Structural Integrity of Starships?
- Thread starter YARN
- Start date
YARN
Fleet Captain
No one set of prints in particular, but I am thinking of various 1707 internal schematics which I've seen which are official and unofficial.
If you're looking for a particular example, this one is pretty representative, I think.
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/web/1701-cutaway.jpg
^^ Thats not a blueprint in any way or shape but just an artist impression of what could be the inner layout of the Enterprise.
Those never show anything of the structure, mostly because its frigging inconvenient to try and show something while a large load bearing beam cuts the place you want to show in half...for something more realistic I would suggest digging out one of the "Anatomy of the ship" books which DO show the entire structure of a ship.
Those never show anything of the structure, mostly because its frigging inconvenient to try and show something while a large load bearing beam cuts the place you want to show in half...for something more realistic I would suggest digging out one of the "Anatomy of the ship" books which DO show the entire structure of a ship.
YARN
Fleet Captain
Yeah, so? I referred to it in my post as an "internal schematic," and not a blue print. Are we really going to run aground of semantics here?
You wanted an idea of what I was talking about, and that's a fairly representative example of what I have been talking about since my opening post in this thread.
It's strange that this is coming relatively late in the thread. Most posters have not had such difficulty catching my drift.
And you don't see such structures in the top orthogonal views either, or in the three quarter views, or even in the computer generated animations of these decks. From what I've seen, it's not that they're hard to show, they simply aren't there.
I don't have one to dig out, but a link might be helpful...
Just about everyone has agreed that the Enterprise is low-fidelity in terms of real world structural engineering. You seem, however, to wish to argue that the 1701 structure is sound, even in terms of what we know of designing real vehicles like supertankers and such. Fair enough, I invite you to take the Pepsi challenge.
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The point is that I need a blue print to determin if a structure is sound or not so with every beam, bulkhead, cross support and so on and then a list of used materials, tensile strengths would be nice to know also material thickness, density...
Balance of Terror mentioned Rodenium which is 21.7 times as hard as diamond, its said that its a normal construction material used inf ships so if thats an indication of how strong the materials are then with the help of a blue print one can so some guessing
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-m...7900X/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_1?ie=UTF8&index=1
^^ That is what I need.
Layouts are useless, I don't care about where the seats on the bridge are mounted, or the consoles I need to know the thickness of the deck plating, size and shape of the suporting structure, the kind of beams, are they H profile or I profile, how are the connected and so on.
I am not saying anything about the 1701's structural soundness, my point is that no one can say anything about it since there's no structural plan whatsoever.
Balance of Terror mentioned Rodenium which is 21.7 times as hard as diamond, its said that its a normal construction material used inf ships so if thats an indication of how strong the materials are then with the help of a blue print one can so some guessing
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-m...7900X/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_1?ie=UTF8&index=1
^^ That is what I need.
Layouts are useless, I don't care about where the seats on the bridge are mounted, or the consoles I need to know the thickness of the deck plating, size and shape of the suporting structure, the kind of beams, are they H profile or I profile, how are the connected and so on.
I am not saying anything about the 1701's structural soundness, my point is that no one can say anything about it since there's no structural plan whatsoever.
That doesn't seem to completely agree with what you were saying in your original posts (the first and second ones at least). I thought your question was: Why wouldn't they make them structurally sound in case of catastrophic power loss? I suggest this possible answer:
The "magic" stuff isn't merely a technological invention, but a discovery. Starships are inherently designed to benefit from a yet unknown set of laws of physics (even when the "field" is at 0%), so starship designers don't give any thought to "what if the SIF catastrophically fails" for the same reason that airplane designers don't worry about "what if lift fails" or designers of solar powered products don't think "what if the sun stops rising".
On the other hand, ignoring fictional science and technology and only discussing what is known and "rational" leads to a dead end too. There always must be speculation.
I see. Have you taken a look at Cary L Brown's version? It isn't screen accurate, but he does take quite a bit of effort to make the ship's internal structure support work.
And there is also some study models of the 1701-refit secondary hull and the 1701 that I've been working on and off on based on screen accuracy (for interiors and exteriors). I'm not finished but there does appear to be quite a bit of volume available for internal bracing/structural support.
