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What if the Original Enterprise's saucer was pulverized?

CaptainJordan

Lieutenant
Red Shirt
What if the Original Enterprise's primary hull was pulverized by a meteor storm during the end of her historic five-year mission?
 
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Impossible. Because meteors are not meteorites unless they survives passage through a planet's atmosphere.

Do you honestly expect any answer other than "then most of the crew would be dead"?
 
Impossible. Because meteors are not meteorites unless they survives passage through a planet's atmosphere.

Do you honestly expect any answer other than "then most of the crew would be dead"?
I changed to a meteor storm. What would happen to the Enterprise?
 
She would have to warp home, as her impulse engines would be lost with the saucer. And that's about as much as we really "know" about the relevant fictio-facts.

Timo Saloniemi
 
A bit silly question really. It's like saying what if Spock or Kirk were lost on a planetary survey on their last few days before the end of their five year mission when the planet was destroyed by an exploding sun? They'd probably be dead! But then again...:rofl:
JB
 
I'm pretty sure The Making of Star Trek says the two hulls can operate independently of each other in an emergency. The survivors in the secondary hull would have to detach from the wreckage and fly to the nearest Starbase.

But this would never happen because the Enterprise has long-range sensors and would maneuver out of anything's way.
 
Except, of course, in cases like "Doomsday Machine", where the first sign of a meteor storm is the sound of 'em rocks pounding against the hull...

It seems starship sensors are only ever good for spotting things that are very actively emitting something, or then things the heroes already know to look for. And to my personal satisfaction, this is more pronounced in TOS than in the later shows, echoing the way naval awareness has evolved ITRW. (Although ENT then throws a wrench in those workings, giving us some sensor feats that seem out of place, that is, time.)

Timo Saloniemi
 
They evacuate the primary hull. Some sources say you can detach it from the secondary (Starfleet Museum allows it off the bat, though requires specialized help to reattach). Everyone is in a crowded secondary hull and sleeping in the hallways as they either warp to the nearest starbase or colony, or wait for help. If the damage isn't that bad, and it shouldn't, they can just seal off and cut off the damaged remains up front, used the rear half for storage, and continue on to a base for repairs.
 
Kirk and most of the command staff would be killed by massive explosions and decompression, leaving Scott left alive in Engineering and now Captain.

What would happen to the intact drive section of the Enterprise when she made it home to Spacedock?
 
They would probably connect a new saucer to it, after determining damage to the rest of the vessel. The closest thing we see to this is in Discovery, where a huge chunk of the Enterprise's saucer is blown away in the season finale battle for S2.

That said: why would a "meteor storm" simply take out the saucer and not the rest of the ship? Why would the captain, upon running into this, not order shields up? For that matter, what captain would fly into a field of meteors to begin with?

My guess is that the sensor as well as SIF/shielding systems may have been stopped working and it got surprised by a meteor/asteroid shower.
 
My guess is that the sensor as well as SIF/shielding systems may have been stopped working and it got surprised by a meteor/asteroid shower.

When it happened in the first episode of Lost in Space, the meteors just bounced off. They shot the scene by hanging the Jupiter 2 vertically and dropping the "rocks" on it (probably painted, crumpled up balls of aluminum foil). The camera was on its side, so on film it looked like horizontal collisions.
 
I also suspect that in that event, Captain Kirk would order station keeping for the ship and crewmembers at the windows to be on visual for potential space bodies, while Spock and Scotty got to work on the sensors and shields.

In real life, getting hit by a space rock or another spacecraft usually happens at tens of thousands of miles per hour, so I think putting crew at the windows would be practically useless. If something was coming at you, you'd just see a little flash of light as you died.
 
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