Why was the Enterprise.. [Spoilers]

[Mountie1988]

I actually didn't like the rockets under the saucer section. My thought is if they have figured out anti-gravity, what the need for thrusters in orbit?

I would guess it would be for redundancy in case what ever powers the anti-grav generators failed. Since they looked like chemical thrusters, it does make you wonder why they weren't using them to slow their descent into the atmosphere?

In space manuvering to match up with the Vengance, dropping out of the sky...The Enterprise almost has a thruster on every open outside plane. I thought it was neat and it does help to explain the command "full stop" as I don't see a set of impulse engines on the front of the saucer.

As far as them not using them to slow their decent well, thats because everything was offline until Kirk kicked back into place the bottom part of the Death Star core. Apparently power for all types of thrust is channeled thru the warp core on the NuEnterprise.

The maneuvering thrusters are no use to decelerate a ship from half the speed of light to a dead stop. Instead even while travelling at subluminal speed, according to Memory Alpha driver coils, ...

'using energy from the impulse fusion reactors to envelop the starship in a low-energy subspace field intended to lighten the relative mass of the starship it encompasses. This significantly reduces the mass burden on the impulse drive, allowing for unprecedented rates of acceleration.'

So in theory with the deactivation of the impulse coil and thus the dissolving of the 'subspace bubble', a starship returns to its former motion vector.

 

[SonicRanger]

The Enterprise flew through the space ameba in The Immunity Syndrome, and Spock described it as...

SPOCK: "Readings coming in now, Captain. Length, approximately eleven thousand miles. Width varying from two thousand to three thousand miles. Outer layer studded with space debris and waste. Interior consists of protoplasm, varying from a firmer gelatinous layer to a semi-fluid central mass. Condition, living."

So in TOS, the Enterprise flew through a mass of fluidic-gelatinous material.

 

[M'Sharak]

I love it when this topic comes up.

Its 300 years from now, the starship can sit at a poker table and deal cards...

While wearing a green celluloid visor?

 

[Kelthaz]

I don't give a shit about the scientific accuracy of the Enterprise going into the ocean, but I do have a problem with the story logic of the scene. Sure, it looked cool, but if it makes your characters look like idiots then either don't do it or rewrite the script. Staying in space and using shuttlecraft would have made so much more sense.

 

[shatastrophic]

I would guess it would be for redundancy in case what ever powers the anti-grav generators failed. Since they looked like chemical thrusters, it does make you wonder why they weren't using them to slow their descent into the atmosphere?

In space manuvering to match up with the Vengance, dropping out of the sky...The Enterprise almost has a thruster on every open outside plane. I thought it was neat and it does help to explain the command "full stop" as I don't see a set of impulse engines on the front of the saucer.

As far as them not using them to slow their decent well, thats because everything was offline until Kirk kicked back into place the bottom part of the Death Star core. Apparently power for all types of thrust is channeled thru the warp core on the NuEnterprise.

The maneuvering thrusters are no use to decelerate a ship from half the speed of light to a dead stop. Instead even while travelling at subluminal speed, according to Memory Alpha driver coils, ...

'using energy from the impulse fusion reactors to envelop the starship in a low-energy subspace field intended to lighten the relative mass of the starship it encompasses. This significantly reduces the mass burden on the impulse drive, allowing for unprecedented rates of acceleration.'

So in theory with the deactivation of the impulse coil and thus the dissolving of the 'subspace bubble', a starship returns to its former motion vector.

Well if what happens is a few fusion reactors creating a bubble which lightens the ship's mass causing it to have unprecedented rates of acceleration, what are the giant glowing red ports on the back of the saucer for? All that would be needed are thrusters if the ship's mass were reduced. That's what they did on DS9 to move it to the wormhole.

I don't know if increasing the mass of something in space causes deceleration per the theroy, maybe it does. Do suns slow their respective galactic speed as they go to red giants? I don't know what another example would be. But it is facinating to think that once the bubble is gone the ship just slows, that's pretty cool you nabbed that! I always wanted to know the how that was answered and why they didn't have another set of engines on the front.

 

[shatastrophic]

I love it when this topic comes up.

Its 300 years from now, the starship can sit at a poker table and deal cards...

While wearing a green celluloid visor?

Yes!!! Taking chips from other ships. The Falcon is too fast and folds to quickly, the Jupiter 2 is lost under the table trying to figure the rules, Serenity never gets any good hands, and eventhough the Galatica is always in for the long haul the Enterprise wins.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

The ship underwater made no sense to me either.

They have a hangar full of shuttles (and since aquashuttles were present on the original Enterprise, it is safe to assume the JJprise would have them as well, given that it is three times the size) and several fully functional transporter pads, all of which have been used countless times on planetary survey missions.

This was just like the buggy in Nemesis, something that's never been seen in Trek before so therefore it must be new, different and cool. Totally pointless I found.

Then there is the native species. They had to avoid contact with them, so as to ensure they culture and social identity wasn't contaminated by Starfleet. How better to do that then by flying into their atmosphere only a few short kilometers away from one of their major temples, just to hide in the sea, then have to take off again and back into orbit, all without being seen! What?

 

[BillJ]

This was just like the buggy in Nemesis, something that's never been seen in Trek before so therefore it must be new, different and cool. Totally pointless I found.

I've been a fan for thirty-seven years and sometimes I can enjoy cool just because it's cool. Is the Enterprise being underwater problematic from a logic perspective? Sure. But it doesn't stop me from drooling when it rises up out of the ocean, flies towards the volcano then zips away like a fighter jet.

