• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Shrooooooms....

That would certainly appear to be true. But there's still the issue of the doors, which are depicted as being big enough for the ship to fit through without having to roll 90° or anything else fancy; yet from the outside, the doors are the same proportion to the rest of the starbase as they were in TSFS, which must mean the whole facility is upscaled, not that they simply retrofitted it with a bigger "Galaxy-sized door."

Some relevant screencaps from "11001001"

Enterprise-D on approach
approaching open doors
passing through the doors

This certainly doesn't present a scaling issue, does it? :p

Enterprise viewed from lounge
Enterprise-D viewed from control room
 
That would certainly appear to be true. But there's still the issue of the doors, which are depicted as being big enough for the ship to fit through without having to roll 90° or anything else fancy; yet from the outside, the doors are the same proportion to the rest of the starbase as they were in TSFS, which must mean the whole facility is upscaled, not that they simply retrofitted it with a bigger "Galaxy-sized door."

Some relevant screencaps from "11001001"

Enterprise-D on approach
approaching open doors
passing through the doors

This certainly doesn't present a scaling issue, does it? :p

Enterprise viewed from lounge
Enterprise-D viewed from control room

I wonder how long it takes to build one of those star bases...and can they move?

Rob
scorpio
 
I'd imagine it takes a long time, even considering how much empty space is up in the "head" of the mushroom. That's why despite the spacedock being visually very cool, it's ultimately impractical. The "framework" spacedocks like we've seen in TMP/TWOK, GEN, NEM, and at Utopia Planitia in various DS9 & VOY episodes, or "spider" facilities like Earth Station McKinley (TNG "Family," "All Good Things") make more sense in terms of resources, personnel, and adaptability.
 
My guess is that 90% of those bases are huge empty cargo spaces or large industrial-sized replicator bays for replicating starship replacement parts. We already see that most of the upper mushroom is just a huge empty berth.

So while the size of the things may be impressive, they're probably not very dense. They'd still be about 50 times more massive than a regular ship.

I imagine there are hundreds of shuttlebays (and by extension hangar doors), possibly explaining why the big doors aren't just labelled 1 through 4.
 
Wasn't it, I believe, Probert's original concept to be that the 'Shroom Base would be outfited with a boom/outrigger for Galaxy class ships since he knew the Ent-D was too big to fit through the doors?
 
I think it's fine that they're so big. Being a station, there are several things that don't limit its size as opposed to a starship:

-The station will never go to warp or impulse, so there is no need for a warp core/impulse engines.

-Since it just sits in orbit, it doesn't need any really heavy-duty structure or structural integrity field or inertial dampners or any of that other stuff a ship needs.

-There's no reason to think the federation is short on labour or materials.

So really, building a big bulk of mostly hollow docking compartments that never has to move is much easier than building a ship that has to move at 1000 times lightspeed and be self-reliant for up to 20 years. That Galaxy-holding monster isn't out of the realm of Trekkian possibility.
 
The "framework" spacedocks like we've seen in TMP/TWOK, GEN, NEM, and at Utopia Planitia in various DS9 & VOY episodes, or "spider" facilities like Earth Station McKinley (TNG "Family," "All Good Things") make more sense in terms of resources, personnel, and adaptability.

Makes more sense how? What is the purpose of the framework? From what I've seen, they just hold some lights, what other purpose are they serving? :wtf:
 
The purpose of the framework is an enclosure where they can work on the construction of the ship. One might assume that the framework can be made larger or smaller by adding or removing sections so as to accommodate different sized starships. Just by virtue of the size of the spacedock doors, the Earth facility would have big problems trying to service the larger 24th century ships like the Ambassador, Galaxy, Nebula, and Sovereign classes.

Furthermore, working in open space means that if some sort of catastrophic accident happens during construction (say, the warp reactor explodes the first time they fire it up), the damage will be limited to that area. Doing said work inside the 'shroom means in the event of a similar accident, you take up your ship and the other twelve docked inside as well.
 
The only thing that would really have to be changed is the size of the doors in the 24th century so a galaxy class would be able to go through.
Several of those ships can easily be placed inside that station, along with multiple other vessels that could take positions above or beneath other ships.
The upper docking area of the base is large and has enough space to accommodate after all.

As for how many people would be able to fit inside 1 star-base ...
Whew ... if the Galaxy class is able to accommodate 15000 in an emergency, then I'd have to pin about 50 000 ... probably up to 100 000 people for the star-base itself ... if not much more.

I mean ... the thing is VERY thick on the outer areas (about 4 to 8 decks in thickness overall) and it's radius is about 3.5 km if I'm not mistaken.

But I don't think the star-base was constructed for decades (perhaps it took a decade or possibly more when it was first proposed ... but definitely not later on).
By the 24th century, SF has plenty of them dispersed throughout Federation territory ... and I'd surmise it takes a few years at best by that time-frame.
They are excellent for industrial/fleet production/support, supporting a potential planet (if they are in orbit of one) and establishing a foothold in a region of space.
That thing in comparison to DS9 is an actual fortress (or at least it should be) and would at least have to be capable of repelling 2x the fleet Ds9 was capable of repelling.
 
Last edited:
Why exactly did starbases of that size exist, anyway? It would seem to take a massive amount of manpower to create such a thing.
 
Why exactly did starbases of that size exist, anyway? It would seem to take a massive amount of manpower to create such a thing.

They were mini cities in space, where you can stop to get your ship serviced, stock up on supplies as well as relax a bit. I imagine they were also used as "layover" stations for crew transfers, etc. You know, hop on the next ship going to Starbase 12, wait a few weeks until your assigned ship shows up for supplies. Lots of good reasons. :techman:
 
Not to mention providing a large, safe Federation repair/dock location where a ground-based operation would be impossible, say, in a star system consisting of gas giants.
 
I don't know if anyone has asked whether MIKE OKUDA is around. It would certainly be great to get the final word on this from MIKE OKUDA. I mean, if anyone would know anything about this graphic, it would definitely be MIKE OKUDA. :p

(Actually, I think that trick only works with Rick Sternbach. ;))

Oh, you messed it up. :klingon: You're supposed to hop in a counter-clockwise circle and say "Okuuuu-da!", with your foot coming down on the "da!" 9 Okudas per circle, 3 revolutions. Incense burning. It also helps if you wear feathers.
 
They were mini cities in space, where you can stop to get your ship serviced, stock up on supplies as well as relax a bit. I imagine they were also used as "layover" stations for crew transfers, etc. You know, hop on the next ship going to Starbase 12, wait a few weeks until your assigned ship shows up for supplies. Lots of good reasons. :techman:
Not to mention providing a large, safe Federation repair/dock location where a ground-based operation would be impossible, say, in a star system consisting of gas giants.
Which would be great if we'd actually ever seen any of those facilities in such a system. We've only ever seen the 'shroom-dock in orbit over Earth or similar Class-M planets (because TNG reused ILM's footage from TSFS).
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top