YARN
Fleet Captain
zar said:
You've got it the other way around. Allow me to explain:
This sentence is my claim.YARN said:
This is support for my claim. Why do I say that it does not appear sound? Because of thinness. This is a prima facie argument - the thing just doesn't look right in these plans.YARN said:
This is an appeal to fidelity which supports the claim made in the first sentence. An actual 1701 would appear to be "structurally challenged." Anticipating a challenge to this appeal, I offered what follows.YARN said:
This bit is support for the appeal to fidelity. This is not my central claim, but rather support for support of my claim. Would fidelity even matter in a world with magic force fields? Here I argue yes, because we've witnessed catastrophic power failures.
From here Timo would rejoin that we've never seen total power failures (i.e., the gravity stays on), which is a pretty good reply. From here I categorized arguments as "the way beyond structural design argument" played in connection with the God Card (magic tech solves all) and finally the "for all we know argument" as ALL failing to meet the test of what would count as rational discussion of this topic. That is, all three arguments reduce our discussion to saying "Well, it works in Trek, so it works. Full stop."
Following this, I offered two grounds for sustaining our rational discussion: fidelity and coherence. I argued that both should be taken in a minimal sense so that our standards do not become ridiculously stringent to the point that no story could argued to be adequate, especially in the particular that we are discussing here.
This is a somewhat lengthy recap, but it may be useful given what you say below.
Magical invention or magical discovery, give it a name, we're still in the land of magic. I could write a story in which a character "discovers" a tunnel which leads to the center of the Earth, but the "discovery" is hardly more plausible than claiming that my character "invented" a digging device such as we saw in the film The Core.zar said:
zar said:
This is ground I've already covered. This is the God card. Like I said, this argument would obtain even if we showed Kirk riding a Pegasus to Mars without a pressure suit. Rational discussion ends here, because we simply suppose that Trek has super physics. Please take note that I have granted (MANY TIMES) that Trek has super physics to avoid this particular cul de sac the other hand, ignoring fictional science and technology and only discussing what is known and "rational" leads to a dead end too.
zar said:
I agree. This is precisely why I argued that coherence and fidelity levels should be held at a minimum level and why I have accepted positive analogies to our world as evidence. The problem here is that my opponents are constantly falling back on the God card, because their minimal fidelity arguments have failed. Timo has offered negative disanalogies (i.e., the "for all we know argument"), but since these weak plausibility/possibility arguments are just a variation on the same theme (i.e., the God card), we find that his argument is not one which satisfies minimum fidelity, but which appeal to the magic of the Trek universe to solve structural problems.
Now I agree with Timo that if we are constantly asking questions like these as we enjoy watching Star Trek, we may cease to enjoy it, having lost suspension of disbelief. But I am not watching Trek right now. I am in the Tech forum on a Star Trek website - one of the few places in the known universe where it is even permissible to ask questions like these. Have a caution, if you shoot down my arguments on the grounds that, "It's only fiction," you jeopardize our ability to have ANY critical discussions of Trek tech in this sub-forum.
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Perhaps, but it is not my responsibility to provide you with any such detailed plans to support my claim.
Consider what I said in my last post,
YARN said:
My argument is that the plans lack prima facie validity. They don't look solid to me (and many others). I have agreed that such plans might be used as a defeater for my claim, but that's it. Since the Enterprise is NOT a real world object, I would be raising the bar too high to demand 1:1 fidelity with the real world. Timo would have me dead to rights if I pulled this move.
Now, since I cannot rightly call upon such evidence to prove my claim, I can hardly be said to have a duty to produce such evidence! We could not say that I have a responsibility to offer this evidence, when I have no right to rely upon it (as it raises the bar too high). It's a defeater only. If you want to take the Pepsi challenge go for it, but it's not my job to provide you plans with fine details.
If so, my claim still comes out on top. I claim that these plans are prima facie unsound and we lack the hyperdetailed technical plans with which my claim could be shot down with "hidden real world fidelity."
