Star Trek Tech Questions

[Bearflag70]

1. Is the bubble "hollow" like the ship sitting in the middle of an air balloon, or does the bubble have more substance to it, like the ship sitting in a water balloon?

2. What happens if two ships with shields up ram each other? Do they just bounce off each other like billiard balls? How fast would they have to be going to cause damage to the ships in that situation, if possible? What would be the cause of that damage?

3. What, if anything, stops a ship from going warp speed in any direction (e.g., up, down, sideways, reverse, etc.)?

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Bearflag70

1. Is the bubble "hollow" like the ship sitting in the middle of an air balloon, or does the bubble have more substance to it, like the ship sitting in a water balloon?

The shields you mean? I think they are hollow bubbles.

Originally Posted by Bearflag70

2. What happens if two ships with shields up ram each other? Do they just bounce off each other like billiard balls? How fast would they have to be going to cause damage to the ships in that situation, if possible? What would be the cause of that damage?

I think I recall an episode where two ships bounced off each others shields at low speed. There was a small flash and the shields became visible for a moment.

Originally Posted by Bearflag70

3. What, if anything, stops a ship from going warp speed in any direction (e.g., up, down, sideways, reverse, etc.)?

I presume that warp drive is largely directional; note that the warp nacelles are always mounted the same way on ships. If direction didn't matter they could be mounted any which way.

[Ephemera]

1. The shields are usually shown as being large hollow ovaloid bubbles. They're shown to be much tighter to the hull and ship-shaped in TWoK, though.

2. I'm going to assume they're going to bounce off each other, as they deflect both matter and energy. As for how fast they would have to be going to cause damage, I'm going to guess high lightspeeds. Photon torpedoes hit shields at low warp speeds all the time, with minimal damage, and dust hits them at Warp 9+ (I'm betting it's the M/AM explosion that weakens them more than the speed and mass), so it's going to take a lot of speed to counteract them.

3. I don't know. As Der Trihs says, I'm betting the nacelles are directional based on them always being in the back and with clear space around them. They're just hi-tech rockets, basically.

[Voyager]

Nothing new about the first two questions, but it appears that warp can be reversed - they went into Full Reverse Warp to escape the Romulan weapon in "Balance of Terror".

I can't remember an specific instances of them changing course in warp, but I also don't remember them having to drop out of warp to do it. I'd guess whichever magical way they have of steering handles warp course changes also.

[Pushkin]

Originally Posted by Bearflag70

3. What, if anything, stops a ship from going warp speed in any direction (e.g., up, down, sideways, reverse, etc.)?

I thought Kirk had the Enterprise warp in reverse in Balance of Terror, when they flee the Romulan superweapon early on.

[Elendil's Heir]

There was a ST novel in which the Enterprise-D surprised and rammed an unshielded Romulan warbird at high speed with full power to the D's front shields and its structural integrity field cranked up to 11. The warbird shattered into a zillion pieces and the Enterprise sailed away unscathed, IIRC.

[DSYoungEsq]

If I recall, the shields in the original series were close to, if not on, the hull of the Enterprise. You'd see photon torpedoes fired at it hitting the ship's hull before exploding. As I recall, Enterprise was consistent with this idea, as the first Enterprise (NX-01) had strengthened plating in the hull. By the time of the Next Generation show, the shields had been extended to an ovoid shape surrounding the ship.

Ships in warp drive change course all the time. But I do not recall any example of a ship shown being in warp and going any direction other than "forwards" or "backwards." This is no shock; the only episode/movie I remember seeing where the whole concept of three-dimensional movement/battle was properly represented was STVI: The Undiscovered Country, where the Klingons are shown sooting UP at the Enterprise from below. The insistence upon maintaining the concept of "up" and "down" during movement in space is, of course, completely silly.

[Pushkin]

Originally Posted by Voyager

Nothing new about the first two questions, but it appears that warp can be reversed - they went into Full Reverse Warp to escape the Romulan weapon in "Balance of Terror".

Bah, not even a simul-post.

Originally Posted by Voyager

I can't remember an specific instances of them changing course in warp, but I also don't remember them having to drop out of warp to do it. I'd guess whichever magical way they have of steering handles warp course changes also.

They did in TNG, in "The Wounded". The Nebula class vessel the Enterprise pursues veers off course in warp IIRC.

[Bearflag70]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

The shields you mean?

Oops. Yes. I edited the post and accidentally wiped out the shields reference.

