Getting the Enterprise into space - with vids!

[Saquist]

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.

We aren't talking bout apartment buildings. We're talking Starships. If 18th century apartments weighed more than a 1,000 times less than modern apartments you'd have a point. No space craft to date has used a reactor for power generation, there are many issues.

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.

All that is fine...but we're relating this to an entire starship. You've made your case on the pressure vessel for modern spacecraft but where we go astray is that you seemed to be implying that the Enterprise had a similar pressure vessel TOO and that's why I resisted this idea.

I already suspected that modern craft had a ..near seelmless "single piece" constructioin for habitable sections. I never knew it was called a "pressure vessel" or even remotely refered to as a hull. But I can't use the information at hand to conclude that there is one entire similarly seemless presure hull for the Enterprise. That's not what we say while Enterprise was being constructed in the space dock...nor did we see that in orbit over Mars.

We see incomplete hull and frame on new construction and not one sign of a pressure vessel such as these modern spacecraft have.

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."

"restraint layer"
"pressure shell,
"the pressurized crew compartment."
"restraint vessel"
I like it when you're detailed.

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.

You said...." a distinict pressure vessel separte from it's outter plating"....IS that what you mean? Do you mean ONE pressure hull?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

We aren't talking bout apartment buildings. We're talking Starships. If 18th century apartments weighed more than a 1,000 times less than modern apartments...

One overt reference to mass...

No space craft to date has used a reactor for power generation...

... plus another overt reference to mass leads me to repeat my earlier question. Apart from mass, what's the real difference? You could simply build the ship the same way you would build any other massive vehicle. We've been doing it for a century already.

All that is fine...but we're relating this to an entire starship. You've made your case on the pressure vessel for modern spacecraft but where we go astray is that you seemed to be implying that the Enterprise had a similar pressure vessel TOO and that's why I resisted this idea.

The fact that it's a spacecraft means it HAS to have a pressure vessel of some kind or another. The question isn't whether it has one, the question is whether the pressure vessel is the ONLY thing holding the ship together. Canonical evidence from many sources indicate that it isn't, that you can breach the armor plating and even knock out external components without breaking the pressure vessel at all. This is consistent with established conventions in REAL spacecraft, so clearly the standard still applies in the 23rd century.

But why would we expect it to be any different? It works perfectly well on real spacecraft and there's no reason it wouldn't work for a starship. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

I can't use the information at hand to conclude that there is one entire similarly seemless presure hull for the Enterprise. That's not what we say while Enterprise was being constructed in the space dock...nor did we see that in orbit over Mars.

You being the experts on spaceship construction are in any position to know what they were actually doing based on fifteen seconds of wide angle CGI footage?

Anyway, there may NOT be a single seemless pressure vessel in a starship. It's possible that the corridors and rooms of the ship are all separated enclosures, all independently airtight, linked together like the modules on the ISS, the interior being filled by electrical conduits, transporter waveguides, thermal and radiation insulation, power buses, etc. That little bit of empty space between the hulls is also probably where the emergency forcefield generators would put up their curtain to contain the ship's atmosphere in the event of a breach.

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.

You said...." a distinict pressure vessel separte from it's outter plating"....IS that what you mean? Do you mean ONE pressure hull?

I have no idea the actual configuration of it or whether it's the same on every starship. Could be it's a single continuous structure underneath the outer hull or it could be a conglomerate of several different passageways and small compartments all mated together to form a larger one. Or it could be something inbetween, with the saucer being filled with several distinct modules shaped like pizza slices that fit together to compose the inner hull. Any way you slice it (no pun intended) the monohull concept is the least likely because there are way too many power-hungry and potentially dangerous components--such as thrusters, phaser banks, sensors, deflector grid elements--that would probably be very troublesome if you had them always in direct contact with the ship's environment. The need to make them accessible in a shirtsleeve environment, though, probably explains the existence of jeffries tubes.

 

[Pauln6]

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

This does raise an interesting point. I always thought that the saucer functioned in atmospheres using thrusters. What propulsion do suttles use? TNG shuttles certainly don't apear to use thrusters. Still, it would not take a huge amount of power to operate thrusters and life support for a short period compared to say sufficient energy to disintegrate rocks.

 

[Saquist]

One overt reference to mass...

Indeed.

plus another overt reference to mass leads me to repeat my earlier question. Apart from mass, what's the real difference? You could simply build the ship the same way you would build any other massive vehicle. We've been doing it for a century already.

Reactor does not equal mass.
We've haven't been making spacecraft for centuries
There is no direct indication that the 23rd or 24th century ships are created the same way.

The fact that it's a spacecraft means it HAS to have a pressure vessel of some kind or another. The question isn't whether it has one, the question is whether the pressure vessel is the ONLY thing holding the ship together. Canonical evidence from many sources indicate that it isn't, that you can breach the armor plating and even knock out external components without breaking the pressure vessel at all. This is consistent with established conventions in REAL spacecraft, so clearly the standard still applies in the 23rd century.

But why would we expect it to be any different? It works perfectly well on real spacecraft and there's no reason it wouldn't work for a starship. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

It's not about broke.

You being the experts on spaceship construction are in any position to know what they were actually doing based on fifteen seconds of wide angle CGI footage?

Anyway, there may NOT be a single seemless pressure vessel in a starship. It's possible that the corridors and rooms of the ship are all separated enclosures, all independently airtight, linked together like the modules on the ISS, the interior being filled by electrical conduits, transporter waveguides, thermal and radiation insulation, power buses, etc. That little bit of empty space between the hulls is also probably where the emergency forcefield generators would put up their curtain to contain the ship's atmosphere in the event of a breach.

that's all I was saying from go. I may not have known the proper terminology but it's clear from the utopia footage that the hull is going into place evern bore then Interior is constructed. I thin this is about Integrity. That's why a sub is constructed of various pressure vessels linked together. I've read alot of books on subs and it seems entire spaces can flood and the ship can stay afloat if it doesn't exceed the vessels buoyancy.

In Remember me the breachers occured in just the same way as the universe shank around the Enterprise there was a shudder as each section was lost. That tells me there is no single pressure vessel and that Best of Both Worlds Dialogue was vague technobable because it's clear just from the out side of Enterprise that there are few spaces where the preesure vessels don't meet right up against the hull made clear from the window frenzy of the design.

People say Defiant could have a double hull I figure it's more possible since it doesn't have any windows on the top and where it does is literally an extension of the ship exclusively isolated from the rest.

I have no idea the actual configuration of it or whether it's the same on every starship. Could be it's a single continuous structure underneath the outer hull or it could be a conglomerate of several different passageways and small compartments all mated together to form a larger one. Or it could be something inbetween, with the saucer being filled with several distinct modules shaped like pizza slices that fit together to compose the inner hull.

That's exactly what I was thinking and why the coordinate system is laid out the way it is in the TNG Tech Manual. The out sections would be the smallest to limit collateral damage of hull breaches while the inner sections pressure vessels would be larger containing corridors inboard and habitat outboard which is why cooridors seem to often be where there is access to conduits and circuitry and such and why the jefferies tubes are most accessible from them. The couduit system could be isolated pressure vessels adhered to the habitat vessels so that they're are pressurized with the ships environmental system but isolatd and separate in of them selves

Any way you slice it (no pun intended) the monohull concept is the least likely because there are way too many power-hungry and potentially dangerous components--such as thrusters, phaser banks, sensors, deflector grid elements--that would probably be very troublesome if you had them always in direct contact with the ship's environment.

The need to make them accessible in a shirtsleeve environment, though, probably explains the existence of jeffries tubes.

How I see the Jefferies tubes working would essentially explain how and why they are able to bypass damage sections or the normal cooridors and reach the same place but the problem is there would still have to be vast sections of space inside the outter hull that are not presurized that contain very large equipment that we never see.

That's why I hate the deck style layout that every ship is given because it makes it look as though every bit of space is portioned to between 2.8 and 3.5 meters tall that the entire ship is pressurized and that components that simplly have to be somewhere aren't given a home...like the shield generators, field generators like the IDF and SIF which have to exist as smaller comoponents through out the ship since there is no central large component ever designated (just like the main deflector is never seen in person)

But then some components foil that idea completely like the warp core that travels through several sections. So I guess the way I designed it for ENIGMA is how I look at it.

Spoiler: Really Big Picture (Close UP)

I essentially broken down the Secondary hull into 5 sections. The Aft shuttle Bay, Deuterium and Cargo Storage. Engineering and Reactor Spaces. Primary Crew Quarters and the Forward Docking and Umbilicals. Those sections are isolated by the sky-blue vertical lines. While the Decks are the Royal blue horizontal lines and light blue is outter hull. So now I'm thinking perhaps to actually show the sections as "containers within the hull.
Each of these sections would have pressure vertical pressure doors at the section boundary only, it's own set of Batteries to keep that section alive (alternating blue and yellow/orange squares) and IDF-SIF packages.

I figured the lifepods would be in banks indented into the pressure vessels and yet and of course flush with the hull but effectively the Idea of contentious running decks is out the door. Just because you're on the same deck if you're not in the same section there is no way to get to the other end of the ship if the main access /gangway or turbolift that runs through all the sections is blocked. (Other than the Jefferies tube system which always has a seal-able hatch)

 

[M'Sharak]

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.

Let's do without the personal jabs, shall we? They add nothing useful to the discussion and are against the rules which everyone agreed to follow when registering here.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Reactor does not equal mass.

Then since pretty much everyone in this thread has already stipulated that the reactor(s) would not be fueled or activated--or possibly even INSTALLED--until the ship was in orbit, I don't see your point.

that's all I was saying from go. I may not have known the proper terminology but it's clear from the utopia footage that the hull is going into place evern bore then Interior is constructed.

The Utopia Planitia footage isn't particularly useful because nothing puts that footage into context as to just which phase of construction we're seeing, or whether or not we are even looking at a phase of construction. From what little we know about starship construction, the process that makes the LEAST sense is to assemble the skin of the ship first and then fill it out with load-bearing structures and internal components later.

Of course we saw them doing it the exact opposite way in "The Expanse" when Columbia was under construction; the older starship appeared to be built from the inside out, like any other conventional spacecraft. The Enterprise as seen in STXI appears to have been built the same way. U.P. is the singular exception to the rule, but doesn't provide much useful data because 1) we never see the "hollow hull" ship entering service as an active vessel and 2) it is a Voyager episode after all.

In Remember me the breachers occured in just the same way as the universe shank around the Enterprise there was a shudder as each section was lost. That tells me there is no single pressure vessel and that Best of Both Worlds Dialogue was vague technobable because it's clear just from the out side of Enterprise that there are few spaces where the preesure vessels don't meet right up against the hull made clear from the window frenzy of the design.

Actually, BOBW makes perfect sense when you consider the delay between outer and inner hull penetration. If you consider that the sections in danger of being decompressed would be part of a single pressure vessel, then the computer's announcement would be mainly a warning for damage control teams trying to figure out where to direct their efforts.

