Trekyards EP342 - Oberth Class (Full Breakdown)

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[@colanitower]

Ex Astris Scientia is indeed one of the best Star Trek reference sites around.

[@digitalis2977]

USS Explodium Registration NCC-OMFG First constructed in the 2280s at the Sacrificial Lamb Shipyards in orbit around the planetoid Eirene where nothing could endanger or threaten them, production was moved to the Red Helmet Shipyards near Luna in the 2340s for maximum protection and defense of the young, fragile vessels.

[@thedoctor755]

There's a slide down in the port strut, and a slide going back up (reverse gravity) in the starboard strut. You get on a Starfleet blanket and slide down to the secondary hull :)

[@Ostermond]

Not gonna lie, the Oberth class looks pretty cool _upside-down._

[@joshuabrown5057]

MainBlag Banner +1

[@jamesfoster7158]

I had the same thought watching the rotation video.

[@Benjamin0119]

Holy crap, you're right. :D

[@shayachern13]

I designed a ship that was pretty much an upside-down Oberth. The saucer was a little bigger and I moved the nacelles though. I called it the Grand Canyon Class. I named all the ships after US National Parks. It was a nice design. :-)

[@abnerhayes6915]

It does

[@nefdsnet]

Futurama style personal transport tubes are also an option for the pylons. And waterslides down of course. Saavik must have had so much fun... raising her eyebrows because of childish humans! 😃

[@mattmon6118]

I'm so glad you've released a video for the Oberth Class, one of my favourite designs. So neatly out of the box.

[@thexsoar]

Yes indeed, I love me some Ekyards.

[@blakew9920]

excellent job as always lads! Just popped in my mind ; would be awesome if the secondary hull could float on water for more extensive planetary study. keep up the good work guys!

[@saladinbob]

What a fabulously interesting idea. I'd love to see that.

[@misteravid]

How about this...? Drop the crew complement down to 15-20 or so. And make the secondary hull uninhabitable - just a large sensor platform. That way you only need Jeffries tube-access to it via the pylons. Warp, impulse, bridge, crew quarters (Defiant-sive bunks only) - all live in the primary hull, which is only 1 deck high aft of the saucer. The warp reactor is on its side, like the Danube-class runabout - so it fits in a small space. And embed a slightly-smaller bridge module (it is a scout after all) in the centre of the saucer, with quarters around the edge. And no shuttles - unless you want a small pod in the recess at the front of the saucer.

[@rolandogamez]

My. thoughts exactly! Logical, Brilliantly Logical!

[@RimonKade]

Yes. If you have to doubt either the size or the crew complement, mishearing or miswriting "eighty" for "eighteen" makes more sense than accidentally swapping 120 meters for the larger sizes.

[@DrewLSsix]

The dark panels on the aft underside of the primary hull resemble NX-01 style pod bays so shuttles of a sort are possible, and it links the design retroactively to ENT. The scaling may be off if the double row of ports on the upper dome are supposed to be multiple decks, but DSC established a design where some decks may have multiple rows of ports with some being practically skylights. Ironically I think the Oberth with requisite coloration and texture changes would fit right in with the DSC designs. And the hull number of the Grissom suggests that particular ship predates the DSC Enterprise and pretty much any ship seen so far outside of ENT era ships.

[@sabrewolf4129]

@@DrewLSsix STD isn't ST cannon, STD is Jar Jar Kelvin cannon, 2 entirely different shows.

[@DrewLSsix]

SABREWOLF No, Paramount and CBS are separate companies, CBS lacks the rights to anything created by Paramount for their trek films.

[@zagartolagonda]

Perhaps the 120m figure refers to the upper hull, with the ‘bolt on’ secondary hull not being considered part of the ship class??

[@goblinwarknight360]

That was my thought. A Gato class sub was 95 meters long and 8.3 meters wide with two decks yet had a crew of 60 that it could maintain for 3 months.

[@castlecircle7612]

Oberth has been one of my favorite designs in Trek, great episode as usual guys

[@Jack_Stafford]

*COMMANDER!* These are some absolutely incredible renders of the Grissom! You found every beauty angle for it; it's one of my favourites anyway, but it's never been seen in the way that you have composed and presented these beauty shots of it. _Thank you so much_ ! I've been a fan of this ship since it first came out, it was only the second ship in all of Star Trek history that was a truly new design that was not a kitbash and didn't share any parts with any other ship, including the Excelsior (which would have been tempting to do since they debuted in the same movie, and before things like scale were important and ship classes weren't really a thing since so very few ships had been shown). With these new ships it really opened up a whole new notion of a much more varied Fleet than we'd ever seen before, previously all ships were variations of the Constitution's saucer and nacelles. People either love it or hate it, but it broke new ground and changed our idea of what a Starfleet ship could look like. I like its sleek Art Deco lines and its nacelles that are unique in all of Starfleet. It strikes me as compact and stealthy in the respect that it is small and perhaps its unique engines don't leave much of emissions trail and perhaps in its mysterious lower hull it carries some kind of scrambling sensor suite and other stealthy technology in order to carry out such clandestine missions as mapping Genesis. I am so happy to be able to see this ship given its due attention and explored from many more interesting angles than we have ever seen before. *Bravo Samuel*! Cheers!

[@shayachern13]

Thank you. The Oberth is easily in the top 5 of my favorite ships in Star Trek. I like the fact that it is not like a traditional Starfleet vessel. Great analysis and episode. Sam, I do think an updated TNG design would be cool also. One of my other faves is the Olympic Class... STO does a decent job of "upgrading" it to 2409. I wish they would do that for the Oberth.

