Did anyone else find that just a little too convenient?
Wait--the Enterprise has 210 satellites on hand?
- Thread starter Wil has a posse
- Start date
Not necessarily. One would expect the ship to be loaded to the scuppers with such hardware, really. These simple "space buoys" would just have to be fitted with whatever mission package was needed that week: a warhead for use as mines, a sensor system for spying or mapping, a simple beacon for use as warning buoys. And that fateful day in "Operation: Annihilate!", the engineering department had to install a set of ultraviolet emitters - probably not standard plug-in hardware, but probably not unheard of, either.
Come to think of it, the ship might carry some EM emitters in stock. It would be rather handy to deploy a couple of hundred satellites in low orbit and have them illuminate, say, a disaster area 24 hours a day (or whatever the length of the day cycle on the world in question). Scotty would just have to tweak the output range from visual to ultraviolet - not necessarily a major concern.
Timo Saloniemi
Come to think of it, the ship might carry some EM emitters in stock. It would be rather handy to deploy a couple of hundred satellites in low orbit and have them illuminate, say, a disaster area 24 hours a day (or whatever the length of the day cycle on the world in question). Scotty would just have to tweak the output range from visual to ultraviolet - not necessarily a major concern.
Timo Saloniemi
plenty of resources on the planet that could be used to assemble the satellites, or as raw material for whatever fabrication equipment they had on board.
Or use photon torpedos refitted without their warheads too.
The real mystery is why they put the satellites into ``permanent orbit'' and that a mere 72 miles above the planet. I mean, even the Apollo parking orbits [1] only got down to about 90 miles. 72 miles is practically in the ocean, and I don't see any obvious atmospheric layer differences between 72 miles and a less challenging figure like 100 miles.
Staying within the ozone layer is the obvious guess, but assuming Deneva's atmosphere to be like Earth's, then its ozone layer is between six and thirty miles above the ground. If Deneva's ozone layer is higher, fine, but that means that perilously low-altitude orbits like that are a bigger problem. Granted with enough energy you can overcome that, but why not go higher as long as you have to have the satellites's light pass through the ozone layer anyway?
[1] Orbital mechanics is really weird. One of its weirdnesses: if you want to escape a planet's gravity well, it's easier to do from as near to the center of the planet as you can get without the atmospheric resistance making you crash.
Staying within the ozone layer is the obvious guess, but assuming Deneva's atmosphere to be like Earth's, then its ozone layer is between six and thirty miles above the ground. If Deneva's ozone layer is higher, fine, but that means that perilously low-altitude orbits like that are a bigger problem. Granted with enough energy you can overcome that, but why not go higher as long as you have to have the satellites's light pass through the ozone layer anyway?
[1] Orbital mechanics is really weird. One of its weirdnesses: if you want to escape a planet's gravity well, it's easier to do from as near to the center of the planet as you can get without the atmospheric resistance making you crash.
They seem too useful not to have on board in large quantities, communications, warnings, probes, navigation, plenty of use.
Regarding the orbital height, every mile would count in terms of radiation attenuation with distance, even if it didn't count in terms of attenuation by passing through a medium. 72 miles might have been the lowest they could do and still have the satellites stay up there for the duration of the operation.
Out heroes might also have wanted as much "horizontal component" to their illumination as possible, to minimize shadowing. The lower the satellites go, the greater an angle their beams can have versus vertical. Although I can't really see how they could have covered all the shadow spots no matter what. Many of the affected people would still be spending their time indoors where the beams couldn't easily reach, and most of the parasites would naturally reside in shadowy places as well.
Timo Saloniem
Out heroes might also have wanted as much "horizontal component" to their illumination as possible, to minimize shadowing. The lower the satellites go, the greater an angle their beams can have versus vertical. Although I can't really see how they could have covered all the shadow spots no matter what. Many of the affected people would still be spending their time indoors where the beams couldn't easily reach, and most of the parasites would naturally reside in shadowy places as well.
Timo Saloniem
Deneva could also be a particularly dense rocky world with a smaller diameter than Earth (and a correspondingly thinner atmospheric layer) and yet possess an Earth-normal gravity. Star Trek encountered at least one other world with similar properties... the Kalandan outpost world from "That Which Survives".
Oh and Wil, I have the same objections about the satellites. Based on the observed size of the critters, I even question whether the Enterprise has the volumetric capacity for several hundred objects of that size. Yes, I said several hundred... you don't think that the Enterprise had exactly 210 satellites in their cargo bays, do you? They probably had some unknown higher number... which means that they needed even more storage space.
