I loved the Yorktown base and a few other things.

[The Wormhole]

The one and only time the NX-01 flew into the atmosphere it was hardly routine - quite literally, all of time itself was at stake.

The NX-01 has actually flown within a planet's atmosphere three times. Broken Bow, Detained, and Storm Front. People always forget the first two for some reason, even when Storm Front first aired everyone was having histrionics in the Enterprise forum about the NX-01 isn't capable of atmospheric flight.

Granted, Broken Bow they are within a gas giant, so maybe everyone mistakes that as a nebula or something, but in Detained it's definitely a class M planet their flying around in the atmosphere of.

 

[Timo]

They've done it when necessary, but it's never been a routine thing - check out the wobbly TOS-1701 in "Tomorrow is Yesterday".

You mean the bit where the ship flies straight and level in Earth's atmosphere without anybody in the controls for several minutes? I'd hate to see the "routine" version of that, because what use are heroes when all they need to do is lie comatose for the entire adventure?

As per Beyond, it's explicit that starships built on the ground are more advanced than ones built in space. Pretend it means something else if you want, but it's there.

Which is the very reason why I have to pretend it means somenthing else, because clearly Scotty is sprouting nonsense there. NX-Beta wasn't more advanced that NX-01, say... And we see E-A being built in space in Beyond itself, so the whole thing is internally inconsistent gobbledigook anyway.

Indeed, tangenting on the thread subject, Starfleet is master of gravity control, and Yorktown is the giant proof of a pudding floating in the sky. The pull of planets never mattered to them. Why should it start to do so either "now" (the 2260s) or retroactively "then" (the 2160s)?

Scotty tells so many stupid lies in that movie. The transporter can't move people? Sure it can, it always could. The ship has trouble flying through atmospheres? She doesn't, by any account (eyewitness or hero commentary), and does much more demanding "flying through" feats anyway. The ship wasn't built on the ground? Well, it has softly landed there (inside a mountain to boot), so where's the problem?

Ditto the Franklin - Scotty says it's not built for it, but it manages it.

And the heroes can count on it, because the ship has already done it. So why the needless excitement?

The Kelvin Enterprise, on the other hand, was made on Earth, to lift off from Earth's gravity. We see it hovering effortlessly in atmosphere in Into Darkness.

Which is what starships always do - hovering effortlessly goes with being a starship, atmosphere or no atmosphere. These things have a thrust-to-weight ratio on the order of zillion to one, and this is fairly obvious to the audience, too. Failure to hover would be amazing and require lots of technobabble, or perhaps big gaping and smoking holes all over the ship...

Perhaps there were lots of holes inside the Franklin? That would have been the more sensible argument from Scotty: this piece of junk has been broken for a full century already, so don't count on her doing what she was built to do.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

The NX-01 has actually flown within a planet's atmosphere three times. Broken Bow, Detained, and Storm Front. People always forget the first two for some reason, even when Storm Front first aired everyone was having histrionics in the Enterprise forum about the NX-01 isn't capable of atmospheric flight.

Granted, Broken Bow they are within a gas giant, so maybe everyone mistakes that as a nebula or something, but in Detained it's definitely a class M planet their flying around in the atmosphere of.

I'm gonna have to rewatch "Detained", I don't remember that at all.

You mean the bit where the ship flies straight and level in Earth's atmosphere without anybody in the controls for several minutes? I'd hate to see the "routine" version of that, because what use are heroes when all they need to do is lie comatose for the entire adventure?



Which is the very reason why I have to pretend it means somenthing else, because clearly Scotty is sprouting nonsense there. NX-Beta wasn't more advanced that NX-01, say... And we see E-A being built in space in Beyond itself, so the whole thing is internally inconsistent gobbledigook anyway.

Enterprise-A is built in the Yorktown docking tunnels, and during her construction we see many little people standing and walking along her hull. So she's built in one-gee of gravity, as the Enterprise was.

Indeed, tangenting on the thread subject, Starfleet is master of gravity control, and Yorktown is the giant proof of a pudding floating in the sky. The pull of planets never mattered to them. Why should it start to do so either "now" (the 2260s) or retroactively "then" (the 2160s)?

Because we never saw it until now. Truly, due to lack of budget or imagination, but if one were to take the evidence in front of them (endless reuses of Regula-1 and Spacedock to represent every Starfleet-built space station) and look for an in-universe reason why, them being incapable of the larger and more spectacular Yorktown it is a far from definitive, but still a perfectly valid one.

Scotty tells so many stupid lies in that movie. The transporter can't move people? Sure it can, it always could. The ship has trouble flying through atmospheres? She doesn't, by any account (eyewitness or hero commentary), and does much more demanding "flying through" feats anyway. The ship wasn't built on the ground? Well, it has softly landed there (inside a mountain to boot), so where's the problem?

I think you're confusing the way you like to imagine the Trek universe, and the Trek universe as it appears on screen. On-screen, the Franklin's transporter was cargo-only (exactly as everything prior to Enterprise NX-01's in "Broken Bow" was), and Scotty upgraded it to beam 20 at a time because he's Scotty.