But then again, I always liked the dune-buggy scene in "Nemesis".

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I know size of the ship is still being fiercely debated but at 725 meters from the official source. That makes it larger than the Enterprise-E from TNG.

No it doesn't. It makes it LONGER than the Enterprise-E while having similar internal volume (and less than 70% the volume of the Enterprise-D). Size wise it's actually closer to the Ambassador class, just with larger nacelles.

With a ship that size, what was Kirk thinking putting it in a situation where it can be exposed like that. It's not like the transporters or shuttlecrafts weren't operable.

It's EXACTLY like the transporters and shuttlecraft weren't operable. The whole point of having to physically land the ship was that the magnetic field around the volcano was screwing up their transporters and they couldn't use the transporters except at incredibly close range. As we saw with Kirk and McCoy's narrow escape, having your ship parked literally within walking distance of the landing site does have certain advantages.

Thoughts please.

You should really stop using Ex-astris-scientia as a trek source. The author of that site is a bit of a neurotic.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Then there is the native species. They had to avoid contact with them, so as to ensure they culture and social identity wasn't contaminated by Starfleet. How better to do that then by flying into their atmosphere only a few short kilometers away from one of their major temples, just to hide in the sea, then have to take off again and back into orbit, all without being seen! What?

IIRC, Scotty implied that the ship submerged out at sea and carefully moved up to shore underwater, over some period of time.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^^I just visited EAS and LOL'd at this quote:

Seeing that the people in charge have lost perspective of ship sizes, we may decide that it all doesn't matter any longer, or we settle on a more reasonable size for the Enterprise. so we are dealing with a Vengeance of "only" some 750m and not one mile.

Translation: I don't like their bigger ships so I'm ignoring the movie and pulling this number out of my ass.

 

[shatastrophic]

You should really stop using Ex-astris-scientia as a trek source. The author of that site is a bit of a neurotic.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^^I just visited EAS and LOL'd at this quote:

Seeing that the people in charge have lost perspective of ship sizes, we may decide that it all doesn't matter any longer, or we settle on a more reasonable size for the Enterprise. so we are dealing with a Vengeance of "only" some 750m and not one mile.

Translation: I don't like their bigger ships so I'm ignoring the movie and pulling this number out of my ass.

Yeah, I caught that too. Textbook example "I've definitely lost the argument, but if I keep pretending that I didn't, then maybe I didn't."

 

[greenlight]

A prediction for the next movie: We will see the Enterprise land on a planet, with landing legs coming out of the secondary hull, like Voyager. The size of these legs will appear to account for most of the volume of the secondary hull, sparking 20+ page threads with much bickering.

I am only half joking.

 

[throwback]

I am less worried about the Enterprise being parked under water, as I am about how long it would take two humans to swim the distance from the surface to that hatch in the secondary hull. I am asking myself this other question, was there a reason why they didn't swim to the primary hull, which was closer to the surface?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I am less worried about the Enterprise being parked under water, as I am about how long it would take two humans to swim the distance from the surface to that hatch in the secondary hull. I am asking myself this other question, was there a reason why they didn't swim to the primary hull, which was closer to the surface?

Two reasons:

1) the primary hull is closer to the surface, but the actual distance is somewhat farther away, and the hatches on the primary hull are probably farther still

2) They weren't "swimming" as such; they had some kind of propulsion jets on the boots of their wetsuits, so it would have been a pretty easy "swim".

 

[WarpFactorZ]

^^I just visited EAS and LOL'd at this quote:

Seeing that the people in charge have lost perspective of ship sizes, we may decide that it all doesn't matter any longer, or we settle on a more reasonable size for the Enterprise. so we are dealing with a Vengeance of "only" some 750m and not one mile.

Translation: I don't like their bigger ships so I'm ignoring the movie and pulling this number out of my ass.

Actually, if you assume Sulu's line "He just jumped 30m!" refers to the gap in the saucer, then the ship's length is about 850m.

I think people will be shocked when the new official numbers come out on the BluRay extras.

 

[M'Sharak]

^^I just visited EAS and LOL'd at this quote:

Seeing that the people in charge have lost perspective of ship sizes, we may decide that it all doesn't matter any longer, or we settle on a more reasonable size for the Enterprise. so we are dealing with a Vengeance of "only" some 750m and not one mile.

Translation: I don't like their bigger ships so I'm ignoring the movie and pulling this number out of my ass.

Actually, if you assume Sulu's line "He just jumped 30m!" refers to the gap in the saucer, then the ship's length is coincidentally about 750m.

I think people will be shocked when the new official numbers come out on the BluRay extras.

I think I'd really like it if that argument didn't keep getting raised outside of the thread expressly provided for the purpose.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^^I just visited EAS and LOL'd at this quote:

Seeing that the people in charge have lost perspective of ship sizes, we may decide that it all doesn't matter any longer, or we settle on a more reasonable size for the Enterprise. so we are dealing with a Vengeance of "only" some 750m and not one mile.

Translation: I don't like their bigger ships so I'm ignoring the movie and pulling this number out of my ass.

Actually, if you assume Sulu's line "He just jumped 30m!" refers to the gap in the saucer

Or if you assume Sulu knows what he's talking about and/or isn't just eyeballing the distance without really measuring it.

E.g. "He just jumped, like, thirty meters!"

 

[nightwind1]

I don't mind it being underwater. I just hate seeing it sail through the air.

Yeah, that never happened before...