How does Voyager stay stable on ground?

apocolypse · Post by **apocolypse** » 2006-12-20 01:10pm

Maybe this is a bit of a stupid question, but it came to me as I was watching Exodus yesterday. They showed a scene of Voyager landing on Hanon IV (IIRC) and landing gear came out from the drive section, but there doesn't seem to be any support for the saucer section. At first, I thought that maybe there was some sort of active anti-grav/repulsor like tech in place, but you don't see any sort of effect (i.e. air shimmering, dust kicking up, etc) in place until Voyager was about to lift off. I'm just curious as to how the ship supports itself then, as the saucer should have some considerable weight and doesn't appear to have any means of support when the ship is at rest. Maybe there's a mass-lighening effect for the saucer only? Thoughts/suggestions/comments?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-12-20 01:22pm

Nacelles are really, really heavy; or so say the background materials (it's in the TM, too, I think).

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2006-12-20 02:00pm

One of the really big technical problems here is that if the Voyager requires forcefield supports for the ship even when it's on the ground on a continual basis, then it's not gaining any more of an advantage than if they simply had the ship hover over the surface on repulsorlifts on a continual basis.

sigh... The only remotely reasonable suggestion I can offer is that the ship's "saucer" section overall has a lesser mass than the rest of the vessel, that in order to make this work at all the centre of the vessel's heavy mass must be located toward the forward end of the engineering hull, that the tail-end of the ship must also mass heavier than the forward compartment, and that the connecting dorsal and upper strongback must be the location for the strongest framing members comprising the ship's construciton. Otherwise the thing has to tip over and fall apart under Earthlike gravity.

The other problem of course is with those landing pods and how they can bear that much mass.

The Voyager seems to suit her captain, as both of them are inherently unstable to begin with.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-12-20 02:01pm

Honestly, I hate the idea of large starships landing, and we've seen it now in both Star Wars and Star Trek. It's fucking stupid. The large starships should spend their entire existence in orbit from the day that the first structural member is welded into place. Shuttles should be used to ferry material back and forth between the starship and the surface.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2006-12-20 02:06pm

Darth Wong wrote:Honestly, I hate the idea of large starships landing, and we've seen it now in both Star Wars and Star Trek. It's fucking stupid. The large starships should spend their entire existence in orbit from the day that the first structural member is welded into place. Shuttles should be used to ferry material back and forth between the starship and the surface.

At least the SW ships are far more structurally sound for a planetary landing than the Voyager. I think the largest vessels we've seen land on a planetary surface have been Acclamators and the sphere-modules of Trade-Fed battleships. We've never seen anything like an ISD or larger-type vessel even attempt to deorbit, much less touch down on the ground.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-12-20 02:10pm

Just to be fair, Voyager and Defiant are both pretty small by Starfleet standards. And as for Star Wars, the largest ship we've seen land and take off is a destroyer that is designed to deploy large amounts of troops and armor quickly.

It's still an inherently silly idea, of course, but not out of reach of each universes' particular brand of handwavium.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2006-12-20 02:10pm

Darth Wong wrote:Honestly, I hate the idea of large starships landing, and we've seen it now in both Star Wars and Star Trek. It's fucking stupid. The large starships should spend their entire existence in orbit from the day that the first structural member is welded into place. Shuttles should be used to ferry material back and forth between the starship and the surface.

You should perhaps not watch stargate SG1 then, though at least there they generally require huge area of ground contact, rather than dinky little feet. Of course, that was the idea for Star Trek for a long time, and I have no idea why they came up with Voyager being capable of landing. The stories where it happens seem to be written entirely to show off that feature.

---

Anguirus wrote:Just to be fair, Voyager and Defiant are both pretty small by Starfleet standards. And as for Star Wars, the largest ship we've seen land and take off is a destroyer that is designed to deploy large amounts of troops and armor quickly.

Venators seem to have done it, though I don't think there's enough seen of the underside to establish if they're landed or just hovering really low. And core ships have been seen to do it on those atrociously spindly legs.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-12-20 02:12pm

Oh, yeah, landing Ha'taks on pyramids is pretty bad.

