"Truncation" sounds more appropriate to my ears, now that you've mentioned it
Constitution Class Ships Seem To Be Everywhere
- Thread starter There Be Whales Here
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No, it says aka truncation right up front. Same concept, one article.
I didn't ignore your answer. I merely pointed out that "Space is BIG" does not equal "Space is UNCROSSABLE," especially in a setting where spacecraft travel faster than light, and therefore that argument can't be used as a reason why one Constitution class can't (or shouldn't) meet another in space. It's tantamount to saying I can't meet a friend downtown for coffee at Starbuck's because the Earth is HUGE!
Fair enough. My question was really for posters going out of their way to try and prove that all those Constitutions were not Constitutions.
Yeah, it is kinda like trying to get straight answer out of politician, isn't it?
While getting a group of people to agree on a pizza topping.
There's a bunch of these. The form is pretty well established, like the Burmese pythons in Florida.
freebie
oldie
goodie
quickie
hoodie
floatie
smoothie
appendectomie
Oops and whoops both got the treatment, to exclaim minor mishaps. Or maybe it worked in reverse: maybe they had to be shortened from the cumbersome and formal Oopsie Daisy.
One time at work, late 1980s, I was carrying six things in my arms. One thing fell, and when I bent down to pick it up, another thing fell, and so on. A woman nearby said "[Zap's] got the droppies." I don't think that one caught on, though. The condition is too rare and fleeting to make it a household word.
Trekkie
The link at the bottom of abbreviation was "clipping (morphology)" and I guessed it was the synonym of "truncation."
I have heard--and used--"dropsies" over the years.
If there were only twelve people on Earth, and they were located at twelve different equidistant places from each other, try and see how easy it is to meet one of them at your local Starbucks. I think that my definition of 'space is big' is quite different from your definition of 'space is big.'
They likely are not equidistant at any given time.
True; they could be 5,000 miles away from each other instead of 6,000.
I mean, it's a fleet. Coordinated efforts are to be expected, especially if one needs assistance.
My point exactly. Starfleet is a fleet, comprising more than just twelve Constitution class ships. So the IRL chances of the Enterprise encountering one of its 11 sister ships when there are a multitude of other vessel classes in operation all over Federation space is astronomical (unless there's a specific reason for it, such as wargames necessitating other ships of the same class, as in 'The Ultimate Computer.' And even then, I'm not quite sure why all four ships needed to be the same class.)
And I would imagine the specific reason is that providing aid to a Constitution may require another Constitution.
Yes, we know that. We’re talking about the real world implications about why that would be a problematic scenario.
Although I would have very much enjoyed seeing new filming models (or at the least, something kitbashed from a model kit) for the Constellation, Exeter, or Defiant, had they had the time and/or the opportunity.
I'm not buying that. A distress call is a distress call. If a Constitution class is in danger and needs help, do you really think that other ship classes that happen to be closer to that ship will just ignore it in favor of letting another Constitution class that's much further away come to its aid?
Although I would have very much enjoyed seeing new filming models (or at the least, something kitbashed from a model kit) for the Constellation, Exeter, or Defiant, had they had the time and/or the opportunity.
I'm not buying that. A distress call is a distress call. If a Constitution class is in danger and needs help, do you really think that other ship classes that happen to be closer to that ship will just ignore it in favor of letting another Constitution class that's much further away come to its aid?
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Well Constitution classes were also considered to be the longest range vessels in the Federation; and the were the ones conducting exploration previously unexplored sectors. That could be a reason why only other Constitution class ships were sent because of the areas involved and the distances that needed to be covered in such situations.
The only thing we have to go on to support this assertion is the visual evidence. Aside from the damaged Excalibur, all of the ships were obviously identical because they were filmed from the same model. The question is "Is being visually identical tantamount to being the same 'class'?"
Part of the confusion is that the Enterprise is described in several ways: Starship Class, Constitution Class, and Mk IX Heavy Cruiser...and don't forget just plain "starship". My favorite way to interpret this so far is from the same issue of T Negative as Greg Jein's "Jonathon Doe Starship" piece. Ruther Berman posits that the Mk IX designation indicates the mission profile for which the ship was built. She goes on to list several other profiles (all made up, I think) with different Mk designations. The idea was that a ship might be outwardly identical to another, but it might have all sorts of different loadouts and machinery on the inside.
Think back to the period when TOS was in production. Space exploration was being performed in several series of craft; for the US, there was Mercury, Gemini, and then Apollo. Each craft in a series was more or less outward identical, but had some equipment differences. I've been thinking for a while that Roddenberry et al, being in the middle of that model of ship design, might have used in (consciously or unconsciously) as a model for Star Fleet design methodology, and that they thought that, if not all then at least a large number of Star Fleet ships would "look the same", but still have design differences internally. As support for this, Roddenberry justified his idea that all Star Fleet crew would be officers because they were the functional equivalent of astronauts, and at that time that was the model for who could go into space.
My opinion is that the Enterprise was a starship (capable of traveling between star systems), of the Starship class (fitted with the best of many things, if not everything, but especially including her warp drive), and a Constitution class (the current design of saucer, fitted with a secondary hull and two warp drive nacelles mounted to the secondary hull). In this world, we see many Constitution class ships in TOS, but we have no idea how many of them, if any, were Mk IX heavy cruisers fitted out for the long range exploration mission profile.
Yes, IF.
And both definitions irrelevant to this conversation, since we're not talking the ships crossing ALL OF SPACE.
And how does that negate my point?
What we're talking about, and the topic of this thread, is the IRL improbability of two or more Constitution class starships being anywhere near each other when a) there are only twelve of them in existence, and b) the vast interstellar distances of space in which they are operating at any given time.
