Plecostomus
Commodore
Re Mariner: It is possible that modules for Spacedock were built on the ground at various shipyards around the solar system and assembled in orbit.
Building NCC-1701 [The Trek XI Way]
- Thread starter Tigger
- Start date
Plecostomus
Commodore
Sure if you blast them at full throttle. You A/G out of the ship-yard guided by tugs and out over the ocean and then light off the impulse engines at low power to gain altitude then start pouring on the power.
No one says it has to be an 90 degree vertical climb.... though that would look BIT'CHN on screen no doubt.
I don't think anyone in this thread has posted Roberto Orci's comments on the issue, which I find rather cogent:
http://trekmovie.com/2008/01/19/interview-orci-answers-questions-about-new-trek-trailer/
Oh dear Lord... I know the whole idea of 'no one can tell me' when discussing the fan base just really fills me with enthusiasm.
And 'the theme connects the Enterprise to today'? That worries me , considering some of the leaked stuff. Looks like this will be my third outright skipped Trek movie so far. :S
Plecostomus
Commodore
So they can't make new stuff up because it might conflict with the old stuff? That is going to cause you to skip the movie? The only way to get you to see this movie is to just rehash what has come before and slavishly adhere to the Holy Canon?
You're twisting it. Orci has affirmed in many interviews that this film respects existing canon, but as he continues to say in this same interview, in areas where canon is ambiguous or silent, the filmmakers are exercising their prerogative to make their own decisions. Which they have every right in the world to do because it's their movie. Because it's the job of ST creators to give us new insights into the universe, not to slavishly adhere to our speculations, guesses, and assumptions about what lies beyond known canon.
Or rather, it's their trailer. Personally, I'm half-convinced that what we've seen is more meant to be a symbolic image of "the new Star Trek under construction" than a literal representation of the ship's construction or anything that will actually appear in the film. After all, why in the world would they paint the ship's name on the hull so early in the construction process? Most ships don't even get their names decided upon until their commissioning. If that's so, if this is just a symbolic sequence for promotional purposes, then it's pretty silly to get up in arms over it.
Absolutely wrong. It's not that they may redo canon (which I've only said is a risk not worth pursuing), it's the attitude.
But 'you can't balance the warp engines unless you're in a gravity well' as their excuse? That's gotta suck for the dozens of times they had to do JUST THAT in every single one of the shows thus far...
Plecostomus
Commodore
Thank you Chris. Now I see why they pay you to write.
With that I'm done with this debate until tomorrow.
With that I'm done with this debate until tomorrow.
Random sniping:
Many angles seemed to show the saucer frighteningly high up in the air, tho. Why do that unless the secondary hull was already in place?
We don't really know the stage of construction for that vessel. But since Leah Brahms seemed to do propulsion work on the ship class, and since she was a bit too young to have done any work on the class when it was originally built, we might surmise that the Galaxy class was subject to a post-testing teardown and major reworking of the propulsion systems. So we could argue initial surface construction and subsequent orbital dismantling.
Of course, even today there are half a dozen fundamentally different ways of building ships; no reason a Galaxy would have to be built the same as a Constitution.
Those things aside, VOY "Relativity" shows us orbital construction work that also involves ships lacking part of their surface plating. If attaching of surface plates is best done with manual welding in the 2240s, something must have changed for the 2370s...
I'd argue the exact opposite: in this case, it would be hellishly difficult to lay the massive parts in 3D without employing constant artificial (anti)gravity.
By all means build the saucer on the surface. Or the secondary hull. Or the nacelles. But combining these elements should take place in null gravity, unless artificial antigravity is dirt cheap. Or unless these guys do it the way cavemen erected monoliths: by building on a level surface (of scaffoldings), then using a "grease pit" and gradual dismantling of the scaffoldings to slowly sink the secondary hull in place. Lifting the massive nacelles up in the air on high scaffoldings seems a waste of energy, and an awful safety risk.
