Hal Clement Article

[ChallengerHK]

I just commented in another thread that Hal Clement wrote an article in the 70s or 80s about the Enterprise, basically saying it was a poor design from a hard sf standpoint (duh ). I can't find a sign of it, though, and my google-fu is tolerable good. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

 

[BK613]

No luck. Are you sure it was Clement?

 

[ChallengerHK]

Pretty sure. The memory plays tricks, but I knew him casually and I recall asking him if he would mind if I wrote a follow up.

That said, do you recall something like that that was written by someone other than Clement?

 

[BK613]

Pretty sure. The memory plays tricks, but I knew him casually and I recall asking him if he would mind if I wrote a follow up.

That said, do you recall something like that that was written by someone other than Clement?

No, I don't have a specific memory. But with 25+ years of discussing ST online, off and on, I have an amalgamation of ideas in my head from various conversations, and the idea that the E is unfit for space is in there.
The only thing I could find by him that might fit the bill is "Whatever Happened to the Science in Science Fiction?" published in the Sept '93 issue of Science Fiction Age magazine. Haven't found an online version and don't have an offline version, though.

 

[ChallengerHK]

Basically, the argument was that it has too many spindly parts and pulls too many g-forces to function.

Thanks for verifying my attempt at research. I want to say that this might have been in a fanzine, which may or may not have been Trek. Unfortunately, all the other people I might have been able to ask about this were in his age group and have also passed on.

 

[ChallengerHK]

This may be part of it. Hard to say.

Star Trek Con (1969 convention)
3:45 -- Hal Clement gave a talk called "Star Trek and Science": "Pertinent [sic] commentary from One Who Knows."

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Con_(1969_convention)

 

[MAGolding]

Here is a link to the bibliography of Hal Clement in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?233

G. Harry Stine wrote an article about the making of TOS and another one about the making of TNG:

"To Make a Star Trek" Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact February 1968. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?115638

"State of the Art: Star Trek Revisited" Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact November 1988. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?115083

In the 1968 article Stine says on pages 75 and 78:

As a result, the U.S.S. Enterprise is a large, complex, armed, multi-mission ship. My first impression of it on the tv screen resulted in a chuckle at what i thought was the creative dream of some nonscientific art director. I changed my mind after reading Roddenberry's Guide and building the AMT plastic model of the ship -- which, I am told, is the hottest plastic model kit on the market right now. Some real thought went into the design...

...In so far as the structural soundness of the ship's overall engineering design goes, again who wants to argue with the technology two centuries in the future? Today's Enterprise model in styrene plastic is an incredibly fragile thing, but made from a man-made engineered material. Long before the time of the Enterprise, we will have created materials with strengths exceeding the ultimates published in Mark's Manuel. After you've seen the boron filaments and composite filament materials now being mass produced by General Electric, the apparently flimsy structure of the U.S.S. Enterprise doesn't seem to be flimsy anymore. .

In any case the ship is a real deep-spacer and obviously has many internally-generated gravity fields to hold the crew to the decks...and probably the ship's structure together as well.

And that is all I can think of at the moment about science fiction writers discussing the spindly and apparently flimsy design of the TOS Enterprise.

And see post # 20 at: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/landing-starships.305417/

 

[Christopher]

I always loved that about the Enterprise, the way its modular design says "This vessel could only exist in space, not on Earth." Too many other TV/movie starships, including in Trek, are stuck within Earthbound design aesthetics where everything is compact and horizontal.

 

[ChallengerHK]

I always loved that about the Enterprise, the way its modular design says "This vessel could only exist in space, not on Earth." Too many other TV/movie starships, including in Trek, are stuck within Earthbound design aesthetics where everything is compact and horizontal.

Couldn't agree more. I've always a visceral reaction to 1701 as a beautiful piece of art, which is part of the reason, I'm sure, that I wanted to do a response. At the time, and in my youthful arrogance I was thinking "Silly hard sf writer, do you not understand the value of beauty?"

 

[Shawnster]

I always loved that about the Enterprise, the way its modular design says "This vessel could only exist in space, not on Earth." Too many other TV/movie starships, including in Trek, are stuck within Earthbound design aesthetics where everything is compact and horizontal.

Which is why I found the "Enterprise" built on Earth scenes in 09 to be ridiculous.

 

[Christopher]

Although the Enterprise design still has Earthbound thinking by having the "down" vector be perpendicular to the direction of motion, like in a ship, aircraft, or car. It would've been even more "spacey" if the gravity had been parallel to the direction of motion, like in a rocket under thrust, so that the crew inside would perceive the ship's movement as "upward." It might also have been more credible if it were symmetrical around the central axis, so the forces would be balanced for maneuvers.

So what I'm imagining as a refinement of the design could be something where the "saucer" is a forward plate that serves as a shield against oncoming debris and radiation (but also has forward sensor arrays of some sort), behind/below which is the habitat section, and below that is a cylindrical hull with pylons connecting to four warp nacelles at the compass points, with impulse engines and heat sinks to the rear/bottom. So kind of like if you stuck vertically-oriented nacelles on Earth Spacedock.

 

[Henoch]

Decision to consider for personnel orientation versus direction of motion: To throw your crew into the bulkheads or into the deck above your head?

 

[Christopher]

Decision to consider for personnel orientation versus direction of motion: To throw your crew into the bulkheads or into the deck above your head?

I assume there's still artificial gravity and inertial dampers, since the ship wouldn't be under thrust all the time and would still have to perform sharp maneuvers at times. I'm just trying to think of a design that would feel like it was created by a spacefaring society rather than an Earthbound production artist. In the early days of space travel, before AG fields and such, thrust would have been the primary source of weight, unless a ship had a centrifuge section. So the "up" direction would either be toward the front of the ship or toward its central axis. Therefore, presumably that starfaring society would come to take such gravity vectors for granted by the time they invented AG and thus would probably keep using them, rather than reverting to something Earthlike.

 

[publiusr]

I always loved that about the Enterprise, the way its modular design says "This vessel could only exist in space, not on Earth." Too many other TV/movie starships, including in Trek, are stuck within Earthbound design aesthetics where everything is compact and horizontal.

Swans may look dainty, but they can break a man’s arm. And that is what the Enterprise is after all—a smiling swan.

One person said of Trek’s look—that it was technology unchained.

 

[Christopher]

Swans may look dainty, but they can break a man’s arm. And that is what the Enterprise is after all—a smiling swan.

I've always seen it more like Pegasus. The angle of the dorsal reminds me of a horse's neck raised proudly, and the nacelles are the wings poised for a downstroke.

One person said of Trek’s look—that it was technology unchained.

That wasn't TOS, and it wasn't about the look. "Technology Unchained" is a term from the original ST:TNG writers' bible. From p. 14 of the March 23, 1987 edition (written by Gene Roddenberry and/or David Gerrold, most likely):

Gone is the metallic sterility of the original ship, the reason being that the last century or so has seen a form of technological progress which 24th century poets call "technology Unchained" -- which means that technical improvement has gone beyond developing things which are smaller, or faster, or more powerful, and it now very much centered on improving the quality of life.

So indeed, it was explicitly not meant to apply to the TOS ship/technology.