Layouts are useless, I don't care about where the seats on the bridge are mounted, or the consoles I need to know the thickness of the deck plating, size and shape of the suporting structure, the kind of beams, are they H profile or I profile, how are the connected and so on.
I am not saying anything about the 1701's structural soundness, my point is that no one can say anything about it since there's no structural plan whatsoever.
No, we still have the prima facie test (most everyone seems to agree with me on this one - but now that I've said it, someone is bound to disagree) and we still positive analogies to draw upon (e.g., super tankers on the high seas).
You lack evidence for a defeater (2), but we still have (1) and (3).
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The thing is, the LAYOUTS were not designed with those things in mind, and any structural blueprint would invariably be a revision of those diagrams or loosely based on them. In the REAL WORLD, this works the other way around: the basic structure is defined first and then the ship is fitted out to the specifications of the engineers.
So once you've figured out the strength of the materials and where the load-bearing walls of the 1701 are and how thick they need to be, does the structural diagram any longer look anything like the deckplan? I don't think it would. I in fact agree with Yarn that these diagrams were designed with no consideration for structural integrity and that a realistic diagram of that type would move things around quite a bit.
But that's kind of stating the obvious; much as we like to think of Star Trek as a "smarter" science fiction production, it is not and has never been HARD science fiction and has never been shy about handwaving away a real-world impossibility. SIF fields were posulated specifically to solve this problem, and replicators were invented specifically to solve the issue of "How much food do we have on board?" Even transporters were first concieved just so the ship wouldn't have to physically land on the planet of the week.
...
Having said that, it occurs to me that in a more realistic situation, a starship's structural requirements would probably be a bit more relaxed since it's not likely to have artificial gravity in all spaces all the time. The connecting dorsel doesn't need it, neither do most of the engineering spaces where crews won't be working most of the time. Given that gravity itself could be (and on the show IS) a hazard to the ship's structural integrity it would make a lot of sense to have the field attenuated such that its intensity rapidly falls off a couple feet above the floor so that only consoles, chairs, tables and your legs are attracted downwards and yet you can still wind up floating if you jump high enough. In that situation, the ship only needs to be strong enough to survive manuevering and battle stress and THAT can realistically be suplemented through smart materials and forcefields.
Not to open up this can of worms again, but that kinda makes me think that the "canon" sizes and masses of starships would likewise be up for debate, since they are invariably based on those deckplans and okudagrams that have no illusions of being structural diagrams. The 3.5 meter deck height is something we've accepted for a long time, for example, but depending on the structural requirements of the ship that might take a little adjustment, wouldn't it?I am not saying anything about the 1701's structural soundness, my point is that no one can say anything about it since there's no structural plan whatsoever.
^^YARN was basing his argument on the apparent lack of structural soundness of the 1701 as found in deck plans and Santaman is saying more or less the same thing: you can't determine the structural soundness of the 1701 based on deck plans and you'd need blueprints and a load of other data not present in those deck plans.
Furthermore, deck plans for the most part aren't screen accurate and that makes the whole "fidelity" argument kinda moot, IMHO. Where's a Thermian when you need one?
Furthermore, deck plans for the most part aren't screen accurate and that makes the whole "fidelity" argument kinda moot, IMHO. Where's a Thermian when you need one?
Yes, but you do the same thing when you shoot down any argument that relies on fictional imagination. If your argument is simply that "the design doesn't appear to be structurally sound by our standards", then we're at a dead end, because there's no way to argue against that - it's simply an accurate description of an image.
If you're asking, "could the design be structurally sound (despite appearances)", the answer is yes - since we don't have the data on exactly what the material is made up of and how everything is supported, we don't know whether it is or not, which naturally means that there's a possibility that it is.
So I think the question that can actually be discussed is why it's designed the way it is, which requires imagination. You said the designers must be more concerned with "looking cool" and that relying on magic technology would make them "profoundly lazy". You seem to think that they would/should always implement the best conceivable physical structure as well as the other technology, but even in the real world this very rarely happens or is even possible - there are always tradeoffs.
I thought Timo's example of airliners was perfect, since they sacrifice some structural integrity in exchange for harnessing aerodynamics. You responded "The admission that airliners are built strong, that structural integrity is an important design feature, is all that I need..." but this only works if we accept the notion that structural integrity is not at all a concern in starship design. I would say that it is. After all, the neck isn't pencil-thin; it does look like there is some effort being made for it to support the saucer, etc. So there is some attention to structural integrity reflected in the design, but not as much as there could be - just like with airliners.
I imagine that the less-than-perfect physical design is a deliberate tradeoff to make the ship properly harness warp dynamics, just as planes are built structurally inferior to harness aerodynamics.
YARN
Fleet Captain
^^YARN was basing his argument on the apparent lack of structural soundness of the 1701 as found in deck plans and Santaman is saying more or less the same thing: you can't determine the structural soundness of the 1701 based on deck plans and you'd need blueprints and a load of other data not present in those deck plans.
Furthermore, deck plans for the most part aren't screen accurate and that makes the whole "fidelity" argument kinda moot, IMHO. Where's a Thermian when you need one?
Allow me to refer you to an earlier post:
YARN said:
As you can see, I've already noted the uncertain relationship of these sorts of plans with the starships we've seen on the big and small screen.
To the extent that these plans are taken to be canonical or quasi-canonical or otherwise a plausible representation of the internal guts of the ship (and some have to taken great pains to ensure accuracy), my argument still attaches to the ships we've seen on screen.
To the extent that these plans are repudiated as plausible representations of on-screen ships, there is still the question of (a question which my posts have been interrogating) of whether the 1701 AS REPRESENTED IN THESE PLANS is structurally sound.
You deprecate the notion of "fidelity" in relation to such plans, but consider what I said in the same post.
YARN said:
In short, yes fidelity matters even for these plans.
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zar said:
No, it's an evaluation of that image. Granted, it is an evaluation that I argue more or less springs naturally to mind from simply viewing these plans (i.e., the prima facie argument), but I am not offering an innocent description any more than Timo is.
Moreover, if my description were so obviously right, it is curious that so many have cared to argue contrarywise to my claim... ....Even if I claimed (which I do not) that I were only offering a description, conversational implicature tells us when a person is doing more than merely offering a description -- people would have a right to challenge the innocence of that description. If I have been in the desert without water for days and tell my rescuer "I am really thirsty!" my rescuer (if she deserves the title), will understand that I am not merely offering a description of thirstiness, but am offering a speech act which amounts to me asking her for water.
We cannot entirely separate evaluations from descriptions. I cannot offer you my evaluation without also offering a description of my evaluation. I cannot say that something is "wrong" without also saying "how it is" (descriptively). The descriptive datum "You have killed a person who posed no threat to you" is not necessarily evaluative (although conversational implicature in a rich enough context would be enough for this to be read as an accusation in and of itself). I might not care either way in uttering this statement that you did it - I might simply be making an observation of what you did. The additional premise "it is WRONG to kill a person who poses no threat to oneself" is evaluative, but I cannot evaluate YOU unless I also describe your action in such a way that it fits under the evaluative premise.
The phrase "does not appear to be" -- taken in isolation could be taken to be objectionable if, by that phrase I simply meant that "to me, these plans don't appear to be structurally sound" as there would be no way to refute a self-report like this. It would be like refuting my claim that I like the taste of chocolate ice cream. My self-report that I like the taste of chocolate ice cream is only a description. Heck, even the statement "I believe EVERYONE should like the taste of chocolate ice cream" is strictly speaking merely a description (although again, under the implications of everyday language use, this can rightly be read well beyond the strict description and taken as an invitation to argument or as a command, etc).
Notice, however, that in my posts I have made no such relativistic claims. Indeed, notice the second half of that statement "by our standards" -- since I don't own "our standards" there is an argument to be had after all. Are these plans, when subjected to intersubjective standards sound?
At any rate, there is no great mystery as to what I am up to here and it is NOT that of merely offering a description. I have offered a contentious claim and some have attempted to contest it.
zar said:
This is NOT what I am asking. I've already rejected the "For all we know argument" as it is cancerous to sustained rational discussion. Could it be the case, despite appearances, that you are asleep right now, or that you are in the Matrix, or that you are the only conscious creature in the universe, or that you are a brain in a vat, or that I am in fact a Thermian? Under this standard, we don't know anything.
