You need to be more specific than "season four." What episode, scene?
Spoilers SFA Ships & Tech
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You need to be more specific than "season four." What episode, scene?
Uncertain, but you're right, it's very possible that a 'school ship' isn't built with the latest and greatest systems, and/or may not be brand new.
i wish to look at these closer, but clicking on them just opens postimage
seeing it in motion i like it more. i like that the core section has very obvious design cues from the tos enterprise.
not a fan of the warp... nacelles???? just sort of wafting away when she deorbits, though. generally don't like the disconnected ship parts...
I think most of us don't. I also don't like the reasoning - extra maneuverability? More efficiency? Without any real explanation.
But wot da heck, I've sorta gotten used to it. I loved Tron, which has floaty separated bits all over the place. Why not.
- What DID bug me most in the premiere was the sudden appearance of the escape pod Nus Braka escapes in. It looks like it was just attached to the outside of the hull, as the door he uses seems flush with the external hull. Maybe it was called into existence to be used, or deloyed from the surface of the hull somehow? And how did he escape in that thing anyway - it's not like it would be super fast, and Starfleet help was only minutes away by then. Did he hide in the Badlands?
Mark
But wot da heck, I've sorta gotten used to it. I loved Tron, which has floaty separated bits all over the place. Why not.
- What DID bug me most in the premiere was the sudden appearance of the escape pod Nus Braka escapes in. It looks like it was just attached to the outside of the hull, as the door he uses seems flush with the external hull. Maybe it was called into existence to be used, or deloyed from the surface of the hull somehow? And how did he escape in that thing anyway - it's not like it would be super fast, and Starfleet help was only minutes away by then. Did he hide in the Badlands?
Mark
You have to put on your engineering mentality a bit to understand why they say that.
In the current day, Synchronous Autonomous Flying can already be done via computer.
Just see all the Modern Day Drone Light Shows where it replaced FireWorks.
That automatically takes care of the floating seperate sections.
Automatic Wireless Communication via Computers lets all sections work in tandem like Synchronized Ballet Swimming.
Now imagine how effortlessly & refined several centuries of improvement will be done to the code base & knowledge base to have multiple independent sections fly together.
Less Mass for a vehicle & each individual section = easier to maneuver at STL speeds.
No need for Pylons or Necks, everything can move on it's own and has less mass to move to begin with since they are seperate sections.
There doesn't need to be extra reinforcement for the Pylons & Necks as well in the structural members of all sections.
That means each section doesn't need as large of a Anti-Grav Drive or Impulse Deck to move at similar speeds as a traditional Single-Piece Connected Ship.
That also leads to less energy consumption since you can use a "Right-Sized" Gravimetric Drive & Impulse Deck for your independent sections to meet specified performance design.
We saw with the 24th Century Defiant-Class that Warp Cores were getting smaller & remained ridiculously powerful.
Now imagine several centuries of refinement of compacting the powerful Warp Cores.
Place a seperate Warp Core in each of the Floating sections along with Impulse Drive & Batteries.
Each Unit can be it's own mini StarShip section as need be.
Individual Flying Sections allow redundancy in battle & makes each individual unit a "Hot Swappable" part in real time.
If you loose a Warp Nacelle, you can ask for HQ to send you a replacement w/o getting towed back to StarBase for Repairs and/or RetroFits.
Now you have lower individual ship sections Surface Area for Shields to Cover.
The independent Surface Area for each individual unit is smaller, ergo you can have Denser Shields for each Floating Section.
Or have all of the floating sections work together to have one large Ovaloid Shield Bubble.
Take your pick.
Smaller Surface Area = Less Power needed for Skin Shields or more power for less Surface Area.
You get Denser Shields by having more Shield Particles covering a Smaller 3D Surface Area.
Or you can have 1 Big Shield Bubble powered by multiple Shield Generators in concert from each floating section of the ship.
Either way, Shields will be improved by the configuration of each individual section working in tandem.
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I'd love to keep using imgur, but that is no longer a good option, and postimages was one of the recommended ones. Haven't found a better alternative with similar user-friendliness...i wish to look at these closer, but clicking on them just opens postimage
tron has the advantage of being a digital world. but they could have done a thing like the feathers/nacelles come down and form vertical pillars around the groundside academy. one of those, they had this idea that they are sticking with, but don't really seem to have been thinking about what to do with it.
am i the only one who kept expecting clive owen to show up with a space baby?
it's probably just a firefox or adblock thing, or both. idk, it's just odd it doesn't even seem to open to an image page when i click on one. it's not the only one that it happens, there's several times recently i've clicked on images/image links, to specific trek set picture collection sites, for example, and they've just opened the main page.
not counting trekcore links which all seem to be broken past like 2 years ago...
you make a few good points, like each nacelle having a separate warp core, but they just don't seem to be doing any of those things. for example, rhino's plan relied on stealing the warp core, which was clearly in the core ship. and if they have forcefields good enough to keep the parts rigidly in place even when main power is down, reinforcing physical pylons shouldn't be that much of an issue....
It should be the largest & best Warp Core out of all of them.