[@godalmighty83]

A 120m naval frigate would have a crew of 200-250 people for comparisons sake. You can cram quite a few people into a contained space.

[@markplott4820]

a more accuate comparison would be the Miranda class and Constellation class, they are both Fighting Frigates in the Star Trek universe.

[@kirishii8895]

I think the naval frigate would probably have significantly more internal volume when compared to this design

[@godalmighty83]

@gareth Fairclough, then that would be a crew from 110-130, probably a close match of the volume of the engineering hull alone let alone the upper half of the Oberth. Either way trek has always had a very low crew count, the crew of the Discovery could go days without seeing another person!

[@godalmighty83]

@Gustav Guijt from my brief visit onboard a Type 23 Frigate it's surprising how vast amounts of space are taken up by equipment, framework and fuel storage, The 'liveable' internal space is probably less then that of the secondary hull alone. Decks are quite low as well, considerably less than 3m.

[@Riceball01]

Agreed, an Oberth is comparable to an LA class attack boat at 100m length and a crew compliment of over 100 officers and men. Similar to the Oberth, an LA class only has 3 decks (not including the sail) and is certainly not nearly as wide as the primary hull on an Oberth. So with the extra width, it's possible to stuff 80 some odd personnel inside an Oberth, but it should be noted that an LA class doesn't actually have enough room for all of its 100+ crew, the junior enlisted have to do what's called hot bunking in where he shares his bunk with 1 or 2 other people. This means that while 1 crew member is on duty somebody is sleeping in his bunk and when sailor 1 gets off duty is due to go to sleep, sailor 2 is now getting out of bed and getting ready to go on duty.

[@adamlytle2615]

Oh, and how could I forget - bravo on the renders in this episode! love the shots of the ship in motion, especially the one where the camera goes between the hulls.

[@Blade_Runner_79]

Adam Lytle Great! And that shot where it goes between the hulls was the icing on the cake! Beautiful work!

[@Jack_Stafford]

I always considered the lower part of the ship to be like the trailer part of a semi tractor trailer truck , or a train car being towed behind a locomotive. The "semi truck" is what provides all of the power and control and equates to the saucer in this comparison, and the trailer is specifically not intended for habitation of any kind, merely for cargo or equipment, like the lower hull of this ship. And I think that works in this case since there are no windows; anything in the lower part of the ship would be strictly cargo or equipment or possibly material that needs to be isolated from the rest of the ship and that could be ejected if necessary. Perhaps also in case of an emergency the lower part could be partially quickly pressurised to accommodate humans and ejected from the saucer and warp-core drive section and serve as a lifeboat if a mission goes very wrong. It would be very interesting to hear the designer's ideas and justification, but using the form follows function rule we have to conclude that the bottom part of the ship is not intended for habitation, much like a coal car on a train or a postal trailer being pulled by a mail service truck. And what a great in useful design this is if one accepts that explanation for its arrangement. :) The graceful curves and elegant lines are just a happy result of the ship's unique designated mission profile.

[@user-do2ev2hr7h]

Except that we see a TNG era MSD for the class that seems to indicate there's quite a lot going on in the secondary hull.(and also shows the nacelle struts are full deck space)

[@CubanWriter]

Love the slow zoom out on the size comparison.

[@marqsee7948]

The nacelles are quite art-deco in style, they remind me of the Exelcior class/ Enterprise B. Now there's a link to that unusual design.

[@Blade_Runner_79]

Marq See Yes,! they must have been tempted to use The Excelsior engines just cut down for size and instead they went with an entirely new design but one that fit in the same era. I really appreciate that design work, being only the second Starfleet ship we've seen with all new parts that wasn't a kitbash of any other ship nor sharing any pieces with any other ship including the only other all new ship debuted in the same movie! That's why it was so popular especially when it first came out, we had been given kitbash designs of the Constitution for 25 years and suddenly there are two New Kids on the Block.

[@marqsee7948]

agreed. One using a similar design style reinforces the validity of the other, acknowledge that yes, this existed and was used and yes, they didn't do it again (yet).

[@williamvanderbilt737]

The best reference is the Oberth-class deck plans in Strategic Designs. It'll give you all the information you could possibly want. You can download them from Cygnus-x1. BTW, there are two methods of interhull transport. 1. Two transporter rooms (one in each hull) linked by way of hardwired conduits to eliminate the danger of signal degradation. 2. A one-man sled on magnatomic rails (think photon torpedo loading) known as an outrigger personnel trolley, one for each pylon. They can be stopped at any point to facilitate engineering inspections.

[@AlexWoodThete]

Maybe the struts are just big slides... weeeee (one slides down and the other had gravity flipped, so much fun)

[@adamlytle2615]

I love how any post about the Oberth on the Trekyards facebook page always leads to a discussion about how the crew gets into the lower hull. I'd say that even if it's meant to be unmanned, there should still be a way to get there. However the Oberth takes a lot of heat for this whereas no one ever seems to wonder about the Miranda class torpedo pod. Anyway, love that Ex Astris Scientia article, and in my head canon the ship is more in the 250m range, which allows for the windows and bay doors to make sense, and I think you could make a stronger case for a turbolift of some kind in the struts at that size. (Even if it's a specialized slim version)

[@90lancaster]

The Reliant rollbar may only be accessible by travel pod or beaming as it doesn't need to be crewed.

[@Benjamin0119]

Adam Lytle I never understood how anyone got to the Enterprise D nacelles. x_x The pylons are so slim! Transporters I guess.