The "For all we know argument" is weak and skeptical - it argues that what we know might be wrong in order to make way any number of possibilities. This argument does not deserve nearly the same level of respect as positive analogies to what we know about the world. "This water treatment system worked in Denver, so it might also work in Phoenix." is a much different argument from "For all we know, the center of the moon is made of styrofoam."
zar said:
Gotcha, magic forcefields, magic materials, and magic laws of structural design resting precariously on the justification that "For all we know..."
zar said:
No, we can discuss the question as I have proposed we discuss it. The mere fact that I (presently) have the better end of the argument is no reason to reject the general approach of minimal coherence + minimal fidelity as being requirements for rational apologies for Trek tech. I've had the worse end of this approach too. In another thread, Timo offered a case that depended heavily on real-world fidelity to refute my claim that gravity should fail before life support. Timo offered an apologia for Trek tech as we've seen it on screen, which I ultimately conceded because his argument was the better one.
My standards are specific to those who offer these designs (see upthread).
zar said:
No, it only works if it IS a concern for starship design (i.e., they would have failed to abide by this principle).
zar said:
If you want to argue this, that's fine. Timo backed away from his own example here to take refuge in the For All We Know Argument.
zar said:
Here you are discussing the external shape of the ship (e.g., the neck, the saucer). My argument isn't directly concerned with the external shape, but the internal supports for that shape.
If I were, however, directly discussing the shape of the Enterprise, I would challenge your speculations about warp dynamics. We've seen various starship designs. Some look delicate, others are squat and sturdy looking. Some look squished length-wise (the E-D). Some look stretched out length-wise (the E-E). Here, coherence poses a challenge to your supposition, which is a rather immediate challenge as this would be an "in-universe" challenge to your speculation. You might speculate further that the TOS/TMP 1701/1701-A were built delicately because they had an imperfect knowledge of warp field dynamics (this would be the For All THEY Knew argument, LOL) that later ship designs did not have to respect. Then again, we have contemporaneous Romulan and Klingon two-nacelle designs which are not nearly as delicate as the old 1701.
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Not quite; I'm not using what you call the "for all we know" argument in this case. I'm saying that since we don't have accurate details on the material and structure besides basic shape, we can't make any meaningful analysis of its soundness, which leaves open the possibility that it is (yes, even with current understanding of physics; no magic required). Your "pepsi challenge" would only be useful in getting an engineer to agree that it doesn't appear structurally sound, but he wouldn't be able to definitely say that it is not, because he doesn't have enough data to make the judgement. I propose a counter-challenge: Find a physicist who could say with 100% certainty that it is not possible (again, with our current understanding) for an object of the shape and size of the Enterprise that supports itself well to be built.
...For which there is no useful data to analyse.
I don't see a problem with this. The whole point of starship classes is that some are better suited to certain tasks. If it was possible to have the best of all worlds, there would only need to be one class. But just like in the real world, they build vehicles of all shapes and sizes for different reasons. A "sturdier" design could be in exchange for a lower maximum speed, for example. Even technologies not related to warp could necessitate changes in overall ship configuration.
But that isn't a contradiction, since Klingons were separate and their science may have been ahead in this area. In fact, if Klingon design is superior, it would explain why their ship design has barely changed over the years, and "less delicate" Federation design started to appear as a result of the Federation/Klingon treaty.
In 1914 the Brits seized a battleship, it became HMS Agincourt, she was the most outrageous battleship of all time, large, quite fast, under armoured but she had 14 main guns in 7 twin turrets.
People who saw her said she was unsinkable, no enemy would ever harm her because she would do herself in with the first broadside she would fire.
She went on a shakedown cruise and the chief gunner slowly worked her up and on a given day she fired a full broadside, 14 guns simultaniously at full powder load and... nothing happened, not a stoved in bulkhead, no deckplank moved, not a rivit sheered off, she was perfectly fine.
