Spoilers ST Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Three SPOILER Discussion

[Timo]

The ambiguous launches in "Into the Forest" are partially explainable with tubes close to the nacelles. The first shots they get off when starting their dance around the Ship of the Dead emerge from the centerline, though. A bit down and aft from the deflector, but we might accept them as coming from the barrels if we really wanted.

The launches in "Sound of Thunder" won't fit the barrel model, though, so we'd have to go for at least three firing locations in the end. It's fortunate we have seen such a low number of launches in general, and that the phaser beams do emerge from the supposed emitters (perhaps those glow red for the very purpose of helping out the VFX team?).

If we accept tubes close to nacelles, we have to accept some sort of a hatch arrangement, which can then account for the centerline launchers of "Into the Forest", too. And be in sync with presumed TOS hatches. We then have to wonder why the launchers in the middle of the dish wouldn't be similarly covered, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

All agreed. What frustrates me is that the designers of the ship went a long way to figure all the OTHER usual ship parts in to the CG model, and even went so far as to modify the exterior between seasons 1 and 2 to upgrade the texturing and add Pike's ready room windows properly - and they STILL haven't shown any clear torpedo tubes.

This does seem to be a general problem for ALL the Starfleet designs of the Discovery era; while some warp nacelle elements are common, the same can't be said of weapons emplacements on any of the non-Discovery Starfleet ships, including the Shenzhou and Enterprise. One could therefore conclude that this era of Starfleet design mounted torpedoes behind doors for some reason, between bouts of ENT not knowing any better and TMP-onwards not really caring.

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Mark

 

[Tuskin38]

There’s a partial discovery interior diagram in the ‘Art of Discovery’ book

https://twitter.com/captain_revo/status/1328683267923582976

and it does show the ready room being behind the bridge dome.

No torpedo launcher labels though

 

[Timo]

Plus, the layout of the secondary hull is rectangular, parallel to centerline - but we saw onscreen diagrams of diagonally laid out Jeffries tubes, and that one zoom-in to the ceiling of Portside Engineering that heavily suggested the facility was at an angle to centerline, too.

Are there really three turntables in the shuttlebay? Seems so - but I wouldn't have realized without the help of this art.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

https://twitter.com/startrekcbs/status/1328759813061320705

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

https://twitter.com/startrekcbs/status/1328759813061320705

That's some funky ass designs

 

[F. King Daniel]

There’s a partial discovery interior diagram in the ‘Art of Discovery’ book

https://twitter.com/captain_revo/status/1328683267923582976

and it does show the ready room being behind the bridge dome.

No torpedo launcher labels though

Fascinating!


Lots of empty space for that funhouse, then

 

[Ronald Held]

Should all those ships be grossly larger than 24th century ships, just due to being in 32d century?

 

[Dukhat]

Judging by the windows of the Voyager-J, it looks significantly larger than the original.

 

[NCC-73515]

If you can grow ships, why not let them grow on and on XD

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I think I've figured out how the Engines function while being detached.
If you're familiar with the Gundam Franchise, the Warp Nacelles each are just giant remote controlled drones/Bits/Fin Funnels.
They have tiny Warp Cores in each one and their own fuel supply.
They can communicate via subspace or other communications methods.

Technically there is no reason why you need the Warp Nacelles to be attached since the Warp Bubble around each vesssel is arbitrarily sized, and if your Warp Nacelles can move to make the optimum shape or get out of the way of enemy energy blasts, then there are advantages to it's design being detached.

 

[Timo]

On the other hand, if parts of the ships' structures are holographic, they could just as well be invisible. A Trek holoprojection need not be of any particular color or opaqueness in order to have physical strength...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

This is reasonable. Holographic nacelle struts can move and maintain the nacelles themselves into an optimum position for any warp speed or maneuvering needed, and can easily reassert themselves if they're hit by weapons fire. As a secondary or parallel system, the nacelles themselves take the whole multi-vector thing a step further, and each one is essentially its own spacecraft that can maneuver on its own while contributing to the whole vessel.

[It goes beyond Gundam BTW, as anime parallels go - in Macross, the later big hero ship-bots are described as a collection of independent craft that can separate and be reconfigured as needed, with arms and legs able to pop off and fly around if needed. In Macross Delta the carrier "arms" do exactly that on multiple occasions.]

As for the Voyager-J, I feel like they took the CG model of the original and ran it through a fractal filter, busting it down to its more basic shapes. Still there, but oddly angular when designs of the time were looking more organic. Could the lowest of those horizontal lines be phaser emitters? The EDF ships from 3x03 had no visible weapons emplacements for those torpedoes.

