The E-D was built on the ground, don't see why The 1701 couldn't

[EyalM]

There are no manned interplanetary spacecraft (moon is not a planet), there never have been any, and there aren't likely to be any in the near future either ... unless we build them up there. Geez, just look some of this stuff up, willya?

The fact that the Moon is not a planet is irrelevant, the ship had to preform in space.

Do you even know what you're arguing about?

I'm not saying a vehicle has to be built in orbit to function there (which I guess is what you're so hung up on considering you moon reference.)

I'm referring specifically to the notion of an interplanetary vehicle (which would likely feature an advanced drive) would be an orbit-to-orbit vessel, not designed to function in a gravity well.

I know that's what you mean. But I don't see the craft being an orbit-to-orbit vessel and being built on the ground as mutually exclusive.

Constructing it in large part within one wouldn't be cost-effective either, since you have to haul the damn thing up.

This is all academic since we are talking about an hypothetical vessel, but I'll offer a counter argument:
Building it in orbit wouldn't be cost effective since you'll have to haul the machinery, facilities, work force (and its life support facilities) and raw materials to orbit. Which will probably cost much much more.

WHAT DO YOU THINK A SPACE STATION IS BUILT FOR?

Unless Armageddon was a documentary, research.

Well, one thing is that it is a way station for going other places. That is where you launch the interplanetary ship from, not down here.

Are there any plans for that, or are you speculating? Keep in mind that launching and building are two different things.

Get your head up out of this gravity well, or else you will be proving why these deft movie writers may be trying to inject too much SW into ST (because modern SF fans seem to have less acceptance of science and more acceptance of fantasy, probably because they were indoctrinated in LucasLand.)

Well.. the only interplanetary spacecrafts I saw being constructed in Star Wars were built in orbit (the death stars)

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Unless Armageddon was a documentary, research.

"The resulting beachhead station, as key to the future, would open the Universe to humans. This is because, as the Austrian space pioneer Baron Guido von Pirquet discovered already in 1928, it takes much less energy to fly on to the planets or to any place in the Solar System from there than it takes to get from the Earth to the station. Called the 'Cosmonautical Paradoxon', this principle says that manned planetary missions are feasible, in terms of energy, if they take off from orbit, but impractical if launched from the Earth. 'All it takes to realize space flight is to realize the space station' (G. v. Pirquet). The reason is, of course, that in Earth orbit, a spacecraft has already so much energy, is already going so fast that only a little energy more has to be added to go onto great distances beyond. On a space station, we have already climbed out of most of the gravity well of Earth. Thus without Freedom and its evolutionary infrastructure we would not have much of a future in space; it is the cornerstone, the keyhole through which mankind has to go eventually." - Human Challenges Tomorrow in Space Development by Jesco von Puttkamer (1992).

TGT

 

[EyalM]

^^ Excellent! Now we just need to find a way to make a spaceship magically appear in orbit, with a starting speed of 27,000 km per hour.

Also,

On a space station, we have already climbed out of most of the gravity well of Earth.

Huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, but gravity is still at about 90% of its sea level strength at the orbits the ISS and shuttles are in.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Excellent! Now we just need to find a way to make a spaceship magically appear in orbit, with a starting speed of 27,000 km per hour.

The actual interplanetary transfer vehicle would only need to be launched - in pieces, undoubtedly - from the Earth's surface once, but after achieving orbit it would be capable of undertaking multiple missions to and from the space station before requiring a refit or replacement. On the other hand, if one wishes to forgo a real space exploration and colonization program in favor of cheap, dead-end flags 'n' footprints jaunts to the inner planets (a la Apollo), then a space station would probably be a waste of money.

TGT

 

[EyalM]

Excellent! Now we just need to find a way to make a spaceship magically appear in orbit, with a starting speed of 27,000 km per hour.

The actual interplanetary transfer vehicle would only need to be launched - in pieces, undoubtedly - from the Earth's surface once, but after achieving orbit it would be capable of undertaking multiple missions to and from the space station before requiring a refit or replacement.
TGT

OK. That makes sense.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, but gravity is still at about 90% of its sea level strength at the orbits the ISS and shuttles are in.

Look at it this way: A flight from Earth to Mars along along a minimum-energy Hohmann trajectory would require a velocity change of 11.567 km/s. The ISS and our (theoretical) docked Mars spacecraft already have an orbital velocity of 7.7 km/s (at perigee), so the Mars vehicle would only require a velocity change of 3.867 km/s for departure. Do you see the huge difference in propulsion/fuel requirements between surface launches and those from the ISS?

