Description of the teaser trailer...SPOILERS, Dude

[Cary L. Brown]

Franklin said:
^^^^^^^^^
I guess now there are plausible in-universe technological explanations that allow us to gravitate (no pun intended) away from Roddenberry's 1960s notion that the Enterprise should never be thought of as a ship capable of atmospheric flight.

Interesting.

Nobody's saying that the Enterprise, by itself, is designed for atmospheric flight, or by ANY means of "takeoff and landing."

Even... just supposing... if the ship was completely built planetside, it might be TOWED into orbit. It could, theoretically, be built in some giant scaffold.

I still believe that the subsections are built planetside and towed to orbit for integration and final outfitting. Because that's the ONLY way that the "San Francisco Yards" makes any sense.

That, and the fact that there's a REAL PLACE called the "San Francisco Naval Yards," just like there's a real place called the Golden Gate Bridge, or a real place called San Francisco for that matter.

You can argue that there's no canon evidence that it's the SAME SFNY, but it's much harder to argue that it wasn't the original INTENTION that it be the same SFNY.

[Cary L. Brown]

Jackson_Roykirk said:
^
^^But in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday', they were low enough to be seen by Captain Christopher in his fighter jet. If they were that low, then they WERE in the atmosphere. There's no way they could have been seen otherwise.

Did they ever say how high there were in 'TiY'?

Not directly... but it would be easy to figure it out.

All you've gotta do is figure out what the aircraft Capt. Christopher was flying (I'm thinking it was an F-101, but I might be mistaken), find out the maximum operational ceiling for that aircraft (since it's no longer an aircraft we fly, that info should no longer be classified)... in the episode, Capt. Christopher is near his maximum ceiling when it spots Enterprise (thats why, I always assumed, he was unable to climb to the same altitude as Enterprise before it started it's own ascent) He was about a half-mile below the Enterprise, and about the same distance behind it. So add that amount to the max operational ceiling for that airplane and voila... you know where the Enterprise was.

[SeerSGB]

Cary L. Brown said:

Not directly... but it would be easy to figure it out.

All you've gotta do is figure out what the aircraft Capt. Christopher was flying (I'm thinking it was an F-101, but I might be mistaken), find out the maximum operational ceiling for that aircraft (since it's no longer an aircraft we fly, that info should no longer be classified)... in the episode, Capt. Christopher is near his maximum ceiling when it spots Enterprise (thats why, I always assumed, he was unable to climb to the same altitude as Enterprise before it started it's own ascent) He was about a half-mile below the Enterprise, and about the same distance behind it. So add that amount to the max operational ceiling for that airplane and voila... you know where the Enterprise was.

F-104 actually, I think they topped out somewhere in high 50 thousand or low 60 thousand feet neighborhood--- around 10 miles or so up. So The 1701 was, very rough estimate, about 11 miles up.

[Holytomato]

"I was there in the San Francisco Navy Yards when her unit components were built."

-Commodore Robert April, The Counter Clock Incident

[Cary L. Brown]

Holytomato said:
"I was there in the San Francisco Navy Yards when her unit components were built."

-Commodore Robert April, The Counter Clock Incident

Well, you KNOW that people will just respond to that by saying that the animated stuff isn't "canon." (Not that I agree...)

[Sharr Khan]

Holytomato said:
"I was there in the San Francisco Navy Yards when her unit components were built."

-Commodore Robert April, The Counter Clock Incident

That's interesting, seems to undermine GR's own statements to the contrary on the matter... which I find mmm ironic - of course GR disowned the animated series - I'm pretty indifferent about it myself found much of it fun and cheesy even but fun nonetheless.

Bits of the animated series have found there way into "canon" in one form or another at times. I chock this up to being one of those times. Wonder if April's words will find their way into the movie in some form? I can see Pike maybe alluding to this in some way.

Sharr

[Franklin]

Sharr Khan said:

That's interesting, seems to undermine GR's own statements to the contrary on the matter... which I find mmm ironic - of course GR disowned the animated series - I'm pretty indifferent about it myself found much of it fun and cheesy even but fun nonetheless.

Bits of the animated series have found there way into "canon" in one form or another at times. I chock this up to being one of those times. Wonder if April's words will find their way into the movie in some form? I can see Pike maybe alluding to this in some way.

Sharr

Well, he does say "unit components," which can be interpreted as parts of it were built on land, while as has been discussed to death above, the final assemblies and the fitting out were done in space.

As far as atmospheric flight goes, Christopher's F-104 tops out at about 75,000 feet. So the Enterprise was quite low in the atmosphere, but obviously not so low that it couldn't escape.

I'm racking my brain, but isn't the bird of prey in TSFS and TVH the first true starship we see in controlled flight deep in the atmosphere? So apparently flying a starship around the sky CAN be done. At least with that particular ship.

[Timo]

By in-show chronology, NX-01 would probably be the first. She never had any problem maneuvering in an atmosphere; altitudes down to a couple of hundred feet were shown.

By in-show technobabble, there's no particular reason why starships couldn't fly in an atmosphere. Or under water. Or through solid rock for that matter. If they can take impulse accelerations and disruptor blasts, they should have no problem whatsoever hovering steadily in a gale above a planet that has a couple of hundred times Earth's gravity.

However, the shape of NCC-1701 isn't conductive of landings or takeoffs. Which is why I like the way they did it in Brad Ferguson's A Flag Full of Stars, with the TOS saucer refitted for TMP on the ground and flown under her own power to the secondary hull which stayed in space the whole time. The original TOS saucer could have been flown up that way, too - although it sounds a bit odd that they would build the nacelles in the same place and tow those up to orbit as well.

As for references to San Francisco yards, those could be on Andoria for all we know. It's just a name, folks. It's not as if Earth Station McKinley sits atop Mount McKinley, either. Or as if Columbia Pictures studios are located in Columbia. Probably the SF Yards have facilities all over the Sol system, although not necessarily in San Francisco itself.

Timo Saloniemi

[Therin of Andor]

I've now SEEN the trailer... and it's wonderful!

SPOILER warning if you follow that link to my blog.

[CommanderRaytas]

Wow, I can't wait to see that!!!!! And I don't care one bit whether the Enterprise was built on Earth or in orbit. In the end, it doesn't matter at all.

[MisterPL]

So long as the ship has a big "Made in USA" emblem painted on its bumper, I don't care where it was assembled.

(An Apple logo is also acceptable.)

[Plum]

^^^
So much for a united earth star fleet?

[Franklin]

MisterPL said:
So long as the ship has a big "Made in USA" emblem painted on its bumper, I don't care where it was assembled.

(An Apple logo is also acceptable.)

By unionized labor!

[Cary L. Brown]

Franklin said:

By unionized labor!

"Loook, FOOOOORRR... The Starfleet LAAAABelll.... "

[MisterPL]

Well I don't know what the hell "un-ionized" labor is. You Trekkies and your technobabble.