Building NCC-1701 [The Trek XI Way]

[Christopher]

^^Personally, I very much doubt that 23rd-century spaceships will be built out of individual metal hull plates at all, no matter how cool it looks on a movie miniature. Welded seams are structural weak points and add excess mass. A futuristic ship hull would probably be a single, continuous piece of lightweight, strong composite material formed in the desired shape -- much as modern aircraft hulls are made largely from carbon fiber. Future materials science should give us composites even stronger than carbon fiber, and considerably stronger and lighter than any metal.

But of course that idea wouldn't have been around (or well-known) in 1979 when the refit Enterprise enshrined the idea of individual hull plates being rendered on a ship miniature, and by now the precedent is too well established in the Trekverse. Hull plates have the advantage of conveying a desired visual impression to the audience (they give a sense of scale and texture) and they help perpetuate the desired analogy between starships and naval vessels of the past and present. The welding scenes in the teaser trailer serve the same narrative purposes.

(By the way, Rick, would you happen to know whose idea it was to put distinct, differently shaded hull plates on the TMP Enterprise? Was it going to be a feature of the Phase II ship, or was it added for the new miniature built with the big screen in mind?)

 

[bryce]

I remember reading in one Trek novel (not canon, I *know*) that those 'box docks" we saw originally in the first two films themselves were equipped with anti-graviy engines, and could be "dropped on' and lifted off the surface of a planet with a starship inside, cradled by tractor beams, etc...

That would be damn handy if that's how they work. Work that goes better in gravity/atmosphere could be done there, and then (or before even) microgravity work could could be done.

I partial to the theory that the trailer is more stylistic than actual, but is based on "actual" events, just not *exactly* what happened.

And I believe that ships are partially built in space, and partial on the ground then lifted up to orbit. Some ships like the DS9 Defiant and maybe even Voyager could be build on entirely on the ground, then flown under their own power into space.

I know that the idea of building the ship on the ground almost seems (even feels to me) kind of "retro" compared to Enterprises' futuristic looking in-space construction, but perhaps it's the opposite...maybe with the early NX class ships like Enterprise and Columbia, they just didn't *have* reliable heavy-lift anti-grav technology, so they HAD to make the ship in orbit. Later, buy the 1701's time, they could lift major components to orbit, so did a lot of he dangerous and dirty work on the ground.

It odd because the NX-Class shape (and those arrowhead ships as well) look like they would be easier to build on the ground, because you don't have to prop up and balance two hulls + nacelles. But with no heavy capacity anti-grav tech, it would be hard to life it. (Remember, we say the NX-Alpha and Beta launched by a *rail* and rocket system!)

 

[syc]

Christopher said:
^^Personally, I very much doubt that 23rd-century spaceships will be built out of individual metal hull plates at all, no matter how cool it looks on a movie miniature. Welded seams are structural weak points and add excess mass. A futuristic ship hull would probably be a single, continuous piece of lightweight, strong composite material formed in the desired shape -- much as modern aircraft hulls are made largely from carbon fiber.

Well that doesnt make very much sense? I mean sure you've got vehicles like the Apollo and even military aircraft that are constructed in a similar manner, But I think we're all missing the point. Yeah uhm, Hi? This is a spaceship. Not an aircraft. What happens when your "single, continuous piece of lightweight, strong composite material" is impacted by micrometerites or is damaged due to combat and weapons fire?

You think the engineers would've liked replacing the entire spacecraft exterior, every time there was a little bit of damage to one section? Oh, sure they could through a patch of your "Strong composite material" on there to repair it, but isn't THAT weakening the superstructure?

Let's use common sense and look at the Space Shuttle, as an example... ONE SINGLE sheet of Silica over the ventral section... pretty expensive and costly to constantly replace that, every time theres damage.

 

[Plecostomus]

Good point.

They could be tack-welding the sections into place pending a final pass with a Tecnobabble Welder of some sort. That makes more sense.

As for patching materials like the mentioned above, you'd use heat and filler, but you'd never recover the strenght in that area due to busted fibers.

