The Saucer Separation of the Refit Enterprise: a Star Trek supplemental

[@brettcooper3893]

As I understand it, the saucer could, in fact, be reattached to either the original or a new secondary hull, but it would require the facilities at a starbase or dry dock. This maneuver was done in the Beta Canon novel, "Black Fire."

[@RichardBonomo]

It was also done in one of the very good fan films, with the *original* Enterprise.

[@DieselxRobot]

@@RichardBonomo Yep, it was the last episode of Star Trek: Continues where they separated the saucer to help in a battle

[@billrose9954]

I’d forgotten that…BLACK FIRE was a great novel- one of my favorites. Now I’ve got to pull it out again!

[@mccpcorn2000]

I think in Black Fire it was a reverse situation though - the saucer section was damaged by a bomb planted on the bridge, so it was evacuated and abandoned before being recovered later.

[@kommandantgalileo]

​@@RichardBonomowhy didn't we get it this in the movies, WHY!

[@cgarciahfcu]

I'm glad separations were rare in TNG because it made each time the ship separated a special event.

[@davidkepler9994]

The only missed oppro5unity is I wish at least some of the galaxies in the largest dominion battles were just star drives

[@vikingfortiesfaeroes]

It essentially became a gimmick, it seemed like a cool idea at first, but the writers quickly realised there just weren't that many situations in which it could be utilised.

[@CZ350tuner]

The engineering section crew also have the cargo transporters and shuttles available for "Brown Alert" emergency situations, like this.

[@brettcooper3893]

Brown Alert? You mean a septic system emergency?

[@sdfried4877]

Brown alert like Holy Shit, we’re gonna blow up!

[@Z1gguratVert1go]

I didn't know the Conny had cargo transporters. Makes sense that it would, I've never heard it mentioned before. I know from the TNG manual that the cargo transporters use less power because nonliving matter was transported at a lower "resolution" but the cargo transporters could be reconfigured very quickly to work like personnel transporters in a pinch.

[@sdfried4877]

@@Z1gguratVert1go The plans had multiple transporter rooms including ones for cargo but budgetary considerations only ever let us see the main transporter room, even when they did beam up cargo. It sounds like Van Gelder might not have survived if he had tried to stowaway on the Enterprise D.

[@Koldeman]

There is an emergency evac transporter room with several pads. Between that, the shuttles, any workbee maintenance pods, and a desperate decision to put on a thruster suit & get out the nearest airlock, the possibility for survival is far from hopeless. Now if you were in engineering & couldn't clear the blast doors in time, things don't look good.

[@christalbot210]

I remember seeing a three panel comic in which the saucer separates in the first panel, flies toward a planet in the second, and is seen coming in for a landing in the third...with Robbie the Robot waiting for them on a planet looking very much like Altair 4. Somebody on board states, "I have a very bad feeling about this". 🙂

[@Kainis80]

And the robot states "Danger Will Ryker, Danger!"

[@mikeohawk95]

Even by 24th century become reattachable in the new ships

[@balrighty3523]

2:47 I feel like personnel unable to make it out of the engineering hull would be using lifeboats and shuttlecraft to escape (and then later dock back with the saucer while awaiting rescue).

[@ryanmooney5758]

I'd imagine there would be an emergency evacuation transporter mode wherein it operates in continuous shifts locking onto and transporting personnel into the saucer. Maybe finish in 30s - 1min? Obviously not adequate in prompt emergencies, but potentially valuable in cases where a progressive failure is identified but with sufficient time to implement emergency procedures. The benefit of this is that it could continue during and immediately after saucer separation.

[@kargaroc386]

@@ryanmooney5758 Yeah I think they just *forgot* that transporters existed. Granted, TOS/TMP era transporters were *slower* than TNG ones, but a chance is a chance.

[@cindydott452]

They'd launch all the Eagles...Oh, wait.

[@joeboxter3635]

​@cindydott452 Yeah, where the bloody hell are the Eagles ... oh wait, wrong show. Lol. I wonder if they got the idea of klingon moon exploding in ToS ST V from Space 1999.

[@TheBigExclusive]

Nice video. But I wanted to add that if you were too far away from the saucer section, then you could run to the shuttle bay and evacuate that way via shuttle craft. So technically you arent screwed if the saucer seperates and you are in still in the Engineering section.

[@La.máquina.de.los.sueños]

I didn't remembered that function of the TOS & refit Enterprise. In TOS :the apple episode, they also talked about it. Could have been amazing to see it in the shows. Thanks for sharing! 😀

[@kennethlee494]

In the final episode of Star Trek Continues, To Boldly Go part 2 there is an original series Enterprise saucer separation performed, it was very cool to see.

[@DanBen07]

Yeah in the Apple they talk about putting every ounce of power into the impulse engines. Discard the warp nacelles and leave with the main section.