TGT

 

[EyalM]

Huh? Correct me if I'm wrong, but gravity is still at about 90% of its sea level strength at the orbits the ISS and shuttles are in.

Look at it this way: A flight from Earth to Mars along along a minimum-energy Hohmann trajectory would require a velocity change of 11.567 km/s. The ISS and our (theoretical) docked Mars spacecraft already have an orbital velocity of 7.7 km/s (at perigee), so the Mars vehicle would only require a velocity change of 3.867 km/s for departure. Do you see the huge difference in propulsion/fuel requirements between surface launches and those from the ISS?

TGT

Yes, but you still spent energy to get the theoretical Mars spacecraft (or each of it's components) to said velocity. I do see how assembly of nearly finished parts in orbit would be much more logistically convenient then shooting the whole thing to orbit. Which is what I theorize the construction of the Enterprise "was" like.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Define "nearly finished." Most fans who are in the "built in space" camp take it to mean that, like the ISS and like what Mr. Sternbach said above (and what you "Built on Earthers" have studiously ignored) and like what TMoST said, that the pieces were built on earth and then assembled in space, since the entire structure--the design MJ arrived upon and GR approved--was expressly stated to be a ship that was never intended to enter a planet's atmosphere ("Tomorrow is Yesterday" was an accident, if you recall, and they had to climb back into orbit as fast as they could). So far as I can tell, no one* disputes that the pieces could be fabricated planetside, just that the final assembly that results in the configuration shown in the trailer would have been in an orbital drydock.

Again, the trailer is fine if we take it to be symbolic of the film's production. It's rather daft (and counter to everything Roddenberry and co. ever stated and implied regarding the E's construction) to take it literally and to come up with magitech(TM) explanations for why it makes more sense.

(Of course, as per Trevanian's Lucasland comment, maybe Starfleet builds its ships in the swamps of Dagobah and has the Starfleet Corps of Yodas lift them into orbit using the force--after replicating more midichlorians, of course. Think that sounds dumb? That is why you fail.)

*Correct me if I'm wrong, TGT and Trevanian.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

"Our vessel was constructed in space and has never felt the solidity of the surface of a planet." - Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek Writer & Director's Guide (Bible) dated April 17, 1967.

TGT

 

[ancient]

It was clearly a mistake for the U.S. Government to organize its successful Moon missions without consulting sf fans about the most reasonable approach. Just because NASA's way worked proves nothing.

Hey! We all know that GR was way, way more of an expert on space travel than those NASA losers.

I will e-mail NASA right away and tell them to stop violating Trek canon.

 

[trevanian]

It was clearly a mistake for the U.S. Government to organize its successful Moon missions without consulting sf fans about the most reasonable approach. Just because NASA's way worked proves nothing.

Hey! We all know that GR was way, way more of an expert on space travel than those NASA losers.

I will e-mail NASA right away and tell them to stop violating Trek canon.

If you could be troubled to read any accounts of the space program (or failing that, watch a dramatization of same), you might see that all of these various approaches were considered early on. The build a station first, then go to moon was seen as the reasonable approach, but it wasn't the FASTEST in terms of years to get there, and therefore it was politically expedient to go with the latter.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

...and if I may introduce into evidence one further example of "prior art" that very likely influenced Gene Roddenberry during the development of TOS, kindly consider these screencaps from the 1963 Czechoslovak sci-fi film, Ikarie XB 1 (a heavily butchered version of which was released in the United States in 1964 under the title, Voyage to the End of the Universe), which just so happened to feature the construction and launch of the titular starship from an orbital drydock:

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-757451.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-794634.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-758254.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-758349.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-758444.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-759091.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-760043.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c339/thegodthing/vlcsnap-760486.jpg

The conceptual similarities to the departure sequence from ST:TMP are nothing short of breathtaking, right down to a separate "space office complex" along with a gas giant flyby maneuver (presumably in order to pick up a few extra clicks on the way out of the Solar System).

TGT

 

[Brutal Strudel]

People like to forget that the moonshot was completely dictated by Cold War politics--as TGT alluded to above, it was imperative for morale that we finally beat the Russians in something vis-a-vis space travel; before we put our "flags and footprints" on the Moon, Russia had beaten us at every major turn. But then, once we got there, we just as quickly left (by the third mission, people had already lost interest) and haven't been back since.

