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Starship design history in light of Discovery

Hell, until the producers told viewers to ignore the design in one episode the D7/K't'inga-style design was in use by the Klingon Empire for at least 224 years with few external changes aside from surface detailing and the colors of the warp nacelles. "Unexpected(ENT)" unintentionally gave us a Klingon warship design that remained almost exactly the same from at least 2151 until the Dominion War more than two centuries later. :shrug:
 
How dare you? The Imperial Defense Force is perfect! Our hulls never degrade! Why, my great-great-great-grandmother's ship still flies straight. And don't go claiming that it's only held together by the bolted-on corpses! Those are strictly ornamental!

...Oh, you said compensation? Well, yeah, we're still negotiating how the loot from Arcanis is to be divided. But the lawyers of our House have been triumphant as of late. And with the most recent layer of bodies, we can keep the ship flying straight for centuries to come.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Gonzo said:
The extreme cold could be an issue but that would already be solved via an internal heat source otherwise the crew wouldn't survive anyway due to exposure.
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Vacuum is an insulator. Contrary to myth, spaceship crews and spacesuit wearers are at more danger of overheating than freezing (which is why the Space Shuttle orbited with its cargo doors open -- the heat radiators were inside them). Think about how you get cold much faster in water than in air because the medium is denser. Now take it in the other direction. With no medium at all, there's no conduction or convection, only radiation, the slowest and least efficient way to lose heat. So being in the vacuum of space is like being inside a huge Thermos bottle.

So a spaceship in shadow or in deep interstellar space will get really cold eventually, much more slowly than it would in atmosphere or water -- and a spaceship in direct, bright sunlight will get really hot. In either case, internal heat would be generated automatically as waste heat from the ship's power systems and from the crew's own bodies. So spaceships don't need internal heating, they actually need cooling systems to carry the heat to external radiators. (It's weird that movie/TV designers never put radiator fins on their ships even when trying for credibility. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Discovery was designed with radiators but Kubrick nixed them.)
 
Christopher said:
Vacuum is an insulator. Contrary to myth, spaceship crews and spacesuit wearers are at more danger of overheating than freezing (which is why the Space Shuttle orbited with its cargo doors open -- the heat radiators were inside them). Think about how you get cold much faster in water than in air because the medium is denser. Now take it in the other direction. With no medium at all, there's no conduction or convection, only radiation, the slowest and least efficient way to lose heat. So being in the vacuum of space is like being inside a huge Thermos bottle.

So a spaceship in shadow or in deep interstellar space will get really cold eventually, much more slowly than it would in atmosphere or water -- and a spaceship in direct, bright sunlight will get really hot. In either case, internal heat would be generated automatically as waste heat from the ship's power systems and from the crew's own bodies. So spaceships don't need internal heating, they actually need cooling systems to carry the heat to external radiators. (It's weird that movie/TV designers never put radiator fins on their ships even when trying for credibility. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Discovery was designed with radiators but Kubrick nixed them.)
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Certainly when dealing with individual spacesuits, small space shuttles and the ISS which is ultimately just some very large metal cans floating in orbit with full exposure to the heat of the sun.

None of which applies to Star Trek or BSG which has huge ships with irregular shaped hulls, operating away from any source of heat besides what they generate internally, as I said in my post the ships will need a source of heat and a way to manage temperature levels, it is certainly possible that any heat can be generated by the engines or power source but it would have to be efficiently spread evenly throughout the ship for comforts sake, radiators could be used for this but the pipework required just for that in a ship the size of Galactica would be ridiculous, even more so for Star Trek where the ships tend to be less bulky with reduced internal volume for their size.

Moisture from all the human bodies (exhalation/sweat) and water use is also a big problem, it can't affect the outer hull but the internal hull could be, presumably any alloy used to line the inside of the hull would be resistant anyway.
 
cooleddie74 said:
Hell, until the producers told viewers to ignore the design in one episode the D7/K't'inga-style design was in use by the Klingon Empire for at least 224 years with few external changes aside from surface detailing and the colors of the warp nacelles. "Unexpected(ENT)" unintentionally gave us a Klingon warship design that remained almost exactly the same from at least 2151 until the Dominion War more than two centuries later. :shrug:
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Why did they feel the need to use a D7 in ENT. They had Klingon ship designs already.

