So if the oberth can seperate, it now has a sction with a warp core and one section with warp field emitters and neither of the parts can do FTL travel.
That is even WORSE than having the engineering and combat section be FTL capable and the civilian escape pod stays at sublight (and looses most of it's shield capacity since canonically the warp core also supplies most of the energy to the ship)
I honestly still prefer the explanation that the "boat section" is a mission-specific detachable pod (in this case, the Grissom was surveying the Genesis Planet, so it's a planetary sensor array) that's not meant to have people in it at all.
Out-of-universe, you'd think if they were going to repurpose the model they could've at least ditched pylons and connected the two parts of the ship directly and just called it the "non-Starfleet" variant of the ship.
We're requisitioning one of those flat escalators in the hot dog for the squishier squishies.
This is my new favorite channel :)
I remember reading in a tech manual for a star teck role-playing game. In game the only way you could get to the lower section by the j tubes.
When I was younger (before I had seen the deck plan) I figured they had to use the transporter to get back and forth.
Functionally, a turbo-lift could be done. However, the rest of the support structure is a combination of a jefferies tube and void/cofferdame. The idea is that the upper section is the command section and is strictly an impulse drive system and the lower section is crew quarters/engineering with the warp engines. It isn't a bad design, but it is not very efficient.
Just imagine getting assigned to work in the pylons... Stuck working in an office that's so narrow you can't even turn your chair around and that's generous if the rooms are aligned to the angle or the struts rather than having an angled roof and floor to make the room a massive hazard.
By late TNg they were being replaced by the Nova class. Which has the benefit of traditional design and the ability to land on planet.
I'm sure it will be retconned that they "beamed" between the sections. the separation being for "bio-hazard" containment, or some such.
I thought the "lower" was a detachable mission specific pod/cargo. Like the CH 54 Tarhe could carry. As such, VERY little back and forth would be needed. (or even wanted) Still doesn't excuse putting decks in a power coupling strut.
I always thought of the TOS ships as more a collection of plates and flashlights but I guess hotdogs work if you're hungry
Zoolander, _”What is this, a starship for ants!!”_
Since these were science/scout ships I always assumed that the boat section was a big, unmanned AWACS dish with all the sensor technology.
The decks shown in the schematic are there for maintenance purposes and are normally accessed at a starbase or via the Jefferies tubes in the field.
Hey Dockmaster! Just started following your content recently. Genius material! In previous conversations had elsewhere, I have tried to find the middle ground in the debate- Starfleet: Military or not. The middle ground that I suggest is to call Starfleet a 'uniformed service'. While terminology ultimately makes little difference one way or another, I'd love to see your take.
I'm pretty firmly in the camp of, "They're military, everyone knows they're military, they know they're military, and they're just playing silly games to maintain their unjustified sense of moral superiority."
ua-cam.com/video/IPjF8h3ZcS8/v-deo.html
Clearly, the OBerth used cutting-edge wonka-vator technology for moving personnel. The arm-decks are for oompaloompas.
In all my 25+ years of trek-DOM I never thought the front of the nacelles were busard scoops. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about all of the 400000000 ways the ship can power itself. Oh, and the whole, deflector and warp bubble thing adds to my confusion.
The blinky lights in the warp nacelle was an attempt to convey mechanical activity in the engines w/o resorting to sparklers and smoke coming out the back that'd been used since the earliest Flash Gordon serials.
I assumed starfleet design changed so much because someone added a shuffle function to their ship design software.
1) Worrying about the turbolift shafts and decks on an Oberth. 2) Discovering that the turbolifts on a Crossfield travel through a Bladerunner cityscape.
I could totally see white boards in use, considering they are still using plastic spray bottles just a few years prior to ST2 time.
Medusans could live in the arm. On the Jefferies tube; you would have them so they can do maintenance/emergency repair on the turbolifts.
I always pictured this as some type of general service work ship / small patrol ship / police ship that they slapped a model on for whatever mission... and for the science model I assumed it needed to be kept away from the engines a bit via interference to whatever they are recording or collecting data on
The original enterprise tos was designed after the saucer from Forbidden Planet, with landing gear that came out of the saucer.
Then they placed a lower deck cylinder and 2 warp cylinders
What if the turbolift traveled outside the ship, like those outdoor elevators
I always assumed the engineering section was not inhabited, which is why it has no windows.
I actually like the idea of modular Oberths. Top saucer/platform attached to ... whatever hull/equipment is needed for the mission.
