The Floral Designer's Tool Kit Includesa Adhesives.b Trowels.c Chalk.d Nails

The Smithsonian is restoring the original USS Enterprise — no bloody A, B, C, or D

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For decades, the USS Enterprise model used on the 1960s TV show Star Trek has been on display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum's gift shop. Now, the 50-year-old model has been sent for renovation and reconstruction in an attempt to repair and stabilize the structure.

The Enterprise miniature is slightly more than 11 feet long. It was deliberately designed to look futuristic, with nacelles that stood well away from the ship and a superstructure that couldn't land on a planet. Unfortunately, the same design elements that make it distinctive, like the broad primary hull and the long nacelles, also make it susceptible to gravity in the long term.

As the National Air and Space Museum writes:

The Enterprise was designed to look unbound by gravity, ready to explore strange new worlds at faster-than-light speeds week after week. Five decades later, the pull of our home world has taken its toll on the model, particularly the secondary hull and nacelles. "The secondary hull was built using horizontal staves, similar to a wooden barrel on its side," says conservator Ariel O'Connor. "But unlike a barrel with metal hoops, the Enterprise staves are only glued together with aging adhesives and no additional structural support. Our museum specialists Gary Gordon and Will Lee are fabricating a precisely fit, reversible metal collar that will be inserted inside the secondary hull and hangar bay to stabilize the secondary hull and prevent the nacelles from drooping."

The original Enterprise model was built in the traditional "build-up" method. Memory Alpha, the Star Trek database, describes this process as being similar to a traditional model kit, in which you start with the inside of the structure and add details and the outer shell as you progress. The original model was built from a combination of wood and plastic. The Enterprise's secondary hull, nacelles, and bridge were made from hollowed-out wood, while the saucer section was constructed around an armature framework using vacuum-formed plastic.

The team used X-ray fluoroscopy as well as infrared photography to map the saucer and secondary hull and determine exactly what kinds of adhesive were used in their construction, as well as the composition of the materials themselves.

The Enterprise under normal lighting. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian

Fans of the show probably remember the saucer being smooth, with no visible plates. The plate detailing was only visible in the movies, seemingly added as part of the refit. The classic book Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise even attempted to explain this change, claiming that the original Starfleet policy had been to paint its vessels, while the newly refitted Enterprise was unpainted.

Enterprise saucer under infrared. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian

This made-up explanation apparently isn't too far from the truth. Under infrared photography, the original pencil lines that detailed Enterprise's hull plates become much more visible. To be fair, the plates themselves always existed — you can see them in the feature image above — but the limits of TV resolution in the 1960s guaranteed audiences would never see them.

The in-depth analysis of the Enterprise confirms that it was constructed from a 1960s era plastic known as Royalite. The team is also analyzing the various paints and varnishes applied to the ship in order to ascertain its original color and complete the restoration.

Enterprise-Paint

Images sent to Ariel O'Connor and the Smithsonian Conservation Lab by Susan Buck as part of paint cross-section analysis undertaken during the 2015 conservation of the 11-foot Star Trek starship Enterprise studio model

The goal of the project is to stabilize and repair the model, before wiring it up to match the dome lights and LEDs that were present on the original, but have not been functional for decades. Once the work is complete, the original Enterprise will be lit the same way as her fictional counterpart, then returned to public display.