I don't think they're using Force Fields to do that.
It's just computer auto manuevering the floating parts to stay in tandem.
Force Fields is a "Brutish Solution" that wastes way too much energy.
Reinforcing pylons is obviously not an issue, StarFleet has been doing that since Day 1 with classic StarShip design.
But this is Radical Engineering in the future that offers changes in fundamental StarShip design.
What if you had "No Pylon" & "No Neck"?
What then?
What PRO(s) & CON(s) do you gain?
And you have to ask yourself, is it worth the trouble?
With the Tech Available at the time in the 32nd Century, the answer is obviously Yes since it's the predominant design choice of that era for newer designed vessels.
Looks almost like something out of Dune...
Have we a sense if she's larger than, or smaller than, the USS Discovery, so far?
Today: Beaming!
This is IIRC the first ship to have an elevator with seats... in an era where people can (and do) beam themselves around a ship routinely. Discovery showed us that they often did this at non-alert conditions too. Perhaps this is a tonal shift, keeping the insta-beaming for more plot related use.
Transporting into water - perhaps it's academic (sic), but I don't know if it's been done before like this, with Sam beaming almost fully into water and Gen standing in it. I think Mariner beamed into a swamp once with a team in LDS, and of course there's beaming two whales and their water in TVH. I guess the closest thing I can think of is Kirk and Scotty transwarp beaming into the... water pipes of the JJ-Prise in ST2009?
Point being that I'm unsure of the physics invovled here. Do transporters beam the volume that will be occupied by people out of the way? There weren't a couple of puddles in the locker room when Sam and Gen beamed out. What about any microbiota that were in the water? Do they have rights?
And finally, using phasers as a conduit for beaming people is not new, being seen in TNG "Gambit". Here it's used basically as lazer tag punishment, with the added bonus of being kinetically knocked on your butt when you land.
Mark
This is IIRC the first ship to have an elevator with seats... in an era where people can (and do) beam themselves around a ship routinely. Discovery showed us that they often did this at non-alert conditions too. Perhaps this is a tonal shift, keeping the insta-beaming for more plot related use.
Transporting into water - perhaps it's academic (sic), but I don't know if it's been done before like this, with Sam beaming almost fully into water and Gen standing in it. I think Mariner beamed into a swamp once with a team in LDS, and of course there's beaming two whales and their water in TVH. I guess the closest thing I can think of is Kirk and Scotty transwarp beaming into the... water pipes of the JJ-Prise in ST2009?
Point being that I'm unsure of the physics invovled here. Do transporters beam the volume that will be occupied by people out of the way? There weren't a couple of puddles in the locker room when Sam and Gen beamed out. What about any microbiota that were in the water? Do they have rights?
And finally, using phasers as a conduit for beaming people is not new, being seen in TNG "Gambit". Here it's used basically as lazer tag punishment, with the added bonus of being kinetically knocked on your butt when you land.
Mark
Engineer transport tool
The engineer transport tool (ETT) was a rifle-shaped piece of transporter technology invented by Montgomery Scott. It allowed the user to tag and transport a targeted object or person from one site to another. It could also be used to destroy drones. While attempting to get around obstacles in...
memory-beta.fandom.com
This is a good question - never thought about this before, but yeah, I would think the transporter would have to push the water out of the way (somehow) prior to beaming the person into that space. In fact, the air we walk around in is not free of microbes and other things - like actual air molecules. The transporter would likely have to push those out of the way as well, lest they merge with the person being beamed in, potentially developing what could be considered a kind of a case of the Benz when the ambient air merges into their bloodstream. In fact, I would think that it would have to make a kind of vacuum for the subject to materialize into to prevent unwanted molecular comingling. Jeez, what a headache. Heisenberg Uncertainty is bad enough... Beaming Benz would add to the technological problem by an order of magnitude. Honestly, stable wormhole-based micro-portals sound like a far more safe way to travel.
Annular confinement beam does that? I do not recall the transporter sending off any matter in the way to another location.
Looks like this photo of the dedication plaque prop for U.S.S. Athena courtesy of John Van Citters on Bluesky hasn't been posted to this thread.
https://bsky.app/profile/jvancitters.bsky.social/post/3mclbewzya223
https://bsky.app/profile/jvancitters.bsky.social/post/3mclbewzya223
I wonder how we explain that the registry number is different to the one on the hull (392023).
Probably just a production mistake.
But, in universe, 70,000 is a huge jump. It just looks similar because it's still starts with the same number. Perhaps this is indicative of a major refit, or perhaps a ship pulled from mothballs and recommissioned as they put Starfleet back together.
Probably just a production mistake.
But, in universe, 70,000 is a huge jump. It just looks similar because it's still starts with the same number. Perhaps this is indicative of a major refit, or perhaps a ship pulled from mothballs and recommissioned as they put Starfleet back together.
They could make a mystery out of it that the kids would need to solve. Like the Titanic/Olympic name swap conspiracy theories that endure to this day. 
Concept art of the U.S.S. Athena by Lee Fitzgerald on ArtStation:
