Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach: The New Enterprise

[SonicRanger]

We see people in protection suits in spacedock.

Really? When? The novelization for TVH had workers painting the "A" onto the Enterprise hull, but the film didn't show that.

From there, it stands to reason that the dock is NOT pressurized in atmosphere, as it would be a huge waste.

Unless it was done for a reason.

The docking bay is, what, a third of the total volume of Spacedock? A fourth? Less?

http://www.starshipdatalink.net/starbase/images/spacedock-1.jpg

The rest needs to be filled with air, so what is another 20% or 30% more given 23rd-century technology.

 

[ancient]

Aside from eliminating the danger of vaacum when repairing or building a ship, it keeps your ship from getting a meteor through its hull while still just a helpless assembly.

Presumably the hull would be assembled first and then fitted out from within via the shuttlebay, thus making micrometeoroid impacts as much a concern as they are for operational starships which would be more or less zero.

Well, judging from what we've seen on screen, the hull is no where near finished when internal stuff starts getting built.

And it keeps your unfinished ship out of the sun, which I imagine is a good thing, what with thermal expansion and all.

Thermal expansion coefficients for modern aerospace materials - especially if coated with Kapton, Mylar or Betacloth - render thermal distortion at 1 AU distance from the sun a non-issue, and 23rd century materials would be presumably far less susceptible. Even if solar insolation was an issue, then a gossamer sunshield with RCS stationkeeping ability would be a vastly more elegant solution for keeping a starship shaded while in dry dock.

Never-the-less, not having a daily 600 degree temp cycle when you're trying to fix a big disrupter hole in the ship would be a good thing, imo.

A pressurized spacedock is the ultimate controlled environment.

Only under the most extreme circumstances, and only if it was designed by Andrew Probert or Rick Sternbach.

Seems to me, a big pressurized space is a big pressurized space, and is never a bad thing.

 

[Psion]

I wonder how fast they can evacuate the air from within Spacedock. If they opened the air and let Mother Nature do the rest, it'd probably empty out in seconds, but that would be wasteful and would be good for neither the structure nor its contents.

Air pumps would be slow ... unless all that piping we see suggests lots and lots of pumps and perhaps a lot of the space is devoted to compressed air tanks. Still, if it were as fast as simply opening the doors, I can't help but think that it'd be nearly as destructive.

But transporter technology ... what if transporters beamed all the air out? Enormous units dedicated to just grabbing air out of specific volumes of the interior, avoiding ships, shuttles, and humans all beaming atmosphere into confinement and back out as ships use the doors. Assuming the existence of such grossly tuned "mega transporters", might that be useful in evacuating the air from Spacedock quickly without causing gale-force winds? Atmospheric pressure might drop from ~100 kPa to 0 in just a few seconds, but without any one obvious direction to vent, essentially dropping the pressure equally in all directions. Pressure could be restored in a similar fashion.

Alright, folks, I've pulled down the shorts on this idea, give it a good spanking and see what we get!

 

[SonicRanger]

^^^

Another possibility is that force fields can allow only sections of the docking area to be vented. Perhaps the fields can also be made "semi-transparent" to air to help equilibrate the entire volume, so the air pumps or stored air would only be needed to make up the difference, perhaps over some time.

 

[ancient]

I imagine sweeping the interior with air-specific forcefield walls would compress and empty the air within seconds if you ever had reason to decompress the station.

 

[Ronald Held]

Isn't it possible that gas leakage or propellant venting could cause a thin temporary atmosphere which is enough to scatter visible light?

 

[Psion]

Isn't it possible that gas leakage or propellant venting could cause a thin temporary atmosphere which is enough to scatter visible light?

Hell yeah! And if any starships need a tune up and their impulse engines backfire, that'll put out a bunch of smoke too.

 

[SonicRanger]

I was going to say that we've never really seen a starship thruster fire, so we really don't know if they expel any exhaust or whatnot...

But then I remembered that once we saw exhaust in TNG's Booby Trap when navigating on low power through an asteroid field:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x06/boobytrap211.jpg

But there's a problem... That jet isn't coming from a reaction-control thruster on the model. That is the position of the airlock behind the photon torpedo launcher.

So maybe Picard and company didn't have the power to fire thrusters and were just opening airlocks to vent atmosphere to navigate (kind of like Cause and Effect).

So I still think we don't conclusively know that reaction-control thruster spew gas all over the place (but they quite possibly do).

 

[ancient]

There is the 'thruster only' rule from STVI, which is probably supposed to keep ion exhaust to a minimum.

The station staff must really hate Kirk.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

There is the 'thruster only' rule from STVI, which is probably supposed to keep ion exhaust to a minimum.

The station staff must really hate Kirk.

So you're saying all the smoke is left over from Kirk firing off the impulse engines in there and burning the paint job?

