mappinglasirena - Tumblr blog

mappinglasirena · 1 year ago

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So I'm catching up on following this with interest. What brought me to it, though, is that I'm looking to see if anyone has come up with an either static (or even better video) of the bridge view looking straight at the captain's chair, fairly close up, in a way that could be used as a Teams / Zoom / etc. background. I found a Constitution Class version of this and love it... but would love to have myself in La Sirena's captain's chair for my meetings - just geeky enough that people might have to ask. (Where everyone recognizes the original NCC-1701...) Any thoughts or know of any other resources? (And BTW, LOVE the deck plans as you have them!!!)

First of all, thank you so much for the compliment, I really appreciate that 💗

As for the image, I'm assuming you're looking for something like this, except more zoomed in and without the people?

Because I was looking for something similar myself a while back, specifically for a phone and laptop wallpaper, but unfortunately, I came up mostly empty.

One of the issues is that the ship is really deep, so when you have the bridge in focus, the background is really blurry.

It's already not great in a medium shot like the one above. If you have a close-up the way you'd need for a zoom background, it starts looking like this:

That is not very recognizable, alas.

In general, there are very few images of the upper deck viewed from the bridge, without someone sitting in the captain's chair.

This one comes to mind, but it's fairly zoomed out and in quite a bit of post-crash disarray 😅 (Also: Raffi and Rios are standing by the engine lights, but they're not super noticeable, because, again, very far away.)

So, you'd probably have to take a bunch of images of the upper deck, especially the engine lights at the back and the railing at the front, and then do some photoshop magic to try and splice them into a coherent image without too much blurriness. But I'm afraid that goes beyond my capabilities 😅

Perhaps someone else knows of any scenes or screenshots that could be helpful? Or some promo pics that show the empty upper deck with enough resolution to be useful?

(Something like this, excpet from the bridge, basically...)

#star trek picard #star trek la sirena #la sirena #upper deck #bridge #screenshots #asked and answered #(well. asked and forwarded to the collective Tumblr Trek community for possible answers)#@somethingscifi #(thank you for the opportunity to dig through my screenshots! I haven't done that in way too long and it's been a very enjoyable half-hour #even if I wasn't able to come up with the sort of image you were probably hoping for #i'll have another look around soon to see what might be some candidates for cropping and collaging together into a possible background #but i'm not too hopeful. There are very few glamour shots of this gorgeous ship sadly.)

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mappinglasirena · 2 years ago

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Hello, Love your work! I've long believed that the realm of transport and logistics in the Star Trek universe is a potential treasure trove of content often ignored. PIC S1 almost bucked the trend with the La Sirena "trailer hitch" and the Sampson/Wallenberg Class alluding to #spacetrains. Are you aware of any Fanart or Fiction exploring #spacecontainers #spacetrains?

Thank you so much for the compliment!

I don't know if you meant to send this to the main blog or @mappinglasirena, but I'm gonna answer it here so it ends up in the tags and more people have a chance to see it ;)

I love when people enjoy specific aspects of the worldbuilding in Trek! There is so much to dive into, and logistics and transportation is definitely a big area that holds a tonne of potential!

Off the top of my head, though, I can't think of any art or fic relating to spacetrains specifically, not in a Trek context. There's a tiny bit of concept art which you may have seen before, of La Sirena delivering cargo before picking up Picard, which was ultimately dropped from season 1:

But I don't recall ever seeing anything more detailed. As for the Wallenberg, the only things I have there are the Eagle Moss booklet cover and very grainy footage from just before the Attack on Mars.

So, I'm throwing this one to the wider tumblr Trekkie community! Does anyone know of any art including Trek-trains? Particularly space trains? Or stories that deal with cargo and towing cargo in particular?

Seven having to figure out the byzantine controls of Sirena's hitch system to take on some particularly heavy cargo? How the previous owner was recruited to aid the Romulan Rescue effort and that's why the hitch was added to the ship? Maybe some exciting spacetrain-heists?