And did DIS not then make it worse by having a whole story about its design phase
 
Not really: by the time of "Unexpected", the only Klingon design completed was the small craft in which Klaang crashed on Broken Bow in the pilot episode. That, and the very ship that was going to be used in "Unexpected", but it got nixed at the last moment because reasons, and they had to recycle a non-ENT design for the Klingon ship there. The multitude of "era-appropriate" Klingon designs was only introduced later in the show.

And DSC didn't exactly establish that the D7 would have been first designed under L'Rell's rule. To the contrary, in "Choose Your Pain", it was stated by the shuttle computer that a preexisting ship already went by the designation D7, even if that one looked nothing like the TOS battle cruiser.

Presumably, the D designations either get recycled by Starfleet, or then refer to a broad category of ships that includes many dissimilar models. And the Klingons like to revamp their old designs, rather than coming up with something actually new...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Well for "Mothballed" ships, Space is actually quite rough on stuff, mainly from just radiations, solar wind,cosmic rays, etc. Stuff breaks down. So if your going to mothball a spaceship, lets keep on Star Trek, it would need to be Far away from a star, so past the Asteroid belt, maybe in the Kuiper belt, but then you have to deal with Cold if the systems are shut down, not just burrr its cold, I'm talking about past -100 degrees, close to absolute zero. and thats throughout the whole ship.
Systems aren't designed to take that, and if they do get that cold, they won't work if you want to warm it up and use the ship.
So a spaceship would have to be located in a safe space, maybe enclosed in some kind of dock, or asteroid,planetoid. and then some way to keep the ship above freezing, maybe some auxiliary generator to "Keep the lights on"
Now if its going to be scrapped, thats different.
 
valkyrie013 said:
Well for "Mothballed" ships, Space is actually quite rough on stuff, mainly from just radiations, solar wind,cosmic rays, etc. Stuff breaks down. So if your going to mothball a spaceship, lets keep on Star Trek, it would need to be Far away from a star, so past the Asteroid belt, maybe in the Kuiper belt, but then you have to deal with Cold if the systems are shut down, not just burrr its cold, I'm talking about past -100 degrees, close to absolute zero. and thats throughout the whole ship.
Systems aren't designed to take that, and if they do get that cold, they won't work if you want to warm it up and use the ship.
So a spaceship would have to be located in a safe space, maybe enclosed in some kind of dock, or asteroid,planetoid. and then some way to keep the ship above freezing, maybe some auxiliary generator to "Keep the lights on"
Now if its going to be scrapped, thats different.
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If they kept the lights on they may as well keep life support (oxygen/heat) on as well which would be a bit of a waste, depending on whether or not it is safe to keep the reactors powered down for long periods of time.

You could land the ships on the planet as well, especially if they are on the list to be eventually scrapped.

Mars could have been the fleet mothball dump as well as a major shipyard, it would make sense as the recycled parts and alloys wouldn't have to travel far as the shipyards are on the same planet.

Attacking Mars could have been to take out the shipyards and the mothball fleet that could have been used as a backup for the evacuation of Romulus.
 
Timo said:
Not really: by the time of "Unexpected", the only Klingon design completed was the small craft in which Klaang crashed on Broken Bow in the pilot episode. That, and the very ship that was going to be used in "Unexpected", but it got nixed at the last moment because reasons, and they had to recycle a non-ENT design for the Klingon ship there. The multitude of "era-appropriate" Klingon designs was only introduced later in the show.

And DSC didn't exactly establish that the D7 would have been first designed under L'Rell's rule. To the contrary, in "Choose Your Pain", it was stated by the shuttle computer that a preexisting ship already went by the designation D7, even if that one looked nothing like the TOS battle cruiser.

Presumably, the D designations either get recycled by Starfleet, or then refer to a broad category of ships that includes many dissimilar models. And the Klingons like to revamp their old designs, rather than coming up with something actually new...

Timo Saloniemi
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I would have been happy with the idea that "D7" was a Starfleet designation the same way NATO uses names for Russian aircraft that are different from the names the Russian use. Then they went ahead and had L'rell use the term "D7" and it kind of falls apart.
 
Klingons already spoke of D-codes amongst themselves in, say, "Once More Unto the Breach". But with the Universal Translator, most bets are off...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo said:
Klingons already spoke of D-codes amongst themselves in, say, "Once More Unto the Breach". But with the Universal Translator, most bets are off...