[@charlesp.kalina4162]

Saucer separation is mentioned in the original series' writers guide as normal practice. The intent was apparently that this would be the normal way for the crew to get down to the planet-of-the-week. It would have looked much like the saucer landing in "Forbidden Planet", which was one of the inspirations for the show. The original Enterprise saucer has two triangular outlines on the underside, and "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" says those were hatches for landing gear (with a third stowed by the neck), while the refit Enterprise replaced them with four square outlines. Problem was that visual effects at the time couldn't do a convincing saucer landing, or couldn't do it within budget, or both. So it was retconned into an extreme emergency measure only, in order to explain why we never saw it on screen. Given that this was apparently a very rare failure mode, it's weird that the ship's designers devoted a lot of hull volume and mass to it. But if those landing gear were being used routinely, it would make more sense.

[@AWriterWandering]

Which does explain why Jeffries chose a saucer. It literally was going to be a flying saucer.

[@wendigos_eat_people7177]

The issue I'm having with the landing legs of the refit is the squares of the landing pads are on the deepest part of the saucers's undercut. If the rim is two decks thick and let's us say each has a ceiling height of 10 ft. plus about 2 ft. crawl space between decks as well as the upper and lower hull, that means the ceiling height where the landing pads is going to be about 5 ft. How is the landing legs stored? The next deck above? If it's folded it needs to be extended down past the lower bulge of the saucer and past the planetary sensor dome and past it to reach the ground. That's over 4 stories of height those legs have to span.

[@MatthewCaunsfield]

@@wendigos_eat_people7177 Mechanically, the legs ought to be able to fit. Even today you can buy scissor lift platforms which expand from around 3 metres tall to approx 20 metres tall, enough to clear the depth of the bottom of the saucer. HOWEVER, the max load on these units is around 750KG each, so even with four of them that's just 3000KG. You'd have to use some pretty robust futuristic materials to bear the weight of the entire saucer section on such spindly little legs!

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@AWriterWanderingthough he first tried a sphere, as Roddenberry asked for something avoiding all cliches (giant rocket plumes and flying saucers being mentioned specifically). But eventually both Jefferies and Roddenberry decided a flattened primary hull looked better than a sphere with the nacelles. Which is also born out by only a handful of canon designs having spheres but hundreds having flat wide hulls.

[@STho205]

Funny Lost In Space had done saucer landings within a smaller VFX budget using models and planet models, not the early blue screen photography Star Trek used. This includes watching the terrain go by in the viewports from inside. By the end of LIS some of the VFX planet shots looked much more realistic than Star Trek all the way to 1969. That is not to say Lost in Space did not have A LOT of hokey photography...but OCCASIONALLY there were some things they did better than Star Trek, who was mostly reusing stock blue screen shots from Summer 1966 through the whole series.

[@martykarr7058]

Here's some non-canon things from the books. In "Flag Full of Stars" which takes place in the time between TOS and TMP, the saucer was getting refitted on Earth, and was flown up to be reconnected to the heavily redesigned engineering hull. And in "Black Fire", it's the saucer that gets heavily damaged and they have to jettison it and go back in the engineering hull.

[@JayStrang1]

I really liked that Star Trek Beyond actually depicted an emergency separation, very similar to the one described here. If I recall, this basic procedure was fully lined out for a sequence cut from the end of TMP, which would have seen the Enterprise face off against the thee Klingon battlecruisers, them having rematerialized as V'Ger left.

[@colonelblastpack169]

1:56 oof! lol

[@raitchison]

I always imagined that if there were ever a saucer separation that was not followed by the complete destruction of the engineering section (AKA "star drive") that the two could be reattached but not easily, requiring a visit to a shipyard, starbase or at a minimum a dedicated repair ship.

[@balrighty3523]

This is another reason why I think we're meant to interpret "the vertical warp core leads up to the impulse deflection crystal" as still leaving room for various components (including, say, a turbolift running vertical behind the warp core) between the very top of the warp core and the impulse engine complex.

[@mickey_moone]

Eye wanna be impulsive, reckless and lose myself in your kiss, says Wilson Phillips. ...but if the engines are imbalanced, the phasers are cut off which means at some point, after the kiss, we'll need to fire our photonic and or quantum torpedoes while in the wormhole.😂

[@guillermodiego819]

Excellent (and funny) explanation! The visuals are great as well. Thank you!

[@peppermintspacecapsule9898]

I like how in one of the novels, the engineering hull is refitted in space and the saucer on Earth, meaning it's launched 'flying saucer' fashion so the two halves can meet. 🛸

[@BBDoesTheThing]

Awesome models and great explanation of hypothetical scenarios!

[@CodexRegius]

Matter of fact, saucer separation would have been my mode of choice for the Constellation. And then remote-control the engine section into the Doomsday Machine.

[@Sennmut]

But the warp drive/core was inoperable. The impulse drive was/is in the aft of the saucer section.

[@CodexRegius]

@@Sennmut Then perhaps lure the Doomsday Machine to the nacelle section? Some high energy output would do. And when it tries to devour it - BOOM!

