Spacedock: When Was It Built?
- Thread starter FalTorPan
- Start date
With all the upgrades DS9 underwent from when SF took control of it, I don't think that replacing it with a mushroom star-base is all that necessary.
On the other hand, putting one of those shrooms in orbit of Bajor would increase it's defensive capabilities and provide viable staging grounds.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
How do you figure? The TMP stuff like epsilon 9 and the earth orbital station look like a combination of spaceframe type builds and reasonable scientific extrapolation, whereas the spacedock design looks like a terrestrial blimp hangar. Spacedock looks like what it is ... a typical ILM mid 80s build. That's not always a bad thing (BOP is their design, and EXPLORERS has a ship that looks like the BOP with wings torn off), but when you put it alongside TMP, it looks like an interdimensional rift has sucked STAR WARS designers into the Federation (let's call it AN EVER MORE FUCKED UP ALTERNATIVE FACTOR.)
Spacedock IS in keeping with the SFS presentation of Starfleet and Federation as Paranoid Xfiles type buggers, totally different from TMP and somewhat different than TWOK. Maybe it was a gift from tellarites or some other bellicose race not known for inspired thinking.
The very solid and somewhat simplistic look of the 'Dock screams 1950s/retro scifi to me, something that would well fit the TOS or even ENT era. At the time the installation was built, it might have housed the entire Starfleet in a grandiose fashion; perhaps its enclosed design would serve as physical armor for the ships inside, in an era when shields were primitive and polarizable armor the hottest thing in the protection business?
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
But despite it's 'simplistic look' it's quite possible it was constructed during or just prior to TMP ... possibly even a bit after that.
...It could have been constructed between the time Kirk departed in ST2 and the time he returned in ST3, too, if the builders were hard-working enough. But I'd still want to give the installation a few decades or centuries of history before ST3, as it doesn't in any way look new or half-finished there.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Why would they do that? The Bajorans may have had a problem with that considering that the Bajorans were not Federation members and the wormhole belonged to them. DS9 was a Bajoran station, the Federation was only there to administrate.
I was referring to the time frame AFTER DS9 ended and Bajor became a member.
It was merely an idea as it would provide the Bajorans with means of developing their space programs better if they wanted it, plus building their own ships.
Plus having 1 shroom sized base in orbit of every Federation member world sounds like a good strategy to me in case the system needs better defensive capabilities.
I've always thought of it as an extension of the same style style stations such as the orbital office complex in TMP and K-7 in TOS. That is, a mushroom shaped complex at one end and a long second at the other end. My pet theory is that it started as a captured asteroid converted into a base of operations. Maybe an early attempt at an off-Earth space colony. It was slowly built up until the asteroid was no longer used. The "top mushroom" was build later after ships became too big to use the "middle mushroom."
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My answer to this is probably going to be different than most of the others you'll get (and I'm writing this prior to reading any of those, to avoid skewing my own answer).
I think the entire basis of the question is flawed. I seriously doubt that it was ever "built" (in the sense that it was "started" at some point with the SFS-timeframe configuration in mind and was "finished" at some point with that same configuration in mind).
I suspect that it's more like a city than a ship. You might well argue that "Starbase 1" (I've always assumed that "spacedock" wasn't the entire structure, just the big bay on top) is the eventual outcome of what is currently the ISS.
If you look at the structure, it doesn't really look like it was built all at one time, does it? I suspect that the spherical bottom-most portion was built first... (possibly as an adjoining element of the ISS or some later form of that???) and that, over time, more and more elements were added, and some old elements were retired or replaced.
More like a city than a ship...
If you were to project 200 years into the future from TSFS, you'd still have Starbase One in orbit around Earth... and it might still have the semi-conical "spacedock" bay up top, but the stuff below it may have been totally replaced, with the "mushroom cap" being one of the SMALLER portions of the total structure.