Which is what starships always do - hovering effortlessly goes with being a starship, atmosphere or no atmosphere. These things have a thrust-to-weight ratio on the order of zillion to one, and this is fairly obvious to the audience, too. Failure to hover would be amazing and require lots of technobabble, or perhaps big gaping and smoking holes all over the ship...

Perhaps there were lots of holes inside the Franklin? That would have been the more sensible argument from Scotty: this piece of junk has been broken for a full century already, so don't count on her doing what she was built to do.

So really, you're saying every time they've suggested in-universe that ships aren't meant to fly in atmo they've been wrong. It's a fair observation of a flaw in Trek's world, but it in no way reflects the in-universe opinions of the characters or the intent of the writers.

 

[Timo]

Enterprise-A is built in the Yorktown docking tunnels..

Thus in space, making Scotty a liar.

..and during her construction we see many little people standing and walking along her hull. So she's built in one-gee of gravity, as the Enterprise was.

We see people walking on all the starships ever built. Usually inside, but sometimes outside, as with the E-nil-refit. So the ships can withstand one gee of acceleration. Big deal - and by that I mean such a small deal that it does not appreciably differ from zero.

If a ship cannot withstand one gee during construction, she's not a starship. If a ship can, that still doesn't win her any prizes. In other words, the difference between built-in-space and built-on-ground must lie elsewhere altogether, and we just have to figure out where. Except we don't, since there is no difference in evidence.

Because we never saw it until now.

What, mastery of gravity? We first saw that in "The Cage". You know, the episode that established that starships indeed exist, indeed can defy gravity and most laws of nature at will, and made it clear that if a starship ever were to have trouble flying through an atmosphere or indeed a mountain, something must be terribly wrong with her.

Yorktown is simply a masterpiece to hammer home this point for those who for some reason might have missed it.

..them being incapable of the larger and more spectacular Yorktown it is a far from definitive, but still a perfectly valid one.

That misses the mark on two sides at the same time. Yorktown vs. Regula 1 is not a big deal, just a matter of quantity. But neither Yorktown nor Regula 1 represent the best that Starfleet can do, because starships are automatically better. Not only do they create (and withstand) one gee at will, they also create (and withstand) impulse accelerations that must amount to hundreds and may amount to tens of thousands of gee.

That they can hover is not in question - they can maintain arbitrary acceleration for weeks without effort. Whether they do hover is debatable: "standard orbit" in TOS is IMHO best explained as hovering. But an incredibly powerful argument would be required to establish that hovering inside an atmosphere would be more difficult than hovering outside an atmosphere, especially since there is no in-universe example of it being more difficult.

I think you're confusing the way you like to imagine the Trek universe, and the Trek universe as it appears on screen.

This is something I often hear from you in particular. It has never been true, though. Onscreen takes precedence, and once again you are in contradiction of it.

That is, you are the one turning a blind eye on the absolute ease at which starships of all eras handle atmospheres, without contrary comment. And then you cling to a single piece of dialogue that may suggest otherwise, failing to notice that there doesn't exist another such piece in the canon of Trek.

On-screen, the Franklin's transporter was cargo-only (exactly as everything prior to Enterprise NX-01's in "Broken Bow" was), and Scotty upgraded it to beam 20 at a time because he's Scotty.

Considering how full of shit he was in this movie, he probably didn't.

So really, you're saying every time they've suggested in-universe that ships aren't meant to fly in atmo they've been wrong.

Yup. Both in ST:Beyond and in ST:Beyond. And, you know, ST:Beyond.

It's a fair observation of a flaw in Trek's world, but it in no way reflects the in-universe opinions of the characters or the intent of the writers.

It contradicts Scotty, who is wrong as we soon see in the movie itself. It is in agreement with the expert opinions of all those heroes who took their starships to atmospheres with no comment whatsoever, or indeed with encouraging comments, and especially with all those events where very special circumstances (deliberately suicidal flying in "Arsenal of Freedom", a clever maneuver by the habitual atmospheric maneuverer Ransom combined with weapons fire in "Equinox", etc.) are absolutely required to make the dip dangerous and the danger goes away whenever our heroes or villains so wish.

I don't think I'm contradicting any writers other than those of Beyond if I'm accepting all those other episodes and movies as written!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[gerbil]

The NX-01 was far more advanced than the Franklin. She was apparently able to handle limited atmospheric flight as was the NCC-1701. Scotty's line couldn't be more clear. Ships of the Franklin's era were built exclusively in space and weren't designed to lift off from a planet's surface from a cold stop.

 

[Timo]

The important thing to note about the above is that NX-01 was also built in space. So that part of Scotty's tirade is devoid of relevance.

It's not necessarily an outright lie - I could say "ships of old were built of wood and couldn't sail against the wind", where "built of wood" is irrelevant to the argument, "against the wind" is a matter of definition, and "couldn't" comes in degrees. I'm not giving any relevant information to my boss who wants to use the old sailboat he just found to get out of this desert island, though.

Lifting off from Altamid's surface from a cold stop is never an issue here, it seems. Once the ship gets going, she does better than that: she kills her entire downward vector and then creates an upward one that takes her straight to space. Basically, she's doing twice what Scotty claimed she wasn't designed to do at all.

