Re: Description of the teaser trailer...
Kegek said:
Starship Polaris said:
Well, it's just an advertisement. The sequence isn't supposed to appear in the movie.
Doubt that'd stop some people.
Interesting explanation,
Cary L. Brown, but, if I understand you correclty, parts of the ship are built but the final assembly into a ship is supposed to have taken place in space, correct? Because it seems here that the final assembly is underway.
Noplace in that description of the trailer (assuming it's correct, obviously) says tha the ship is undergoing "final assembly."
The explanation from way back when was that the components were assembled at the San Francisco Naval Yards (which is the spot I just showed) and lifted into orbit where the final starship assembly was completed.
We know that we see elements of the saucer... BEING WELDED... in a planetside setting. We also know that we see nacelles under construction in the distance.
Why would you assume that this means that they're completed? Why would you assume that this means that they're even ATTACHED to each other?
As a parallel... think of the F-22. It's actually constructed at multiple facilities. The cockpit section is assembled at one site. The midbody is assembled at another site. The engines are constructed at yet another site. And at a FOURTH site, the various parts are assembled to each other and the final aircraft is completed.
Technically, up until that point, it's not an F-22. So Roddenberry's quote (given by TGT, above) would be entirely accurate even if SOME PORTION of the construction was done planet-side.
Roddenberry was pointing out his intention that this ship doesn't take off and land. It's not designed to, it's not intended to. But the idea that every SEGMENT of it must have been manufactured, from scratch, in orbit is taking that point far beyond where it can reasonably be seen to lead.
The SFNY (which you can see in the image I link above) currently has two very large naval drydocks (you can see the outlines off the lowermost right corner) and the idea that I've always understood was that the nacelles were constructed planetside (but perhaps not FINISHED planetside... ) and lifted to orbit by some form of "heavy lifter" system (presumably antigravity based, not rockets!)
Similarly with the saucer... there's no reason to assume that it has to be welded up from individual beams in orbit. Seems that construction is always simpler if you can have your teams working in "shirt-sleeves."
In fact, that's how I see the "Starbase One/Spacedock" as seen in ST-III... it has a pressurized interior in zero gravity but with a breathable atmosphere, allowing people to work in that space without spacesuits, but also to have the advantage of low-gravity construction (and also near the no-atmosphere drydocks where you could do work requiring no atmosphere).
Before you had a big "Starbase One" pressurized spacedock facility, it seems to me that certain tasks would really need to be done planetside just for them to be practical. And with heavy-lift anti-grav capabilities, it's really not TOO much of a problem, is it?
