STID: The ‘Other' Starship / [Spoiler]

[WarpFactorZ]

Frankly, I am surprised by WarpFactorZ's stance. As a college science teacher, I would think that he would be exposed to and using the techniques of the scientific method to form his hypothesis

My hypothesis is: the artists screwed up and didn't communicate with the set-designers. The scale varies from shot to shot, ergo scale measurements are useless (although I find it funny that the only scene in which the E is conclusively smaller -- the shipyards -- is summarily rejected by the Big-E booster crowd).

The only constant is therefore the exterior appearance, which matches up almost precisely with the TMP refit: the windows, the hatches, the photon torpedo tubes, etc...

My conclusion is therefore the original intent was for the ship to be basically the same as the old, but on set JJ wanted BIG -- and no one realized that BIG meant the ship design was insufficient.

Anyway, I've wasted about enough time arguing the "correct" size of a pretend ship. I will now go apply the "scientific method" at the pub. My hypothesis is: I will get sloshed if I drink beer.

 

[yenny]

I would say the the new Enterprise is 2550ft in length. 850 ft in width.

 

[Grup]

If this is in the wrong thread, please relocate it. Thanks.

I believe I read here though, a discussion about the ship being 3x faster....

I remember reading in (I believe) Scholastic magazine when I was in high school just before STTMP was released, a description of the newly refitted Enterprise. It said...The old Enterprise is to the new Enterprise as a stick match is to an atomic bomb. They were referencing the new ships warp capabilities.

Does anybody remember anything like this and does it shed any light on how much faster this new ship might be?

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Since warp speed is completely hypothetical, who knows what it really means to be "3 times as fast". The options are: it can reach warp factors 3 times higher, or it can reach speeds 3 times higher. Let's assume the latter. I remember reading somewhere that the speed scales as the cube of the warp factor: warp 1 is the speed of light, warp 2 is 8 times the speed of light, 3 is 27 times, etc...

So using this scale, "three times faster" could mean if the Enterprise top speed is warp 5, say (125 times the speed of light), the Dreadnought can travel 375 times the speed of light, or warp 7.2.

 

[TOSTNGDS9VOYENT]

I would like to talk about the speed of this ship. According to the web site TrekMovie, this new ship is said to have three times the speed of the Enterprise. Now, before the first movie premiered, I learned from the official film dossier that the Enterprise had a maximum warp speed of 8.

So, if the Enterprise has a maximum warp speed of 8, and the Dreadnought can go three times faster, than what is the warp speed of this ship? Does this mean this ship can go to warp 24? Or am I doing the math wrong?

Might be an early form of transwarp. Perhaps JJ decided to incorporate an Excelsior type experimental the way they did in ST: III. This is an alterate universe, so size and speeds from the prime universe don't apply here. The Enterprise can be bigger for any number of reasons beyond the obvious, that technology development accelerated after the Kelvin incident. We have to remember too that JJ made the Kelvin way bigger too, and it would have techically existed in the Prime universe.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

This is an alterate universe, so size and speeds from the prime universe don't apply here.

Wait a sec here. It is an alternate timeline , but not an alternate universe. Nero's incursion didn't alter the laws of physics. Whatever the "formula" for warp speeds was before, it is now as well.

That's not to say there was ever any standard for warp speeds before, but to suggest that the timeline divergence would change that is bunk.

 

[Kruezerman]

Since the speed of warp speed is never really agreed upon on screen, we can only guess as to what the speed actually is.

 

[throwback]

The physics of the universe may not change, but the understanding of them would have been changed by having introduced a ship with a hundred years plus of knowledge into the timeline. Look at what is happening to us on this mundane world. Where were we a hundred years ago before in our knowledge of physics? We aren't living in a time, like the ancient Greek and Roman world, where the understanding of the universe is progressing at a snail's pace. In our modern world, there seems to be a new discovery every week I would think in a multi-species melting pot that is the Star Trek universe that new discoveries would be happening on a faster scale.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

The physics of the universe may not change, but the understanding of them would have been changed by having introduced a ship with a hundred years plus of knowledge into the timeline.