Despite what people assumed.
So, the 1701 can't endure 1g because of what you see? What some say? what you or others assume?
Proof it!
People who saw her said she was unsinkable, no enemy would ever harm her because she would do herself in with the first broadside she would fire.
She went on a shakedown cruise and the chief gunner slowly worked her up and on a given day she fired a full broadside, 14 guns simultaniously at full powder load and... nothing happened, not a stoved in bulkhead, no deckplank moved, not a rivit sheered off, she was perfectly fine.
Despite what people assumed.
So, the 1701 can't endure 1g because of what you see? What some say? what you or others assume?
Proof it!
YARN
Fleet Captain
Yes, face validity is sometimes wrong. I seem to recall another ship from around that time which was pronounced "unsinkable," a passenger ship of some note which sank on it's maiden voyage from Southampton to New York...
It's not just me. Notice how people in this thread have not sprung to justify the face validity of these plans? Notice how others have conceded that what we see "appears" to be weak?
The prima facie test is an important one. If you entered a restaurant and it appeared to be so disgusting (the way it looked to you "on its face") that the food was to your eyes probably unclean, you would have good grounds to look for a meal elsewhere.
These are NOT details we really think about, but which simply "look right to the eye," because they conform with expectations operating in the background.
If you saw, for example, that there was only one bathroom in the design plans about the Enterprise, you would not start "doing the math," but rather immediately conclude without conscious deliberation that this didn't look right. Now, when a fellow Trek nerd entered the thread discussing the bathroom situation and argued that it is entirely reasonable that there should only one bathroom for the entire ship, you would be justified in noting that the burden of proof lies with your opponent. Given what we know, without even really thinking about it, about the needs of human bladders and bowels, it would be your opponent's job to defeat the prima facie requirement for more than one bathroom. And as our discussion moved on to discuss how many crewmen there are, how long the lines would be, how many crew would be active during a given shift watch, and as we speculated about the magical properties of the future internal organs of humans (for all we know...), we would be moving beyond prima facie considerations into consciously measured aspects of the case.
The prima facie test can be defeated. As your above example above shows, appearances can be deceiving. This is what I have referred to elsewhere as "hidden fidelity."
In the present case, however, the prima facie test is more salient than it is in the case of battleships that appear to be set to tip over or restaurants that appear to be unclean.Why? To answer this question we should consider the purpose of these various internal schematics.
Why do they exist? Do these designs exist because the 1701 of the big and small screen critical needs them? No, the 1701 gets by fairly well without them. It is not because of these plans that the 1701 can take stresses of 1g and very very much higher (how high, of course, depends on who is writing the script that week). No, the plans do not exist for her benefit and enjoyment, but our own. The Enterprise is a fiction, but we (the geeky) people of the non-fictional realm wish to discuss that fiction! And the hard part is attempting to translate/transport her from her world into our world, to put her in terms we understand. That is what these internal plans attempt to do. These plans attempt to give us a more immersive experience by offering a rationalized schematization of her internal structure. Given the external shape, what we've been told and shown within the ship, what we know about the interiors of ships in general, and the basic demands of human architecture, these designs offer us a more completed reality.
The trick, however, is not to break the spell. If we see that there is only one bathroom, or that there is a deck which cannot be accessed, or that the engineering room is located in the left warp nacelle, the spell is broken. We know there is no actual ship or actual future technology to compare these designs to, so what we are looking for IS prima facie validity conforming with what we've been told in-universe (coherence) and what we know of our world (fidelity). Internal schematics which fail in terms of face validity, fail in their very purpose of extending and immersing us into an alternate reality.
Look at it this way. We would NOT blame a magician for failing to saw a woman in half, but for failing to create the appearance that he had sawed a woman in half.
Fiction is simply narrative magic and the test is not whether it is true, but whether it is compelling. In a sense, the only thing that matters is whether or not it passes the prima facie test. Internal Design schematics are a tricky affair, because they open the box and purport to show us the woman inside. That is, the are a bolder sort of trick which attempt to deepen the illusion that we are in another world where such fantastical things could happen. The test is still prima facie, but it is harder to pull off when you open the lid of the box. Because this is the primary test, and because I freely acknowledge that even the internal design schematics are a sort of magic trick, I have made no demands that the 1701 actually stand up to the most rigorous of scrutiny. I make no demand that we actually saw the woman in half. Indeed, it would be unfair for me to demand that a fictional object perfectly conform with the demands of our own world.