[@tarrantwolf]

Funny thing is, in one of the technical manuals it shows "freight elevators" on the saucer underside which would suggest an ability to detach, land, take on freight, then lift off and rejoin the drive section. That would make much, much more sense than just having it as an emergency feature. Landing the saucer to take on supplies and personnel would be much faster than trying to beam up everything if a fully stocked starbase wasn't available. Love the IJatDoD jab.

[@90lancaster]

If the Enterprise was docked (inside a space station) as we see in Strange New Worlds with some other ships the ship could potentially interface directly to freight lifts for resupply. this would be a lot quicker than manually loading and unloading via the shuttle bay, though the under cut on her back/underside might also open up for Freight egress too. As for evacuation the ships internal sensor might be able to lock onto life signs in the engineering hull and beam the crew into a empty cargo bay in the saucer even if that isn't normal procedure to do intra-ship beaming, the ship is capable of doing it. Though without combades to lock onto it's a lot harder. But maybe they use a special metal in their rank pins that the ship can pick up and know that is a person. a metal that isn't used elsewhere in the ship's construction.

[@dominiklehn2866]

I heard in this comment section that was the original idea how they would get down planetside instead of shuttles or transporters, but was cut due to budget/technology restraints

[@davidkaminski615]

There are several doors on the exterior of the saucer that we get to see the uses of in The Motion Picture. There are small hatches on the top for EVA excursions (the away party uses one to walk to V'ger). There are at least two bulk cargo bays that only have exterior hatches on the underside of the saucer (seen open in the arrival fly-by). There are the four landing pads as mentioned in this video. There are at least two recessed airlocks on the underside of the saucer (Spock and Kirk exit out of one inside V'ger). There are escape pods nearby the docking port and cargo bays in the engineering section, presumably hidden behind exterior detachable panels (signs for them can be seen in the arrival scene).

[@indigoyarkindell968]

"Belay that Phaser Order!" Phasers are routed through the main engine to increase power. They'd be greatly reduced in power, if not shut off with the warp core.

[@MatthewCaunsfield]

Lovely animation of this unseen procedure 👍

[@ericb7889]

Thank you for this amazing video. I couldn't agree more, no matter the Era, this band knows how to make great music. As always, I enjoy your take on these groups.

[@NavyCuda]

The Indy reference absolutely cracked me up!

[@DoktorRotwang]

It's funny because it's true.

[@thecaptain6730]

Thank you so much for making this! It looks amazing! I have always wanted to see this, and never had a chance until today. Now, if you could just film the cetacean section of the Enterprise D, I will have seen it all. :)

[@chrisschembari2486]

Cetacean section?? I never saw that on TNG. Were there whales, dolphins, or something similar living aboard the Enterprise D, possibly as crew members?

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@chrisschembari2486t was only mentioned in dialogue in TNG, but there was concept art for it. The idea was they were better at celestial navigation because you already have to navigate in 3D underwater, as opposed to 2D like land animals’ brains are used to. It was finally shown in Lower Decks but is a much smaller affair than the TNG concept art (which was also expanded on for STO concept art). They’re a lot of fun to look up, I’d link you pictures but that gets blocked now.

[@Z1gguratVert1go]

"...becomes a very large bomb, rather like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." aaaaand subbed.

[@Penfolduk001]

Was saucer separation actually mentioned in the original series? I remember dialogue talking about jettisoning the warp nacelles, but nothing about actually separating the saucer section. Assuming saucer separation was possible on a pre-refit Connie, it may have been possible to accelerate the saucer section to relativistic speeds if they were too far from Federation assistance. Although the effects of the time dilation may have made integrating the crew back into Federation Society difficult.

[@DanBen07]

The closest mention in TOS of the Enterprise being able to separate or Discard parts of the ship is in the Apple. Kirk says to Scotty: "KIRK: Then use your imagination. Tie every ounce of power the ship has into the impulse engines. Discard the warp drive nacelles if you have to, and crack out of there with the main section, but get that ship out of there!" Actual saucer separation not mentioned but under the saucer you can see these cut out which people making the show nicknamed cats eyes and they were landing struts it's in concept art.

[@robertahue1969]

I really liked this reimagined version. Thx for giving me my ST fix.❤

[@obsidiansands]

Star Trek Beyond's USS Enterprise was the first 1701 alternate universe starship where we actually SEE what that saucer separation looked like prior to any overall "refit" - despite the fact that the Kelvin Timeline 1701 already suffered a couple of refits before it was finally brought down.

[@kargaroc386]

To be fair the Kelvin Conny is so different that it's basically a completely different ship.

[@obsidiansands]

@@kargaroc386 while that statement is true, it still had the basic design elements the TOS Connie has - most especially the alleged saucer separation design it supposedly had by Matt Jeffries. Allegedly.

[@Southside1983]

The only problem I see is: The saucer is attached in Spacedock and can only separate by use of explosive bolts(for lack of a better term). It would not be such a smooth separation.

[@CharlesGates-v6n]

Very nice presentation.

[@kerravon4159]

Great animation, well done.

[@cujoedaman]

I still love that the designers make the blast door cut the horizontal intermix chamber in "half", even though there's no way for the door to go through it because it's a solid tube all the way to the back of the ship.

