Why process Ore in Space on Terok Nor?

[TenLubak]

Why would the Cardies want to go into space to build Terok Nor to process ore?

What advantages would that render?

We see the mine cart looking things in the third season ep when Miles Benjamin and Jake-o locked them selves in a room that showed two industrial slides (for rocks?).

While it was cool backstory it never made much sense to me.?

(Where are some pics of the new Deep Space Nine Starbase)

 

[Christopher]

Well, in general, a good reason to move industry into space would be if it produces hazardous waste products and you don't want to pollute the environment. Although the Cardassians didn't care much about Bajor's environment, it seems.

Ordinarily, it would seem that processing ore would be something you'd want to do on the ground, though, because the unrefined ore would have a lot more excess mass and thus be harder to get into orbit. However, in an age of antigravs and transporters, that would be less of an issue.

 

[urbandefault]

It's harder for Bajoran rebels to sabotage a facility if it's in space. That, and the writers needed a reason for the station to be there in the first place.

 

[Count]

It has to be moved to space eventually for shipping out of the system, I imagine the Cardassians just found it convenient to have a central mining facility that doubled as a shipping location, rather then having specific refineries all over the planet and then shipping it straight to Cardassia, or ship to DS9 just to forward it on.

 

[WarpCore]

Why would the Cardies want to go into space to build Terok Nor to process ore?

What advantages would that render?

Being able to process ore from both sides of the planet? It makes sense if you consider that the Cardies would be strip-mining ore from multiple parts of Bajor simultaneously and used 1 high output refinery to process it. Or perhaps uridium is only found under Bajor's oceans? As far as I can recall, locations of mines were never spoken of much, but there could have been thousands of them all over the planet pulling out a very rare mineral and every bit of it being processed at Tekor Nor. Could even be that uridium must be refined in a low grav environment for best results and that was easier to create on a space station.

^^ Agreed. It also could have been completely political or a totalitarian control sort of thing for security. There may have been some high ranking officials that didn't feel secure stepping foot on the planet but slightly moreso on an orbiting station since access to it would have been restricted and better monitored than some random building on the surface.

 

[Christopher]

Being able to process ore from both sides of the planet? It makes sense if you consider that the Cardies would be strip-mining ore from multiple parts of Bajor simultaneously and used 1 high output refinery to process it.

Err, why not just build multiple refineries, then? Honestly, DS9 is far too small to be credible as the only refinery for the entire planet's uridium.

And even without transporters, it would take far less energy to ship ore from one side of the planet to the other than it would to launch it into space. That's why we here in the real world are able to fly people and cargo around the world affordably countless times a day, but are still struggling to devise an affordable way to travel to space and back. Fighting gravity takes a great deal of energy. It's much easier to move freight horizontally than vertically.

Could even be that uridium must be refined in a low grav environment for best results and that was easier to create on a space station.

That's a plausible suggestion in theory, but we saw slaves working in the station's uridium refinery in "Crossover," and they were evidently in full gravity there.

It also could have been completely political or a totalitarian control sort of thing for security. There may have been some high ranking officials that didn't feel secure stepping foot on the planet but slightly moreso on an orbiting station since access to it would have been restricted and better monitored than some random building on the surface.

Yes, that seems more plausible. Space was more their own territory, an environment they controlled, and didn't require lowering themselves to the primitive planet below. Although we do know there were many Cardassians living and working on the surface. I can buy Terok Nor as an orbital administrative facility for the elites, but having it actually be an ore refinery is kind of incongruous.

But as you say, maybe it was political. Maybe the refining operation on Terok Nor was a token, something that could be put on display for visiting politicians to show that the ore was flowing and the slaves were being properly subjugated, without requiring them to go down to the planet surface where most of the refining and enslaving was actually done.

 

[JD5000]

It's a pretty good question. During a military occupation, it would be much more logical to have a space station that served a strategic purpose, such as an extra-planetary command center (less vulnerable from insurgent attacks) or surveillance station.

I'm going to go with the theory that it makes sense to process the ore at the point-of-transport. There's nothing that says all the ore processed there came from Bajor either, some unprocessed ore could have come from other systems to be processed there en route to a final destination. One would assume that refined uridium weighs less than unrefined ore, so refining halfway through the transportation doesn't make much sense, but people do stupid things all the time.

I guess.

Yes, that seems more plausible. Space was more their own territory, an environment they controlled, and didn't require lowering themselves to the primitive planet below. Although we do know there were many Cardassians living and working on the surface. I can buy Terok Nor as an orbital administrative facility for the elites, but having it actually be an ore refinery is kind of incongruous.

But as you say, maybe it was political. Maybe the refining operation on Terok Nor was a token, something that could be put on display for visiting politicians to show that the ore was flowing and the slaves were being properly subjugated, without requiring them to go down to the planet surface where most of the refining and enslaving was actually done.

Cardassians pride themselves on efficiency, and processing ore on Terek Nor seems most inefficient. However, they are also renowned for being haughty, arrogant, and believing themselves to be above all other humanoid species, so this may be a plausible explanation. As they are portrayed, the latter qualities seem to outweigh the former.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The main reason that they processed the ore in space was [INSERT TECHNOBABBLE HERE]. It's really as simple as that.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Perhaps they had heard about what happened to Praxis and thought it best to keep high concentrations of another unstable element off of a planetary body?