How I see the Jefferies tubes working would essentially explain how and why they are able to bypass damage sections or the normal cooridors and reach the same place but the problem is there would still have to be vast sections of space inside the outter hull that are not presurized that contain very large equipment that we never see.

That's to be expected in a spacecraft. Ships like the Dragon C1 and the shuttle have huge equipment bays that contain APUs, batteries, coolant lines, electrical conduits, etc. It's certainly safer to have a plasma conduit running through empty hull spaces than through habitable compartments, isn't it? But unlike the shuttle, all of these components would be installed in such a way that all of their working components would be accessible through the Jeffries tube crawlspaces. Anything that can't be fixed from the access tube is going to require major overhaul of that component anyway and is the sort of thing you'd have to put into space dock for (and this has happened from time to time).

Agreed with the deck layout thing, and if starships are built anything like REAL spacecraft, there wouldn't be a lot of empty space between the outer and inner hulls, the gaps will inevitably be filled by various goodies. There is already a ridiculous number of components even MODERN spacecraft have to squeeze into their equipment bays, and starships have to also add things like internal sensors, emergency forcefields, structural integrity fields, replicator waveguides, ODN conduits, plasma conduits, emergency bulkhead passthroughs, and so much more.

But then some components foil that idea completely like the warp core that travels through several sections.

Not neccesarrily. The warp core could be encased in a single section that happens to inhabit the center of the ship. It's also possible that the term "warp core" actually refers to the pressurized section in which the matter/antimatter reaction chamber sits, and "eject the core!" is just an inaccurate colloquialism.

 

[Saquist]

[
Then since pretty much everyone in this thread has already stipulated that the reactor(s) would not be fueled or activated--or possibly even INSTALLED--until the ship was in orbit, I don't see your point.

That's fine but like I said none of the systems can be tested off of warp plasma until then. I'm not sure if impulse power can power those systems sufficiently or if Earth solar network can do the same job. My experience is that it's more useful to test these components during construction rather than mass assembly then testing because of the issues of reaching your assemblies after in place. If there is a problem you'll want to know about it before surrounding equipment is in the way.

The Utopia Planitia footage isn't particularly useful because nothing puts that footage into context as to just which phase of construction we're seeing, or whether or not we are even looking at a phase of construction. From what little we know about starship construction, the process that makes the LEAST sense is to assemble the skin of the ship first and then fill it out with load-bearing structures and internal components later.

Yet that's what we see. For instance it's not like we're looking at a ship under repair. We are clearly see a new construction of a Galaxy class Saucer. Context isn't particular important either. We see frame work, and Hull and nothing between the hull. Clearlly it's the early stages of construction

We see something similar with the Enterprise in the Orbital City with the bottom of the Saucer seemingly or nearly complete and the top only in frame and the entire secondary hull complete. This would seem to match my bullet point of contruction procedure.

Of course we saw them doing it the exact opposite way in "The Expanse" when Columbia was under construction; the older starship appeared to be built from the inside out, like any other conventional spacecraft. The Enterprise as seen in STXI appears to have been built the same way. U.P. is the singular exception to the rule, but doesn't provide much useful data because 1) we never see the "hollow hull" ship entering service as an active vessel and 2) it is a Voyager episode after all.

I'm looking at Columbia now and it look exactly the same.
Hull and Frame work and the saucer looks like it's little to nothing on the inside even while hull is going in place. (of course you know the real reason why they do this)

The Abramsprise is far too complete for me to make a similar evaluation.

Actually, BOBW makes perfect sense when you consider the delay between outer and inner hull penetration. If you consider that the sections in danger of being decompressed would be part of a single pressure vessel, then the computer's announcement would be mainly a warning for damage control teams trying to figure out where to direct their efforts.

If it was part of single pressure vessel then the breach would have been catastrophic and the windows still don't show us any differentiation in of the hulls. Also since Ten Forward is an emergency shelter I have to assume because of the necessities of a shelter to be an isolated independent environment that it is indeed and example of numerous pressure hulls in particular one with it's own extended rededicated life support. It's hard to say how this works. Trek has given us some rather ambigous and contradicting information. Should not every pressure hull have it's own life support system and how do we fit these pressure hulls withing the hull witout same major gaps appearing in the floor plans?

That's to be expected in a spacecraft. Ships like the Dragon C1 and the shuttle have huge equipment bays that contain APUs, batteries, coolant lines, electrical conduits, etc. It's certainly safer to have a plasma conduit running through empty hull spaces than through habitable compartments, isn't it? But unlike the shuttle, all of these components would be installed in such a way that all of their working components would be accessible through the Jeffries tube crawlspaces.

But starships are just the opposite. The MSD in engineering shows every bit of space through the middle cross-section is filled with decks.

Agreed with the deck layout thing, and if starships are built anything like REAL spacecraft, there wouldn't be a lot of empty space between the outer and inner hulls, the gaps will inevitably be filled by various goodies. There is already a ridiculous number of components even MODERN spacecraft have to squeeze into their equipment bays, and starships have to also add things like internal sensors, emergency forcefields, structural integrity fields, replicator waveguides, ODN conduits, plasma conduits, emergency bulkhead passthroughs, and so much more.

So which is it? Are starships nearly 100% habitable in a single pressure hull? Or are they numerous pressure hulls with a significant fraction non habitable? (less than 20 %)

Not neccesarrily. The warp core could be encased in a single section that happens to inhabit the center of the ship. It's also possible that the term "warp core" actually refers to the pressurized section in which the matter/antimatter reaction chamber sits, and "eject the core!" is just an inaccurate colloquialism.

That could be the inner hull the Computer was refering to rather than something laying against the inside of the outter hull....

 

[UFO]

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

Its harder in terms of predicability and planned avoidance.

I want preface the following comments with the warning that I have not yet had time to reread the books we are referring to so I can’t be too hard and fast.

Yes O’Neill Colonies have to be built but there are a number of possible boot strapping precursors to even fairly modest such colonies. But yes they are expensive however when you consider the increased wealth available in space (energy and materials) combined with automation etc, they would no longer look so "excessive".

Certainly the costs to orbit are very important and I accept that the space shuttle in particular was sadly a major let down in that regard but it was something of a low budget compromise that had to be more conservative due to the need to carry passengers and be mostly reusable. Freight only systems with lessons learnt from Shuttle and with a decent budget should be more efficient. The laser launch system I mentioned earlier offers the ability to put 90% of the capsules gross weight into orbit and the only energy expended is electricity (quite a lot of electricity admittedly but SPSs (solar power satellites) should bring that cost down).

With respect to the difference in difficulty of getting a starship into orbit and a submarine into water, the latter will always be easier (consumes less energy).

Your worker in Chicago/coal mine in Canada analogy doesn’t take the differences in scale of space environments, nor the fact that mining there will be largely automated or via remote control, into account. The techniques are also likely different. Moving thousands of kilometres is also easier and faster in space (as you know).

I may not have thought excessively about the amount of biomass to be put into an O'Neill colony in order to develop a viable ecology but quite a few people have, and I should think most of the actual bulk will probably come from "moon waste". Earth is clearly not the only source of water etc. Once again boot-strapping will form part of the equation I suspect. As I have written, the initial advantage of industrialising space is the wealth it will provide to Earth and the consequent population stabilisation. The number of colonies will probably grow at a fairly modest rate at first in order to support that industry and similar projects.

Right, but that's where [then moon] the first colony would actually develop. Since that's the first and only place where anyone actually NEEDS to be, …

Actually I should think the goal would be to only need a handful of people on the moon to sort our problems. Bulldozers would be driven from space and again most things would be automated where possible. The moon is just a source of materials. You wouldn’t wont to make anything there. The gravity is wrong, solar power is only available half the time and your products have to be launched into space at a cost in rockets and fuel which is just a waste.

… the fact is the first permanent communities in space would form wherever the work is being done

Exactly. The work [building solar power satellites for a start] is being done in space, perhaps in small "construction shacks" for a start, later in O’Neil colonies as production (and revenue) takes off, not on a planet or moon.

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.

Your point? Its always been my point.

I think I have covered why we send the ores to space and you can’t "just as easily process them on the moon and then ship the finished products directly to Earth", even if they were intended for Earth, which they aren’t. The initial and continuing products are SPSs remember? Those will be used in space.

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.

To turn their "base" into a third class O’Neill colony while spending almost as much time and energy doing so perhaps?

Boot strapping our way to the first O’Neill colony addresses you economic concerns I believe. I hardly think a fictitious work (DS9) written by people who themselves are not open to the idea of space colonies constitutes evidence in favour of your viewpoint.

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

Because if doesn’t matter too much where space cities/towns are located. They can, if necessary, move about, albeit slowly. You go where the resources are if that is appropriate. I may have overstated when I said "whole city", but certainly a decent sized town that would still be in contact with the rest of civilisation no matter where in the solar system it was. It’s a new way of looking at things I agree, but it is the likely future in my view. Whether and to what extent ST technology might change that is another matter, but the culture will probably be established by then anyway.

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.

I’m afraid it might take me a while to check into who was doing the rationalising. I think the list of assumptions you mentioned are the ones I thought likely. Hopefully they were based on my memory of what I read as well as common sense.

The "blow up" O’Neill colony is probably not that expensive and from there the fit out might be similar to a moon base cost-wise. The result of course would be much better and more "roomy".

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.

Whatever size colonies are built in space will be justified by the economic requirements at the time. After a while, processing materials, building SPSs and other products would easily justify a town of at least 10,000 people after a few years particularly when you subtract the cost of workers going back and forward to Earth. I have also accommodated your "ass-backwards" concerns above. Yes, the hydro-electric dam analogy isn’t bad is it, since the point of ultimately building O’Neill colonies is to supply power to at least hundreds of millions of people on Earth.

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.

Not sure about O’Neill but Heppenheimer went into that in detail explaining how micro course corrections were effected at launch and how, even if the targeting is a bit off, the peculiar Earth/Moon gravity arrangement at L2 actually corrects minor errors. I’m sure you recall the large catchers used to collect the payloads? I don’t imagine they have to be moving too fast so long as they get there.

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.

I'm sure the rockets would be reused but its still an unnecessary expense especially given the undesirability of moon manufacture in the first place.

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

Oh I see. So phasers use nine volt batteries?

You will forgive me for not accepting you view that O’Neill and others were just trying to "WILL a space industry into existence". Thumbing through his book seems to indicate that he also had in mind a boot strapping approach. He describes the use of the external fuel tanks from the shuttle being used as a modular habitat for early space manufacturing (page 117 in my Corgi addition). I also feel your view of automation in space is "a little" pessimistic particularly when remote control assistance is taken into account and the methods available for asteroid mining may to be more amenable to automation it seems to me, although I admit to being no expert.

I can appreciate and have some sympathy if you objected to what you may have taken to be an "idealistic" tone in these books, but I haven’t found any support for your main criticisms yet. Indeed the reverse seems the case. I, like you, thought the O’Neill colonies would be built first up, but while they probably get most of the publicity, that doesn’t seem to be the case so far.

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

If ships were build in enclosed space docks, there would be no such risk. The people who write these films seem to havea limited view of how to use space.

