Enterprise Repair Time

[Transk53]

Hi,

Does anybody know what the repair time was for the Enterprise E, at the end of Nemeisis? I am writing a fanfic and would ask if anybody could give me some guidence on repair times.

At the end of the Movie, it is difficult for me to tell. I would say the damage was quite serious, so to me that would be about three months. Any help would be very much appreciated.

 

[Timo]

Rebuilding the section that was dispersed into space might be a breeze: the real world is replete with examples of a navy taking an already partially completed ship section from another production line and grafting that onto a hurt vessel that is in more immediate need of, say, a new bow. For all we know, Starfleet had the missing girders and plates in stock and could install them in a week.

Repairing whatever was bent and twisted in the surviving parts of the ship might well take a lot longer, though. And if Starfleet had enough off-the-shelf spares to repair all that through 1:1 replacement, they might be better off just building a new Sovereign class ship out of those and placing the Enterprise at the very end of a long repair queue!

Three months might be fine - but it could serve your dramatic purposes if the end result of three months of repairs would be an only partially repaired starship, one that suffered from known and unknown performance shortcomings as the result of the earlier damage and the incomplete repairs. You could argue that full repairs would have taken five years and that this would not have been cost-effective...

Partial, hasty repairs would make sense if Starfleet considered the Enterprise so prestigious she had to be made spaceworthy on short notice no matter what.

Of interest might be that the ship already underwent quite a change from ST:INS to ST:NEM. And I'm not talking about a few extra torpedo launchers here (launchers that might well have been there all along anyway). The engine pylons were redone and the secondary hull shape was altered - a massive change that might well exceed the ST:NEM repairs in scope. Was that done in response to catastrophic damage, too? If it was done for the sake of tinkering, then Starfleet clearly has capacity to burn, and the ST:NEM repairs might take all of a weekend!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Transk53]

Thanx. I did realise that there were some changes between the aforementioned movies. I must confess though, I did not see the difference in the (which is a one element of my fanfic) pylons.

Thinking about it, your thoughts on partial or hasty repairs would make a lot of sense, because as you say the Enterprise being the flagship. Whether it could be considered a flagship of the line is dubious to me considering First Contact.

I'm not sure about this, but I am sure that I read somewhere that Starfleet found it very resourse intensive to build the Sovereigns, and as such kept a healthy supply of spares. Maybe that is plausible for a quick repair job or even a mod.

Must admit though, if there had ever been another film after Nemisis, I believed that it would have been Enterprise F. That would have decomssioned many a ship.

 

[Timo]

...because as you say the Enterprise being the flagship...

Umm, on screen, the E-E has never been indicated to hold flagship status. Nor any other exceptional status for that matter; Admiral Janeway at one point jokingly accuses Picard of getting all the interesting assignments, but she never indicates this would be because he flies the flagship.

For all we know, Picard was given a smaller and less prestigious ship after the E-D because he didn't exactly come out smelling of roses from the loss of that vessel.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Transk53]

Really, I thought I heard Picard allude to that just before he ignored orders and bolted for Earth.

Anyway, if the Mods want to close this now, I believe this thread gone off topic too much. I have got what I need now. A pylon repair should be quick enough and Timo, you have been a great help.Thanks!

 

[BriGuy]

While it might have given the fans upset about Data's death something to smile about at the end of the movie - the Enterprise "survived" after all - in retrospect I think it was rather naive and practically impossible for the ship to have survived that incident and be repaired seemingly so quickly and easily.

As said before, beyond the obvious damage to the bow of the saucer, there had to have been damage that rippled through the entire ship and every one of its structural members.

While Starfleet may be capable of a heck of a lot, repairing a ship with that degree of damage should have been considered impractical, and resources better used in building a new ship to replace it.

What was left of the Ent-E should have been sent to the Starfleet junkyard (thinking of the one we saw in TNG.)

But after Data's death, like I said, maybe the fans needed something to smile about.

 

[Alrik]

For all we know, Picard was given a smaller and less prestigious ship after the E-D because he didn't exactly come out smelling of roses from the loss of that vessel.

