Okay, every anyone who wants to come up with any theory regarding WWIII, the Eugenics Wars, or genetic-engineering should watch this first. So helpful!
What happened on Earth between 2063 and 2079, and after? How was United Earth founded?
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
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There's an old missile Nike site in my town and I believe it only has one silo. It's been filled in with concrete. When I was a teenager, it was a hangout spot. There were still barracks there and a weird radio tower(I think that's what it was). All that stuff is gone now besides the giant concrete slap on the ground.
In the FC novelization, Zephram Cochrane was a scientist who was recruited for the war, and was working on something involving antimatter at that base. The war ended and he saw the potential for the Warp ship
In the FC novelization, Zephram Cochrane was a scientist who was recruited for the war, and was working on something involving antimatter at that base. The war ended and he saw the potential for the Warp ship
There were a few former missile silos for sale. The pictures are interesting. None of them look to have held more than 1 silo.
https://www.missilebases.com/
Missile complexs spread their launch silos many miles apart, so a hit on one won't destroy all of them.
FWIW, Nike sites and the like are to be found close to population centers, as they were intended to protect those, while Minuteman sites are the opposite in basically every respect. Nike indeed tended to be compact - the underground component was more like a hangar, out of which one would cart multiple missiles to their actual launch sites. Indeed, the missile wasn't underground in order to protect it from enemy attack (nobody would bother to strike that deep into the US just to hit some SAMs), but in order to protect nearby urban features from embarrassing accidental explosions.
Is the Bozeman base realistic? Placing a Titan II silo in the middle of a rather dense pine forest on top of a hill, at a steep slope, might take some doing - even if we take this to be a 1960s site that was abandoned early on and has now been reclaimed by the forest. Then again, this might be a dedicated modern "Titan V" silo, optimal for this hyperfuturistic launch vehicle that does not seem to require heavy fuel logistics or blast channels. Also, the launch has basically no effect on a glass/corrugated steel -walled shack and its shelves of bottles twenty meters away; perhaps the original idea was to place the silo as close as possible to all sorts of camouflaging aids, including human-shield features (the shack does appear to be constructed on a foundation, as if there always was a building there)...
Timo Saloniemi
Is the Bozeman base realistic? Placing a Titan II silo in the middle of a rather dense pine forest on top of a hill, at a steep slope, might take some doing - even if we take this to be a 1960s site that was abandoned early on and has now been reclaimed by the forest. Then again, this might be a dedicated modern "Titan V" silo, optimal for this hyperfuturistic launch vehicle that does not seem to require heavy fuel logistics or blast channels. Also, the launch has basically no effect on a glass/corrugated steel -walled shack and its shelves of bottles twenty meters away; perhaps the original idea was to place the silo as close as possible to all sorts of camouflaging aids, including human-shield features (the shack does appear to be constructed on a foundation, as if there always was a building there)...
Timo Saloniemi
Nikes were created to shoot down enemy bomber formations, by deploying a small nuke in their midst. They flew fast but not far - even a war between California and Oregon would have been difficult to wage with a Nike Hercules that could only cross 90 miles under ideal conditions!
There were some plans on converting antiquated Nikes into battlefield tactical rockets, and the Pershing is actually sort of related. But the Pershing was mobile, hauled right next to the enemy (within a couple of hundred miles, that is) for firing. Nothing flying from a bunker in mainland US could ever have reached the enemy - only the big things stored in vertical siloes had a range in thousands of kilometers.
AFAIK, no ICBMs were ever situated anywhere near cities. For a rare once, the military did this primarily in order to protect the civilians: a Russian warhead falling on a rural ICBM site would be one warhead less falling on a US city. Conversely, allowing the Russians to kill a city and an ICBM site simultaneously would have been giving the enemy too much of an advantage! But AFAIK, no ICBM site was in truly mountaineous terrain, either, for the difficulty in construction and in transportation. Something may have changed in the Trek 21st century: perhaps air transport got much cheaper, perhaps antigravs were introduced, perhaps the missiles were printed out in situ...
Timo Saloniemi
There were some plans on converting antiquated Nikes into battlefield tactical rockets, and the Pershing is actually sort of related. But the Pershing was mobile, hauled right next to the enemy (within a couple of hundred miles, that is) for firing. Nothing flying from a bunker in mainland US could ever have reached the enemy - only the big things stored in vertical siloes had a range in thousands of kilometers.
AFAIK, no ICBMs were ever situated anywhere near cities. For a rare once, the military did this primarily in order to protect the civilians: a Russian warhead falling on a rural ICBM site would be one warhead less falling on a US city. Conversely, allowing the Russians to kill a city and an ICBM site simultaneously would have been giving the enemy too much of an advantage! But AFAIK, no ICBM site was in truly mountaineous terrain, either, for the difficulty in construction and in transportation. Something may have changed in the Trek 21st century: perhaps air transport got much cheaper, perhaps antigravs were introduced, perhaps the missiles were printed out in situ...