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

Didn’t doors close when Kahn first decoyed the Enterprise and attached at close range?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

[
Then since pretty much everyone in this thread has already stipulated that the reactor(s) would not be fueled or activated--or possibly even INSTALLED--until the ship was in orbit, I don't see your point.

That's fine but like I said none of the systems can be tested off of warp plasma until then.

Theoretically, none of those systems would even be INSTALLED until then. But they will have been tested at the factory where they were actually manufactured for quality control purposes; testing them again on the ship is a matter of integration and fine-tuning and is probably part of the shakedown process.

We are clearly see a new construction of a Galaxy class Saucer. Context isn't particular important either. We see frame work, and Hull and nothing between the hull.

to be sure, we see nothing BELOW the hull. This is why context is important: we don't know if they're building the entire ship all in one shot, or if they're building the upper portion of the saucer's structure with the intention of mating it to a lower section and sandwiching the pressure vessel in between. OTOH, it may not even be an actual vessel; it's might actually be one of these, an engineering reference article used by engineers to see how new systems and components fit into the design.

We see something similar with the Enterprise in the Orbital City with the bottom of the Saucer seemingly or nearly complete and the top only in frame and the entire secondary hull complete.

First, the bottom of the saucer is ALSO incomplete so it appears only the outer structure along exterior rim has been completed. Second, we never do see what's INSIDE that framework, and there's zero reason to assume it's just an empty shell that will be filled with components later.

I'm looking at Columbia now and it look exactly the same.
Hull and Frame work and the saucer looks like it's little to nothing on the inside even while hull is going in place.

There's actually quite a bit inside there. The production crew apparently took NX-01's original lightwave model and modified it, removing some external hull plating and adding some detail features inside so that the "guts" of the ship are exposed to space. It was a smarter way of representing "ship under construction" while still making the outline of the ship recognizable to the viewer.

The Abramsprise is far too complete for me to make a similar evaluation.

For one thing, it's where it is INCOMPLETE that is telling. Sections of the outer hull are still waiting to be attached and, like Columbia, we see internal surfaces and components that are probably part of the pressure hull. Moreover, there's also the original trailer to consider, where we got some pretty good views of the Enterprise under construction; assuming they used the same model for the previews (they probably did) then that tells us that the interior was filled out first with outer plating added only to completed sections.

If it was part of single pressure vessel then the breach would have been catastrophic and the windows still don't show us any differentiation in of the hulls.

The first statement assumes too much, between emergency forcefields AND emergency bulkheads both being canonically established. And in the second case, I just showed you several examples of REAL spacecraft with their pressure vessels exposed. You will note that every one of those spacecraft have windows, and you will note there is a similar lack of overt differentiation. This is because the outer casing of the spacecraft is designed to protect the pressure vessel right up to the frames of the windows and is a non-continuous structure; only the pressure vessel needs to have that kind of integrity.

Also since Ten Forward is an emergency shelter I have to assume because of the necessities of a shelter to be an isolated independent environment that it is indeed and example of numerous pressure hulls in particular one with it's own extended rededicated life support.

Possibly. The same has been said of sickbay from time to time so it could be the same principle at work.

Should not every pressure hull have it's own life support system and how do we fit these pressure hulls withing the hull witout same major gaps appearing in the floor plans?

Why would there be gaps on the floor plans? The floor plans are only meant to tell you where you can walk and where you can't, they're not intended to give you a detailed x-ray view of the ship's structural configuration.

But starships are just the opposite. The MSD in engineering shows every bit of space through the middle cross-section is filled with decks.

Since the MSDs don't show anything ON those decks, this doesn't matter much. Again, they're meant as systems diagrams, not structural ones. More importantly, they're meant to represent those systems in a way that is least confusing to the VIEWER.

Agreed with the deck layout thing, and if starships are built anything like REAL spacecraft, there wouldn't be a lot of empty space between the outer and inner hulls, the gaps will inevitably be filled by various goodies. There is already a ridiculous number of components even MODERN spacecraft have to squeeze into their equipment bays, and starships have to also add things like internal sensors, emergency forcefields, structural integrity fields, replicator waveguides, ODN conduits, plasma conduits, emergency bulkhead passthroughs, and so much more.

So which is it? Are starships nearly 100% habitable in a single pressure hull? Or are they numerous pressure hulls with a significant fraction non habitable? (less than 20 %)

Probably the latter, for practicality sake. But the various compartments are likely to be flush with one another to occupy as much space as possible while leaving as much space for external components as needed. Everything inside the ship is built-to-fit.

Not neccesarrily. The warp core could be encased in a single section that happens to inhabit the center of the ship. It's also possible that the term "warp core" actually refers to the pressurized section in which the matter/antimatter reaction chamber sits, and "eject the core!" is just an inaccurate colloquialism.

That could be the inner hull the Computer was refering to rather than something laying against the inside of the outter hull....

Unlikely, since the computer didn't mention decompression danger UNTIL the penetration of the inner hull.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

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

Its harder in terms of predicability and planned avoidance.

Sunrise and sunset are predictable. Rain storms--and weather patterns of all type--are predictable even in modern times. UNLIKE space hazards, there's no particular need to avoid them if you're building something robust enough that none of those things will hurt it.

Yes O’Neill Colonies have to be built but there are a number of possible boot strapping precursors to even fairly modest such colonies. But yes they are expensive however when you consider the increased wealth available in space (energy and materials) combined with automation etc, they would no longer look so "excessive".

That wealth has to be acquired first before it can be spent. This is why O'Neill cylinders are not a "bootstrapping" proposition, they're a metropolitan development for a population that has already been living in space, has been THRIVING in space, and now want to pay themselves a dividend from their hard work.

Your worker in Chicago/coal mine in Canada analogy doesn’t take the differences in scale of space environments

Oh, but it DOES. The coal mine in Canada could be fifty to a hundred kilometers from Chicago. In astronomical distances, that's the distance an O'Neill cylinder might be placed from an asteroid its population was in the process of mining. OTOH, the distance between an O'Neill Cylinder and the moon's surface is going to be farther still, and even less accessible without vehicular transportation.

In either case, the point is they are BEYOND WALKING DISTANCE.

I may not have thought excessively about the amount of biomass to be put into an O'Neill colony in order to develop a viable ecology but quite a few people have, and I should think most of the actual bulk will probably come from "moon waste"

That, again, is not a viable option until SEVERAL generations of colonists have already been living on the moon.

Right, but that's where [then moon] the first colony would actually develop. Since that's the first and only place where anyone actually NEEDS to be, …

Actually I should think the goal would be to only need a handful of people on the moon to sort our problems. Bulldozers would be driven from space and again most things would be automated where possible. The moon is just a source of materials.

Colonies are always setup as close as possible to a viable source of materials. Not to export them, but to EXPLOIT them. The colony is going to need a cheap source of building materials, fuel, and especially water. Since the only place it can get them is on the moon or a near Earth asteroid, then the colony will be setup in a location conveniently close to these things.

On the flip side: the first colonial mission that attempts to mine the moon STRICTLY through teleoperated robots is going to be the first colonial mission that discovers their entire mining operation being taken over by the people who had the balls to go there in person. A territorial claim is a lot easier to stake when you're physically standing on the territory you're declaring.

Exactly. The work [building solar power satellites for a start] is being done in space, perhaps in small "construction shacks" for a start, later in O’Neil colonies as production (and revenue) takes off, not on a planet or moon.

Except the satelites are sitll being BUILT on the moon and only ASSEMBLED in orbit. There's no advantage to setting up a second industrial site when the first will, by that point, already be inhabitted and established and the only extra infrastructure you have to setup is getting a ship in orbit to help mate the completed modules together.

I'm basically saying an O'Neil cylinder isn't going to be a colony of Earthlings. It's going to be a colony of Lunarians.

I think I have covered why we send the ores to space and you can’t "just as easily process them on the moon and then ship the finished products directly to Earth"

I must have missed that post, because as far as I can tell you've suggested no compelling reason why construction ON THE MOON is in any way infeasible. It is potentially more expensive than building in orbit, but that potential depends entirely on the marginal costs incurred from setting up that orbital infrastructure in the first place.

The initial and continuing products are SPSs remember?

In Gerald O'Niell's very specific scenario, yes. The problem is, not everyone is going to go to the moon for that specific reason. The much bigger problem is building solar power satellites doesn't require the colonization of the moon in the first place.

To turn their "base" into a third class O’Neill colony while spending almost as much time and energy doing so perhaps?

And yet they could build a comfortable habitat on or beneath the moon's surface in one tenth the time and for one tenth the energy, AND use those resources for themselves without the expense of importing them from the moon.

I hardly think a fictitious work (DS9) written by people who themselves are not open to the idea of space colonies constitutes evidence in favour of your viewpoint.

Heppenheimer and O'Neill's works are ALSO fictitious. But unlike DS9, they didn't bother to explore the implications of human nature, human conflict, or most importantly human discord.

Because humanity's colonization of space is EXTREMELY unlikely to be the work of a unified global entity with the best interests of mankind at heart, and it has to be considered that not all of the colonies will be established at the same time for the same reason by the same people. If that first colony is O'Neill's orbital society mining the moon by teleoperated robots, they will probably find themselves in a very bad position when the third, fifth, and eleventh colonies decide to walk over to their mining centers, reprogram the robots and keep all those resources for themselves. In the BEST case scenario, the orbitals are screwed over and wind up sending complaints to their sponsor country who them lodges a few impotent complaints. Worst case scenario, this results in a war, which would be VERY bad for the orbitals on account of the fact that space stations, unlike moons, are very fragile things.

The "blow up" O’Neill colony is probably not that expensive and from there the fit out might be similar to a moon base cost-wise.

Not if you want to produce full gravity, it aint. A structure that size with full radiation shielding and habitation would be immense, difficult to build, and harder to maintain.

A lunar settlement of similar size could be established by digging underground and lining the cavern with lunar cement, OR, it could be established in one of the sub-surface lava tubes in the lowlands (some of which are estimated as being several miles long and hundreds of meters in diameter). The ONLY disadvantage of such a settlement is the low gravity. But that's only a disadvantage for a population that has any intention of returning to Earth. Not because prolonged low gravity can make that trip impossible (it would take a couple of years for that to happen) but because the CHILDREN of those colonists would be adapted to lunar gravity and would never be able to visit Earth.

But that's a self-correcting problem. Colonies with low population growth tend to be unviable.

Whatever size colonies are built in space will be justified by the economic requirements at the time. After a while, processing materials, building SPSs and other products would easily justify a town of at least 10,000 people after a few years

Only of the solar power satellites produce an equivalent amount of wealth for the community. In this case, the satellites are beaming power to Earth, and the space colonies do not even INDIRECTLY reap the benefits of their construction. They simply get paid to do a job and then they spend that money on survival; economically, it might as well be a lunar Toyota factory.

