Scrapping starships?

[Lyon_Wonder]

In the first Trek XI movie trailer we’ve seen the new Enterprise constructed on the surface with welders. And their are those Galaxy Class ship hulls on Mars seen in TNG “Parallels”. Would scrapping a starship be easy in a zero-G vacuum. Or would it be better to land or tractor-beam a starship to the surface of a planet and employ an army of torch cutters after the hull has been stripped of it's warp core and other components? I image this was how the saucer of the E-D was scrapped on Veridian III. Tractor-beaming the saucer off the planet and towing it in one piece was probably pointless considering how much damage it took.
After being stored in ship yards for awhile, starfleet might decide to scrap ships and recycle trititanium and other materials of vessels who weren't lucky enough to end up in a Starflleet museum. Of course, by looking at DS9's Dominion war battle scenes, Starflleet likely kept older combat-capable ships such as Mirandas in reserve in case of a full-scale war.

 

[Timo]

In the first Trek XI movie trailer we’ve seen the new Enterprise constructed on the surface with welders.

..Which raises the question "Are trailers canon?". I'd argue that for example opening and end credits aren't part of the Star Trek "reality", because they'd have us believe that Kirk is but an impostor, his real identity being some bloke named Shatner, or Pine, or even some broad named Smith.

And their are those Galaxy Class ship hulls on Mars seen in TNG “Parallels”.

Well, one hull, at any rate. Or a mockup of a hull, perhaps?

Would scrapping a starship be easy in a zero-G vacuum. Or would be better to land or tractor-beam a starship to the surface of a planet and employ a army of torch cutters after the hull has been stripped of it's warp core and other components?

One would think that the important and expensive part of such construction or destruction would be the delivery of the materials to those in need. Today, it's hellishly expensive to haul things to orbit, and there are few users in orbit, so stuff is built and dismantled on the surface. But if Trek construction mostly happens in space (as we often see), then the transportation issue probably has been solved; and OTOH if it also happens on the surface (as we sometimes see), there are no other major limiting factors there, either.

So perhaps it really is up to the whims of the parties involved? Starships have demonstrated the ability to land and take off with ease, and no doubt even destroyed starships could be made to move up and down with a little help from intact sisters. So dismantling would probably happen where it is of the least inconvenience to the surroundings, after which the resulting scrap would be delivered to end users.

No doubt there are places analogous to the Alang beach where cheap labor is used planetside for dismantling work (no need for spacesuits, no need for equipment that captures lost items or pieces of scrap) - but the UFP might consider the expenses trivial, and would see no benefit in going cheap.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cwl]

I still think the Ent-D was salvageable

 

[Mr. B]

Even in the future it would have to be substantially easier to scrap a ship on the surface.

As for the ultimate fate of the Big D's saucer section, I can see it going either way. It would be quite a feat even in the Trek universe to get a massive, damaged, powerless ship into orbit. However, hat might be more appealing than a temporary operation on an uninhabited planet along with the necessary convoy of cargo ships.

Choosing between those options might depend on the methodology used to scrap ships. The process may resemble the manual labor and cutting torches we use today. I think it could also be accomplished with sophisticated sensors, a cargo transporter and some industrial replicators. You could have one or more people at a specially designed transporter console beaming parts off to recycle with a replicator, either added to the matter storage or reconverted to raw materials. Actually this process could probably be accomplished automatically with a computer.

 

[captcalhoun]

given the Qualor II depot in Unification, I'd actually guess that they more likely strip out the warp core, phasers, torpedoes and any classified kit and just dump it in orbit of some uninhabited world out of the way. Like the Boneyard in Texas...

 

[Cary L. Brown]

given the Qualor II depot in Unification, I'd actually guess that they more likely strip out the warp core, phasers, torpedoes and any classified kit and just dump it in orbit of some uninhabited world out of the way. Like the Boneyard in Texas...

In Texas? Unless there are two of them... I think you mean Arizona, don't you?

 

[captcalhoun]

whoops! yes, yes, i do...

