For one thing, the original canon information was derived from a density figure of the Apollo capsule, was it not?
That was Sternbach's original source for pegging a density, yes. There is some variation between the density I have for Voyager and the real command module density, but I presume that to be a result of volume calculation differences and rounding.
(i.e. I don't know how he calculated the Apollo volume ... quite possibly on paper from an analysis of the simple solids involved. And I don't know how he obtained Voyager's volume.
In any case, though, "700,000 tonnes" is quite a round figure in any event . . . he might've ended up with 694 or 712 or anything in such a range.)
However, that's what got him in the neighborhood. After that, though, its use in the show became an independent fact.
(Meaning, to my mind, he could've picked the number out of thin air for all it matters, since once it was in the show (and used repeatedly therein), stated as fact by reliable characters, it became the closest thing to from-the-show truth we have.)
There's a starting point right there: the Apollo capsule and/or CSM, just to see if the formula is actually consistent with itself. The next logical step would be to apply it to other spacecraft of the same era, namely the Mercury and Gemini craft and also their Soviet counterparts (Vostok/Vokshod, Soyuz, TKS and Mir). Add comparisons to Skylab and ISS for that matter.
Such explorations could be quite fun and educational, but I don't see their relevance to the internal consistency of the page.
(It's phrasings like that that got me twitchy earlier, BTW, since it's suggestive of . . . well, look just below)
What's wrong with incredulity?
Well, some of your earlier phrasings were suggestive, to my mind, of your trying to argue against the values and concepts on the page, or at least claim them to be inconsistent or otherwise useless. That's fine in and of itself, but the method of doing so appeared to be by way of what, from the perspective of a from-the-show logic, would be the utter irrelvancies of real-world vehicles. (Or more to the point, it would be like trying to constrain modern structure/vehicle densities based on the materials available to people hundreds of years ago.)
Whether or not that was your intent, that was how it appeared at the time. And sadly, dismissing show facts based on irrelevancies represents the usual reception that my from-the-show logic commonly receives at TrekBBS (and often in harsher tones than even what I thought you were engaged in at first).
I was simply making the point that without actual evidence of flaw in my methods or reasoning from the show itself, that the logically fallacious 'argument from personal incredulity' would be the only active counterargument in play.
What I'm saying is it would incredibly revealing to looking at the volumetrics as if they were real space craft and see what this tells us about how they were built
That's why I yap incessantly in the sections below the Volumetrics chart about tritanium and duranium. (I believe the former to be denser than the latter.)
My concern for a long time was that certain Starbases (e.g. Spacedock) and shuttlecraft might be nowhere near as massive, based in part on the fact that shuttle hulls were said to be made of duranium (as if it was a primary component), as opposed to ship hulls which seemed to frequently be tritanium.
But the apparent fact that the Delta Flyer's density seems to fall in that range also (which is a new addition from this last round of updates to the ~6 year old page) would seem to point toward confirming the values for even the smaller vessels.
True as that is, that's where incredulity comes in: at 1700 tons we're talking about a twenty meter spacecraft that weighs as much as a WW-II submarine.
I think that's the issue right there, because on the page itself the fighter is still listed as (and calculated from)
31 meters.
At 31 meters, the fighter has a volume of 1522 m^3. Modifying the numbers real quick based on the N^3 volume rule, a
20 meter fighter would only have a volume of 409m^3. Then its mass (at Voyager levels) would be just
457 tonnes.
That's twice the max takeoff weight of a B-52 and three times its usual maximum load weight, but I don't view that as being beyond reason for such future fighters. After all, a fighter from WW2 like the
P-51 had a loaded weight of
4 tonnes. A loaded
F-22 is 29 tonnes. (Empty weights are 3.5 vs. 19.7.)
At that rate (a factor of 7 per 60 years), aerial fighters massing 457 or 1700 tonnes are simply a matter of time, and not necessarily a whole lot of it. That's aerial fighters of 200 tonnes by 2070, and 1400 tonnes by 2140.
It doesn't seem like something that size could BE that heavy unless huge parts of it were actually made out of chobham armor.
Wooden warships gave way to steel, short-range cannonballs gave way to huge steel shells and dropped bombs, and all of the sudden you might find that from the perspective of those aboard the wooden ship, a modern naval vessel seems impossibly massive.
Given that Trek vessels are made of materials we've never heard of and that they feature technologies we can scarcely dream of, I have no real problem with the extra mass compared to modern materials and construction methods.
After all, the shuttle or modern spacecraft have to blast off, which is expensive and messy.
It also uses these thrusters to land and take off from planetary surfaces, presumably even in emergencies when its impulse engines are disabled.
I don't think that's accurate . . . we've certainly never seen it.
Just that the information isn't all that useful from an analytical standpoint unless you can use it to estimate where that extra density is coming from. If, for example, most of that extra mass is coming from warp coils, hull armor, gravity plating or something exotic like that, then you'd have to adjust for the fact that smaller craft--or craft with smaller nacelles--might have proportionately lower masses inconsistent with the general formula.
As noted, I might've thought so too, but then the Delta Flyer's density is at least roughly consistent with that of Voyager. That may seem counter-intuitive to some degree, but it pretty much seals the average density for the entire ship as valid across multiple ship sizes.
Comparing to the Prometheus saucer (since I don't have the Delta Flyer in the list yet) her volume coefficient is also similar to that of Voyager. But her surface area per volume should be quite different.
The Argo shuttle (the next closest shape analog I have for which volume and surface area data is available) has an SA/V value of 1.8036. Were we to shrink Voyager to Argo length, her SA/V would be 332/123, or 2.7ish. And yet the Delta Flyer and Voyager densities are similar. So there's no obvious correlation between density and the surface area divided by volume.
The shrunken Voyager's surface area would be 332 square meters, the Argo is 992. Even if we assume the Argo's half again too surface-y compared to the Delta Flyer, that's still a big difference, which if it was strictly a question of hull material would again mean there's no obvious correlation.
Presumably the consistency has to do with warp coils and superstructure moreso than hull. Is there a margin for error? Surely. But the evidence from the show makes it clear that the density remains fairly constant for Federation ships.
