Building NCC-1701 [The Trek XI Way]

[Tigger]

Based on the new trailer for Star Trek XI, it seems pretty clear that NCC-1701 was built on the surface of a planet in a complete structure. You can see what appears to be an atmosphere, as well as massive overhead cranes and the saucer is supported by an extensive pylon system, neither of which is really needed if assembled in a zero-gravity environment.

While we know the ship can operate in an atmosphere ("Tomorrow is Yesterday"), so it seems plausible the ship could lift off from the ground and proceed to orbit, where she would spend the remainder of her days. One would guess she could do so in a "VTOL" type process like Voyager, but it might be kind of cool to see her being built in an actual slipway/drydock and motor on out into San Francisco Bay (assuming she is still built at the SF yards and those yards are earthbound) and lift off ala the animated Yamato.

On the flip side, it seems kind of strange her predecessors (NX-01) and successors (NCC-1701-B/C/D/E) were all built in orbit and she was built in a gravity well...

 

[David cgc]

Not necessarily. We've never seen any of the ships constructed keel-up (with the exception of the Enterprise-D/Galaxy in "Booby Trap," and even then, most of the exterior was finished aside from the top of the saucer), so it's possible that the ships were built planetside, either in whole or in parts to be assembled in orbit.

 

[Christopher]

According to The Making of Star Trek, the main components of the Enterprise were built at the San Francisco Naval Yards and assembled in space. I think that's somewhat consistent with what we saw in the trailer. Aside from the final shot with the saucer and the nacelles, we didn't get a clear sense that the whole ship was in one piece in those scaffolds.

And so it's possible that those other ships were built the same way, with components being built on the ground and final assembly occurring in space. TNG: "Parallels" showed an image of the Utopia Planitia shipyards with the components of a Galaxy-class ship laid out on the surface:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:Utopia_Planitia.jpg

 

[Plecostomus]

Working in space is exhausting, physically demanding, and far more dangerous than working on the ground.

Think about it. Yes you can fall off the scaffold and die... that's a given. But you don't have to worry about oxygen supplies on the ground. You don't have to worry about suit punctures on the ground. You have a natural gravity source to work with you don't have to run generators or use special boots so there is an energy-cost savings.

Living expenses are reduced as you don't have to beam/shuttle to the ground every day or live in life-support quarters. You don't have to worry for the most part about cosmic rays and solar flares causing havoc during critical procedures.

All sorts of advantages really.

Yes I know there is no money in the future but there is always a cost in terms of energy expended, people-hours worked (labor) and of course material. That's what I refer to when I say cost, not actually money.

 

[ed629]

^ Agreed.

Also, the task of laying parts in place without the needing the artificial gravity brought online until the ship is ready to be placed in orbit. Instead of producing the parts, taking them into orbit and then installing the parts, such as deck plating, walls, piping, conduits, etc that need to be kept in place. All this is easier than needing to keep either the gravity on, or needing the workers in environmental suits with maneuvering systems to keep them in place. Because in zero-G, the small recoil\thrust of the welding guns would push the worker back, or just snapping parts in place is easier too.

 

[Plecostomus]

In TNG times it becomes easier, once you get a shell built and in orbit you can set up an industrial-size replicator to make some of the bits and pieces for the ship thus eliminating or reducing the launch/beamup cost from the surface.

 

[Christopher]

Plecostomus said:
Working in space is exhausting, physically demanding, and far more dangerous than working on the ground.

Think about it. Yes you can fall off the scaffold and die... that's a given. But you don't have to worry about oxygen supplies on the ground. You don't have to worry about suit punctures on the ground. You have a natural gravity source to work with you don't have to run generators or use special boots so there is an energy-cost savings.

Actually there's a design being developed for a type of spacesuit that uses mechanical compression to keep the body pressurized (i.e. it's very tight) and thus doesn't need to be inflated with oxygen. So aside from the helmet, punctures and pressure loss wouldn't be a problem. In fact, this suit would be porous to allow the body to be cooled by its own perspiration, rather than requiring elaborate cooling systems built into the suit. Plus it would allow considerably more freedom of movement than the bulky, stiff suits of today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_suit

Although I guess that doesn't apply in the Trekverse, since all the spacesuits we've seen have been of the conventional, air-pressurized variety. Well, except for the "Tholian Web" spacesuits and the TAS forcefield belts.

Living expenses are reduced as you don't have to beam/shuttle to the ground every day or live in life-support quarters.

Normally that would be more than cancelled out by the immense cost of lifting masses that huge out of Earth's intense gravity well. This is why large spacecraft in real life would have to be built in space -- because the launch costs would be prohibitive otherwise. It can only be justified in a Trek context because they have antigravity, tractor beams, and the like (they also have transporters, but it would be prohibitive to beam something that large).