[@lesigh1749]

I believe an early draft of the Motion picture was going to include a saucer separation and the two parts of the ship being operated separately before later being reattached.

[@pwnmeisterage]

The large ship models they used for filming could all separate the saucer. For simple storage and transport reasons. Of course they came up with the idea of implementing it in show after enough time working with the model.

[@jmwoods190]

I'm currently building a scale model of the Enteprise C and I plan to leave both saucer section and the warp nacelles removable for the exact same reasons- I can dismantle the ship whenever I move houses so it's easier to store and lessen the chances of the ship being crushed by accident!

[@MK0272]

There's one thing that always bugged me - in DS9's Dominion war story line, we never saw Galaxy class star drive sections operating without the saucer. It seems to me that if the primary duty of those Galaxy class ships was combat, it would make sense to relieve them of their bulk unless they had an actual need to carry troops or conduct a rescue mission. Also, building just stardrive (or battle sections, if you prefer) would be much less resource intensive than building an entire ship. And finally, the saucer sections could be quite useful around a shipyard for things like housing and intrasystem materials transport. That created a glaringly obvious plot hole in the series.

[@michelleann1910]

The Galaxy class was never designed for battle. It was designed for exploration. Saucer separation was an emergency measure only designed for survival, not combat. We saw multiple times in TNG where the civilian population was evacuated into the saucer and sent to safety, while the lower section turned to face the enemy. The starship is far more powerful when both sections of the ship are mated together. Saucer separation actually DECREASES the concentration of power in the starship, because it deprives the saucer of photon torpedo capability, and halves the amount of phaser firing points left to each of the two sections. It also greatly weakens the phaser power of the saucer, because the saucer only has impulse engines to power them, whereas the mated ship uses the much more powerful warp engines of the engineering section to power all phasers.

[@liamscienceguy8153]

Theres a decent chance the USS Syracuse was a galaxy class built without a saucer for resource reasons during the war, and later was decommissioned just in time for geordi to steal it to glue it to the enterprise.

[@lucasbachmann]

I personally think the hull shapes the warp bubble. So if the saucer is missing it probably makes the warp less optimized despite Worf's claims about "bulk" and battle.

[@michelleann1910]

@lucasbachmann The hull has absolutely nothing to do with the shape of the warp bubble. The bubble has to be shaped constantly in order to change course under warp. The hull doesn't change shape, so it can't alter the shape of the warp bubble. The bubble is created by the nacelles and is shaped by how the nacelles project it around the ship. It's got nothing to do with the shape of the ship the bubble forms around. Remember, the warp bubble can be expanded to cover a second ship that will be carried into warp by the ship that projects the bubble, so the hull shapes of the two ships couldn't be involved or that wouldn't work.

[@JasonAguirre]

​@@michelleann1910not talking about design. They are referring to the ship's wartime function and the fact that many were built without labs or interior comforts to bolster the struggling fleet.

[@asdfjoe123]

One would assume all transporters, when facing the scenario presented here, would be put into use transferring personnel to the saucer section. Not just the ones we usually see moving crew , but also ones not man-rated that are used to move cargo. Speaking of cargo-movers, shuttles themselves would be another way to get crew offloaded from the drive-section/bomb.

[@maarkaus48]

I have an old enterprise model from the early 80's that has the saucer section that can separate with landing gear. Its pretty neat to study. Its about the size of the Dinkey Toy from the 70's but all plastic.

[@snafu6548]

While I'm familiar with saucer separation from the original series documentation, I have always understood the Enterprise was never meant to be atmosphere or landing capable. The only time TOS Enterprise was seen in the upper atmosphere was in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" where an F-104 (max ceiling of 58,000 feet) pilot looked up and saw her. When focused on TOS only (exclude movies and later series), where was it identified as planet-fall capable before the series ended? Just curious where that info came from, as I have most (and maybe not all) the publications of that period.

[@IamSkyeOrion]

In the refit, phasers were channeled from the warp core (Decker, Star Trek TMP)- they wouldn't have had phasers if the saucer section had been separated from the secondary hull.

[@Wolfe351]

Scotty changed that later on as it was a bad idea!! By the time of ST Wrath of K.... Refit Connies could fire if warp power was not available

[@wendigos_eat_people7177]

They fixed that by the time" The Wrath of Khan" came around. Khan knocked out Enterprise's warp drive on his first attack, but the Enterprise still used her phasers on the reliant after manually lowering her shields . She was on "battery" power then and only had impulse back online a short time later. The Enterprise hit reliant's bridge in a glancing blow and took out her port side warp nacelle inside the nebula while on impulse power. The torpedo sheared the rest of it off.

[@Penfolduk001]

@IamSkyeOrion. Yes in the Motion Picture, phaser power had been routed through the warp core systems to increase power. Hence them going onto automatic shutdown during the warp engine imbalance. In the book of the film, it was explained that Decker had already argued with project engineers that not being able to fire phasers without warp power was a bad idea, and was already working on an bypass system to address this. But the V'Ger probe meant Enterprise launched before there was time to install it.

