In what century do you think Starfleet would invent self-repairing hulls?

[Prax]

I wonder how long it took them? In fact, is there any chance that the Enterprise-J (seen in ENT) has that capability?

Doug Drexler, who designed the Enterprise J, has said that he envisions that ships are no longer built by that time, but grown, and that the Enterprise J was a huge semi-organic city in space.

Also, in the final episode of Voyager, they got shield technology from the future where they installed these giant hologram emitter things on the outer hull, and use them to create a complete additional ablative hull around the ship. You'd think this would have been done earlier.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

A Combination of Albative Hull Generator + Ablative Plates + Multi Layer shields + Multiple shields should honestly be standard by the future.

Instead of a battle taking minutes to finish off a StarFleet vessel, it should extend out to be like a super long wrestling match that can take 20-60 mins to finish.

 

[Unicron]

I think in part, one also has to consider the technology base. Making the technology level too high is not always good, because it makes technology seem more magical. The Intrepid class was built using gel packs, and those don't seem to have worked out well despite their implied advantages.

To use a non-Trek example, there's a lot of design options in BattleTech for adding advanced systems (specifically on mechs themselves). Some of the more useful ones also have a significant trade off that should be taken into account for the overall design. If you want to mount more weapons and armor, you could consider mounting an extra light (XL) fusion engine. The shields on this engine are lighter and thinner than a standard engine, so that it weighs less for equal power, but the cost is that the engine is also more vulnerable to critical damage. Those thinner shields can't offer the same degree of protection, and that feature also makes the engine more expensive.

You can also free up mass with an endo steel chassis, which is a specialized blend of steel, titanium and aluminum mixed together in a zero-g environment. An endo steel structure is twice as strong per weight unit as a normal structure, but at the cost of being bulkier and more difficult to repair or refit in the field. It's also more expensive because of the zero-g refinement, and was one of the many technologies that became extinct for a time.

 

[Tenacity]

So why wasn't Starfleet using it on their ships in the TOS movies and in TNG, VOY, and DS9?

STD is a separate continuity/canon.

And I don't recall seeing a "repair crew" working on the hull on any of the shows

The Enterprise in TSFS had large sections of the hull replaced with "patches." The work of the cadets?

 

[Timo]

We can always flip the coin around and argue that DSC had no robotic repairs in evidence. It just had fancy hardsuits for the guys and gals of the Damage control (Outside) Teams. Not all that different from certain Jeffries doodles.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[bryce]

Remember that Enterprise episode "Dead Stop", where the alien repair station seemed to use some sort of replicator/transporter technology to reconstruct Enterprise's damage sections?

(It also made a bowl or replicated soup appear on a table, so nearby replicator needed.)

That, and the Voyager episode with the Prometheus class starship got me thinking...

Basically a holodeck and the holo-emitters use a combination of force field and replicator technology (and of course optical technology.) And a replicator basically is a variant of the transporter. So you could have a universal emitter that is basically a holo/optical/force field/replicator-transporter emitter.

And in Voyager we saw the Prometheus with it's holo-emitters all throughout a ship.

So what about a sort of "holographic starship", a physical ship, obviously, but one that has millions and millions of tiny force-shield/holo/transporter/replicator emitters built into and throughout the hull.

So when a part of the ship is damaged or destroyed, new parts can be replicated in place. (At least until the raw materials run out or the power becomes unavailable.) Not just that, but parts of the ship can be re-configured at will, but structurally and internally. Internal rooms and compartments can changed just by asking the computer...from the furniture and decorations to the basic environments (fill with water, change atmosphere, etc.)

Remember that episode when Barkley was upgraded and asked the holodeck to build him all those fancy controls and stuff? Well, in a holographic starship, you could do that on the bridge or in a lab or in engineering or sickbay or in any other part of the ship. (There was an alternate future episode of DS9 where an older Bashir mentioned how modern starships now have holographic controls or 3-D controls or some such. Actually, I think I saw a version of those in the Picard trailer.)

(Also, holographically projected control panels...wouldn't explode! Hopefully.)

And if you are hungry or thirsty, not reason to get up and walk to a replicator...just have the food & drink appear on a surface next to you...or even in your hand.

Clothes could be replicated right on your body.

Naked sexy holo-babes projected right on your bed!

 

[bryce]

Self repairing hulls/robots would certainly explain Voyager's ability to look pristine after every battle. Except Year of Hell, the self repairing system must have been the first thing to get knocked out.

See, that's the thing about Voyager...fans and non-fans (especially the latter) point out how unrealistic is is that after 7 years being lost in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager still look like it just left the Spacedock factory floor.

And I think there is validity to that criticism, but at the same time, with Federation synthesizer and replicator technology, as long as power and raw matter resources available, Voyager was endlessly self repairing. Even photon torpedoes could be replaced. SO voyager was never going to look as battered as say, the Galactica after 7 years.