Timo Saloniemi
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Indeed, yes. I still think a D type is just human parlance and just happened to be used by L'Rell. Or, the Klingons started calling it that just to throw off Starfleet Intelligence.
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
I would have been happy with the idea that "D7" was a Starfleet designation the same way NATO uses names for Russian aircraft that are different from the names the Russian use. Then they went ahead and had L'rell use the term "D7" and it kind of falls apart.
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I noticed that, too, in my recent re-watch of S2. It definitely throws a wrench into the works with that one.

Interestingly, and I don't know if this is the etymology of the designation of "D7", as it was never mentioned as such on-screen on TOS, but I quite by accident discovered this, many years ago. The Klingon glyphs (outlined in red) on what we know of as the D7 of TOS (original studio filming model) look like this:
D7.jpg

The original Klingonese font used early on (which some refer to as Klinzhai, but definitely pre-tlhIngan Hol which looks completely different), as it first appeared in the USS Enterprise Officer's Manual (1980) by Geoffrey Mandel and Doug Drexler, looked like this:
USS-Enterprise-Officers-Manual_Page_085.jpg

At least I think 1980 was the first sighting of these glyphs. Mandell is a member here (or he used to be when I had some conversations with him over his Star Charts projects back in '02), and maybe he can confirm this alphabet's origins. Those 3 characters map to read "D74" - maybe a reference to the 4th ship in that generation of D7's. There is a possibility it that it could be "DY4", as the "7" and "Y" glyphs look somewhat similar. Don't know what came before and what came after, and I have no clue who coined the term "D7" or when, but it's certainly, at the very least, an interesting coincidence, if not potential evidence of the designation's origin.
 
Christopher said:
Ah, but did she appear to be speaking English when she did so? We could just assume that's how the translator rendered the Klingon name.
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It was that scene in the great hall or whatever, L'Rell was speaking Klingon and we see the translation on screen while they were looking at a hologram of the "new" ship.
 
137th Gebirg said:
At least I think 1980 was the first sighting of these glyphs. Mandell is a member here (or he used to be when I had some conversations with him over his Star Charts projects back in '02), and maybe he can confirm this alphabet's origins. Those 3 characters map to read "D74" - maybe a reference to the 4th ship in that generation of D7's. There is a possibility it that it could be "DY4", as the "7" and "Y" glyphs look somewhat similar. Don't know what came before and what came after, and I have no clue who coined the term "D7" or when, but it's certainly, at the very least, an interesting coincidence, if not potential evidence of the designation's origin.
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The term "D-7" comes from an anecdote Roddenberry related in 1968's The Making of Star Trek (see https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D7_class#Background_information ), and was frequently used in tie-in fiction thereafter. I'm sure Mandel, Drexler, or whoever created that Klingon alphabet assigned the symbols from the miniature as "D" and "7" retroactively to match the established designation.



Ar-Pharazon said:
It was that scene in the great hall or whatever, L'Rell was speaking Klingon and we see the translation on screen while they were looking at a hologram of the "new" ship.
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Okay, then as long as we didn't hear her actually speak the syllables "dee-seh-ven" -- or whatever the Klingon name for the letter D is plus Soch for 7 -- then that's not what she actually called it.
 
Christopher said:
The term "D-7" comes from an anecdote Roddenberry related in 1968's The Making of Star Trek (see https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D7_class#Background_information ), and was frequently used in tie-in fiction thereafter. I'm sure Mandel, Drexler, or whoever created that Klingon alphabet assigned the symbols from the miniature as "D" and "7" retroactively to match the established designation.





Okay, then as long as we didn't hear her actually speak the syllables "dee-seh-ven" -- or whatever the Klingon name for the letter D is plus Soch for 7 -- then that's not what she actually called it.
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L'Rell appears to be speaking English (or Federation Standard) here at 1:57 rather than translated Klingonese.
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Whichever way you look at it, Star Trek inconsistencies that don't really bother me.
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
It was that scene in the great hall or whatever, L'Rell was speaking Klingon and we see the translation on screen while they were looking at a hologram of the "new" ship.
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Christopher said:
Okay, then as long as we didn't hear her actually speak the syllables "dee-seh-ven" -- or whatever the Klingon name for the letter D is plus Soch for 7 -- then that's not what she actually called it.
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Tyler did say 'D7' in Klingon in episode 3. 'Day-Soch'

http://klingon.wiki/En/DSC203
 
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