You don't have to worry for the most part about cosmic rays and solar flares causing havoc during critical procedures.

Those can be shielded against. A solar flare would just require getting the construction crew into storm cellars until it passed -- just a delay, not havoc. On Earth you have to worry about storms, earthquakes, etc.

 

[syc]

Quick Question... Say the NCC-1701 is constructed on Earth, or the Galaxy Class vessels of Utopia Planitia, how does one put something THAT massive into orbit? Sure it would be nearly impossible to rocket a Saucer Section or Engineering Hull into space in todays times.
But in said Trekverse, how does one accomplish this task? And is it really cost saving? Some excellent rebuttal's from Christopher contradict the very nature and reasoning of surface construction.

I mean sure it looks nice and gives a very, World War II/ Aircraft Carrier, feel to it.

What do you do? Strap a low-energy Warp Engine around each piece and non-newtonian wise, lift it into orbit? What about acceleration? In order to maintain orbit a object must be traveling at orbital velocity; which is around 17,500mph for the Earth. Now you've got four giant pieces flying at a very fast velocity that you must guide and rendezvous in orbit!

Or!? Just transport... I'll say again... TRANSPORT all of your people and supplies into orbit for construction.
Hmmm?

 

[Praetor]

It certainly doesn't seem so ludicrous, thinking about it now, to virtually build the thing on the planet. If the ship's IDF fields can survive warp, it's been seen flying in an atmosphere (although apparently doing so is difficult), and there are definite advantages logistic-wise. Plus, most of my concern over the stresses I think have stemmed from comparisons to the space shuttle, which has to land and take off repeatedly and then be refurbished, whereas each ship would theoretically only have to do this the one time (unless refits take place on the planet).

By the way, how do we really know this isn't happening on the moon, inside a dome, or after the moon has been terraformed?

 

[Plecostomus]

Heck with that maybe inside of the giant Starbase that seems to orbit Earth.

 

[Tallguy]

What the heck. We saw Voyager could land and take off.

I'm still rather taken with the idea of space assembly though. I'm just old fashioned that way. Probably a combination of the two is most likely.

BTW: Over at Trekmovie.com in the comments:

Rick Sternbach - January 21, 2008

The Galaxy class spaceframe and other hull components were fabricated under 0.3g conditions on the surface of Mars and underwent systems integration testing on the surface before being disconnected, powered down, and hauled into Mars orbit over Utopia Planitia for reassembly. Interior habitation elements were installed by means of industrial transporter pads and automated gamma-welding systems, and tied into standard consumables re– say, you -are- cleared for this information, aren’t you?

Rick
A Franchise Guy Once Upon a Time

 

[StarryEyed]

Assembly on a planet makes no sense at all. You'd be fighting gravity the whole time. Why would you do that? You can move large assemblies around in space with ease. It would take enormously more energy to assemble the space frame on a planet.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

I haven't read it in years, but didn't Alan Dean Foster's novelization of The Counter-Clock Incident portray the Enterprise's components being assembled in San Francisco?

 

[S'kai]

syc said:
Quick Question... Say the NCC-1701 is constructed on Earth, or the Galaxy Class vessels of Utopia Planitia, how does one put something THAT massive into orbit?

Simple. The impulse engines are strong enough to do it. The only problem is they will incinerate an area the size of Manhattan when they are activated inside the atmosphere. A little bit of collateral damage.

 

[shipfisher]

Orbital assembly is as much about lack of heavy lift capability (and the frailty of things like the ISS) as anything else. A society which has had gravity manipulation tech for at least a century would have little problem getting any big assembly off the ground. As stated above, the advantages of working in a shirt-sleeve environment under 1g far outweigh any relating to assembly in space, and if you do need 0g to build or run up any ship components, well you just flip the switch on your anti-gravs don't ya?

One more thing - whats all this moaning about the welding? Is an actual flame ever visible in the trailer? A fancy beam welder would make plenty of smoke and sparks in air.

 

[USS Mariner]

Dumb.

Just dumb.

It wouldn't look half as bad if it didn't look like a giant metal Lego set.

 

[Christopher]

StarryEyed said:
Assembly on a planet makes no sense at all. You'd be fighting gravity the whole time. Why would you do that? You can move large assemblies around in space with ease. It would take enormously more energy to assemble the space frame on a planet.

In reality, that's somewhat true. But in ST, they have "antigravs" and tractor beams and other such magical gizmos. Cancel out the weight of an object with antigravity, and you can easily move it around or even launch it into orbit without the "collateral damage" Skai mentioned.