It is part of the original "aliens in Egypt" concept, so I suppose that's why they try to work it in.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2006-12-20 02:14pm

Anguirus wrote:Oh, yeah, landing Ha'taks on pyramids is pretty bad. It is part of the original "aliens in Egypt" concept, so I suppose that's why they try to work it in.

To be fair, they've mostly changed that so that pyramid landing structures are obsolete, and that they now use big mastabas shown here.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2006-12-20 03:14pm

Patrick Degan wrote:At least the SW ships are far more structurally sound for a planetary landing than the Voyager. I think the largest vessels we've seen land on a planetary surface have been Acclamators and the sphere-modules of Trade-Fed battleships. We've never seen anything like an ISD or larger-type vessel even attempt to deorbit, much less touch down on the ground.

In Krytos Trap, the SSD Lusankya takes off from the surface of Coruscant, though it has the galaxy's biggest repulsor harness on it to do the job.

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2006-12-20 03:35pm

NecronLord wrote:And core ships have been seen to do it on those atrociously spindly legs.

Though the ICS states that IIRC they can't spend more than a few hours on these legs without the assistance of the repulsor beams in a landing pit.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-12-20 08:15pm

I was talking about Venators, but I had forgotten about the core ships. Apparently those are the "shuttles" for the TradFed superfreighters, though it seems like a hell of an inefficient design to me. Especially since they can already land massive amounts of materiel with those four-winged transports from TPM.

Comosicus · Post by **Comosicus** » 2006-12-21 03:01am

Anguirus wrote:I was talking about Venators, but I had forgotten about the core ships. Apparently those are the "shuttles" for the TradFed superfreighters, though it seems like a hell of an inefficient design to me. Especially since they can already land massive amounts of materiel with those four-winged transports from TPM.

Perhaps those transports are nothing more than landers ... like some sort of glider ... used just for quick deployment of troops and materials, that lack the means to get back into space. In fact, the wings themselves suggest that to me, as I don't know of any other craft that has a similar design. My 0.02$ is that they use the wings for lift purposes, as they have stripped (or skipped entirely from the design) the means to get space-born again for more space and just used enough repulsorlifts to safely land the craft.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-12-21 03:14am

I've never had a problem with Stargate ships landing, if only because Ha'tak look like pyramids and I like the idea of Giza lifting off

. The sane reason is of course the already mentioned large contact surface rather than dinky feet, and that the Ha'tak seem like true multi-purpose vessels.

Voyager on the other hand is hard to make out. Why would a very small scout ship need to land? If it was supposed to be a troop ship, you would expect a far larger crew complement, shuttles and much more crew quarters and provisions. I can't figure out what Voyager is supposed to do. Excelsiors, Galaxies, Defiants, Akiras, Nebulas, all have their roles. But a Voyager I can't figure out, except as a testbed ship.

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2006-12-21 05:22am

Venators seem to have done it

Even though the original sourcebooks said they couldn't, many stories have Imperator-class Star Destroyers flying in atmospheres. I think I even read somewhere that the Executor got caught in some kind of planetary tractor beam and Vader told his crew to prepare for a crash landing, possibly using repulsors to ease the flight down.

Of course this doesn't equate landing normally.

As for the Core ships, they seem to be used mainly to land or lift a very large force to save some time. Some also got refitted for hyperspace travel and outright ship-to-ship combat (SW:Republic).

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-12-21 11:17am

quote]I've never had a problem with Stargate ships landing, if only because Ha'tak look like pyramids and I like the idea of Giza lifting off Razz. The sane reason is of course the already mentioned large contact surface rather than dinky feet, and that the Ha'tak seem like true multi-purpose vessels.

The problem, of course, is that a Ha'tak CAN'T land on a Giza-type pyramid! Its central core is a three-sided pyramid.

The Stargate creators even discuss the problem in the DVD commentary on an ep (forget the name, but I think it's the one where Cronus bites it) where in the final shot we see a Ha'tak start to land on a four-sided pyramid. They talked about how they had to cut away before the audience could see that it wouldn't work!

