Starship water landing
 

Because someone's gonna have an issue with it once the teaser comes out, I thought I'd get the topic going:

How plausible is it for the (JJ) Enterprise to survive a landing in water? To have to land in water in the first place, Enterprise must've received some serious damage. It looks like it hits the water - nose-first at a 45 degree angle - at some speed (enough to send spray into the air to the height of the back of the nacelles), so it wasn't a soft landing. Those who'd say "starships can fly into the atmosphere of a gas giant" should bear in mind that hitting water at speed would almost be like hitting a solid object!

And, once it's underwater, there's a question of pressure. How deep did the Delta Flyer go underwater in that VOY ep, and were there any issues? With a structual integrity field, it would be a breeze, but without, how much can a hull take?

Re: Starship water landing
 

I'd say it should be able to easily survive a hard water landing. Keep in mind that the TOS Enterprise in "The Immunity Syndrome" slammed into the membrane of a gigantic space ameoba and continued on to maneuver inside it to go drop off a bomb. That is the equivalent of flying into a giant jello the size of the Earth and swimming around in it.

And we also have "Wrath of Khan" where the nebula is so dense that it literally stops a ship cold and it has to push into it.

So I would be surprised if there were issues in the JJ-version...

Re: Starship water landing
 

True, but they had fully-functioning ships, and presumably entered those things at a speed they knew to be safe. What about a ship with no SIF or thrusters, impacting at terminal velocity? We saw the damage done to 1701-D in GEN, and they glided in...

Re: Starship water landing
 

In the "Immunity Syndrome" it was an uncontrolled impact. She did have her shields up though.

As to a ship with no SIF or thrusters impacting at terminal velocity, there is the relatively intact ship of the crash landed Jenolan from "Relics". However, most everyone was killed but the ship was in great shape :)

And there is one more example, the TOS Enterprise presumably ended up entering uncontrollably in the atmosphere in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" before Scotty was able to get the ship under impulse power. No crash, but I'd imagine hitting the atmosphere at high speed would've been bad.

And the BOP in "The Voyage Home" also had an uncontrolled/unpowered entry into the atmosphere and crash landing into the SF bay.

Re: Starship water landing
 

And the BOP in "The Voyage Home" didn't plow straight in, instead skidded along the surface, bleeding off energy, until it came to a stop.

There the possibility that the JJ_prise would float after entering the water, it's quite heavy (maybe) but also holds a large internal volume.

:)

Re: Starship water landing
 

I have many huge issues with the JJ-Trek, but this sounds fine to me. I've always imagined hulls of the starships to be incredibly durable, especially with structural integrity fields. These ships sometimes survive several photon torpedoes without their shields being up. Compared to a huge anti-matter explosions, some water splashing against the hull will be nothing. Saucer of Ent-D seemed to handle the impact against the ground pretty well. The bigger structures seemed to remain intact, they mostly broke windows and some hullplating.

Re: Starship water landing
 

We never saw the underside of the saucer. I imagine that ended up in a pretty bad shape ("The Enterprise herself cannot be salvaged.")

We've also seen the damage a semi-functioning ship can sustain (and deal) when 1701-E ran head-first into the Scimitar.

Re: Starship water landing
 

Is this thread title a spoiler? Seriously?

Re: Starship water landing
 

I imagine a starship could go into an ocean much deeper than a submarine, especially with shields and a structural integrity field in place.

But in a disastrous situation where the ship is in a total freefall tumble and has no forcefield protection, if she hits the ocean like a brick, she may suffer some extensive structural damage, IMO, possibly even losing a nacelle during the impact. The worst-case scenario could be even the shearing off of the saucer section (with the connecting dorsal) from the lower stardrive section depending on the angle she hits the water.

Re: Starship water landing
 

Is it, if it's in a teaser that's out in two days? If so, I'm sorry, and I'll edit it.

Re: Starship water landing
 

Hmm, good point. The neck is her weakest point. That, the front of the saucer, and the deflector would see the most damage, I'd guess.

Then again, this is the ship that was built on Earth, went into Titan's atmosphere, and pulled-out of a black hole. She may just come out of the water looking even more shiny (wear sunglasses for those lens flares)! :)

Re: Starship water landing
 

The navigational deflector would tend to push things away lessening the impact. With shields, inertial dampers and structural integrity fields too they should be OK.

Without them the ship would turn into paste...

Re: Starship water landing
 

Oh I forgot, at the end of "The Immunity Syndrome", the Enterprise is BLASTED AWAY from the exploding amoeba while still immersed in it and survived (she exhausted all her power, including shields prior to the explosion.) That's the equivalent of a jello the size of Earth exploding while the ship is still stuck in it being able to receive any concussive damage directly to the hull.

Re: Starship water landing
 

Farnsworth: Good Lord! That's over 5000 atmospheres of pressure!
Fry: How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?
Farnsworth: Well, it was built for space travel, so anywhere between zero and one.

Re: Starship water landing
 

A starship supposedly is built to take thousand-gee accelerations routinely from her own impulse engines. And if warp one imposes any physical stresses, and those have a linear relationship to speed, then a starship capable of warp nine ought to also be capable of flying through a million miles of solid steel as if it weren't there. This being with hull strength and SIFs alone, before shields or anything.

External pressure would be somewhat different from acceleration, but not all that different. A million atmospheres doesn't sound particularly unrealistic. What would make the difference is not structural strength, but the ability to withstand being surrounded by a dense fluid. Where does the heat go? What vital interfaces will be blocked? Will external pressure push substances in? We know that the ship can take lots of pressure, but we also know that there are valves that will allow fluids in, as in "Obsession". Was that because the dikironium cloud found a way to change its form of existence to be transparent to the valve (while it could not make itself transparent to the ship's hull or even its internal walls)? Or simply because the cloud applied more than one atmosphere of external pressure on the valve?

Timo Saloniemi