[@90lancaster]

The ship is so large that the pylons only appear thin they are actually plenty thick enough for a modest turbo lift car though it seem the car might have to travel tilted on it side during the horizontal section of it's journey. The Plasma conduits inside the strut must be a bit odd they must look like the teeth on a comb to fit inside there too. I don't think anyone though anyone was going to be walking around inside the Nacelles when they invented the ship though or they'd likely have doubled the thickness of the "wings" and the vertical struts - they actually are arguably a huge waste of space anyway as they is barely a man height in the large horizontal sections that come of the engineering hull - at least on the Enterprise C here skirts look like they are tall enough for someone to walk around in. It may be an illusion of scale - but it would be a bit silly to have many square metres of area that people can only crawl around inside - or they'd have to use droids/exocomps/remotes that we tend to not see often. But it might be an illusion of scale.

[@Benjamin0119]

All I could figure is it must be a turbo lift that tilts, yeah, and the gravity in it stays oriented the same way, if one could even fit. Well people have to go in there to do routine maintenance from time to time. There was actually an episode of TNG with someone working in the nacelle. memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Nacelle_tube Hm, I don't remember all this in the episode, but apparently you could get to the control room in the nacelle via Jeffries tube! That's a lot of climbing! Yeah the horizontal parts would be quite a waste of space if no one could walk in, even if it is mostly stuff to make the ship work, someone has to get in there to do maintenance. There's not very many shots of the Ambassador class, the writers' logic was that it was an "older ship" so there aren't very many around. Never mind the Excelsior class which shows up constantly, which would be older. Though the idea was also probably that this is the past Enterprise, so we want to keep it special and not see that ship class too often. Anyway, in the few pictures of the actual ship in the shows, it looks like yeah maybe someone could fit in there. Looked up some of Enterprise D, some shots from the back, and of it with the Enterprise C, maybe those pylons are thicker than I thought and it is an illusion of scale, like you said.

[@DrewLSsix]

Benjamin0119 those pylons are as thick or thicker than the rim of the saucer, the rim is thick enough to house 10 forward with huge ceilings. Probably 12 to 15 feet from deck to overhead then there's a 2nd deck (deck 9) above it. So the rim is at least 30 is feet thick not counting space between decks deck plating thickness and external hull thickness. I think there's space for turbolifts in those pylons lol.

[@VieVentar]

Wonder if the length would work if you exclude the lower hull? If its modular, maybe the class length is for the main hull only?

[@voltaicfire1825]

That's as good a hand-wave as any other I suppose.

[@redshirt0479]

Ah the _Oberth_ class, I love this little design. I’ve read the article mentioned here before. Personally I side with the 150 meter length. When it comes to the secondary hull, I assumed that if it was inhabited or not varied from ship to ship. Same thing with placement of the warp core and various systems. Basically, the only thing standard is the ship’s profile. I also wouldn’t say that the vessel is a bad design if the pylons have to pump matter/antimatter from the secondary hull to the primary one (if you go with that arrangement). Hull strength is at most tertiary for starship defense with shields and structural integrity fields being the primary and secondary defense. Even the capital ships are in extreme danger if those go down and they’ve got thicker hulls. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that the most common arrangements would be 150 meters long, warp core, fusion reactor, and living quarters in the primary hull, and the secondary hull contains the science labs, navigational deflector, and high fidelity sensor palettes. And on the issue of internal space, well the Warp Core is probably small, I’d guess around the size of NX-01’s core. She doesn’t need a lot of power since she’s a slow, non to light combat capable vessel and given the advancements in technology between the 22nd and 23rd centuries a warp core of equal size probably outputs quite more power. Fuel stores are going to be small since the vessel is low endurance, low power, and low speed. As for the crew, well the _Legend_ class Cutter used by the US Navy can have a crew complement of nearly 150 and only has a length of 127 meters. So it’s entirely doable to have a crew of 80 on a 150 meter starship. As for scaling issues, honestly the problem goes away when you eliminate shots done for dramatic effect and the outliers. Also if you don’t take most of the space scenes literally since as it’s been established multiple times the Visual Effects people go with what looks interesting or think is necessary rather than what the writers want/intend. This is why we have a mix of combat at over 200,000 kilometers and getting up close and personal or some rather bizarre shots (especially from DS9).

[@donaldhill3823]

Generally good points about ship size not matching what is seen on screen. However size can be hard to judge between ships in space if you do not know the distance between the ships or the distance of the camera from the closest ship and the furthest ship. Closer ships will appear larger then ships further out. This could explain much of the size comparison issues of Star Trek Ships if it was not for the modelers sticking to unrealistic sizes for various ships. I also think it would have been better to say the pods were not Engineering and served only as sensor packages based on current mission with minimal need for personal to visit them during mission. This said the struts would work best as permanent parts of the package pods which could connect to various point along the bottom of the permanent hull depending on the configuration. This would create the function which the form is trying to fit.

[@Blade_Runner_79]

Donald Hill Exactly! I would like to see someone do a render of it without the pylon and pod and you have a cool design of a ship that could take on kind of an NX defiant role, and also be fitted with sensitive equipment for top secret missions like the Grissom was on or with extra fuel, or cargo that might need to be quickly ejected. But the top part of the ship is the central core of the ship, and the bottom part is just along for the ride.

[@richardharleman]

Regarding access to the lower section of the ship... I happened to notice at 22:50 there is a docking port on the side of the secondary hull, just below the pylon; perhaps there is a shuttlepod in the shuttle bay they can use to get to the secondary hull to make repairs or access the equipment when necessary. If this is the actual filming model, then it would also be a good size reference for the ship overall length and height.