[silenus]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

... of three-dimensional movement/battle was properly represented was STVI: The Undiscovered Country, where the Klingons are shown sooting UP at the Enterprise from below. The insistence upon maintaining the concept of "up" and "down" during movement in space is, of course, completely silly.

They did it other times as well. Remember Kirk ordering the Enterprise "down" when Khan was chasing them in the nebula. He even comments on Khan's "two-dimensional" thinking. Then there was Riker blasting through the Klingons from below in the ST:TNG finale. That little maneuver actually had me cheering while I watched.

[Bearflag70]

So, 2 ships, warp 1 each, shields up... head on collision...

What result?

BOING!? That's it?

[runcible spoon]

Nah, I'm pretty sure their consoles would explode in sparks, too. Might get a few styrofoam beams falling on unimportant characters, and of course the mood lighting.

[Amp]

Originally Posted by runcible spoon

Nah, I'm pretty sure their consoles would explode in sparks, too. Might get a few styrofoam beams falling on unimportant characters, and of course the mood lighting.

Don't forget the crewmen being thrown all over the place due to lack of seatbelts.

[BigT]

Originally Posted by Amp

Don't forget the crewmen being thrown all over the place due to lack of seatbelts.

and the inertial dampeners conveniently going offline.

[carnivorousplant]

In an Enterprise episode they got the shields of two ships in sync and could climb from one ship to the other.

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by Aesiron

1. The shields are usually shown as being large hollow ovaloid bubbles. They're shown to be much tighter to the hull and ship-shaped in TWoK, though.

Well, the little "doot-doot-doot" LED display was tight around the ship, but it wasn't necessarily to scale.

TOS Trek on at least occasion identified the shields by number ("Shield #2 at 40 percent!") suggesting a network rather than a single bubble. I don't offhand recall TNG talking about "aft shield" and other specifics, but they may have done. I always kinda wondered why you couldn't drop a single shield to use the transporters - they always made a big deal about having to drop them all at once, just for dramatic purposes.

[DWMarch]

Voyager claimed "Speed of light, no left or right" indicating that one cannot make turns at warp. However, they've done so often enough that there must be means of doing it. Perhaps they drop out of warp for a second, use thrusters to maneuver and then fire the engines back up.

The Enterprise E rams Shinzon's ship in Nemesis. It is indicated in dialogue that the Scimitar still had almost full shields while the Enterprise had none. So ramming a shielded ship, even with an unshielded one is quite possible and will result in great damage to both ships.

[Jolly Roger]

Originally Posted by silenus

They did it other times as well. Remember Kirk ordering the Enterprise "down" when Khan was chasing them in the nebula. He even comments on Khan's "two-dimensional" thinking. Then there was Riker blasting through the Klingons from below in the ST:TNG finale. That little maneuver actually had me cheering while I watched.

You can count the DS9 episode "Sacrifice of Angels", too. When the klingons show up in the space battle between the Federation and the Dominion/Cardassian battle they swoop in from above. It was pretty cool looking.

[DWMarch]

Further to the question of shielded ships ramming each other, DS9's "The Jem'Hadar shows a Jem'Hadar fighter ramming a Galaxy-class starship. I'm pretty sure the Galaxy class had lost shields by then but the Jem'Hadar ship probably still had shields when it went in. The result: Both ships blew the hell up.

[Icerigger]

Originally Posted by Voyager

Nothing new about the first two questions, but it appears that warp can be reversed - they went into Full Reverse Warp to escape the Romulan weapon in "Balance of Terror".

I love Kirk's order in that episode.

Full Astern! Emergency Warp Speed!

[GuanoLad]

Here's something I've always wondered about:

Would you really be shaken around when your ship is struck by a phaser blast, when the artificial gravity is relative to the ship itself?

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Originally Posted by BigT

and the inertial dampeners conveniently going offline.

The inertial dampeners, they canna take no more!

[DSYoungEsq]

Originally Posted by silenus

They did it other times as well. Remember Kirk ordering the Enterprise "down" when Khan was chasing them in the nebula. He even comments on Khan's "two-dimensional" thinking.

Funny, this was EXACTLY the stupidity that I was thinking of as what you should NOT do in three dimensions!!!

Kirk goes down, yes. Then he comes back "up" and, while on the same "level" as the other ship, blasts it from behind. Why? Why not just shoot up at it from below as it passes overhead?? Kirk's own thinking is almost as two-dimensional as Khan's.

[silenus]

Almost.

Of course, the real reason is that the writers are hacks and/or the producers are idiots and/or the average viewer is a moron.