[@cryalot378]

"in space, no-one can hear you explode" xD... damn so dark I hope they had this hanged as a poster at the Starfleet Academy

[@Rigel_Chiokis]

I believe in Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, it was noted that the saucer was separated by explosive bolts. You would think that Starfleet engineers would be able to come up with the simpler solution of ejecting the fuel storage or even the entire warp core, rather than discard half of the ship. By the way, you referred to the warp nacelles as propelling the ship; they actually don't. They are very powerful field generators which "warp" space allowing the ship to "shorten" the distance it has to travel. But while in warp space, it is still propelled forward by the impulse and its maximum speed is 0.9 C.

[@eddievhfan1984]

Warp core ejection was a feature on the Galaxy-class at least (maybe even Constitution Flt. III/Enterprise-class when they changed to full-vertical warp cores?), and in "Contagion" from that series, they also mention an automated antimatter dumping system for when containment starts failing. They tried a core ejection in the episode "Cause and Effect," but of course, the system was knocked offline. They did do a successful core ejection in "Insurrection", and though my memory is spotty, maybe they also did one in a VOY episode? As to the effect of the warp engines, it's been my understanding that since at least the TNG series, the warp drive is what would be called IRL an Alcubierre warp drive (or at least its closest counterpart): it uses spacetime compression ahead of the vessel, plus expansion behind it, to directly propel the ship, as opposed to shortening the (classical) distance between ship and destination like a jump drive or wormhole generator.

[@phillipthorne8363]

@@eddievhfan1984 Well, the "ST:TNG Technical Manual" (which describes "asymmetrical peristaltic field manipulation" using nested subspace fields) was 1991, and Miguel Alcubierre's proposal was in 1994, and I'm not aware of any official technical work which has linked the two. So the similarity is more coincidence and aesthetically gratifying to the sub-subset of Trek fans who like treknobabble *and* speculative physics.

[@kylenegus8597]

1:50 LOL!!! Liked and subscribed for that one! :)

[@DistracticusPrime]

One of these on the White House lawn, please.

[@jordanwebster1492]

We seen a 23rd century Federation ship split in two and her severed propulsion section (or engineering section) blow up was in Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I really enjoyed getting to see it in Beyond, with the view of the secondary hull falling away. They managed to make the dorsal connector look pretty elegant too, unlike the pancake on the Galaxy class.

[@Tapperje16]

Love the content, please keep it comming! And also love the animations! they look great!

[@beyerdr]

In an old comic it was explosive bolts that separated the saucer from the drive section 😊

[@astrofan1993]

There was actually a chapter of Star Trek: The Manga, where they did a saucer separation. Part of the saucer section stayed attached to the stardrive section, and the two sections were joined together by a series of cables that had to be blown. In order for the two sections to be rejoined, they had to travel to the nearest starbase.

[@dls1970]

Intra-ship beaming via transporters to get the poor bastards out of the engineering hull, and then take thing from there. I know that back in the day (1960's TOS) it was extraordinarily risky to beam personnel from one part of a ship to another, but it was succinctly proven in 'Day of the Dove'. This is an easy workaround.

[@JackVermicelli]

Unless the timing of the antimatter annihilation were uncertain, in which case the decision might likely be made to have shields up as soon as feasible.

[@DanBen07]

As long as there's no interference from anything happening in engineering they could try what you said. Apparently some reference material shows cargo transporters not that far away from engineering which they could use if they could get to that part.

[@Willpower-74205]

Assuming the Connie has transporters in the engineering hull, the crew could just simply use them to beam to one of the corresponding transporters in the primary hull. 🖖😎👍

[@DanBen07]

Yeah I've seen on KZbin "Mego Star Trek commercial" Which is a commercial for the Motion Picture toy ships and it shows the Enterprise toy separated & saucer section with landing gear.

[@patricktilton5377]

An article in one of the BEST OF TREK paperbacks -- #16: FALLING OUT OF STANDARD ORBIT, by David Winfrey, page 75-86 -- made the case that both the secondary hull AND the saucer section were capable of warp velocities. Aside from the facts Winfrey cites in his article, it should be noted that the 2 nacelles providing warp speeds for the entire ship -- as well as for the secondary hull following a saucer-separation -- seem to be matched by the two 'vents' at the back of the saucer section: in other words, if it takes TWO 'engines' to produce the warp-tunneling effect, then those 'impulse' engines we see above the back of the 'neck'/dorsal might very well help to provide warp speeds for the complete ship as well as for the saucer alone following a separation.

[@christopherrobin4619]

"A Very large bomb..." fuckin lol'd

[@jasonp.1195]

I'm seeing a nice mechanic for delivering saucer based ground stations during the TOS Federation era. Though I'm thinking the initial rampway could stand to be quickly replaced and a pressurized skirt from the leading edge of the saucer down to the ground would provide a nice high ceiling working outdoor working area for the nascent base.

