Starship Volumetrics (Update)

[Crazy Eddie]

You're not giving honest opinions about my webpage. You are trolling.

Yes, of course. Anyone who disagrees with you is trolling.

If you were simply interested in giving an honest, critical opinion, you might simply note that you personally don't agree with the canon densities, but that (a) they are canon and (b) my page deals with them correctly.

I'm pretty sure I already noted that. This is, however, the Trek Tech forum. The Canon is God forum is down the hall to the right.

Instead, you're claiming that my page is wrong

I never claimed anything of the sort. I said your numbers don't make alot of scientific sense. Which shouldn't surprise you, because alot of things in Star Trek don't make alot of scientific sense.

That, again, is why we have Trek Tech: the forum for our collective vain efforts to explain the inexplicable. The Trekkie hive mind has a compulsion to analyze and critique any in-depth analysis of any aspect of treknology. If you do not want that kind of attention, then don't bother plugging your site (or at least, count your blessing that nobody's flaming you yet).

 

[DSG2k]

I love when trolls say "oh, so anyone who disagrees with you is trolling?". CuttingEdge was just fine, for instance, but you would apparently label him a troll. How typical.

And don't try to turn this into some canonista vs. anti-canonite horsecrap either. The official figures are what my page is explicitly based on, so your anti-canon tirades are just a desperate attempt to change the subject.

It's funny you point out this is the Trek Tech forum, though, since instead of discussing actual Star Trek or Star Trek ship volumes and masses in a Trek Tech thread about a page on starship volumes and masses from Star Trek, you'd rather argue against all that based solely on values from some weird canon in your own head.

I also do not approve of your false claims about your own behavior. It's entirely possible you believe you haven't said anything against the page, but that would simply prove delusion.

You are the one who claims that "your numbers don't make scientific sense" and that I should scale down my figures by a factor of ten, claim based on an episode you are explicitly vague on that the Delta Flyer density is unsupportable and that I should use submarine data instead to test the page, claim that the existence of thrusters means the masses on my page are too high (and that habitual FX problems not showing what you need them to show have effectively covered up this truth that you so benevolently brought to us), claim the page is flawed due to "weird results", that my page represents a model that is untestable and produces implausible results, and insinuate that by my so-called 'declining' to jump through your illogical hoops regarding submarines that you've somehow invalidated something on my end.

That's a list of several unique attempts to attack the page, from multiple (and occasionally mutually exclusive) angles. And that doesn't even take into account the petty argumentation on every single point, even when we were in agreement (e.g. your attempt to continue arguing the boot thing even though I had a page touching on the topic). That's where it quite clearly went from simply being someone who watches too much House (believing therefrom that being obnoxious is cool because your TV said so) to being a full-fledged troll of the thread.

I have performed, at great expense of time and effort, pure research on the ships of Trek that is unmatched. You would call this "plugging your site". I call it sharing with the community. And for that, you threaten flames.

Instead of discussing the page, you attack it by any means you can think of no matter how silly or obviously wrong, and now you've settled on a faux casus belli of attacking it on the grounds of your pet theory that "small vessels" like fighters should be less dense, even though we know from the show that the Delta Flyer, smaller than a fighter, is in fact about as dense as gravitationally-densified water and thus as dense or slightly denser than Voyager. In other words, the density holds true across sizes over a thousand times different, yet you would claim this cannot be because . . . er . . . well . . .



Put simply, you have shared with us your opinion that the page is invalid and we all get it. You are not contributing anything useful to the thread, just continuing to argue that same point. And you're thus distracting me from expending more time to enhance the page with extra values.

As such, you just went on my ignore list, and I encourage others to do the same.

 

[blssdwlf]

You're late to this thread, but a few pages ago I mentioned that it would be interesting to use DSG2K's formulas to apply to other existing craft whose volumes are known. Submarines would be a good bet because they are also designed to withstand prolonged extreme pressure and stress, so since DSG2K declined to do so, I ran the numbers myself.

Just for fun, I did a quick comparison of various submarines and found that the densities were related to what generation/time period and what nation built it. For example, a 1940 Gato-class is ~1/2 the density (surfaced) as of the 1956 Barbel-class. All the US SSNs are about the same density (except for the LA, Ohio, and later which are more) than that of the Barbel. A small craft like the DSRV-1 is roughly the same density as the Barbel. More civilian-like DSV's like the Trieste were half the density of the Barbel.

Contrast that with USSR subs and they actually became 40% less dense with the Alfa's starting in 1977, presumably because of different building material and design.

