Getting the Enterprise into space - with vids!

[Crazy Eddie]

No real spacecraft in history has EVER been built this way.

No spacecraft in history has ever been so large.

And I'm sure you expect me to believe that the larger size alone totally explains that progression you just made up out of thin air.

Unfortunately Federation ships have never been said to have a "pressure hulls"

They've never been said to have toilets either, but unless human anatomy has changed dramatically in the 23rd century we know they have them. Their existence is a foregone conclusion because a starship is designed to hold atmospheric pressure in the vacuum of space, therefore BY DEFINITION it contains some continuous structure that acts as a restraint layer for its atmosphere.

A pressure hull or pressure vessel, FYI, is a containment vessel that acts as the restraint layer for the atmosphere and environment on the interior of the ship. Shielding, armor, sensors, weapons, thrusters, docking mechanisms, etc are all external to the pressure vessel and are considered superstructure components. So you can have, say, severe damage to an engine component or subspace transceiver or a weapons system without actually suffering a hull breach.

This is precisely what happens in "Best of Both Worlds" when the Borg cutting beam strikes the Engineering section. The computer first announces "Warning: Outer hull breach." A few seconds later adding, "Warning: inner hull failure immanent on decks twenty three, twenty four and twenty five. Decompression danger." Note that decompression is not an issue until the inner hull is jeopardized; in traditional spacecraft construction, the inner hull is a pressure vessel.

There is also no indication that starships are separated into large compartments like subs are such as the Engine room, Control room, torpedo rooms and Battery rooms that have limited number water tight doors to isolate damage.

Except for repeated mention of "emergency bulkheads" being used to seal hull breaches, not to mention the fact that the ship is explicitly referred to as being divided up into sections, e.g. "Sections twenty six, twenty seven and twenty eight on decks four five and six, destroyed."

Just because the sub concept was adopted for starships doesn't mean they are constructed like subs.

Who said anything about their being constructed like subs? I said they are constructed like SPACESHIPS, which invariably have an inner pressure vessel and an outer super-structural material that contains most of their working components. Even submarines aren't always built this way.

More to the point: for MOST spaceships, it is common to build the pressure vessel first and the rest of external/superstructure components afterwards. Part of the reason for this is the pressure vessel is the most important component of the ship and the most critical in terms of quality control.

 

[UFO]

But not to the people UP THERE, which is my point.

The natural hazards in space are pretty much a known quantity and can be overcome. Its far harder to do that on Earth.

No, it's easier to ASSEMBLE heavy structures in space, provided you have already constructed them on the ground and provided those modules are small enough to be placed in orbit on a medium-lift booster.

Why couldn’t you construct them in a shirtsleeves environment in space (ie in an O’Neill colony) then assemble them in space? You seem to be missing the obvious here.

Just because my car operates mainly on the road is NOT a good reason to build it in the middle of the freeway.

Of course not but its built within easy access of a freeway, not on the top of a mountain.

Except you can't mine anything, and you can't cultivate plants or animals unless you bring them with you and spend a few generations breeding them. Failing that, it's difficult to justify the expense of an O'Neil cylinder as a location for five thousand customer service call centers.

Not many cities dig up their streets to mine them so there is no difference between a city on Earth and one in space from that point view. What in space is so hard about bringing plants and animals with you, its done all the time on Earth? As for call centre operators, there might be a few of those (unless they are out sourced!) but there would also be every other sort of employment and a few new ones, that you would find on Earth. There is no rational reason why these cities and communities would not be like any others anywhere.

The initial idea, IIRC, was to colonize THE MOON as a resource outpost and then expand those operations into orbiting facilities as a way of thinning out the excess population of Earth.

Either way, the connection between O'Neil cylinders and solar power satellites has never been particularly solid since we are perfectly capable of building and launching those kinds of satellites right here on Earth.

No, the moon "base" would be just for mining, at least initially. I am currently re-reading the books (thanks for your inspiration) but "thinning out Earth’s population" would not an immediate goal and would require considerably launch capability Beanstalks or laser launch systems perhaps. The latter might be a little high gee of course. As mentioned though, the wealth brought down to Earth would probably reduce population growth etc.

Until you consider that like everything else, Earth also is a planet in space. What would be the justification for extracting materials from Earth and then sending them to an O'Neil cylinder in orbit for processing? Why would you send your ores into orbit when you could just as easily send them to Pittsburgh?

Why bring up sending ore to space for processing when (as you know) the plan is the other way round, if anything?

More to the point: if you have already have a steel industry in Pittsburgh, why would you spend the time and money developing New Pittsburgh in orbit when you could just as easily send those ores down to REAL Pittsburgh for processing?

You are familiar with the concept of economic growth, I am sure. Strange you have temporarily forgotten it!

It's not a matter of preference, actually. There's a fantastic number of people who would jump at a chance to go into space if anyone was offering a seat. These are not, however, the MAJORITY of people. The simple fact that space exploration is not and has never been a huge budgetary priority bears this out (NASA's budget has never exceeded more than 3% of the Federal). People (for the most part) simply care more about where they are than anything else (hence the Department of Defense budget has never been lower than 45%).