 

[JNG]

As for the ultimate fate of the Big D's saucer section, I can see it going either way. It would be quite a feat even in the Trek universe to get a massive, damaged, powerless ship into orbit. However, hat might be more appealing than a temporary operation on an uninhabited planet along with the necessary convoy of cargo ships.

If I remember correctly, the TNG TM section that "inspired" () the writers to crash the saucer suggests that deep, irreparable structural damage would be likely to result.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the internal pressurized modules and installed pieces of equipment were salvageable.

 

[diankra]

So far as recovering the Enterprise-D saucer from Veridian 3 goes, I'd argue that it was probably done by transporter.
Not in one piece, obviously - I'd assume that something that size can't be beamed, either because the power required is excessive, or a pattern buffer that big won't work reliably. (If it could be done, think how it could be used in battle - one starship beams another across the battlefield!).
But if you don't want the saucer intact (let's assume that any salvagable records or systems have been removed, and all that's left is the raw materials), and just want to get it off the planet to avoid Prime Directive contamination, then beaming it up in chunks makes sense.
The transporter must have some kind of incredibly good fine-targeting programme (one that lets it identify and beam up the officer, their clothes and anything they're handling... while leaving the ground they're standing on behind). But it it's not unreasonable to assume that this function can be shut off, so the transporter just beams up a particular volume (I can think of one bit of onscreen evidence to support this: in The Voyage Home, Scotty transports the whales AND the water around them into the tanks in the Bird of Prey).
So you use the (cargo?) transporter in this way to beam the E-D saucer in bits into a very big freighter that carries it home for recycling.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

One would think that the important and expensive part of such construction or destruction would be the delivery of the materials to those in need. Today, it's hellishly expensive to haul things to orbit, and there are few users in orbit, so stuff is built and dismantled on the surface. But if Trek construction mostly happens in space (as we often see), then the transportation issue probably has been solved; and OTOH if it also happens on the surface (as we sometimes see), there are no other major limiting factors there, either.

Think for a minute that the TMP Enterprise was in a "dry dock" when Kirk boarded it for the first time in two years. The implication of something being a "Dry dock," indeed the very PURPOSE of such a structure, is to remove a ship from its environment so you can work on it easily. In a naval dry dock--especially in the case of submarines--the dry dock is a floating structure that can literally haul the ship out of the water so workers can get access to the hull. With 23rd century technology I would imagine these "Dry docks" have the capacity to move easily into and out of Earth's atmosphere, hauling the entire ship in a tractor field and using antigravs and thrusters to change altitude. If we assume the under-construction Enterprise is mostly suspended by a network of mooring beams and antigravs at load bearing points, then the moment the ship is ready to be hauled up to space dock for shakedown and trials, someone in Riverside Iowa looks up and sees a dry dock slowly descending from the heavens like a giant crane, engulfs the ship, wraps it up in a cage of tractor beams and then slowly ascends all the way up to orbit altitude where the ship either powers up itself or finishes its final outfitting.

Depending on what it takes to scrap one of these ships (and how Starfleet wants to do it) you could either hack it to pieces and leave them in orbit, or you could lower the ship back to the ground in a dry dock and then slice it up on the ground.

But then... why would anyone want to scrap a space ship? It's not like the hulls rust or something. If one gets too old that you can't upgrade it anymore, it's still a perfectly good spaceframe, it would probably be cheaper to scrape the weapons out of it and sell it to the Packleds. So I think the Qualor-II example is the best precedent here: Starfleet doesn't bother scrapping starships, they sell them to junkers and build new ones. Sometimes, Starfleet probably buys old ones back when they really need one, considering how easy it seems to be to reactivate old ships sitting in space for eighty years (Hathaway and Stargazer, both repaired in-field into something that vaguely resembled working order).

 

[sojourner]

But then... why would anyone want to scrap a space ship? It's not like the hulls rust or something. If one gets too old that you can't upgrade it anymore, it's still a perfectly good spaceframe, it would probably be cheaper to scrape the weapons out of it and sell it to the Packleds. So I think the Qualor-II example is the best precedent here: Starfleet doesn't bother scrapping starships, they sell them to junkers and build new ones. Sometimes, Starfleet probably buys old ones back when they really need one, considering how easy it seems to be to reactivate old ships sitting in space for eighty years (Hathaway and Stargazer, both repaired in-field into something that vaguely resembled working order).