Timo Saloniemi
I think we have to take some artistic license with this. Mainly because this isn't the only flub. When the Phoenix separates the first stage it's way too high up. Not just in terms of limited launching capabilities of the Titan II(or fictional V), but in terms of the amount of time it would have taken then to reach that distance from earth. Not only that, but the earth's shadow is on the wrong side in some of the Phoenix launch scenes.
This is a fairly clear-cut case of two wrongs making a right, though. A missile built for WWIII in the 2050s is fully entitled to feature futuristic technology, even if packaged in an ages-old shell (think 1960s Atlas and today's Atlas and multiply by another few decades). Around this time, mankind already has superengines capable of whisking a ship to Mars in weeks - and may have had those in the 1990s already. Manipulation of gravity is also an old trick from the 1990s, perhaps not directly applicable in rocket propulsion but certainly an attractive replacement for today's cold-launch techniques.
A rocket that produces no flame, shakes no shacks, and throws a heavy upper stage to escape trajectory, is merely to be expected, all these three features seamlessly fitting together. Who knows, perhaps the Titan V was built in order to bombard the Moon? Surely there would be enemy assets there in the 2050s, possibly even silos of like weapons facing Earthward from under the regolith. But simply hitting the enemy continent faster, and in cheerful dismissal of orbital mechanics limitations, would also be a worthwhile goal for a future missile.
Timo Saloniemi
A rocket that produces no flame, shakes no shacks, and throws a heavy upper stage to escape trajectory, is merely to be expected, all these three features seamlessly fitting together. Who knows, perhaps the Titan V was built in order to bombard the Moon? Surely there would be enemy assets there in the 2050s, possibly even silos of like weapons facing Earthward from under the regolith. But simply hitting the enemy continent faster, and in cheerful dismissal of orbital mechanics limitations, would also be a worthwhile goal for a future missile.
Timo Saloniemi
China and Chinese people still exist, as shown in the TNG episode Coming of Age.
They have an antimatter refinery, more so than a warehouse full of solid fuel... Okies, I suppose they could have ransacked half the states pool supplies warehouses, and garden centres to get 30 tons of potassium/nitriate/oxide, if there wasnt already enough fuel on the base locked up safe, which is the required feul for this class of ship, even if the ship was still already going to have always needed an antimatter reactor to crack warp one.
BUT if the Phoenix's conventional drive, was powered by anti matter, the ship, aerodynamically still has to weigh the same, look the same, and go through the same process of casting of spent stages, even if its all theatrical because an antimatter reactor is smaller and generates more power than a chemical rocket's fuel supply. By this logic, the ship would only need to be blasting off at a fraction of its full speed so that the phoenix doesn't pull itself apart on launch.
That's a reasonable theory, I suppose it all depends on how much anti-matter you're willing to allow the mid 21st century to have.
Even the existence of anti-matter as fuel for the Phoenix has been a debated topic, but I think onscreen evidence indicates that they did have anti-matter. In First Contact Lily Sloan has theta radiation poisoning. Data then notes that the radiation is coming form the damaged throttle assembly of the Phoenix. In Voyager's episodes "Night", "Extreme Risk", and "Juggernaut" we learn that theta radiation is a byproduct of anti-matter. based on this we definitely know the Phoenix used anti-matter.
From this point it's speculation as to how much anti-matter they had. Personally I prefer the idea that they had very little anti-matter. So the first stage of the rocket was a conventional fueled rocket and only the warp drive of the Phoenix used Anti-matter. Personally, I still limit it even further and the following is my speculation:
The phoenix didn't have enough anti-matter to run it's warp drive with a typical m/am reaction. It would have burned through its anti-matter fuel too quickly to create a stable warp field. So instead they used the material for the warhead of the missile(or from somewhere else) to create a sort of hybrid fission-fusion reactor. This reactor outputed a "subcritical" hydrogen plasma. This "subcritical" plasma was a sufficient enough fuel supply, but it didn't have quite enough energy needed to create the warp field. So the anti-matter was used to catalyze this plasma into a more energetic plasma. This would allow the the anti-matter fuel supply to be used in smaller portions, allowing it to be used for longer time. Yes, I know this is all mumbo-jumbo, but it's Star Trek, and I'm still working on improving it.
I think the high altitude launch shots of the Phoenix need to be discarded mainly becasue a Titan II(V?) can't (probably couldn't) reach that altitude.
The shot in question is this one: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=491&pid=52030
Earth from Low Earth Orbit looks like this:
So the Phoenix is considerably farther away from earth. But even if we grant that perhaps the Titan rocket, through whatever means was capable of reaching this height, the question is why? Why would the need to get so far away from earth? The boundary of space should be sufficient enough and require not as much fuel. Excess is not a something the really exists when it comes to space travel.