You are expecting "most people" to appreciate the possibilities of living and working in space without even an example to go by? Heck, someone like yourself, who knows what’s possible, still can’t get past the idea that we have always lived on planets, so we always will. Once people see that planets aren’t the only option, they will lose that blind-spot in my view.

I am not assuming that at all. There may be relatively few people engaged in the actual mining and processing of material but as with any activity, supporting services spring up and then the town’s size increase, as it might on Earth or elsewhere. If the colony was on a nearby planet I suppose you would not have a problem with that, but because its in a space habitat its ridiculous or unworkable?

Unworkable, because most of the population would prefer to live ON THE PLANET.

And there we have that blind-spot again! You mean, unworkable until people see the example of others, then it will become routine as all such changes do.

It has occurred to me that you are probably overlooking the fact that for 23rd century Earth--not to mention the rest of the Federation races--ORBITAL space is no longer the final frontier, or ANY kind of frontier for that matter. Currently we're not exactly busting at the seems with people who want to go and work on offshore oil rigs, for example. A giant platform in the middle of the Atlantic specifically for drilling oil would have generated a lot of excitement for the original readers of, say, Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. Nowadays, though, the novelty has worn off.

Its nothing to do with being on the "final frontier". Its about attractive economics and lifestyles. And why are you still stuck on "orbital facilities" when they aren’t likely to be the best places for colonies anyway long term? Now you are trying to compare oil rigs with O’Neill colonies? Can we at least stick to comparing apples with apples? I.e. A more comparable situation would be an oil-rig with a whole city attached to it! Now you know that, so why use the example you did?

And the one thing they really drove me nuts about these books was that it was never adequately explained why moving those materials to an O'Neill cylinder was in ANY WAY preferable to processing them ON THE MOON and then sending them directly to end-consumers on the Earth.

I’ll assume your memory is playing up because that is all explained in detail (makes me wonder what your original rationalisations for disliking it were though ). For a start, the products (power satellites, initially at least) are required in space, not on Earth, that’s just where the power ends up.

Now power satellites are fairly fragile things so making them on the moon would involve having to over engineering them to withstand the stresses of launching them into space (Or packing them very well. Good thing we don’t have to land them on Earth!).

There are a number of problems. You would have to build comfortable accommodation for the workforce on the moon since you don’t want to be taking them back to Earth regularly (which would be more expensive from the moon of course), so why not house them in space where you have better control over gravity etc? You would still need some people in space to assemble them, so you would need an O’Neill colony, or something similar, anyway for those workers!

Then you would have to build a fleet of rockets to launch the "satellite kits" which you don’t need if you are sending up raw material by mass driver. Then there is the problem of the moon colony being in darkness for a couple of weeks every month so power generation is restricted. This isn’t a problem in space of course.

Now all of this is pretty obvious so its hard to see any of it driving you nuts.

Adding the O'Neill cylinders as a middle man strikes me as a dubious sci-fi excuse to insert "look at my cool space habitat concept!" into the middle of an otherwise sensible model. The biggest problem with the theory is that you'd be expecting people to make a capital investment of hundreds of billions of dollars building the habitat, hundreds of billions more setting up the mining operation and the mass driver, and then asking hundreds if not thousands of people to take the risk of emigrating into that habitat, and do all of this before you begin to make even a PENNY of profit from the mining.

That's a bit like saying that in 1823 America built the entire city of Chicago--complete with skyscrapers, mass transit, two airports and enough homes for three million people--just to have a convenient place to trade with Indians. Fact of the matter is, Chicago grew up around Fort Dearborn, which was located purely for convenience. O'Neill cylinders may be cool, but they are NOT convenient.

Once again you are you are distorting the position for effect unless the "entire city of Chicago" only accommodates about 10,000 people, the size of the first colony (from memory, it might be smaller). Things would grow from there but that would happen as needed, not all up front. And of course they are convenient and necessary to retain a permanent workforce that isn’t going back to Earth all the time. Costings are in the books. In reality its not unlike building hydro-dams or highways etc which have long terms payoffs.

And I'll remind you again we're talking about Star Trek, where linear accelerators are hopelessly obsolete and replaceable by shuttlecraft, freighters or transporters.

I would need to see your payload to orbit costings. Don't tell me, shuttles use nine volt batteries as well I suppose. Just because something is old doesn't make it obsolete.

It is exactly the same expense as building a terrestial colony, but with two major differences:
1) You have to bring ALL of your supplies with you, where as a ground-based colony you can live off the land
2) Not only do you have to build the dwellings and infrastructure, you also have to build and sustain the environment in which those dwellings and infrastructure sit.

In other words, you don't just have to build a town, you first have to build an artificial planet in which the town sits.

There are ways of reducing the latter cost which I have already detailed. But it’s a boot-strapping operation. Most raw materials will come from the moon not Earth, because as you know, bringing anything it up form Earth is very expensive (at the moment).

One can be accessed with a $5 shovel. The other can only be accessed with a $5 shovel, a $250,000 space suit, and a $560,000 space craft.

As you know, most mining on Earth these days involves a great deal of very expensive equipment. Robots and remotely controlled machines don’t need space suites. And of course resources are often more accessible in space. Again, apples with apples please. That is, if you expect to be taken seriously. It has been suggested that bring a nickel/iron asteroid from the belt, processing it in orbit or elsewhere would be cost effective if we just got off our backsides. Of course if you have a space industry to start with its so much easier. In the 23rd century it might be a bit easier to have a planet only civilisation but we are getting to the point where expanding into space to live and work is increasing practical and sensible.

From Star Trek IV we're told that the Planet gets almost all of it's energy from the sun.

Not, shock horror, solar power!!! Not in Star Trek? I’m coming over all faint!

… you really believe it could take all of that but couldn't survive being dropped from a height of fifty meters?

You may be right. The Enterprise can’t be as fragile as it looks, but of course at some stage it will be only partially completed and that state is easier to handle in space.

Except for repeated mention of "emergency bulkheads" being used to seal hull breaches, not to mention the fact that the ship is explicitly referred to as being divided up into sections, e.g. "Sections twenty six, twenty seven and twenty eight on decks four five and six, destroyed."

There do appear to be bulkheads or pressure tight doors opperating in TWOK I think.

 

[Saquist]

And I'm sure you expect me to believe that the larger size alone totally explains that progression you just made up out of thin air.

You add the "alone" that's why you're so sure of it.

They've never been said to have toilets either, but unless human anatomy has changed dramatically in the 23rd century we know they have them.

I don't care about toliets.

Their existence is a foregone conclusion because a starship is designed to hold atmospheric pressure in the vacuum of space, therefore BY DEFINITION it contains some continuous structure that acts as a restraint layer for its atmosphere.

ergo the space shuttle, the ISS and the Apollo capsules having one too? You'll have to show it.

A pressure hull or pressure vessel, FYI, is a containment vessel that acts as the restraint layer for the atmosphere and environment on the interior of the ship. Shielding, armor, sensors, weapons, thrusters, docking mechanisms, etc are all external to the pressure vessel and are considered superstructure components. So you can have, say, severe damage to an engine component or subspace transceiver or a weapons system without actually suffering a hull breach.

I understand the concept and where you're going. It makes sense for a sub because of the nature of outward pressure against the interior but Star ships don't have to deal with that sort of environment. Resisting the outside pressure is the whole point of the the component.

This is precisely what happens in "Best of Both Worlds" when the Borg cutting beam strikes the Engineering section. The computer first announces "Warning: Outer hull breach." A few seconds later adding, "Warning: inner hull failure immanent on decks twenty three, twenty four and twenty five. Decompression danger." Note that decompression is not an issue until the inner hull is jeopardized; in traditional spacecraft construction, the inner hull is a pressure vessel.

That's a good example but just because the Enterprise is said to be double hulled doesn't mean it's a pressure hull.

Except for repeated mention of "emergency bulkheads" being used to seal hull breaches, not to mention the fact that the ship is explicitly referred to as being divided up into sections, e.g. "Sections twenty six, twenty seven and twenty eight on decks four five and six, destroyed."

And I knew you would say that.
A bulkhead can be just a barrier, a reinforced wall. It doesn't mean there is a pressure hull in Enterprise.
Sections are logical but don't mean there is a pressure hull either. It merely means a division. I do believe that starships have issolated sections that are independent from each other and that breaching one will lose the entire section to decompression. It's the logical way to construct a ship but that doesn't mean a pressure vessel like what we see in subs.

Who said anything about their being constructed like subs? I said they are constructed like SPACESHIPS, which invariably have an inner pressure vessel and an outer super-structural material that contains most of their working components. Even submarines aren't always built this way.

Subs are where pressure vessels come from.
I don't think a nuclear reactor would be the right concept for what we're talking about. So maybe I'm misunderstanding by what you mean by pressure vessel.

 

[BK613]

Not to me, especially since most starships will have a pressure vessel designed to contain atmosphere and environment and the outer hull plating will be a protective external shell against the environment, radiation, weapons fire, etc. Jeffries original idea--mostly followed throughout trek--is that once the pressure vessel is sound, you can install everything else INSIDE the ship in a shirtsleeve environment and never have to go EVA except when something really weird happens.

Unfortunately Federation ships have never been said to have a "pressure hulls", They have structural weaknesses such as windows and shuttle bay doors spread through out the hull that readily show that there is no inter space or division of hulls between space and the inside environment. There is also no indication that starships are separated into large compartments like subs are such as the Engine room, Control room, torpedo rooms and Battery rooms that have limited number water tight doors to isolate damage.

Internal designs seen on screen including Defiant and Constitution never show a significant separation of hulls at all. Just because the sub concept was adopted for starships doesn't mean they are constructed like subs.

LOL
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x07hd/dayofthedovehd0545.jpg

(Been AFK all week so I have missed most of the hyperbolic hyperbole (once-in-a-millennium earthquakes, really?). It has made for entertaining reading today... )

 

[Birdog]

And I'm sure you expect me to believe that the larger size alone totally explains that progression you just made up out of thin air.

