The Narada

[JarodRussell]

And that would make sense because.......the ship is in space.....

You mean it wouldn't make sense.

Ballast in a sailing ship serves two purposes:

1) It creates a low center of gravity, keeping the ship upright in the water and making it more resistant to rollover.

2) It causes a ship sailing empty (without cargo) to ride low enough in the water that it can be steered effectively.

Take the water (and thus an orientation dictated by gravity) away and the need for ballast goes away, as well.

And his comment would make sense...because it was sarcasm.

M'Sharak definately has a problem with sarcasm.

As far as the pools of water, you might be onto something. The Narada presumably sat around for 25 years, with the Klingons for some reason unable to strip it down and learn its secrets. I imagine it might've gotten very cold in there, and all that water might simply be condensation.

Problem is that water doesn't just suddenly appear because it's cold for a long time and then getting warm. It's the moisture in people's breath that condensates. I don't think you can create a whole pool of water with just that. And since the Narada was probably in space, no humidity coming from there either.


Maybe the Narada beamed them aboard altogether with a few ice chunks from Rura Penthe.


Or the slugs are swimming in there, and they simply beamed an entire pool filled with those slugs aboard.

 

[JuanBolio]

Problem is that water doesn't just suddenly appear because it's cold for a long time and then getting warm. It's the moisture in people's breath that condensates. I don't think you can create a whole pool of water with just that. And since the Narada was probably in space, no humidity coming from there either.

The atmosphere alone would be bound to have a certain amount of humidity in it. Breathing air with zero humidity can be pretty bad for your lungs. Also its quite possible that there are steam vents somewhere on the ship.

 

[JarodRussell]

The atmosphere alone would be bound to have a certain amount of humidity in it. Breathing air with zero humidity can be pretty bad for your lungs. Also its quite possible that there are steam vents somewhere on the ship.

Okay, when you assume that the life support has been running for 25 years, then it might work.

 

[Nerys Myk]

They shouldn't have left the AC on.

 

[EnsignRicky]

In Alien, Ridley Scott did something similar with condensation to give the impression that it was raining inside the ship. It was a great idea that really added a moody atmosphere and sold just how big and foreboding a mining related vessel the Nostromo really was.

These hacks must have read that somewhere too.

 

[Search4]

Being BIG, the rig would also probably have vast interior spaces, most of which would have no role to play when the rig isn't mining anything. A torture chamber, two different kinds of roller coaster, and a sauna compartment with mood-enhancing firefalls wouldn't surprise me a bit, and might indeed be considered essential gear for a Romulan mining rig on a long duration mission.

First, thank you for the laugh.

What's really not clear to me is how the Narada could take out 47 well armed Klingon cruisers with the weapons we saw. Maybe an infinite number of the weapons we saw... fine... i'm sure they have plenty of reason to "mine" with cluster bombs. BUT why would the Narada have anything other than minimal shields? And yes, any one Klingon ship might be 150 years out of date, but 47 all firing away?

Our heroes could beam in from across the solar system. The proverbial question remains how about beaming in a torpedo? How about beaming in a torpedo NEXT TO THE DRILL? How about, oh i don't know, beaming OUT the red matter container?

Well, i guess the Romulan design criteria was that the Narada look menacing and look great going through a black hole.

 

[bullethead]

Our heroes could beam in from across the solar system. The proverbial question remains how about beaming in a torpedo? How about beaming in a torpedo NEXT TO THE DRILL? How about, oh i don't know, beaming OUT the red matter container?

They can't do any of those things because they have no idea where anything is on the Narada. Scotty says he's gonna beam them into a cargo bay and they end up in a firefight with Romulans, so obviously their sensors suck at distinguishing stuff inside the Narada. Besides, beaming torpedoes into ship that's carrying a substance that can create black holes isn't a good idea, especially when it's orbiting your home planet.

 

[Timo]

That is not true. An oil rig vs. a destroyer? A super tanker vs. an aircraft carrier?