You'd almost need some kind of nano-bot weaver system to effect repairs then.

 

[trevanian]

CHRISTOPHER,

Sternbach might know something different, but based on the people I've talked with, there's no indication that the panelling was going on the phase II ship (you can take a look at the Brick Price photos of the scaled-up docking section for phase II in the phase 2 book and see it was awfully plain), and very little to suggest that the panelling was going on the ship as a feature while Abel and Taylor were doing it. Taylor has mentioned that the pearlescent thing was his idea, but I think he is backtracking a bit, since he had indicated that was his desired approach for the bioluminescent vger as well.

I think the panel stuff almost certainly originated with Trumbull, who was desperate to try and get some sense of scale into a model that was way too small to show it. If he had tried planting plate detail on, it would have suffered from the problem the 4 ft -d has, with the plates being out of scale. So he probably settled for the suggestion of plating. (by way of comparison, the DISCOVERY in 2001 could utilize very fine plant-ons on the sphere section because the model was so huge.)

Another bit of evidence for the ship being smooth and plain comes from Magicam, who built the thing. In STarlog 27, they complain about how much texture and paint has been added to the ship, saying it was a better aesthetic when it was totally smooth (though harder to put in the access panels.) Considering that Magicam was in the business of building AND painting miniatures, you'd figure that this would have affected those comments, even if their work was painted over or scraped off (the various TMP models WERE upgraded and altered by EEG and Apogee after Magicam finished with them, mainly to add more detail and more lighting.)

 

[Christopher]

syc said:
Well that doesnt make very much sense? I mean sure you've got vehicles like the Apollo and even military aircraft that are constructed in a similar manner, But I think we're all missing the point. Yeah uhm, Hi? This is a spaceship. Not an aircraft. What happens when your "single, continuous piece of lightweight, strong composite material" is impacted by micrometerites or is damaged due to combat and weapons fire?

What an odd question. First of all, since it's a spaceship, that means it needs to cover huge distances with limited fuel, and so it needs to be as lightweight as practically possible.

Second, why would micromete or weapon impacts be more of a problem for this kind of hull than for a metal hull made of plates? It's a stronger material, more resistant to puncture. It would have no seams that could rupture or give way, so it would be much stronger structurally.

And unlike metal, a composite hull could be built with self-repair capability -- it would be filled with pockets of fluid that would expand into a rupture and harden to seal it off. This technology is being developed today in the real world for aircraft bodies.

And Plecostomus makes a good point: the kind of nanofabrication technology that would allow the creation of such hulls would allow their repair as well. We're talking about a level of technology sufficiently advanced that it behaves more like a biological system, capable of monitoring, adjusting, and healing itself. Engineers in the real world are already beginning to develop technologies in that direction, and there's no telling how far those technologies could advance. At the very least, our present-day aerospace technology is already far beyond just welding hunks of metal together.

In the Trek context, given the existence of transporters and replicators, it should be easy to use those tools for "rapid prototyping" on a large scale, creating full-size, seamless components with whatever advanced structural features you can program into them. The whole thing would be materialized as a single unit. And if a part of it were damaged, it should be simple to focus a transporter beam on the damaged section, dematerialize it, and rematerialize it back in its original configuration. So this sort of thing should be even easier in the Trekverse than in reality.

 

[aridas sofia]

Some points I made in another thread, which bear repeating here:

"Roddenberry often speculated in 1960s terms. When building a starship's basic components on the ground and trucking them into space, he was speaking in terms of NASA's near-future speculations. In terms his audience could comprehend, but still hold in awe...

"A starfaring civilization that doesn't mine its solar system for building materials and do the whole damn thing in space is such a contradiction in terms that it becomes fantasy. But fine, so much of Trek is fantasy that we have to give them their own language and concede them their vision. Though one would hope they would try to stay as far ahead of us as the original creators of the show were, and not fall further behind...

