Building the Mighty Mushroom - Spacedock

[Santaman]

I'm not quite sure what Spacedock's orbit looks like, how far is it away from Earth? is it in a geostationary orbit? If it actually orbits then it probably can wipe any invasion force from the planet as soon its on top of them, if its sits in one place relative to a spot on the planet then it will leave a huge gap indeed unless it can move around which means it will be able to be there where its needed.

 

[Meredith]

The shroom spacedock is best buit using lunar mining and parking it in one of the stable lagrange points.

 

[Timo]

The ST3 footage seems to indicate a relatively low orbit, perhaps about a thousand klicks above the planet. Not stationary, so the guns and transporters of the station could cover most of the planet, given enough time. Not so high that both poles could be efficiently covered, though.

The same goes for all reuses of that footage, of course.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David cgc]

...Also, a space fortress sounds like the best sort. The very fact that it sits in the middle of space means that it's gonna be basically self-sufficient and immune to the starvation aspect of a siege.

Of course, a smallish space installation will soon run out of other things besides breathing air or drinking water or food. Which might be all the incentive one needs for building humungous space installations. Those could manufacture their own endless supply of torpedoes, as pointed out above, and could also go on existing even if the rest of the UFP didn't.

How could one effectively besiege a starbase? And what would one win by that?

Reading this reminded me of the old Starfleet Academy game, and how, sometimes, I would screw around with the starbase in that one. It had an infinite supply of shields, so you could just blast away at it all day without any effect. However, if you had a sufficiently large and powerful ship, it was possible to grab it with your tractor beam and throw it at the local star. Thanks to an apparent lack of foresight by the designers for how I'd try to break their game, either the Starbase specifically, or all the NPC ships in general, were immune to the gravity-well zone of death that would destroy you if you got too close to a (woefully out-of-scale) planet or star. So I'd grab the starbase, haul ass to the star, drop the tractor and let it coast when I started to hear my hull creaking, then fly around the star and watch the starbase come out the other side.

So, I guess you could do that, but it would depend on the Starbase being disinclined to fire upon you.

 

[Saquist]

Spacedock was shown in a high parking orbit.

A low orbit is where the shuttle and the ISS fly...200 miles...up

Hubble orbits at 347 miles up
High Earth Orbits are 22,000 miles

I just did a cad Drawing for the perspective seen while Enterprise is on approach.
The distance is about 2500 miles up.

 

[bryce]

Does anybody know where I could maybe find a pic comparing spacedock the size it was in the movies to the size the starbase version was supposed to be...?

Also...how big is the movie spacedock? how long/tall? Etc? (And what about the TNG "starbases"?)

 

[bryce]

Check this out as an alternate mushroom dock (something like this is what I'd sub for the Earth Spacedock if I was doing a "Star Trek: Remastered" style TNG):

http://suricatasblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/starbase.jpg

(I found it here: http://suricatasblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/the-concepts-of-star-trek-online/ )

Here's another view: http://meatbun.verbsite.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/starbase.jpg

 

[Saquist]

Where did you get that?

 

[bryce]

Where did you get that?

Here: http://suricatasblog.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/the-concepts-of-star-trek-online/

(Well, originally I just Googled "spacedock" and "starbase" and it came up on the first page.)

^There are some *AWESOME* Trek-style starship designs there too!!!

 

[Saquist]

I'm not a fan of John Eaves Federation Designs...so those ships don't interest me but that Starbase station is inspired....

I may be able to redesign them to Something....para familiar yet futuristic tot he 24th century.

 

[Python Trek]

So is the official name of the big mushroom "Spacedock"? Wouldn't there be hundreds, if not thousands, of spacedocks of various kinds in the Federation? It needs more to its name, right? Like, "Spacedock One" or "Spacedock Alpha". Personally, I've always called it "Starbase One", but now that I think of it, didn't ENT suggest that Starbase One was in orbit of another star, one of the Centauris or something? Or did I dream that?

 

[Timo]

I'd argue it's clear from the context. The mushroom near Earth is "Spacedock Earth", a sombrero next to Vulcan is "Spacedock Vulcan", a dumbbell next to Andor is "Spacedock Andor", etc. The hundreds of dockyards around Earth do not perform the function of "Spacedock Earth", so they don't get called that in traffic control communication. Instead, they get called things like "Spacedock Four", and even that is probably shorthand for "Spacedock Four of the San Francisco Yards, Center Orbit Cluster".

I'd prefer "Spaceport" for such a central facility, but perhaps Spaceports in Trek are surface installations. And the traffic control entity might be called Space Central; there's decidedly a "Vulcan Space Central" controlling traffic in the Vulcan home system in "Amok Time". The "Space Central" in "Miri" might also be a traffic control facility, but all we know about it is that it will send teachers and advisers for the children on Miri's planet - so perhaps it's in fact short for Space Central High School?

As for "Starbase", I'd actually find it really odd if Starbase 1 sat on Earth orbit. That's not "a base at stars", not from the Earthling viewpoint! Surely the first Starbase would be founded in some distant star system, to complement Earthbase (or whatever) and to extend Starfleet's logistical reach via a second hub.