[@DennisCosteaJr]

If the Drive section always had a secondary Bridge and navigation stations, then yes, delivering the saucer section to a planet in order to serve as an "instant" planet-side base would be cool. If Starfleet was responsible for the delivery of outposts and those consisted of 200+ personnel for a planetary survey, colonization or military purpose, saucer delivery would definitely be a quick way to achieve a planet-side or moon-side presence.

[@AaronDanieltenni]

This would be a great add. Perhaps due to the budget, that's why they made the Galaxy Class into the detail? All together, the saucer separation has always been a fave of mine.

[@wyattmann8157]

Thumbs up just for the "Dial Of Destiny" crack. 😂

[@CaptainRC1]

"Assuming the storage bottles cannot be ejected into space, then the engineering section of the Enterprise quickly becomes a very large bomb... rather like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." That line alone deserves a like.

[@danieldb631]

Supposedly, one draft of the Motion picture script had the Klingon battle cruisers re-materialize and attack the Enterprise after V'ger left. The Enterprise would be critically damaged and forced to separate the saucer section, making an emergency landing on Earth. Although, that idea was a hold over from the original "Planet of the titans" script, as I understand it.

[@DanBen07]

This toy commercial "Mego Star Trek commercial" from the motion picture shows that the Enterprise has saucer separation and landing gear.

[@qdllc]

It’s worth noting that the layout of TOS enterprise was so that the secondary hull had a redundant set of everything in the event of catastrophic damage to the saucer section. This never came to pass, so the option was to make the saucer section into a lifeboat and utilize the secondary hull for larger shuttle bay and cargo transport capacity.

[@IO_Darren]

I have always wondered where the emergency doors that separate the horizontal intermix conduit come from. It's pretty clear that part is on the very top portion of the engineering hull, and it's curved roof makes it seems like that's where the hull outer skin is. The torpedo bay is right above there, so it's possible that it's coming down from there. But it doesn't look like it could do so with what we've seen of the torpedo bays. So..where is that blast door coming down from?

[@esecallum]

do one for the klingon d-7 now.. the front part detaching with or without neck...

[@Conundrum191]

By choice, or by a full spread of torpedoes to the neck? lol

[@esecallum]

@@Conundrum191 by choice. The front part seems to have what look like impulse vents on the triangular part.

[@mdurwin]

The doors for the landing gear can actually be seen in the underside of the TOS Enterprise. Take a close look. I wouldn't expect a ramp coming out of the back of the saucer section, as it's interfere with the intermix chamber and the turbolift. More on the turbolift later. It's suggest that the ramp(s) for the saucer section could be built right into the landing gear, similar to what we saw in the first encounter with Vulcans in First Contact. TOS Entperise designers discuss landing legs and saucer separation in the original design. It was built in because they intended to use it in the original series. Budget prevented them, but it was always there. Mr. Scott has mentioned that the lower half of the saucer and some of it's odd spaces was largely taken up by landing gear. Most of the diagrams we see are cutaways from the side, so we wouldn't see the landing gear which sites at 10, 2, 5, and 7 o'clock.

[@pigpig252]

Hope wouldn't necessarily be lost for crewmen stuck in the Secondary hull. I assume there are escape pods. They could make for those, and rendezvous with the saucer section once clear of the blast

[@phillipthorne8363]

"Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" (1987) describes one-man lifeboats on R Deck, intended for personnel who can't reach the primary hull before separation. Afterward, personnel are transferred by transporter or via the H Deck docking port. (This is in the vicinity of the cargo facilities and above the botanical garden.)

[@autecheee]

3:11 Not unless Troi is piloting

[@gabrielvampyre]

Semi related to this is something I've been thinking about since the torp bay video and through the dorsal problem video. How do the photorp casings get loaded on the Refit? We know the magazine is above the photorp bay, but there's no way a cargo elevator could carry the casings up from engineering/storage to the aft dorsal section, and there may not be a way for a cargo elevator to exist to carry the casings down into the aft dorsal from the saucer. So I started to wonder if they needed to "pop the top off" to load the 96 photorp magazine?

[@nekophht]

there's the "exhaust" spots at the rear of the torp bay area on the exterior. Perhaps something hooks up there and loads into the torp bay from the rear, which then lifts it up into the magazine?

[@eddievhfan1984]

Anti-gravity cargo pallets are shown being used in the ST universe, and the docking ports flanking the torpedo launcher suggest that they would have been direct-loaded from there; saves the hassle and danger of moving possibly loaded torpedoes around the engineering hull.

[@christopherrobin4619]

Is there any chance you could do a cutaway video of the TOS various decks of the ship? Id love to watch one of your breakdowns of the unseen areas that never made it to the screen.

[@Vipre-]

In the secondary hull it'd probably make more sense in an emergency to get to the shuttle bay and launch then rendezvous with the saucer after. Assuming of course doing so was fast enough.

[@Ostsol]

I would also question the propulsion systems available to the saucer. The impulse drive would work, but that's just forward thrust. What does the saucer have for landing thrusters?