[@dreamingsamurai]

One of the great mysteries of StarTrek. A ship that seems to use either clown car or TARDIS physics. :-)

[@DarinRWagner]

Wow, Samuel's cgi animations ALMOST make me think this could be a cool ship. Well done!

[@GregoryMCMAHON817]

I really love hearing the full breakdown of the Oberth Class.

[@aleksdamjanovic9082]

I'm pretty sure it was the Tsiolkovsky in 'The Naked Now' rather than the Tolstoy. The Tolstoy was a Rigel Class starship destroyed at the Battle of Wolf 359

[@saladinbob]

Whilst a neat looking ship on the surface, clearly not a lot of thought went into the design. In fairness to them though, prior to TNG, the ship appears on screen for no more than a couple of minutes before going boom. It was never meant to be anything more than a Red Shirt.

[@MrSheckstr]

One thought on the size issue. Perhaps we need to consider the Oberth Class like the Ford F series of trucks? That would explain having an upper module of between 2 and four decks Also considering all the lower module variants I think we have to accept that engineering has to be in in the upper level with the lower level being only for mission specific material and spaces

[@watcherzero5256]

The upper and lower hull being seperate environments would make sense for a science ship before the later prevalence of forcefields that could be projected practically anywhere. If your studying a new virus say or new engineering technology and theres an accident the living quarters are safe from contamination, the lower section is esentially a hot lab. If your dead set on there having to be a physical connection through the pylons though remember this was the time of the narrow jeffries, rather than a whole lift there could be grav chutes, you jump in and artificial gravity takes you safely to bottom, meanwhile for going back theres a revere chute.

[@maxabramson4781]

120m would give you a ship 40m or about 130 feet high. Assuming decks no higher than we see on the show, that's 16 stories high, if you have less space between decks. I've worked on merchant ships about this length, and it's plenty of room for hauling cargo and crew. At the 26:00 mark, we see the Oberth Class at 12" long on my monitor, giving the saucer section (2 decks plus one more deck beneath it) a height of about 8m, or 2.6m (8ft) per deck. They've even included a turbolift in the schematic running down the side. Since artificial gravity is well established by the 23rd century, crew members wouldn't even feel the maneuvering of the lift. And the small warp core (on chief engineer and four enlisted crew) are seen right behind the saucer section.

[@benharding5727]

i can imagine universities using these ships for research missions or being sold by private contractors to businesses or governmental bodies as science ships that cost next to nothing and a better option over larger ships like the constitution or miranda

[@CaptRobertApril]

My personal take: the lower hull is strictly an add-on, like the upper pod on a Danube class runabout or a Nebula class starship, and isn't accessible from the saucer section other that via transporter (probably a hard wired system). Given the registry number of the Grissom, I also see this as actually an older class vessel that's been refit, at least those flying around during the movie era. Just picture TOS style nacelles on the sides, and you get what I'm thinking.

[@SeanCodyTexasLegalDefense]

The podcast "outpost" uses an Oberth as the primary ship of the show.

[@SeanCodyTexasLegalDefense]

It was the chimera

[@theicmn]

I came to post this. Tough little ship.

[@Darkhorse393]

Slides!!! There are multiple emergency slides to get to the secondary hull quickly.

[@johnmiller7682]

Intra ship beaming might be dangerous, with normal transporters. But if you had a dedicated system, that used internal conduits, rather than sending through space, it would be safe. In fact, modern day radar systems (and even Bose stereos) use what is called "Wave Guides". If you can do this with sound and radar, why not a transporter?

[@janetybarra2692]

This is a great presentation on the ship and the class. I would just say that Nick Meyers, et al, clearly wanted a ship on screen in "Search for Spock" which would be both a quick but shocking attack on the part of the Klingons. Over time I wondered that if the Mutara sector was as sensitive as Starfleet claimed, that they would have sent *some* more tactically capable ship to escort the "Grissom."

[@AvoozlPlays]

I am still waiting on STO to add this ship in T6 form.

[@WaybackTECH]

The secondary hull seems to me like it would be, or should be a module which you just switch depending on what the use for the ship happens to be, cargo, equipment, rescue missions, science stuff.. seems like it is intended to be a separate module which just receives power for basic environmental needs from the ship through the struts. If a secondary deflector is needed, then one is already installed in the module, but I can't see there being any kind of crew living quarters down there.

[@CaneMcKeyton]

Woe unto those poor souls assigned to the Oberth class

[@a.j.leonard964]

A ship is a ship Captain Kirk

[@marleymcleay9228]

Oh I'd happily cruise the universe studying phenomena in an Oberth, I love em ;)

[@RotalHenricsson]

Same. Wouldn't be my first, second or third choice but as long as i have my own bathroom and not have to live on this planet anymore i'd be game.

[@poseidon5003]

Spending time orbiting planets and scanning them because the big explorer ships just map unexplored space as they go following signals. All good and cool.

[@KertaDrake]

TOS-Era crew: This ship is pretty advanced and sciency! Hope we don't get assigned anywhere dangerous though. TNG-Era crew: It's a bit old, but great for science... Oh, there's a big cube heading for Earth and they want us to fight? I'm sure the rest of the fleet can handle it, we'll be fine... I hope. DS9-Era crew: They're sending us into war against ships that can take down a Galaxy?! Wonder if we can just call the Borg back... it's probably safer being assimilated!

[@PaulGuy]

They don't use turbolifts through the pylons, they have tubes like on Cloud City.