[Mijin]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

Why not just shoot up at it from below as it passes overhead?? Kirk's own thinking is almost as two-dimensional as Khan's.

Similarly ships almost always face off with the same pitch and roll and never drift (unless all power is lost).
I assume it's because they don't want to confuse or disorient the viewer. Or it's their own lack of imagination

Originally Posted by BigT

and the inertial dampeners conveniently going offline.

Similar the holodeck safeties are rather easy to disable. It's also easy to re-route holodeck power, or whatever, so that it can't simply be turned off.

[garygnu]

Originally Posted by GuanoLad

...Would you really be shaken around when your ship is struck by a phaser blast, when the artificial gravity is relative to the ship itself?

If the ship shook, you'd notice. It's inertia, not gravity.

[Mijin]

Originally Posted by garygnu

If the ship shook, you'd notice. It's inertia, not gravity.

But by that token, shouldn't the crew be thrown backwards whenever the ship accelerates under impulse?

[garygnu]

Originally Posted by Mijin

But by that token, shouldn't the crew be thrown backwards whenever the ship accelerates under impulse?

There's some handwaving for that, but it's an expected movement that can be compensated for.

[BigT]

Originally Posted by Mijin

But by that token, shouldn't the crew be thrown backwards whenever the ship accelerates under impulse?

That would be the inertial dampeners mentioned upthread.

[levdrakon]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

The insistence upon maintaining the concept of "up" and "down" during movement in space is, of course, completely silly.

It's not that silly when the species that built the ships evolved under gravity and then fitted their ships with artificial gravity. Are they supposed to fasten chairs and consoles to the walls & ceilings and turn the gravity off?

[Picard Kills Kirk]

I always thought the ships would just smash into each other until one lost their shields. The other one would just plow through until their shields fell, and be destroyed also. Isn't this what happened to Kirk Sr. did in the latest movie?

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

Kirk goes down, yes. Then he comes back "up" and, while on the same "level" as the other ship, blasts it from behind. Why? Why not just shoot up at it from below as it passes overhead??

Maybe the rear of the ship is the most vulnerable, and least well armed?

Besides; it was more dramatic that way IMHO; I give it a pass due to artistic license.

[brossa]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

Kirk goes down, yes. Then he comes back "up" and, while on the same "level" as the other ship, blasts it from behind. Why? Why not just shoot up at it from below as it passes overhead?? Kirk's own thinking is almost as two-dimensional as Khan's.

Any naval captain worth his salt knows that a good stern rake wreaks the most havoc on the enemy vessel.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally Posted by brossa

Any naval captain worth his salt knows that a good stern rake wreaks the most havoc on the enemy vessel.

I recall mumbling something about that the first time I saw TWOK.
They did rake a warp nacelle in addition to the bridge, but your link points out that a rake is more difficult to aim than a broadside.

"I spit my last breath at Thee!"
Man, that was a good movie, morons or not.

[Dewey Finn]

Another stupidity. Why is the bridge of the Enterprise shown as being on the top deck of the saucer section, instead of buried safely much deeper in the ship? I mean, they're not looking out actual windows, but at displays, so there's no need to be that vulnerable.

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

I remember having a TOS tech manual that had the bridge facing about 30 degrees in one direction instead of pointing straigh forward. Anyone remember that? why would anyone do that on a ship?

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Dewey Finn

Another stupidity. Why is the bridge of the Enterprise shown as being on the top deck of the saucer section, instead of buried safely much deeper in the ship? I mean, they're not looking out actual windows, but at displays, so there's no need to be that vulnerable.

They do have windows on top. But as I recall, the bridge was modular and designed to be capable of being swapped out. But yes; putting it far inside would be a much better design.

[athelas]

Originally Posted by Dewey Finn

Another stupidity. Why is the bridge of the Enterprise shown as being on the top deck of the saucer section, instead of buried safely much deeper in the ship? I mean, they're not looking out actual windows, but at displays, so there's no need to be that vulnerable.

Seems to me that if ships can launch antimatter torpedoes at each other, by the time the shields are down it won't matter if you're a bulb on the surface or ensconced deep inside the ship - you're dead.

Of course the ST writers don't follow this consistently; we sometimes see chunks flying off ships with the rest mostly intact. The writers just seem to have a problem with the scale of space and the energies involved. As another example, the ramming in Nemesis was far too effective; the ships weren't moving that fast and the hulls just buckled. You'd expect that substances that can take plasma torpedoes and laser beams would be more resilient.

