Starship Size Argument™ thread

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by WarpFactorZ, May 1, 2013.

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  1. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    But weren't they able to adapt to Federation weapons thanks to the encounter in system J-25?

    And don't forget that in the novels they had a Borg cube eat Pluto! :guffaw:

    But either way, the Connie's seemed to be Starfleet's front line vessels when it came to mixing it up with other Empires. So I think my point stands that a first-time dedicated 'warship' in the Abramsverse contradicts nothing nor does it mean that Starfleet was made-up of tree-hugging Hippies prior to Nero's incursion. :techman:
     
  2. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    My bad! :alienblush:
     
  3. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    My fanwank from the 1970's was that Spock broke the Enterprise in such a way that it could no longer energize photon torpedoes. This idea was pre-TMP ["Belay that pha-ser or-der!"], and I'm also sure that I didn't crosscheck it with all the other episodes.
     
  4. anotherdemon

    anotherdemon Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    BillJ,

    You misunderstand. I meant that a simple shuttle having a warp accident and smashing into a planet would most likely devastate it. Accidents can wipe out planetary populations..., so it'd make sense for proper Starfleet vessels to have immense armament compared to what we see as militarily appropriate through the eyes of today.

    CorporalCaptain,

    The energy has to go somewhere. As it's not transmitted to the surrounding space when entering and exiting warp, it's a decent assumption that it's stored as KE as the vessel moves at warp. There's no mention of mass alteration and time dilation during warp, so we can probably assume that the mass of the vessel is the same.
     
  5. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    At the risk of bringing science into Star Trek, not so fast.

    "The" energy? What energy are you talking about?

    If we restrict ourselves to the established physics of relativity, then the amount of energy needed to accelerate an object to faster-than-light speeds (continuously, starting from rest, along a "best attempt" trajectory) has to be infinite. That is to say, no matter how much fuel you consumed, you'd never get there.

    Therefore, to avoid infinite fuel consumption, a warp drive must artificially reduce the inertial mass of the craft, from the point of view of the outside universe, in addition to acting in ways contrary to presently established physics. (By the way, in there is an argument for it causing the craft's inertial mass to vanish, but that's beside the point.)

    In fact, reducing inertial mass is exactly what warp fields do, according to Star Trek canon. From TNG: Deja Q:

    In other words, the kinetic energy of a ship moving at warp really can't be as huge as one might assume, if one were to extrapolate from known physics alone. For, if it were, it would be too huge for the warp drive to work at all. One function of the warp field must be to reduce the kinetic energy, by reducing the inertia of the craft, as it is perceived by the outside universe, especially as the lightspeed barrier itself is pierced.

    I eagerly look forward to seeing how STiD deals with this next week.

    Now, on the other hand, a ship traveling at a high sublight speed, but without a warp field, and smashing into a planet could certainly cause a catastrophe.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2013
  6. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I've pointed out before that the ship interiors LOOK big because they're likely shot with a wide angle lens. That tends to give a distorted depth perception to scenes. If you ever had a chance to visit the bridge sets on a Paramount tour, for example, you'd see that they're much tinier than on screen. That's also why engineering looks huge, but really isn't the cavernous place it is on screen (the actual brewery buildings themselves are about 50m x 100m, and that's not just the tanks and pipes).
     
  7. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Camera tricks don't hold up to analysis, but these large interiors and scaled exteriors have, as I've shown throughout this thread.
    [YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq9uXOWOqaQ[/YT]
    That as well as the huge shuttlebay.
     
  8. anotherdemon

    anotherdemon Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Warp drive doesn't equate to impossible physics (the need for infinite energy to accelerate past light speed for example), rather it's a space-time distortion that creates said distortion around the vessel and allows it to move at relativistic speeds through normal space. However, in Star Trek the vessel at warp is still affected by objects outside of the warp bubble.

    Generally, entering and exiting warp as we know it will probably toast a planet at least if you're in its vicinity when exiting/entering. Since this doesn't happen in Trek, the energy of the warp bubble must be stored differently.

    Hence, a ship, no matter how light, moving at warp, will literally toast a planet if it hits such whilst at warp.
     
  9. WarpFactorZ

    WarpFactorZ Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    All you've shown throughout this thread is the RESULT of lenses making things look bigger than they are. Why can't you understand that? Your "evidence" is completely biased by what you call "camera tricks." Have you ever shopped for a house or apartment online? Have you ever noticed the rooms in the pictures look HUGE compared to how big they are in real life?

    In the end, your "analysis" is no different than the one I did, which you subsequently shat all over and mocked. You measure pixels on one object, and compare it to something else to make your point. And, just as you accused me, I shall return the favour: you fail to consider the perspective! At least I was using orthographic projections for my measurements. You're using 2D projections of "3D" scenes and pretending you can correctly guess the depth.
     
  10. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I never said that it did. What I said was:

    I also quoted some on-screen Trek to back up what I was saying. Yet you assert:

    Now, I'm genuinely curious: can you quote any on-screen Trek to back up what you're saying?

    I haven't seen the new film. What I said about that was:

    Is there something in the new film that supports what you are saying?

    No comment about what I said here?
     