Lastly, we know from dialogue that the Phoenix's warp flight had to take place before 11:15AM. All the preceding shots in terms of daylight are reasonably well done to establish that this is referring to Mountain Standard Time. So the actual warp flight has to happen at 11:15AM MST on April 5th. At this time we would see the shadow of the earth just over Paris and almost reaching the British Isles. https://www.suncalc.org/#/45.6841,-111.052,3/2063.04.05/11:15/1/3
Yet, the above mentioned shot of the Phoenix's launch puts first stage separation at about 4:40PM MST: https://www.suncalc.org/#/45.6841,-111.052,3/2063.04.05/16:40/1/3
This can't be 4:40PM on April 4th, becasue of the pacing of the scenes, the urgency of their launch, and we know from the beginning of the movie that the Enterprise crew arrived at nightfall in Montana on April 4th.
Warp can't work in a gravity well. I'm guessing that there are plenty of times that that has happened, but it's also something that I read in a novel.
Wikipedia IRL says that there was a nextgen of Titan on the books, a super titan, when the line of rockets was scrapped in 2005.
What is antimatter?
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Antimatter
It's not exotic matter from a parallel universe, it's just an electron with a negative charge, which means you are colliding two types of matter both found freely and easily in our universe, even in one of those types of matter has to be fiddled with.
John Archer in Doctor Doctor complained that it took the Vulcans a century to teach humans how to refine antimatter safely by themselves.
Deuturium is special hydrogen.
So it's not exactly rocket science.
Wikipedia IRL says that there was a nextgen of Titan on the books, a super titan, when the line of rockets was scrapped in 2005.
What is antimatter?
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Antimatter
It's not exotic matter from a parallel universe, it's just an electron with a negative charge, which means you are colliding two types of matter both found freely and easily in our universe, even in one of those types of matter has to be fiddled with.
John Archer in Doctor Doctor complained that it took the Vulcans a century to teach humans how to refine antimatter safely by themselves.
Deuturium is special hydrogen.
So it's not exactly rocket science.
Yes, probably. But it also had anti-matter, because it was leaking theta radiation. Three Voyager episodes show that theta radiation is a by-product of antimatter.
...Also, we hear that "intermix" is a stage in the power or propulsion process. Nuclear systems wouldn't involve that, but chemical or m/am ones would.
Gravity doesn't stop warp, as we see ships going to warp right next to planets (say, ST4, within Earth's atmosphere). However, gravity certainly does affect warp, making it so slow that we can follow it with our naked eyes (say, ST4 again). Cochrane would do well to sail clear of Earth, so that there is less effect from the planet's gravity - and of the Sun, too, if possible, but apparently his bargain basement rocket doesn't allow for that.
Yet the rocket performance we see is basically the minimum we should expect of the tech, rather than excess. Heck, the upper stage apparently features not just the warp drive but also a comparable sublight drive that Cochrane uses to get his rig back to Earth (it has a big rocket-bell style feature at the bottom, just like the lower stage, but this bell isn't lit during the warp flight. Packing the capability into the upper stage as an afterthought bodes well for the lower stage, too.
Why the future USAF would pack this wonderengine into a Titan body is not all that difficult to understand: it then follows that the vehicle automatically fits in a Titan silo! Not that this specific silo would have been an old Titan II one (it really can't be, not on that slope), but the principle stands.
The Botany Bay went interstellar. Talk about exceeding the specs!
Timo Saloniemi
Gravity doesn't stop warp, as we see ships going to warp right next to planets (say, ST4, within Earth's atmosphere). However, gravity certainly does affect warp, making it so slow that we can follow it with our naked eyes (say, ST4 again). Cochrane would do well to sail clear of Earth, so that there is less effect from the planet's gravity - and of the Sun, too, if possible, but apparently his bargain basement rocket doesn't allow for that.
Yet the rocket performance we see is basically the minimum we should expect of the tech, rather than excess. Heck, the upper stage apparently features not just the warp drive but also a comparable sublight drive that Cochrane uses to get his rig back to Earth (it has a big rocket-bell style feature at the bottom, just like the lower stage, but this bell isn't lit during the warp flight. Packing the capability into the upper stage as an afterthought bodes well for the lower stage, too.
Why the future USAF would pack this wonderengine into a Titan body is not all that difficult to understand: it then follows that the vehicle automatically fits in a Titan silo! Not that this specific silo would have been an old Titan II one (it really can't be, not on that slope), but the principle stands.
The Botany Bay went interstellar. Talk about exceeding the specs!
Timo Saloniemi
True, I think there are a plethora of examples of warp speeds being slow in gravity wells. Which, if we accept the turn around scene as reliable, the Phoenix didn't make it very far from at warp one. My theory is that despite phrases like "light speed" being used, the Phoenix didn't exceed lightspeed from an outside perspective. The actual accomplishment was generating a one cochrane warp field.
Yes, I think that engine did play a role in the return process. They would only need a short burn to get into an elliptical orbit and fall back towards earth.
I agree that it's not a exact Titan II. The engine is completely different and I haven't done a detailed examination of the external features.
Yes, I think we've had this discussion before.
Maybe that's the trick.
The upper stage is very light weight, enabling the lower stage to lift it to a great altitude.
Easier to retrofit a new engine into a existing body?
Along with those new antimatter warheads.
And have it fit into that pre-existing silo.
The money for Medicare for All is going to have to come from somewhere.
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