You add the "alone" that's why you're so sure of it.

They've never been said to have toilets either, but unless human anatomy has changed dramatically in the 23rd century we know they have them.

I don't care about toliets.



ergo the space shuttle, the ISS and the Apollo capsules having one too? You'll have to show it.



I understand the concept and where you're going. It makes sense for a sub because of the nature of outward pressure against the interior but Star ships don't have to deal with that sort of environment. Resisting the outside pressure is the whole point of the the component.




That's a good example but just because the Enterprise is said to be double hulled doesn't mean it's a pressure hull.

Except for repeated mention of "emergency bulkheads" being used to seal hull breaches, not to mention the fact that the ship is explicitly referred to as being divided up into sections, e.g. "Sections twenty six, twenty seven and twenty eight on decks four five and six, destroyed."

And I knew you would say that.
A bulkhead can be just a barrier, a reinforced wall. It doesn't mean there is a pressure hull in Enterprise.
Sections are logical but don't mean there is a pressure hull either. It merely means a division. I do believe that starships have issolated sections that are independent from each other and that breaching one will lose the entire section to decompression. It's the logical way to construct a ship but that doesn't mean a pressure vessel like what we see in subs.

Who said anything about their being constructed like subs? I said they are constructed like SPACESHIPS, which invariably have an inner pressure vessel and an outer super-structural material that contains most of their working components. Even submarines aren't always built this way.

Subs are where pressure vessels come from.
I don't think a nuclear reactor would be the right concept for what we're talking about. So maybe I'm misunderstanding by what you mean by pressure vessel.

You are surprisingly thick sometimes.

ANYTHING that is sealed and has a pressure gradient between the inside and the outside is a pressure vessel. It does not matter if the pressure is higher inside or out. The ISS, Shuttle and every single manned spacecraft yet built by the US has a pressure hull that is independent of the outer hull.

A bulkhead is a pressure proof barrier. It's a naval term. A bulkhead on a warship is a water tight wall. A non-watertight wall is a partition.

 

[Saquist]

Not to me, especially since most starships will have a pressure vessel designed to contain atmosphere and environment and the outer hull plating will be a protective external shell against the environment, radiation, weapons fire, etc. Jeffries original idea--mostly followed throughout trek--is that once the pressure vessel is sound, you can install everything else INSIDE the ship in a shirtsleeve environment and never have to go EVA except when something really weird happens.

Unfortunately Federation ships have never been said to have a "pressure hulls", They have structural weaknesses such as windows and shuttle bay doors spread through out the hull that readily show that there is no inter space or division of hulls between space and the inside environment. There is also no indication that starships are separated into large compartments like subs are such as the Engine room, Control room, torpedo rooms and Battery rooms that have limited number water tight doors to isolate damage.

Internal designs seen on screen including Defiant and Constitution never show a significant separation of hulls at all. Just because the sub concept was adopted for starships doesn't mean they are constructed like subs.

LOL
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x07hd/dayofthedovehd0545.jpg

(Been AFK all week so I have missed most of the hyperbolic hyperbole (once-in-a-millennium earthquakes, really?). It has made for entertaining reading today... )

They don't fully understand the New Madrid fault.
The estimates have been from 200-300 years 500 years or 800 years.

"Based on this history of past earthquake*s, the USGS estimates the chance of having an earthquake similar to one of the 1811-12 sequence in the next 50 years is about 7 to 10 percent, and the chance of having a magnitude 6 or larger earthquake in 50 years is 25 to 40 percent."http://geology.com/usgs/new-madrid-seismic-zone/

1811–1812 appear to have happened around AD 1450 and around AD 900,[4] as well as approximately AD 300. This is merely from the evidence of the sand blows which doesn't precluded quakes which did not exhibit sand blows. So the problem remains the same that the area is proven to be geologically active for the last 2000 years.

You are surprisingly thick sometimes.

...and you're predictably irrelevant.

ANYTHING that is sealed and has a pressure gradient between the inside and the outside is a pressure vessel. It does not matter if the pressure is higher inside or out. The ISS, Shuttle and every single manned spacecraft yet built by the US has a pressure hull that is independent of the outer hull.

Pressure hull and Pressure vessel isn't the same from what I read. A Water heater can be called a pressure vessel as can a nuclear reactor but a pressure hull is a sub feature from what I read.

 

[Birdog]

You are surprisingly thick sometimes.

...and you're predictably irrelevant.

ANYTHING that is sealed and has a pressure gradient between the inside and the outside is a pressure vessel. It does not matter if the pressure is higher inside or out. The ISS, Shuttle and every single manned spacecraft yet built by the US has a pressure hull that is independent of the outer hull.

Pressure hull and Pressure vessel isn't the same from what I read. A Water heater can be called a pressure vessel as can a nuclear reactor but a pressure hull is a sub feature from what I read.

A simple google search for ""pressure hull" spacecraft" yields numerous articles discussing it. The Dragon has a pressure hull for example.