"Let's see extruders creating metal frame like grey goo toothpaste that instantly freezes into a glittering skeleton of incomprehensible beauty. Show me nanoscale builders that magically bring basic forms into view before our eyes -- apparently creating something out of nothing. People? How about 23rd century construction techs using carbon spinners, weaving ceramics into a hull like spiders weaving a web. Then let's see the welders -- plasma torches on robotic limbs sealing weird rainbow-hued panels over the hull. And transporter and replicator technology just to make the point that what's a pumpkin one minute can be a starship the next."

Importantly, I think we must anchor ourselves in whatever vision of the future Trek embraces. Their tech involves finely controlled antigravity, so although we truck objects into space for assembly, and would expect an advanced civilization to manufacture and assemble spacecraft from space-mined materials in space... that isn't necessarily the only way to do it. If a society is master of gravity, then really, they can do this stuff anyway they want. And since Roddenberry stated in his original materials that the parts were made on Earth and moved to space for final assembly, we shouldn't be at all surprised that anyone would portray it that way.

For someone that embraces the artistic vision and technical prognostications of the original Trek and TMP as much as its storytelling power, JJ getting this little detail right is one brief bright spot in an otherwise pretty bleak week (Trek-wise, that is).

 

[Rick Sternbach]

trevanian said:
CHRISTOPHER,

Sternbach might know something different, but based on the people I've talked with, there's no indication that the panelling was going on the phase II ship

Nope, don't have a whole lot more to add; I wasn't anywhere near the miniatures, though I wish I had been.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Captain Robert April]

Problem: What we're being shown doesn't look, to me at least, like components being built for later assembly in orbit.

It looks to me like they're putting the whole thing together on the ground, which, despite their lameass justifications to the contrary, is stupid and insults the intelligence of the audience that they expect us to just swallow something that deliberately goes against what's been set up previously.

Never mind the issue of why would they be doing this type of work at night with horrible lighting conditions?

And isn't anyone else disturbed by the apparent size of this monster? Looks to me like we're getting a ship the size of the Enterprise-D, not Kirk's ship.

Now, who was it around here that figured that a frame that large would collapse under its own weight in Earth normal gravity....?

 

[Plecostomus]

Submarine sections are welded at night after the sections cool and contract. This allows better alignment and eliminates errors caused by one section being in the sunlight and expanded and one section coming out of a fab area and being cooler. Once welded and locked in position, the difference in expansion and contraction can cause the very frame the very structure of the ship to warp and buckle.

 

[Christopher]

Captain Robert April said:
It looks to me like they're putting the whole thing together on the ground, which, despite their lameass justifications to the contrary, is stupid and insults the intelligence of the audience that they expect us to just swallow something that deliberately goes against what's been set up previously.

Once more:

This is a teaser trailer, and thus is probably not in the movie. It's essentially a commercial for the movie, and we all know that commercials are about creating impressions, not conveying accurate information. So don't take it so literally.

And isn't anyone else disturbed by the apparent size of this monster? Looks to me like we're getting a ship the size of the Enterprise-D, not Kirk's ship.

Looks about right to me. Here's a screencap:

http://trekmovie.com/images/sttease/sttease_06.jpg

You can see inside to the actual decks, and their height (and the height of the guy standing inside the exposed corridor on the lower right -- at least I think there's a guy there) is consistent with the ship having 6-8 decks from the top of the bridge to the bottom of the saucer rim, and it's generally accepted that there are 7.

 

[Ronald Held]

Can anyone remember where I got the idea that the hull plates were connected not by welds, but magnatomic seals?

 

[Plecostomus]

Various sources. I recall seeing magnatomic in the Franz Joseph stuff which was my earliest exposure to Technobabble.

 

[bryce]

The 1701 was built, what, like about 250 years from now?

The original Trek as ~ 300 years in 1966's future, so subtract ~ 40 from 300 to get 260, then minus how old the Enterprise already was when Kirk took command...20 years?

So in 240 or 250 years, I don't think they'd still be welding bits of metal together by hand to build ships, no, they could be *growing* entire ships out of diamond or something using nano-fabrication as mentioned before. Or out of something organic - living maybe. Or something else we can't even imagine now.

