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*Spoilers* U.S.S. Franklin Design?

The Enterprise in TWOK seemed to have some extra screens around the bridge and top few decks when Kirk ordered yellow alert, even though the main shields hadn't yet gone up.

Seems like that would be a waste of resources. Burying the bridge deep in the saucer wouldn't require the extra shielding.
 
Seems like that would be a waste of resources. Burying the bridge deep in the saucer wouldn't require the extra shielding.
Except that in most of Trek it seems like once the shields go down the hull can't take much of a pounding. Supposedly the weapons are supposed to be strong enough to make armor ineffective. Therefore, whether you place the bridge on the top of the saucer or in the bowels of the secondary hull, it makes no difference. That said, the ablative armor in DS9 may have made this a moot point.
 
Except that in most of Trek it seems like once the shields go down the hull can't take much of a pounding. Supposedly the weapons are supposed to be strong enough to make armor ineffective. Therefore, whether you place the bridge on the top of the saucer or in the bowels of the secondary hull, it makes no difference. That said, the ablative armor in DS9 may have made this a moot point.

But if you're deeper in the hull, you're not going to get picked off with the first shot after shields go down.
 
Or they just knock out your life support systems and leave you to suffocate.

While the shows never actually show it. I would like to believe there is emergency equipment that would allow a starship crew to extend its life if life support went down.
 
All of Trek is very inconsistent about this. Even a photon torpedo set to half charge should blow up an entire starship with shields down, it doesn't matter where you are on the starship (which is why I thought it was silly people complained about the bridge being on top). Bascially they use the power of weaponry to suit whatever the plot needs, because it's sure not consistent.

RAMA

Except that in most of Trek it seems like once the shields go down the hull can't take much of a pounding. Supposedly the weapons are supposed to be strong enough to make armor ineffective. Therefore, whether you place the bridge on the top of the saucer or in the bowels of the secondary hull, it makes no difference. That said, the ablative armor in DS9 may have made this a moot point.
 
All of Trek is very inconsistent about this. Even a photon torpedo set to half charge should blow up an entire starship with shields down, it doesn't matter where you are on the starship (which is why I thought it was silly people complained about the bridge being on top). Bascially they use the power of weaponry to suit whatever the plot needs, because it's sure not consistent.

RAMA
I guess it depends on how many -um- internal shields they have.
 
The bridge sticks out like a sore thumb because that's how bridges and conning towers have been placed on real navy ships.

And all the discussion of holograms above is giving me an interesting idea of a holographic person that you have to physically interact with in very particular ways to get the ship to do what you want it to do... :wtf:

Kor
 


I had also forgotten about this turbine design
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/wave-disk-engines-could-be-35-times.html


More for the bottom of a saucer--one would think.
Maybe a saucer like avrocar--with intakes at the edges and this buried...

Huge saucer shaped HLLV http://www.astronautix.com/craft/bonaucer.htm

American manned spaceplane. Study 1963. In 1963 Phil Bono of Douglas Aircraft considered a lenticular configuration for a single-stage-to-orbit reusable booster. This was the largest application found to date for the lenticular concept.

The 108-m (354 ft) diameter saucer would have delivered a million pounds of payload to low earth orbit. It was assessed as having a slightly inferior mass fraction to the baseline cylindrical ROOST design (0.925 versus 0.930) and a significantly higher delta-V requirement due to increased drag (9450 m/s total impulsive requirement vs 9100 m/s for the preferred ROOST concept). This drove the gross lift-off mass at the assumed vacuum specific impulse of 410 seconds to 45 million pounds versus 25 million pounds for the ROOST baseline. The design evidently went no further than a notional concept in the trade study.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kehlet argued that a lenticular vehicle, as a manned spacecraft launched into orbit by a conventional booster, had clear advantages over ballistic, lifting body, and winged designs. At hypersonic re-entry speeds it would undergo lower heating and require less shielding. At the same time it was more maneuverable at subsonic speeds than a winged design, and could land at sea or on land without undercarriage. The symmetrical shape meant it would integrate easily into conventional booster designs, without creating excessive drag or asymmetric loads during ascent to orbit.

A saucer-shaped vehicle was inherently aerodynamically unstable and would require aerodynamic surfaces to allow controlled gliding flight. Kehlet advocated the use of deployable fins that would conform to the convex top of the saucer during most of the mission, and only be deployed when the spacecraft had slowed to below Mach 2 after reentry.

http://www.astronautix.com/fam/lenicles.htm

That's your surface details. I think FASA had the BoP feather plates as aerodynamic surfaces
 
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The Enterprise in TWOK seemed to have some extra screens around the bridge and top few decks when Kirk ordered yellow alert, even though the main shields hadn't yet gone up.
Actually that's an Intruder Alert diagram (cut from from TMP, but used in the trailer) and even says INTRUDER ALERT across the top. If you look closely it's just a diagram of a deck, and only deck 4 (or maybe 5) is lit up in the profile view. So even if you assume it's supposed to the this "defense fields" Saavik says to energize, it's several decks below the bridge.

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CLICK TO EMBIGGEN!​
 
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Interesting, I'd never seen the profile in that much detail - I'd always assumed it was a field covering the top three or four decks. Could be that "energise defence fields" is a precursor to raising the shields fully. Maybe that's where the main shield generators are located? It's followed by this panel.
 
Interesting, I'd never seen the profile in that much detail - I'd always assumed it was a field covering the top three or four decks. Could be that "energise defence fields" is a precursor to raising the shields fully. Maybe that's where the main shield generators are located? It's followed by this panel.
I always just retconned "Energize defense fields" as being like "Polarize the hull plating" from Enterprise. An intermediate, passive defensive system that bolsters key areas of the hull armor without being as provocative as raising shields.
 
Which is likely why the torpedo that hit the top of the saucer did little or no damage (externally).
 
Maybe polarizing or magnetizing the hull is the way to make shields work. Otherwise, how would you have 100% coverage?
 
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