OT - Doing Some Forbidden Planet Research

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The C57-D was designed in the 1950s; it's retro enough to accomodate diesel.

I had a conversation with one of the artists on TNG back around 1992 - nothing "real," just sort of blue-skying - about how we could develop a "Forbidden Planet" television series. His immediate take was that the 1950s retro look was still completely valid, gauges and switches and all, and I thought it should be updated some. Finally he said, "okay, we can 'update' the instruments as long as we use a lot of neon," which I thought was a wonderful idea.

 

[The Axeman]

Any movie tends to use the apex of button/display technology available at the time, hence the new Trek ships refit. I would think it would be the same with a Forbidden Planet reboot. You simply wouldn't believe a ship that supposedly goes faster than light, but is controlled using 50's knobs and switches linked to analogue needle displays.

 

[larryman]

^ The C-57-D was 'atomic powered'.

Missing Narrator dialog words re-inserted from draft screenplay...

Narrator: In the final decade of the 21st century... men and women in [chemically-fueled] rocket ships landed on the moon. By 2200 A.D., [with the perfecting of atomic propulsion,] they had reached the other planets of our solar system. Almost at once there followed the discovery of [quanto-gravitetic] hyper-drive... through which the speed of light was first attained... and later greatly surpassed. And so at last, mankind [now banded together in a single federation,] began the conquest... and colonization of deep space. United Planets cruiser C-57-D... now more than a year out from Earth base on a special mission... to the planetary system of the great main sequence star, Altair.

No diesel-powered flying saucers, please.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

No diesel-powered flying saucers, please.

Well, no one said anything about a diesel-powered saucer so it's not a problem.

Any movie tends to use the apex of button/display technology available at the time, hence the new Trek ships refit. I would think it would be the same with a Forbidden Planet reboot. You simply wouldn't believe a ship that supposedly goes faster than light, but is controlled using 50's knobs and switches linked to analogue needle displays.

I'd tend to agree. We had a kind of surreal take on the thing, sort of a "parallel 1950s future" that would have revealed some eccentric backstory as the show went along. Another joke was that David Lynch (doing Twin Peaks at the time) would have to direct it.

 

[Albertese]

Okay, so I'm starting to get a bit of progress on filling in the unestablished bits on the C-57D. The first step is to determine how big the ship is. I started with Shane Johnson's stuff, but once I started playing around with trying to fit some stuff into the cross section at that scale, it didn't seem to fit very well. Plus, I'm using a different section than he did (given that every model had a subtly different section, I'm okay with this). So I settled on a diameter of 166 feet, which I think will suit my purposes nicely, and is only marginally bigger than Johnson's. So here's the ventral plan of the c-57D at a diameter of 166' (the green grid is 1 foot per square):



I also need to know exactly how much vertical dimension I have to play with while I'm trying to lay out the interior. To that end, I made the next image to help with that. Every band is one foot thicker than the next outside band. I imagine the lower dome is all machinery so I didn't include it in these bands:



The center of the upper dome would be 27 feet higher than the lowermost deck (excluding, of course, the lower engine dome). And the outer-most rim of the saucer is about 1 foot thick. This will help to figure out the internal spaces, especially in the tapering saucer profile.

Well, that's about as far as I am right now. I'll keep posting my progress.

--Alex

 

[larryman]

^ Just inside the outer perimiter is where I'd create a ring of dilithium crystals to open the hyperspace access, when energized. And I'd do the same for the Metaluna-Bellerophon too.

 

[The Axeman]

I dont know if it would be dilithium crystals, they're power generation mcguffins, but whatever materials cause the space warp would be well placed in that outer ring. The drive in the center then provides the actual forward propulsion.

I have to admit to laughing out loud when I saw the new blueprints for the saucer. A couple of circles about sums it up. You have to love saucers for their simplicity of line.

 

[larryman]

I'm banking on the little-known 11th-dimensional sparticle energy emission capability of electro-magnetically-stimulated dilithium crystals... to emit a hyperspace field, which in turn gives access to the hyperspace transit medium.

 

[therealfoxbat]

^ The C-57-D was 'atomic powered'.

Missing Narrator dialog words re-inserted from draft screenplay...

Narrator: In the final decade of the 21st century... men and women in [chemically-fueled] rocket ships landed on the moon. By 2200 A.D., [with the perfecting of atomic propulsion,] they had reached the other planets of our solar system. Almost at once there followed the discovery of [quanto-gravitetic] hyper-drive... through which the speed of light was first attained... and later greatly surpassed. And so at last, mankind [now banded together in a single federation,] began the conquest... and colonization of deep space. United Planets cruiser C-57-D... now more than a year out from Earth base on a special mission... to the planetary system of the great main sequence star, Altair.

No diesel-powered flying saucers, please.

Depends on how you define "greatly surpassed"...

From here to Altair in 378 days is approximately 16.2 times the speed of light, around warp 2.5...

 

[Albertese]

^ Just inside the outer perimiter is where I'd create a ring of dilithium crystals to open the hyperspace access, when energized. And I'd do the same for the Metaluna-Bellerophon too.

