Landing Starships

[STEPhon IT]

Yes, it's a gimmick, but it was also an attempt to take the hero ship somewhere new, the ground. Yes, shuttles and transporters are a thing. I want to focus on actual landings, not beaming. Running with that, I guess your argument wouls be why land the whole ship instead of simply taking a shuttle?

What advantages are there to landing the ship itself instead of taking a shuttle? Assume transporters are unavailable, because plot.

Transporters not available. Fix them. I don't see any advantages of a starship landing unless it is unable to commit to a standard orbit. It would take a tremendous of power to waste getting such a hulk off of the planet's surface. I don't think it would be worth it. Do you have any ideas why a starship would land on a planet?

 

[Imaus]

If I remember right, the Klingon Bird of Prey in The Search for Spock was the first time we saw a starship land. Did we ever see a landing of any kind of full size ship back on the original series? The way I understand the intentions of Star Trek is that capital ships aren't too big to land, but rather aren't designed with that in mind.

Outside of the Klingon Bird of Prey, have we seen starship landings before Voyager? Alien ships count, crash landings don't. That said, the crash of the Ent-D saucer is breath taking and still holds up for me in 2020.

I'm pretty sure the Defiant-class was designed with landing in mind. I mean, it's smaller than Voyager and kinda flat, so why not? I think the Equinox and Prometheus were capable of landings.

What other ships were designed to land by the production team, or at least look like they could land?

I wish we saw more of this in Star Trek. Not on the regular, but more often than what we've seen so far.

Why not? Because the Defiant is small, cramped, and adding landing gear and supporting anti-grav systems is a waste of space and energy.

The Defiant is not a transport, cargo ship, assault ship, evacuation ship, explorer, liner, or any thing else that needs to land or requires the expense to land. It is tough enough to survive a emergency landing, sure. It may even be designed so the pilot can do a semi-soft landing, it won't be graceful but it should land in a controlled fashion via RCS, impulse, timing, and the mark 1 eyeball. Whether or not it can take off again is another matter, but one of again probable brute force, as the hull itself is basically the landing gear in that case.

But the Defiant is a dedicated anti-borg ship killer. The Borg ships are in space, not on the ground (for the most part). The Defiant should not waste valuable space and energy on such a system.

Overall I loathed the whole idea, from the Intrepid to the Defiant to the Connie or NX or whatever. A Space/Starship should be solely interplanetary, interstellar. It can lithobreak without killing everyone on board or exploding, sure, but that's a bonus from the tough construction of the future; it shouldn't be a dedicated system. If you have to land, sure, the saucer section can get you down there, but it probably won't be coming back up under its own power.

But the main job is to scoot from orbit to orbit, or star to star, it shouldn't have to deal with anything more than the uppermost layers of an atmosphere, and again it's brute-forcing it via the massive energy available to it than gracefully flying...or as seen in the movie, even swimming.

That's what the shuttles are for- to transport personnel and materiel from ship to surface or vice versa; and that's the front that should be expanded on; we should see a lot more shuttlecraft and runabout size class for that heavy duty, especially in earlier works.

ENT did a sort of disservice by shoving in the damn transporter 100 years before Kirk and McCoy, it should had been all shuttles, and a rather big assortment of big, beefy shuttles at that. Smaller XV-30s and the like than the oddly small miracle craft that clamped awkwardly to the ship.

Voy landing always got an eyeroll from me. Take those legs out and put more space for dilithium crystals or replicator feedstock.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

The Defiant's MSD cross section featured landing gear. Why is it such a bad idea to land and lift off given the level of technology featured in Star Trek? In other sci-fi movies, we see "mother ships" come down for landings and no one seems to mind. Why is Star Trek exempt?

 

[Timo]

Because variety? Transporters are the one thing that sets Trek apart from other scifi, and it's cool that they have In-Universe Implications, such as making it unnecessary for starships to land. However:

It would take a tremendous of power to waste getting such a hulk off of the planet's surface.

Except not. If you are going to have a starship with generic ("impulse") engines that can move her swiftly from planet to planet, going down to the surface of one and then taking off is not "tremendous". It's trivial.

Now, if starships were carefully stated to be struggling with this between-planets thing, with fuel a constant concern and thrust a limiting commodity, then landing or taking off might be an issue. But starships are robust, and by their Trek definition can fly through mountains or take off from black holes - which is exactly what we see happen, just as we should.