Rust? maybe not. Over the lifetime of the ship though I would hazard that a lot of stress is put on the frame. At some point that stress eventually compromises the structure to the point where it is unsafe to use. Depending on the design and planned life cycle of the ship, the space frame may still be safe to use after it is "retired" from active service and would result in the ship being sold, put in storage, or some other use. I would guess a good percentage of the ships at retirement age would fail safety inspection and become "uncertified". This would prompt StarFleet, being the conscientious organization it is, to scrap the ship to prevent others from attempting to make use of it.

 

[JNG]

^

That seems reasonable. Some ship designs must have proven very successful in terms of their ability to withstand the stresses put on their structure. (It seems that Voyager was able to hold together in situations probably beyond the wildest dreams of her designers, and hey, the TOS Enterprise was never meant to go warp 14.1, but she didn't fall apart right away!) Perhaps this explains why it was deemed economic to keep certain types of ship in service for a very long time, such as the Miranda and Excelsior classes: they were more resistant to fatigue than had been expected, and so it became worthwhile to uprate the warp drive and other equipment and preserve the viable spaceframe.

I guess ships that come in on the borderline are the ones that are placed in places like the Qualor II depot: not certified for demanding frontline service any more, but left in a sort of mothballed state should they be needed again. Maybe in the Dominion War, they reactivated some flyable old ships to fill gaps.

This might also be what is going on with ships like the transport Lantree, which seems to be a Miranda-class ship that has had her weapons removed and has a smaller crew (only 26) as a result of less demanding duties, and possibly increased automation and decreased space for crew accommodation. Maybe she was showing some wear and tear and couldn't be a frontline cruiser any more, but was still fit for regular transport flights, perhaps at a warp factor or two lower than used to be typical for her.

In Mr. Sternbach's article on the Constellation class, he has two representatives of the class placed into a museum after long service, but they are actually on standby and ready to go back into service after fueling and new software installation should they be needed. The article suggests they will remain viable for this status for decades to come, even though they are already nearly 100 years old. Even Stargazer qualified for this after the beating she took at Maxia Zeta.

 

[sojourner]

Yea, I would go so far as a rating system. older ships might be down rated from say class A condition to class B (to class C, D, E, and finally F. hehe) and thus by regulation would be re-assigned to less stressful uses. Things like limiters on the warpdrive could be installed and such. I believe the FAA has a system like this in place. Any licensed pilots around that can verify?

 

[Lyon_Wonder]

^

That seems reasonable. Some ship designs must have proven very successful in terms of their ability to withstand the stresses put on their structure. (It seems that Voyager was able to hold together in situations probably beyond the wildest dreams of her designers, and hey, the TOS Enterprise was never meant to go warp 14.1, but she didn't fall apart right away!) Perhaps this explains why it was deemed economic to keep certain types of ship in service for a very long time, such as the Miranda and Excelsior classes: they were more resistant to fatigue than had been expected, and so it became worthwhile to uprate the warp drive and other equipment and preserve the viable spaceframe.

I guess ships that come in on the borderline are the ones that are placed in places like the Qualor II depot: not certified for demanding frontline service any more, but left in a sort of mothballed state should they be needed again. Maybe in the Dominion War, they reactivated some flyable old ships to fill gaps.

This might also be what is going on with ships like the transport Lantree, which seems to be a Miranda-class ship that has had her weapons removed and has a smaller crew (only 26) as a result of less demanding duties, and possibly increased automation and decreased space for crew accommodation. Maybe she was showing some wear and tear and couldn't be a frontline cruiser any more, but was still fit for regular transport flights, perhaps at a warp factor or two lower than used to be typical for her.

In Mr. Sternbach's article on the Constellation class, he has two representatives of the class placed into a museum after long service, but they are actually on standby and ready to go back into service after fueling and new software installation should they be needed. The article suggests they will remain viable for this status for decades to come, even though they are already nearly 100 years old. Even Stargazer qualified for this after the beating she took at Maxia Zeta.

