Building the Mighty Mushroom - Spacedock

[Galileo7]

Well, whenever someone finds out what year exactly TMP is set that is on screen canon please let us all know so we can finally resolve this question.

I don't think you'll ever get an exact canon date. Even if you use Voyager's "Q2" episode's 2270 as the end of Kirk's 5 year mission it is only consistent (or verifiable) within the Voyager universe. Voyager's "Flashback" episode swapped out human Tim Russ for Vulcan Tim Russ and changed the timespan of the Praxis explosion till Kirk and McCoy's arrest from the movie's 2 months to the episode's 2 days. The only definite is that TWOK says it took place in "the 23rd century" and the Romulan Ale was made in the year 2283 or on stardate 2283 (take your pick )

Thanks for giving what is canon. I think that the official Star Trek publications books do us no service by stating dates if they can never be considered canon.

 

[UssGlenn]

Voyager's "Flashback" episode swapped out human Tim Russ for Vulcan Tim Russ

I'm pretty sure Tim Russ's human character was on the Enterprise B not the Excelsior.

 

[blssdwlf]

Voyager's "Flashback" episode swapped out human Tim Russ for Vulcan Tim Russ

I'm pretty sure Tim Russ's human character was on the Enterprise B not the Excelsior.

You are correct - I had mistakenly put him in the same movie (d'oh!) It was Valtane that had changed between movie and episode. In TUC he survives to the end and in "Flashback" he dies during Sulu's rescue attempt.

Valtane alive and well (top left)
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tuchd/ch13/tuchd2492.jpg

I think I had subconsciously imagined that the Voyager version swapped Valtane for Tuvok if they had did that same above scene


@Galileo7 - Publications tend to be variable because they're usually trying to make their own timeline work or are trying to fit the various disjointed series together into one overarching timeline.

 

[BolianAuthor]

There is nothing in Kirk's "two and a half years" remark to rule out that he could have commanded another ship, task force, or space station as a flag officer after he relinquished command of the Starship Enterprise at the end of his famous five-year mission but before he became Chief of Starfleet Operations.

So it could have gone like this:

(NOTE: I have based some of my conjecture on the non-cannon novels "The Prometheus Design" by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Colbreath, and "My Enemy, My Ally" by Diane Duane.)

2261: Design begins on the new Starbase One, also known as Spacedock City Earth.

2265: Kirk assumes permanent command of the Enterprise, after temporarily taking over from Fleet Captain Pike.

2266: Design is complete on Phase One of the huge new Spacedock City, the first portion being the Orbital Office Complex. Component fabrication and construction of the new facility begins.

2268: The Constitution-class Federation Starship U.S.S. Tzaled ("Intrepid"), manned by Vulcans, is destroyed near Gamma 7A.

2269: Design and testing begins on components of the new fourth-power linear warp drive. A prototype refit Constitution-class starship fitted with a crude prototype linear warp drive, U.S.S. Tzaled-A, is deployed by the Vulcans. (Diane Duane's "My Enemy, My Ally")

2270: The Enterprise ends its famous five-year mission, and Captain Kirk is promoted to flag rank. Kirk assumes a new deep space command.

2273: Linear warp drive is certified as stable and standardized as a star-drive technology to replace third-power circumferential warp drive. Design begins on new-generation linear-warp-driven starships. A new generation of the Constitution-class, called the Tzlaed-A-class, will be based on the Vulcan "Intrepid" prototype. The new Miranda-class starships also begin design phase.

2276: Kirk is promoted to Chief of Starfleet Operations, ending his six-year deep space assignment. The first phase of Spacedock City, the Orbital Office Complex (the "inner base of the Mushroom") is complete. Testing begins.

2278: The Orbital Office Complex testing complete, the first phase of Spacedock City construction is now made fully operational. Design begins for additional sections of the "Mushroom".

2279: Admiral Kirk assumes command of the newly refit Enterprise (which uses the new linear warp drive), after two-and-a-half years in Operations. Fabrication begins on Phase Two of Spacedock City.

2280: Construction begins on Phase Two of Spacedock City. Construction and mass refits begin on Constitution (Tzaled-A) and Miranda-class starships. Fleet Admiral Savaj of Vulcan reveals "The Prometheus Design" when Spock temporarily assumes command of the Enterprise.

2282: As construction of Phase Two is complete, testing begins. Design also begins on Phase Three.

2283: Phase Two of Spacedock City is made fully operational. Construction of Phase Three begins. Design of Phase Four, the final phase, begins.

2284: Construction of Phase Three of Spacedock City is complete. Testing begins. Construction of Phase Four begins. After completing its first five-year-mission since being refit, the Starship Enterprise is re-assigned to Starfleet Academy as a cadet training vessel under the command of Captain Spock.

2285: Construction of Phase Four of Spacedock City is complete. Testing begins.

