Mrs. Bernse and I were watching ST3 the other night. Mrs. Bernse made a comment with the scene of Enterprise docking into Starbase. The comment was about how flippen HUGE it was.
I would guess many (WAG-10?) miles tall and several wide. Here is the only pic I could find . It is not from ST3 but the starbase looks the same.
What effect would a massive Starbase like that in Earth orbit have on our tides? Would there be any other consequences of a massive object like that in Earth orbit? (Other than blocking our view of the sky)
That is a picture of Starbase-1, which is, in the Star Trek universe, in orbit around the Earth in one of the lagrange points, if I remember correctly. It supposedly houses about a quarter million people. Because of where it’s located it’s bulk would be equally affected by the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun’s gravitational pulls.
I wouldn’t think it would have much of an effect at all on the Earth’s orbit. Big as it is it’s mass is insignificant alongside Earth’s.
I’ll bet it would be pretty to look up and see it though.
Tides? Probably not a whole lot. If they can invent transporters to move people left and right, they can develop orbital protocol to commit the several Starbases around planet Earth, standardizing the tides.
A Starbase is huge, but not as massive as the moon.
Look at it this way; the mass of a Starbase as portrayed in the movie isn’t any more than the mass of all the buildings in a very large city. Even if you built a city the size of Chicago by shipping the concrete and steel in from overseas - thereby creating a big new mass right on the surface of the Earth - it wouldn’t have a tidal effect. Yet it’s closer to the earth’s surface than a starbase, so it should have MORE effect. Relative to the size of the Earth or the Moon, it’s still a very small object and far less dense.
On the other hand, such enormous orbital structures would sure make the night sky different. They would be very, very bright nighttime objects, probably as bright as the moon. As it stands, Iridium satellites and the ISS can get brighter than any star. Depending how many starbases there were you could screw up amateur astronomy forever.
10 miles? nope, I don`t think that would change the tides at all, nor it would block the Sun; it probably would be visible from the ground, faintly in the daytime and like a very bright star in the night; as long as it´s not orbiting too high.
10 miles isn´t that big when you think about celestial bodies; Mars smallest moon, Phobos is a bit over 13 Km on it´s longest axis, weights 10.800 billion tons and orbits almost 10 Km over the planet´s surface ; I do recall seeing on a TV program (maybe Cosmos?) long ago that it would look like a very tiny dot during the day and as an average star in the night. Someone may want to do the math about the tidal force it produces.
If it makes any difference, (probably not) the material used to make the star base would be subtracted from the Earths mass. Make enough starbases and Enterprises and it may make a difference then. Im assuming that the ships where made from raw material here on Earth.
But a starship is itself no larger than, say, an oil tanker or an aircraft carrier. The Enterprise isn’t much bigger than the USS Enterprise CVN that currently serves in the U.S. Navy. THOSE ships don’t make much difference in the gravitational nature of the Earth.
Would they be? Most of the raw materials might be mined from the asteroid belt, with no pesky gravity well to haul the stuff out of. Heck, if we’re talking about Star Trek, some or most of the materials might be replicated, converted from energy. And that energy might have come from Fusion reactors, which could be fueled by Hydrogen or Helium from who-knows-where.
For what it’s worth, I checked the Daystrom Institute, a site specializing in trying to work out the technology of Trek and here are the statistics on the Spacedock in Earth orbit:
And out of curiosity, I checked the stats on the Galaxy class starship, the biggest class in the fleet. It’s doubtful that Spacedock could hold thirty of these since it’s said that it depends on the type of ship, but just for the hell of it, let’s pretend they can.
Here are the stats:
And finally, to carry this out even further, let’s assume they have a full complement of Danube class runabouts on board too. Three hundred in all.
I doubt this will change the answer much but can someone figure out if the starbase operating at full capactity like this would affect Earth much, if at all?
So, a fully loaded Starbase has a mass of some 585,001,700 tons, which I’m going to assume is metric tons, just for the heck of it.
The mass of the Moon is (cite) some 7.35 x 10e22 kilograms, or 7.35 x 10e19 metric tons, or 73,500,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
585,001,700 divided by 73,500,000,000,000,000,000 equals Not Much Really.
The Starbase also isn’t really going to affect amateur astronomy all that much, on account of amateur astronomy in the Star Trek universe is called “tourism”.
If the starbases are in the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, the closest (L1) is nearly as distant as the moon itself, but directly in front of the moon so the base would be barely visible (except at new moon).
all the other Lagrange points in the Sun-Earth and Earth -Moon systems are further away, but some of them might afford more favorable viewing conditions.
If they were in GEO they would be more visible, an object 10 miles wide would be dozens of times as bright as Venus, and visible in daylight.
Building Starbase from Earth materials is an obvious loser proposition. What you do is, get yourself a good-size nickel-iron asteroid, and tow it into orbit somewhere between Mercury and Venus, where you’ve set up a giant (kilometers wide) lens with about the thickness of a soap bubble. (In weightless conditions, you can make objects of extreme flimsiness.) The lens collects sunlight and focuses it. At the focus point what you have is an industrial furnace capable of melting the asteroid. Which you do. With the right combination of melting and pressurized gases, you could pretty much build the frame of your Starbase to specs right on the spot, then tow it to Earth orbit for finishing.
This isn’t my idea, I read it in a book about the prospects for industrializing the solar system a few years ago.
Sure, you can make such flimsy things, but don’t expect them to last too long. The flimsier it gets, the more likely that a tiny micrometeor will trash it (such as the zillions of micrometeors which more sturdy things shrug off). And by making it so huge, you’re increasing those odds exponentially.
Ah, Keeve, but you don’t care if there are a few holes in your giant lens; it’s just for collecting energy, nothing precise. So you just have to make it so flimsy that something hitting it will punch a hole right through, rather than strong enough to resist, which would pull the whole thing out of shape.
Obviously a soap bubble that would collapse if there is one hole wouldn’t work, but a really thin sheet of gelatin or something would work (maybe with some wires bracing it into shape).
mmm… gelatin space lenses… <mouth watering>…
Altho a starbase is MUCH smaller than the moon, it is also much closer. Aren’t tides proportional to the inverse cube of the distance? I’m still going to say “negligable effect”
Since ISS and even satelites are visible, it is safe to say that a huge space station is going to be quite bright.