So for the sake of discussion, if we only knew of data for the Barbel-class sub, we could make a fairly good guess at what other US subs (and small craft like the DSRV-1) densities are from that generation. Of course with more data, we can fine-tune it and certainly then be able to better account for materials, etc.

Along the same lines, we only have a handful of data points from Star Trek. Enterprise-1701 = "nearly 1 million tons", Voyager = "700,000 tons". All ships (and not small craft) unfortunately.

The only small craft data I found was from a Voyager ep, but the density is really, really low:
Ares-4 = "46m long, 92t, ~9m diameter (visual estimate)".

So at least for small craft with small warp nacelles, a lower mass figure seems more logical, where the higher figure for starships can be explained by unobtanium components like warp coils and the like.

That seems logical. A small craft (like a shuttle but not like a 1 seat fighter) usually has a larger percentage of interior space vs structural/mechanical equipment than say a starship (in general).

But how much lower? It is hard to judge given that there are warp engines, m/ar reactors, batteries, duranium (or whatever) hulls, etc involved and no numerical reference point (like dialogue) to draw any conclusions for small craft.

Well, we can see the interior of things like the Type-6 and Type-8s that are almost entirely empty space with some engines attached. These I would expect to be on the extreme light end of the spectrum. The Type-7 has a warp core in its aft compartment and some extra bulkhead space, so I would expect it to be a BIT heavier.

The thing is, I still think the densest thing on any starship is going to be the nacelles. Even in a single-seat fighter, most of the fuselage is empty space anyway (just because it isn't habitable doesn't mean it's a solid piece of iron; it's usually structural ribbing, avionics bays, probably some fuel tanks). Warp nacelles are supposed to be made out of verterium cortenide, though, which even the TNG manual implies is supposed to be ungodly heavy. The way the volume works out, a shuttlecraft with 12 tire-sized warp nacelles might concentrate, say, 40% of its overall mass in those coils; a starship might be closer to 80%, especially since the larger ship's drive coils are designed to handle higher speeds for longer periods of time.

Sure, your guess is as good as mine Maybe that's why on shuttles the nacelles are usually on the bottom so they aren't top heavy when parked. (Although I wouldn't have any problem with a 600t Danube, after all, fictional materials, construction and engineering...)

 

[blssdwlf]

I looked abit more at DSG2k's sites and numbers and found that they seem pretty reasonable if you're willing to use Voyager's density as a baseline for estimating other ships of the same generation (like the USS Barbel example in previous post.)

Interestingly, the TNG:TM's mass / density for the Galaxy-class (for the same of off-screen vs on-screen contrast) is close to Voyager's. Using DSG2k's volume and mass estimates:

Galaxy (Voyager density of 1118 kg/m3) = 5.8 million tons
Galaxy (TNG:TM density of 773 kg/m3) = 4.5 million tons

Too bad we don't have more specific density information for specific parts of the ship

 

[Unicron]

DSG2K, with all due respect to you and to your work, I don't think newtype is trolling or attempting to troll. It's clear that you and he do not agree on some things, but you've made a number of posts over the course of this thread that have been very defensive and assertive that the figures and work you've done are 100% accurate.

Now, I'll freely admit that I don't have the head for these sorts of calculations. I like to read the discussions, but I suck at them. So I don't feel overly qualified myself to judge whether they're correct or not. But from what I've read in some of newtype's posts, and from a familiarity with how he normally posts, I agree with him on some things. If the show's statistics are derived in some meaningful way and aren't just what the staff invents out of thin air, then I'd say they're a valid baseline. If that's not the case in some instances, then they're unreliable.

What it comes down to is, you are the only one claiming that the official figures should count for something against all other calculations, even if they're something that was just made up for convenience. I mean, they've never canonically decided on how big the Defiant is supposed to be. Again, I'm in no position to say how accurate or inaccurate they are, but I think perhaps you could dial things back a bit. Disagreeing with your methods or suggesting that the official figures aren't the best baseline is not the same as attacking you or your site.

 

[DSG2k]

you've made a number of posts over the course of this thread that have been very defensive and assertive that the figures and work you've done are 100% accurate.

On the contrary, resisting baseless claims of inaccuracy is not the same as claiming perfect accuracy.

Someone claiming you're wrong on such-and-such points and you showing them you're correct should not open you up to claims that you somehow think you're always right. That's a logically invalid supposition.