2286: Spacedock City is certified complete, and is formally dedicated Starbase One. The Starships Reliant and Enterprise are destroyed in the Mutara Sector. The Whalesong Probe attacks Earth. Testing begins on the new Excelsior-class starship.

I like this breakdown... the reason I'm so curious, is because in the TNG Tech Manual, it is stated that the Galaxy-Class project alone was in the drawing board phase to completion for a span of at least 20 years, and that was just for one ship the size of the Galaxy-Class... so I would assume the R&D phase alone for Spacedock would be pretty incredible.

 

[SicOne]

I wonder if Starfleet's fear of cloaked warships, either Romulan or Klingon, decloaking and attempting a Pearl Harbor-like attack on Federation ships in open-spaced docks led to the creation of an enclosed space like SpaceDock. Think of it. A handful of cloaked ships decloaking and opening fire in an open orbital shipyard could wreak instantaneous havoc. I don't see the shipyards as having enough space to allow the ships contained therein to raise shields.

There's nothing to say that a cloaked ship couldn't "draft" a ship entering SpaceDock and bide its time, but I would imagine (1) there are sensor nets in place to prevent such an occurence from being successful, and (2) there are too many shuttles, work bees, etc around to let a cloaked object that size go unnoticed for too long, and a vehicle ramming an invisible object would garner attention. But it might be long enough to decloak and rip up a dozen starships, then overload its warp core inside the SpaceDock.

 

[blssdwlf]

^^A strong defensive mentality does make sense. Also the giant ship V'ger came by the planet in TMP and Starfleet felt like it needed some stronger defenses. Perhaps the Mighty Mushroom is scaled up and packed with giant anti-ship weaponry like how the Veritech soldier mode were scaled up to fight the Zentraedi in Macross/Robotech to stop future big ship attacks?

 

[Lazarus]

I wonder what sort of tonnage we're talking about here?

The galaxy-class has a mass of four and a half million metric tonnes, so the spacedock must be somewhere in the region of what, a eighty million? A hundred million?

 

[publiusr]

As for why they have an internal bay for ships, that's a better question. The answer would have to lie in something we've never seen on screen. Perhaps they build and test classified projects inside. Perhaps they can pressurize either the whole or part of the dock, or enable gravity. Perhaps shields work better when you don't have little ships hanging off the side of things.

In ST TAS we heard different red Alert noises. We heard a klaxon that sounded better for ground installations. One was a typical red alert sound with a more nasal follow on. I would use that to indicate ships return to spacedock in case of a massive solar flare caused by some attack. The other red alert with the screech behind it would be used as a starship scramble--to get out as fast as possible.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I wonder if Starfleet's fear of cloaked warships, either Romulan or Klingon, decloaking and attempting a Pearl Harbor-like attack on Federation ships in open-spaced docks led to the creation of an enclosed space like SpaceDock. Think of it. A handful of cloaked ships decloaking and opening fire in an open orbital shipyard could wreak instantaneous havoc. I don't see the shipyards as having enough space to allow the ships contained therein to raise shields.

.

It probably has more to do with consolidating defenses and resources and making everything more efficient. You could protect ships in a drydock by installing shields on a drydock, but then you have to install weapons as well. You have to have a bunch of little power generators, computer cores, storage areas, and crews, for all the individual drydocks. The enemy could pick them off one by one.

It's much easier and safer to group them inside the base and just protect the base with powerful shield and thick hull. If you dock ships on the outside, then you have to extend shields up to 700 meters away from the hull of the Space Dock, which is probably not efficient

 

[BolianAuthor]

^

Well, my take on this is that they built the Spacedock-like stations so that experimental or new ships could be built in there, away from the prying eyes of the Tal'Shiar or Obsidian Order's deep space telescopes. I say this because not only did we know that the Excelsior was kept inside Spacedock during its trial run phase, but in the TNG episode "Booby Trap", we can see that the skeletal Enterprise-D (or maybe even the Galaxy or Yamato) is inside a Spacedock, or Spacedock-like structure.

 

[timelord1010]

You guys are forgetting about the K-7 station from the TOS episode "Trouble with Tribbles". That station was huge. I remember building a model of K-7 many years ago and the scale Enterprise could actually fit inside any one of the "pods" extending from the central portion of the station so the Federation had the capability to build large structures back during TOS.

I even found the model on Amazon with the scale Enterprise: http://www.amazon.com/Round-Star-Tr...XREC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286060595&sr=8-1

 

[EmperorTiberius]

^

Well, my take on this is that they built the Spacedock-like stations so that experimental or new ships could be built in there, away from the prying eyes of the Tal'Shiar or Obsidian Order's deep space telescopes. I say this because not only did we know that the Excelsior was kept inside Spacedock during its trial run phase, but in the TNG episode "Booby Trap", we can see that the skeletal Enterprise-D (or maybe even the Galaxy or Yamato) is inside a Spacedock, or Spacedock-like structure.