But we're talking about balances here, first and foremost. Why are things built the way they are, today? Because it's the cheapest way to do it. That's the beginning and end of it. Today, certain things are expensive (drydock time, manual labor) while others are cheap (transportation of steel and components from inland), so the practice of modular construction is in favor. In the past, manual labor was trivially cheap, favoring other types of construction. In the future, it may perfectly well be that zero gravity labor overpay is the leading reason why starships are built on the ground: the costs of actual construction, liftoff and so forth pale in comparison with said labor costs, and play no role in the decisionmaking process.
The technologically smart way to do something is extremely seldom the right way to do it. Else we wouldn't e.g. run our cars on gasoline, which requires a mindboggingly complex infrastructure with massive inefficiencies and low performance compared with the many alternatives. What absolutely decides the method is the overall expenses. (Yes, even in a moneyless society!)
Because they are building silver bullets, and already know their mission itineraries for the next five years even before the first seam is welded?
This is not series production, apparently. It's more like a prestige project where national flags would be flying over the staff restrooms if Trek had national flags and restrooms.
(Of course, we can also say that what we see in the trailer is in fact refit work carried out on April's old, already painted ship before it's handed over to Pike...)
Timo Saloniemi
Many angles seemed to show the saucer frighteningly high up in the air, tho. Why do that unless the secondary hull was already in place?
We don't really know the stage of construction for that vessel. But since Leah Brahms seemed to do propulsion work on the ship class, and since she was a bit too young to have done any work on the class when it was originally built, we might surmise that the Galaxy class was subject to a post-testing teardown and major reworking of the propulsion systems. So we could argue initial surface construction and subsequent orbital dismantling.
Of course, even today there are half a dozen fundamentally different ways of building ships; no reason a Galaxy would have to be built the same as a Constitution.
Those things aside, VOY "Relativity" shows us orbital construction work that also involves ships lacking part of their surface plating. If attaching of surface plates is best done with manual welding in the 2240s, something must have changed for the 2370s...
I'd argue the exact opposite: in this case, it would be hellishly difficult to lay the massive parts in 3D without employing constant artificial (anti)gravity.
By all means build the saucer on the surface. Or the secondary hull. Or the nacelles. But combining these elements should take place in null gravity, unless artificial antigravity is dirt cheap. Or unless these guys do it the way cavemen erected monoliths: by building on a level surface (of scaffoldings), then using a "grease pit" and gradual dismantling of the scaffoldings to slowly sink the secondary hull in place. Lifting the massive nacelles up in the air on high scaffoldings seems a waste of energy, and an awful safety risk.
But we're talking about balances here, first and foremost. Why are things built the way they are, today? Because it's the cheapest way to do it. That's the beginning and end of it. Today, certain things are expensive (drydock time, manual labor) while others are cheap (transportation of steel and components from inland), so the practice of modular construction is in favor. In the past, manual labor was trivially cheap, favoring other types of construction. In the future, it may perfectly well be that zero gravity labor overpay is the leading reason why starships are built on the ground: the costs of actual construction, liftoff and so forth pale in comparison with said labor costs, and play no role in the decisionmaking process.
The technologically smart way to do something is extremely seldom the right way to do it. Else we wouldn't e.g. run our cars on gasoline, which requires a mindboggingly complex infrastructure with massive inefficiencies and low performance compared with the many alternatives. What absolutely decides the method is the overall expenses. (Yes, even in a moneyless society!)
Because they are building silver bullets, and already know their mission itineraries for the next five years even before the first seam is welded?
This is not series production, apparently. It's more like a prestige project where national flags would be flying over the staff restrooms if Trek had national flags and restrooms.
(Of course, we can also say that what we see in the trailer is in fact refit work carried out on April's old, already painted ship before it's handed over to Pike...)