But still, it would have been nice if Voyager could at least have shown *some* signs of having struggled for 7 years. Maybe power and resources were scarce at times...or at other times (like when fighting the Borg) they were harder to stop and find, and there were some things that were priorities to fix (like the engines) and others that were less important (interior bulkheads and furniture) weren't important at all (like the hull paint).

And Voyager should show signs of all the Borg and other alien technology that they retrofitted it with. A little like some of the later TARDIS control rooms...a bit of a kludge of different parts.

 

[darrenjl]

The Astrometrics lab had Borg technology embedded in the walls but that was the only visible components we saw.

 

[bryce]

Yeah, even with Federation synthesizers and replicators, Voyager should have been a patched together mess of repairs and alien tech by the time it got home.

 

[Deks]

Yeah, even with Federation synthesizers and replicators, Voyager should have been a patched together mess of repairs and alien tech by the time it got home.

Not necessarily.
They could have (and likely have) stopped in uninhabited star systems and used solar energy to power their replicators which would have allowed the ship to repair itself and build more shuttles (in addition, they likely mined some asteroids for needed raw materials in order to not use replicators all the time).

Automation is excessively fast at repairing/building stuff vs humanoids... and by the 24th century, this would be done in a proverbial blink of an eye with ridiculous efficiency.
So, technically speaking, Voyager shouldn't have suffered the rationing issues it had... but then again, its possible they hadn't passed directly through too many uninhabited solar systems where they could take refuge... after all, in the early years, Voyager was almost hunted by the Kazon, and space is vast.

But I don't agree that Voyager would have have been a proverbial mess of repairs because each and every part would have had to been repaired to Starfleet specs (which would make it indistinguishable from the newly made parts in drydock).
The astrometrics lab was a synthesis of Federation and Borg technology and they fitted it in a relatively small section of the ship with no external changes (that we know of) to the ship itself.

The only thing that DID require external changes was the armour technology which Admiral Janeway brought back... and those ablative generators were mounted on the outside of the hull (which are probably just massive pattern buffers with transporter/replication facilities hardware that materialise the armour and just repair it when its not in use on a subatomic level - aka the armor is transported/recycled back into the generator which then just uses existing damaged bits to rematerialize new/undamaged armour plates).

But this bit would already had to have been possible before Admiral Janeway with regular hull and internal systems repairs... it could be just that SF never thought of using the technology like that (or should I say, the writers didn't), or they DO use it, but in a relatively minimal fashion.

 

[bryce]

Not necessarily.
They could have (and likely have) stopped in uninhabited star systems and used solar energy to power their replicators which would have allowed the ship to repair itself and build more shuttles (in addition, they likely mined some asteroids for needed raw materials in order to not use replicators all the time).

Automation is excessively fast at repairing/building stuff vs humanoids... and by the 24th century, this would be done in a proverbial blink of an eye with ridiculous efficiency.
So, technically speaking, Voyager shouldn't have suffered the rationing issues it had... but then again, its possible they hadn't passed directly through too many uninhabited solar systems where they could take refuge... after all, in the early years, Voyager was almost hunted by the Kazon, and space is vast.

But I don't agree that Voyager would have have been a proverbial mess of repairs because each and every part would have had to been repaired to Starfleet specs (which would make it indistinguishable from the newly made parts in drydock).
The astrometrics lab was a synthesis of Federation and Borg technology and they fitted it in a relatively small section of the ship with no external changes (that we know of) to the ship itself.

The only thing that DID require external changes was the armour technology which Admiral Janeway brought back... and those ablative generators were mounted on the outside of the hull (which are probably just massive pattern buffers with transporter/replication facilities hardware that materialise the armour and just repair it when its not in use on a subatomic level - aka the armor is transported/recycled back into the generator which then just uses existing damaged bits to rematerialize new/undamaged armour plates).

But this bit would already had to have been possible before Admiral Janeway with regular hull and internal systems repairs... it could be just that SF never thought of using the technology like that (or should I say, the writers didn't), or they DO use it, but in a relatively minimal fashion.

No you have a point, and I mention that in my first post above that with 24th century tech like synthesizers and replicators and nano-tech. they could repair Voyager and it would look seamless.

I was talking more for like dramatic reasons they should have come up with reasons - Voyager always on the run, not always being able to safely stop and gather resources, having to incorporate alien tech, etc - that would have been an excuse to make Voyager *look* like the trip through that Delta Quadrant wasn't easy peasy and consequence free.

Because why I know intellectually that Voyager could repair itself very thoroughly (and I know the production reasons was that they didn't want to or couldn't upgrade the models and CGI and it was cheaper to rely on stock footage rather than have to refilm everything) - emotionally I still had a hard time reconciling the showroom perfect Voyager we saw at the end of the 7 years with a ship that had made a difficult 7 year struggle to get back home.

And the average casual viewer who isn't an expert on Trek tech wouldn't have seen that either. Then again, maybe they wouldn't care.

But contrast that with a show like the Battlestar Galactica reboot, where by the end of the show the ship honestly *looked* like it had been through hell. Even in Enterprise, there were stretches during the Xindi arc where the ship *looked* like it had been in a life and death struggle.