Is that unexpected? It shouldn't be: the ship is shown soft-landed, intact and level, on Altamid. Her capabilities are already amply demonstrated.

Does Scotty have in-depth knowledge of the Franklin specifically? ENT featured a couple of Earth spacecraft that supposedly predated NX-01, yet were obviously at home in atmospheres and planetary gravities. So Scotty is categorically wrong in what he claims. But is he casuistically right? Was it a fluke that the Franklin soft-landed and then nicely took off, and this specific design had some exceptional shortcoming in comparison with her contemporaries? This is quite possible. It just means Scotty used an the incorrect argument to promote a correct risk analysis. (For a risk that never materialized, but that wasn't Scotty's fault.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Thus in space, making Scotty a liar.

Space, in the context of the conversation, being zero gravity.

It contradicts Scotty, who is wrong as we soon see in the movie itself. It is in agreement with the expert opinions of all those heroes who took their starships to atmospheres with no comment whatsoever, or indeed with encouraging comments, and especially with all those events where very special circumstances (deliberately suicidal flying in "Arsenal of Freedom", a clever maneuver by the habitual atmospheric maneuverer Ransom combined with weapons fire in "Equinox", etc.) are absolutely required to make the dip dangerous and the danger goes away whenever our heroes or villains so wish.

I don't think I'm contradicting any writers other than those of Beyond if I'm accepting all those other episodes and movies as written!

Scotty isn't wrong for saying the Franklin wasn't meant for atmospheric flight and that modern ships that are, are more advanced. Presumably the ship designed to fly in atmosphere does so with much less risk than the ones that aren't. Just because we haven't (yet) seen the bad side of that margin for error in the handful of times we've seen Federation ships fly in atmo doesn't mean it's not there. If it wasn't, the characters would never object to it.

 

[The Wormhole]

I'm gonna have to rewatch "Detained", I don't remember that at all.

Here's a picture of the NX-01 flying through clouds from Detained.

 

[Timo]

Space, in the context of the conversation, being zero gravity.

I'm not sure if this is relevant even in the context. When the E-nil was being refitted in space, there was full gravity aboard. Why would the strain from that be qualitatively or quantitatively different from the strain of having the ship rest (via scaffoldings, not via her belly) on Iowan bedrock?

Scotty isn't wrong for saying the Franklin wasn't meant for atmospheric flight and that modern ships that are, are more advanced. Presumably the ship designed to fly in atmosphere does so with much less risk than the ones that aren't. Just because we haven't (yet) seen the bad side of that margin for error in the handful of times we've seen Federation ships fly in atmo doesn't mean it's not there. If it wasn't, the characters would never object to it.

That I guess is the source of my frustration here: that the characters actually never object to it, except for Scotty in Beyond.

When Kirk dives into atmospheres in TOS, it's always bad business - but only in the sense of there being bad business around that causes the ship, among other things, to dip into an atmosphere. The air isn't tearing the ship apart or anything. Instead, aliens are applying heat beams or giant green hands or whatnot, or preceding wild rides are rendering the crew unconscious, or saboteurs are sabotaging the engines, and the long harmless fall is going to end in a sudden stop that Kirk abhors.

When Picard dives into atmospheres, it is by tactical design. Okay, technically it's his helmsman who actually takes the ship down to the soup in "Arsenal of Freedom", in a game of chicken, and he comes out the winner. And it's his doctor who takes the ship into the atmosphere of a friggin' star in "Descent" and again wins... But there are no negative comments about the former concept, even if the latter justly makes some roll their eyes.

Janeway's ship is built to operate in atmospheres. It's thus interesting to compare "Equinox" to "Arsenal" and see that exterme atmospheric flying can be a weapon regardless of how "meant" a ship is for the environment.

Soo... Risks for the Franklin > risks for Archer's ship > risks for nuKirk's ship > risks for Janeway's ship, perhaps. But this has little or nothing to do with whether these ships were built in space. And it's especially annoying that there were prominently aerodynamic starships in ENT that show that this "not good with air" phase in Starfleet history must have been a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. Scotty should just say that the Franklin was famed for her design flaws that made her a poor atmospheric dancer.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

There were two stations. A small free floter out past the entrance--right?

 

[F. King Daniel]

There were two stations. A small free floter out past the entrance--right?

I think there were a couple of floating defence turrets. We see one close-up when Kalara's ship approaches.

 

[IMC Headquarters]

I want to live in Yorktown for about five years. My God it's utopian!!!

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

And what of the Enterprise 1701 in Into Darkness?

They were able to get the ship not only into atmosphere but parked on the bottom of an ocean, and were able to take off again as if nothing was too stressful for it. Pity we couldn't have seen the landing sequence. I wonder how they pulled that off?

 

[M'Sharak]

And what of the Enterprise 1701 in Into Darkness?

They were able to get the ship not only into atmosphere but parked on the bottom of an ocean, and were able to take off again as if nothing was too stressful for it. Pity we couldn't have seen the landing sequence. I wonder how they pulled that off?

What do these questions have to do with the topic of Yorktown base (never mind the fact that this thread has been inactive for over two years)?