[@poseidon5003]

I absolutely love this little ship. The 220 meter makes the most sense I guess.

[@cdlord80]

I's been a follower of Bernd for over a decade. Maybe even since the late 90's but my memory is a bit fuzzy. Great articles and analysis.

[@EugenioAngueira]

I always liked this design. Really cool looking ship. By the way, the hospital ship version was designed by Eric Kristiansen (Jackill's) and he named the ship after me. :)

[@PsychoStreak]

For me, the thing that makes the Oberth so accessible is that when you look at it, it's intentionally very simple. If you take a Connie and you strip away everything that isn't needed for moving the ship around, scanning and doing research, and someplace for the people doing that to sleep, then you wind up with just enough parts to make the Oberth. Arrange those parts into a graceful secondary hull, and a utilitarian primary hull, and you end up with a mix of clean lines and familiar shapes, and not a ton of bits spattered over the hull to 'add interest'. The Oberth is also, seemingly by design flexible enough to be configured for nearly any task you can think of. Combine that with them being (apparently) really reliable, it's easy to see why Starfleet would crank them out for decades. I would like to see one ugraded with Nova class Nacelles and a more powerful warp core - for speed more than range. With Discovery, first there are far too many wildly disparate designs to make it believable that they're all from the same organization. Second, there isn't any sense whatsoever of form following function; you can't tell at a glance what a ships designed role is. With Trek, the baseline for what Federation ships can and can't do is the Enterprise. In canon, the Connie, and each successive class that has born the name, is said to be able to perform the functions of any other ship or or facility in the fleet. Specialized vessels exist for providing greater detail, capacity, or weaponry than the Enterprise has room or facilities for. The Enterprise in all her iterations can do basically everything except land and takeoff from a planet's surface. (Theoretically if you built a cradle structure that supported the areas of the hull that would be most strained by gravity, she could do that too.) One should, IMO, be able to discern what a different classes intended role is by comparing what it adds or removes when compared to the Enterprise. Discovery's Starfleet designs utterly fail at this across the board. Ironically, the otherwise awful "Klingon" designs actually do this better - The BoP Deathglider Batwing is a small attack craft, while the larger monstrosities are cruisers, heavy cruisers, transport/prison ships and what have you. To touch on the simplicity aspect again, as nondescript as the Discofleet designs are, they still pack in an unnecessary amount of odd details that leave the viewer asking, "what's that there for?", and "what the heck does that do?" And now you're looking at the ship for all the wrong reasons. The goal to me - for Starfleet vessels anyway, is that you look at the ship and you make that comparison to the Enterprise almost subconsciously, then you're looking at the lines, at the layout and ultimately, you either want the ship to be the first to blow up, you're ok with it but it's not your thing, or you say to yourself, "Oooo. I want a model of that on my desk/shelf." The Oberth makes the cut, none of the Discofleet ships do. Personally, another thing is that the aztec patterns on the Oberth are not nearly as extreme as they are on other designs, which I've always felt went way overboard with it. I believe a shipyard would be able to sort and batch hull panels as well as anyone dealing with new tiles. If it were my shipyard and I was getting such an insane variety of panels from a supplier I'd file a complaint.

[@spudzillah_6175]

Wow the secondary hull looks soo good from the side view

[@poseidon5003]

Furthermore, this ship would make an excellent light freighter. Take out the big scanning sensor from the secondary hull and turn it into a huge cargo bay. Perhaps a different secondary hull type.

[@hanskywalker9552]

My head cannon since being a kid had the bottom section as just sensors. Especially the smooth underside parts of the bottom section. The ship would place it's bottom section facing the planet/moon/whatever and it would send out the 23rd century equivalent of radar and etc. out in 180 degrees scanning and analysing many different things all at once.

[@cdlord80]

Setting aside cutaways and deck plans, I like to think the secondary hull IS just equipment, sensors, etc., and each nacelle has it's own (smaller) warp reactor. The balance of ship systems would then be powered by the impulse fusion reactor. Each nacelle is a self-contained unit and that greebling behind the saucer would be to balance the warp fields.

[@mdtauk]

Curiously, if you take the Scaled up length of the Discovery Enterprise, the Oberth comes out closer to 300 - 360m - Which makes sense according to the Articles. So perhaps there is some merit to the Trek ships all being underscaled

[@DrewLSsix]

Martin Anderson. One of the issues with the smaller scales for the Oberth is the windows, they typically indicate the relative spacing of the decks and the Oberth model seems to show more decks than many of the deck plans allow for, like 2 decks in the bridge dome being evident from outside but only one being shown in plans. But with the Discovery showing some of its decks having two distinct rows of windows its possible the Oberth shares this feature. This may help resolve some other scaling issues in the franchise also 🤔

[@mdtauk]

DrewLSsix the Oberth is certainly a mess of a ship. Designed purely for it's silohette on the big screen no doubt

[@DrewLSsix]

Martin Anderson. I have a soft spot for it though, I wish it wasnt the go-to model for establishing danger or tension. Need to show the situation is dangerous but a redshirt floating in space wont do? Heres an Oberth! In starfleet academy (on Nintendo) taking down a cruiser with an Oberth was a true test of skill! And its only got its reputation because even TNGs budget didnt allow for many new models.

[@adamlytle2615]

Just gotta say, the 220 M version still makes sense as a "small scout ship" if the lower pontoon is just a mission specific sensor pod. At 220m, if the ship "proper" is just the upper part, then that part is about 145m, which seems appropriate.

