If you don't think some of the rich old 'harry' fat guys get plenty of hot action, then you don't know what makes the world go round. Hint: it's not love, and in the US it is mostly green.
Way to ignore the point completely.
Bill offered sun surfing time travel as an example of
Star Trek's incredulity. Your response was to suggest that, since it's been associated with the form for a while, that it automatically passes the sniff test.
I used an absurd analogy to point out how ridiculous that is. I could have just as easily used laptop supercomputers in crime procedurals, or the way people's lifestyle in most film and television exists beyond their means. Or, if I really wanted to skew the conversation, I could've brought up prophetic sons of gods born to virgin or unwed mothers.
Just because something is presented consistently in such a way over time doesn't it make it truthful, accurate, or believable.
But thanks for the contemptuous, albeit cynical, non sequitur.
If you don't find Van Vogt's stories plausible, that's your concern. I can't get into Tolkien, but I know lots of people love his stuff, and I ASSUME he knows something about what works in fantasy -- much as Van Vogt knew something about what worked in science fiction.
And Ted Kaczynski knew what worked in dementedly Quixotic manifestos. What's your point? What works and what's believable are two completely separate things.
Once more, with the last erg of feeling. It is safer to build in space than on Earth, unless you've got everybody with their own personal antigrav rig. It is probably faster too, because you're working in microgravity and only have to worry about inertia mass and not the one gee going DOWN. Plus zero-gee fab offers all sorts of possibilities.
Your "safer" argument has already been proven inaccurate.
"Faster" is irrelevant. It does not mean "better," just cheaper. And monetary considerations don't apply. There was also no evidence that deadlines to meet political or civil considerations applied since it was implied the
Enterprise was a special case. And there was no evidence that
all Starfleet ships were built planet side.
Since it was a special case, I might point out that all of your arguments apply to assembly lines and auto manufacturing. Yet there are legitimate reasons people choose to build cars by hand.
Besides, your basing most of your arguments on theory since there's only one large man-made structure in space. And it was only
assembled in space. And a space station is quite a different animal than a space ship. You have no idea what the intricacies and nuances of building a starship are. For all anyone knows, there are plenty of practical reasons for building one on Earth.
We're all just guessing, and, despite the smug condescension, your guesses aren't any better than others'.
