Getting the Enterprise into space - with vids!

[F. King Daniel]

So how was the Enterprise gotten from the Iowa shipyard and into space?

Was it taken apart, flown up and reassembled in an orbital drydock, as seen in this brilliant clip by Daniel Broadway:
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HN1H_ShuIo[/yt]

Or did it simply power up and fly away, as seen in Star Wreck?
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psf1ob2H6Us[/yt]
I say the latter. It was built in Iowa, and it took off from Iowa. FWIW one of the Lost Years novels had the Enterprise saucer refitted on the ground, and it flew up under it's own power.

 

[G2309]

Flying up would make a better visual. A TOS episode had them flying at the same altitude pretty much as a jet fighter.

 

[Caesar753]

I would think that it flew up in one piece, since we see it almost fully constructed on the ground. In my imagination, they used some sort of booster technology to get it into space, since (as far as we know) the 2009 Enterprise wasn't capable of landing and taking off on its own.

 

[NSTrekfan]

I would think that it flew up in one piece, since we see it almost fully constructed on the ground. In my imagination, they used some sort of booster technology to get it into space, since (as far as we know) the 2009 Enterprise wasn't capable of landing and taking off on its own.

We have no information on it one way or the other. For all we know it`s fully landing capable.

Roddenberry had insisted that the TOS Enterprise was built in space and had never touched ground. He mentioned this in the Phase II book as well as TMOST. (He also said the viewscreen wasn`t a window). However, once we saw the ship on the ground in Iowa, all bets were off. Different ship, perhaps different capabilities.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't imagine that a starship with the capacity to escape the gravity of a BLACK HOLE would have any difficulty escaping from Earth's gravity. Even if it didn't lift off under its own power, it is fully capable of doing so if it needs to.

 

[Patrickivan]

That first clip was pretty neat. I liked the spin on the new Enterprise too...

 

[Shazam!]

I think the Enterprise stayed where it was and they moved the Earth

 

[shapeshifter]

I don't imagine that a starship with the capacity to escape the gravity of a BLACK HOLE would have any difficulty escaping from Earth's gravity. Even if it didn't lift off under its own power, it is fully capable of doing so if it needs to.

Agreed. They probably decided to skip showing how because this, though the most logical reason for self-powered ascension, would have further inflamed the Purists.

God bless Roddenberry and all of that but not all of his ideals were the best.

 

[shivkala]

I think the Enterprise stayed where it was and they moved the Earth

Kind of fits with Scotty's transwarp equation:
"Imagine that! It never occurred to me to think of SPACE as the thing that was moving!"

Which opens up another possibility, though somewhat far-fetched: Maybe it was beamed into space?

 

[danellis]

Which opens up another possibility, though somewhat far-fetched: Maybe it was beamed into space?

Although as they point out in the TNG TEchnical Manual, if you could do that, you wouldn't need to build them in the first place (you could just replicate them).

dJE

 

[Glacial]

Since a nice sweeping turn at .25c should produce acceleration stresses in the thousands of Gs, I'm pretty sure 20 G to get off the planet would be no trouble at all...

 

[CaptainJack]

I think your Enterprise in the first video is better than what we got in the last movie.

 

[Shikarnov]

I don't imagine that a starship with the capacity to escape the gravity of a BLACK HOLE would have any difficulty escaping from Earth's gravity. Even if it didn't lift off under its own power, it is fully capable of doing so if it needs to.

I'm no physicist, but wouldn't creating a warp field on the ground be somewhat dangerous? And without such a field, would a ship's physical propellants be enough to achieve liftoff at all?

To the original point of the thread, I'm not sure why they'd assemble the ship in its entirety on the ground -- especially given all the energy required to lift and later support all that tonnage -- only to take it apart, haul it into orbit, and put it back together again. It makes a lot more sense to do the final assembly, at the very least, in space like they did in oldTrek. But I digress...

 

[USS Triumphant]

I think the Enterprise stayed where it was and they moved the Earth

This sounds silly, but, the Earth is always moving anyway - 67,062 mph (107,300 km/h) just in relationship to the sun, and about 483,000 mph (792,000 km/h) around the center of the galaxy, and the whole galaxy is moving 1.3 million mph (2.1 million km/h) relative to cosmic background radiation. Maybe they did use some sort of stasis field (or something) to bring the ship close enough to zero motion that it stayed in one place while the Earth continued moving as normal, effectively putting the ship into space.

 

[UFO]

I think the Enterprise stayed where it was and they moved the Earth

Well, they already moved one planet so ... .

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't imagine that a starship with the capacity to escape the gravity of a BLACK HOLE would have any difficulty escaping from Earth's gravity. Even if it didn't lift off under its own power, it is fully capable of doing so if it needs to.

I'm no physicist, but wouldn't creating a warp field on the ground be somewhat dangerous?

I don't see why it would be, unless Enterprise was physically sitting ON the ground when it went to warp, in which case it would drag a huge divot into orbit with it when it accelerated.

If you can go to warp inside an atmosphere--or drop out of warp in one--then using warp drive or even impulse drive to haul yourself into orbit is probably child's play.

 

[NSTrekfan]

For all we know that scaffolding is also a huge transporter and they beamed the ship into orbit.

 

[M'Sharak]

I don't imagine that a starship with the capacity to escape the gravity of a BLACK HOLE would have any difficulty escaping from Earth's gravity. Even if it didn't lift off under its own power, it is fully capable of doing so if it needs to.

I'm no physicist, but wouldn't creating a warp field on the ground be somewhat dangerous?

I don't see why it would be, unless Enterprise was physically sitting ON the ground when it went to warp, in which case it would drag a huge divot into orbit with it when it accelerated.

--------------------------------
STARFLEET
SHIPYARD 2-1A
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Construction Zone
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SFC DIVISION
United Federation of Planets
SECTOR 47
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Notice:
This facility is on SF-SEC Security
LEVEL 3
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(Please replace your divots)
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​

 

[BriGuy]

Building the ship on the ground made about as much sense as a brewery for engineering.

It was done for expediency, and I'd guess simply for the scene of Kirk riding up, taking a look-see, and deciding his fate.

 

[USS Triumphant]

It was done for expediency, and I'd guess simply for the scene of Kirk riding up, taking a look-see, and deciding his fate.

That scene would have been cooler, though, if he had been on a flying bike, riding up to look at the construction.