I've been told that Starbase 001 was a totally unrealistic design. How so?
Starbase 001: Unrealistic?
- Thread starter CuttingEdge100
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I, for one, am totally unsure of what you're talking about. Earth's Spacedock from Star Trek III? Franz Joseph's Starfleet Headquarters space station? Something else? I'm not sure I've ever heard the designation "Starbase 001." I guess I'm just not sure where you're going with this...
I think the OP is referring to the mushroom shaped starbase from movies and TNG.
I for one don't find it unrealistic.
It actually proves just how advanced Fed technology is and make sense from a certain perspective if you want to extend your foothold and create a base of operations in specific sectors that has an ability to house PLENTY of personnel, has star-ship construction ability and powerful offensive/defensive/scanning abilities.
You get multiple things in one large package that likely has a very long lifespan among other things.
I for one don't find it unrealistic.
It actually proves just how advanced Fed technology is and make sense from a certain perspective if you want to extend your foothold and create a base of operations in specific sectors that has an ability to house PLENTY of personnel, has star-ship construction ability and powerful offensive/defensive/scanning abilities.
You get multiple things in one large package that likely has a very long lifespan among other things.
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I've never heard the term "Starbase 001" either.
I don't quite understand why they need such a big space station, either. There is probably room for a million people. It's not to say I can't make up reasons pretty easily, but the show didn't give us too many, and they'd need to be pretty good reasons when one considers how many starships and other useful things one could create with that commitment of resources. All I can say is I can't imagine the stations have much, if any, ability to defend themselves against warp-speed attacks, so I don't figure defense is one of their most important duties.
I don't quite understand why they need such a big space station, either. There is probably room for a million people. It's not to say I can't make up reasons pretty easily, but the show didn't give us too many, and they'd need to be pretty good reasons when one considers how many starships and other useful things one could create with that commitment of resources. All I can say is I can't imagine the stations have much, if any, ability to defend themselves against warp-speed attacks, so I don't figure defense is one of their most important duties.
And instead of starships, imagine how many PADDs they could build if they committed their resources to producing them.
The way resources are distributed doesn't parallel the most "efficient" way they could be distributed. Suppose a certain amount of raw materials is sufficient for 100 ships or 1 starbase. If you already have 100 ships, maybe building a starbase next is more valuable than building another 100 ships. If a starbase can do something no number of starships can do, there must become a point when a starbase is desirable no matter what it's cost.
Clearly a starbase has a different function from a starship. I have no trouble in accepting that the Federation may expend significant time and resources on building one. Or two. Or more.
I disagree.
Hypothetically speaking, SF would be idiotic not to install defensive systems on-board one of their largest designs which were designated as star-bases as well (TNG did among other things refer to them in such a capacity).
Warp-speed attacks would be relatively doable to deflect given the fact weapons that SF uses are apparently warp capable (at least the torpedoes are), and these large star-bases are huge ... making their defensive shields that much more powerful and not really easy to break through.
If you recall, DS9's defenses were only penetrated (after a time) when a fleet of 50 ships confronted the station.
Since DS9 is smaller than a mushroom type star-base, it would make sense it would be less powerful in comparison.
There are good reasons for building large habitats in space that can hold tens of millions of people or more. Read The High Frontier by Gerard O'Neill for the seminal discussion on the subject. Really, there should be a lot more space habitats in ST than there are.
Not that I know of. I think the OP is conflating the "Starbase 1" designation that sometimes been used for it with "Sector 001" referring to Earth's sector of the UFP.
To address the original question: the claims of its lack of realism are that an open structure like the TMP drydock makes more sense, or that there's no need to enclose a space that isn't going to be pressurized, something like that. However, I've heard arguments that it makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of debris in space, micrometeors and such, as well as intense radiation. It makes sense to enclose ships and the engineers/techs working on them within protective walls. Also, a ship orbiting in an open spacedock would go in and out of the sunlight as it orbited, periodically warming and cooling, expanding and contracting, and that would put stress on its structure. In an enclosed spacedock, its temperature could be kept more steady.
I think the biggest problem with Spacedock is tactical. In case of an attack, it is a bottleneck waiting to happen. If not heavily armored, it would be an orbiting Pearl Harbor, with battleships/starships getting hit in the channel/doorway.
Clearly a starbase has a different function from a starship. I have no trouble in accepting that the Federation may expend significant time and resources on building one. Or two. Or more.
Clearly it does, yes; my comment was that I don't know quite what that function is or why it requires such a large station. I don't feel the show has really told us. Starbase 375 was acting as a base for fleets of ships, seemingly none of which could fit into its internal bay; what are the really big stations doing that it can't? As for the awkward analogy of PADDs, there is a clear need for more starships, and 700 plus starbases is kind of a lot, so I think it's a fair question to ask.
I don't suggest they wouldn't install defensive systems, but I don't believe this can be a primary purpose of the stations; if near a planet, they can't stop anyone from landing on it very easily (if that's the point), and I don't think they have much chance against warp-driven attackers.
Even in the impulse flight regime, I can imagine that would be a risk that one small segment of the shields could be focused upon and compromised when the weapons covering that arc are out of action. They might be a lot of trouble to capture or destroy, but could easily be isolated and ignored.
I believe the attacks on DS9 were for the purposes of capturing it, not destroying it, and I don't see how it could have survived multiple attack runs by warp-guided ships with warp-speed weapons. The torpedoes won't accelerate to warp if launched at impulse, as per DS9 Technical Manual. I don't know if other facilities have some sort of warp accelerator tube to launch them, but that would sure help; K'ehleyr's probe was going at warp, so it's possible. The manual made no mention of this possibility, though, and I'm not sure why DS9 would not have been so equipped.