SPS construction isn't going to be a major part of the colonial economy UNLESS they build a few of them for themselves. Otherwise, the major industries for the colonies will be agriculture, spaceship construction, habitat construction, material commodities--particularly aluminum and iron, which can be used for rocket fuel--and the collection of lunar water, which is going to be extremely valuable for all of the above. A somewhat larger portion of the colonists' energies are going to be expended in the collection and cultivation of resources for their OWN use than will be on resources for EARTH'S use; water in particular is a latchkey industry for agriculture and for rocket fuel, for example, and the control of water resources WOULD become a source of wealth, since water is something very much in demand in the space colonies.

Ultimately, even your O'Neil colony would come to depend in the water extraction facilities on the moon, unless it wants to pay the much higher price to import water from Earth. Even in the heyday of solar power satellites, though, the O'Neil colonists would not be able to profit directly from the extraction of natural resources, only by acting as a middleman between the lunar workers and Earth consumers. When you once again introduce competition and conflict to this situation, the orbitals situation is precious at best: almost everything they need to survive is on the moon, and the only means they have of obtaining it is cash flow from Earth.

Yes, the hydro-electric dam analogy isn’t bad is it, since the point of ultimately building O’Neill colonies is to supply power to at least hundreds of millions of people on Earth.

You do realize the Hoover Dam was built to serve the needs of the southwest United States, right? Not, say, Spain or the British Empire? It wasn't built by the Dutch East India company either.

The Hoover Dam was built by the people who arrived in north America as colonists; it was built for their own use, using their own money. And that's what I meant earlier when I said that an O'Neill cylinder, if it were to be built at all, would be built by the colonists from their own wealth in accordance with their own priorities. That kind of construction requires a present and active civilization already in place to finance and drive the construction effort; it isn't the kind of thing you would "bootstrap" just because your workers don't want to live in reduced gravity.

I’m sure you recall the large catchers used to collect the payloads?

I do. I also recall the relative velocity was something like a "mere hundred meters per second." I think that like space elevators and launch loops, it's a concept with a lot of fundamental problems that most people--Heppenheimer included--ignore on the assumption that someone, somewhere, will figure out how to solve later.

I'm sure the rockets would be reused but its still an unnecessary expense especially given the undesirability of moon manufacture in the first place.

What exactly IS the undesirability of moon manufacture?

Oh I see. So phasers use nine volt batteries?

Or the 23rd century equivalent. That is, a portable power cell that can fit into a pocket but is also cheap enough that civilians are able to obtain one.

You will forgive me for not accepting you view that O’Neill and others were just trying to "WILL a space industry into existence"

HE wasn't trying to, he was basically saying that SOMEONE ELSE would. It's not really his fault, because there's a whole school of thought among the NASA/Spaceflight community that still thinks this way. Lately they have come into very bitter conflict with the NewSpace faction, for whom the "bootstrap" approach doesn't involve waiting around for someone to invent a new pair of high tech boots.

I also feel your view of automation in space is "a little" pessimistic particularly when remote control assistance is taken into account and the methods available for asteroid mining may to be more amenable to automation it seems to me, although I admit to being no expert.

It's not that my view is pessimistic. It's that the proponents of teleoperated mining are extremely optimistic. Robotic capability isn't going to eliminate the need to build large settlements. It will merely empower the settlers so that the same number of people can do ten times as much work. Which would be a huge thing in and of itself, UNTIL you consider that everything in space is ten times as expensive as it is on Earth, that the cost of shipping payloads to the moon is hundreds of times greater than the cost of shipping payloads across the Atlantic, and the needs of a space colony--lunar surface or otherwise--are far more severe than those of a terrestrial settlement that can at least rough it on local resources if their supplies run out.

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

If ships were build in enclosed space docks, there would be no such risk. The people who write these films seem to havea limited view of how to use space.

No, just a limited view of how to use their own props.

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

Didn’t doors close when Kahn first decoyed the Enterprise and attached at close range?

Just the one door that dropped in the engine room, although there was that set of double doors in the engine room that we also saw in TMP.

But the whole "airtight compartment" thing really shows up in TUC. Once on Enterprise when they find Burke and Samuel lying dead in the corridor, and again when the Excelsior gets hit by a torpedo and two crewmen are seen running down a hallway as the compartment decompresses behind them.

 

[UFO]

Its harder in terms of predicability and planned avoidance.

I wasn’t thinking of the more mundane variations of planetary environments, just the unpredictable ones. What hazards are you worried about in space that aren’t either predictable or avoidable?

By "boot strapping precursors" I am obviously not referring to O’Neill colonies themselves. They are the things you boot strap to. Nor is it correct to view them as some sort of luxury. Compared to the revenue derived from power supply they are probably a relatively minor expense. Though obviously not something to build right off the bat and it doesn’t look like anyone is suggesting that.

Oh, but it DOES. The coal mine in Canada could be fifty to a hundred kilometers from Chicago. In astronomical distances, that's the distance an O'Neill cylinder might be placed from an asteroid its population was in the process of mining. OTOH, the distance between an O'Neill Cylinder and the moon's surface is going to be farther still, and even less accessible without vehicular transportation.

By the time O’Neill colonies are built you might only have one or two people left on the moon (if that) for emergencies. Everything else would be done remotely or automatically. You don’t have to transport workers backwards and forwards. The moon operation mainly consists of scraping up material from the surface and loading it into buckets that are then cycled through the mass driver. Its not rocket science!

That, again, is not a viable option until SEVERAL generations of colonists have already been living on the moon.

Its too dangerous to ask why you would assume that. You might answer me.

Colonies are always setup as close as possible to a viable source of materials. Not to export them, but to EXPLOIT them. The colony is going to need a cheap source of building materials, fuel, and especially water. Since the only place it can get them is on the moon or a near Earth asteroid, then the colony will be setup in a location conveniently close to these things.

We always have so we always will eh? Fuel comes for the sun, which is a lot more accessible at L2 than on the moon. The mass driver provides a continuous stream of raw materials. It might take a couple of weeks or months for the first load to arrive but that doesn’t matter.

On the flip side: the first colonial mission that attempts to mine the moon STRICTLY through teleoperated robots is going to be the first colonial mission that discovers their entire mining operation being taken over by the people who had the balls to go there in person. A territorial claim is a lot easier to stake when you're physically standing on the territory you're declaring.

Well I guess thats as close as you will come to admitting the problems aren’t practical. By the way, no one would go to the moon longer than it takes to set up a mass driver.

Except the satelites are sitll being BUILT on the moon and only ASSEMBLED in orbit. There's no advantage to setting up a second industrial site when the first will, by that point, already be inhabitted and established and the only extra infrastructure you have to setup is getting a ship in orbit to help mate the completed modules together.

Nope. The only manufacturing site is in space. There is no need for anything like that on the moon. Its just a mine. Why is that so hard to understand?

I'm basically saying an O'Neil cylinder isn't going to be a colony of Earthlings. It's going to be a colony of Lunarians.

Now you are just baiting me.

In Gerald O'Niell's very specific scenario, yes. The problem is, not everyone is going to go to the moon for that specific reason. The much bigger problem is building solar power satellites doesn't require the colonisation of the moon in the first place.

Of course not, just a mining base, which is what I have being saying. Building them on Earth and having to boost them to high orbit would be a colossal expense. Might as well use nuclear power instead. Building SPSs was the facilitating reason for getting industry into space. There won’t be much competition for colonising the moon (assuming they want to) for quite some time, as history has shown, sadly.

Heppenheimer and O'Neill's works are ALSO fictitious. But unlike DS9, they didn't bother to explore the implications of human nature, human conflict, or most importantly human discord.

They aren’t fictitious (except for one letter form a colonist used to indicate how people might live there), they are speculative. I see no point in going into your political machinations. Such problems will be sorted out or we might as well not bother going into space at all. It is stupid to start a war with your neighbours in space. No one can hear you scream! I doubt it will be allowed to become the Wild West you prefer to envisage. Besides there are such things as automated defences. Not that anyone would be silly enough to test them.

Not if you want to produce full gravity, it aint. A structure that size with full radiation shielding and habitation would be immense, difficult to build, and harder to maintain.

I have already explained how they are built and how big they are. They seem relatively easy to build (that’s there main advantage) and should require little maintenance, except for docking areas etc and internally of course.

As for economics, if your have to go into and out of gravity wells all the time, then yes, space travel can be very expensive. O’Neill colonies don’t have much gravity of course, so its not a problem. Water can also be found elsewhere in the solar system.

You do realize the Hoover Dam was built to serve the needs of the southwest United States, right? Not, say, Spain or the British Empire? It wasn't built by the Dutch East India company either.

And SPSs will be built to supply the needs of Earth not Jupiter.

I do. I also recall the relative velocity was something like a "mere hundred meters per second." I think that like space elevators and launch loops, it's a concept with a lot of fundamental problems that most people--Heppenheimer included--ignore on the assumption that someone, somewhere, will figure out how to solve later.

Well when such things are finally built you will be able to say "I told you so!".

HE wasn't trying to, he was basically saying that SOMEONE ELSE would. It's not really his fault, because there's a whole school of thought among the NASA/Spaceflight community that still thinks this way. Lately they have come into very bitter conflict with the NewSpace faction, for whom the "bootstrap" approach doesn't involve waiting around for someone to invent a new pair of high tech boots.

I fail to see what the problem is. O’Neill did more than his share of actually "doing things". I am surprised you would imply otherwise. It seems unfairly disrespectful. He is not allowed to have a vision as well?

 

[Saquist]

Theoretically, none of those systems would even be INSTALLED until then. But they will have been tested at the factory where they were actually manufactured for quality control purposes; testing them again on the ship is a matter of integration and fine-tuning and is probably part of the shakedown process.

From my own experience with R&D in system engineering it's almost always prudent to test an installed part before the total system is completed because it reveals errors in the installation process. Our computers and hardware were tested in development in Houston for stressing for up to months straight and then once the those individual systems were confirmed we assembled them and tested each system in connection with one another then and only then...did we ship the entire system to Oman for deployment where it under went Trials and testing which was monitored hear in Houston for a live feed.

Even with CAD showing us precision (unlike standard drafting) there were still modifications to be made for efficiency however small with the installation because we wanted the design to be more serviceable and accessible or we wanted the installation to go smoother.

Of course this is development project but I still go back to one part that matches whether in mass production or R&D. That's quality control and that's a continous process through out both sorts of projects.

to be sure, we see nothing BELOW the hull. This is why context is important: we don't know if they're building the entire ship all in one shot, or if they're building the upper portion of the saucer's structure with the intention of mating it to a lower section and sandwiching the pressure vessel in between.

I found a clear picture that confirms what you say. We don't see the bottom of the saucer at all. The only thing not on the saucer is the main decks 1-3 for the shuttle bay and main bridge.

OTOH, it may not even be an actual vessel; it's might actually be one of these, an engineering reference article used by engineers to see how new systems and components fit into the design.

But that's speculation.
The only thing I got from that episode is that apparently there is a Orbital city around Utopia Planita...