Absolutely. If they had run with that concept, and thought about how they might attach to the upper section in a reliable, consistent way that didn't involve spindly arms with no space in them, the ship class would have been all kinds of interesting. Kind of like the Star Trek concept of the US Navy's Littoral Combat Ship... only it would probably work.
Thinking about the idea a little more ... the top-only Oberth is basically a complete starship.
Which (to me) resembles the TOS-style Romulan Bird of Prey. The one which off-screen lore claimed the Romulans built by copying stolen/captured Federation technology.
@@pwnmeisterage Oh, now that's a fun idea. I think the BoP appeared in TOS, though, which technically predates the Oberth. Could have been a predecessor to the class, though?
@@SacredCowShipyards Miranda-class (then known as Reliant-class) was the refined version of an earlier "Anton-class".
So maybe Oberth-class was developed from something earlier. But I honestly don't know. There's no lore, the thing didn't exist before it appeared in the movies.
If the Obeth had been doubled in size then I think the turbolifts just abour squeeze through the pylons... I guess during design someone got the memo that resources were needed for the Excelsior and had to scale the Obeth's design back to get the ship concept off the board... and they never bothered to scale it up again.
Tribbles, tribles are more than happy with weird shaped spaces.
And just asking here but is it confirmed that the warp core is in the lower hull ?. Because if the whole warp core and the crew living spaces were in the upper hull the lower half could be just a giant pod that could contain whatever "mission module" was required: from cargo pod to giant sensor pod. Like a "inverted nebula" class if you will on the very cheap.
Plus they make good insulation.
It would make more sense if the Oberth was like a AWAC and that lower section was not manned as was some giant sensor pod or experimentation pod. Maybe some ladders could access it but it could be disconnected and left while the ship goes somewhere else.
I feel like the original blueprint was meant to have a center neck but it was removed in post production.
I’ve always figured the struts had to have zero-g personnel tunnels running through them since if you don’t want gravity in a section, you don’t put grav plates in the area or else you just turn them off. Otherwise you’ll need a “wired” transporter set up, where there’s a pad at the top, a pad at the bottom and you just zip through the hardwired system rather than through empty space like normal ship to ground transport.
They must have access to Gallifrey technology in order to fit anything in those arms.
Seems to me that it would have made sense if the lower section was mostly a deflector array and all other functional parts of the ship be relegated to the upper section. Considering how often they do something experimental with the navigational deflector in Star Trek, it would make a little more sense and at least somewhat justify the odd configuration.
I suspect the turbolift cars might have to be mounted at 90 degrees to the usual gravity direction- people inside as thus essentially laying down.
Unless the decks are unusually tall otherwise (they can have crawl spaces - so who knows).
Head Canon? The decks are small crawl spaces.
The arms have a sloped ladder and a slide.
Because slides are fun!
Not sure how to get sensitive chemicals up or down.
Also not entirely sure why you have a massive flat deck in the middle.
Frankly I would intergrate the two components, seal the core section and install it as a massive hanger bay and deploy a hundred fighter/cargo/exploration craft.
And a dozen Minivans to come and go from and get actual work done!
I thought those "decks" in the pylons were just compartments with lateral stiffeners and bits of machinery inside, not actual decks for people.
I'd say the "decks" in the arms are more like compartments for storage and utility junk
I've been on SWATH hulled ships, we pack a lot of machinery into the pontoon parts, not full on decks due to the size, but storage, CHT system, Fan rooms, And on one ship the Gym was in the pontoon. I've always just looked at star trek stuff as akin to modern SWATH ships. Our ship diagram even showed the pontoons with deck delineations, I suppose if you didn't know what a SWATH hull ship was one could presume that they were normal decks based off the oneline diagrams. But I doubt the startreck people put that much thought into it.
FWIW: SWATH boats/ships are cool...👍👍
i usually think they must just transport everywhere and transporters must be very efficient, when things are like that
Yeah it would have been better if they just said the upper and lower aren’t connected, because lower area is for “special dangerous tests or cargo”
To quote a famous doctor from Starfleet Leonard bones McCoy engineers they love to change things
What I have always wondered is why is there gravity in the jeffries tubes? Do they not realize how easy it is to traverse those types of passages in micro gravity at least compared to ladders?
The Oberth is probably one of the most studied Star Trek ships because of its ridiculous design. I have been in forums that had people going so far as to make accurate 3D models of it from screencaps and use them to figure out what could be in those struts for instance. A turbolift could not possibly traverse it with anything like a vertical orientation, it would have to go fully on its side like a soda can in a vending machine rolling down a chute to fit through it, but then again turbolift cars have their own gravity independent of the ship's gravity while in transit so that is probably not an issue.