"Waste" is not a Trek concept. Thinking of the energies involved in replicating a sandwich or landing on a planet is pennywise, and thus our heroes never think of that; there's no "conserving" involved, because there's no shortage, ever.

...Except when something breaks, that is. And then it may become impossible to heat up the crew quarters, let alone establish orbit or take off.

Do you have any ideas why a starship would land on a planet?

Half a dozen already listed on the previous page. But why would we need ideas? It's like asking why one should drive one's car down a particular street instead of all the others. "Just for fun" is as valid a reason as any.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

In other sci-fi movies, we see "mother ships" come down for landings and no one seems to mind. Why is Star Trek exempt?

Because that's other sci-fi and not Trek. Every franchise/universe is different in some way in order to tell the stories it wants to. If every ship in every franchise had planetary landing capabilities, two dozen shuttles, teleportation technology, ten wings of fighters, galaxy-spanning hyperdrives, then why would there be any need to have different shows/films. If they're all the same then they'd just get dull, limitations breeds creativity, put restrictions on what can be done within the physics of that universe and give the heroes another hurdle to overcome. However, since the latest trend is to through lore out the window, you'll probably get your wish sooner or later.

 

[Timo]

It's sometimes fun to watch moments of fictional tech transition, though. Star Wars opens with the urbane and traveled Han Solo not believing in planet-busting weapons and space stations the size of moons, say. Or in the Force.

We basically got that in ENT, with our heroes being for the first time handed the tools of trade necessary for Trek style deep space exploration: a fast ship, potent guns, and the all-important transporter. Was that overdoing it? Solo got his three surprises in a package, too...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

It's been trivial for a starship to land since we were shown a centuries-old city in the clouds.
And if the E can go swimming in an 11,000-mile long mass of protoplasm (mostly water), then a planet's ocean would trivial as well.

 

[Timo]

Well, perhaps not literally protoplasm and thus not literally water, but it is "gelatinous" and mostly more than "semi-fluid", so probably not mere nebula wisps, either.

"Trivial" seems to accompany most starship feats. A ship knocked off course and on automation can effortlessly hover in Earth's atmosphere while the crew regains consciousness; a ship told to accelerate to twice the recommended speed in warp factors (and perhaps thousandfold in units of distance per units of time) does so; a planet breaking up in various ways merely inconveniences the ship, even when bumping against her in large lumps... Supernovae are things to be studied up close, unknown energy barriers exist to be penetrated, and issues of endurance or durability are shrugged off as inconsequential.

If the issue of landing ever arose in TOS, it probably simply would happen, with a simple command and some fairly involved VFX that would then be refined for the remastered version.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shawnster]

(It's First Contact, btw. ...)

Timo Saloniemi

D'oh! Such an obvious mistake. I blame the alcohol.

 

[Timo]

I'm envious of you. But plan on blaming the alcohol at some later point.

Would Vulcans land their starships? ENT mostly shows large and intimidating vessels that could easily deploy auxiliaries the size of the ST:FC tripod or the "Carbon Creek" spindle. But "Carbon Creek" also explicitly shows a small craft comparable to that spindle, operating solo and with its very own warp engineer aboard, plus with a shape that suggests landing ability (the thing has wings), even though we only ever see a crash.

Also, do Vulcans use transporters? They tell humans they are not cleared for bio-transport initially, but is that another of their filthy lies? Andorians seem to get hold of that tech soon enough as ENT unfolds, if they didn't already possess it from the get-go; would Vulcans keep such an obvious ace in their sleeve without ever drawing it out?

Landing a ringship would be a chore, except with the tilting-ring design. And we never learned that the tilt would have been designed with landing in mind (although we didn't quite see it used the intended way, either, for deploying the smaller craft carried inside it).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[AresB]

The Romulan Bird-of-Prey is often depicted having landing gear and being planetfall capable in various blueprints and EU fiction. Never on screen though.

 

[Albertese]

I've read (though I can't recall were) that the intention to land the ship was there from the very beginning of Star Trek.

My understanding is that Matt Jefferies' idea at one point was that the ship would arrive in system whole, then the saucer would separate and the saucer would go investigate planets in the system. The big triangles on the lower side of the saucer were originally landing gear. But then it was realized that the budget would not allow the visual effects required for routinely landing the ship on screen, so the transporter was imagined.