[@alberttetley]

brilliant episode on a brilliant starship

[@seanm4095]

An answer has finally been provided to answer the question of how you access the the primary to secondary hall. An advanced but smaller turbo lift. The pylons are thicker than are shown and that's how you go through the ship. And there are two engineering sections. The primary engineering is on the top hall.

[@morkofork]

They could have a wired transporter system that sends your pattern down an ODN line to the pad in the secondary hull. I always thought that a cool varient of the Oberth would lose the secondary hull & struts, then have a ton of weapons attached like forward facing mega-phasers and photon tubes. It would be like a TMP era Defiant class.

[@krim7]

I have long thought about how cool it would have been for the Galaxy to be shown with a "Tactical Saucer section" rather than the gigantic normal saucer. Doing the same for the attached module for the Obert would be cool. They could have a tactical pod decked out with tons of torpedo launchers and a massive arsenal. Bigger ships protect the little torpedo boat while the torpedo boat blasts the enemy from every angle.

[@STNuevo]

This is always a challenge based on the nature of star fleet design with saucer, neck, pylons, nacelles and secondary hull, especial for small ships to get a useable space at the end. In addition, negative space or cutouts looks cool sometimes but often they are useless.

[@markplott4820]

the Obearth class starship was later Refit and Remade into a Gunship, called the Jester class, it was the Oberth class primary hull with the Lower hull removed completely , essentially it was all Stardrive, with 4 Warp nacelles instead of Two and also upgraded Impluse System for high output. Megaphasers were added to some variants while others opted for a underslung Auto torpedeo launcher from the Miranda class. additional and upgraded phaser Ball turrets were added as well as the Standard armament. because of the small size , crews were easy to find and were quite effective in Combat. they could also provide Escort and Light Patrol Duties .

[@kiffstevenson2784]

I, too, assumed that the "secondary hull" was a "bolt-on", unmanned sensor suite. It makes sense. Basically, the ship is a massive, glorified, long-range shuttle with a warp-drive and a modular equipment hard point. Think a mixture of Spock's long-range shuttle from TMP and the old Franz Joseph Ptolemy class. Probably a crew of less than 50, though.

[@KosmonautKong]

I like the extendable turbolift struts idea. I could see it being one of those features that, if the Oberth was a starring ship, the writers would forget about halfway through season 2 in favor of intership beaming.

[@Blade_Runner_79]

AkiraZXE I really reject the idea of an extendable tube, this is something very early on in development that engineers and designers would catch as an unnecessarily flimsy add on and they would have merely added a third strut that included turbo lifts but would never rely on something like that, we see how often Transporters mess up how often do you think a telescoping transport tube would, being exposed to deep space? Somebody who signed off on the project would say I know you're strut design is cool but form follows function and we need something here in the middle... so we have to logically deduce that since there _is_ no indication of such a thing that the lower part of the ship is meant to be uninhabited with either cargo or sensor Suite equipment and the top part is essentially independent ship warp sled, kind of like that era's defiant that can be fitted with any mission specific pods on the bottom.

[@Privrf]

When I was a kid watching ST3:TSFS I always thought that the secondary hull was a single warp nacelle for the longest time. Especially when told that this was a scout/science vessel.

[@Benjamin0119]

Great episode. Was always one of my favorite ships due the unique design. Never thought about the size issues. Usually you can get an idea of ship size by the windows = decks. I always just figured the ship was "small" and that was about it, heh.

[@kiwikaboodle]

At 18:24, with the shot of the studio model, the secondary hull sports a docking port for shuttles, similar to the one on the Enterprise. This, for me, would be the ideal starting point for gauging the size of the ship.

[@Blade_Runner_79]

Keith Crawley yes, windows and docking ports are perfect places to establish scale and ignore what has been established in games and side Cannon. Even what a designer says, if his model doesn't matches words then you have to go by the model. Also having docking ports down there doesn't imply it being necessarily inhabited, they could be docking ports merely for unloading cargo or fuel or for maintaining equipment when it's in Dry Dock or a situation in space where a catastrophe requires people from the main ship to go to the modular pod for whatever reason. I think of it as an NX defiant type ship that can be attached to pylons and pods for Mission profiles.

[@gildavis8266]

I always thought that the secondary hull in the Oberth Class science vessels were basically there to house the large sensor package as well as provide storage capacity for supplies, etc. Access to and from it was possible via Jefferies tubes with ladders and stairs that were embedded within either pylon. To make it effective these areas were kept in a 1/2 g environment to make it easier for personal to ascend, or descend. Also, a transporter pad made it possible to move stores, parts, etc. between the upper and lower hulls. As a point, I would agree that the vessels were actually 300 meters in length and, with the exception of officer quarters, most of the crew were assigned a common bunking areas on one of the lower decks. The upper decks housed both the bridge and science stations while the aft section housed engineering. All in all, I think this class of vessel was quite literately all business in it's design and function which explains it's short duration status. Most would be assigned to Star bases and would only be within a few light years from them at any given time.

[@collectorstartrek1036]

Oh the irony; I painted my Oberth model TODAY!

[@goblinwarknight360]

I know I'm late in commenting on this. But even as a kid I would compare Star Trek ships to modern ships and figured that the Oberth was measured from the bow to the aft of nacelles. So 120 meters is a good size. The Gato class subs being 95 meters with 60 crewmen. The secondary haul I figured was just extra power plants and sensors.