There's actually quite a bit inside there. The production crew apparently took NX-01's original lightwave model and modified it, removing some external hull plating and adding some detail features inside so that the "guts" of the ship are exposed to space. It was a smarter way of representing "ship under construction" while still making the outline of the ship recognizable to the viewer.

I don't see nothing but a thruster assembly and some minor guts of the deflector. In fact for that much of the hull in place for the saucer there appears to be nothing in the saucer at all and obviously a large portion of the bottom is implace for hull.

For one thing, it's where it is INCOMPLETE that is telling. Sections of the outer hull are still waiting to be attached and, like Columbia, we see internal surfaces and components that are probably part of the pressure hull.

I don't see anything...where are you looking?



The first statement assumes too much, between emergency forcefields AND emergency bulkheads both being canonically established. And in the second case, I just showed you several examples of REAL spacecraft with their pressure vessels exposed.

You will note that every one of those spacecraft have windows, and you will note there is a similar lack of overt differentiation. This is because the outer casing of the spacecraft is designed to protect the pressure vessel right up to the frames of the windows and is a non-continuous structure; only the pressure vessel needs to have that kind of integrity.

Yes, I know but that's not the point it's that the winows are SO unsubstantial in thickness for their to be two hulls there, less than 3 feet, and their stemless. Even the shuttle windows have layers visible in the rim edges. On Voyager and Enterprise the glass might as well be floating.

Possibly. The same has been said of sickbay from time to time so it could be the same principle at work.

But that does't appear to be so from the construction images. It seems that large parts of the hull and frame work are finished or nearly finished before even the stuctures beneath are. SO...if that's the case then these aren't single pressure hulls and it could make possible that the a whole pressure hull is applied in pieces (which I don't like).

Why would there be gaps on the floor plans? The floor plans are only meant to tell you where you can walk and where you can't, they're not intended to give you a detailed x-ray view of the ship's structural configuration.

Doesn't matter a good floor plan will always tell you where unused space is or NON living space. Many people believe that you can get a proper estimate of a houses square footage just by calculating the entire perimeter. But their wrong...Houses have 6 inch outer wall and 4 inch inner walls which will add somewhere near 20 and square feet. Just about every commerical apartment plan I've seen is just as proper. I can't believe a schematic on a Starship would be that vague...if so then that's the TV factor invovled and it doesn't make sense.

Since the MSDs don't show anything ON those decks, this doesn't matter much. Again, they're meant as systems diagrams, not structural ones. More importantly, they're meant to represent those systems in a way that is least confusing to the VIEWER.

The simplicity of the diagram is so stupid for the Galaxy. It go better as MSD's go when the Defiant and Voyager came around.

Probably the latter, for practicality sake. But the various compartments are likely to be flush with one another to occupy as much space as possible while leaving as much space for external components as needed. Everything inside the ship is built-to-fit.

I would like to believe that but look at the deck layouts for Constitution Refit...or even the original...
There is something wrong with how the movies potray those emergency doors "FALLING" in place from the ceiling. This ship is made of DECKS, the doors should be sliding horizontal. This is a factor because then how big really is each of the pressure hulls. Surely not a deck high.

That could be the inner hull the Computer was refering to rather than something laying against the inside of the outter hull....

Unlikely, since the computer didn't mention decompression danger UNTIL the penetration of the inner hull.[/quote]

But decompression of what? It was too general.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Its harder in terms of predicability and planned avoidance.

I wasn’t thinking of the more mundane variations of planetary environments, just the unpredictable ones. What hazards are you worried about in space that aren’t either predictable or avoidable?

In order of frequency and danger level:
Solar flares/CMEs.
Micrometeoroids.
Navigational accidents.
Poorly understood spatial phenomena
Q

By "boot strapping precursors" I am obviously not referring to O’Neill colonies themselves. They are the things you boot strap to. Nor is it correct to view them as some sort of luxury.

Luxury is a relative term. Hell, indoor plumbing is a luxury to someone whose spent their entire life crapping in a hole in the ground.

Compared to the revenue derived from power supply they are probably a relatively minor expense.

That's a hell of an assumption right there. Exactly how much revenue do you think the COLONISTS are going to gain from solar power satellites? Especially considering that they didn't invest any of their own capital in their construction and therefore won't be able to claim ownership of them if and when they become operational?

Is General Electric really going to shell out the cash for an O'Neill cylinder for the colonists, or will it expect them to make due with Sundancers and BA-330s?

By the time O’Neill colonies are built you might only have one or two people left on the moon (if that) for emergencies.

Actually, it would just the opposite: by the time the O'Neill colonies are built there would be AT LEAST one major city and several smaller settlements on the moon's surface. Primarily because, once again, the primary source of the colonists' wealth will be on the surface of the moon itself, and it is from THOSE activities that the revenues for orbital construction will be obtained.

Everything else would be done remotely or automatically.

We've known how to run teleoperated machinery from Earth since the 1960s. If it were possible to do all of that automatically or remotely we wouldn't NEED colonists in the first place, they could just send everyone home and do it all from Earth.

We always have so we always will eh?

Yes. There's a REASON for that, you know.

Fuel comes for the sun, which is a lot more accessible at L2 than on the moon.

Rocket fuel doesn't, and isn't.

The mass driver provides a continuous stream of raw materials.

But only to a single location, and not anything you might be worried about crushing under 40+ gravities. In the end, it's just an additional, highly sophisticated solution to a relatively simple problem, but it's by no means the ONLY one, and for most purposes, it's not even the BEST one.

By the way, no one would go to the moon longer than it takes to set up a mass driver.

I believe you MEAN to say that the people who intend to use a mass driver would not go to the moon longer than it takes to set up a mass driver.

So what do you do about the people who DON'T intend to build one? Especially since those permanent lunar settlers would find themselves with a corner in the cheapest commodities for the orbital settlers?

Nope. The only manufacturing site is in space. There is no need for anything like that on the moon. Its just a mine. Why is that so hard to understand?

Gerard O'Neill described a path for space exploration using EXISTING technology as a basis. EXISTING technology uses metalworking and refinement techniques developed and perfected on Earth, all of which require the presence of GRAVITY.

If O'Neill was describing the creation of an entirely new branch of materials science just to figure out how to process ores in microgravity, he either left that part out of the book or he assumed that somebody at NASA had already figured that part out. Either way, once you figure out that the ores have to be processed in the same place they're mined (if only to avoid the expense of heaving several hundred tons of useless material into orbit along with the metals), it becomes obvious that pre-production part manufacture can take place in the same facilities with far better quality control than at the orbital facility. And if you're already making the parts, you might as well save them the time by building the sub-assemblies they will have to put together in the end run.

The only reason to do any of the assembly in orbit is the use of a mass driver makes completed assemblies hard to launch. If you're NOT using a mass driver, you don't need the orbital facility at all.

Now you are just baiting me.

You got something against lunarians, groundhog?

Of course not, just a mining base, which is what I have being saying. Building them on Earth and having to boost them to high orbit would be a colossal expense.

So would an O'Neill cylinder, but you would have me believe the solar power satellites would make that colony more than affordable. How could you POSSIBLY believe those same satellites wouldn't do the same for a terrestrial commercial launch industry, when ordinary communication satellites already have?

Supply and demand, UFO. The demand for medium- and heavy-lift rockets would go through the roof if somebody out there got serious about orbiting solar power. ULA, SpaceX and EAS would have a collective orgasm if that were to happen.

And this is the part that's gonna really piss you off: the entire fictional scenario in "High Frontier" is basically predicated on the promised low cost of payloads to orbit that the shuttle was supposed to deliver (around $250/kg). Only at that low cost does it become economical to use lunar resources for the construction of solar power satellites; ON THE OTHER HAND, at that low price it also becomes economical to simply launch them from Earth in the first place without the time and expense of trying to colonize orbital space, and with results materializing much faster and with fewer lives at risk.

Building SPSs was the facilitating reason for getting industry into space.

For Gerard K. O'Neill, yes. But not everyone in the world is Gerard K. O'Neill, especially those who make policies for their countries/space programs/corporations/families.

There won’t be much competition for colonising the moon (assuming they want to) for quite some time

Unless somebody out there has the foresight to tug a small comet into Earth orbit to supply everyone's water and fuel, YES THERE WILL.

They aren’t fictitious

Yes they are. In that, much like Star Trek, they describe a possible future based a handful of starting assumptions. One of those assumptions was that the space shuttle would turn out to be exactly what NASA claimed it would be; if it had, we could at least describe it as "realistic fiction," but in hindsight it's not even that much.

It is stupid to start a war with your neighbours in space.

It's stupid to start a war with your neighbors ON EARTH and yet people still do it.

Water can also be found elsewhere in the solar system.

But not elsewhere in the EARTH system, and in terms of energy required to reach those other water sources (about 2.5km/s just to reach Earth Escape Velocity) there's no advantage over getting those supplies from the moon.

More importantly, the INITIAL colonies are going to need those supplies in order to survive, and they won't have the luxury of sending a ship way out into the asteroid belt looking for a hydrated chondrite they can break down for water. They'll have to make due with what they have right in front of them, and the only place they can do that is on the moon's surface.

Which means that for the first fifty or so years of colonization, EVERYONE is going to depend on the water resources of the moon or whatever can be cheaply exported from Earth. Supply and demand, once again: whoever controls those ice fields will end up controlling most of the colonists' wealth.

And SPSs will be built to supply the needs of Earth not Jupiter.

In which case means the SPS will not be part of a colonizatoin effort, but an economic development effort on Earth. Even if they use off-world resources to build it, the SPSs will never be a source of revenue for the colonists themselves and they'd just as soon move back to Earth when the work is done.

HE wasn't trying to, he was basically saying that SOMEONE ELSE would. It's not really his fault, because there's a whole school of thought among the NASA/Spaceflight community that still thinks this way. Lately they have come into very bitter conflict with the NewSpace faction, for whom the "bootstrap" approach doesn't involve waiting around for someone to invent a new pair of high tech boots.

I fail to see what the problem is. O’Neill did more than his share of actually "doing things".

True as that is, the one thing O'Neill never did was convince anyone at NASA--or anyone in congress--to actually implement his ideas in the form of a realistic space policy.

This is where the divide comes with the NewSpace community; the traditionalists have a lot of beautiful lofty ideals that would be so wonderful to see but never actually go anywhere. The NewSpace crowd is more "Use what we have to build what we can and see what it can do." It's almost the exact opposite approach; and the really funny thing is, it WORKS.

He is not allowed to have a vision as well?

Having a vision does not make one a visionary.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

From my own experience with R&D in system engineering it's almost always prudent to test an installed part before the total system is completed because it reveals errors in the installation process.

And if the Enterprise was a prototype for a totally new class of starship, that just might be relevant.

Of course this is development project but I still go back to one part that matches whether in mass production or R&D. That's quality control and that's a continous process through out both sorts of projects.

It's clear from that statement you're fully aware that the process in mass production or end-product assembly is significantly different. But let's not loose sight of the fact that we're not talking about system integration, but the installation of physical components in a vehicle. NO vehicle of any kind ever has its engines installed early in the construction process; Naval vessels don't receive an engine until the hull and most of the superstructure is already completed, and the same is true of spacecraft, aircraft, rockets, cars, lawnmowers, buses, missiles, even trains. I don't see starships being the singular exception to this pattern... at least, not without a damn good reason.