[dzeiger]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

Funny, this was EXACTLY the stupidity that I was thinking of as what you should NOT do in three dimensions!!!

Kirk goes down, yes. Then he comes back "up" and, while on the same "level" as the other ship, blasts it from behind. Why? Why not just shoot up at it from below as it passes overhead?? Kirk's own thinking is almost as two-dimensional as Khan's.

IIRC, the photon torpedo tubes were mounted below the saucer dish, so that the saucer would block upwards fire.

[Uosdwis R. Dewoh]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

They do have windows on top. But as I recall, the bridge was modular and designed to be capable of being swapped out. But yes; putting it far inside would be a much better design.

The Enterprise-D did have a combat bridge buried deep inside the main hull, but was rarely used for some reason. I think the real life reason was to save money. They didn't want to show the removal of the saucer section every time the Enterprise went to combat.

[Bryan Ekers]

Originally Posted by Uosdwis R. Dewoh

The Enterprise-D did have a combat bridge buried deep inside the main hull, but was rarely used for some reason.

The original had something similar called "Auxiliary Control".

[The Controvert]

Originally Posted by dzeiger

IIRC, the photon torpedo tubes were mounted below the saucer dish, so that the saucer would block upwards fire.

Do you honestly think that a starship captain competent enough to get through Starfleet Academy and earn a posting on a ship would want to fly a lengthy maneuver to be able to fire when simply rotating the ship accomplishes the same thing?

[audit1]

Originally Posted by Intergalactic Gladiator

I remember having a TOS tech manual that had the bridge facing about 30 degrees in one direction instead of pointing straigh forward. Anyone remember that? why would anyone do that on a ship?

you would not do it on a ship but you would if the set designers (who had lined up the bridge so the viewscreen, helm station captains chair and communications station lined up with the bridge, but the lift was offset.) and the model makers (who had the lift on the centerline ) did not work in tandem.

But then these are the people who had the bridge with only one exit.

[Jolly Roger]

Originally Posted by audit1

But then these are the people who had the bridge with only one exit.

...and no toilets.

[Raguleader]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

They do have windows on top. But as I recall, the bridge was modular and designed to be capable of being swapped out. But yes; putting it far inside would be a much better design.

Depending on which movie you watch, the viewscreen is even a window/set of windows itself (ie: the USS Kelvin's viewscreen setup, which appeared to be some kind of polarized two-way space-mirror. Opaque until you pump it full of space-energy. In Nemesis, of course, the viewscreen was some kind of space-age HDTV setup, place directly on the otherside of a bulkhead from outer space, making a window a much cheaper (and probably as safe) an alternative.

Random question on starship design (since, of course, most ships on ST are designed to look cool first and be functional a distant fifth...), anybody else ever notice that the humans are the only folks in space zipping around in flying saucers? Flying saucers with a second hull attached, but still flying saucers.

[DSYoungEsq]

Originally Posted by levdrakon

It's not that silly when the species that built the ships evolved under gravity and then fitted their ships with artificial gravity. Are they supposed to fasten chairs and consoles to the walls & ceilings and turn the gravity off?

I'm not talking about the inside of the ship. We assume that they set it up so that the artificial gravity creates a definite feeling of "down". Though it should be noted that artificial gravity created by rotating a ring design would have seats that appeared to be on the "ceiling" when viewed from the other side of the ring.

I'm talking about the movement of the ship itself. Turn the ship 180 degrees on an axis parallel to the direction it "points." Now the ship is "upside down" relative to its last position. Do you think this makes any difference??

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

Maybe the rear of the ship is the most vulnerable, and least well armed?

Besides; it was more dramatic that way IMHO; I give it a pass due to artistic license.

If the rear of the ship is the "most vulnerable", it can be attacked from the below rear as easily as from the directly behind rear, most likely. And given that the ship is in space, it seems quite likely that it would be equally well "armored" in all directions, since an attack can come from all directions. In short, the possibility of a less well-defendended area of the ship is the result of 2-D thinking.

As for "artistic license", the only artistic license involved is the limited thinking of the director and his crew, which sadly parallels the limited thinking of a large chunk of the regular audience. Most of the science fiction fans at the time that I talked to left the theater shaking their heads in dismay, even if it was a pretty good movie otherwise.

Originally Posted by dzeiger

IIRC, the photon torpedo tubes were mounted below the saucer dish, so that the saucer would block upwards fire.

To answer this, see below.