If the show's statistics are derived in some meaningful way and aren't just what the staff invents out of thin air, then I'd say they're a valid baseline.

They are a valid baseline for Trek even if they are based on the orientation of Rick Sternbach's alphabet soup some morning in 1990, because they represent what Trek has repeatedly and consistently told us about itself.

For an analogy not requiring "number-crunchy stuff", this is basically the equivalent of me doing up a page on Star Trek officer ranks in which I show that Romulan commanders invariably outrank Romulan centurions and make projections off of that in regards to who could order who about, only to have newtype come in and say he doesn't believe any of it, that it's all wrong and weird and implausible, basing his opinion off of Greco-Roman rank schemes, then demanding that I test my page by applying the Romulan rank structure to Roman methods to see if they jive, and if not that I should change the page. All while posting his contrariness for the sake of itself every chance he got, and arguing every little point even when agrees with it, apparently just for the pleasure of doing so.

It's not rational behavior, none of what he's saying is relevant, and it's clearly just disagreeing for its own sake. It's such a waste, and it's just a time vampire.

{...} canonically {...}

As an aside, the anti-canonites at TrekBBS are always all about trying to turn conversations into "canonista"-bashing if someone dares talk about facts from the shows called Star Trek, which is really amusing since the forum only exists because of said shows. The shows sought to present an internally consistent objective reality, and that fictional reality is Star Trek.

For the anti-canonites, however, Star Trek is not a series of plots and internal consistency, but a canvas upon which to paint their own imaginations and fan-fictional ideas . . . which would be fine, except they try to force it down the throats of those who might have their own views or (horror of horrors!) actually want to discuss the Star Trek shows themselves, and then these anti-canon folks insult the Trek fans and call them silly names and pretend they are closed-minded fools if they resist.

That's about the same as what's going on here, as newtype tries to force his silly little low-density submarine up the tailpipe of ships known to be heavier, and claimed "canon is god" nonsense when I resisted.

I think perhaps you could dial things back a bit.

I freely admit and proudly profess to having no patience for his behavior. But he's on the ignore list now, so I needn't be bothered by it.

Disagreeing with your methods or suggesting that the official figures aren't the best baseline is not the same as attacking you or your site.

Why would you think I thought so? Disagreeing is one thing, but upon that cake was the icing of his arguing every little thing even when we agreed (e.g. the belt, et al.) which made it clear to me he was just arguing for the sake of argument.

Besides, he's not even disagreeing with my method, nor is he even explicitly disagreeing about the official Trek baseline (right now) . . . he's simply claiming that the page is overestimating by a factor of ten, and (as corollary/premise) that fighters should magically be lighter. Even when shown disproof of his view he won't admit to any possibility that the figures on my page are right and that he is wrong, and he keeps posting his views and false claims (though he's seemingly given up arguing every little point I make as he was earlier).

Me, I'll happily admit error. Right now I'm looking at having to revise some of the Star Wars ship info on the page because my ISD volume from LightWave seems to have been off, and I've already posted information about that at a forum related to the topic.

I don't mind actual differing opinions or disagreement. I just loathe incessant and repeated claims of objective error based solely on utter irrelevancies and personal delusion, with counterevidence ignored and so on and so forth. If it's not trolling, then what is it?

Anyway, frankly, I'm sick and tired of having to discuss the troll, though I admit I fed him a bit in a post earlier. I'd love to get back to something crazy like discussing the technology of Star Trek. Or is that something people are not supposed to do here?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You're late to this thread, but a few pages ago I mentioned that it would be interesting to use DSG2K's formulas to apply to other existing craft whose volumes are known. Submarines would be a good bet because they are also designed to withstand prolonged extreme pressure and stress, so since DSG2K declined to do so, I ran the numbers myself.

Just for fun, I did a quick comparison of various submarines and found that the densities were related to what generation/time period and what nation built it. For example, a 1940 Gato-class is ~1/2 the density (surfaced) as of the 1956 Barbel-class. All the US SSNs are about the same density (except for the LA, Ohio, and later which are more) than that of the Barbel. A small craft like the DSRV-1 is roughly the same density as the Barbel. More civilian-like DSV's like the Trieste were half the density of the Barbel.

Contrast that with USSR subs and they actually became 40% less dense with the Alfa's starting in 1977, presumably because of different building material and design.

