Well, that’s because you are.
Just joking! No Pit speak! 
I’m a total Trek geek too, so much so that I want to know when the first episode of the new/old series is going to air. Could it be as early as September?
Viva the Geek cannot wait…
The premiere date is set for September 26 at 8:00PM.
BE THERE!
I like the new engine room - it reminds me vaguely of a turbine deck at a coal power plant.
That link still doesn’t work anymore. In fact, the whole website (www.lcarscom.net) seems to be kaput. (All I get now is a page that reads “Unable to Fetch Domain The requested URL cannot be loaded.”) Could it be that Paramount got wind of it and ordered them to shut down?
[nitpick]
Jab1, hate to tell you this, but you’re wrong. There’s currently two models of sat phones that are roughly the size of Kirk’s communicator. One is the Iridiumphone, which has two models. One is about twice the size of a cell phone, the other is only slightly larger than a cell phone.
The other phone is the Globalstar phone, which is the size of a large cell phone.
Both of these phones can be used to do something that I don’t think Kirk’s communicator was ever shown to be capable of, and that’s to transmit data (9.6k max).
The phone on the site you linked to is an Imarsat Mini-M phone which uses geosync sats to link up to and the antenna is shaped that way because you have to point it at a specific spot in the sky to get it to work. They could make those phones smaller, but it’d be kind of pointless since you have to have an antenna which you can point at a specific spot. Iridium and Globalstar both use constellations of sats that aren’t in geosynch orbit, so all you need is an antenna that points skyward to use them.
FWIW, I’ve heard a rumor that the cell phone industry is planning on abandoning cell networks and switching to a sat based system. There’s a few kinks they have to work out first, though. One of which is that the current breed of sat phone will not work indoors.
[/nitpick]
Jab1 or any one else who saw the exterior pic, could you do a find files on your C: drive for NX-01wp.jpg and email it to me? I’d really like to see it. It will still be in your temporary internet files unless you deleted them. Thanks.
And which of these phones behaves more like Kirk’s communicator? The one that must be pointed to a specific spot in the sky to work (like the Enterprise) or the one that uses a constellation of satellites? Are we to assume that the Enterprise launched a bunch of communications satellites every time it entered orbit around a new planet so it could maintain contact with surface teams? There was never so much as a hint that they ever did such a thing or that they were even capable of it.
And Kirk often maintained communications with his ship while indoors. IOW, his communicator was far more advanced than what we have now.
As for sending and receiving text, the communicator wasn’t designed for that. (It had only two controls, for frequency and volume.) The tricorder was used to record things and the recordings were returned to the ship and downloaded into the ship’s computer.
I can’t help you, mblackwell. I post from a library and all temporary files are deleted at the end of the day when the computers are shut off. But as I said, there is a similar picture in this week’s newstand issue of TV Guide.
C’mon!! I want to see the new Enterprise!!* shcnell!!!*
I can’t for the life of me understand why you’re debating whether we have communications devices that are the equal of a Star Trek communicator. Of course we don’t – and Berman never said we did.
He said: “How can we create for Enterprise a communicator even more primitive than Kirk’s when Nokia and Motorola have communicators today that are far more COMPACT AND COOL LOOKING (emphasis added) than Kirk’s ever was?”
Are today’s cell phones smaller than Kirk’s communicator? Clearly they are. Are they cooler looking? This is subjective, but I would say “Yes.”
Berman’s comments were about the look of cell phones and communicators, not their capabilities.
Jab1, the main reason sat phones can’t be used in doors (and I should have made this clear) is because the FCC didn’t parcel out the radio frequencies which can pentrate buildings at low power to the sat phone makers. (Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if the military didn’t have a few models which weren’t bound by those regulations.)
Additionally, I would imagine that the Enterprise would park itself in a geosynch orbit above the landing party so that they could beam them up in a hurry. And has already been posted in another thread, ST orbits are very low, so they wouldn’t be using an equatorial orbit as we do now for geosynch. So, in all likelihood, they could dispose of a large antenna that needed to be aimed at a specific point in the sky. (The sat phones like the one you linked to, just need their antenna pointed upwards at the equator, you don’t have to aim for any one spot in the sky.)