But that's speculation.
The only thing I got from that episode is that apparently there is a Orbital city around Utopia Planita...

We've already been over the fact that orbits don't work that way and there's no such thing as "around Utopia Planitia," in this case because U.P. is not an equatorial location.

This orbital facility we see could be the shipyards, or it could be a boneyard for decrepit starships, or it could be simply be a set of co-orbital drydocks that just happen to be really close together on this particular day.

I don't see nothing but a thruster assembly and some minor guts of the deflector. In fact for that much of the hull in place for the saucer there appears to be nothing in the saucer at all and obviously a large portion of the bottom is implace for hull.

This is the case at the rim in particular, but the rest of the ship is filled out with some randomly applied greebles and braces designed to suggest internal construction. Abrams crew did a similar thing for the STXI trailer.

Yes, I know but that's not the point it's that the winows are SO unsubstantial in thickness for their to be two hulls there, less than 3 feet, and their stemless.

The windows on the Apollo capsule were just a couple of inches thick. The windows on the Dragon and the CST-100 are even thinner.

Maye you're not getting the fact that the outer hull is specifically designed with cutouts for the windows so it doesn't obstruct a view from the interior of the ship? It would be kinda pointless to install a window that doesn't show you anything except a bulkhead and some electrical conduits.

Even the shuttle windows have layers visible in the rim edges. On Voyager and Enterprise the glass might as well be floating.

That's because 1) the shuttle windows are about a foot thick and 2) the sets on Voyager and Enterprise didn't actually HAVE any glass in those windows.

But that does't appear to be so from the construction images. It seems that large parts of the hull and frame work are finished or nearly finished before even the stuctures beneath are. SO...if that's the case then these aren't single pressure hulls and it could make possible that the a whole pressure hull is applied in pieces (which I don't like).

If all else fails, it's worth remembering that the construction scenes from TNG and Voyager were meant to be recognizable to the average viewer, not informative to anyone who knows anything about spaceship (or anything else) construction.

Doesn't matter a good floor plan will always tell you where unused space is or NON living space.

Of course. It just won't tell what's IN it, and thus that's exactly what we see when Jean Luc Picard calls up a floorplan for Enterprise in "Rascals." We see a floorplan, no gaps, just empty space in locations where there is no "floor."

Many people believe that you can get a proper estimate of a houses square footage just by calculating the entire perimeter. But their wrong...Houses have 6 inch outer wall and 4 inch inner walls which will add somewhere near 20 and square feet...

That's occurred to me as well. But have you ever noticed that the floorplans of houses and apartments RARELY draw the outer and inner walls to scale?

Probably the latter, for practicality sake. But the various compartments are likely to be flush with one another to occupy as much space as possible while leaving as much space for external components as needed. Everything inside the ship is built-to-fit.

I would like to believe that but look at the deck layouts for Constitution Refit...or even the original...[/quote]
You mean the totally non-canon deck layouts produced afterwards by fans and artists loosely based on their interpretation of the ship? Yeah, I was just thinking about those. But none of the TMP diagrams have ever been completely consistent with the turbolift diagram from TMP, nor the TOS ones with all visual details depicted. If there's room for the artists to supply their own interpretation, there's room to envision that all of those internal layouts just conveniently "leave out" the pressure hull divisions for simplicity and ease of viewing.

There is something wrong with how the movies potray those emergency doors "FALLING" in place from the ceiling. This ship is made of DECKS, the doors should be sliding horizontal. This is a factor because then how big really is each of the pressure hulls. Surely not a deck high.

Have you considered the possibility that the individual corridors and rooms and might themselves by standalone pressurized compartments that COLLECTIVELY make up the "pressure hull"?

That could be the inner hull the Computer was refering to rather than something laying against the inside of the outter hull....

Unlikely, since the computer didn't mention decompression danger UNTIL the penetration of the inner hull.

But decompression of what?[/QUOTE]
Some portion of decks twenty three, twenty four, and twenty five. It was pretty specific at the time.

 

[Saquist]

From my own experience with R&D in system engineering it's almost always prudent to test an installed part before the total system is completed because it reveals errors in the installation process.

And if the Enterprise was a prototype for a totally new class of starship, that just might be relevant.

But it was. There were indications that Enterprise and Galaxy and the other ships were constructed together at the same time. Enterprise had direct attention and contact with it's designer, It was built in a space dock instead of dry dock, and it was still considered experimental along with the Yamato as they still refered to possible bugs between the two ships.

It's clear from that statement you're fully aware that the process in mass production or end-product assembly is significantly different. But let's not loose sight of the fact that we're not talking about system integration, but the installation of physical components in a vehicle. NO vehicle of any kind ever has its engines installed early in the construction process; Naval vessels don't receive an engine until the hull and most of the superstructure is already completed, and the same is true of spacecraft, aircraft, rockets, cars, lawnmowers, buses, missiles, even trains. I don't see starships being the singular exception to this pattern... at least, not without a damn good reason.

I would point out in Mass Production cars are built with the engines already installed are they not? Fitted on the chass and then the passenger cage lowered down around the assembly. It may vary from maker to maker but I've see Benz made that way.

We've already been over the fact that orbits don't work that way and there's no such thing as "around Utopia Planitia," in this case because U.P. is not an equatorial location.

Around Mars

This orbital facility we see could be the shipyards, or it could be a boneyard for decrepit starships, or it could be simply be a set of co-orbital drydocks that just happen to be really close together on this particular day.

Booby trap didn't show dry docks it showed an Orbital City. and the ship within was the Enterprise.

This is the case at the rim in particular, but the rest of the ship is filled out with some randomly applied greebles and braces designed to suggest internal construction. Abrams crew did a similar thing for the STXI trailer.

I see a place that could be a cooridor or it could be more framing but that's it.

The windows on the Apollo capsule were just a couple of inches thick. The windows on the Dragon and the CST-100 are even thinner.

Small ships small windows. That's not a problem.

Maye you're not getting the fact that the outer hull is specifically designed with cutouts for the windows so it doesn't obstruct a view from the interior of the ship? It would be kinda pointless to install a window that doesn't show you anything except a bulkhead and some electrical conduits.

That's not what I'm talking about....

That's because 1) the shuttle windows are about a foot thick and 2) the sets on Voyager and Enterprise didn't actually HAVE any glass in those windows.

LOL.
So don't take it literally....
I guess...

If all else fails, it's worth remembering that the construction scenes from TNG and Voyager were meant to be recognizable to the average viewer, not informative to anyone who knows anything about spaceship (or anything else) construction.

I realize that.

Of course. It just won't tell what's IN it, and thus that's exactly what we see when Jean Luc Picard calls up a floorplan for Enterprise in "Rascals." We see a floorplan, no gaps, just empty space in locations where there is no "floor."

Hmmm.
Touche'...you got me there
I would like to talk to the guy that made that plan...

That's occurred to me as well. But have you ever noticed that the floorplans of houses and apartments RARELY draw the outer and inner walls to scale?

Yeah and that's the funky nature of architectural design for houses. I don't know about skyscrapers but houses merely aren't created to any serious tolerances. I worked for a place called Siteworks and the Senior CAD man said "A 1/4 inch goes a long way" He said that because that's the standard or tolerances in residential design and by the time you're done with your house construction you could be more than a foot larger in either direction. (extreme cases) Several jobs I've interviewed have asked me if I could scale back my need for precisions. (It would have been hard after years of mechanical drafting)

You mean the totally non-canon deck layouts produced afterwards by fans and artists loosely based on their interpretation of the ship? Yeah, I was just thinking about those. But none of the TMP diagrams have ever been completely consistent with the turbolift diagram from TMP, nor the TOS ones with all visual details depicted. If there's room for the artists to supply their own interpretation, there's room to envision that all of those internal layouts just conveniently "leave out" the pressure hull divisions for simplicity and ease of viewing.

I didn't know the deck plans from the Motion Picture were...made by fans...It looked so...official. I poured over those things for ever...OR...maybe I'm not remembering right...maybe those blue prints didn't have deck plans in them just the external stuff for the Klingon, pods and Enterprise from the movie...

Have you considered the possibility that the individual corridors and rooms and might themselves by standalone pressurized compartments that COLLECTIVELY make up the "pressure hull"?

Yeah. The problem I have with that is that there is there would be alot of space between them ...much like the diagram you showed above. I prefer the idea of having the corridors as external segments of the pressurized compartments. In other worlds a habitable pressure hull would have say 5 decks habitats and afixed to the inward 5 decks of corridors for those sections and of course the Jefferies tubes would follow (in most cases) the corridors. My attempt would be to make these sections as MODULAR as possible (especially for Galaxy) for across the fleet so they could be added to any ship. So going up from one corridor would get you to the cooridor immediate about you untill you ran into a deck or section where the hull thinned out or the shape became irregular.

When it comes down to it...the smaller the pressurized hulls the more structural support in the ship you'll need to anchor each section. With bigger sections less support...or really what I'm saying...less joints and I tend to avoid an excess of joints for a stiff overall cage.

 

[UFO]

That's a hell of an assumption right there. Exactly how much revenue do you think the COLONISTS are going to gain from solar power satellites? Especially considering that they didn't invest any of their own capital in their construction and therefore won't be able to claim ownership of them if and when they become operational?

Is General Electric really going to shell out the cash for an O'Neill cylinder for the colonists, or will it expect them to make due with Sundancers and BA-330s?

The operation would have to be government funded. It will be another 50 years if we relied on private enterprise. And yes, the government will provide adequate accommodation given the project is open ended.

Actually, it would just the opposite: by the time the O'Neill colonies are built there would be AT LEAST one major city and several smaller settlements on the moon's surface. Primarily because, once again, the primary source of the colonists' wealth will be on the surface of the moon itself, and it is from THOSE activities that the revenues for orbital construction will be obtained.

Beats me who will be building those colonies. Not private enterprise. At least they haven't done so yet.

We've known how to run teleoperated machinery from Earth since the 1960s. If it were possible to do all of that automatically or remotely we wouldn't NEED colonists in the first place, they could just send everyone home and do it all from Earth.

Its a repeative operation. Ideal for automation.

Yes. There's a REASON for that, you know.

Closed mindedness.

Rocket fuel doesn't, and isn't.

Rockets? Oh, you mean ion drives?

But only to a single location, and not anything you might be worried about crushing under 40+ gravities. In the end, it's just an additional, highly sophisticated solution to a relatively simple problem, but it's by no means the ONLY one, and for most purposes, it's not even the BEST one.

You could probably send moon mass anywhere you wanted to. It might take a little longer is all. Its actually a very simple and elegant solution. I guess history will decide if its the right one.

I believe you MEAN to say that the people who intend to use a mass driver would not go to the moon longer than it takes to set up a mass driver.

Them too.