Partially. Soviet/Russian subs still use the double-hull design, as did (I believe) the Barbel class. Later U.S. subs used a single pressure hull, which has different construction requirements and is easier to do in some ways but harder to do in other ways. It reflects the common disconnect between U.S. and Soviet designs: the Russians like to take a really simple concept and tune it to perfection, while the U.S. relie on alot of sophisticated concepts that work extremely well IF they are perfect.

Anyway, the double-hull design allowed the Russians to build more robust pressure hulls with less material, depending on the titanium outer hull to handle any wear and tear. U.S. submarines had to be stronger overall, requiring more material no matter what they were made of (and few if any have ever made wide use of titanium in their construction).

So for the sake of discussion, if we only knew of data for the Barbel-class sub, we could make a fairly good guess at what other US subs (and small craft like the DSRV-1) densities are from that generation. Of course with more data, we can fine-tune it and certainly then be able to better account for materials, etc.

Probably true, but it can't be overestimated how important it is to know about the materials and how they're arranged. If you know that the craft is hollow, and if you know what MOST of it is made of (with a good guess at how thick the skin is), you can set an upper and lower limit for what its average density must be; it would be somewhere between "hollow shell" and "50% solid"

Along the same lines, we only have a handful of data points from Star Trek. Enterprise-1701 = "nearly 1 million tons", Voyager = "700,000 tons". All ships (and not small craft) unfortunately.

That's mainly why I don't have that big a problem with the larger ship figures (with the caveat that I tend to treat anything that comes from Voyager with a grain of salt). But with a 30 foot shuttlecraft whose internal volume is almost entirely hollow, I feel a hull material would have to be unworkably dense in order to justify that kind of density, something close to ten or twenty times the density of iron.

Sure, your guess is as good as mine Maybe that's why on shuttles the nacelles are usually on the bottom so they aren't top heavy when parked.

That was my thinking too, with the tiny-nacelle STXI shuttles being the exception that proves the rule.

Although I wouldn't have any problem with a 600t Danube, after all, fictional materials, construction and engineering...

I don't have a problem in principle. My problem is the classic trek assumption that more = better. Especially when working with fictional materials, there's no reason to expect higher density would actually equate a desirable building material, especially since the desirable properties associated with them don't usually correlate directly with density.

It's sort of an unnecessary suspension of realism to me, sort of like the blanket abandonment of money. You can assume that everything is free to everyone, but then you have to go back and create workaround reasons why not everyone in the Federation owns a space yacht.

 

[blssdwlf]

Probably true, but it can't be overestimated how important it is to know about the materials and how they're arranged. If you know that the craft is hollow, and if you know what MOST of it is made of (with a good guess at how thick the skin is), you can set an upper and lower limit for what its average density must be; it would be somewhere between "hollow shell" and "50% solid"

That's mainly why I don't have that big a problem with the larger ship figures (with the caveat that I tend to treat anything that comes from Voyager with a grain of salt). But with a 30 foot shuttlecraft whose internal volume is almost entirely hollow, I feel a hull material would have to be unworkably dense in order to justify that kind of density, something close to ten or twenty times the density of iron.

I wonder how hard it would be to subtract the interior/hollow volume from the estimated volume of a shuttle and then re-calculate the mass with Voyager's density? It would be interesting to see how much it differs...

Sure, your guess is as good as mine Maybe that's why on shuttles the nacelles are usually on the bottom so they aren't top heavy when parked.

That was my thinking too, with the tiny-nacelle STXI shuttles being the exception that proves the rule.

STXI-anything (STXI-primeverse, STXI-altverse) already is slotted into "alternate universes" as far as I'm concerned. I even prefer to separate out TOS and TNG+ as different continuities as well... less headaches to reconcile (and there are more than enough per series anyway)

Although I wouldn't have any problem with a 600t Danube, after all, fictional materials, construction and engineering...

I don't have a problem in principle. My problem is the classic trek assumption that more = better. Especially when working with fictional materials, there's no reason to expect higher density would actually equate a desirable building material, especially since the desirable properties associated with them don't usually correlate directly with density.

It's sort of an unnecessary suspension of realism to me, sort of like the blanket abandonment of money. You can assume that everything is free to everyone, but then you have to go back and create workaround reasons why not everyone in the Federation owns a space yacht.

I agree to some extent, OTOH, there is no reason not to have higher density material with desirable properties used for ship construction either. Or to have things that don't entirely make sense to us. For example, even most of the shuttles use antimatter for "something" and that's expensive (to us), highly volatile and to me pretty dangerous

The Federation money thing is a whole different can of worms though

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I wonder how hard it would be to subtract the interior/hollow volume from the estimated volume of a shuttle and then re-calculate the mass with Voyager's density? It would be interesting to see how much it differs...

