OT - Doing Some Forbidden Planet Research

[The Axeman]

Ok, how about the De-cohesion Cage or D****** Cage, where D****** = the name of the inventor or the effect. In essence it works like an annular confinement beam, keeping your molecules in one place while you pass through the light barrier in either direction. Without it you'll basically evaporate or explode or turn inside out or something.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

^^^ 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

Beats me - but if they don't say "deceleration" then you're freer to make assumptions about what they do.

If the set drawings call them deceleration tubes then I guess you have to take that into account. It seems logical, though, that they'd be used for both acceleration and deceleration - it may just have been too much of a mouthful for the writers, and "AC/DC stations" wouldn't work either.

 

[larryman]

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.

In the drawings I sent, you can see the 96-inch crew hatch is almost in line with the front of the command dome - which places it on the rounding portion of the (right hand side) bottom deck. In the 3rd inter-porthole space from the front. In your flyby, it looks like the crew hatch is positioned back in the straighter portion of the (left hand side) bottom deck; and in line with the center of the command dome. I think the crew hatch slides upward to open.

The large 696-inch hatch on the opposite ship side is not needed. It was never seen in the "This Island Earth" movie. The 516-inch circular hatch on the very bottom was the only other hatch used - to capture an airplane. And I think it slided rearward to open - if I remember correctly.

Sorry to be a pain about the crew hatch. But it must line up with the elevator tube, when the Metaluna lands on the elevated landing pad on Metaluna underground.

Other than the crew hatch location, your Metaluna saucer looks really good in the flyby.

 

[therealfoxbat]

...

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

In the movie, Leslie Nielsen stated his crew had been "locked up in hyperspace for 378 days." Forbidden Planet was released about nine years after the sound barrier was broken. Back then, most Hollywood writers just assumed that the light speed barrier could be accelerated beyond with sufficient technology (like the sound barrier). The Deceleration Stations are there to protect the crew from the stresses of sudden deceleration from greater than light speed to CONSIDERABLY less than light speed and are probably called Acceleration Stations when the ship enters hyperspace.

 

[Psion]

^^^ 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

Since 'c' often represents the speed of light, I always assumed they were "de-c" stations; that is, a place to go while the ship drops below the speed of light.

 

[Maurice]

I just don't think anyone would accept a non- Shane Johnson version of the C-57-D now.

Anyone being the tiny little subset of fans who look up other fan blueprints...which would be less than 1% of the people who like the film.

 

[larryman]

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:

The Matt Jefferies saucer was never filmed. So it would not qualify for inclusion in this book.

But I wish it had the Bamboo Saucer, and the saucer from the Matt Helm movie - later used in I Dream Of Jeannie and Bewitched.

Would have been great to have the V mothership saucers too. But that would be out of the 50's and 60's time frame of the book.

 

[The Axeman]

Anyone being the tiny little subset of fans who look up other fan blueprints...which would be less than 1% of the people who like the film.

I think even that figure is optomistic. I'd guess the people who wouldn't accept anything other than the Shane Johnson plans could comfortably fit in my bathroom. I'd also go on to guess that the number of people who even think seriously about plans for the ship might fill my entire flat. Compared to the millions of people who've enjoyed the movie over the years it's a fraction of a fraction.

 

[larryman]

Does anyone else like this idea...

The United Planets Federation (based on Earth) is directed by the "Colossus" super computer, created by Dr. Charles Forbin in the 1970 "Colossus: The Forbin Project" movie, and maintained/enhanced over the ensuing 80 years?

In the movie, Colossus said it would give mankind the stars.

It would certainly differ from the Star Trek federation model.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'm always of the "let a thousand flowers bloom" persuasion rather than the P.F. Farmer grand-meta-kitchen-sink school. IOW, I love having dozens or even hundreds of discrete science fiction "universes" each with their own flavor rather than merging and linking them. I don't like to think of FP as belonging sequel or prequel-wise with any other movie or tv series. Whatever's going on in that universe - history, technology, cosmology - is unique unto itself.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I have an idea for a UP saucer about twice the size of the C-57D, maybe a few years newer. It's actually pretty conservative - when I get a basic mesh done I'll post it.

I should correct myself and say that I don't dislike the "Colossus" idea, any more than the Jupiter II or the Metaluna saucer, as part of FP. But I think that the more stuff that's invented specifically internal to the "universe" the more interesting it is. The appearence of just about every important physical object in the Trek universe, for example, was at some point extrapolated from the designs of Jefferies and Chang and Theiss for a couple of ships, props and uniforms. An enormous amount of new invention and outside reference have been pulled in over the decades, but they defined a certain envelope.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Here's a mesh I did about five years ago, based on drawings available online and frame-grabs from the movie:

 

[TowerPower]

Nice pic. That would look great as wallpaper. Got a higher resolution of it?
Thanks,

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'll have to hunt up the old files and see if it can be tweaked and rerendered - I'd drop some of the hull detail now (panel lines are too obvious and Trek-like) and fiddle with the engine lighting. I think this is a 2005 project.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

 

[Albertese]

Cool. That's a pretty neat saucer. But I think it diverges too far from what was in the movie for me to think of as the C-57D. On the other hand, if they remade the movie, I think this is as far away from the original that I'd like to see it go.

Good work!

--Alex

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I've updated the pics.

It's not the C-57D - it's a successor, larger and a few years later.

 

[Albertese]

Ooohhh.. That is pretty cool.

--Alex

 

[publiusr]

So what would the Bellerophon look like? I think, being a colony ship of sorts, that it would be larger, perhaps more dome-like?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A variation I like better: