Defiant - where is the airlock at the front?

[toughlittleship]

Apologies to anyone who has mentioned this. There are two "prongs" that jut out horizontally from DS9's docking bay; presumably the Defiant has airlocks on either side as its nose fits in between the two "prongs".

[Tiberius]

Timo wrote:

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...Or perhaps the battle nudged DS9 a bit out of place, and USS Trial is just pushing her back to position?

Timo Saloniemi

lol, I'm beginning to think that you really are incapable of ever agreeing with me, Timo!

[Timo]

Well, I always felt two takes on the Star Trek universe is better than one..

Why do the ds9 pylons curve inwards? Even for multiple small ship docking the manouvering woiuld be more hazardous than if they curved outwards. It's just aesthetics.

Or then it's the same thing as with harbors today. It's easier for ships to moor on the "outsides" of piers and jetties, from the maneuvering an congestion points of view, but it's safer and more practical for them to moor on the insides, away from the waves and winds and perhaps even separated from the tides by a series of locks and gates.

DS9 supposedly does feature a spherical forcefield protecting it from outside attacks. Ships docking at the tips of inward-turned pylons would enjoy the protection of that field, while ships docking on the outside would not.

Which reminds me of another aspect of the Defiant docking issue. In "Way of the Warrior", the damaged and useless ship docked at her regular outer ring port at the end of a chase. The Klingon fleet then attacked. From that point on, the Defiant was nowhere to be seen.

Did the ship remain at that outer port (which was admittedly initially facing away from the Klingon fleet), or did it get moved to somewhere supposedly safer? During the battle, we saw dorsal shots of the station, revealing many of the docking pylon tips, but IIRC none revealing all of them; we also never got a view that would have revealed all the docking pylon / outer ring junctions and established that the ship had been moved. But would an outer ring position be secure during the battle?

In "A Call to Arms", some of the smaller Dominion vessels actually flew between the pylons and crashed to the inner structures. Enemy fire also penetrated that far. But in "Way of the Warrior", no ships intruded into the area supposedly protected by the spherical forcefield, and only the heaviest enemy fire from Gowron's flagship hit the inner structures (an action associated with the collapsing of the shields). In contrast, the red beams from the waves of old battle cruiser prompted fireball explosions at the outer rim. Would not the poor Defiant have been toast pretty quickly?

Timo Saloniemi

[EmperorTiberius]

Shield envilope can be extended around the docked ships I'm sure. It's probably not practical but we've seen it done.

[{ Emilia }]

Tosk wrote:

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There's not really a good spot on the nose where you can say, "There's the docking port!" Add it to all the other things that weren't really defined (or changed later) on the Defiant. Size, tractor emitters, the shuttle bay, armament, docking ports...they were all seemingly kind of made up as they went along.

Does it really matter, though? I can't really blame them for not putting a lot of thought into something that's so irrelevant to the plot.

But then again I never cared for Trek ship blueprints much either. Voodoo science doesn't really appeal to me.

[toughlittleship]

Some images:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...earch1_213.jpg

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...fglory_094.jpg

[Vanyel]

I never understood the reason behind docking nose first. The ship could have docked on her ventral or dorsal sides eliminating all problems of how it docked. A ventral surface docking would have allowed for greater movement between the station and ship, if the shuttle bay could be opened once docked.

[bullethead]

Vanyel wrote:

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I never understood the reason behind docking nose first. The ship could have docked on her ventral or dorsal sides eliminating all problems of how it docked. A ventral surface docking would have allowed for greater movement between the station and ship, if the shuttle bay could be opened once docked.

The shuttle bay didn't even exist until season 6 or 7.

[Timo]

Shuttles came out of somewhere in "The Search" already...

Docking nose first allows the ship to reach the bottom of a fairly deep "bay" in the station's structure. The only other way to get in there would be to ease the ship in sideways. Dorsal or ventral approaches would require a telescoping tunnel, which would negate the supposed advantages of the position change.

Using the shuttlebay to facilitate greater flow of goods or personnel would not work because the narrow airlock at the station is a bottleneck. OTOH, by connecting the nose to the airlock, our heroes leave the shuttlebay and possible cargo bays free to be opened into space, so that goods can flow into the cargo holds of the station by the supposed large cargo doors there (such as the ones seen opening in "Dramatis Personae").