 

[beamMe]

21st century tech sure
23rd century tech with gravity plating, transporters and tractor beams...no.

Yes, that is why they can built the damn ship wherever the hell they want.
In this case: rural Iowa.


It's just a movie, and you are overthinking it.

It's not a matter of will.
It's a matter of efficiency. The place to construct these sort awkward designs is in space. I've used the Vehicle Assembly building as an example. Even if built on the ground the ship wouldn't be constructed in the midst of the elements as shown in the movie. It would be built in a hanger likely something far taller and wider because humidity cold and heat become issues in construction of space vehicles. (which would create a minor whether system in the building). The AVB ha the largest doors in the world and thus so would this building and so massive engineering would be required here. The Floor of the building or whatever earth bound facility would need to be perfectly level (PERFECTLY) just like the AVB which is the most level piece of real estate in the world. You'd need all sorts of lifting hardware designed to lift some of the heaviest components ever constructed on a planet for precision mating and assembly. And while the AVB is built to withstand Hurricane force winds a Facility in IOWA would need to be built to withstand a tremendous 8.0 or higher Earthquake because the period of the 23rd century would have either been JUST after or during the regions regular periodic disturbance due to the compression of the Atlantic sea floor spreading and the Pacific plate subducting under the North American plate. These quakes were so powerful that they reversed the flow of the Mississippi River from south to north. They experienced 2000 Tremors of 3.0 t0 8.0. Created lakes, creating the Sunken Lands and Sand blows occuring from 200-300 years. Some place it at 500 year spans.

Whatever was I thinking when I said you are overthinking all of this...

 

[Saquist]

A simple google search for ""pressure hull" spacecraft" yields numerous articles discussing it. The Dragon has a pressure hull for example.

Now that was refreshingly relevant.

In reference to alpha's comments: Even if this is rightly called a pressure vessel then it can't simply be one hull merely mimicking the outter hull. I pointed out that would lead to far too many weak points in what I refered to as "habitats" would be these pressure vessels or modules. I don't believe that the sections refer to each module of the ship.

Whatever was I thinking when I said you are overthinking all of this...

Not my concern to ponder your state of mind.

 

[Pauln6]

That's why you would build the structure and hull on Earth and then RAISE it into orbit for the first and last time ever to have its engines fitted and tested.

But the saucer is a separate ship.

Is it? We've never seen it separated at any time in TOS or the TMP movies. It could very well be tightly integrated with the secondary hull in such a way that it cannot operate independently except to still be semi-habitable if the other half of the ship is blown away somehow.

Kirk mentions saucer separation in TOS. The TMP saucer had landing struts.

 

[beamMe]

Whatever was I thinking when I said you are overthinking all of this...

Not my concern to ponder your state of mind.

Obviously the irony of you quoting my 'you are overthinking this'-comment and replying to it with ... well ... more overthinking on your part is quite lost, isn't it?

 

[Saquist]

Whatever was I thinking when I said you are overthinking all of this...

Not my concern to ponder your state of mind.

Obviously the irony of you quoting my 'you are overthinking this'-comment and replying to it with ... well ... more overthinking on your part is quite lost, isn't it?

I could care less...
Most obnoxious people I know don't do alot of thinking anyway so ANY thought would be over the norm for them.

 

[beamMe]

Not my concern to ponder your state of mind.

Obviously the irony of you quoting my 'you are overthinking this'-comment and replying to it with ... well ... more overthinking on your part is quite lost, isn't it?

I could care less...
Most obnoxious people I know don't do alot of thinking anyway so ANY thought would be over the norm for them.

Oh... oh... I see what you did there...
You think you are clever, don't you?

BTW: It's "I couldn't care less..."

 

[Saquist]

BTW: It's "I couldn't care less..."

FYI: I meant what I said.

 

[beamMe]

BTW: It's "I couldn't care less..."

FYI: I meant what I said.

Yeah... right.

 

[BK613]

Internal designs seen on screen including Defiant and Constitution never show a significant separation of hulls at all. Just because the sub concept was adopted for starships doesn't mean they are constructed like subs.

LOL
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x07hd/dayofthedovehd0545.jpg

love the way you gloss over or just simply ignore anything that contradicts what you are saying LOL

(Been AFK all week so I have missed most of the hyperbolic hyperbole (once-in-a-millennium earthquakes, really?). It has made for entertaining reading today... )

They don't fully understand the New Madrid fault.
The estimates have been from 200-300 years 500 years or 800 years.

"Based on this history of past earthquake*s, the USGS estimates the chance of having an earthquake similar to one of the 1811-12 sequence in the next 50 years is about 7 to 10 percent, and the chance of having a magnitude 6 or larger earthquake in 50 years is 25 to 40 percent."http://geology.com/usgs/new-madrid-seismic-zone/

1811–1812 appear to have happened around AD 1450 and around AD 900,[4] as well as approximately AD 300. This is merely from the evidence of the sand blows which doesn't precluded quakes which did not exhibit sand blows. So the problem remains the same that the area is proven to be geologically active for the last 2000 years.