So those big triangles are the remains of starship landing from the very beginning.

--Alex

 

[Shawnster]

I'm envious of you. But plan on blaming the alcohol at some later point.

Would Vulcans land their starships?

If I remember right, the Klingon Bird of Prey in The Search for Spock was the first time we saw a starship land.

Using the Klingon BOP as an example, I'd say yes, the Vulcans would land their starship if it was designed as such.

Granted, the movie does not state that the Vulcans landed their starship as opposed to their shuttle or auxiliary craft. One opinion is just as valid as the other until proven otherwise.

 

[Timo]

My feeble objective argument in favor of the craft in First Contact being a mere shuttle is that her three engine pods are the same as on the spindly Vulcan fightercraft, and completely unlike the warp rings we see in the warpships. Then again, we also later see a ringed shuttle, and there are no rings (no whole ones, at any rate) on the supposedly warp-capable, supposedly independently operating craft of T'Pol's granny in "Carbon Creek".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

An argument for a single Vulcan craft: The Enterprise would have a harder time hiding from both a shuttle and a mothership left in orbit than it would just a single craft that's landed on the surface.

 

[Timo]

Possibly so. OTOH, the arrival of the putative mothership would be a historic and historical moment - meaning the heroes could look up her movements from their books and records, never mind her sensor capabilities and weaknesses, and gain a definitive edge.

That there would be unpredictable elements involved is sort of in contradiction of the heroes only hiding from this one event, not from other spyships lurking around before the First Contact Day. I guess there was quite a bit of luck involved in Cochrane and the Vulcans happening to be close both spatially and temporally. Or then lots of forward planning, so that Cochrane was prevented from flying too early by the bombardment of the cunning Borg, or too late by the Borg-orchestrated arrival of help from the future...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[J.T.B.]

But yeah, it would have been a huge demand on set design. Enterprise was supposed to be as big as a large naval ship. It just would not work. They finally saw what it might look like in TMP, and it does indeed look cool. Saucers landing on worlds looks cool, such as Day the Earth Stood Still, or even Enterprise's spiritual and slightly creative predecessor the C-57D, are much smaller.

Speaking of STTMP, on the Enterprise poster by David Kimble the retracted landing gear were shown inside the saucer. Ten year old me did not know they were for the saucer only, so I pictured Enterprise landing like this:



There is something to be said for storytelling working within limits and constraints. When everything can be answered with "They have unlimited energy so no problem," it sort of makes it feel like nothing is a problem. So the threats and challenges have to seem bigger and bigger, until saving the entire galaxy becomes routine.

Showing a starship being built on the ground instead of in space IMO added nothing to the story, it just seemed like someone thought it would look cool. In Alien the Nostromo landed, but it was a big deal, definitely not something you would want to do every day, and it actually did some damage to the ship. That was cool, it created some tension and some problems for the characters to overcome.

 

[Timo]

It's also amusing how the construction practice subverts terminology. The floating dock up in orbit is a "drydock" now, even though the ship within is immersed in her normal operating environment...

In a full reversion of today's practice, I guess the Riverside yards ought to have big pumps that create a vacuum around the ship for the duration of the repairs.

The matter still stands that Trek starships are Supermen, impervious to mere mortal threats and obstacles. Even TOS manages to show them in all sorts of adverse environments yet faring just as well there as one would expect from a vessel that can fight its way from star system to star system. And yet even Superman can be put in peril when really required, this resulting in an entire genre that has no problem with super-perils as a dramatic element.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I might land the 09’ Ent in a canyon, the secondary hull in the gorge and the saucer resting on the rim

 

[at Quark's]

Voyager's ability to land was really more of a gimmick to make her stand out--same way we say the E-D separate and reattach its saucer in episode one.

As argued earlier in this thread, I don't think there really is a good reason why the average starship wouldn't be able to land.

However, going with the suggestion that Voyager seems to make that this is a relatively unique and new feature of the Intrepid class, perhaps we can rationalize it in-universe by remembering that Voyager was classed as a long range explorer, so one that would presumably going through unexplored territories for months or years on end, without access to shipyards or drydocks. If it had to have some major maintenance anyway, and the vessel's crew had to do it themselves, probably doing it on the surface of a nice M-type planet would be much preferable to doing it in spacesuits.