starships underwater.

[DredZed]

I saw the same argument elsewhere about whether the ship coming up from the water was Enterprise. I put these pictures together to clarify the situation.

Screenshot:


Engine from MadMan1701's enterprise model:


Composited together:


They're clearly the same, the ship is definitely Enterprise's class (is it officially called Constitution class in the new timeline?) and would thus almost certainly be the Enterprise. After all, they've never had another ship of the same class as the Enterprise in any movie so far.

[SalvorHardin]

DredZed wrote:

---

They're clearly the same, the ship is definitely Enterprise's class (is it officially called Constitution class in the new timeline?) .

It was called that in the ships dossier in the first movie's official site

[Chaos Descending]

Well, now I'm convinced.

[King Daniel]

From someone who's seen the 9-minute preview of Into Darkness...

It's hiding in an ocean on the red forest planet monitoring the opening mission-in-progress while Kirk and McCoy are visiting the locals undercover. Spock is in a volcano trying to prevent it's eruption.

Also...

We also get enough humor (particularly from Simon Pegg) that manages to make light of exactly the kind of fan over-analysis that the film is sure to generate (i.e. Can the Enterprise even operate underwater?)

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=97913

[jayrath]

I sure hope that Admiral Nelson, the Seaview and its Flying Sub put in an appearance.

[throwback]

I don't have an issue with starships operating under water. There could be technologies present in the 23rd century that would allow a starship to operate underwater for a period of time. I doubt that the film will go into the specifics on why the Enterprise is underwater.

[Anji]

Not necessarily. They could base the techobabble on current theories on how USOs function underwater.

[Timo]

Which is always a bad idea - when scifi tries to be contemporary, it only manages to annoy the enthusiasts in the know about contemporary tech, confuse those not in the know, look dated from the get-go, and technologically outdate itself in two months anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

[King Daniel]

Has anyone mentioned Insurrection's village-sized holoship yet? Was that film really so forgettable that no-one realized a starship has already been hidden underwater in a Trek movie?

[Timo]

I'd think that the technological hurdles would be relatively low, but not nonexistent as per VOY "Thirty Days". The operational rationale is no doubt going to be debated for quite some time, though.

The holotrap transport of ST:INS was hidden uncrewed and otherwise unattended, waiting for the conclusion of a rather monomaniacal mission. It's a good way to stash away something that's not needed for anything else and should go unobserved not only by natives but also by starfarers.

No doubt a big starship can also hide underwater waiting for the conclusion of a recce mission or whatever. But shouldn't NCC-1701 have better things to do? If her capabilities are not needed for the mission, and she's there merely to pick up Kirk at the end of an adventure, a shuttle could be used instead, hidden underwater, on a mountaintop, buried in sand, cloaked, whatever. Why land the ship?

I sort of doubt the movie will give us a rationale, such as transporters not being available and shuttles being undesirable for a clear-cut reason X. There's no big reason not to dip the ship, sure, but only if we postulate a short mission. If Kirk is gonna be gone for weeks, the ship should be free to depart.

But I might be dead wrong. Apparently, and spoilers be damned, there are plenty of things going on at the planet where this dipping takes place. A center of operations close to all the action might be an operational necessity for a reason that becomes obvious once we see all the relevant scenes.

Timo Saloniemi

[FatherRob]

Timo wrote:

---

But shouldn't NCC-1701 have better things to do? If her capabilities are not needed for the mission, and she's there merely to pick up Kirk at the end of an adventure, a shuttle could be used instead, hidden underwater, on a mountaintop, buried in sand, cloaked, whatever. Why land the ship?

Because that doesn't give you a big hero reveal with accompanying musical score that makes fanboys go 'twee!!!'

Rob+

[jayrath]

^ Now, that is the best explanation I've heard yet!

[Ronald Held]

The best explanation is that it is just for show.

[blssdwlf]

It's like Space Battleship Yamato, but with the Enterprise

[MiKaTrek]

I did some calculations with the given pressure values on http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/GSC and an approximated gravitational acceleration on Earth of 10 m/s².
The Klingon Raptor-Class can withstand a pressure of 15000 GSC (g/cm²). On Earth this would be about 1,500,000 Pa. This is the pressure in 140 m (460 ft) deep water.
On Kirk's Enterprise it is getting critical at 1000 GSC (that's nearly the standard atmosphere pressure). Told exaggerated, a normal anticyclone could be a problem for the Enterprise. So there is no way they could dive underwater.
Sisko's Defiant can even withstand 9,000,000 GSC (900,000,000 Pa or 9000 bar). Theoretically they could dive down to 90 km (56 miles).
So these are three widely differing canon values with a lot of room for speculation.