After watching the last episode of WANDAVISION, there was a philosophical debate concerning the "Ship of Theseus". Basically, how much of the ship is removed and replaced before its ceases to be the original ship? Now, that line got me thinking about the Enterprise, and what Captain Will Decker said to Admiral Kirk, about the Enterprise almost being a totally new Enterprise. Thus, IS the TMP Enterprise still the TOS Enterprise, but now refitted? And whatever happened to the old hull and parts? In my headcanon,all those old parts were reassembled in secret, with that Enterprise being placed in a museum.
Ship of Theseus...Ship of Kirk?
- Thread starter dswynne1
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We know the old engine room pipes were kept in the refit because that's where Ephraim laid her eggs.
...Heck, they apparently survived the scuttling of the ship over Genesis, since they're still there in the NCC-1701-A!
The identity of the ship might well be independent of any of her physical structures. Indeed, this might be the very reason for the refit.
Presumably the Feds and the Klingons had been escalating for a war prior to "Errand of Mercy", possibly ever since Burnham's War a decade prior. After that adventure, though, we get this something they call the Organian Peace Treaty. Yet Klingons don't seem to believe in peace much, treaty or no treaty. The actual content of that treaty thus could be an arms race limitation deal wherein the two sides agree on quotas of shipbuilding, perhaps type by type - much like nations between the World Wars here agreed on such, in the hopes of gaining the upper hand on their competitors, or maintaining it, or at least not losing too much of it, all without bankrupting their own economy.
So Starfleet would be motivated to "refit" an old ship when the treaty tells them not to build a new one - even if the old ship simply ceases to be and a new one emerges in her place... Quite a bit of that happened between the World Wars, too.
We don't know if starships have keels or skeletons on which the rest of the parts hang. If so, NCC-1701 might still retain her interior framework, even though the exterior is of wholly new shapes and dimensions. This assuming that there's some point in retaining the framework, rather than dumping it along with the old powerplant, the old engines, the old weapons, the old computers, the old chairs...
If starships are more like cars, though, and the outer hull itself is the load-bearing structure, then it's a massive undertaking to alter the curvature of the secondary hull by two feet, compared to swapping a panel welded to a girder. Essentially, the dockyards would have to melt the old ship for raw materials and mold a new one out of those.
Timo Saloniemi
The identity of the ship might well be independent of any of her physical structures. Indeed, this might be the very reason for the refit.
Presumably the Feds and the Klingons had been escalating for a war prior to "Errand of Mercy", possibly ever since Burnham's War a decade prior. After that adventure, though, we get this something they call the Organian Peace Treaty. Yet Klingons don't seem to believe in peace much, treaty or no treaty. The actual content of that treaty thus could be an arms race limitation deal wherein the two sides agree on quotas of shipbuilding, perhaps type by type - much like nations between the World Wars here agreed on such, in the hopes of gaining the upper hand on their competitors, or maintaining it, or at least not losing too much of it, all without bankrupting their own economy.
So Starfleet would be motivated to "refit" an old ship when the treaty tells them not to build a new one - even if the old ship simply ceases to be and a new one emerges in her place... Quite a bit of that happened between the World Wars, too.
We don't know if starships have keels or skeletons on which the rest of the parts hang. If so, NCC-1701 might still retain her interior framework, even though the exterior is of wholly new shapes and dimensions. This assuming that there's some point in retaining the framework, rather than dumping it along with the old powerplant, the old engines, the old weapons, the old computers, the old chairs...
If starships are more like cars, though, and the outer hull itself is the load-bearing structure, then it's a massive undertaking to alter the curvature of the secondary hull by two feet, compared to swapping a panel welded to a girder. Essentially, the dockyards would have to melt the old ship for raw materials and mold a new one out of those.
Timo Saloniemi
For all we know, Starfleet of the 23rd century has a process which repairs microfractures and other wear and tear allowing hull panels to be reinvigorated and reused countless times, so whose to say the hull panels on the refit Enterprise aren't the exact same ones from Kirk's (or even Pike's) five-year mission?
We have to assume that they aren't as wasteful a society, so anything stripped from the ship could be recycled or reused in some manner either on the original vessel or on another elsewhere in the fleet.
We have to assume that they aren't as wasteful a society, so anything stripped from the ship could be recycled or reused in some manner either on the original vessel or on another elsewhere in the fleet.
None of us is made of what we were made of thirty years ago.
There are at least two approaches to answering the Ship of Theseus question. One concerns itself with the material bits of which the ship is made. The other suggests that it's the essential design or pattern of a thing that make it "itself."
On that premise, as long as the various fixes to the ship maintain the essential design identity, it is the same ship.
To make another ship which is identical to the first and which could exist simultaneously with it is to create another object, another "self" if you will, not to extend the existence of the original.
There are at least two approaches to answering the Ship of Theseus question. One concerns itself with the material bits of which the ship is made. The other suggests that it's the essential design or pattern of a thing that make it "itself."
On that premise, as long as the various fixes to the ship maintain the essential design identity, it is the same ship.
To make another ship which is identical to the first and which could exist simultaneously with it is to create another object, another "self" if you will, not to extend the existence of the original.
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Yup. Or then even the pattern doesn't matter, and it's purely a matter of an unbroken provenience chain. "I used to be a piece of string and now I am the very same thing, only I serve as a starship mainframe - see documentation here."
...Why?
If they have access to the resources of the galaxy, including essentially unlimited energy (vital for accessing those resources), why would they confess to an anti-wasting religion? Except perhaps in the sense of dealing with wastes, but it takes more than the lifetime of the universe to fill said universe with garbage.
Timo Saloniemi
...Why?
If they have access to the resources of the galaxy, including essentially unlimited energy (vital for accessing those resources), why would they confess to an anti-wasting religion? Except perhaps in the sense of dealing with wastes, but it takes more than the lifetime of the universe to fill said universe with garbage.
Timo Saloniemi
Every five years really thanks to the turnover of atoms in the human body.
During ENT, Trip said about the recycling system in place for human waste, and throughout Trek we've never seen starships dump waste like in Star Wars, so recycling would seem to be key to Starfleet operations. Even with replicators they need matter stores to transform into new items as well as taking old items and breaking them down into matter once more for it then to be recycled into something else by someone else on the ship/station. When ships are being refitted, it makes sense to break down metals, reformat and augment as required then reproduce replacement parts from the old material, instead of mining virgin material, breaking it down to create alloys and making it into something new, only to then dispose of it and start the process all over again.
Granted I am somewhat biased, as this is the sector I work in, so needlessly wasting of material is something that really grates on me.
^^^ There was the one scene in TFF (the first time we saw a toilet in all of Star Trek!) in the brig with a label over it saying "DO NOT USE WHILE IN SPACEDOCK". This would imply... not recycling certain things.
I lean towards thinking the raw materials from the TOS Enterprise were recycled into the TMP Enterprise. Thus it can be the same ship because technically it's a lot of the same material.
Prisoner poop ain't for eatin'!
Wouldn't that be funny, Starfleet has standards regarding who's shit they'll eat and who's they won't.
That's true of the 22nd century, and 32nd post-burn Starfleet, but 24th century replicators were stated to be energy/matter conversion, and the replicator disintegrated waste.
Well, the Organians themselves had a hand in that. The Burn should have been something that happened at the end of the Vanguard novels—sadly wiping out Tholians. Thus the refits could use “shard drive” explaining the new look nacelles. Really, spore drive should be used by the Vong—they would hurt the midiclorians in lava craft like krall’s bees