So what do you do about the people who DON'T intend to build one? Especially since those permanent lunar settlers would find themselves with a corner in the cheapest commodities for the orbital settlers?

A) There won't be any colonies on the moon for quite a while in this scenario and B) There is enough of the moon to go around for some time to come, in the event some do show up down the track.

Gerard O'Neill described a path for space exploration using EXISTING technology as a basis. EXISTING technology uses metalworking and refinement techniques developed and perfected on Earth, all of which require the presence of GRAVITY.

Which is not to say the that adapting them to zero G would be all that difficult, or do you think you are the only one who could understand these things?

As you know, its it not "useless material", its a gold mine and any "waste" is good for sheilding if nothing else.

The only reason to do any of the assembly in orbit is the use of a mass driver makes completed assemblies hard to launch. If you're NOT using a mass driver, you don't need the orbital facility at all.

As you know, even rockets will not allow the launching of complete SPSs from the moon's surface so an orbital facility is unavoidable. It doesn't really help your position to say things that are so plainly wrong.

You got something against lunarians, groundhog?

There aren't enough of them to sterotype.

So would an O'Neill cylinder, but you would have me believe the solar power satellites would make that colony more than affordable. How could you POSSIBLY believe those same satellites wouldn't do the same for a terrestrial commercial launch industry, when ordinary communication satellites already have?

Supply and demand, UFO. The demand for medium- and heavy-lift rockets would go through the roof if somebody out there got serious about orbiting solar power. ULA, SpaceX and EAS would have a collective orgasm if that were to happen.

The only people who can get serious seems to be a goverment and they will want to do it the cheapest way which means using material from the moon. So demand will be limited.

And this is the part that's gonna really piss you off: the entire fictional scenario in "High Frontier" is basically predicated on the promised low cost of payloads to orbit that the shuttle was supposed to deliver (around $250/kg). Only at that low cost does it become economical to use lunar resources for the construction of solar power satellites; ON THE OTHER HAND, at that low price it also becomes economical to simply launch them from Earth in the first place without the time and expense of trying to colonize orbital space, and with results materializing much faster and with fewer lives at risk.

The only thing that pisses me off is what is happening in space now (pretty much nothing compared to what we should be doing). Even having people stomping about on the moon for some unknown reason would be better that that.

What I recall from his book is that, using the payload costs he had to hand, it was still much cheaper to build SPSs in space compared to building them on Earth. If that wasn't the case he would be knowingly wasting his and a lot of other people's time. Despite your supply and demand theories, that is always a probable situation.

Building SPSs was the facilitating reason for getting industry into space.Building SPSs was the facilitating reason for getting industry into space.

For Gerard K. O'Neill, yes. But not everyone in the world is Gerard K. O'Neill, especially those who make policies for their countries/space programs/corporations/families.

Nothing else by itself seemed able to justify establishing facilities in space and that has proven to be the case. There are a lot of useful things you can do in space once you have a base there. SPS production provided a stand alone justification for that base.

Unless somebody out there has the foresight to tug a small comet into Earth orbit to supply everyone's water and fuel, YES THERE WILL.

History has proven you wrong so far (its about 40 years and counting). O'Neill's plan is still more likely than your independent moon colonists as I see it. But any port in a storm.

Yes they are. In that, much like Star Trek, they describe a possible future based a handful of starting assumptions. One of those assumptions was that the space shuttle would turn out to be exactly what NASA claimed it would be; if it had, we could at least describe it as "realistic fiction," but in hindsight it's not even that much.

They are no more fictitious than a book telling you how to play golf is fictitious.

It's stupid to start a war with your neighbors ON EARTH and yet people still do it.

In that case it probably wouldn't matter how many people were there in person.

But not elsewhere in the EARTH system, and in terms of energy required to reach those other water sources (about 2.5km/s just to reach Earth Escape Velocity) there's no advantage over getting those supplies from the moon.

More importantly, the INITIAL colonies are going to need those supplies in order to survive, and they won't have the luxury of sending a ship way out into the asteroid belt looking for a hydrated chondrite they can break down for water. They'll have to make due with what they have right in front of them, and the only place they can do that is on the moon's surface.

Which means that for the first fifty or so years of colonization, EVERYONE is going to depend on the water resources of the moon or whatever can be cheaply exported from Earth. Supply and demand, once again: whoever controls those ice fields will end up controlling most of the colonists' wealth.

I presume you mean Moon Escape Velocity being 2.5km/s above? Anyway, getting water elsewhere can be done if necessary but of course it wouldn't have to be since the rule of law would be enforce by all. And as I say it is more than possible that a number of colonies will be built before anyone else has a claim on moon resources. Not that there isn't enough to go round for a lone time to come. Your concerns are therefore unfounded on a number of fronts.

In which case means the SPS will not be part of a colonizatoin effort, but an economic development effort on Earth. Even if they use off-world resources to build it, the SPSs will never be a source of revenue for the colonists themselves and they'd just as soon move back to Earth when the work is done.

When you have an industrial facility in space the work is never done. And how do you know what the workers employment contracts might say? Anyone (who didn't know better) would think you are just trying to raise any crazy objection you can.

I fail to see what the problem is. O’Neill did more than his share of actually "doing things".

True as that is, the one thing O'Neill never did was convince anyone at NASA--or anyone in congress--to actually implement his ideas in the form of a realistic space policy.

Actually he did convince some people at NASA. Don't quote me but I think a figure of $750 million was allocated for developing his ideas but I believe it was cancelled for political reasons. I think there was also support in policial circiles too, just not enough or the right people.

This is where the divide comes with the NewSpace community; the traditionalists have a lot of beautiful lofty ideals that would be so wonderful to see but never actually go anywhere. The NewSpace crowd is more "Use what we have to build what we can and see what it can do." It's almost the exact opposite approach; and the really funny thing is, it WORKS.

With a bit more political will and intelligence, O'Neills ideas would have come to pass. At least a lot of people heard about them and a great deal of work was done.

Unfortunately, from where I sit, the US space programme looks pretty weak right now. Please raise my morale with some of these success stories.

He is not allowed to have a vision as well?

Having a vision does not make one a visionary.

There is no question. He was a visionary a number of times over. Some came to pass. Others will take a little longer.

 

[Psion]

Folks, let's all take a moment to remember our beleaguered moderators who must wade through all of the above.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

From my own experience with R&D in system engineering it's almost always prudent to test an installed part before the total system is completed because it reveals errors in the installation process.

And if the Enterprise was a prototype for a totally new class of starship, that just might be relevant.

But it was. There were indications that Enterprise and Galaxy and the other ships were constructed together at the same time.

Which still doesn't make Enterprise the prototype, does it? Early production run maybe, probably built alongside the Yamato. But all of the systems development and R&D would have been completed on USS Galaxy and implemented on the production models.

OTOH: I was referring to the 23rd century Enterprise we saw in STXI (you know, the subject of this thread?) not the Galaxy class. It makes a certain amount of sense for prototype starships to have more work done in an orbital environment where the workers/drafters aren't totally sure how well everything's going to fit. But that might not be conducive to mass production in the end.

I would point out in Mass Production cars are built with the engines already installed are they not?

Only when COMPLETED. The engine is installed fairly late in the process for most models, especially some of the newer ones where the engine is just the least troublesome in a series of components that have to interface with the car's onboard computer.

Booby trap didn't show dry docks it showed an Orbital City.

Actually it showed the interior of a space dock facility, similar if not identical to the ST-III shroomdock. That could count as an orbital city, but I don't think it's anything we haven't seen before.

Small ships small windows. That's not a problem.

Windows only need to be thick because glass is fragile and doesn't respond well to very high pressures. Starships apparently use transparent aluminum for windows, which could very easily maintain the integrity of the pressure hull being only three or four inches thick.

Yeah and that's the funky nature of architectural design for houses. I don't know about skyscrapers but houses merely aren't created to any serious tolerances. I worked for a place called Siteworks and the Senior CAD man said "A 1/4 inch goes a long way" He said that because that's the standard or tolerances in residential design and by the time you're done with your house construction you could be more than a foot larger in either direction. (extreme cases) Several jobs I've interviewed have asked me if I could scale back my need for precisions. (It would have been hard after years of mechanical drafting)

Just had a very similar experience today of all days (I need to talk to the bosses about these seven-day workweeks). There are times when it doesn't matter either way, but there are other times when a couple inch variation can screw up the entire layout and you won't even know what's happening until you're halfway through the job.

The good news is, floor plans are typically drawn up AFTER the fact, especially when it comes to things like ships and airplanes. Not just autocad, but rapid prototyping is also very useful in this sort of process, and Starfleet as you know is an organization that has access to replicators that can really simplify that sort of operation.

I didn't know the deck plans from the Motion Picture were...made by fans...It looked so...official. I poured over those things for ever...OR...maybe I'm not remembering right...maybe those blue prints didn't have deck plans in them just the external stuff for the Klingon, pods and Enterprise from the movie...

They were based very closely on the production material, but they weren't actually published by the production staff themselves. The TMP diagrams were drawn by David Kimble and didn't have any deckplans in them; Jackill did a couple of speculative cutaways and David Schmidt from Strategic Designs extrapolated those into an actual deck plan (his latest version is, by the way, stunning).

But at the end of the day, they were all made by fans, sometimes with Paramonunt's blessing, but more often with its tacit acceptance as long as nobody made too much money off it.

My attempt would be to make these sections as MODULAR as possible (especially for Galaxy) for across the fleet so they could be added to any ship. So going up from one corridor would get you to the cooridor immediate about you untill you ran into a deck or section where the hull thinned out or the shape became irregular.

That would seem kind of consistent with the accidental cross section we got when Enterprise got filleted by the Borg. Internal pressurized sections are probably built in blocs similar to the space shuttle's crew compartment but on a much larger scale. The pressurized corridors might be independent structure/tunnels or maybe part of that structure itself... hard to say.

When it comes down to it...the smaller the pressurized hulls the more structural support in the ship you'll need to anchor each section. With bigger sections less support...or really what I'm saying...less joints and I tend to avoid an excess of joints for a stiff overall cage.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. And it makes sense from what we see in Q Who since the Borg are able to extract a big chunk from the saucer section with their tractor beam. But if you assume it has an upper and lower pressure hull within the saucer section that would explain why they only cut into decks four five and six in those sections.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The operation would have to be government funded.

Good luck with that.

It will be another 50 years if we relied on private enterprise.

Where as with the government it'll be another sixty years, a hundred and forty billion dollars over budget, and after the program gets cancelled twice, redesigned three times and with a series of incomprehensible design changes imposed by the Air Force in case they ever decide to use it for a military mission.

I'll give government funding as a means to subsidize private industry partners that have an actual business model and a set of concrete goals. But leave it to the government to set the agenda themselves, and you're just asking for a financial and technical disaster.

Beats me who will be building those colonies. Not private enterprise. At least they haven't done so yet.

Heh... neither has government. Primarily because though they have the funds, they lack the political will to pull it off. On the other side of the coin there's private enthusiasts like Gerard O'Neill who have the will, but not the funds.