[@b.s.864]

You still have the maneuvering thrusters on the saucer rim to help with orientation (highly doubt this would be powerful enough for vtol). You might have some type of gravity control. but most likely you are a slightly maneuverable brick and reliant on atmospheric forces to 'cushion' your 'landing'

[@SaturnCanuck]

Nice Indiana Jones comment. Well done

[@gregorymcmahon876]

Very cool.

[@huskerchuck9212]

Has nobody mentioned Star Trek Continues? Specifically the two-part finale "To Boldly Go". Saucer separation well done.

[@Starman20290]

This is great! Would you be able to make one with the TOS Enterprise and SNW Enteprise configurations?

[@WeTravelbyNight]

Perhaps, but I have a long list of projects so it won't be soon.

[@darrellhagan6124]

I dunno.....I always kind of thought that the whole saucer separation concept was kind of a silly idea and when I saw it for the first time in Star Trek TNG I considered the joint between primary & secondary hulls a possible weak point in the ship's design. Seems like maybe a badass dose of shear forces perhaps in an Ion storm could rip the two apart.....

[@DanBen07]

It's not Canon but the prequel comic to the new video game Star Trek Resurgence shows the USS resolute which is a Centaur-class being able to saucer separate.

[@steelgreyed]

Here's the thing. The original had explosive "skuttling" charges that would outright destroy a section of the neck to separate the saucer section and is indeed a one time deal as you otherwise correctly outlined with the rest being spot on, as the original Constitution did lack all the landing additions. This is also why it required a dry dock to re-attach as they had to rebuild the blown away deck level. The irony to the "refit" Constitution class, they removed the explosive charges, and just put the Warp core and the Torpedo bay in the neck..... (literally next to each other) No need for charges, we are definitely gonna separate when the neck is hit hard enough, or if someone sabotages the torpedo magazine. In all honesty though I think they have to dump the core before attempting to survive separation via torpedo explosion. While it lowered the survivability of the vessel it almost guaranteed most of the advanced tech would be unsalvageable by the enemy. In this vein, all the strut additions you mention were the Captains commenting on the original skuttling scenario, "Okay so we now have a saucer, how do we land it?" "uuuuuuuh we didn't think that far. Wait for the refit."

[@nocelebrity6042]

I'd assume that in a failure mode where the antimatter containment is restored after saucer separation, it might be possible to rig Engineering to control the stardrive (via the control room in Engineering), and then use a tractor beam to tow the saucer safely back to the nearest shipyard that could reattach the saucer.

[@Spindrift-id1ez]

They never mentioned Saucer separation in any of the original series episodes. But, there where a few times Kirk told Scotty to jettison the warp nacelles if he had to. Maybe that's what your referring to

[@UberNeuman]

They played with the idea for use in Star Trek III, if you search for it you can find the storyboard draft of how it would have looked in the film.

[@DanBen07]

Iv hard the reason they blow up the saucer section that way was so the secondary hull could crash on the planet and be salvaged. They didn't go with that and wanted to change the self-destruct explosion but couldn't do they have to go with what they had already.

[@andrewkapplin1138]

During saucer separation the transporters could also be used to evacuate the lower hull. I also have an issue with where the disembarking steps or ramp is located. It’s right in the middle of where the core and turbo shaft is. (Or at least that’s what it looks like to me.) Nice video, tho.

[@josegabrielhc]

About the escape of the crew by turbolift, I think that it would be reasonable to think, as starfleet has ranks like the military, the ship could have a evacuation protocol like the in the modern navies. Some of the lower decks personal could be assigned to evacuate by turbolift and some via shuttlecrafts, that could dock on the sauce after the separation.

[@jmc32007]

The enterprise as designed by Matt Jeffries is a modular design. It looks as though the saucer was designed to detach and descend to the planet, so that the crew could utilize the full resources of the ship rather than just a few hand held items that they would’ve beamed down with. This was never fully realized in the series due to budget constraints on special effects

[@balrighty3523]

1:57 Now just think of how much power you could get if you could harness Indy 5's flop potential...

[@kateward3914]

...and suddenly I see a use case for Jackill's dockport passenger pod, if you could fit a couple in stowage under the hanger deck. Four shuttles, two with passenger pods, could evac most of the landing/cargo bay. Plus six workbees, two (or more?) cargo bay lifepods, and ten spacesuits with thruster packs (2 per airlock according to Mr. Scott's Guide). That leaves only main engineering and the torpedo room to evac up the dorsal.

[@kateward3914]

Rereading Mr. Scott's Guide, there are also emergency transporters two decks below main engineering, on either side of the intermix shaft, that can beam evacuees to the pads in the primary hull.

[@skyvogel8326]

How would the primary hull: 1) enter (reenter, if originally built on land) an atmosphere, and 2) what with gravity and the need to provide controlled lift, fly?

[@tdrewman]

In the book, a flag fool of stars, the saucer section was refitted on Earth and then was launched into space and fitted to the drive section in space dock.

[@TurtleTrackin]

Would the phaser banks function without the warp drive?