I'm not sure that would be a fair use of the approach since DSG2K's method assumes from the get go that the overall density will include hull materials AND empty space. Actually, I think that the formula for larger starships would be more accurate IF you went the other way and calculated, say, a shuttle's density based on total volume over empty volume or something like that. This gives you some way of calculating what the density of the skin should be, and then you can play with the mass depending on how thick the hull is.

I agree to some extent, OTOH, there is no reason not to have higher density material with desirable properties used for ship construction either.

I noticed... but suppose I were to show you a wall that would do the same job, but be only one inch thick? Would that be worth something to ya?

Put another way: aluminum may have more than twice the density of most plastics, but its superior strength means you can use less of it to build the same transparency and your wall becomes one third as heavy as the one made of plastic. This was the impetus for using aluminum in aircraft, by the way: it's less dense than iron, but its much stronger pound for pound so you need less of it to make an aircraft structurally sound. That means the load-bearing structures of starship hulls wouldn't even need to be as thick as a submarine hull to ensure stability; probably, you could get away with a relatively strong hull with a very thin cross section if you used the right material, in which case your overall weight will be reduced dramatically even as strength increases.

The ubiquity of structural integrity fields should only expedite that trend IMO.

 

[Unicron]

On the contrary, resisting baseless claims of inaccuracy is not the same as claiming perfect accuracy.

I wouldn't consider some of his claims to be baseless, and as mentioned I'm not even particularly skilled in this sort of calculating. I can see where both of you are coming from in some respects even without that. And on a personal level, I'd probably disagree with your statement earlier that the canon values are "independent facts" by virtue of their use in the show.

They are a valid baseline for Trek even if they are based on the orientation of Rick Sternbach's alphabet soup some morning in 1990, because they represent what Trek has repeatedly and consistently told us about itself.

But there have been plenty of instances where Trek has not been consistent with issues like scaling and volume and so forth, as is the case in my Defiant example and with the Klingon BOP. These are ships whose scale changed fairly regularly either because it was easier to film, or because the producers didn't want the ship to look too flimsy if it had to fight a bigger ship. This is how we got the different BOP classes because the model had to be a potential enemy in TNG if the plot required it. Duranium is another example - it's said in some episodes to occur in a raw form and in others to be an alloy, which can only occur by combining two metallic materials. Alloys do not occur in nature.

And if the numbers were pulled out of thin air in some cases, and don't hold up by comparison with real-world number crunching, how can they form a valid baseline?

As an aside, the anti-canonites at TrekBBS are always all about trying to turn conversations into "canonista"-bashing if someone dares talk about facts from the shows called Star Trek, which is really amusing since the forum only exists because of said shows. The shows sought to present an internally consistent objective reality, and that fictional reality is Star Trek.

* shrugs * Canon is irrelevant to me, personally, for the purposes of doing the sort of calculations you've been working on. Whether or not the figures are canon doesn't matter nearly as much as whether they make some degree of sense for what they're supposed to represent onscreen. It is true certainly that Star Trek is largely consistent, but it's made plenty of mistakes in that regard too. I think when canon stretches the veil of disbelief a little too far, in any particular area, there's nothing wrong with ignoring. Think of how often we see some poor redshirted ensign get killed off in TOS; are we to assume from this and that most of the crew don't seem to mind that it's perfectly okay for the Enterprise to go through its security personnel at such a ridiculous rate? And that maybe they have a redshirt replicator onboard somewhere?

(There's an amusing thought... )

For the anti-canonites, however, Star Trek is not a series of plots and internal consistency, but a canvas upon which to paint their own imaginations and fan-fictional ideas . . . which would be fine, except they try to force it down the throats of those who might have their own views or (horror of horrors!) actually want to discuss the Star Trek shows themselves, and then these anti-canon folks insult the Trek fans and call them silly names and pretend they are closed-minded fools if they resist.

Who are these "anti-canonites"? Nobody except for you has mentioned canon being a huge factor that should be considered infallible.

Why would you think I thought so? Disagreeing is one thing, but upon that cake was the icing of his arguing every little thing even when we agreed (e.g. the belt, et al.) which made it clear to me he was just arguing for the sake of argument.