Because I'd definitely love to see/read those myself 😁

#reblogging my main to add to have this question on here as well #cargo #cargo spaces #spacetrains #wallenberg class #design #eaglemoss #mark yang #asked and answered #@carfreemaine-blog #maybe someone else can help out?

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mappinglasirena · 2 years ago

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Awesome job!! What is the cargo tonnage and expected price? Thanks!

Thank you so much for the compliment! And I'm very sorry I'm only getting around to your message now, I hope my answer is not too late to be useful.

Though I'm afraid it might not turn out terribly useful in general, since I can't give a precise answer to the first part of your question - and I'm not entirely sure what you mean with the second part 😅

But let's start with the first: It's really difficult to say what the cargo capacity of La Sirena might be, given that we've never seen her cargo bay. Nor even a proper sketch of what her cargo bay might have been intended to look like. The closest we get is this cutaway from the "Set Me Up" featurette:

On the left-hand side of the cutaway, you can see what is likely supposed to be a cargo bay at the bottom, leading to the big cargo doors. But technically, the space above that is the engine room, and given all the slightly arbitrary geometry in there, I'm not sure any of these spaces in the model were fully thought out by the production team or should be used to draw conclusions about the in-universe ship.

And even taking this model at face-value, it's still really difficult to evaluate the size of the cargo bay. The set of the front part of Sirena, as it was designed and built, is too large to fit into this model. You'd have to make a bunch of adjustments to either the size of the ship or the size of the interiors, and that would have more or less drastic impacts on how large the cargo bay would turn out to be in comparison.

Also, it's very much a question of how the ship is loaded. In an early design phase, all the open spaces along both decks of the ship were supposed to hold modular cargo containers.

Quoting from the Eaglemoss Official Starships Collection Special Issue on La Sirena:

[Art Director Rob] Johnson gave the interior an exposed framework that modular rooms were designed to fit into. The cargo would have done the same job, with different-shaped containers made to fit in the voids in the bulkheads. The cargo was never added and Johnson says what you see is “a skeleton without the organs.”

This is an early design of what this modular cargo might have looked like, also from the booklet.

When we meet Rios and La Sirena in season 1, the only cargo we see are a number of crates strewn around the upper and lower decks.

It stands to reason he wouldn't have too much freight on board, since he has just been hired to ferry Picard to destinations unknown, which doesn't really combine well with any scheduled cargo run. But whether there are these sort of modular containers somewhere in-universe that might be fitted in between the ribs of the ship is never answered.

Apart from storage space inside the ship, though, there is also the fact that Sirena was conceptualized as a tug. Some of the assembly at her back serves as a tether for cargo modules that can be strung together like the cars of a freight train.

At that point, the cargo tonnage of the ship expands dramatically and becomes a question of engine power and warp mechanics that nobody can answer in any meaningful way.

So, the answer to "how much cargo can Sirena transport?" is "almost impossible to answer"it's pretty much impossible to say". Depending on how much you want to bring production design intentions into it, the available space varies between "as many of the sorts of crates we see used in the show stacked along the two decks we know exist for certain" and "that plus some unseen cargo bay" and "densely stacked modular cargo containers designed to slot into all parts of the ship alongside the living quarters and holodeck, plus the same in cargo bay, and a train of freight modules hitched to the back of the ship."

As for the "price": I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here. How much this sort of ship would cost to acquire? How much you would be charged to have your cargo hauled by one of these freighters? What we think Picard might have paid Rios to take him on his little adventure? Something else entirely?

Money is always tricky in Star Trek, but the core of the United Federation of Planets is supposed to be a moneyless, post-scarcity society. If we go by the strictest interpretation, if Rios found Sirena on Earth, he wouldn't have had to pay anything for her. Same goes for shipping costs. If a Kaplan F-17 freighter were operated legally anywhere within or near the core of the Federation, I assume you wouldn't have to pay to acquire their services.