Timo Saloniemi

Timo, where I agree with you on many things, I've seen you make reference to this before, and simply don't understand where you are coming from. The loss of Enterprise was 100% on Riker. Sure, Picard was Captain of the ship, but he turned over command of a perfectly healthy ship to Riker before leaving. Picard wasn't even sure if he would make it back.

If anything, Picard probably got a commendation and medal for not only stopping Soran, but more for saving an entire planet.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

^ It doesn't matter if it was a 'perfectly healthy' ship (at least IRL) -- the CO is ultimately responsible for the ship. That's what is so great (and perilous) about being a CO.

Granted, both of them would probably come up on charges, and that's when different degrees of culpability would be figured out. But Picard certainly would not get a mere "slap on the wrist" while Riker would be the recipient of (most likely) a career-ending Admiral's Mast, etc.

The former (Picard) certainly would NOT get any type of commendation or medal. The circumstances might lessen his consequences, but that's about it.

Cheers,
-CM-

P/S As for the original topic -- I would double it. Even given the Federation's higher tech levels, rebuilding half of a ship would still take a while IMO. Nine months to a year, conservatively, even if you had a spare Sovereign-class saucer lying about...

 

[Judy Waxhorn]

In a "real" metal frame structure that kind of impact would have been catastrophic... Panels would have popped, seams would have let go, shockwaves would have bent and twisted the frame far from the point of impact.

Now it is entirely possible, and maybe even probable... that the inertial dampeners and the structural integrity field worked to counteract and dampen the shockwaves from the impact. Working in concert under automatic computer control, they could have set up a counter-impact wave, nulling the impact force and restricting it to "forward of frame member XX-XX-XXX-Alpha" or whatever.

Given the ability to replicate things at the push of a button... it may have been a case of simply detaching the ruptured sections with a torch at various points and attaching new structural members and whatnot.

Hell with "real" modern modular designs they could detach the entire "bow" and install a new one in just days/weeks rather than build one post-and-frame.

The big issue, and the one that was glossed over would be replacing the crew that died in the impact. No matter how you play it with evacuations and so on... people died when entire sections were vented into space. Quite a few of them.

I don't see it as "murder" or anything (someone was calling it that on another forum), it's the whole going into the Service knowing at any moment you could be called upon to give it up for the Good Of The Nation... something like that would be part of Starfleet too.

 

[Timo]

The dialogue did feature comments on evacuation of the relevant decks long before the ramming, making it plausible that the evacuation was 100% effective. And we didn't see the ship burst a seam anywhere else but the actual impact zone, nor did people on the bridge get particularly bruised (and the bridge had already taken a few hits and might thus be argued to have been the area least likely to feature proper inertia damping and forcefield bracing).

It's actually debatable if anybody much died in the "hard docking" at all, as the E-E plowed into a big and rather empty-looking hangar cavity (just three Remans visible there), not into those parts of the Scimitar that featured portholes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[willg]

The damage suffered in Nemesis was more extensive than The Best of Both Worlds I believe. I can't remember the refit time that Riker gave to Picard at the end of BOBW, but I'd think that the repairs required to Enterprise might be longer than that.

 

[MacLeod]

You've also got to factor in fitting out time on top of repair time. All that carpet to lay etc...

 

[Transk53]

You've also got to factor in fitting out time on top of repair time. All that carpet to lay etc...

Maybe they can replicate it in one block or section on a particular piece of the ship. I have for two weeks swapping out the pylon for two others that have different engines. That is just the swap out though, and it is based on the Engineers being the best of the best, but only in skills set. In my story, the cream of the Academy are not what was required. I went for the type of Humans and Aliens that are akin to the garage tinkerer.

Like a bloke or women who would spend hours just doing what they love to do, but some with slightly less conformity in their overall attitude. They would have that as a facet of their nature anyway. Like the British Army, my characters have the opertunity to improve their Academic and particular skills.

Anyway, I will credit you all with my answer. The amount of time and the level of spares has had an influence.

Thanks all