LOL I've heard of the New Madrid earthquake...doesn't stop it from being a silly reason for not building starships on the ground. You harden the facility against possible earthquakes, just like we do today when we build in earthquake zones, and move on. It becomes part of the planning for the facility but not a deterrent. You might even have some technology 200 years out that we are just experimenting with today that could make it earthquake-proof.


--------------------------------------
FWIW, I agree with those that say that JJ's portrayal of the ship being built on the ground is silly-looking; that is not the same issue as whether starships could (or should) be built on the ground.

 

[Cyke101]

LOL I've heard of the New Madrid earthquake...doesn't stop it from being a silly reason for not building starships on the ground. You harden the facility against possible earthquakes, just like we do today when we build in earthquake zones, and move on. It becomes part of the planning for the facility but not a deterrent. You might even have some technology 200 years out that we are just experimenting with today that could make it earthquake-proof.

If your ship's basic structure can't withstand an earthquake, then it has absolutely no business at all being in space!

I agree with those that say that JJ's portrayal of the ship being built on the ground is silly-looking; that is not the same issue as whether starships could (or should) be built on the ground.

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that people are confusing the two. One doesn't preclude the other, really.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But not to the people UP THERE, which is my point.

The natural hazards in space are pretty much a known quantity and can be overcome. Its far harder to do that on Earth.

How is it harder when the natural hazards of Earth are both far better known and considerably less lethal?

Why couldn’t you construct them in a shirtsleeves environment in space (ie in an O’Neill colony) then assemble them in space?

Because in order to do that, we would have to first BUILD AN O'NEILL COLONY (we WERE talking about the ISS, remember?)

Building an O'Neil cylinder is a very expensive proposition, and even a society that doesn't use money has some concept of resource expenditure and can run a cost-benefit analysis. In Star Trek terms, the real question is how much money would we be able to save by investing in an O'Neill cylinder and how soon would the savings add up to a profit?

It turns out it depends entirely on the cost of sending things into orbit. With conventional rockets it costs us about $10,000 per kilogram of payload. In most hard-science space operas this is down to between $250 and $1000 per kilogram. In the Star Trek universe it's possible to send a grand piano into orbit using a ten-year-old's allowance; lifting things into orbit just isn't a problem, even every LARGE things thanks to the invention of the tractor beam.

Of course not but its built within easy access of a freeway

Is it? Car factories don't need to have any access to the freeway, not while the cars themselves can be loaded onto trucks that can afford to drive a couple miles to the nearest interstate. Which is, in Trek universe, about the amount of difficulty a typical shuttlecraft has getting into orbit. Extrapolate that onto a pair of spacedock tugs that are specifically designed to tractor heavy loads, and your starship could get into orbit as easily as a submarine gets into the water.

Not many cities dig up their streets to mine them so there is no difference between a city on Earth and one in space from that point view.

Except that again, you cannot mine anything in an O'Neill cylinder. Therefore using the cylinder as a mining town is the technical equivalent of moving to Chicago with the intention of working in a coal mine in Canada. Even if you happen to own your own private helicopter, it's not exactly a convenient location for your workers.

What in space is so hard about bringing plants and animals with you, its done all the time on Earth?

Because we're not COLONIZING Earth. Have you really thought through the amount of biomass you'd have to put into an O'Neill cylinder in order to develop a viable ecology? How much water all those plants and animals are going to consume on a day to day basis, especially if they're going to be cultivated for the use by the local population? That is, by itself, a HUGE investment that will pay off only in the long term. For the community to be viable it must be able to get something equal or greater in exchange for it in the SHORT term, and unless for mining for platinum (or dilithium, maybe?), there aren't alot of things in an asteroid valuable enough to offset that kind of expense.

As for call centre operators, there might be a few of those (unless they are out sourced!) but there would also be every other sort of employment and a few new ones, that you would find on Earth. There is no rational reason why these cities and communities would not be like any others anywhere.

EVENTUALLY, yes. The point I'm getting at is that people don't just will communities into existence. They come to exist for economic reasons, because it makes economic sense for a group of people to live in a particular area whose resources they are trying to exploit. So if you're going to mine an asteroid, you're not going to form a community on that asteroid unless you HAVE to, and that community is going to grow out of the bare necessities of what the workers need to survive. If the community outgrows its original founding purpose then they will probably find it's easier to find new things to do than it is to split up and look for greener pastures (check out the "Asteroid Wars" series from Ben Bova. The Rock Rats lived on Ceres for twenty years before they actually got around to building a proper habitat).

But people do not build huge city states in a fully developed state and then look for some key industry to devote the city's resources to. It doesn't work that way, it's NEVER worked that way. The only reason to think it could work that way is if--in O'Neill's theory--the Earth becomes so overcrowded the deporting half the world's population into space becomes a benefit in itself.

No, the moon "base" would be just for mining, at least initially.