Now, once we move into the further reaches of Federation space, where people do still use money for the exchange of goods and services, things get even more complicated.

According to the designers' original intent, the Kaplan F-17 is fairly old. It was suggested that Sirena was built anywhere between 50 and 100 years before the start of season 1 (which is set in 2399). Acquiring such an old-fashioned ship might not have incurred a huge cost. Then again, she has souped-up engines and weapons, which either Rios or some previous owner added (same with the modular cabins, holodeck, transporter, etc. inside), and which might all affect the price.

And if we're talking about shipping costs, Rios, of course, is operating outside the typical post-capitalism norms of the Federation (and outside Federation space often enough to know e.g. the political situation in and around Vashti fairly well). But it's unclear whether he'd be paid in gold-pressed latinum or some other currency, and the value of any of those are pretty much impossible to know, anyway.

I think in beta canon, i.e. Rogue Elements by John Jackson Miller, we also don't get an exact number for what Rios pays for Sirena, though the down-payment is made in gold-pressed Latinum, and it takes him months to work off the rest of the price. But it's been a while since I've read the book, so I can't give you any more details on that off the top of my head.

Perhaps I might be able to give you some better suggestions about price and cargo if you let me know in a bit more detail what you want to know and what you need it for? (i.e. just out of general curiosity, or for story-writing purposes, or to size a 3D model properly, or....)

I hope I understood your question correctly, and I'm sorry if this answer isn't particularly satisfying 😅 If you're looking for info for a specific reason or project (just out of curiosity, for story-writing purposes, to size a 3D model of the ship more accurately, ...), maybe I might be able to offer more insights or at least point you to some other places that might be able to help?

EIther way, I hope that this was at least a somewhat informative read, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to write about this bit of design history!

#star trek picard #star trek la sirena #la sirena #cargo spaces #design #eaglemoss #rogue elements #rob johnson #mark yang #long post #asked and answered #@voightkampffsblog

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mappinglasirena · 2 years ago

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The Stairs Under the Bridge

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that one of the many mysteries/points of discussion that come up repeatedly is: what is happening in the space under La Sirena's bridge? There's a door leading there from the mess hall and we see Picard walk through it in S01E06, "The Impossible Box", but we never find out what that space is being used as.

(At least, we don't know what its in-universe use is. We know from set plans that in the studio, the space apparently held the playback setup.)

We got a glimpse of a cross-section of the ship in the Blu-ray set tour, which has some impossible geometry happening under the bridge...

(That is not a proper floor and something is definitely clipping through it!)

... and if you remember my post from a while back, I speculated that the most likely explanation is that the model has an extendable ladder there, that would allow people to board/leave the ship by a means other than the loading ramp. This would fit with the early idea of the season 1 writers to have Picard board La Sirena in a space port, rather than beam him on board while she's in orbit.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, we got confirmation that this is indeed what the production team originally intended.

Dave Blass, the production designer for PIC Seasons 2 and 3, tweetet some images showcasing a cross-section of the Sirena set/model:

As you can imagine, this gave me enormous joy (and a not too small amount of glee)! I have long insisted that the panorama windows, i.e. the exit the Motley Crew use to get off the ship once she crash-lands on Coppelius, don't really work as a proper access point to the ship. There is a three foot drop right inside the window the crew needs to bridge, no proper hatch, no ladders, etc. The only reason it makes for such a convenient exit is that Sirena is buried in a few metres of dirt, bringing the window level with the ground.

And indeed, La Sirena has, or at least was originally intended to have, a proper access to the front of the ship, one with a ladder and hatch and everything! And it's located in the mysterious space under the bridge!

But, me being me, this schematic also immediately raised a question: Isn't that ladder a bit too short?

If you remember this post, it seems like one of the changes made during Sirena's design process was that the wings were dropped quite a significant amount. Where the early concept art has the ship sitting fairly low to the ground, she is raised much higher when she reaches her final form.