I'm very familiar with space habitats, but don't necessarily accept the quick assertion that Starfleet starbase=space habitat per se. I also don't accept that those "good reasons" for doing this in the first place apply as easily in Trek, with its terraforming and near-unlimited resources and everyone fighting over planets anyway (???);I'd also have to silently accept the idea that the starbases are actually large-scale civilian habitats for Federation citizens and not pure Starfleet facilities, though off the top of my head I cannot think of any references that support this and it seems absurd for the ones that are along contested borders with hostiles and so forth.
Building something that can hold a million people in orbit of some planet we hear of once and never again makes me curious, sure. If it's all Starfleet people in there doing their thing, what are they doing that requires such a big station? Do research labs, phaser training ranges, ship engineering facilities and whatnot require such a scale? Maybe! It's just hard to imagine. This board has already seen more than one debate about the point of the giant empty mushroom head and just how exactly it is used.
I thought maybe the stations overall were so big because that's where they generate and process the bulk of the antimatter, which I would figure is among the most dangerous and valuable commodities in the Federation. I can well imagine this would require dozens of fusion reactors and huge charge-reversal devices and what have you. I don't know that I'd want to live on top of all that, but let's hope the Starfleet safety record on that stuff is good.
True, the door is a problem. There should be more and bigger doors.
Were we talking about starbases in general? Haven't most of those been portrayed as somewhat smaller? I thought we were talking specifically about the structure known as Spacedock from The Search for Spock.
As for why Earth's primary spacedock facility would be so large, why do cities grow up around ports? Sure, with transporters you could argue that people no longer need to live anywhere close to where they work. But the level of transporter activity from a busy spacedock to various Earthbound facilities supporting it would be huge. It would take up immense amounts of power and subspace bandwidth (if we treat transporter beams like radio signals). So it seems more efficient if there are residential facilities for visiting crew and permanent spacedock personnel on site, and in that case they'd need infrastructure to provide their food and resources and entertainment and so forth, and the people who provided those things would need places to live and infrastructure to support them, and so forth.
Even aside from that, what if there's a quarantine situation? What if Earth needs to be cut off from space? Then the spacedock would have to be able to function independently from ground facilities for an extended period of time.
So to me, it makes plenty of sense for Earth's main port of call to be a self-sustaining city in space.
Why go to all that trouble? Build some vast solar-collector stations at Mercury's L4 and L5 points, and in similar proximity to other stars. Why waste effort building your own puny fusion reactors when the universe provides us with billions of huge natural fusion reactors just pouring out vast quantities of free energy?
If I had been charged with the task of making that model more sensible, I would have broken out the razor saw and done this:
http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n167/aridas_sofia/trek/SpacedockRev.jpg
Maybe it wouldn't have had the drama of an opening hatch, but I'm sure creative camera angles could have made up for any problems.
Well, SD1 (which I thought was used in TUC, but I can't be sure now) has a few 'realism issues', but it's important to keep in mind that it's not a tactical or strategic structure, but an administrative one. It seemed to me, really, that it was a huge complex for Star Fleet Operations, more than anything, and only maintained a handful of ships (for whatever reason) within the massive dome.
It seemed to be a place for refit - in the naval sense - and resupply, but NOT someplace you go for major repairs and upratings. That's what the open drydocks were for. Keep in mind, we don't see the Enterprise being repaired in the dome, or any ships being constructed there. They are, however, being supplied and maintained.
So, it would decidedly not be the type of base you would see in more strategically sensitive areas. That's what the smaller bases, open docks, and so-forth, are for.
It seemed to be a place for refit - in the naval sense - and resupply, but NOT someplace you go for major repairs and upratings. That's what the open drydocks were for. Keep in mind, we don't see the Enterprise being repaired in the dome, or any ships being constructed there. They are, however, being supplied and maintained.
So, it would decidedly not be the type of base you would see in more strategically sensitive areas. That's what the smaller bases, open docks, and so-forth, are for.
I don't understand. What is that image supposed to be showing me? Is that dark band supposed to be some translucent wraparound window? Or a forcefield? If the latter, that seems like a very illogical idea. Why waste energy on a forcefield when you can just build a nice functional wall? And with all that transparency, you severely impair your thermal regulation ability.
Actually, I would think that SD1 would be the first place that anyone would look, and with all the people and ships around, you could easily be anon as you snoop. Hell, TFSF was basically "Welcome to Spacedock One, the top-secret Transwarp project is to your right, we'll be discussing Project Genesis openly in front of crewman at boarding hatch six..."
It's a somewhat difficult concept to explain. It's called "a bigger door".
So you can push a button and the wall goes away and your ships can get out quickly so they won't get stuck in the big orbiting Pearl Harbor.
I must admit that I was not aware that the temperature coefficients for force fields in a vacuum had been calculated.
I would think the opposite. Spacedock is where you put your shiny new Excelsior poised to take over as the frontline workhorse of Starfleet. Or where you dock your battered, held together with duct-tape Enterprise so when you scrap it people will remember that even though it's (arguably) the most famous ship in the fleet, it was in really bad shape.
Secret stuff would be in its own private dock away from heavy traffic and prying eyes. That's where Excelsior would have been built. Later, when finished she was moved to Spacedock for a "look what we've got" period while her supplies and crew were brought onboard.