I don't think so. The only thing they got from Nero's ship is a face full of torpedoes. They certainly didn't share their databases. It's very doubtful anything was "learned" about the technology that would have facilitated significant advances in e.g. warp propulsion.

The only possibility is if Prime Spock shared his knowledge, or possibly they downloaded data from the Jellyfish in those few instants where nuSpock was on board. But this movie takes place 6 months after ST09. I doubt that's enough time to develop a transwarp drive, even with his help.

 

[trevanian]

This is an alterate universe, so size and speeds from the prime universe don't apply here.

Wait a sec here. It is an alternate timeline , but not an alternate universe. Nero's incursion didn't alter the laws of physics. Whatever the "formula" for warp speeds was before, it is now as well.

That's not to say there was ever any standard for warp speeds before, but to suggest that the timeline divergence would change that is bunk.

Yeah, but there's in-universe reasoning and then there's making-a-movie justifying. The whole point of throwing away the good universe in favor of a new one was to let the new kids play in their own sandbox. That means they can fill it with mud if they want and still call it sand -- which is how you get Delta Vega, a world on the rim of the galaxy, to migrate to within spittin' distance of Vulcan, I suppose.

Or build starships on the ground because the nacelles have to be calibrated in a gravity well (believe it or not, I remember reading the screenwriters spouting that one in print.) I think that's a whole lot more stupid than doing a black hole movie and employing 'simply irresistible' as the theme song.

 

[BenRoethig]

Frankly, I am surprised by WarpFactorZ's stance. As a college science teacher, I would think that he would be exposed to and using the techniques of the scientific method to form his hypothesis

My hypothesis is: the artists screwed up and didn't communicate with the set-designers. The scale varies from shot to shot, ergo scale measurements are useless (although I find it funny that the only scene in which the E is conclusively smaller -- the shipyards -- is summarily rejected by the Big-E booster crowd).

The only constant is therefore the exterior appearance, which matches up almost precisely with the TMP refit: the windows, the hatches, the photon torpedo tubes, etc...

My conclusion is therefore the original intent was for the ship to be basically the same as the old, but on set JJ wanted BIG -- and no one realized that BIG meant the ship design was insufficient.

Anyway, I've wasted about enough time arguing the "correct" size of a pretend ship. I will now go apply the "scientific method" at the pub. My hypothesis is: I will get sloshed if I drink beer.

From what I've heard that was pretty much the case and you'll see a bunch of really inconsistent scaling in the first movie because of it.

 

[throwback]

What about the sensors? Information recorded on these devices could lead to advances in technology. Well, that is the explanation offered by the people who are making these films. For me, this is believable. Airplanes and cars are equipped with black boxes that record data on the function of the vehicle and the human occupants. It might be probable that analogue devices were a standard component of starships. There might be a third black box which would record data on particulars located outside the vehicle, such as the environment and ships that might be encountered.

These films are separated not by six months; rather, they are separated by a year.

 

[calamity_si]

Yeah agreed. It's quite amusing watching everyone squabble over their interpretations of the size of a pretend spacecraft. But I think there's a thread for that. This one is about the Dreadnought. Please someone tell me they've found another pic of it?

 

[FlapJoy]

Regarding the introduction of the Narada into the TOS Trek universe leading to tech advances; consider Nero was around with his big super ship from the future for 25 years. While waiting for Spock Prime to show up, who knows what may have been discovered or studied, or even shared, and by or with who. Even if you remove the barely canonical Klingon prison sub-plot, we could infer that Nero sold off technology, shared it with alliances he ran across or other elements he contacted or ran up against along the way while biding his time, even the Romulan Empire itself. Poisoning the past didn't seem to be something he worried about, only surviving long enough to get his revenge. Even his hanger bay seemed to be full of other ships from other worlds... Kirk once worried about one communicator being left behind in a pre-warp civilization, consider a whole garage full of future alien tech wandering around space, not just the Narada herself.