So yeah, it worked, we got there and picked up a few rocks (eat your heart out, Astronaut Jones) but we never established a meaningful pressence, which could have happened had we gone at it more methodically.

(I'm a robot man, myself: send out a swarm of V'gers and Mariners and Sojourners and Galileos and Huygens and keep our watery monkey asses safe and sound on Earth. Manned spaceflight is still 90% publicuty stunt of the "Oh look! A teacher in space!" [] variety.)

I do love how the "built on Earth ('coz the Alias/Xena guys sez so)" crowd completely ignores TGT's copious citations from real experts (and the Trek Writers Guide) and ignores Rick Sternbach's own comments that the picture that started this thread should not be taken to indicate that Galaxy class ships are built planetside and then launched intact into space (hell, even the idea that the components as shown would be launched into space seems to disagree with him--note that his preferred expanation is that it is a testing facility, with the idea that they are shells of about 20% the finished mass of the ship coming in only as a secondary explanation).

But no, we don't build submarines in the water so I guess the case is closed.

 

[EyalM]

^^ Actually, the "Alias/Xena guys" said (in the same interview with the "balancing the warp nacelles in a gravity well" quote) that what we saw in the trailer could have been just the individual components being built, with final assembly happening in space (which would explain why the nacelles looked to be in an odd position to the saucer).

 

[trevanian]

^^ Actually, the "Alias/Xena guys" said (in the same interview with the "balancing the warp nacelles in a gravity well" quote) that what we saw in the trailer could have been just the individual components being built, with final assembly happening in space (which would explain why the nacelles looked to be in an odd position to the saucer).

Which doesn't explain why you'd want to have your shiny new engineering and primary hulls right next to something filled w/ antimatter that you're calibrating on the ground, in an environment that is probably less safe than vaccuum (shock waves don't propigate in vaccuum.)

 

[Rivas_Jakarta]

Letting NASA consult with us geeks might seem like a good idea at first. But unless you're actually a qualified professional in the field, letting the rest of us dictate the terms of the space program is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum .

 

[trevanian]

Letting NASA consult with us geeks might seem like a good idea at first. But unless you're actually a qualified professional in the field, letting the rest of us dictate the terms of the space program is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum .

I believe the poster TGT in this thread has been involved in aerospace for much of his career (which may explain his deft and lucid explanations.)

 

[EyalM]

^^ Actually, the "Alias/Xena guys" said (in the same interview with the "balancing the warp nacelles in a gravity well" quote) that what we saw in the trailer could have been just the individual components being built, with final assembly happening in space (which would explain why the nacelles looked to be in an odd position to the saucer).

Which doesn't explain why you'd want to have your shiny new engineering and primary hulls right next to something filled w/ antimatter that you're calibrating on the ground,

A. wouldn't the antimatter be in the shiny new engineering hull?
B. why would they fill the ship with antimatter before they finish construction?

in an environment that is probably less safe than vaccuum (shock waves don't propigate in vaccuum.)

a hundred tons of flaming tritenium (or whatever the hell the hull is made of) can propagate very well in vacuum...

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Letting NASA consult with us geeks might seem like a good idea at first. But unless you're actually a qualified professional in the field, letting the rest of us dictate the terms of the space program is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum .

I believe the poster TGT in this thread has been involved in aerospace for much of his career (which may explain his deft and lucid explanations.)

Shush, you! Jennifer Morrisons's down to the second veil!

What's that? Ms.s Ryder and Saldana want to dance, too? Well, in that case, the E could have been built at the bottom of the Marianas Trench for all I care!

 

[Captain X]

It's made pretty clear in the trailer that at the very least, the secondary and primary hulls are already joined to each other by the interconnecting hull (the "neck"), and that the engineering hull has the pylons already joined to them. That kind of eliminates the idea that we were just seeing the components being constructed before they were launched into orbit. Then again, if you're willing to believe that the ship underwent a massive TMP style refit between its initial construction to what we saw in TOS, and then the refit we did see in TMP, then I'm guessing you might not have a problem with the idea of them putting everything together on the ground, then taking it all apart to launch the components into orbit before reassembling them there.

Of course this is completely ignoring that we actually saw the Utopia Planitia fleet yards with an empty Galaxy class frame being skinned with hull: screencap.