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Bottle Throw!!!

I still can't believe Scotty would let them smash a vintage bottle of Dom Perignon like that! (Was that product placement or an ironic acknowledgement, anyway?). ;)
 
It was supposed to show Kirk's frustrations with aging even further (since the theme was addressed in TWOK). He had, presumably, taken to a lot of various risks since then (think of it as the El Capitan follow-up to TFF). Which is why his "death" aboard the ENT-B was supposed to be seen as "doing what he loved", which was dealing with life and death situations and, if possible, saving the day, no matter what.

Later, they modified the same suit for B'Elanna Torres in VOY and made her all ruthless for an episode.
 
Wouldn't a bottle in space simply explode with the massive difference in pressure inside and outside of the bottle? :p And even if it didn't, why is it still liquid when the bottle smashes? It should instantly turn to ice, weakening the structural integrity on that deck, etc etc...

Either way, chalk up another vote for Insane Carol Marcus Borg Queen From the Future ;)
 
Obviously they had to pressurize the bottle before shooting it off into space. And maybe it had a high alcohol content and therefore didn't freeze right away. Plus the bottle was probably made out of some fancy glass (transparent aluminum, mayhaps?), which I am going to pretend is produces a lot of insulation.

Or maybe spacedock is equipped with heaters.
 
Chucking some transparent aluminum against the hull of a ship will cause it to SHATTER?!? That transparent aluminum crap is over-hyped. ;)
 
It obviously was not thrown or launched from space. However, the effect of the shots would be comical rather than dramatic if they did a slow-motion shot of the bottle traversing the room.
 
Smack the bottle across the warp-core then wonder why your new uber-drive-of-the-week malfunctions suddenly. I think I just wrote a Voyager Episode! :D
 
Do objects lose heat in space that quickly? If it was only thrown a few metres it might not have time to freeze - also don't liquids boil in space because there's no pressure?
 
WHO threw the bottle???
Humor aside, how would they have launched it in the first place?

No doubt it was launched mechanically on a precisely calculated trajectory. Why is it any more strange than launching a probe or torpedo from a tube?



Wouldn't a bottle in space simply explode with the massive difference in pressure inside and outside of the bottle? :p

No. Champagne bottles are designed to withstand a pressure differential. Why do you think the champagne erupts out when you pop the cork? Because the contents of the bottle are at 4-6 atmospheres of pressure and the air outside is at only 1 atmosphere. If the bottle can withstand a differential of 3-5 atmospheres without bursting, surely a differential of 4-6 atmospheres (between its contents and vacuum) wouldn't overwhelm it.

And even if it didn't, why is it still liquid when the bottle smashes? It should instantly turn to ice, weakening the structural integrity on that deck, etc etc...

Do objects lose heat in space that quickly? If it was only thrown a few metres it might not have time to freeze - also don't liquids boil in space because there's no pressure?

It's a myth that space is freezing. Think about it. How does a thermos bottle keep coffee hot?

By surrounding it in a vacuum.

Vacuum is a superb insulator. There's no conduction or convection to take heat away from a body, only radiation, the slowest, least efficient method of heat loss. Spaceships and spacesuits need cooling systems, not heating systems, because objects in space lose heat far, far more slowly than they lose it in air.

True, an object that's in space long enough will eventually radiate away its heat and become cold -- if it's not in direct sunlight. If you're absorbing more infrared than you're emitting (and a hot star would definitely generate more thermal energy than a cool bottle), you're going to heat up, in the same way that the Sun warms the Earth.

Now, small particles of liquid or gas would lose heat a lot faster than, say, a human body or a spaceship. So one would expect the "spilled" champagne to freeze before long. But the bottle was apparently in sunlight (and really, those shots of it hitting the ship should've been a lot brighter, given the lighting angle on the Earth in the background of the wide shots), and the ship itself would've probably been radiating a good deal of heat, so it's credible that the liquid didn't freeze instantly. Although the way it splashed was no doubt inconsistent with how it would actually behave in freefall and vacuum.

(EDIT: Actually it's more likely that the champagne would sublimate into vapor, as someone else said above. Then the vapor would condense into ice crystals.)
 
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How does a thermos bottle keep coffee hot?

By surrounding it in a vacuum.
Interestingly, the earliest product placement in Star Trek (which very probably received zero consideration) was in "The Cage" when Vina had Pike fetch a Thermos from his horse. Yes, it's a copyrighted name just as much as Kleenex or Xerox or TiVo...but even by the mid-'60s it had already become genericized. Nowadays a network clearance editor would have probably stricken it out and insisted they just say "flask" or something.
 
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