Right, but that's where the first colony would actually develop. Since that's the first and only place where anyone actually NEEDS to be, they begin to develop communities amongst themselves and then seek the means to provide the services they need in their day-to-day lives. Whether O'Neill got into this or not (I haven't read those books since high school) the fact is the first permanent communities in space would form wherever the work is being done. I don't see O'Neil Cylinders being viable AT ALL except as developments from smaller orbital communities that exist for similar conveniences. Say, an orbital supply depot where some ambitions chump sets up a satellite refurbishing dock and starts renting out his services to telecom companies; pretty soon he's able to hire more workers, which gives him the ability to build satellites, which allows him to hire MORE workers, which leads to them buying more habitat modules for everyone, and after fifty years of this they realize that they now have three thousand people living in this huge tinkertoy space station and "Maybe we ought to pool our money to upgrade this place?"

Why bring up sending ore to space for processing when (as you know) the plan is the other way round, if anything?

That's kinda my point. Why send the ores to space AT ALL? You could just as easily process them on the moon and then ship the finished products directly to Earth. Eventually, as the community developed, they would gain the ability to add more and more value to those products and the moonbsae would become an exporter not only of refined metals and building materials but of tools, parts, furniture, electronics, and eventually--because the lower gravity gives them a comparative advantage--an inexpensive manufacturer and servicer of telecommunications satellites and other spacecraft.

There's no reason to send those ores to Earth or anywhere else, especially when the people who actually dug them up will probably want to use alot of that stuff for their own purposes.

You are familiar with the concept of economic growth

An economy has to grow out of something. You can't plant a wooden pole in the forest and expect it to grow into a tree; in the same way, you can't plant an O'Neill cylinder in the middle of space and expect it to just automatically grow into a city.

And there we have that blind-spot again! You mean, unworkable until people see the example of others

On DS9 it took the example of Quark keeping his bar open, and the other 150 or so merchants and mechanics (mostly) stayed.

The other three billion Bajorans stayed on Bajor. Which is my point.

Its nothing to do with being on the "final frontier". Its about attractive economics and lifestyles. And why are you still stuck on "orbital facilities" when they aren’t likely to be the best places for colonies anyway long term?

Because a facility that ISN'T in orbit is on the surface of a moon or an asteroid or a planet. And I agree, the most attractive economics and lifestyles, as well as the best place for a long-term colony, is on the surface of a moon or an asteroid or a planet with easy access to resources the community can exploit to bankroll its own growth.

Now you are trying to compare oil rigs with O’Neill colonies?

Wasn't the idea that you would setup an O'Neill colony next to a small asteroid and then mine it for resources? Economically speaking, the operations model is identical to an oil rig.

Or to Terok Nor. But then DS9 basically IS the Cardassian equivalent of an offshore oil rig...

Can we at least stick to comparing apples with apples? I.e. A more comparable situation would be an oil-rig with a whole city attached to it!

There you see my objection. Why would anyone want to attach a whole city to an oil rig?

In the case we're discussing: why would anyone want to attach an entire city to an ore processing station?

I’ll assume your memory is playing up because that is all explained in detail

It was rationalized, not explained. There were a lot of very specific assumptions in the explanation (solar power satellites are fragile, launching from the moon is very stressful, satellites launching from the moon have to be "over-engineered", just to name a few) that didn't have any particular justification and a few others that were just plain wrong. That's the main reason I consider O'Neill's work to be science fiction; there's a lot of MacGuffins floating around in there.

You would have to build comfortable accommodation for the workforce on the moon...

Yes you would.

Would that be more or less expensive than building an O'Neill colony?

You would still need some people in space to assemble them, so you would need...

A space station parked at a convenient assembly area.

Basically, the problem here is arguing for the wholesale manufacture of Modern New York City to accomplish what actually requires two Jamestowns and a Plymouth. NONE of this justifies the expense or the sophistication of an O'Neill cylinder.

Then you would have to build a fleet of rockets to launch the "satellite kits" which you don’t need if you are sending up raw material by mass driver.

Except O'Neill never explained how the mass driver was supposed to get those payloads to their destination without midcourse guidance or terminal phase retrofire.

OTOH, those moon-launch rockets are likely to be a pretty valuable commodity, especially once privately-owned spacecraft learn how to recover and resell them to their manufacturers or other producers who need a cheap way of getting payloads into space. A fully reusable SSTO is a VERY easy thing to develop on a place like the moon.

Now all of this is pretty obvious so its hard to see any of it driving you nuts.

It's because the development progression is so completely ass-backwards. As in this case:

Once again you are you are distorting the position for effect unless the "entire city of Chicago" only accommodates about 10,000 people, the size of the first colony (from memory, it might be smaller).

Put that in historical perspective. 10,000 people is more than the total European population of North America from 1601 to 1620, by which there were dozens of colonies from dozens of different countries. At O'Neill cylinder isn't a first anything, not in the context of colonization.

Things would grow from there

That's what I mean by ass-backwards. If anything, a colony would eventually grow INTO that, after a couple decades of economic development. I like your hydro-electric dam analogy: the Hoover Dam was built in 1931, at a time when there were a couple million people living in the southwest. They didn't build the dam first and then colonize the territory around it.