There are obviously no decks there, though there could be some storage, and there is probably machinery besides the turbolifts, conduits, and jefferies tubes and whatnot (for instance the ship probably uses Klingon style grill scoops instead of the Constitution style big glowing bussards since you can see there is nothing but smooth metal on the front of the nacelles).
Make the upper hull thicker and maybe add another pair of nacelles under the existing ones and it would look much cooler.
The Oberth class: may or may not be made of 75% explodium.
You should totally do a video on the Orville!
I always figured the lower hull was unmanned from the lack of windows. Star Fleet always puts windows in their manned spaced.
Given the ship's mission and the textures shown, I figure it's a sensor pod.
I would have thought the same if not for deck diagrams.
Random you say? You want random! USS Yeager. You're welcome... and my sincere condolences.
I always thought the first ship of the class was the prototype (1700 Constitution) then the immediate proceeding ship (1701 Enterprise) was the flagship of that class. Could be wrong though.
They did have some pretty solid reasoning for the dinner plate/hot dog bun/two hot dogs motif, and real scientists, some of the best in history had input into this, including Carl Sagan. The dinner plate was where people would actually live. The hot dog bun was where the dangerous stuff was kept. The reactors, engines and stuff...stuff that could potentially go really wrong and endanger people if their living space was too close. The two hot dogs are the warp nacelles and they had a few rules to govern them: 1. They put out a f***ton of radiation, so they wanted those well away from people. 2. They had to be in view of each other and they had to be an even number, otherwise they wouldn't work. And it's fine! These ships are not exo-atmospheric so there is an unbelievable freedom to make a space ship any shape you want. No matter how absurd the shape is, it can be done in space.
Then the Gene Roddenberry got booted out by Paramount because The Motion Picture didn't make as much profit as Paramount thought it should, and immediately started breaking all of these rules. The science may have been speculative and the results may have looked absurd, but there was still real science in the original Star Trek. In more modern Star Trek, that science based design is still there because it's tradition, but they don't follow the rules anymore and a lot of ships just end up being magic. Odd numbers of hot dogs, or only one hot dog. Dinner plates too close to the hot dogs and hot dog buns. No apparent ways to move between decks (et al. the Oberth class). And we know what you say about magic.
Well, ironically, the placement of the warp nacelles gets the radiation-emitters /closer/ to the people-disc.
Being stationed on an Oberth class for "The rest of your natural life" will greatly shorten that life expectance. I think 20th century aircraft carrier flight deck crew life expectancy is longer.
In my head cannon, 2 Jefferies tubes per pylon, one fore and one aft with AG plating turned off, with ladder rung/handrails. Forward one for travel up, aft down. The remaining spaces are to accommodate power and other utility conduits, much like shaft alleys.
Would have loved to have the grav turned off doing shaft alley patrol watch on Nimitz class. AKA Remedial PT for the overweight.
So, Shaft alleys are on deck 6, down near the keel. They are only accessible from Deck 2, next deck below the hanger deck. Each deck is 10 feet. The access is a vertical ladder of FOUR DECKS. Three sections of shaft alley per shaft. One watch covers 2 of the 4 shafts. Each shaft alley must be inspected every hour. SOoooo, 4 decks down and back up, 3 per shaft, 2 shafts, EVERY HOUR. Four or six hour watches, twice a day depending on manning levels. Anyone doing that for a couple of weeks can skip leg day for the next decade.
That sounds like even more fun than getting to Aft Steering on ships with well decks.
@@SacredCowShipyards Ah, Speaking from experience, eh?
@@whirledpeaz5758 Just a touch ;).
Oberth Class just includes the table the dinner plate, hot dog bun and hot dogs were laid out on. Oh, and the hot dog bun was switched out for a bratwurst.
I appreciate the Enterprise not being the class ship. It makes her special for being her, and for having her crew, not for being the first.
Also, something something, never buy the first one, as you say in the Firespray/Slave I video.
When I first saw the Oberth on screen, as a young teenager watching "The Search for Spock" in theaters, I *loved* it. I loved it's weird futuristic design and odd, sleek shape.
It was only in recent years when I saw fan criticisms of the design online, and then looked at it up close myself, that I started to really see the flaws
Still, *some* of them can be explained away. And some may be based on fan assumptions - and mistakes made by the TNG folks - that are just wrong.