I say "somewhat" because large masses in space would still have a lot of inertia, so it wouldn't be totally effortless to move them around. It would be easier in a lot of ways, but trickier in some ways. Everything's a tradeoff.

And of course humans have gotten pretty good over the millennia at building massive structures under a full gravity. The Empire State Building and the Sears Tower are bigger than a Constitution-class starship.

EliyahuQeoni said:
I haven't read it in years, but didn't Alan Dean Foster's novelization of The Counter-Clock Incident portray the Enterprise's components being assembled in San Francisco?

Foster expanded on what The Making of Star Trek had described: the main components being built at the San Francisco Naval Yards, then being assembled into the final ship in space. At the time Foster wrote that, TMoST and the Star Fleet Technical Manual were pretty much the ST reference books, and Foster's flashbacks to the construction of the Enterprise in Log Seven were based on both of them.

shipfisher said:
One more thing - whats all this moaning about the welding? Is an actual flame ever visible in the trailer? A fancy beam welder would make plenty of smoke and sparks in air.

And if it is a more conventional welder, what's wrong with that? We've got to move beyond this notion that all present-day technology will inevitably be replaced by fancy beams and rays and fields. In reality, new technology tends to coexist alongside the old rather than replacing it. When something works well, you keep using it. Heck, we still use fire and string after hundreds of thousands of years.

 

[Plecostomus]

Info On Welding

shipfisher said:
One more thing - whats all this moaning about the welding? Is an actual flame ever visible in the trailer? A fancy beam welder would make plenty of smoke and sparks in air.

Mig/Tig, and Stick use electricity. Mig and Tig use various ways to shield the arc and supply filler metal to the weld. Stick uses a huge electrode which melts and fills in the weld.

Oxy-Fuel is the sort that uses flames... and under normal condition the actual welding process doesn't produce sparks at all. The process that produces the sparks is Oxy-Fuel cutting not welding. In this process you heat the metal to a predetermined point using the oxy-fuel flame then direct a jet of pure oxygen at the hot metal. The results are spectacular.

Currently we also have laser and electron-beam welding but those are for thin metals and exotic alloy at this point.

Welding is an interesting trade, one I wish I had learned more of when I was at the welding shop. Ah well. Wiki has some useful information too if you're really interested.

 

[USS Mariner]

shipfisher said:
Orbital assembly is as much about lack of heavy lift capability (and the frailty of things like the ISS) as anything else. A society which has had gravity manipulation tech for at least a century would have little problem getting any big assembly off the ground. As stated above, the advantages of working in a shirt-sleeve environment under 1g far outweigh any relating to assembly in space, and if you do need 0g to build or run up any ship components, well you just flip the switch on your anti-gravs don't ya?

One more thing - whats all this moaning about the welding? Is an actual flame ever visible in the trailer? A fancy beam welder would make plenty of smoke and sparks in air.

The only problem with that is that you have to deal with the fucking atmosphere, which not only gets in the way of an easy liftoff (unless you like causing instant tornadoes when you thrust them into the air as carelessly as you describe,) but also interferes with construction (It would seem easier to get rid of particulates in an environment where there are none because there is no air.

As for the "weak spaceframe in space" argument, if this thing is supposed to withstand 18-zillion-gs!!!1, what the fuck difference is building the thing in 1g going to make, other than "ease of construction" (which is a lie for various reason stated in this thread) and to provide another unnecessary step during assembly (getting the shit into space.)

As for the welders, umm, why are people doing this? I can only imagine that having a bunch of drooling buffoons stamping all over an unfinished hull making giant-ass welds is the mark of a sound ship in Star Trek.

 

[USS Mariner]

Christopher said:

StarryEyed said:
Assembly on a planet makes no sense at all. You'd be fighting gravity the whole time. Why would you do that? You can move large assemblies around in space with ease. It would take enormously more energy to assemble the space frame on a planet.

In reality, that's somewhat true. But in ST, they have "antigravs" and tractor beams and other such magical gizmos. Cancel out the weight of an object with antigravity, and you can easily move it around or even launch it into orbit without the "collateral damage" Skai mentioned.

I say "somewhat" because large masses in space would still have a lot of inertia, so it wouldn't be totally effortless to move them around. It would be easier in a lot of ways, but trickier in some ways. Everything's a tradeoff.

And of course humans have gotten pretty good over the millennia at building massive structures under a full gravity. The Empire State Building and the Sears Tower are bigger than a Constitution-class starship.

Do they build orbital stations on the ground too? The construction of Spacedock must have been a real circus.

I'm not saying that it isn't possible, but it gets to a point where you might as well build things in space because they're going to stay there, period.