Docking directly with the high capacity cargo doors might be tricky. But "Dramatis Personae" makes it look as if these are on the inner surface of the outer ring (or perhaps on the sides of the connecting spokes), and indeed there are some features in the model at such locations that could be taken for the doors (although not exactly). Easing a ship inside the ring and turning her belly outward towards the ring or the spoke would be a cool maneuver!

Timo Saloniemi

[G2309]

Timo wrote:

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Well, I always felt two takes on the Star Trek universe is better than one..

Or then it's the same thing as with harbors today. It's easier for ships to moor on the "outsides" of piers and jetties, from the maneuvering an congestion points of view, but it's safer and more practical for them to moor on the insides, away from the waves and winds and perhaps even separated from the tides by a series of locks and gates.

DS9 supposedly does feature a spherical forcefield protecting it from outside attacks. Ships docking at the tips of inward-turned pylons would enjoy the protection of that field, while ships docking on the outside would not.

Ok i tink that is a good explanation although we've seen sields expand furter in te past.

[Tosk]

{ Mitt Romney } wrote:

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Does it really matter, though?

Did I seem like I was particularly worried? I used a smiley and everything.

[Kolrad]

I was always puzzled by the "ablative armor" that was added to the Defiant in season 4 that protected the ship from damage when the shields were down, but somehow didn't visibly change the ship's appearance at all.

If I understand the meaning of "ablative" correctly, there should have been an outer layer on the Defiant that would gradually break off in little pieces as the ship took damage.

[Mark_Nguyen]

The ablative armor was just several layers of additional paint. Really, really tough paint. Paint ablates when you rub it. Yup.

Also, don't forget that the Defiant apparently has some side docking capacity as well. It was only ever shown docked at an upper pylon once (or more specifically departing from it), but it was there.

Mark

[Jimi_James]

It's been understanding that the detailed paneled surface of the ship itself was meant to represent the ablative armor. This is why we don't see some of the traditional details we're used to seeing on other ships, like standard segmented hull lines representing the presence of a deflector shield grid. Even things that got identified later on, such as thrusters, torpedo launchers, and transporter emitters, don't appear to be the same common variety in use by the rest of Starfleet. They're all covered with armor.

As for why the hull never appeared to be burning or breaking away as the armor was damage, as the name suggests, I would imagine it has to do with the limits of CGI budgets. Consider that quite often many ships didn't even appear to have shields because it would have been cost/labor intensive for the large fleet scenes, as you can guess at what it might have taken for them to show consistent damage throughout a battle.

Not to cross forums, but consistent damage has long been a sticking point against Voyager, though they certainly tried to make up for it with the USS Equinox. Outside of Trek, only one recent show that I know of has done a good job with showing consistent and accumulative damage, and that's BSG. It certainly added a great deal of realism to the show, to see the Galactica actually taking damage, some of which couldn't be repaired, leaving her hull scared and burned.

Timo brought up an inserting point I hadn't thought of, a few posts above, in regards to what the Defiant was up to, during the battle against the Klingons in Way of the Warrior. The ship had taken some damage during the mission to rescue Dukat, but it hardly seemed to slow them down at all.

I wonder why Sisko didn't leave Dax or Kira on board in command of a skeleton crew, and give them orders to engage the Klingons, particularly given the number of times Defiant was off doing something while action was happening on the station later on. So it's not like they had anything against splitting up the action. It seems strange now, that for the entire battle, we didn't see the Defiant at all and while the ship is certainly tough, I doubt it would have lasted long given the amount of weapons fire that was being exchanged.

If not in the fight, then surely Sisko would have ordered a skeleton crew to take the ship to Bajor and wait for Starfleet reinforcements.

Perhaps adding those elements would have disrupted the flow of the episode...or pushed it over in time.

[Timo]

the "ablative armor" that was added to the Defiant in season 4

Why should we think it was "added"?

It seems strange now, that for the entire battle, we didn't see the Defiant at all and while the ship is certainly tough, I doubt it would have lasted long given the amount of weapons fire that was being exchanged.

Exactly. The station is a better combatant than the ship. There's no particular reason to assume otherwise: the ship is small, the station is big. And by not using the ship, the station can shoot more freely.

Timo Saloniemi