Because you've made multiple comments to the effect that the canon information is ultimately valid because it's canon, and it doesn't matter if some of it was just pulled out of thin air. You've shown an unusually high degree of sensitivity towards any criticism of said information, even to the point of implying that it's somehow critical of you in particular. And it isn't, not from my point of view and not from newtype's. I will admit that he is sometimes very bluntly honest, and perhaps that causes some statements to come across the wrong way.

But your entire premise has largely been that the canon data is somehow infallible and should be the baseline for everything. When it comes to a fictional universe and fictional technology, it's often a lot easier to get stuff wrong than get it right, and sometimes you can allow for a certain level of disbelief in storytelling.

What it comes down to is this: you could have stated in your opening post that you would have preferred comments to be largely based on canon figures, and that you weren't interested in other sorts of speculations. It's kind of limiting from my perspective, but it's perfectly valid. But since you didn't do that, you opened the door for plenty of real-world discussion, which newtype has been trying to generate.

I'm willing to let this thread continue for the moment because I think some good can still come out of it, but I'm going to say you're skating on thin ice here. You've called him a troll several times solely based on your own biases and perceptions regarding things like canon, which you seem willing to reflect onto others who disagree, and that's slipping pretty close to an infraction for flaming. But since you've stated your choice to ignore him, I'll let it go for now. I'm not biased for or against anyone, and I try to be fair. And I'm not convinced by your behavior that you're the "wronged" person here.

 

[blssdwlf]

I'm not sure that would be a fair use of the approach since DSG2K's method assumes from the get go that the overall density will include hull materials AND empty space. Actually, I think that the formula for larger starships would be more accurate IF you went the other way and calculated, say, a shuttle's density based on total volume over empty volume or something like that. This gives you some way of calculating what the density of the skin should be, and then you can play with the mass depending on how thick the hull is.

That gave me an idea.

Lets approach it from a different direction.

I mocked up a type 6 shuttle and ran areavol on it in lightwave and derived these figures:

total vol: 41.1 m3
both nacelles volume: 3.67 m3
percentage nacelle volume: 8.9%

Dsg2k's volume for intrepid class where his densities are derived:

total vol: 625885 m3
both nacelles volume: 35046 m3
percentage nacelle volume: 5.6%

As you can see, the nacelles take up a larger percentage of the volume on the shuttle. When I get home from work, I'll
mock up a cross section of voyager's decking and compare it to the shuttle.

What will be interesting to note will be on the scale of the shuttle to say similar volume of decking from voyager will be how similar they will look.

Granted the machinery is smaller on the shuttle, I'd bet that the mass would be made up for with the nacelles. Essentially, the average density would be comparable between the two despite the apparent differences in sizes, IMHO.

Of course the shuttle's average density should be less, but the difference might be between 1-25% rather than 50%.

I noticed... but suppose I were to show you a wall that would do the same job, but be only one inch thick? Would that be worth something to ya?

but suppose I were to show you a wall that normally needed to be ten feet thick to protect against 90% of the common star trek radiation found in deep space but I could do in 1 foot, the only catch is that even thinner, it is dense, more dense than any known modern material.

you get to trade mass for elegant, thin hulled ships. what would that be worth to you?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

but suppose I were to show you a wall that normally needed to be ten feet thick to protect against 90% of the common star trek radiation found in deep space but I could do in 1 foot, the only catch is that even thinner, it is dense, more dense than any known modern material.

you get to trade mass for elegant, thin hulled ships. what would that be worth to you?

It sorta depends. If protecting from radiation is the only advantage it offers I might prefer to use forcefields for that. Especially, if the material is more than ten times the density of the material it replaces (it would HAVE to be to result in increased mass).

I also might go with the less dense material if it's in some way cheaper to produce. Hence the reason most starships and structures are made out of duranium instead of, say, neutronium. The latter is hard enough that no known weapon can blast through it, but it's apparently so hard to find and so hard to move that you need to be an intergalactic power just to have access to it in large quantities.

 

[blssdwlf]

but suppose I were to show you a wall that normally needed to be ten feet thick to protect against 90% of the common star trek radiation found in deep space but I could do in 1 foot, the only catch is that even thinner, it is dense, more dense than any known modern material.

you get to trade mass for elegant, thin hulled ships. what would that be worth to you?

It sorta depends. If protecting from radiation is the only advantage it offers I might prefer to use forcefields for that. Especially, if the material is more than ten times the density of the material it replaces (it would HAVE to be to result in increased mass).

I just used radiation as a random example. I'm sure you can use your imagination and add on "high warp stress", "phaser energy resistance", "electronic conduit protection", etc. As we've seen in Star Trek, ships also have to tolerate alot of hazards with their shields down and power out.