Timo Saloniemi
hypothetically if they have ultra-massive mass drivers it would be cheap to send the parts into space but i personnally think it would be more practical to build the whole thing in space besides thats what 40+ years of trek lore show, including "Enterprise" and normally i dont count "Enterprise" but also weather we like it or not this is a reimagining of the original series i think the biggest debate will be if it fits in with current cannon
...We don't really know if NX-01 was built in space, either. Or NX-02, for that matter.
What we do learn in ENT, namely "Minefield", is that the surface plating of a 22nd century starship can be almost trivially easily removed, using basic onboard tools.
None of Trip's objections would matter in the case of spacedock repairs. So we can easily say that whenever we see (22nd century, and perhaps other) ships lacking their hull plates in an orbital shot, this is because they have been temporarily removed for ease of maintenance access.
Timo Saloniemi
What we do learn in ENT, namely "Minefield", is that the surface plating of a 22nd century starship can be almost trivially easily removed, using basic onboard tools.
None of Trip's objections would matter in the case of spacedock repairs. So we can easily say that whenever we see (22nd century, and perhaps other) ships lacking their hull plates in an orbital shot, this is because they have been temporarily removed for ease of maintenance access.
Timo Saloniemi
Why are they drooling buffoons? It seems to me they'd only hire the most skilled of technicians to work on this project.
Why would walking on an unfinished hull be a problem? Assuming they're intelligent enough to not stand on anything delicate (which I'm sure they are), then there's no problem walking on the skin of what's clearly a tough, space-going vessel, capable of going through time quakes and doing battle with Klingon warships. I'm not sure the weight of a man is going to do any damage.
Star Trek has always had men in roles that could easily and arguably be filled by automated machines and robots - especially given the advanced level of technology. Why should this be any different? If robots could do everything, what would be the point of HUMANITY doing the exploring?
Agreed. This was the whole point of "The Ultimate Computer"
I can see ground assembly of components, and then via anti-gravity, IDFs,etc lift the pieces into orbit for final assembly and checkout. I might even accept the saucer can launch from the ground and make orbit.
Main problems with the 1701 being built is could it reach orbit in one piece...I dont buy the "they will put it together in space they are just building the parts" argument because why have the engines positioned where they should be!
Other thing is the weather in the open could do some damage to the structure, it would have been better for them to build it under ground like they did with Prometheus in SG-1
Other thing is the weather in the open could do some damage to the structure, it would have been better for them to build it under ground like they did with Prometheus in SG-1
Plecostomus
Commodore
This ship can survive a trip to the center of the Galaxy and back I don't think a rain-storm is going to harm it. 
A) If they need the drives in a gravity well to calibrate them (perhaps with respect to the ship's gravitational field), then perhaps that calibration also requires placing the engines in the scaffolding in locations relative to the saucer that correspond to their final placement on the ship.
B) It may very well be a symbolic image that doesn't appear in the film, in which case the placement of the nacelles, like the premature addition of the name and call letters, is just to make the identity of the ship immediately recognizable to the viewer.
It's been established that the Federation has weather control in the 24th century, so they may have it in the 23rd. Orci's comments about the novels containing precedents for starship construction on the ground suggest that he's read the novel The Lost Years: A Flag Full of Stars by Brad Ferguson, which depicted the Enterprise saucer being detached from the rest of the ship, refitted on the ground (because of the benefits of working in a gravity well), and then launched back into orbit. That book also postulated that Earth had complete technological control over its weather, including a scheduled rainfall to put out a forest fire (IIRC), which delayed the launch of the saucer.
That mayb so but would you want rain, wind and snow in your shiny new ship when its under construction?
Guess that point isnt as revevant in some ways as this is what would happen with a sea going naval ship but then a space ship would be under more strain.
Also rain might not matter on the hull/space frame as we have no idea if it would even affect alloys used
Guess that point isnt as revevant in some ways as this is what would happen with a sea going naval ship but then a space ship would be under more strain.
Also rain might not matter on the hull/space frame as we have no idea if it would even affect alloys used
Absent weather control, they could just activate a deflector screen as a sort of "tarp" over the ship assembly yard in case of bad weather.
Similar threads