 

[DaveyNY]

I think those circuit things may actually be diagrams of circuits. Of course, that doesn't explain why they would have a big glass barrier on the bridge to look at circuit diagrams. That seems more like an engineering thing.

Are they maybe an homage to Scotty's engineering circuit-board readout? I'm hoping they are animated and not just static paintings.

Not sure if you got an answer as I haven't finished reading the whole Thread yet... (if you did, my apologies and I shall delete this)

But those screens ARE Animated... I can see them changing on my 37" TV while watching the Trailer in slo-mo.

 

[DaveyNY]

What sense does it make, if the ship is larger than the E-D?

It isn't. Its about the same size as the original.

Actrually, we don't know EITHER of these things.

We've seen indications in the trailer that the ship is a lot larger... mainly, as far as I'm concerned, driven by the tiny size of the people seen on what is now, quite clearly, the top of a nacelle.

But the trailer could still turn out to be wrong in this regard. If it's not, however... yeah, this is one big honkin' ship. And yes, about the same size as the 1701-D.

If we follow that lineage does that make the E-D the size of DS-9??

 

[ancient]

There is the 'thruster only' rule from STVI, which is probably supposed to keep ion exhaust to a minimum.

The station staff must really hate Kirk.

So you're saying all the smoke is left over from Kirk firing off the impulse engines in there and burning the paint job?

Kirk always gasses the the place up.

I think those circuit things may actually be diagrams of circuits. Of course, that doesn't explain why they would have a big glass barrier on the bridge to look at circuit diagrams. That seems more like an engineering thing.

Are they maybe an homage to Scotty's engineering circuit-board readout? I'm hoping they are animated and not just static paintings.

Not sure if you got an answer as I haven't finished reading the whole Thread yet... (if you did, my apologies and I shall delete this)

But those screens ARE Animated... I can see them changing on my 37" TV while watching the Trailer in slo-mo.

Ah good, then they are probably just like Scotty's readout, or any of the little blocky diagrams on the original bridge.

 

[JuanBolio]

Actrually, we don't know EITHER of these things.

We've seen indications in the trailer that the ship is a lot larger... mainly, as far as I'm concerned, driven by the tiny size of the people seen on what is now, quite clearly, the top of a nacelle.

But the trailer could still turn out to be wrong in this regard. If it's not, however... yeah, this is one big honkin' ship. And yes, about the same size as the 1701-D.

Have a look at the guy walking along the scaffolding in the red circle here:

He's about the right size for the ship to be just about right for a Constitution-class starship.

 

[Captain Robert April]

You're assuming that's a human around six feet tall you've got circled there.

Suppose that's a piece of equipment that's fifteen feet tall?

 

[JuanBolio]

You're assuming that's a human around six feet tall you've got circled there.

Suppose that's a piece of equipment that's fifteen feet tall?

If you watch that segment of the trailer, you can see it walking in a very human motion.

 

[Timo]

Also, the structure at ground level seems to have a very obvious door built into it, to the right of Kirk's right hand. Although we don't know if that's a vehicle door or a personnel one. Looks like the structure would be two stories tall, making this a vehicle door, and roughly preserving the idea of a 6-foot person and a 1,000-foot starship.

A question for the sharp-eyed: does that scene have some explicit indication that the ship under construction is USS Enterprise, NCC-1701?

And can we perhaps spot other ships under construction in the scene?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tigger]

Even with the "infinite energy" available to the Federation, I still don't see the purpose of pressurizing Space Dock. Plus if they did pressurize it, then they should be able to have atmospheric recyclers of such amazing efficiency that there would be no particulate matter inside to actually reflect/refract a spotlight beam. That air should be pure nitrogen (assuming folks wore self-contained breathing apparatuses).

If a pressurized work environment was so beneficial, then there would be no open dry-docks in Trek. The TMP Enterprise would have been refitted in Space Dock. The Enterprise D would have been repaired in a Space Dock in "Family". "Relativity" would have shown all the ships in Space Docks in Mars Orbit (and we saw a number of such structures - both mushroom and other types).

Also, with the control of various types of fields that the Federation has, why not just put fields around the open dry docks? That would allow you to pressurize them and protect workers and ships from comets and asteroids, much less far smaller debris. And you could have a nice low-gravity-field environment to work in.

I admit we're arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but there is no one clear "truth" in the matter - at least until such time as one of the Production Designers drops by and says "yes we designed it to hold and maintain an atmosphere" or "no, we designed it to be in a vacuum".

 

[Tallguy]

You're assuming that's a human around six feet tall you've got circled there.

Suppose that's a piece of equipment that's fifteen feet tall?

We all know that little guys on the hull for scale reference are 6'6".

 

[ST-One]

You're assuming that's a human around six feet tall you've got circled there.

Suppose that's a piece of equipment that's fifteen feet tall?

We all know that little guys on the hull for scale reference are 6'6".