I also might go with the less dense material if it's in some way cheaper to produce. Hence the reason most starships and structures are made out of duranium instead of, say, neutronium. The latter is hard enough that no known weapon can blast through it, but it's apparently so hard to find and so hard to move that you need to be an intergalactic power just to have access to it in large quantities.

Well that is a much more extreme example than I had considered. I said "90% of the common star trek radiation", not "100%"
In anycase, a simpler, and less extreme, example would be most starships use duranium instead of steel. Or Trititanium instead of titanium. I understand your point that with advanced materials comes the ability to use less of it to get the same result and that works fine for existing "modern" problems. But there is nothing in modern day that is engineered and constructed for fictional Warp 5+ travel and dealing with various ion storms, subspace anamolies, atmospheric flight and diving into giant-energy-sucking-space-amoebas.

So as far as I'm concerned, it can also be said that to deal with those new, fictional problems, you need to use more of said same advanced fictional materials - even if they are denser than common ordinary materials. I mean, even if you look at real world stuff, average densities of US submarines trended upwards after WW2 as the subs are pushed to dive deeper (just one example.) And then the USSR used more advanced materials (or at least harder to work with ones) to create new subs that progressively had less average density as the US counterparts and be able to have the same operational envelopes. If it were Star Trek speak, the ships after Voyager might use newer uberanium which is lighter but still as strong as duranium and the average density of new ships might fall back to "modern" day densities...

We can definitely go point / counter-point indefinitely on small craft "average" density since there will be no future production of Star Trek as we knew it so there will be no way to prove conclusively any of these points. But it is definitely fun debating them

I mocked up a quick Type-6 shuttle and took me a lot longer (under limited time) to find info on Voyager so I didn't get a chance to mock anything up for Voyager. But I snagged a screenshot of a typical corridor. The corridors are almost wide enough to park a Type-6 in there (just kidding). The point I suppose is that the ratio of empty space to structure/machinery for the shuttle and Voyager looks very similar. The shuttle's warp nacelles also take up a higher percentage of total volume compared to Voyager. IMHO, small craft average densities can be pretty close to the big ship even if it means that shuttles have a lot more mass than what you'd expect for it's size...

 

[DSG2k]

Y'know, I was done with it. But since you decided to chide me publicly, I'll respond publicly.

And on a personal level, I'd probably disagree with your statement earlier that the canon values are "independent facts" by virtue of their use in the show.

And if the numbers were pulled out of thin air in some cases, and don't hold up by comparison with real-world number crunching, how can they form a valid baseline?

Because they are consistently used in the show . . . part of its continuity.

It's a TV show, you know . . . this stuff's not real. They could always say a quarter weighs a trillion tonnes and thus, for the purpose of analyzing the show, that's true. Maybe everything's heavier or maybe they redefined the tonne, but who cares? It's a TV show.

Who are these "anti-canonites"? Nobody except for you has mentioned canon being a huge factor that should be considered infallible.

Actually, I wasn't explicitly mentioning canon at all, precisely because I know how it's received here.

I was talking about Star Trek, where one would assume the shows might still constitute the highest resource. It was newtype who turned it into an anti-canonade.

To my mind, if newtype wants to talk about a TV show while refusing to accept anything about it as true within its little TV show universe, then that's his problem and not mine.

For a forum called Trek Tech, Star Trek technology discussion seems awfully unwelcome here.

You've shown an unusually high degree of sensitivity towards any criticism of said information

No, you can call the show and its statements and characters stupid all you like . . . I don't care about that. Most of it is.

I just don't care for the persistent claim that I'm wrong because I'm using its own data to analyze it. Why the hell should my faculties of reason and conclusions be challenged because newtype doesn't wanna admit to heavy ships? Why should I stand for his bogus claims and heckling on that basis?

Frankly, I find it incomprehensible that you don't get that.

And, I really find it incomprehensible that you would suggest something so weird as me having some sensitivity against criticism of Star Trek in general and Voyager in particular. It's Voyager, for chrissakes.

So no, don't try to paint me as a weird person when I'm sitting here refuting the heckling of someone who is on a forum to talk about a TV show but refuses to accept any data from it as being a part of said TV show. That doesn't even make sense. Just because I didn't leave the thread immediately on account of his weirdness doesn't make me the weirdo.