 

[bryce]

A Combination of Albative Hull Generator + Ablative Plates + Multi Layer shields + Multiple shields should honestly be standard by the future.

Instead of a battle taking minutes to finish off a StarFleet vessel, it should extend out to be like a super long wrestling match that can take 20-60 mins to finish.

Don't forget all those fancy new technologies (in TNG time) like that fancy "multiphasic shielding" or whatever is was that that Ferengi scientist discovered...and then there is "regenerative shielding" and even that Romulan cloaking that let them phase through solid objects.

And by the end of the 24th century we had all sorts of propulsion advances either realized, or on the horizon. Voyager had "variable geometry warp drive" (apparently so did the E-E, but it was never mentioned) and the Slipstream drive. And by the time of the Enterprise-J they likely perfected things like co-axial warp and artificial wormhole generation that was being researched in Deep Space Nine.

And the E-J also had Xindi crew, so there is that Xindi vortex tech they might have incorporated.

By the very, very least, the E-J has slipstream. By the very least.

I kinda imagine that by the time of the Enterprise-J, Starfleet probably has some very...flexible...technology. Like the E-J may have *multiple* FTL propulsion methods available to it. Perhaps some sort of, I dunno, "Multi-Axis Warp Drive" that can generate something like Co-Axial Warp (what even happened to that tech, btw, it was there on Voyager one episode, and gone without explanation the next...?) but could also be used in standard warp ans slipstream/transwarp and possibly even channel energy through the deflectors to generate wormholes - which might not be commonly used methods, but would all be there for unusual circumstances. And be easy to access as flipping a switch or hot swapping out components in engineering.

So if in episode 22 the ship's co-axial warp is down for [TECH] reason, they could switch over to the transwarp coils and 'limp home" on slipstream.

The problem is that the more and more you project Star Trek technology to the point it was headed in by the end of Voyager, the tech becomes basically magic, and there is almost nothing you can't do...so then you have to start envisioning all sorts of convoluted and non-sense sounding technobabble reason why X-technology won't work in this situation. (Something they seemed to actually run into on Voyager near the end.)

Which may by why the last 2 TV series and the last 3 movies have all been set in TOS and earlier timelines.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Which may by why the last 2 TV series and the last 3 movies have all been set in TOS and earlier timelines.

They don't have anybody who knows Trek well enough in terms of canon lore to make a show post 24th century and make it work.

 

[Prax]

Not necessarily.
They could have (and likely have) stopped in uninhabited star systems and used solar energy to power their replicators which would have allowed the ship to repair itself and build more shuttles (in addition, they likely mined some asteroids for needed raw materials in order to not use replicators all the time).

Automation is excessively fast at repairing/building stuff vs humanoids... and by the 24th century, this would be done in a proverbial blink of an eye with ridiculous efficiency.
So, technically speaking, Voyager shouldn't have suffered the rationing issues it had... but then again, its possible they hadn't passed directly through too many uninhabited solar systems where they could take refuge... after all, in the early years, Voyager was almost hunted by the Kazon, and space is vast.

But I don't agree that Voyager would have have been a proverbial mess of repairs because each and every part would have had to been repaired to Starfleet specs (which would make it indistinguishable from the newly made parts in drydock).
The astrometrics lab was a synthesis of Federation and Borg technology and they fitted it in a relatively small section of the ship with no external changes (that we know of) to the ship itself.

The only thing that DID require external changes was the armour technology which Admiral Janeway brought back... and those ablative generators were mounted on the outside of the hull (which are probably just massive pattern buffers with transporter/replication facilities hardware that materialise the armour and just repair it when its not in use on a subatomic level - aka the armor is transported/recycled back into the generator which then just uses existing damaged bits to rematerialize new/undamaged armour plates).

But this bit would already had to have been possible before Admiral Janeway with regular hull and internal systems repairs... it could be just that SF never thought of using the technology like that (or should I say, the writers didn't), or they DO use it, but in a relatively minimal fashion.

If Voyager takes damage, they can replicate the hull panels, and all the components affected, then physically go outside and install them. I'm sure the computer has stored the replication pattern for every little part on the ship, but whether it's food, hull panels, or conduit, that material has to come from somewhere. That's why they were always looking for new elements, ores, and other raw materials.

Which may by why the last 2 TV series and the last 3 movies have all been set in TOS and earlier timelines.

The problem is that the more and more you project Star Trek technology to the point it was headed in by the end of Voyager, the tech becomes basically magic, and there is almost nothing you can't do...so then you have to start envisioning all sorts of convoluted and non-sense sounding technobabble reason why X-technology won't work in this situation. (Something they seemed to actually run into on Voyager near the end.)

Excluding Enterprise, I think the others were functionally just as, or more advanced than the TNG era. I think you can still tell good stories no matter when it takes place. There's always going to be limits placed on the technology, whether it makes sense or not.