Oh and Wil, I have the same objections about the satellites. Based on the observed size of the critters, I even question whether the Enterprise has the volumetric capacity for several hundred objects of that size. Yes, I said several hundred... you don't think that the Enterprise had exactly 210 satellites in their cargo bays, do you? They probably had some unknown higher number... which means that they needed even more storage space.
Last edited:
1) I'd think a deep space exploring starship carries raw material for thousands of probes, as easily configured from loose parts as loose photons are reconfigured into a crewman. i'd also say they could be a lot smaller than the neo-Nomad probes shown in TOS-R.
2) The permanent orbit would likely be necessary in order to provide the needed intensity of radiation. It would be permanent in case more of the rubbervomit creatures arrived, or came out of some deep hiding place. Occasionally the things would light up and clean the planet of stray rubbervomit creatures.
3) To reconcile the low orbit and the need for "permanence" it would no doubt be a powered orbit, or one that uses gravity manipulation to defeat degradation.
2) The permanent orbit would likely be necessary in order to provide the needed intensity of radiation. It would be permanent in case more of the rubbervomit creatures arrived, or came out of some deep hiding place. Occasionally the things would light up and clean the planet of stray rubbervomit creatures.
3) To reconcile the low orbit and the need for "permanence" it would no doubt be a powered orbit, or one that uses gravity manipulation to defeat degradation.
You have to believe they were able to synthesize them out of their raw material stocks...
Same thing goes for Patterns of Force - they don't have a wardrobe of Nazi uniforms hanging around...they just have the computer whip one up!
Same thing goes for Patterns of Force - they don't have a wardrobe of Nazi uniforms hanging around...they just have the computer whip one up!
Way I figure is they just have a few cargo containers somewhere with different "mission packs", and what they don't have they can kitbash with parts from different packs, and crates/racks of one style of generic all-purpose probe frame they can just plug the parts into. Once you've got the hardware in, just plug in a tricorder or a terminal to download the appropriate software package and away the probe goes.
I doubt Kirk would want such potentially fatal instrumentation to remain in use for months or years at an end. One sweep and that's it - and if the creatures do return, and somehow manage to fool Customs, it's time to sow another batch of satellites, or much better still, send in a team armed with sunlamps.
I'd rather argue that "permanent" is the Trek word for a natural orbit that doesn't require the sort of constant thrust that a "standard", short-lived orbit would call for. Putting the satellites on a natural orbit but low in the atmosphere would be a good way to perform a single (if prolonged) sweep, and then quickly clean the neighborhood as the satellites burn up.
It just doesn't make sense that Kirk's solution to the pancake problem would be the literally permanent vigilance of a giant ultraviolet flash system. Every time that sucker is fired up, people get soaked in ionizing radiation, further shortening their cancer-ridden lifespans. And surely it's one of the least efficient ways to hunt for remaining pancakes - let alone to protect the planet for further incomings, which necessarily always arrive inside well-protected spacecraft. If Deneva was really felt to warrant such measures, then Kirk should order every Federation world flash-fried the same way every month or so.
Timo Saloniemi
To be clear, I meant "permanent" in the sense that it is capable of being maintained indefinitely, not necessarily that it would be maintained indefinitely. It might be necessary to sweep the planet periodically for a few weeks. Given the preference of the rubbervomit creatures for darkness, it only makes sense some would steal into caves and other deep, dark places, and that some provision need be made to get 'em. I think that was what was being inferred in the script.
I would want the orbits to last at least for months, to be able do periodic cleansing of the surface.
It'd probably be more beneficial if the things pulsed every time they passed over into the nightside of the planet, with random pulses during daylight hours as well. After all the creatures were probably more active during the night than any other time.
Last edited:
Operation Annihilate leaves a lot of other unanswered questions. They know about the mass insanity sweeping worlds in a line heading towards Deneva, but no one seems to know anything about it. What happened to the populations of those planets? Did no doctors scan any of the affected and figure out they had this stuff wrapped all around their nervous systems? Did the populations all die, or just stay crazy and quarantined?
Someone should take 210 UV satellites to the pancake script logic...
Someone should take 210 UV satellites to the pancake script logic...
Maybe they're tiny satellites...man-sized or smaller. Fabricated from available onboard junk and components by an automated computer system that used a crude form of replication.
Similar threads