Agreed. I don't think regular ships would be allowed to tie up the space inside for several years

 

[STR]

The tallest buildings on Earth don't serve a function

Of course they do. The World Trade Center was an attempt to bring together all the importers, exporters and anyone else in international trade under one roof. The Sears Tower, shockingly, was built to house Sears Corp. Petronas towers house the HQ for Malaysia's state-owned oil company (hence "Petro" in the name. Other buildings, such as Empire State, are built as speculative ventures which use the location and visibility to lure tenants. Burj Khalifa was intended as the centerpiece of a massive development, one part of a larger whole that brings attention to the entire complex.

Every large building has a very specific reason for being built. Sure, the height is an extra premium cost, but that's balanced out by the higher rent you charge for the views, and the free advertising you get for being the biggest. Often location is the biggest reason for building tall. The WTC had a mandate of 10 million sqft of commercial space, and there's only a few good ways of fitting that into 16 acres of Manhattan land. More often then that, the economics of building big just don't pan out, which is why for every world's tallest you have a dozen failed projects (4 or 5 proposed buildings here in Chicago were supposed to top 2,000 feet).

Do we have any indication that Spacedock would or could handle starship construction or repair? It briefly held the wounded E-nil-refit, but didn't do anything to her that we'd know of. It also held the Excelsior before her trials, but again didn't seem to do anything to her. No activity was seen around the ships at the end of ST4, either.

Well, the 1701-A was laid up there too.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

You guys are forgetting about the K-7 station from the TOS episode "Trouble with Tribbles". That station was huge. I remember building a model of K-7 many years ago and the scale Enterprise could actually fit inside any one of the "pods" extending from the central portion of the station so the Federation had the capability to build large structures back during TOS.

I even found the model on Amazon with the scale Enterprise: http://www.amazon.com/Round-Star-Tr...XREC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286060595&sr=8-1

'
it looks huge from that link, but I don't think it's represented as that in the show, at least not in DS9 where the Klingon ship appears pretty big compared to one of the pods.

 

[BolianAuthor]

Yeah, K-7 is not that big...

 

[T'Girl]

K-7 station from the TOS episode "Trouble with Tribbles". That station was huge. I remember building a model of K-7 many years ago and the scale Enterprise could actually fit inside any one of the "pods"

Not even close. According to the windows on the station and the ship, also by comparing the scales at the bottom of the respective blueprints, you get this size.

 

[timelord1010]

I don't think you can go by the window sizes, that's what got the people trying to figure out the size of the new JJ Abrams Enterprise in trouble
When you look at the screen shots from the remastered Trek the Enterprise and Klingon ship look smaller. Even if K-7 isn't that big it is still larger than the Enterprise and was built near the edge of the Federation border with the Klingon Empire. Imagine if the Federation can haul materials that far out to build the K-7 station what the Federation could build in orbit above one of the founding worlds.

 

[blssdwlf]

The height of one of the windows as seen from the interior suggests that it is at least 6 feet or more in height (we never see the top of the window) plus the decks we see are fairly tall as well. K-7 could be 2x or 3x larger than presented in the blueprint above (but probably not large enough to have the Enterprise park in it.)

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/2x15/TOS_2x13_TheTroubleWithTribbles0055-Trekpulse.jpg

 

[Timo]

The above view also highlights the supposed collapsibility of K-7. That is, each of the sombrero sections appears to consist of pie wedges of slightly different sizes, so that the smaller ones can rotate around the vertical axis and become nested inside the larger ones. That's because the station is a copy of an old Douglas design where the sombrero modules were supposed to fit inside a rocket: the top of the hat would be the nose cone, and the rim of the hat would fit under the cone when nested into a "pie wedge".

Starfleet might have hauled K-7 out there in similar fashion, inside rocket-like cylindrar containers. Possibly similar to those the Ptolemy class hauls around, even if the diameter isn't an exact match. The entire station (or at least its outer shell, before internal furnishing) could have been but one Ptolemy-load, equalling two of those 40x200 m cylinders.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Galileo7]

Well, whenever someone finds out what year exactly TMP is set that is on screen canon please let us all know so we can finally resolve this question.

I don't think you'll ever get an exact canon date. Even if you use Voyager's "Q2" episode's 2270 as the end of Kirk's 5 year mission it is only consistent (or verifiable) within the Voyager universe. Voyager's "Flashback" episode swapped out human Tim Russ for Vulcan Tim Russ and changed the timespan of the Praxis explosion till Kirk and McCoy's arrest from the movie's 2 months to the episode's 2 days. The only definite is that TWOK says it took place in "the 23rd century" and the Romulan Ale was made in the year 2283 or on stardate 2283 (take your pick )

STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE has to take place between 2273 to 2277 because in a NG episode "Cause and Effect" a ship U.S.S. Bozeman from the year 2278 is seen, and they were wearing the style uniform that was introduced in WOK.