Maybe they had another group of workers - Cardassian or slave, either way - working on the station to go ahead and turn the processed uridium into the components needed for their ships' sensors? Ship comes in loaded with the sensor array components other than the uridium, leaves with the parts that have been assembled since the last run.

 

[Pondwater]

Deoxygenated Environment

 

[JirinPanthosa]

First off, those slides were for magma. That's why they were able to escape through the tubes, because while the facility is active those tubes are impassable due to being filled with magma.

They needed the facility to be in space for the same reason ships face each other directly rather than through thousands of self replicating phaser drones. The story demands it.

 

[Christopher]

First off, those slides were for magma. That's why they were able to escape through the tubes, because while the facility is active those tubes are impassable due to being filled with magma.

Magma is the term for molten rock beneath the surface of the Earth (or Bajor). Above the surface, it's called lava. Although neither would be used for molten ore in a refinery. It's just "molten uridium."

 

[USS Triumphant]

The main reason that they processed the ore in space was [INSERT TECHNOBABBLE HERE]. It's really as simple as that.

They needed the facility to be in space for the same reason ships face each other directly rather than through thousands of self replicating phaser drones. The story demands it.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TruSBSsBaDE[/yt]

 

[TenLubak]

Ok then. Thanks for the ideas, that one was on my m ind since 1994 when i was aa small child around 11 years old.

How come sometimes there are purple clouds seen in the distance of the DS9 station, and then sometimees there are not purple clouds in space. They're seen in the opening credits season 4 +.
And where is the denourius belt? Asteroids that are a little farther away i guess.

 

[Silvercrest]

Could even be that uridium must be refined in a low grav environment for best results and that was easier to create on a space station.

That's a plausible suggestion in theory, but we saw slaves working in the station's uridium refinery in "Crossover," and they were evidently in full gravity there.

Plus it isn't really "easier". If they can create artificial gravity in space, they can just as easily create low-grav or zero-grav on a planet if they want. As you say, in an age of anti-grav....

Well, in general, a good reason to move industry into space would be if it produces hazardous waste products and you don't want to pollute the environment. Although the Cardassians didn't care much about Bajor's environment, it seems.

Perhaps they had heard about what happened to Praxis and thought it best to keep high concentrations of another unstable element off of a planetary body?

It's harder for Bajoran rebels to sabotage a facility if it's in space. That, and the writers needed a reason for the station to be there in the first place.

I'd go with a combination of these. Process it in space so the Bajoran rebel scum can't run easy raids on potential material for weapons.

Couple that with it being an orbital administration facility for the elites, etc. etc.

 

[Christopher]

How come sometimes there are purple clouds seen in the distance of the DS9 station, and then sometimees there are not purple clouds in space. They're seen in the opening credits season 4 +.
And where is the denourius belt? Asteroids that are a little farther away i guess.

The purple clouds are the Denorios Belt. Although it was originally conceived as an asteroid belt, it was changed to a "charged plasma field" (redundant, since all plasma is charged) when it was realized that putting DS9 against a field of asteroids would be too elaborate and expensive a special effect to do every week. (Although that's based in the nonsensical Empire Strikes Back-style fantasy image of asteroid belts as dense clutters of rock. In actuality, you could fly through the Solar System's Main Asteroid Belt a hundred times and never actually see a single asteroid with the naked eye, except maybe as a distant speck of light. There are a lot of asteroids there, sure, but they're small and space is inconceivably vast.)

 

[TenLubak]

Okay, thanks for the thoughtful responses.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

How about an explanation that may not be logical, but is drawn from real life: it was a means of diverting public money to private interests, and it justified the construction of the station by claiming that it could "pay for itself."

 

[doctorfoto]

...There's nothing that says all the ore processed there came from Bajor either, some unprocessed ore could have come from other systems to be processed there en route to a final destination...

This is my take on it too.

When the Cardassians took over Bajor, they not only took over the planet, but the entire Bajoran system, and all the resources that system had to offer.

So yeah, I don't think much of the ore came from the planet at all, but from the various planets, asteroids and moons neighboring Bajor.

I think Terok Nor was built in close proximity to Bajor not because of it's convenient location to the planet, but because of its convenient access to free and expendable slave labor.

Of course the first order of business was to build such a station to take advantage of all those resources in the system, and who better to build it than Bajoran slaves?

Why build a station with so many docking ports and pylons? Not because they wanted a transportation hub for all those other species, the Cardassians were too xenophobic and certainly not altruistic enough to do that.

No, I think the reason was to support all the Cardassian mining transport vessels that brought in raw ore from around the system. Otherwise, why not just set up some industrial transporters and beam it up from the surface as needed?

Of course it was stated multiple times that Bajor was strip-mined, but I think that many of those Bajoran labor camps on the surface served in both extracting and processing most of the ore that was mined there.

Lastly, there's Empok Nor, which is the exact design as it's sister station - but it's just sitting there, not orbiting a planet at all, which further makes me think that the Cardassians would build these stations for the purpose of processing ore found in space.

Just my 20¢.

 

[Christopher]

I think if the station were meant to process ore from all over an entire star system, it'd have to be about a hundred times larger.