How Did The Enterprise Get Into Space ????
- Thread starter Nero's Shadow
- Start date
But at least a sub is going to be built near a navigable body of water, and not in Iowa...
And what JB said.
Still, no good answer.
We (Trek nerds) are not supposed to ask such questions about this film. Just enjoy it.
Here's the "good answer": Because they could. Whether "they" is Starfleet Construction Command or JJ Abrams, it doesn't really matter.
This.
The very same ship, in the very same film is seen happily navigating the atmosphere of a gas giant. Earth's low pressure/gravity is trivial, but somehow puzzling to some.
I really don't understand this whole obsession with where the Enterprise was built. . . the federation has tractor beams, they have transporters, they have anti-gravity technology and inertial dampeners. . . why does anyone think it would be hard to get the Enterprise into space?
But if you want some plausible answers as to why build it on earth. . .here are some off the top of my head:
1. There's the economic advantage of not transporting thousands of workers and tons of material into orbit to work on it.
2. It's also much less dangerous: workers don't have to wear spacesuits, they don't have to deal with trying to move with accuracy and precision in microgravity. Doesn't matter how advanced the spacesuits are - space is a more dangerous environment than that of good old Earth.
3. Security from interstellar spying could also be a reason, given that this new Enterprise was built later than the original, and is much more advanced, considering what the Federation learned from the Kelvin encounter. (see Parallels where the Cardassians were spying on the Utopia Planitia Ship Yards on Mars --which by the way have Galaxy Class ships being built on the surface). . .
4. Plus, the Enterprise itself will operate with artificial gravity; its entire interior is going to be put under 1G constantly. Shouldn't it be built in those conditions, too? When you build any structure in space, you can't really test what the structural integrity will be in a 1G environment until you flip on the artificial gravity. You could easily build a floor, a wall, a ladder, tubes and internal plumbing with the supports misaligned, and while they would be structurally fine in microgravity, they could collapse once the ship's interior artificial gravity is turned on. And even if something didn't collapse immediately under a 1G load, you couldn't certain that an interior structure was weaker than spec and that it wouldn't collapse later under the constant pressure of gravity later. The only way to be certain is to build the entire ship in a 1G environment so the construction process tests that it is inherently sound as it's being built.
Quite frankly, there is nothing in TOS that said that the Enterprise was built in orbit (it WAS refitted in orbit because it can't LAND -- but even TOS showed that the ship could travel in the atmosphere). . .In TOS, the ship's commissioning plaque says it was built in the San Francisco fleetyards. . . which, since we never traveled to 23rd Century Earth in the TV show, for all we know the yards COULD be in San Francisco, proper. . . And we know that the Enterprise D and Voyager were built on the surface of Mars at Utopia Planitia, so having ships built on the ground is not a new concept. Think about it this way: You have a starship that weighs millions of tons with a propulsion system that can instantly accelerate it from a standing start to the speed of light and beyond. The power required to lift that starship from the ground into Earth orbit is MICROSCOPIC compared to what it takes to fly it through space like starships can. In the Trek Universe, you have magical technology allowing you to manipulate intertia without rendering crews down to a red slush thinly coating the rear of every cabin when the ship accelerates past the speed of light, allowing the ship to negate its own mass, possibly by partially removing the ship from our regular vanilla space-time, we have tractor beams, transporters and antigravity; so what does it matter where you build the ship? Like I said earlier, given these 'facts,' why would it matter that the ship was built on Earth? Star Trek has always been full of magical technology that defies the laws of physics as we know them, so the question becomes what makes it more acceptable to you in one instance and not the other?
~FS
But if you want some plausible answers as to why build it on earth. . .here are some off the top of my head:
1. There's the economic advantage of not transporting thousands of workers and tons of material into orbit to work on it.
2. It's also much less dangerous: workers don't have to wear spacesuits, they don't have to deal with trying to move with accuracy and precision in microgravity. Doesn't matter how advanced the spacesuits are - space is a more dangerous environment than that of good old Earth.
3. Security from interstellar spying could also be a reason, given that this new Enterprise was built later than the original, and is much more advanced, considering what the Federation learned from the Kelvin encounter. (see Parallels where the Cardassians were spying on the Utopia Planitia Ship Yards on Mars --which by the way have Galaxy Class ships being built on the surface). . .
4. Plus, the Enterprise itself will operate with artificial gravity; its entire interior is going to be put under 1G constantly. Shouldn't it be built in those conditions, too? When you build any structure in space, you can't really test what the structural integrity will be in a 1G environment until you flip on the artificial gravity. You could easily build a floor, a wall, a ladder, tubes and internal plumbing with the supports misaligned, and while they would be structurally fine in microgravity, they could collapse once the ship's interior artificial gravity is turned on. And even if something didn't collapse immediately under a 1G load, you couldn't certain that an interior structure was weaker than spec and that it wouldn't collapse later under the constant pressure of gravity later. The only way to be certain is to build the entire ship in a 1G environment so the construction process tests that it is inherently sound as it's being built.