[@creepyrobot23-50]

I think a Jeffries tube is the best option, but if we assume there is a turbo lift in the pylons, I think it probably travels up the shaft horizontally, so perpendicular to what the video diagram showed. I think it would be able to go through the strut’s curves that way. And that’s not a problem for a turbolift since they can have their own gravity anyway. Just a thought! Great breakdown guys

[@90lancaster]

It's possible it has a telescoping retractable turbo-shaft (like the USS Titan has)

[@creepyrobot23-50]

90 Lancaster hmm interesting. Seems kind of odd but totally doable.

[@Witnaaay]

Perhaps there is a tube that drops from the primary to secondary hull for people to move around? If the seconds half if purely a technical section, could work.

[@llanorick]

How about ladders to get from the secondary hull to the primary. Since it may be necessary to get from the primary to engineering in a hurry, SLIDES would make sense.

[@squishybrain]

Always assumed that the secondary hull was full of delicate sensors that were kept separate from the main hull and engines to avoid interference in their sensor readings. This would explain the design of the engines as well, since they look like they're extremely well shielded, with no exposed emitters of energy (like the glowy bits on almost all other Starfleet ships).

[@glennlaroche1524]

Good episode--nice that you give Ex Astris Scientia some props--Sam is right, you can lose days on there. One of the best Trek sites there is--and the guy who runs the site is even harsher on Discovery than me, which is also nice. EDIT like 30 seconds after I posted---love the extendable turbolift idea. Solves all the problems, and not as tight a squeeze as Jeffries tubes.

[@Imperator_Prime]

The problem with Jeffries’ tubes connecting the primary and secondary hulls: descending them, you either have to start a downward vertical descent inverted, head first, or you have to go down feet first and arch your back blindly behind you through the curvature. Neither seems very practical. Therefore there’s only one logical choice: ladders for going up, waterslides for going down. Or you just assume that very low & skinny turbolifts have independent artificial gravity in their floors, so that through the transition from vertica to horizontal and back to vertical the passenger’s “down” stays constant.

[@berthulf]

And this ship is proof of why I completely ignore all arguments of size in any ship or series.

[@marleymcleay9228]

The Naked Now is the USS Tsiolkovsky not the Tolstoi

[@joearmstrong2404]

Variable gravity turbo lift. Basically slides that lead to the bridge from the hull, and from the bridge to the hull.

[@bikkiikun]

If you look at naval vessels on earth, the crew size of 80 will easily fit into 120 m. And 2 decks make sense. With labs in the lower hull for isolation and quarantene purpose. Transport to the lower hull can be achieved by pods flying through the space between the hulls. This would also play well into the isolated labs concept.

[@ImpracticalVFX]

There are clearly reversible gravity slides, fireman poles, or stripper poles in the pylons. Probably all three.

[@johnburton1838]

Michael Pawlak Star Trek motion pictures Star Trek

[@ImpracticalVFX]

You make an excellent point. 😂

[@markplott4820]

reversible BAT Poles. batman and robbin had then installed at Wayne Manor.

[@MrSheckstr]

John McLain is there to guide people through the AC ducts to the lower level

[@jeffd8465]

What if they have turbolifts that are like the ones in the Saint Louis arch? The elevators in the arch go from the base to almost the vary top, they are shaped like eggs, hold like 3-5 people, but have to sit down because the while thing is short that a 6ft man will have to hunch down. If the secondary hull is just full of science equipment and sensors the "egg" turbolift would be a great size and shape for having to go down there every so often.

[@dogspunk]

I too assumed the secondary hull was unmanned. Maybe they have slides/chutes for quick access! Pneumatic tubes to ascend.

[@shanenway2647]

When I was young when I saw the Oberth class, it had a closed curcuit transporter from primary to secondary hulls

[@shanenway2647]

So kind of like the B'rell bird of prey

[@borusa32]

A great episode -sorry to have been a late arriver to this. I never quite got the hang of the Oberth Class .

[@norman7566]

Inexplicable design idiosyncrasies not withstanding, this has always been my favorite ship since I first saw it. This ship, to me, is simply gorgeous. When I look at it I think of a ship on the water like a yacht. Much of the fun I have with this ship is thinking of solutions to the improbability of it and retractable turbo lift....FANTASTIC idea! Perhaps they use a combination of all the ideas mentioned...perhaps they have a lift such as on a flight of stairs to help someone who cannot walk up and down them. Lol...I joke, but I still LOVE this ship. I want one.

[@pwnmeisterage]

I like the idea of modular Oberths. Top saucer/platform section - basically a complete starship - attached to whatever hull/equipment is needed for the mission. To me, the top-only Oberth kind of looks like the TOS-era Romulan Bird of Prey. A I recall original off-screen explanations (or intentions) were that the Romulans actually built this "flagship" by copying stolen/captured Federation technology.

[@blairheald7720]

the only way to figure which length works best is to scale by height and extrapolate the other way- the thin deck on the primary hull outboard and aft of the saucer has to be 1 deck-any smaller and it's jeffrie's tubes connecting the nacelles, impulse engine, struts- every thing! that thin layer should be between 2 and 3 m. call it 2.5 and use that bench mark to determine true length- the struts could house a 1-man tube 1m diameter by 2 m long horizontally - with the long access parallel to the long axis of the ship= tube would simply roil through the bends in the struts- you simply lay down/stand up at either end- the struts are long enough to house at least 2 of these tube shafts per side, one in front of the other

[@ffnbbq]

This episode brought up a good point regarding Discovery Starfleet ships (wrong sizes aside): TMP era and TNG era both have varied ship design styles & configurations (some radically different to their respective Enterprises). How come we're so fixated on the TOS Enterprise/Connie being The One True Style of this era? It's only so by default. We just have *no idea* what any other (canon) Cage TOS/TOS series ship is supposed to look like. I'm saying this despite thinking the Discovery itself is pretty ugly.