Just for fun, I'm pretty confident I could easily sink an aircraft carrier if given command of a medium-sized oil tanker. The tanker would probably be roughly as fast as the carrier, would be virtually unsinkable (antiship missiles would only create teeny weeny holes above the waterline in the double hull, and modern warships just don't carry torps big enough to sink anything but already-sunken submarines), and would tear the carrier in two if properly steered.

Now, give me a container ship... That's way faster than large warships, way stronger, and can carry a much greater (containerized) warload if needed. With a few days of equipping her with off-the-shelf items in my secret volcano island base / Somali harbor, I could probably sink a significant portion of the 6th Fleet before somebody managed to get a clearance for deploying truly effective ordnance against me.

Of course, that would call for the element of surprise inherent in using a civilian ship against military targets. But the Klingons probably didn't realize that they were up against a serious combatant, either...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Search4]

Our heroes could beam in from across the solar system. The proverbial question remains how about beaming in a torpedo? How about beaming in a torpedo NEXT TO THE DRILL? How about, oh i don't know, beaming OUT the red matter container?

They can't do any of those things because they have no idea where anything is on the Narada. Scotty says he's gonna beam them into a cargo bay and they end up in a firefight with Romulans, so obviously their sensors suck at distinguishing stuff inside the Narada. Besides, beaming torpedoes into ship that's carrying a substance that can create black holes isn't a good idea, especially when it's orbiting your home planet.

Oh, i know, you have to be careful with the red matter...
so just flash in at warp and destroy the drill. Or beam in the torpedo to be adjacent to the drill, that should have been a lot easier than the 'cargo hold'.

Phasers seemed to work just fine and in fact, that's what did destroy the drill to begin with.

 

[JuanBolio]

We've never seen a torpedo beamed. I would imagine that de-materializing it would have an adverse affect on the containment fields holding the antimatter in place, resulting in catastrophic detonation.

 

[bullethead]

We've never seen a torpedo beamed. I would imagine that de-materializing it would have an adverse affect on the containment fields holding the antimatter in place, resulting in catastrophic detonation.

They did it once in VOY, but I don't know the episode title.

 

[Jerikka Dawn]

We've never seen a torpedo beamed. I would imagine that de-materializing it would have an adverse affect on the containment fields holding the antimatter in place, resulting in catastrophic detonation.

According to TOS "Obsession" .. an antimatter container, which contains antimatter, can be transported just fine.

 

[nx1701g]

What's really not clear to me is how the Narada could take out 47 well armed Klingon cruisers with the weapons we saw. Maybe an infinite number of the weapons we saw... fine... i'm sure they have plenty of reason to "mine" with cluster bombs. BUT why would the Narada have anything other than minimal shields? And yes, any one Klingon ship might be 150 years out of date, but 47 all firing away?

We learned in TNG's second season (the Outrageous Okona) that the shields of Starships could absorb certain types of weapons fire. In the episode I mentioned the Enterprise-D encounters ships that are roughly 100 years behind the Enterprise technologically and Picard says that their phasers wouldn't even be able to penetrate the navigatonal deflectors let alone the full deflector shields of the Enterprise. The Narada, most likely, benefits from similar advancements due to the age of the Federation's weapons when compared to the Narada's technology being from the late 24th Century.

We've never seen a torpedo beamed. I would imagine that de-materializing it would have an adverse affect on the containment fields holding the antimatter in place, resulting in catastrophic detonation.

They did it once in VOY, but I don't know the episode title.

Dark Frontier. They transport a photon torpedo aboard a Borg Probe (a rectangular scout ship) that detonates next to a plasma conduit and destroys the ship.

 

[JuanBolio]

We've never seen a torpedo beamed. I would imagine that de-materializing it would have an adverse affect on the containment fields holding the antimatter in place, resulting in catastrophic detonation.

According to TOS "Obsession" .. an antimatter container, which contains antimatter, can be transported just fine.

I thought of that, but "Obsession" had one glaring flaw when it came to antimatter already - namely the cloud creature being obliterated by a small amount of antimatter from the ship's engines while photon torpedoes were completely ineffective. Perhaps that was before they nailed down that torpedoes were antimatter missiles, though...