My point about the data was that when TOS was first running, no one really thought about the need to be able to transmit data from a ground station to an orbiting body, but people do it all the time today.
Which does relate (albeit indirectly) to what Berman said. Back when TOS premiered, the very thought that something small and hand held which could be used to communicate was a mindblowing concept. Ever see one of the early model mobile phones? My dad had one and it filled a good sized briefcase. You couldn’t even really dial out on it, you called a “mobile operator” who would then make the connection to a land line for you. Very primitive stuff, indeed.
Someone smarter than I figured this ouf, but here you go:
Every Klingon has two heads. They wear one and keep the other in a pickle jar. (Hmmm…I feel ridgy today! or Everybody put on your smooth heads for the landing party!)
At some point, they all decided that the ridges were really cool and began wearing them exclusively. If it became known that they were mere fashion hounds, they would lose their rep as tough guys, hence Worf’s comment “We do not speak of it.”
transporter malfunctioned, and stuck you inside a solid (albeit thin) object, which would probably ruin your day. But this being the early days of transporters, it may happen more often than the manufacturer wants to admit.
Probably true, but I seem to remember episodes where NCC1701 was “out of range” or some such, so the landing partiy was SOL for awhile.
[sub]rereads first part of reply, steps into nearby transporter to make quick get-a-way[/sub]
Found a working link to an exterior pic:
http://www.treknews.com/cgi-bin/newspro/articles/994973946,54677,.shtml
Yeah, but I think that most of those instances were when the Enterprise had to leave orbit for some reason, though I could be wrong.
Thanks to Hail Ants for the new pic. Doesn’t look too bad. Hopefully, the show won’t suck.
For some reason, I was imagining an Enterprise that looked more like the Pheonix…
Jeez, this new ship looks more advanced ('cuz we all know that, in Star Trek, the level of advancement is indicated by how cool it looks) than Voyager was.
On a side note, I was personally hoping they would have the new series based on Peter David’s New Frontier. Just goes to so you, Paramount couldn’t find original thinking if it bit them in the ass
I haven’t seen the ship in a while, but after looking at the new Enterprise, I found it looks like the old Miranda-class ships, such as the Reliant in Star Trek III: The Wrath of Khan. Anyone else agree or disagree?
Lockz wrote:
[sub]Now to dive into the living hell known as Trek geeking …[/sub]
I respectfully disagree with you, Lockz, but the only resemblance between the Miranda-class light cruisers and this thing is the absence of a significant secondary hull (engineering section).
Remember, Reliant’s warp nacelles projected down from the primary hull (saucer section) on pylons; the impulse stack was attached to the rear of the PH, and there was a photon torpedo launcher mounted on a rack above the PH. It looked a lot like the older Andor-class ships from which the Mirandas were derived.
This new Enterprise looks a lot more like one of the mid-size frigates that appeared in the good Star Trek strategic simulation wargame. In other words, NOT that advanced-algebra abortion Star Fleet Battles thing.
I have to agree that, except for the hybrid warp nacelles on this ship (red caps but glowing sides), it looks like a brand-new 24th century design that could be seen in Voyager or DS9. Bring back the hard lines and flat hull of TOS, sez me. Of course, then we’d all be commenting what a piece of crap it was. In the end, I’ll accept the new design – I’m sure Paramount is thrilled to hear that. [sub]maybe somebody should tell them I don’t own a TV?[/sub]
Does anybody have a class or size for this new ship yet? I know NX = experimental or prototype, but they have to call it something. It’s clearly not a Constitution or Constellation, or anything else we’ve mentioned so far.
Ok, so it’s been a year or two since I’ve seen the movie (Star Trek II, not III as I wrote. I’ll correct my own mistakes.) Again, another WAG, but there were probably ship types like this shown at Wolf 359 after the Borg swept through. Not sure what I’m trying to say/prove (perhaps sleep would help :)), but I don’t think we’ve seen any earlier ships without a secondary hull. And I’m meaning larger starships, not ships like the Pheonix.
Well, technically it may not be the Enterprise, but in * Mirror, Mirror * IIRC they talk about targets coming into range - the planet was spinning under them and the cities came around the horizon. I think it happened other times, just that one stuck out first.