I've decided to implement the Ministry-approved method of gauging step depth by using the Cleese Scale - as can be clearly seen, the first step can be rated "Very Silly" with subsequent steps being "Quite Silly with Deep Lunge required"
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Some of the other images leave interpretive wiggle room but if I had to make a headcanon decision based on that one alone -- with or without the Cleeses -- I'd say it has to be an escalator of some sort, assuming that the ships haven't "just been scaled up." Given the geometry the mechanism would have to be more complicated than a comparative 20th/21st century escalator, but that's not without precedent in the
ED universe. Material science has vastly improved and energy saving doesn't seem to be an issue. Even if it was, it would be characteristically Imperial to have something so decadent anyway.
Given that the bottom step appears to be partway through a deployment or retraction motion I do wonder exactly what would happen to travellers as they got to the bottom. Being unceremoniously dumped onto the planet like mud from a dredger as you wave to the adoring crowds doesn't seem particularly Imperial, but of course this is all speculation and we're far from seeing the whole picture, literally or figuratively.
On the other hand it all adds weight to the argument that some of the ships
have "just been scaled up" for some reason, which leads to speculation as to why. One answer might be that someone figured out the sizes of various modules and hangars partway through the design phase and realised none of the ships was large enough to accommodate them. But given that some patches have increased slot sizes without apparent issue, I'm not convinced that's an immediate concern any more. Although it might have been previously.
My favourite theory is that when all the models were done, someone important (in my head it's David Braben) noticed that all of the ships passed so easily through the enormous Coriolis slot that the whole terrifying feel of manual docking from the original game was lost even with the gigantic ships. So rather than scale down the port (which would have made the station look less like its historic counterpart) they scaled up some of the ships with the intention of -- but never getting around to -- doing an adjustment pass on the greeblies down the line. My main problem with this theory is that the Cutter wasn't added until a year after launch. Unless the basics of the model was already done prior to 2014, it doesn't explain why it wasn't built to scale in the first place.
An oddity for sure. And I suspect that even if a developer came into this or a similar thread and said either "it's rescaled" or "it's an escalator" the community would still be split on whether or not to accept their explanation. It's just one those things where the "real" answer -- even if one exists to the exclusion of all other factors -- won't sit well with everyone. FD are probably right just to let us bat this particular ball back and forth. At least it's keeping people talking about the game.