Starship paint jobs?
- Thread starter James Wright
- Start date
It should. You can use the same process in zero gravity/vacuum as you do on the Earth where you apply a positive charge to the paint particles and a negative charge to the surface you wish painted. Even without gravity the electromagnetic attraction should be strong enough (though you might need to be closer or use more powerful fields). And you can heat a surface with radiant energy even in a vacuum so curing shouldn't be an issue, though you could develop a binding agent that works via cold.
Plecostomus
Commodore
Why would it not? The solvent would boil away in vacuum leaving the pigment/binder behind.
Or you could skip that step and put down a layer of liquid binder/pigment (possibly a liquid polymer or something exotic) and fuse it with heat/lasers/microwave/subspace. Ceramic powder, polymers, carbon-nano-whatchamacllits...
Way out there would be some kind of electro-process like brush anodize, you actually chemically color the metal itself. How about have nanites deliver the pigment at the molecular level and attach the pigment molecules to the hull molecules?
Plenty of room for technobabbling here, you can mix and match ideas to come up with an isothermal photonic peristaltic applicator/fuser gun for your carbon nano-ceramic polymer optical pigmentation matrix layer.
...or you could just use frigging spraypaint.
Yep. That could be a plot device. They strand some hero in open space, but he uses an overlooked can of spray paint to navigate to sefety . . . somehow.
I remember an essay question like that in high school physics. A guy doing a spacewalk to repair a spacecraft drifts away. He stragegically throws his screwdriver in the opposite direction, and Newton's Third Law brings him back to the ship . . . in three weeks or thereabout.
I remember an essay question like that in high school physics. A guy doing a spacewalk to repair a spacecraft drifts away. He stragegically throws his screwdriver in the opposite direction, and Newton's Third Law brings him back to the ship . . . in three weeks or thereabout.
Since they have transparent aluminum, that means they adjust the color on the molecular level, so I see each panel itself being modified to create a color scheme.
Other than that, anodization is a possibility. The Romulan ships (TNG) always looked anodized to me.
Other than that, anodization is a possibility. The Romulan ships (TNG) always looked anodized to me.
Every time I hear this I CRINGE.
"Transparent aluminum" is a scientific impossibility. Sort of like "Cold superheated gas."
The very characteristic which makes aluminum METALLIC (loosely bonded free electrons) is also what makes it (and all metals) OPAQUE.
There is NO SUCH THING AS MOLECULAR STRUCTURE WHEN TALKING ABOUT A METAL!!! Metals, BY DEFINITION, do not have a "molecular structure" and thus you cannot adjust the molecular structure of a metal at ANY level.
Yes, you can make CERAMICS based upon aluminum which would be transparent... but they would not have the tough, malleable characteristics of metals, and thus would be useless for that purpose.
For a substance to have metallic properties, it must have "free electrons." Free electrons reflect photons very effectively... that's why metals tend to be shiny. The more free electrons, the more shiny it is (Mercury has a LOT of free electrons, which is why it's fluid at room temperature and EXTREMELY shiny).
This particular line in ST-IV annoyed me at the time... and since so many people have accepted it without question (by the way, it was a POLYMER CHAIN which was shown on-screen... unrelated to either metals or ceramics!), there's a lot of really bad science accepted as "fact" by Trekkies.
If there was only one thing I could "retcon" out of Trek's existence, I really think that "Transparent aluminum" would be at the top of my list!
(RANT MODE: OFF)
To create an "in universe reason", perhaps what Scotty was referring to was not really a transparent form of aluminum (for both of the reasons you noted), but a polymer that had similar properties in terms of strength and heat resistance to aluminum, yet was transparent? So they called it "transparent aluminum" for marketing to the public reasons?
That's one of the treknologies that never made me cringe Cary. An Iron beam isn't made of iron, it's made of steel, so why not just imagine transparent aluminum (maaan I hate that spelling error; it's aluminium darnit 
) is actually some sort of alumina??
) is actually some sort of alumina??You clearly don't have to worry about applying paint in zero-g, because as everyone knows, the Enterprise was built in an atmosphere on a planetary surface by guys in ninja hoods and 1930's goggles using arc welders and grindy things that throw off lots of sparks.
Or maybe they just get Lister out there with a paint roller.
Or maybe they just get Lister out there with a paint roller.
Nah- send Cat...
Regardless of where it's built, they probably would have the colour placed on the material prior to construction.
Perhaps all of the paint spatters, confined to the "paint job orbit," would one day form a visible ring about Earth.
Similar threads