Quite frankly, there is nothing in TOS that said that the Enterprise was built in orbit (it WAS refitted in orbit because it can't LAND -- but even TOS showed that the ship could travel in the atmosphere). . .In TOS, the ship's commissioning plaque says it was built in the San Francisco fleetyards. . . which, since we never traveled to 23rd Century Earth in the TV show, for all we know the yards COULD be in San Francisco, proper. . . And we know that the Enterprise D and Voyager were built on the surface of Mars at Utopia Planitia, so having ships built on the ground is not a new concept. Think about it this way: You have a starship that weighs millions of tons with a propulsion system that can instantly accelerate it from a standing start to the speed of light and beyond. The power required to lift that starship from the ground into Earth orbit is MICROSCOPIC compared to what it takes to fly it through space like starships can. In the Trek Universe, you have magical technology allowing you to manipulate intertia without rendering crews down to a red slush thinly coating the rear of every cabin when the ship accelerates past the speed of light, allowing the ship to negate its own mass, possibly by partially removing the ship from our regular vanilla space-time, we have tractor beams, transporters and antigravity; so what does it matter where you build the ship? Like I said earlier, given these 'facts,' why would it matter that the ship was built on Earth? Star Trek has always been full of magical technology that defies the laws of physics as we know them, so the question becomes what makes it more acceptable to you in one instance and not the other?
~FS
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Titan, actually. Not a gas giant. Though the point stands.
Agreed. Not much of a stretch, really,
But, as you said already, they have transporters and anti-gravs and so forth. So I am a little unsure of the specific 'economic advantage' here. Doesn't matter where the job is being done, those thousands of workers presumably still have to commute and all those components have to be shifted around as well..
Very true, but given the state of technology, working in space might be regarded as no more dangerous in the 23rd Century, than (for example) high-rise construction work has been for much of the 20th century. Possibly less so.
Plausible, but I think any security advantage from this measure would be very tenuous. After all, with the main effort on the ground, any schmo can conceivably ride along and do a simple Mark One Eyeball check on whatever is happening. If he/she/it has a tricorder or even the equivalent of a digital camera, then it gets even better.
Unless the structural components are pre-tested before being put in place, which is a standard procedure for many types of construction even now.
.... OR the yards could be in geosychronous orbit above San Francisco, hence their identification with that particular city. This was the line that Alan Dean Foster took in his 'Star Trek Logs'. As I recall, the Enterprise there was built in pieces in the "old" Navy Yards on the ground, then moved up to the spaceyards for final assembly.
Obviously, this is not what happened in the reboot. But it does show there is at least one alternative to 'Built In Space' versus 'Built On Ground'.
Or parts thereof, which I strongly suspect was the case for Enterprise-D - built in pieces, then assembled in orbit. Different case for Voyager, but she is very different in that regard. Just my own take on this.
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There is no such thing, precisely, as a geosynchronous orbit above San Francisco. Since San Francisco does not lie on the equator, the closest thing to it is an inclined geosynchronous orbit that passes over San Francisco once per sidereal day. A nice picture is at http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/05/03/nasa-sun-watching-probe-sees-moon-mountains/.
I stand corrected.
Dammit, it's the WRONG FRANCHISE.
Everybody knows Superman did it. Ensign Bryan Singer told me so.
Or it is in a true geosynchronous orbit that lies at the same longitude as San Francisco. They may name the orbit location after the city it's longitude lies closest to.
What you are describing is impossible if the orbit must be under the influence of gravitation alone.
I see what you mean now. You mean a geosynchronous orbit that does not pass over San Francisco at all, but rather is a geostationary orbit over the point on the equator that has San Francisco's longitude. That orbit will stay at the same longitude, but it will also always have zero latitude. That will work, too. You are correct.
I misunderstood what you meant when you said "true geosynchronous" orbit, because really all the orbits under discussion are already true geosynchronous orbits. When you qualified the orbit as "true", at first I thought you intended the orbit to still pass over San Francisco (as if there were a geosynchronous orbit that could do all of those things), but I see now that you didn't mean that to be the case. Actually, I suspect you meant to say geostationary orbit, instead of true geosynchronous.
(A geosynchronous orbit is any orbit whose period around the Earth is one sidereal day, regardless of its inclination or eccentricity even, but not all geosynchronous orbits are geostationary.)
Anyway, I take back my objection.
I misunderstood what you meant when you said "true geosynchronous" orbit, because really all the orbits under discussion are already true geosynchronous orbits. When you qualified the orbit as "true", at first I thought you intended the orbit to still pass over San Francisco (as if there were a geosynchronous orbit that could do all of those things), but I see now that you didn't mean that to be the case. Actually, I suspect you meant to say geostationary orbit, instead of true geosynchronous.
(A geosynchronous orbit is any orbit whose period around the Earth is one sidereal day, regardless of its inclination or eccentricity even, but not all geosynchronous orbits are geostationary.)
Anyway, I take back my objection.
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"Q" did we're just not supposed to know he did it 
I vote trebuchet.
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