AGAIN, as it would be unfair of me to demand 1:1 fidelity with our reality, I CANNOT ALSO be said to have a responsibility to prove that the 1701 does not meet this standard!
On the contrary, it is up to those who wish to argue for "hidden fidelity" (i.e., real world evidence that trumps the prima facie test) to provide such evidence. I reserve the right to contest this evidence, but it is not my job to "do the math."
This is a rather generous argument position I have laid out. I can be defeated by detailed considerations of actual stuctural design, but I cannot prove my own case on these grounds!
The alternative, however, seems even more unpalatable. That is, suppose that I argued that ONLY prima facie evidence is allowed when we evaluate science fiction. It would seem to be perverse to punish an artwork for "getting the math right" even though it seemed "on it's face" to be wrong. EXAMPLE: I recall watching Attack of the Clones with my sister. There is a shot where someone jumps from a sky car to another sky car. Obi Wan sees Anakin falling and puts his sky car into a dive and allows Anakin to gently land on his car. My sister maintained that this is impossible. To her, it would be like jumping in a falling elevator at the last second in a desperate attempt to avoid getting crushed. In the case of the elevator, of course, she is right, but this case is different. Let's say Anakin is falling at 120 MPH. Obi Wan puts his sky car into a dive that roughly matches his rate of descent (it doesn't perfectly match him or they would never meet). Relative to Obi Wan's car, Anakin is only falling at 2-3 MPH which would not result in Anakin getting squished. Of course, when Anakin then jumps onto another car which is not in a dive he would have been, but let's stick to this example. Here we have an example where real world physics defeats the prima facie folk physics of my sister's expectations.
Suppose, for another example, that people claimed that the anti-gravity system on the Discovery in 2001 made no sense. Given that the centrifuge systems used in this film (they also use it for the space station) are the ONLY plausible AG systems we've ever seen depicted, it would seem to be perverse to fault 2001 for the ignorance of the general public! This is why I am loathe to completely rule out rigorous real-world evidence (i.e., doing the math) even though I admit I cannot use it to prove my side of the case.
I should, however, append a caveat here. If almost ALL of the general public shared my sister's perception, then as a matter of pulling off the magic trick, the screen writers should explain how real world physics backs them up in a line or two of exposition.
There is a middling sort of evidence between what is true at a glance and what is true after having been proved conclusively, and that is reasoning by analogy. Both sides in this discussion, I think, can fairly make use of analogies to demonstrate our points. My only objection here is where comparisons are made only to draw disanalogies -- the appeal to ignorance -- the "for all we know argument" because the sidewalk of rational discussion ends where these weak plausibility/possibility arguments begin.
Proof it!
I have proven it. I appear to have proven it so well, that my opponents have been driven into arguing strictly in terms of magic -- in effect, arguing that we cannot really argue about it and that we should simply accept as a matter of dogma that the 1701 is structurally sound.
You're going to have to do better than post an emoticon to bait me into accepting a burden of proof that I do not have (i.e., doing the math). If you want to take the Pepsi challenge, then take it.
For my part, I have made my case in terms of face validity and analogies to the real world. I have no need or burden to actually build the thing deck by deck to provide the ultimate proof of it's unsoundness (and even then, who among my opposition would accept this as proof? For I would not have used magic materials, or magic forcefields, or magic design principles, LOL).
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You're arguing that it isn't sound, and we're arguing that you can't know either way. There's a difference between this and saying that it is sound. Only one of us is making an actual assertion - you. And no you haven't proven it. You have only "proven" that it appears that way, which was never in dispute in the first place.
That said though, I believe it could be proven that it's a sound design, using modern-day physics principles, by adding the proper variables - for which there is plenty of room because there is practically no static information we already have on the ship besides the external shape.