Dark Frontier. They transport a photon torpedo aboard a Borg Probe (a rectangular scout ship) that detonates next to a plasma conduit and destroys the ship.

Hmm... you'd think with something like a photon torpedo wouldn't need to be placed next to anything in particular when its already inside a ship. Oh well.

In any case, I'll wager beaming a torpedo or any kind of antimatter storage device would be a tricky thing indeed. Screw up and it blows up on the pad and atomizes your ship.

 

[Timo]

..namely the cloud creature being obliterated by a small amount of antimatter from the ship's engines while photon torpedoes were completely ineffective.

No more unrealistic than a hand grenade killing a guy who has so far evaded artillery fire. Apparently, the cloud could dodge phasers, torpedoes and sensors if it so wanted, either by physically moving aside or then doing the far niftier trick of becoming something else for a short while. But catch the cloud when it's not aware of being targeted, when it's in fact feeding and presumably locked to a mode where it can interact with physical things such as this blood it's eating...

Hmm... you'd think with something like a photon torpedo wouldn't need to be placed next to anything in particular when its already inside a ship. Oh well.

You obviously don't know Janeway. When the torp blows up the Borg ship, she laments that the prey got away. Her plan was to merely damage the ship, then board her, harvest her technologies, and probably leave behind a sarcastic calling card. That's how much she feared and respected the cyborgs...

In any case, I'll wager beaming a torpedo or any kind of antimatter storage device would be a tricky thing indeed.

Possibly. But transporters are good at beaming tricky things without creating a mess. If they can time and again perfectly preserve one's brain chemistry through a transporting operation, they probably can handle relatively coarse tech like forcefields just fine.

OTOH, transporters are easily blocked, jammed, scrambled, redirected or otherwise mucked up by a determined enemy. So any delicate trickery, such as beaming over torpedoes or boarding parties, is probably best left to the final phases of the battle where the enemy no longer can put up much resistance.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jerikka Dawn]

OTOH, transporters are easily blocked, jammed, scrambled, redirected or otherwise mucked up by a determined enemy. So any delicate trickery, such as beaming over torpedoes or boarding parties, is probably best left to the final phases of the battle where the enemy no longer can put up much resistance.

Timo Saloniemi

Except in the case of the Borg where most of the time people are beaming back and forth to Borg ships indiscriminately. LOL.

 

[B.J.]

About the water...

Maybe the Narada beamed them aboard altogether with a few ice chunks from Rura Penthe.

This gave me an idea. Perhaps they were mining comets?

Or, maybe they use the water as a working fluid when they're mining something solid. Mud is a whole lot easier to move around (with tubes & pumps) than a pile of dirt, and you wouldn't be left with a thick layer of dust on everything.

I have this image in my head of all those spiky bits opening up and clamping down on the side of an asteroid, kinda like a person's hand on a basketball. I know it's not suggested in the movie that the spikes move, but it would make the mining ship more functional.

 

[Peter the Younger]

OTOH, transporters are easily blocked, jammed, scrambled, redirected or otherwise mucked up by a determined enemy. So any delicate trickery, such as beaming over torpedoes or boarding parties, is probably best left to the final phases of the battle where the enemy no longer can put up much resistance.

Timo Saloniemi

Except in the case of the Borg where most of the time people are beaming back and forth to Borg ships indiscriminately. LOL.

That's because the Borg, despite abundant dialog to the contrary, act like a bunch of morons.

 

[EJA]

Does anyone have a size comparison chart showing the Narada with other ST ships?

Personally, it would be easier for me to believe that the Narada was never a mining ship, but was an experimental super-battlecruiser that Nero stole. But then it has the drilling cable, which a warship wouldn't have. Damn it...

 

[M'Sharak]

Does anyone have a size comparison chart showing the Narada with other ST ships?

I'm not aware of any which include the Narada yet. (In checking some of the more likely candidates, however, I find that Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions appears to have been hacked.)