Perhaps a bit down the road, in the name of equality, a Starbase 77 or something like that might be established in the Sol system (that is, preexisting facilities there would be given the name Starbase 77 to calm down the Andorian critics who hate the fact that their home system has to play host to Starbase 66, making it look like Andoria is some sort of final frontier or wasteland).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Galileo7]

Earth Spacedock http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Earth_Spacedock

 

[Saquist]

Does anybody know where I could maybe find a pic comparing spacedock the size it was in the movies to the size the starbase version was supposed to be...?

Also...how big is the movie spacedock? how long/tall? Etc? (And what about the TNG "starbases"?)

I have CAD software that could determine that if you wish based on the size of the 305 meter Enterprise and I could scale it to the ENT-D.

Last time I looked ....

Galaxy accommodating Starbase

Length:

18 483. meters = 11.4848037 miles



Diameter
12 270.7599 meters = 7.62469671 miles


----------------------------------
Earth Space Dock

Length:
13 351.4244 meters = 8.2961905 miles


Diameter :
8 856.1296 meters = 5.50294381 miles


The original Spacedock seen in Star Trek III should have...

A crew of 961,757 or more and 4,450 levels or decks.
(crew based on volumetrics of a Galaxy Class Starship which offers almost 2300 square meters per person)
Theoretically the Space Dock could accommodate 2 million people or more.

 

[SonicRanger]

^

Significant figures are your friend.

 

[thepatagonian]

Impressive numbers. And having them DOES make building something that big much easier to contemplate. This thing would be clearly discernable in the night sky from anywhere in the facing hemisphere, even if it were at the same distance as a satelite (though for dramatic effect stations are always shown in a very low orbit). I wonder if there are equally impressive artificial structures on the moon,...Riker did say "The moon looks a lot different in my time."

I've read that the weight of water held behind all the dams in the Northern Hemisphere has slightly altered the orbit and inclination of Earth. Spacedock might be a counterweight to balance changes to future changes to either the Earth or the Moon. If not, wouldn't we need to have an equally dense object antipodal to Spacedock? ... one in the Northern/Western Hemisphere and on opposite in the Southern/Eastern Hemisphere?

Some of us like the tides coming and going just they way they are afterall.

 

[Saquist]

If DS9 is any indication these things should be very difficult to conquer.

 

[Wingsley]

^ Depends on...

1: who's doing the conquering

2: how determined the conquerors are, which itself will determine...

3: how prepared and well-armed the conquerors are


Keep in mind that in the end, it's only a stationary (or relatively so) space station, with all the limitations therein.

 

[bryce]

Impressive numbers. And having them DOES make building something that big much easier to contemplate. This thing would be clearly discernable in the night sky from anywhere in the facing hemisphere, even if it were at the same distance as a satelite (though for dramatic effect stations are always shown in a very low orbit). I wonder if there are equally impressive artificial structures on the moon,...Riker did say "The moon looks a lot different in my time."

Yeah...and something about a "Lake Armstrong" - makes me wonder if the Moon is terraformed, or partially terraformed, in TNG's time.

*Unfortunately*, despite Riker's statements every time that we have seen the Moon in Trek - from the TOS movies to TNG & beyond, it has looked exactly like it does now...without even a hint of *cities*. (The only exception being the opening credits of "Enterprise", where we finally see a Lunar settlement.)

But since "Star Trek: Remastered" has come out I now tell myself that what we seen on screen may only be a *representation* of what is...erm..."really"...there. (Hence the re-use of Earth's Spacedock as various starbases - as if Starfleet/The Federation can just put up these massive million-person crewed stations up everywhere and anywhere - I just pretend that they are stand in's for some other *similar*type structure...)

I've read that the weight of water held behind all the dams in the Northern Hemisphere has slightly altered the orbit and inclination of Earth. Spacedock might be a counterweight to balance changes to future changes to either the Earth or the Moon. If not, wouldn't we need to have an equally dense object antipodal to Spacedock? ... one in the Northern/Western Hemisphere and on opposite in the Southern/Eastern Hemisphere?

[SNIP]

I wonder...another spacedock (perhaps the one we saw in nuTrek) or a cluster of stations and docks.

And if there didn't want to (or it wasn't feasible to) build another monster dock, they could just haul a small asteroid into orbit - and perhaps use that asteroid as a combination space station/space dock and mining facility (perhaps using the ore to build starships.)

(Or who knows - maybe there is something else there..something like a giant orbital O'Neil colony or massive power-station beaming power to the global power grid...? Or maybe something multi-purpose - which Spacedock itself probably is, actually...)

 

[Saquist]

^ Depends on...

1: who's doing the conquering

2: how determined the conquerors are, which itself will determine...

3: how prepared and well-armed the conquerors are


Keep in mind that in the end, it's only a stationary (or relatively so) space station, with all the limitations therein.

Most definitely.

I always figured the stations would have to have an extremely long range phasers and torps because the station can't move effectively to avoid incoming fire so enemies could sit outside it's weapons range and simply rain down the destruction unless it's own range was great than the average ship torpedo.

Sort of a Cruise torpedo.