That's my take on it. I suspect that the big sphere at the bottom, and maybe the next ring up from there (the real "mushroom" portion) may have been in existance at the time the 1701 was built...
The construction of a massive, pressurized zero-g maintenance and repair bay ("Spacedock") would have eliminated the need to take ship sections planetside for certain maintenance operations which require the presence of an atmosphere. So while the 1701 (pre-TOS) was built in sections at San Francisco Naval yards and then lifted into orbit for final assembly in space, many ships in later-TOS-movie times (and certain in TNG times) could be constructed and maintained ENTIRELY in space.
If it were my guess, I'd say that the Excelsior class would be the first class of ship built entirely in space... with the portions of assembly requiring the presence of an atmosphere having been done inside the newly-completed "Spacedock" addition to Starbase One.
Anyway... that's what I'd do if I were in charge of the franchise. Your mileage may vary.
The problem with that theory is that Starbase 74, Starbase 133, Starbase 84 and Lya Station Alpha look exactly like Earth Spacedock. Since the Ent-D could manoeuvre inside these stations should be even larger than the Earth's starbase or they enlarged the doors.
Anyway it seems more logical that this is a standard class or type of base since they all look exactly the same (and apparently they all orbit dark blue planets at exactly the same angle.
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I remain of the opinion that Spacedock was built to that configuration from the start and that the starship area is unpressurized.
I have a nice fan-art CG piece of the Constitution Class Enterprise approaching Spacedock and like to think it was in place by the late TOS period.
I have a nice fan-art CG piece of the Constitution Class Enterprise approaching Spacedock and like to think it was in place by the late TOS period.
My crackpot idea (please forgive me if I'm repeating myself): Spacedock is a mass-production starship factory, the first of its kind, and it was built after TMP. Why? Starfleet seems very different after V'Ger showed up (as Trevanian rightly points out). Perhaps having only one starship available to intercept V'Ger made the Admirals paranoid and the public supportive of a massive expansion of Starfleet. By the time TNG rolls around, there are thousands of starships, most of which fall into just a few major classes, and a few more of these factories spread around the Federation, just in case.
Oh, and I don't believe the TNG "spacedocks" are any bigger than the original. I subscribe to the "the doors are bigger on the side we didn't see" theory.
Thanks for listening,
--MyClone
...Doesn't work since we see the very act of entering. Unless we assume that the doors opened wider at the last second, after the camera had already cut away from the exterior view.
Also, I don't think Spacedock has any capability for building or even repairing starships. It has never demonstrated anything like cranes, or tools, or stores of components. It looks more like a big passenger harbor or airport terminal, only capable of handling passengers, freight, fuel and consumables plus basic cleanup and repainting duties.
I mean, the station type (never mind its TNG successors) is big enough to house virtually any and all functions imaginable - we would be hard pressed to fill the interior volume with meaningful or even meaningless functions after we have added the starship factory, the spa and the asteroid pinball court. But probably the starship factory still isn't among the functions chosen for this city in orbit.
Timo Saloniemi
Also, I don't think Spacedock has any capability for building or even repairing starships. It has never demonstrated anything like cranes, or tools, or stores of components. It looks more like a big passenger harbor or airport terminal, only capable of handling passengers, freight, fuel and consumables plus basic cleanup and repainting duties.
I mean, the station type (never mind its TNG successors) is big enough to house virtually any and all functions imaginable - we would be hard pressed to fill the interior volume with meaningful or even meaningless functions after we have added the starship factory, the spa and the asteroid pinball court. But probably the starship factory still isn't among the functions chosen for this city in orbit.
Timo Saloniemi
trevanian
Rear Admiral
This kind of ties in with the STARFLEET WENT REPUBLICAN notion of post TMP, that form and function aren't necessarily related, that Starfleet wanted something that looked good in PR shows rather than spaceframe functionality. Who cares what goes on there, it looks REALLY BIG. Who cares if the ships can't get out if somebody pulls the power plub on the dock, it looks REALLY BIG.