And then there's people like Elon Musk, who have the will, AND the funds, AND the determination to actually go and do it.

Its a repeative operation. Ideal for automation.

Then perhaps YOU could explain to me why so few mines on Earth are fully automated right now?

Closed mindedness.

There are those who believe that if you just open your mind wide enough you will be able to see the future, walk through walls and bend spoons with your thoughts. I am not one of those people.

Rockets? Oh, you mean ion drives?

No, I mean rockets. Powdered aluminum and liquid oxygen, or ALICE propellant using aluminum and iron oxide. I've run the delta-v equations myself: lifting off from the lunar surface, a spacecraft the size of an ATV could put eight tons of payload into lunar orbit with just a single rocket stage. If you have another ship in orbit equipped with an ion drive (or better yet, a VASIMR) then you can take that payload anywhere you want, to GEO stationary orbits, to a Molniya orbit, to polar orbits, equatorial orbits, sun synchronous orbits, and so on. Ion and plasma drives can afford to get fuel from Earth because they don't expend their fuel all that quickly. It's only climbing in and out of a gravity well that poses a problem, and if you don't need a bigass rocket for that, the problem is minimal.

A) There won't be any colonies on the moon for quite a while in this scenario

That's fine as far as the scenario goes. But we're talking potential realities here and their implications for the Star Trek universe, not to mention our own. We're therefore assuming that conditions exist so that SOMEONE is playing out Gerard O'Neill's scenario. What I'm telling you is that given those same conditions (most importantly: affordable access to space for civilian industry) you cannot assume that EVERYONE will play out that same scenario, nor can you assume they will use the exact same methods and timetables, or even have the same objectives.

B) There is enough of the moon to go around for some time to come

Which, I'm sure, is exactly the message someone would send via email the day they discover that some complete asshole has sabotaged his mass driver and loaded this week's entire ore shipment onto a pair of SSTOs, currently outbound to the Chinese research station at L3.

Which is not to say the that adapting them to zero G would be all that difficult

It's not to say that it wouldn't either.

As you know, even rockets will not allow the launching of complete SPSs from the moon's surface so an orbital facility is unavoidable.

Incorrect. A spacecraft carrying fully assembled subsections can be used to mate those sub-sections together at their final operating point. You can do this either with a single craft with SSTO and maneuvering capability or with a humble SSTO and a space tug (the latter option is probably more efficient, the former is almost certainly cheaper).

This approach is favorable because we already know how to do this: it's how we built the ISS, it's how the Russians built the Mir, it's how China plans to build Tiangong-1 and how Robert Bigelow plans to build a private space station by 2015. It is something we DO know how to do; more importantly, it's something that has already been done. Adapting it to work on a larger scale requires no new technology and no new techniques. More importantly, it requires no new construction facility EXCEPT for the facilities on the surface of the moon, and those can be built using materials mined from the moon itself.

The only people who can get serious seems to be a goverment and they will want to do it the cheapest way

The government will want to do it in the most politically expedient way. Which is, unfortunately, rarely the cheapest, or most effective, or the least time consuming.

What I recall from his book is that, using the payload costs he had to hand, it was still much cheaper to build SPSs in space compared to building them on Earth. If that wasn't the case he would be knowingly wasting his and a lot of other people's time.

He was. Mainly because his estimates were based on the expected cost-to-orbit rates of the space shuttle which were, at the time (1976), widely believed and celebrated. The only other technology that even EXISTED at the time were the Saturn-V rockets and the Soyuz launch vehicle and I severely doubt O'Neill was considering either of them as a viable starting point in his scenario (the former having recently been cancelled and the latter being... well, a Soviet rocket).

Nothing else by itself seemed able to justify establishing facilities in space

In 1976, sure. These days orbital solar is a distant second to space tourism and commercial research; that is, there are actually people who have both plans and funds to build facilities in space along THAT concept.

Other possibilities are often completely overlooked. The far side of the moon, for example, provides an ideal location for observation of near Earth asteroids and comets and the airless environment of the moon is the perfect position for (at least one) large telescope. Physical research laboratories with direct access to cosmic ray activity and solar wind particles, geological sites exploring the moon's possibly extensive cave systems.

And that's before you consider the now widely-accepted fact that most of the world's precious metals and rare-Earth elements were probably deposited by meteorite impacts in Earth's geological past. Though the moon seems to be lacking in other resources, the one thing it has in abundance is impact craters.

History has proven you wrong so far (its about 40 years and counting).

Wrong about what? There's no orbiting colonies up there so there's no competition for control of the water supplies on the moon's surface, because nobody UP THERE needs it.

O'Neill's plan is still more likely than your independent moon colonists as I see it.

I never said that either was more or less likely. I've said that O'Neill's idea is overly simplistic and based on a few equally simplistic assumptions about human nature and American space policy. The key problem here is that even IF the demand for orbital solar power manages to lead to the construction of O'Neill colonies, it won't occur before the much higher demand for more tangible products drives the creation of lunar settlements on the ground. Because even if 99% of all would-be colonists decide to follow O'Neill's plan to the letter, the 1% who DON'T wind up with a corner on the cheapest source of potable water in the Earth system, which therefore gives them a virtual monopoly on water, fuel, oxygen, chemical production, and indirectly, on the artificial ecosystem of the orbital colonies, on their cost of commerce and on their standard of living.

The United States already has this problem with OPEC nations and a dependency on foreign oil. What do you suppose would happen to an O'Neill colony that is totally dependent on foreign water? And do you think for one second that somebody out there, seeing that opportunity, will hesitate for a microsecond to exploit it?

They are no more fictitious than a book telling you how to play golf is fictitious.

Unless, of course, that book is telling you how to play golf on the moon with Zaphod Beeblebrox.

In that case it probably wouldn't matter how many people were there in person.

It wouldn't, really. Even a small number could really screw up your day if there's nothing there to oppose them.

I presume you mean Moon Escape Velocity being 2.5km/s above?

No, escape velocity from Earth's gravity from the surface of the moon. From low lunar orbit it's closer to 1.8km/s. Lunar escape velocity by itself is only 2.3km/s.

Anyway, getting water elsewhere can be done if necessary but of course it wouldn't have to be since the rule of law would be enforce by all.

Who is "all" and what's he doing on the moon?

And as I say it is more than possible that a number of colonies will be built before anyone else has a claim on moon resources.

Assuming that's true, that doesn't change the basic fact that all of those colonies will be in VERY serious trouble if and when someone goes to the moon and starts to claim those resources unopposed.

Not that there isn't enough to go round for a lone time to come...

Which changes nothing. The whole point of claiming resources for private exploitation is to restrict access by others. Just because there's plenty for everyone around doesn't mean you can't profit off the plenty.

Your concerns are therefore unfounded on a number of fronts.

That's what they said when the Saud family took over Arabia.

And how do you know what the workers employment contracts might say?

Let me put it this way: of the nearly 3,500 KSC workers who were laid off this year, how many of them--either collectively or individually--actually own a space ship?

Actually he did convince some people at NASA. Don't quote me but I think a figure of $750 million was allocated for developing his ideas but I believe it was cancelled for political reasons. I think there was also support in policial circiles too, just not enough or the right people.

Funny your attitude about private enterprise; NASA gave Elon Musk $750 million too. Do you happen to remember what he did with it?

With a bit more political will and intelligence, O'Neills ideas would have come to pass.

That and a space shuttle that didn't cost $2.5 billion per flight.

Unfortunately, from where I sit, the US space programme looks pretty weak right now. Please raise my morale with some of these success stories.

I'll get back to you November 30th. Speaking of bootstrapping...

He is not allowed to have a vision as well?

Having a vision does not make one a visionary.

There is no question. He was a visionary a number of times over. Some came to pass.[/quote]
Which ones, exactly?

 

[Saquist]

Which still doesn't make Enterprise the prototype, does it? Early production run maybe, probably built alongside the Yamato. But all of the systems development and R&D would have been completed on USS Galaxy and implemented on the production models.

Not if they laid all the keels were laid down at first.
They could have developed each ship in unison. That's why I point out that Enterprise apparently had some personal attention from the designer. Like with fighters a number of prototypes are made to test different system exclusively. Ultimately of course that's not comparable.

However I look at the number of Galaxy-esque class ships and it seems it's a design that was developed for decades. Nebula being the most immediate predecessor and the Ambassador being the earliest.

So the label of prototype becomes just a label of honor.

Only when COMPLETED. The engine is installed fairly late in the process for most models, especially some of the newer ones where the engine is just the least troublesome in a series of components that have to interface with the car's onboard computer.

Corvettes engine are installed midway through the process.
The chass is painted...doors...seats ...hatch and forward windshield. Then down goes the engine...exhaust then transmission and drive train...hood headlights and taillights


But even through that process of mass production testing is required to make sure everything is being built to spec...it's just faster.

Actually it showed the interior of a space dock facility, similar if not identical to the ST-III shroomdock. That could count as an orbital city, but I don't think it's anything we haven't seen before.

Not in Martian Orbit.

Just had a very similar experience today of all days (I need to talk to the bosses about these seven-day workweeks). There are times when it doesn't matter either way, but there are other times when a couple inch variation can screw up the entire layout and you won't even know what's happening until you're halfway through the job.

That's why I always ignored my boss when he said I didn't need to be precise becacuse it's annoying when I don't get the symmetry I should. I know certain premade products aren't made the same way but I need my drawings to represent a more detailed standard since I'm marrying premade parts with custom parts. We can work out the tolerance later after we've gone through a few productions

They were based very closely on the production material, but they weren't actually published by the production staff themselves. The TMP diagrams were drawn by David Kimble and didn't have any deckplans in them; Jackill did a couple of speculative cutaways and David Schmidt from Strategic Designs extrapolated those into an actual deck plan (his latest version is, by the way, stunning).

Kimble!!!
Yes...that's the signature I struggled to read...
And I'm very familar with Schmidts Work...

That would seem kind of consistent with the accidental cross section we got when Enterprise got filleted by the Borg. Internal pressurized sections are probably built in blocs similar to the space shuttle's crew compartment but on a much larger scale. The pressurized corridors might be independent structure/tunnels or maybe part of that structure itself... hard to say.

The only reason why I go for part of the section because each section would support it's own corridor instead of the corridors having to be supported or affixed to the framing themelves. AND that the internal views seem to indicate a fairly seemless transition from cabin to corridor implying that they are one section.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. And it makes sense from what we see in Q Who since the Borg are able to extract a big chunk from the saucer section with their tractor beam. But if you assume it has an upper and lower pressure hull within the saucer section that would explain why they only cut into decks four five and six in those sections.

You know THAT is a pretty good explanation!
I always wondered why more wasn't pulled out....
So they cut at least 4 decks down and from that point in the hull it's like half way through the saucer.

Notice!!! The HULL and seperation of the Outer and Inner Hull here. MUCH Thicker than the Windows in the same images.


http://ncc1701.us/10.html


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That means you were right...But also means that the pressure hull protrudes out to the hull where windows meet the hull...

That's trouble some on a Galaxy class starship....