That’s a far cry from today’s museum warships. When the Essex class aircraft carrier USS Intrepid was moved from it’s dock in New York for restoration a year or so ago, it was towed because getting it’s boilers back online after 25-30 years was more complicated than it was worth.

 

[Santaman]

I don't think that fatigue issues exist at all, even in the 23th century they have such a fine control of molecules and the like that a checkup in drydock will detect the slightest weak spot which will be fixed by arranging the molecules of the material back to the what it was like the day the ship was sent on its shakedown cruise.

 

[JNG]

That’s a far cry from today’s museum warships. When the Essex class aircraft carrier USS Intrepid was moved from it’s dock in New York for restoration a year or so ago, it was towed because getting it’s boilers back online after 25-30 years was more complicated than it was worth.

It is, but is also seems a pretty consistent implication within Trek; the work done on Hathaway was interesting to watch in this regard.

I guess with replicators, modular parts (heck, on Voyager, the whole warp core assembly can be swapped out pretty readily), the rooms being internal pressurized modules that can supposedly be swapped out without too much trouble, and really advanced technology for scanning for faults and the like, it begins to seem more plausible. I can imagine that when the deep skeletal structure of the ship begins to exhibit weaknesses and deformations and so forth, it is usually not economic to fix that rather than to begin recycling the materials into a ship of a newer design. But even in such an instance, many of the ship designs share large-scale elements, so I can imagine they can sometimes cherry-pick a saucer segment here, a nacelle there, a rollbar there from ships that otherwise are headed out of service and use them to get another one up to spec again.

IIRC, the TNG Tech Manual suggests that the ships are typically in for minor refurbishment every year or so, more major overhauls every five years, and big-time upgrades and whatnot maybe every twenty years. Something like that. I guess they have a pretty good picture of how a ship is progressing through its intended lifespan. Of course, the ships that get sent out on the long-range missions of exploration and are away from the Federation for years at a time have got it rough, and probably don't last as long.

 

[CTM]

That’s a far cry from today’s museum warships. When the Essex class aircraft carrier USS Intrepid was moved from it’s dock in New York for restoration a year or so ago, it was towed because getting it’s boilers back online after 25-30 years was more complicated than it was worth.

Yes, but that is still dealing with Steel and Water - which is going to lead to rust no matter what. Mothballing ships in the 20th Century involved pumping void spaces full of inert gasses (e.g. other than Oxygen to prevent rust and other corrosion - I don't recall exactly what chemicals were used). That's void-spaces (fuel tanks, and the voids between the outer and inner hulls). The remainder of the ship (personnel spaces etc.) might still be vented to the atmosphere - at worst, or simply sealed up with some chemicals etc. A visit to the USS Texas or the USS North Carolina will show that the engineering spaces were NOT environmentally controlled, and in the case of Texas has rendered it wholly unsafe to enter. That is entirely attributable to the presence of Oxygen, Iron (steel), and Water. The rust is extensive and inevitable.

To mothball a Starship, it can simply be vented to vacuum - which will halt all but radiation-induced corrosion (the out gassing or sublimation of semi-volatile compounds such as plastic etc. on the inside will not affect the structure. Radiation from the system primary may be a concern, as would micrometeorites, but a depot could easily be placed at a good distance from the primary (say Jupiter for distance), and use either natural EM shielding (as in a Jovian system) or the depot itself could provide a minimal shielding for the boneyard.