I mean, hell, we're all on a Star Trek forum anyway so it isn't like any of us are on a particularly long bus right now, but jeez.

even to the point of implying that it's somehow critical of you in particular

Having error claimed of me falsely (and even after suitable clarification is offered) is offensive, which is why I take issue with your post in which you ascribe beliefs to me I do not hold.

If you want to claim that newtype isn't a troll, that's fine, and for the purposes of this forum you can even order me not to say he was being one. But when he does all the things a troll would do, I am not going to pretend I'm wrong in concluding he is being one for his benefit, or yours.

But your entire premise has largely been that the canon data is somehow infallible and should be the baseline for everything.

Infallible? Hardly. But it isn't contradicted in this case, so it's just fine. When we have such an esoteric bit of data three different times without contradiction (and on Voyager for crying out loud), then yes I view it as pretty much solid data from the shows.

Which means, of course, that it is the baseline to use in such an analysis. To use any other baseline besides what we know from the show when analyzing the show is just a waste of time.

Now, for pleasure and fun and to exercise one's calculator, one could certainly extrapolate to the Trek ship volumes using modern densities.

But that has nothing to do with my page, and most importantly you don't go telling me my page is wrong . . . incessantly and repeatedly . . . because I don't do the same. That's where I called trolling, and I stand by that.

What it comes down to is this: you could have stated in your opening post that you would have preferred comments to be largely based on canon figures, and that you weren't interested in other sorts of speculations.

Other speculations are fine. But in a forum supposedly about Trek tech, I can't imagine why I should have to explicitly point out in the opening post that declaring speculations on official Star Trek fact wrong because they use official Star Trek fact (and heckling the author on that point and any other just for the sake of arguing) is a no-no. That should be brutally obvious.

And I'm not convinced by your behavior that you're the "wronged" person here.

At TrekBBS, it seems I'm always wronged. I've been flamed by novel authors who thought I was someone else who'd been arguing with them previously when I wasn't, one of whom then joined briefly with my internet opponents who engage in death threats and other similar harassment nonsense against me, anyone else who disagrees with them, Star Wars authors, and so on . . .

And just to revisit that absurdity ... yes, an author hooked up with wacky people who send death threats and harass authors. Y'know, because that makes sense.

And of course there's the last Trek mass thread I was involved in (which I ended up finding after newtype reminded me of it with his KBoP-in-the-bay complaint), in which you allowed anti-canonites to engage in all sorts of lies about me, personally, without retribution, claiming things of me that were either about completely unrelated persons, or claimed about me by the aforementioned insane people on the internet, opposed to my website and the fact that I can be just as big a jackass as they can, if not more persistent. (Perhaps that's part of newtype's issue, too, given my House theory of his behavior . . . )

So between them and my own past dealings with TrekBBS and you, I will admit I might've had a bit of a hair trigger in calling newtype a troll, but then I still can't quite find where I can disagree with my assessment. Under normal circumstances I might give him another chance on your word, but then I don't know that I'm fond of you either . . . you're on thin ice with me.

I figure it's just a question of subculture and mindset . . . a capitalist posting on a communist board and having a commie pester him might seem normal to the other communists, for instance. So, too, might being pestered with non sequiturs and claims of error be considered normal here, when some poor sap is trying to talk Star Trek (and, historically, flames and other nonsense).

C'est la vie.

So, take whatever action you see fit. Personally, I still think you should do something about that Aridas chap's post from that other thread, but I have a sense that you'll probably do something about my account, instead. No matter.

Hopefully blssdwlf will come up with interesting observations in the thread here, especially once this useless bickering newtype started and you continued is out of the way.

And, barring suggestion to the contrary on your part, I'll try to make sure, in the future, not to forget myself and think I should share interesting stuff with Trek Tech.

The sad thing is, I came to share the volume stuff and discuss it and similar interesting things . . . but that was like, what, two messages? Folks who come to share interesting things should not have to put up with crap like this, chief. I'm just sayin'.

 

[Unicron]

Perhaps we can agree to disagree then. I tend to view the forum as being pretty welcoming for most forms of discussion, both in terms of official/canon and unofficial information. Nor is it even restricted to Star Trek in some instances. However, I also would say that such discussions allow for plenty of cross-examination using real world examples, and not simply assuming that the official information should be the only baseline to start from. I'll put it that way. Just like it would be silly to argue that redshirts are an expendable and invisibly renewable resource because that wound up being a consistent use of them in TOS.

I've talked this over with some of the other mods, and I think it best to close this for the time being. You can PM me if you want to see perhaps about a new thread.