For example, I had always assumed, until TNG, that the lower hull was NOT designed for habitation. That was all in the upper hull. The lower hull would have the navigational deflector, specialized sensors (LOTS of sensors, it's a science vessel) pre-configured probes, fuel storage, and cargo that isn't needed to be accessed while in flight. There would be some pressurized areas, but those would be reached by, well, a ladder in a Jeffries tube. (Having the ladder at an angle to the gravitational field would actually make it safer, because if you let go of the rungs you would just slide "downards". In fact, you could even imagine some engineers putting in, well, a *slide* next to the ladder, to get to the bottom quicker.
Also, I assumed that the bottom hull...the "boat"...could be detached, and it was just ONE kind of specialized hull modules that could be attached for certain missions.
Yes, you COULD redesign the lower hull for habitation...if you really *wanted* too. And it seems that's what the TNG folks did. But then you gotta add those weird ball-shaped turbolifts that some fans have designed for the Oberth.
The REAL issue with the Oberth is that the "window" arrangements make NO sense, unless this ship is MUCH bigger than we think...closer in size to how it appeared in TNG's "The Naked Now", where it was really shown much bigger than it should have been...as opposed to it's size in the closing scene of "Generations", where it was shown as possibly *smaller* than it should be.
Either that, or those windows *aren't* windows.
The modular lower hull appears to be the fan-favorite explanation for the peculiar design.
"Pylon up is not starship up -- up is \\ or // -- we "borrow" solution from cheeseburger and pickle" -- Cosmodrome Engineering Group
OK, so the secondary hull of the Oberth class is for fitting out experimental technologies for future starship design, or special science packages. the Primary hull, or upper region is for crew habitation. Should one require access to the secondary hull, it would be via transporters, or via crawl spaces, stairs and ladder access, but generally there's little need to go down there, since there's an absence of windows too. It's like the old J class cargo freighters from Enterprise - yes you can gain entry to the modules, but the actual ship is just the small frontal section.
While that would make... at least more sense than what they did, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have a massive section of the ship - in fact, likely the majority by both mass and volume - functionally inaccessible without significant effort. At the very least, damage control becomes /very/ difficult in those kinds of circumstances, and while the Oberth definitely isn't a ship rated for even a dustup, it could be examining things - say, comets - that could potentially damage it.
Unfortunately, most of the deck plans I've seen of the Oberth place its Main Engineering down there, since its deflector dish is also down there, and that would require constant manning and an easier, more reliable method of getting there.
It makes little sense as it is shown to have a shuttle bay there.
So you would typically want to use it in circumstances where teleporters might be unreliable.
The Oberth class was designed to be modular. The lower pod can be replaced with cargo, survey, recon or a number of other pods. Most of the pods were fully automated.
I always thought that they had the ship crew in the top and science labs/teams in the bottom in case something happens.
Gotta be awkward for long journeys, though.
About the turbolifts, I have never understood how the artificial gravity of a Starfleet ships work, for all I know the lift can have their own gravity field and keep inside verticality all the way for the security and comfort of passengers.
What bugs me the most, not counting the general Starfleet design philosophy, is the Oberth could easily make sense with some very slight changes. Just making the struts 2.5m thicker would negate 50% of the criticism, and it would make the ship look better. I love Starfleet's iconic ship design ethos. It looks neat. I even like the design concept of the Oberth, but it's trying to keep the same silhouette lines as a ship 4x it's size.
As for the MSD profile, the struts probably have Jefferies Tube-esque maintenance causeways for repairing EPS conduits and heat management systems. That said, the hull plating is probably thin enough that a slight power overload would rip the strut clean off the ship. Beef this piñata up a bit, and you got a creative take on Starfleet's design philosophy that isn't a paper maché coffin with FTL.
All the STIII people had to do was stick a vertical “neck” in the middle and the ship would have been fine. The ship from Lower Decks makes this same mistake, though in that case the goofiness may have been intentional.
There's more than a few fan art renditions of the Oberth that did exactly that. Also gave a good spot to mount a photon torpedo bay.
That... Thing is probably as 2 different ships constructed The upper part is created for battle and to engage fast etc... And the lower part functions as storage or civil transport part that could split apart from each other for example surprise attacks so that the storage unit could fly away while the upper part fights. Or that it works like a hyper jump ring from star wars with the lower part as main engine. The federacy is big maybe they have ant or slime crew members that could live there perfectly. Maybe it's finally a ship for people that were torn apart in the transporter but survived it barely somehow.