But a Voyager I can't figure out, except as a testbed ship.

It doesn't seem to fill a military role, but instead is an offshoot of its "Explorer" classification. It's actually meant to go out and explore new planets, landing to conduct lengthy scientific surveys.

Kane Starkiller · Post by **Kane Starkiller** » 2006-12-22 09:03am

Darth Wong wrote:Honestly, I hate the idea of large starships landing, and we've seen it now in both Star Wars and Star Trek. It's fucking stupid. The large starships should spend their entire existence in orbit from the day that the first structural member is welded into place. Shuttles should be used to ferry material back and forth between the starship and the surface.

I have no problem with landing the ships. I mean if they have the repulsorlifts capable of providing 1000G acceleration what the hell is the problem with landing? Hovering above the ground shouldn't take up any significant amount of energy. This eliminates the need for orbital space stations as middle man between planet factories and starships and enables the troops and vehicles to exit en masse from ships hangars. The thing that bothers me are those huge landing gears. They take up a enormous percentage of the internal space and with repulsorlifts are totally superfluous.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2006-12-22 05:21pm

Anguirus wrote:The Stargate creators even discuss the problem in the DVD commentary on an ep (forget the name, but I think it's the one where Cronus bites it) where in the final shot we see a Ha'tak start to land on a four-sided pyramid. They talked about how they had to cut away before the audience could see that it wouldn't work!

We have seen Hattak's trying to land on a Pyramid only once, and the VFX crew actualy messed up and portrayed a 4 sided representation of the underside of the Hattak for the sequence. All the other times we see Hattaks just sitting without knowing whats underneath.

Setzer · Post by **Setzer** » 2006-12-23 02:53am

Star Trek invented transporters because it was a free way of showing them getting to a planet's surface. Now they land the ship just for the hell of it?

They could spend that money in better ways, like better make up for aliens, rather then just crinkled noses or big ears.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2006-12-23 06:24am

There may not be a problem here. I just went looking for screencaps to see how bad it was, and I got this:

Now, it looks pretty bad, but then I found this:

Which is actually this:

I don't know if that top shot is from 'Exodus', but it seems like Voyager's imbalance could have just been a perspective illusion.

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2006-12-23 11:19am

It would appear that the combined weight of the nacelles would have to be as much as the saucer section.

A quick question though, where is the second shuttle bay? There never is a shot that shows a shuttle bay other than the one at the rear oh the ship, yet shuttle bay 2 is said many times throughout the show.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2006-12-23 11:35am

If Memory Alpha's Intrepid entry is to be believed, that's because there isn't one really.

MA on the Intrepid's parasite craft wrote: Located in the aft dorsal portion of the secondary hull, the Main Shuttlebay is the primary port for entrance and egress, as well as management of auxiliary craft and shuttles. The Main Shuttlebay is managed by a team of pilots, engineers and technicians, and operations personnel that are based on the flight operations office under the supervision of the flight control officer.

Inward from the Main Shuttlebay is a secondary storage/maintenance area behind huge inner airlock doors. This secondary area is almost as large as the Main Shuttlebay and is commonly referred to as Shuttlebay 2.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-12-23 11:44am

A quick question though, where is the second shuttle bay?

Deck 9¾, between the cloning lab and the plastic surgeon's office, right across the hall of the shuttle factory. It's also bigger on the inside than the outside

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2006-12-23 11:51am

Bounty wrote:
A quick question though, where is the second shuttle bay?
Deck 9¾, between the cloning lab and the plastic surgeon's office, right across the hall of the shuttle factory. It's also bigger on the inside than the outside

Oops

Somebody made a few minor scaling boo-boos I think

Post by **NecronLord** » 2006-12-23 11:55am

Bounty wrote:
A quick question though, where is the second shuttle bay?
Deck 9¾, between the cloning lab and the plastic surgeon's office, right across the hall of the shuttle factory. It's also bigger on the inside than the outside

There are many things to be said for the Acclamatorprize. Having more shuttle space than you would know what to do with is one of them.