I'm not going to use dilithium crystals for anything. I don't want to try to shoe-horn this into Star Trek so I'm going to avoid all the pseudo-science tropes from there as much as possible. Besides, I always thought that using magical crystals for things was better left to the realms of high fantasy than sci-fi. However, whatever it is that does let the ship go faster than light very well could be in that outermost ring. In fact I like that idea very much. But there won't be any crystals involved.

I dont know if it would be dilithium crystals, they're power generation mcguffins, but whatever materials cause the space warp would be well placed in that outer ring. The drive in the center then provides the actual forward propulsion.

I agree completely.

I have to admit to laughing out loud when I saw the new blueprints for the saucer. A couple of circles about sums it up. You have to love saucers for their simplicity of line.

Indeed. Of course, it's not just any old circles, the proportion is what's important. I'm debating whether or not I want to add any details to the outer surface when all is said and done. I'm leaning towards indicating there are more hatches than we thought before, but they are all flush and the seams wouldn't be seen on-screen. But we'll see.

--Alex

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'm not going to use dilithium crystals for anything. I don't want to try to shoe-horn this into Star Trek so I'm going to avoid all the pseudo-science tropes from there as much as possible. Besides, I always thought that using magical crystals for things was better left to the realms of high fantasy than sci-fi...

... I'm leaning towards indicating there are more hatches than we thought before, but they are all flush and the seams wouldn't be seen on-screen. But we'll see.

Absolutely Right(TM). I like the direction you're going.

In practice, the seams around the landing feet were pretty much invisible (probably didn't exist on the smaller models).

 

[The Axeman]

I think you would be doing it just to satisfy a need to have something on paper rather than 3 circles. I dont have a problem with a 'flying saucer' having no discernable hatches and so forth, indeed it was a big selling point of how advanced Klaatu's saucer was in The Day The Earth Stood Still. It was a completely smooth surface until the hatch opened, showing how amazing the fit/material/design is.

 

[Albertese]

...

From here to Altair in 378 days is approximately 16.2 times the speed of light, around warp 2.5...

This brings up another interesting point: what's the deal with D.C. Stations. They all rush into these stations which seem to convert the crewmen to some sort of energy state in order to protect them from violent deceleration forces. Some one (Ship's Bosun I think?) spurs on a crewman by saying "You wanna bounce through this one?" suggesting that being in the D.C. Station's beam is pretty important for safety.

It's been suggested that the crew has to be in the D.C. Stations for a transition into hyperspace as well as out of it. But in that case, why should it be called a deceleration station specifically instead of an H.T. Station (Hyperspace Transition) or something more like that? Also, at the end of the movie no one is rushing towards a D.C. Station as the ship gets under way (but, of course, it may be that the ship needs to be farther away from Altair before transitioning to hyperspace, we don't know really)

Now, if the crew needs to be in the D.C. beam to both get into and get out of hyperspace than it would make sense that it's traveling at essentially the same velocity the whole trip. 16.2C is pretty fast, make no mistake! But if they only need the D.C. Stations for deceleration than perhaps they were accelerating the whole trip. In this case, the idea is that the ship can accelerate fairly gently, in a way that can be compensated for without isolating the crew in their own energy tubes. Perhaps the nature of their hyperspace is one of constant acceleration and it takes energy to slow down rather than to speed up. In that case, they may have topped out at closer to 30C and change before arriving at Altair and needed the D.C. Stations in order to stop the acceleration and drop back into realspace. In this case, it makes sense to have a dedicated DEcleration station for each crewman.

What do you guys think?

--Alex

 

[publiusr]

Too bad the Matt Jefferies saucer Enterprise didn't make it here:
http://www.arapress.com/saucer.php

Look for their "2010 the year we make contact" work:

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, are they ever called deceleration stations or just "DC stations?" I've forgotten.

 

[Albertese]

^^^ Huh. I dunno either. I know that the working drawings do call them out as deceleration tubes. I'll have to watch the movie again to see if they actually say so in dialogue. But what else would "DC" mean?

--Alex

 

[The Axeman]

Direct Current for one.

I finished that Metaluna saucer, by the way. Here's a little flyby animation to test the specular surfacing. I'll stick the saucer up for download on my site, and I'll stick it up in .dxf format as well so that Sketchup/Blender users can play with it as well. They'll have to make their own surfaces though, there's no image maps involved.

 

[larryman]

^ Was that flyby animation a mirrored video? If not, then I think you have the bottom deck crew hatch on the wrong side of the ship, and back too far from the bow. The crew hatch should be on the right hand side, and about one porthole spacing closer toward the front of the saucer.

 

[The Axeman]

It's probably on the wrong side of the saucer because I still had the viewports set for making the .stl models for physical printing. It's a 2 second fix, I'll just mirror the whole model before I upload it.

As for the actual relative positioning, the hatch and portholes were put in place with the drawings you sent me in the background as a guide. If it's in the wrong place it's because the drawings are wrong in some way. I'll double-check when I get back home though. Even with the issues it's about 600% more accurate than the existing models, which cheers me up a bit.

 

[Albertese]

Direct Current for one.

...

Direct Current? Plugging yourself into a direct current socket doesn't sound like the sort of action designed to decrease injury. Any other ideas?

--Alex