  11. Admiral Buzzkill

    Admiral Buzzkill Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    CorporalCaptain is right - given that we know nothing about how momentum and kinetic energy apply to a fictitious "warp drive" it's impossible to say what would result from a collision between a vessel traveling in that manner and an obstacle in its path.

    Hell, maybe it'd pass right through. :lol:
     
  12. trevanian

    trevanian Rear Admiral

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    There's some validity to this observation. One of the difficulties on 2010 was determining the actual size of 2001's DISCOVERY sets, due in large part to the use of very wide angle lenses on the 65mm camera. Even with a lot of study by the art department, it seems pretty clear that 2010 messed some of that up pretty badly. For this TREK stuff, if you knew the lens used, you could then extract the distortion from the image and THEN do 2d projections to get an accurate size, but you'd need to know the lens AND be able to extract the distortion, which doesn't seem likely for anybody here.
     
  13. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ORTHOGRAPHIC VIEW. Establishing deck height, which matches the bridge, the rest of the windows, the torpedo launcher, the shuttlebay etc etc etc. While I respect that wide-angle lenses can make things look bigger than they are, these are not camera tricks. You yourself admitted earlier that the shuttlebay and bridge at the very least would have to be ignored in order to fit what we've seen into a ship less than 725m in length.

    You're also again ignoring the shuttle size, and that it would be physically impossible to fit the rows of 12m shuttles in a shuttlebay thay would be just 17m wide.
     
  14. Gonzo

    Gonzo Guest

    So here we are 4 years later with someone still trying to argue that the NuEnterprise is the same size as the original when it clearly is not. Those NuShuttles are twice the size of the old ones and they have rows of them in the shuttlebay.

    Not too mention the NuEnterprise engineering which is a huge area, from whatever angle you look at it.

    Why is it so hard to accept reality WarpFactorZ, you are the only one left who cant accept the truth that it is larger, KingDaniel has been very patient with his explanations and has provided more than enough evidence to prove that the dimensions of the NuEnterprise are considerably larger than the original.

    I was here when the original discussion started up after the first new film in 2009 and it was blindingly obvious that it was larger just by looking at it, no diagrams or comparisons that were provided at the time were necessary and back then I could not understand why a few members couldn't accept the new reality.

    It has been stated by those who designed the new ship that it is twice the size of the original and the scale model kits that were released confirmed it also.

    What is the real problem...

    P.S

    The Vengeance is a big girl and using the side view comparison from one of the trailers is easily twice the size of the NuEnterprise (probably more) which would make it as big as a Romulan Warbird from TNG (looks even bigger tbh), I have no problem with this as bigger ships mean more deployment flexibility and increased time away from starbases.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 13, 2013
  15. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    All I know is this:

    * My house size matters.
    * My bank account size matters.
    * My d*ck size matters.
    * The size of a fictional starship, doesn't matter.
     
  16. Beagleman

    Beagleman Commodore Commodore

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    It's not the size it's what you do with it... oh whatever...;)
     
  17. Kruezerman

    Kruezerman Commodore Commodore

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    ^ Bull.

    Anyway, I've always wondered, with a crew of 1100 or so, where do they all sleep? And relax? Can they fit so many quarters in the ship plus the massive engineering and shuttlebay, plus the science labs and torpedo bays, etc?
     
  18. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    Oh, sure. Even if you confined them all to only the saucer section you'd have more than enough room for the crew quarters. The thing is massive.

    The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the picture below, had a crew of:

    5,828 (maximum)
    Ship's company: 3,000 (2,700 Sailors, 150 Chiefs, 150 Officers)
    Air wing: 1,800 (250 pilots, and 1,550 support personnel)


    Aircraft carried: Hold up to 90 / 60+ (normally)

    That's with the hangar deck, nuclear reactors, workshops, aviation fuel storage, engine room, armories, mess hall, etc. taking up a ton of space.

    It's about as tall and long as the rim of the ST09 Enterprise saucer alone, and only a fraction of the width. She's a big girl.

    [​IMG]

    The Enterprise-D there typically carried a crew of about 1,014 in luxurious hotel suite sized quarters, and it had plenty of room to spare. It's actually a small crew given its immense volume. It probably was pretty lonely in a lot of corridors aboard ship.
     
  19. Xavier_Storma

    Xavier_Storma Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Taking INTO DARKNESS into consideration the size of 350 meters is about right.

    Several hints at that: Kirk and McCoy dive to the Enterprise.
    Vengance attacks Enterprise we see several hull breaches, and they consist of one at max two decks at the endge of the saucer.
    When the Vengance crashes, it's saucer is not higher than 150 meters, considering it is much bigger than the Enterprise, it will probably be somewhere in 600 meter range.

    350 meters fits the ship perfectly, therefor one has to readjust that chart.
     
  20. Richard Baker

    Richard Baker Commodore Commodore

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    I was corresponding with Ed Whitefire, one of the original designers of the Galaxy Class, he mentioned that that with the size of the ship and crew you could wander for days and never see another person- it was the equivalent of one person per almost two football fields of space.
    My only problem with the new Enterprise's size is that it just does not look 'large' enough for the stated scale. When you look at the Enterprise-D it appears to be the right size- the blended forms, expanses of windows, you can see it being a massive vessel. Same thing for the larger Klingon BoPs- it was created to look like a scout ship and enlarging it to the size of a D-7 just does not work with me...
     
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