Mark

 

[Timo]

What an invisible/transparent hologram is, is forcefields and light, only without the light. Why make some parts transparent and others not? Presumably because the crew prefers the privacy of opaque walls, and perhaps because the glow of the warp plasma ought to be camouflaged for reasons of health and stealth alike.

It then follows that the rest doesn't have an excuse to be opaque - so there might be a lot more of this "rest" than just two missing pylons...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

My thought is that some mounting parts are "Quantum Entangled" to where they are always exactly X meters between them, and maybe its like a power transfer beam between them when at warp?

 

[Go-Captain]

If this Federation HQ is so isolated, wouldn't it stand to reason that other chunks of Federation members including StarFleet who lost communique with Federation HQ on Earth reassemble everybody they can contact nearby and make a temporary local HQ in their region?

We could potentially see over a dozen UFP / StarFleet remanents with their own local StarFleet / UFP HQ's in their neck of the woods.

That would explain the very different hull technologies mentioned for the Federation Headquarters fleet.

All agreed. What frustrates me is that the designers of the ship went a long way to figure all the OTHER usual ship parts in to the CG model, and even went so far as to modify the exterior between seasons 1 and 2 to upgrade the texturing and add Pike's ready room windows properly - and they STILL haven't shown any clear torpedo tubes.

This does seem to be a general problem for ALL the Starfleet designs of the Discovery era; while some warp nacelle elements are common, the same can't be said of weapons emplacements on any of the non-Discovery Starfleet ships, including the Shenzhou and Enterprise. One could therefore conclude that this era of Starfleet design mounted torpedoes behind doors for some reason, between bouts of ENT not knowing any better and TMP-onwards not really caring.

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Mark

It doesn't have torpedo tubes. Not only do they launch from the nacelles, they launch from the saucer edge, under the saucer edge, and maybe over. It's weird because they took the time to put TMP style phaser banks in, but couldn't be bothered with anything else, which puts the model somewhere between ship of the week and villain ship, where with both any random greeble is a weapon in addition to the actual weapon details.

Should all those ships be grossly larger than 24th century ships, just due to being in 32d century?

They probably are, but sizes should depend on their missions and technologies. Though in real life ships, and fighter jets, do seem to be on an upward trend in size regardless of role.

I think I've figured out how the Engines function while being detached.
If you're familiar with the Gundam Franchise, the Warp Nacelles each are just giant remote controlled drones/Bits/Fin Funnels.
They have tiny Warp Cores in each one and their own fuel supply.
They can communicate via subspace or other communications methods.

Technically there is no reason why you need the Warp Nacelles to be attached since the Warp Bubble around each vesssel is arbitrarily sized, and if your Warp Nacelles can move to make the optimum shape or get out of the way of enemy energy blasts, then there are advantages to it's design being detached.

That's a very modern take, but disappointingly mundane to have formation flight as the answer. It doesn't leverage the wild technologies of the settings, and needs to be something as robust as a physical connection.

My thought is that some mounting parts are "Quantum Entangled" to where they are always exactly X meters between them, and maybe its like a power transfer beam between them when at warp?

Elsewhere, someone proposed the nacelles are physically connected in a higher dimension. That's wacky enough for the setting and time period, but seems extreme given the general state of technology we have seen so far.

I could see it as an extension of the inertial dampening system, where they can cancel inertia and induce it at will, and transmit power, as you say, by beam. Inertial control like that would replace impulse engines for the whole ship, and only the main hull would need the system with no specialized equipment in the nacelles.

 

[Ronald Held]

Should we expect an onscreen explanation how the nacelles are floating yet are powered and coupled to the ship?

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Not likely. We’ve already seen Burnham’s interim shuttle had separate wings / nacelles and we don’t have an explanation for it. It follows that she’d have a working understanding of HOW this happens, but there’s just been no story-related reason for it to be explained.

At this point it’s the same magic question as “why does the artificial gravity still work sometimes (but not always) when the power goes out?” and so on.

Mark

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

At this point it’s the same magic question as “why does the artificial gravity still work sometimes (but not always) when the power goes out?” and so on.

Mini Battery Backup that keeps the Artificial Gravity running for a bit even if power goes out.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've always kind of thought artificial gravity was either part of or at least tied into a ship's life-support system and will always be one of the last systems to ever go out (unless specifically hit).