BUT..this trailer, the more and more I think about it, seems to be about conveying and image and a feel of something, not a tech manual description, and in that sense the trailer succeeds very well if you ask me.

I get a sense of awe of a big ship being built, but for the sea of space.

:thumbsup:

 

[Christopher]

Plecostomus said:
Various sources. I recall seeing magnatomic in the Franz Joseph stuff which was my earliest exposure to Technobabble.

I remember the word "magnatomic" mainly from the TMP blueprint set by David Kimble, but I just checked and I found that the FJ Tech Manual's page on warp nacelles is the source of the terminology used for the nacelle callouts on the blueprints (phrases like "magnatomic flux constriction" and "space-energy/matter sink"). But I don't recall coming across the word in reference to welding or seals.

Of course, the word doesn't actually mean anything. I assume FJ was trying to merge "magnetic" and "atomic," but just smooshing those words together doesn't produce a meaningful result. Literally, "magnatomic" would seem to translate from the Latin (and Greek) as "of large cuts." Which makes it even less likely to have anything to do with welds or seals.

 

[ancient]

I think it's fine that they are building it on the ground.

-In space, there is no gravity, but everything still has mass. Manuvering stuff would still be very unweildy and dangerous, especially with very massive pieces. Since artificail gravity/anti-grav is shown all the time in Trek, there is no advantage to be had from builting it in space.

-Human workers will be more comfortable in their natural environment, and will be able to work faster and more efficiently as a result.

-They'd have to keep the thing on the dark side of the Earth or inside a dock, to keep the hull away from the sun. I don't think having a temperature range of 600 degrees daily on the unfinished structure is a good idea, no matter what materials you use.

-I think that just because humans are welding stuff doesn't mean they are assembling the whole ship that way. maybe 90% of the welding/etc is done by robots. The guys there are just adding the human touch to a few key peices.

BUT in any case, the teaser was done well. They put it on the ground and had welders so that non-geeks would be able to tell what was going on. If they'd showed robots building something in space it would've seemed aloof and nerdy right off the bat.

 

[Shaw]

Plecostomus said:
Various sources. I recall seeing magnatomic in the Franz Joseph stuff which was my earliest exposure to Technobabble.

Christopher said:
I remember the word "magnatomic" mainly from the TMP blueprint set by David Kimble, but I just checked and I found that the FJ Tech Manual's page on warp nacelles is the source of the terminology used for the nacelle callouts on the blueprints (phrases like "magnatomic flux constriction" and "space-energy/matter sink"). But I don't recall coming across the word in reference to welding or seals.

Of course, the word doesn't actually mean anything. I assume FJ was trying to merge "magnetic" and "atomic," but just smooshing those words together doesn't produce a meaningful result.

Sometimes when looking at this stuff too closely I start to think of MYSTERY MEN...

And we should also recall what happen to the scientists who worked on the PSYCHOFRAKULATOR...

I mean, do we really want to get so caught up in this that we end up in an insane asylum? They really limit your access to forums like these in places like that.



Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.

 

[Harry]

I do agree with Christopher that it may be that we will not see any of this in the final movie. The teaser is deliberately called 'Under Construction', and they're talking about the movie itself as much as the most immediately recognizable icon of Star Trek: the Enterprise.

But, playing along for a bit, here's two more bits:

- The Enterprise is presumable the 2nd ship (after NCC-1700) of the "Starship class"/Constitution-class. This at least gives it some kind of special status, even if it isn't supposed to be a significantly important during TOS. From an engineering POV, she may have been special in 2245.
- Not all starships are built the same. Maybe only 1700 and 1701 were built in 'drydock', in some kind of highly advanced variable gravity surface dock.
- I don't know about the welders. I hope they didnt weld the entire hull, but just removed and restored some access hatches. But it works for the trailer.

 

[Christopher]

I think the welders are a good sign. They're evidence that the Enterprise was built Ford tough.

 

[ancient]

^At least some things, like spaceships, will NOT be made in China. That's a good sign!


If the 1700 was the first ship then it was a design prototype, which makes the Enterprise the first production ship.

Or something like that.