So, now you have a depot or series of depots with ships dating back several technological generations. Can the USS Constitution (the real one in Boston) be made capable of sailing the high seas? Yes. Is there any point in doing so? For ceremonial purposes yes. Is there any point in staffing and sending out to sea several hundred ships of similar or older vintages - to combat zones, or to patrol say the Somali Coast (anti-piracy patrols)? It would be a waste of effort to man the ships, provision them, and then sail them halfway around the world - when there are far more modern and capable ships that can do a much better job for a fraction of the cost EVEN IF the sailing ships were in pristine condition and ready to sail at a moment's notice. How about World War II vintage ships? It's a better deal than the sailing ships, but the technology used while similar in principle to modern ships, is still quite outmoded and outdated. Even if in perfect condition, they would be labor intensive to operate, and would be easily outperfomed by anything remotely modern. They could be modernized to an extent, and might make good sentry/picket/recon ships, but would largely be cannonfodder (A good example of how the Mirandas appear to have been used in the Dominion War). The advancement of technology would have a far greater impact on the "deterioration" of a starship in mothballs than anything physical. An outmoded design is an outmoded design, and only so much can be done to make it useful in a modern setting.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But then... why would anyone want to scrap a space ship? It's not like the hulls rust or something. If one gets too old that you can't upgrade it anymore, it's still a perfectly good spaceframe, it would probably be cheaper to scrape the weapons out of it and sell it to the Packleds. So I think the Qualor-II example is the best precedent here: Starfleet doesn't bother scrapping starships, they sell them to junkers and build new ones. Sometimes, Starfleet probably buys old ones back when they really need one, considering how easy it seems to be to reactivate old ships sitting in space for eighty years (Hathaway and Stargazer, both repaired in-field into something that vaguely resembled working order).

Rust? maybe not. Over the lifetime of the ship though I would hazard that a lot of stress is put on the frame. At some point that stress eventually compromises the structure to the point where it is unsafe to use. Depending on the design and planned life cycle of the ship, the space frame may still be safe to use after it is "retired" from active service and would result in the ship being sold, put in storage, or some other use. I would guess a good percentage of the ships at retirement age would fail safety inspection and become "uncertified". This would prompt StarFleet, being the conscientious organization it is, to scrap the ship to prevent others from attempting to make use of it.

Metal fatigue and similar problems plague conventional engineers only because of the complications involved in replacing them. On the other hand, we've seen Starfleet dismantle and rebuild entire ships into new configurations, and it stands to reason they have the technology to beam over-stressed parts out of the spaceframe and supply a replacement with relative ease.

 

[Unicron]

But then... why would anyone want to scrap a space ship? It's not like the hulls rust or something. If one gets too old that you can't upgrade it anymore, it's still a perfectly good spaceframe, it would probably be cheaper to scrape the weapons out of it and sell it to the Packleds. So I think the Qualor-II example is the best precedent here: Starfleet doesn't bother scrapping starships, they sell them to junkers and build new ones. Sometimes, Starfleet probably buys old ones back when they really need one, considering how easy it seems to be to reactivate old ships sitting in space for eighty years (Hathaway and Stargazer, both repaired in-field into something that vaguely resembled working order).

Perhaps if a ship took severe damage, as might have been the case during the Dominion War, it might be easier to scrap it than fix it. Particularly if it's a spaceframe several decades old. Pull out whatever's still good and get rid of the rest.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

How about World War II vintage ships? It's a better deal than the sailing ships, but the technology used while similar in principle to modern ships, is still quite outmoded and outdated. Even if in perfect condition, they would be labor intensive to operate, and would be easily outperfomed by anything remotely modern. They could be modernized to an extent, and might make good sentry/picket/recon ships, but would largely be cannonfodder (A good example of how the Mirandas appear to have been used in the Dominion War). The advancement of technology would have a far greater impact on the "deterioration" of a starship in mothballs than anything physical. An outmoded design is an outmoded design, and only so much can be done to make it useful in a modern setting.

Well, it also has to be said that quite a few Mirandas appear to have been modernized in exactly the way you describe, and some--like the Brattain--are operated with a skeleton crew and probably mostly controlled by computer. As we saw in TOS, a sufficiently intelligent computer would be more than up to that task, so the Mirandas in the Dominion War may well have gone into battle with crews of twenty to fifty on board. Hell, even Sisko's Saratoga might have had a crew of a few dozen officers and their families.

It's also worth noting that a few of those vintage WW-II ships did remain in service for twenty to thirty years after the fact and quite a few of them were sold off to third world countries with their outmoted weapon systems. Likewise, the old Iowa class battleships were brought to something like a modern combat condition without much difficulty, replacing old weapon systems with more modern versions and adding a few new ones in armored launchers. While true these ships were labor intensive to operate, they were much less so in their modern configuration than they were in their heyday, and that's just with 1980s automation technology.