Originally Posted by The Controvert

Do you honestly think that a starship captain competent enough to get through Starfleet Academy and earn a posting on a ship would want to fly a lengthy maneuver to be able to fire when simply rotating the ship accomplishes the same thing?

Not to mention that the cannon movies make it clear that a photon torpedo can move in all sorts of guided directions; witness the crazy loops the one makes following the cloaked Bird of Prey in STVI. Hell, even WE do that with guided missiles, and have since at least the 70s. I worked two summers on the Shrike program, our main at the time (and still to this day, I believe) anti-radar (or, as they prefer to say, anti-radiation) missile. They were launched in a direction not directly at the target, and only in the last few seconds of flight did they turn and home on their intended radar dish. Surely the 24th Century can manage that with a photon torpedo.

[DSYoungEsq]

As far as where the bridge is:

In the original pilot, you are taken into the bridge through the dome window at the very start of the episode. This at least implied that the bridge had a domed window at the top of the saucer. This photo shows the configuration in question, though not well.

As for "why" this would be, when clearly the "bridge" of the ship, as its nerve center, should be buried inside the ship, I say it's actually a logical result. Since they imply heavily that the United Star Ships are run by some sort of quasi-naval organization, it's easy to assume that they were designed by people from the navies of Earth, and followed traditional naval design, with the "bridge" of the ship at the top of the superstructure, where you have the greatest view. Apparently, it has not occurred to anyone yet that the captain of a space vessel doesn't need the "view" from sitting on top of the ship.

Also, why WOULDN'T the orientation of the bridge be in ANY direction they want? 30 degrees off line, 52 degrees off line, what does it MATTER? The screen doesn't need to face forward, remember? Perhaps the feature that orients the bridge is the turbo-lift, which runs down the "middle" of the back portion of the bridge, and everything else is canted as needed from that?

Also, IIRC, the original Technical Manual (from back in the 70s) showed that more than one turbo-lift exited the bridge, but that the one you always see them use heads to the most useful (for Kirk et al) areas of the ship: Sick Bay, Main Engineering, one of the transporter rooms (of which there were several in the technical manual, including one for cargo loads), etc. I cannot recall if we ever saw the whole of the bridge, but I'm thinking we did, and that there were no such doors, so the Technical Manual (or my memory of it! ) may have gotten that wrong.

[dzeiger]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

If the rear of the ship is the "most vulnerable", it can be attacked from the below rear as easily as from the directly behind rear, most likely. And given that the ship is in space, it seems quite likely that it would be equally well "armored" in all directions, since an attack can come from all directions. In short, the possibility of a less well-defendended area of the ship is the result of 2-D thinking.

Only if you can power all sections of the shields to the same degree all at once. On the other hand, it makes sense that you might sacrifice shield power in one direction in order to increase it in the direction that you believe the attack will come--particularly if you are already on a damaged ship with a skeleton crew.

Not to mention that the cannon movies make it clear that a photon torpedo can move in all sorts of guided directions; witness the crazy loops the one makes following the cloaked Bird of Prey in STVI.

That would be the movie where fitting the torpedo with a heat-seeking guidance system was a fairly major plot point, and something that was new to everyone, right?

No matter what the tech manuals may say, in the movies, photon torpedoes act like cannonballs--they fire in generally straight lines, and when they hit, instead of a big matter-antimatter explosion, they tend to just punch a hole through the hull.

And yes, perhaps the Enterprise could have just flipped over, but how, exactly, is that superior to just changing altitude?

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by DSYoungEsq

Also, IIRC, the original Technical Manual (from back in the 70s) showed that more than one turbo-lift exited the bridge, but that the one you always see them use heads to the most useful (for Kirk et al) areas of the ship: Sick Bay, Main Engineering, one of the transporter rooms (of which there were several in the technical manual, including one for cargo loads), etc. I cannot recall if we ever saw the whole of the bridge, but I'm thinking we did, and that there were no such doors, so the Technical Manual (or my memory of it! ) may have gotten that wrong.

IIRC, the blueprints from the TOS Enterprise showed only one turbolift on the bridge, but stairs (and toilets!) behind the view screen. The turbolift was not like an elevator, but each car could travel along alternate paths to its destination. I assume the controller always had one available at the bridge, which could be moved aside if another arrived.

BTW, in some early TOS episodes, back when they could afford enough extras to make things look realistic, we saw crew members climbing down stairs. (more like tubes, I think).

[Icerigger]

I still have my original Enterprise Blueprints, cost then $5.00.