I would need to see your payload to orbit costings. Don't tell me, shuttles use nine volt batteries as well I suppose.

Well, Scotty once got a shuttlecraft into orbit using the power cells from a couple of phasers...

As you know, most mining on Earth these days involves a great deal of very expensive equipment. Robots and remotely controlled machines don’t need space suites.

Theoretically, they don't need a human presence either. But since that theory is unlikely to survive first contact with reality, the inevitable human presence WILL require widespread and prolonged use of space suits, habitats and transport vehicles. That's ON TOP of the mining equipment you still have to buy in order to mine an asteroid.

It has been suggested that bring a nickel/iron asteroid from the belt, processing it in orbit or elsewhere would be cost effective if we just got off our backsides. Of course if you have a space industry to start with its so much easier.

You can't WILL a space industry into existence, UFO. That's what O'Neill was basically envisioning in his books: the wholesale manufacture of a space colony complete with intact economy, industry, community and purpose, not by necessity, but by sheer force of will.

If you depend on having a robust infrastructure in place before you can do any real work, then you'll never do any real work. That's the difference between colonization and immigration: colonists go up there and CREATE infrastructure, immigrants move to a place where it already exists.

… you really believe it could take all of that but couldn't survive being dropped from a height of fifty meters?

You may be right. The Enterprise can’t be as fragile as it looks, but of course at some stage it will be only partially completed and that state is easier to handle in space.

Not THAT much easier, and certainly not enough to justify the increased risk to the workers.

Except for repeated mention of "emergency bulkheads" being used to seal hull breaches, not to mention the fact that the ship is explicitly referred to as being divided up into sections, e.g. "Sections twenty six, twenty seven and twenty eight on decks four five and six, destroyed."

There do appear to be bulkheads or pressure tight doors opperating in TWOK I think.

You're thinking of TUC, I believe. Lots of drop-door things dividing corridors, especially during Chang's torpedo attack.

 

[Saquist]

LOL I've heard of the New Madrid earthquake...doesn't stop it from being a silly reason for not building starships on the ground. You harden the facility against possible earthquakes, just like we do today when we build in earthquake zones, and move on. It becomes part of the planning for the facility but not a deterrent. You might even have some technology 200 years out that we are just experimenting with today that could make it earthquake-proof.

I'm not concerned with what you think is silly because there is no way it's logical to build such a facility needing such exacting standards in a geologically active location. Texas or Arizona would be better locations.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And I'm sure you expect me to believe that the larger size alone totally explains that progression you just made up out of thin air.

You add the "alone" that's why you're so sure of it.

Indeed. Apart from the greater mass, what other significant differences are there? It's more technically sophisticated, sure, but so are modern apartment buildings compared to their 18th century counterparts.

ergo the space shuttle, the ISS and the Apollo capsules having one too?

Yes, they did. And so do all the more modern spacecraft, designs; the CST-100, the Dragon C1 and the Dreamchaser.

In fact the only spacecraft that didn't have a distinct pressure vessel inside of an exterior shell was the Soviet Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft, primarily because the entire spacecraft was just a hollow sphere wrapped in ablative material.

I understand the concept and where you're going. It makes sense for a sub because of the nature of outward pressure against the interior but Star ships don't have to deal with that sort of environment. Resisting the outside pressure is the whole point of the the component.

Incorrect. On a spacecraft, resisting INSIDE pressure is the purpose of a pressure vessel. And this purpose is supremely important because the exterior plating and shielding is being used to deflect against micrometeoroids, radiation, temperature extremes and sometimes even the heat of reentry itself and therefore must be designed to insulate the interior of the ship against these conditions. Failures can and do occur in most of these outer layers with varying degrees of survivability (depending on the component and the craft in question) but a failure in the PRESSURE VESSEL is rarely survivable.

Who said anything about their being constructed like subs? I said they are constructed like SPACESHIPS, which invariably have an inner pressure vessel and an outer super-structural material that contains most of their working components. Even submarines aren't always built this way.

Subs are where pressure vessels come from.

No, they are not. Even the Mercury capsule was built with an internal pressure vessel; it HAD to be, because it used a radiatively-cooled heat shield and didn't have any other way of dissipating that heat away from the pilot.

The pressure vessel of spacecraft has been identified by many terms by many different people, but the term I learned in college was "restraint layer" or "restraint vessel" that describes the overall concept regardless of nomenclature. Boeing uses "pressure shell," SpaceX and Sierra Nevada used "pressure vessel" and NASA referred to the shuttle's pressure vessel as "the pressurized crew compartment."

It's the exact same concept, and the only spacecraft in history NOT to feature a distinct pressure vessel internal to its working components was effectively a flying briefcase.

If the Enterprise doesn't have a distinct pressure vessel separate from its outer plating (which is virtually impossible considering the way it's designed) then it has a monohull, in which case the entire hull IS the pressure vessel. But we already know from "Best of Both Worlds" that even the window-happy Galaxy class has a restraint layer inner hull that's relatively tough to crack. The same is almost certainly true of its 23rd century counterpart.