[@DanBen07]

TMP DECKER: "Sir, the Enterprise redesign increases phaser power by channelling it through the main engines. When they went into anti-matter imbalance, the phasers were automatically cut off." For the Wrath of Khan they were able to use phasers when engineering was damaged.

[@amyhogarten5038]

Beautiful digital model and renderings ‼️ There is an issue with both the Jeffries and the Probert versions of the landing legs/gangway the saucer: both schemes would create interference with all the massive amount of other “stuff” crammed into the neck. On both the TOS and Refit, there’s the turbo lift itself occupying the same physical space as the saucer landing gear and/or gangway, not to mention the vertical warp core shaft to the impulse crystal on the refit. Two physical things cannot exist in the same space. The idea of the saucer separation is great, but the landing gear schemes were never thought through like the rest of the designs. Not a criticism of this effort, just a general detail of the designs that seemed to be never really addressed from a realist perspective.

[@pasqualguigano6315]

According to the Star Trek technical manual, the saucer section was supposed to come in and skid to a stop. No land with landing gear

[@02ujtb00626]

The secondary hull does have escape pods and shuttles though.

[@Millennial_Manc]

I’m not sure the main reason for rare saucer seps in TNG was cost. They were able to recycle footage from the pilot as often as necessary for the actual separation. It was more about the plot and the pace. The saucer sep was only useful if they were aware of danger in advance, which is very limited in Star Trek plots which often involve some sort of surprise / ambush / natural disaster. Furthermore, the process of evacuating to the saucer, then separating, then cutting to the battle bridge, then later rendezvousing and reconnecting would eat up valuable screen time with something that would become painfully slow and dull. It also means some of the main cast would be commanding the saucer instead of being where the action was taking place.

[@Sasuke81a]

What about using Transporters to Assist in Evacuation and the shuttle bay?

[@daviddooley5361]

I see a flaw in your video, the crystal l dome just forward of the impulse deck is a deflection crystal for the warp intermix and in the case of a saucer separation it would not be glowing blue, instead it would most likely be black.

[@startiger2]

A saucer separation was part of the plan for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. They even went as far as story boarding the sequence. The idea was that after V'ger disappears, everything that V'ger digitized on its flight reappears in Earth Orbit. The Klingons from the start of the movie are back, panic, and attack the Enterprise. The battle ends with the separation. Like you said, cost killed the idea. The movie was badly over budget and the whole sequence was one of the first things to go, long before they ever filmed anything.

[@majinjones4565]

The original Connie can do this to, In fact most federation ships have this function.

[@originaluddite]

I'm now imagining all those flying saucers visiting Earth in the 50s were in fact emergency landings of habitat modules. :)

[@TurtleTrackin]

The Mirror Enterprise has to do a separation like this in DC Comics "Mirror Universe" storyline. I remember reading it some years before we ever saw the Next Generation do it on TV. These issues have since been collected in a trade paperback, and represents a more creative solution to the conclusion of Star Trek III, now popularly forgotten. The DC Star Trek timeline of that era was only canon to itself, and in an era where the only Trek was the next movie or reruns of TOS, it was how Trekkies of the 1980s got their monthly fix.

[@TurtleTrackin]

If Paramount wanted to make some side money, they'd do an animated adaptation of that old comic storyline. Everyone would know it wasn't canon, but it would be a lot of fun to watch.

[@DanBen07]

There's a toy commercial for the tmp where the Enterprise can do it "Mego Star Trek commercial".

[@wildstar1063]

Some of the engineering crew, and other people in the secondary hall, could probably escape through the shuttle craft's there are supposed to be several of them, right?

[@christopherelworthy9640]

Maybe this is where self sealing stem bolts are used in conjunction with the magnetic seal🤔

[@strikerevimus]

Here's the thing, the refit ship was in-fact designed to do a saucer separation if a film had required it. We just never got to see what that looked like, but a few drafts of Star Trek the Motion Picture did feature the saucer separating, and concept art of saucer separation does exist. So it could have been done at least once, but the thing was never done.

[@thekaniack]

nice 3d model, did you build it?

[@Jeffers1960]

Surely the crew could beam to the saucer section

[@firesoldier343]

or run for the shuttle bay

[@gabrielvampyre]

Intraship beaming was an extremely dangerous thing in the 23rd Century. The only time I believe it's done in TOS era was in Day of the Dove where Spock clearly indicates it's not something to be taken lightly.

[@charlesp.kalina4162]

People routinely beamed between spaceships, so long as there was a transporter at the receiving end. So beaming between the primary and secondary hulls should have been fairly safe. The danger in "Day of the Dove" came from Kirk beaming into an ordinary space (main engineering) without a transporter pad to receive him. (Also Klingons had taken over the ship, so perhaps it was dangerous because they could detect and mess with the beam.)

[@-johnny-deep-]

How is the saucer section supposed to land completely vertically like that? It would need impulse engines pointing downward from the underside, right?

[@luciusvorenus9445]

How does one contain anti-matter? What are the storage bottles made of?