[@Blade_Runner_79]

V P yes, that's why I don't think this ship has to follow the rules as far as deflector dishes, bussard collectors and what's going on in the bottom part of the ship. It's only the third ship we've ever seen that wasn't just a batch of a constitution-class, so it does its job in a way we don't really need to understand completely. But some things are common sense, the scale has to go by the windows regardless of what side Canon book say or authors or designers say. We see that there humans on the ships in all cases and that sets the scale by Windows on other Starships. There are none on the lower part of the ship so that clearly means aren't people down there and it is all fuel for long-distance surveying and or cargo, sensors, and Other equipment. It looks clearly detachable by the top of the pylons for ease of different Mission profiles, and I think this ship would look great without the lower part in the pylons kind of like an early defiant. But as far as what we saw on screen and what was actually shown in the shows, that is what should be the primary cannon that we concern ourselves with.

[@seanm4095]

The idea to the ship is if an experiment got out of control it could be jettisoned. There are several area that can be jettisoned if some experiment got out of hand. If hazardous materials where in the turbolifts they can be shot out into space.

[@jean-pauljesstiece5987]

Guys after all this time and hard work and commitment dint you think its time you where upgraded - As a huge Fan i here bye promote you to Admiral Foley and Captain Cockings.

[@priyonjoni]

The Oberth was a bridge module with warp engines and an engineering section.

[@sirbobbyuk]

I was thinking about the secondary hull, I think transporting personal from the primary to secondary transporter pad wouldn’t be considered as a side to side transport. Also there could be walk ways in the connecting struts

[@raabaddler5802]

Lower hull was iso lab and sensitive sensors, dedicated transport systems between hulls makes sense, no warp core, power the nacelles off the impulse reactor makes the lower warp make sense. you could make the 120 meters work

[@jamielynnkring4220]

I have always loved this science vessel but I feel a next generation of this vessel secondary hull would be awesome with a secondary hull like Voyager as a replacement with a smaller version of a sensor plat form above the main deflector

[@Jack_Stafford]

I would really like to see someone with the skills to use these parts of rearrange them in the traditional manner, the bottom hull would have to be significantly shortened for proportion"s sake. But I think with those engines and that saucer it really could make for an interesting design to kitbash and rearrange these individual parts that really are nicely designed separately, but just rearranged a bit in the conventional manner that we expect Starships to have. If I had the skills I would do it with either a physical model or with Photoshop... Hopefully someone will like the ship enough and give that a try! Those nacelles are a great design and I'm surprised they weren't used on other ships when the need arose in TNG to kitbash for a larger Fleet. Or leaving the lower hull.and pylons off altogether, and you would have something akin to a proto Defiant, or fast assault ship with the proper weaponry.

[@KertaDrake]

I could see it working quite well with the secondary hull connecting directly to the saucer. Keeps everything but the pylons and could still look like a decent ship.

[@mynkir-sol2150]

Still one of my favorite episodes of Trekyards! And still a curious ship design I really like!

[@JRS3540]

I always assumed the secondary hull was designed as sacrificial space. Access would be transporter-only so environment is segregated and if an experiment goes really wrong, the whole pod could be detached while primary hull warps away. There are still better options but it's always been one of my favorite ships (behind Miranda and Excelsior) so it is what it is. The lack of bussard collectors works for me as the ships probably spends time in areas where it couldn't collect bussards (Are bussards collected?) so the ship carries it's own.

[@Mistraker]

Just no artificial gravity in the struts. Have a motorized handle to carry you up or down quickly. Or some kind of small capsule lift, rather than a normal turbolift, in Futurama style pneumatic tubes. There are a million simple little solutions for getting from the top to the bottom. Or maybe a transporter that's hardwired to one in the bottom, eliminating the issues with intership beaming, with one of the lift ideas, and a Jefferies tube backup.

[@enterprise-h312]

The Oberth-variant we see in "The Battle of Maxia" here on KZbin is probably my favourite. The stocky profile works for it. 22:55 It looks like a stockier variant of the refit's nacelles to me.

[@johnmiller7682]

You guys should check out Navy vessels. The U.S. Naval ships like the Perry class frigate. It's 445 feet long (135 meters) has a ships compliment of 15 officers and 190 enlisted, plus another 6 officers and 15 enlisted, for the helicopter. And in certain circumstances, they'll even have a compliment of Marines. And though not cruise ship roomy, like the Enterprise (any of them) It still has plenty of space.

[@vivomega3937]

In the book star trek novel avenger, the oberth was described as having been the size of the E's 'saucer' section length from tip to the base wher the saucer meets the hull and as wide as the E's saucer.

[@ShrekWallBee]

5:59 the Oberth Class ship in "StarTrek Outpost" ( GiantGnome Productions) USS Chimra had in addition to Phasers and Photon Topeados was equiped with Klingon Disrupers

[@paulsaunders5555]

And she's back today. Out post has a new podcast out at last. SO HAPPY.

[@paulsaunders5555]

And she's back. There have a new podcast out today. So missed them.

[@TonyToon]

It would be kind of neat if there was an airlock and a somewhat permanently docked shuttle right behind that bridge section. It already kind of looks like a landing strip for an aircraft carrier, albeit much much smaller.

[@Lightray110]

I remember reading somewhere that the only reason the Grissom was destroyed was because they were taken by surprise.