 

[yenny]

Y'all have to remember that the Klingons had possession of the Narada and had held Nero and his crew prisoners for 25 years.

That will give the Klingons plenty of time to figure the Narada access codes and download all the information that they had found.
Also plenty of time for federation spies to steal that same information from the klingons.

The Dreadnought most likely was built from information that was gotten from the Narada. Which mean, that the Dreadnought is not from the future, but is base on future technologies.

 

[calamity_si]

Memory Alpha seems to support this theory guys;

"Star Trek screenwriter Roberto Orci (in a post on Ain't It Cool News [3] as well as in an interview with Star Trek Magazine[4]) and J.J. Abrams (in an interview with MTV, conducted between the two aforementioned statements from Orci [5]) established a reason why technology in the alternate reality appears to be more advanced than it is during the same period in the prime reality; scans of the 24th century Narada, taken by the Kelvin, were brought back to Starfleet by the survivors on the Kelvin's shuttles."

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Alternate_reality

 

[FlapJoy]

Y'all have to remember that the Klingons had possession of the Narada and had held Nero and his crew prisoners for 25 years.

That will give the Klingons plenty of time to figure the Narada access codes and download all the information that they had found.
Also plenty of time for federation spies to steal that same information from the klingons.

The Dreadnought most likely was built from information that was gotten from the Narada. Which mean, that the Dreadnought is not from the future, but is base on future technologies.

See, again, I don't know if we can really canonize a deleted scene... but even if we do, we really don't know what the Klingons had, they may have attempted to capture the ship, but only succeeded in capturing Nero and some of his crew, the rest of the miners taking the Narada to who-knows-where. Nero may have even given himself up to the Klingons specifically to allow the the Narada to escape and wait out his time, saying nothing, knowing that when they do escape, the Narada is waiting for them. All the while, the Narada's supplemental crew trying to survive for 25 years waiting for Nero to return... it opens many possibilities for future tech seeding the known galaxy.

I even wonder if that was the writers plan all along, to not only re-set and alter the TOS timeline to fit a cinematic universe, but introduce 24th century tech in the mix to upgrade that universe's technology and ship design to meet modern audience standards.

 

[FlapJoy]

Memory Alpha seems to support this theory guys;

"Star Trek screenwriter Roberto Orci (in a post on Ain't It Cool News [3] as well as in an interview with Star Trek Magazine[4]) and J.J. Abrams (in an interview with MTV, conducted between the two aforementioned statements from Orci [5]) established a reason why technology in the alternate reality appears to be more advanced than it is during the same period in the prime reality; scans of the 24th century Narada, taken by the Kelvin, were brought back to Starfleet by the survivors on the Kelvin's shuttles."

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Alternate_reality

...yes, exactly

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Memory Alpha seems to support this theory guys;

"Star Trek screenwriter Roberto Orci (in a post on Ain't It Cool News [3] as well as in an interview with Star Trek Magazine[4]) and J.J. Abrams (in an interview with MTV, conducted between the two aforementioned statements from Orci [5]) established a reason why technology in the alternate reality appears to be more advanced than it is during the same period in the prime reality; scans of the 24th century Narada, taken by the Kelvin, were brought back to Starfleet by the survivors on the Kelvin's shuttles."

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Alternate_reality

Perhaps. But I honestly hate explanations like this that seek to "explain" why the special effects from the 1960s doesn't match our current view of the future. It's almost the same as Klingon ridges.

As Roddenberry said: "What do you mean? It always looked like that." Seems easier to accept.

 

[Oso Blanco]

Regarding the size of the Enterprises:

According to the Special Features on the Star Trek BD, the original TOS Enterprise is 948 Feet long, and the nuPrise is 2,379.75 Feet long ... whatever that may be in the metric system.