Essentially, we went from a configuration that might have looked something like the version on the top to the actual model on the bottom:

This change increased the ship's clearance significantly.

For the non-imperial-measuring among us, the height of the ladder given in the schematic shared by Blass, 14' 10 1/2", translates to about 4.8m. However, when you line up the orthogonal view of the ship with the cross section, the length of the ladder is not really enough to reach the ground once the ship has landed.

(The green line indicates the bottom of the stairs.)

There is some speculation that maybe Sirena can fold up her nacelles for landing, and that might be true. There are rooms extending into the wings that would end up at an odd angle, but I suppose with artificial gravity, anything is possible -- if somewhat unlikely.

Still, if we presume Sirena's wings are rigid in general, the distance from the tarmac to the belly of the ship (here: the stage floor in the schematic) is a bit larger than 4.8m.

I wanted to adapt the ladder accordingly, but getting good measurements by converting between feet, pixels, and metres is a bit of a hassle. So instead, I simply used the measurements already on the schematic and extended the ladder so that the ship's clearance would be 5.5m or around 18ft.

This brings the total length of the ladder to about 21ft or 6.5m, and overlaid on the orthogonal ship view, it looks like this:

(The green line once again indicates the bottom of the stairs.)

As you can see, this length requires for the outer engines to fold up a little bit and would have the lowest point of the nacelles basically sitting on the ground. I personally think that would make a lot of sense, and in season 2 we did see that the outer engine pods are on hinges and can definitely fold down.

(It's subtle, but they do move back into their resting position towards the end of the gif.)

It was never confirmed that the engings can fold farther up as well, but looking at how they're attached, I think it makes sense that they could.

Now, in the adjusted S1 concept art of Sirena at the space port, the outer engines are in their normal positions and the wings are actually fully off the ground, with the ship resting on extended landing gear:

So, my extended ladder is the absolute minimum length needed to account for the dropped wings. In all likelihood the ladder would have to be even longer than that, because the clearance would be over 5.5m.

One thing that playing around with all of these views and measurements made me realize, though, is that La Sirena is quite a bit larger than I usually picture her. I have this realization about once every two or three months, so to make it easier to internalize, I asked the wonderful @regionalpancake to assist me.

Google helpfully suggests that 5.5m / 18ft is about half the size of a telephone pole or of three Michael Jordan's standing on each other's shoulders. It is also the size of...

... one average adult giraffe. (This is more or less helpful, depending on when you last went to the zoo, but I really enjoyed that as a visual aide.)

And because Regionalpancake is a good sport (and extremely proficient at adding animals to La Sirena), she also gave me this second edit:

(She also helpfully removed the spacedock workers who were a little to tall in comparison to Sirena. Hopefully, the friendly Averagely-Sized Adult Giraffe will make the ship's real dimensions slightly easier to gauge.)

So, now we have an idea of what might lurk beneath La Sirena's bridge!

I imagine in-universe, there is more stuff stashed under there than just the stairs, though. Perhaps the space gives easier access to the phaser banks in the nose of the ship, or to some other flight control or power distribution machinery. And there's still the question of why Picard, after a very emotionally draining conversation, chooses to head into this space rather than going straight upstairs to his cabin or to his study on the holodeck. (Yes, I know the Doylist answer is because it was the more dramatically satisfying blocking/staging choice, but on this blog, we like to dig for Watsonian explanations, too!)

My personal guess is still that there's some communal washroom down there, because those have to be somewhere on the ship, and that space would actually make sense, being in such close proximity to the bridge and mess hall.

But, since we never saw any of it on screen (and won't ever see La Sirena on screen again), I guess the space under the bridge will always remain a canonical mystery -- and thus available for any interpretation your writing /mapping/ headcanon might require ;)

#reblogging for time zones #it's not a full deep dive #but it's the first proper mapping post i've been able to do since... january?#so i'm celebrating 😁

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