RULE NUMBER FIVE: THE OUTSIDE OF SHIP   

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With a Star Trek like starship, the outside of the ship, is the ship. It is not to be designed from the inside out, that is for reality – this is fiction. A starship is to be designed from the outside in, with the outside being far more important than the inside. Again relating to my rule number one. This is the way the Star Trek Starship was designed - from the outside in.   

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You should not be concerned with the small things; such as where the bridge should be, or where the primary-hull engines should be, or where the shuttle bay should be, or it’s doors. These are the small things that should come later. Don’t be thinking; I need to design all these things into my ship, so I will design my ship around them. No! Wrong way.   

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And as far as all those “lifeboats“ or escape pods goes, The Star Trek Starship did not have them, so why have them? Remember, everything about starships is fiction. They make this stuff up like kids eating candy on Halloween, they are not space ship designers. Don’t design your ship too well as if it's a real space ship: There needs to be rules that are followed.   

For example; for the primary hull to be able to separate from the ship, it should be at the rear. Because at the front—separating, the remainder of the ship is in danger of colliding with it, because according to Star Trek, the primary hull can go no where near the speed of the main ship. But that’s not the way The Star Trek Starship was designed, with it at the rear, where it should be. And so to change it like that would make it too different. The thinking I have put forth here, is probably why the shuttle bay was put in the rear. But by then, the basic design of the ship had been settled upon, and not only that, but at the beginning having a shuttle bay was in doubt.  

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Furthermore, after the bridge had been placed, the housing for the "turbolift" was put immediately behind it. But this became a problem when it came to designing the bridge interior because for filming, they did not want the entrance to the bridge to be directly behind the captain as the characters went in and out. So they turned the whole middle area around to the left. This means that the captain, navigator and helmsman are all not facing forward. But the outer design of the ship had been designed first, so they had to compromise.  

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Or if a person got to thinking that the primary hull should rotate – to provide gravity. It’s mostly round anyway, why not? A neat idea. But that’s not the way they did it, and so it would be too great of a change to make. Likewise, if a person decided that the engine nacelles are up too high, too far away from the center of mass, and so lowers them only because of that, then that is the wrong thing to do.   

SO A PERSON SHOULD NOT DO WHAT ONE THINKS IS BEST. There are rules to be followed. If a person wants to do their own thing, then that’s what they should do, and not connect it to someone else’s work. So don’t design it too much like a real spaceship. But also don’t get caught up too much in the fiction of it all. Be careful about doing something only for a fictional reason, or to make it too much like a real spaceship would be like.