How does Voyager stay stable on ground?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-12-23 12:08pm

Somebody made a few minor scaling boo-boos I think

Oh, it's more than just a few boo-boos...

Kuciwalker · Post by **Kuciwalker** » 2006-12-23 12:59pm

Patrick Degan wrote:
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.

To be fair, there was that level in Rogue Leader...

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-12-23 01:03pm

To be fair, there was that level in Rogue Leader...

That wasn't a landing, it was a plain crash. The ISD was wrecked beyond recovery - the hull had been split into multiple pieces and much of the ship had collapsed into itself.

Kuciwalker · Post by **Kuciwalker** » 2006-12-23 01:04pm

A bunch of ATAT's (of course) managed to make it out.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-12-23 01:08pm

Kuciwalker wrote:A bunch of ATAT's (of course) managed to make it out.

...what, it's not a crash when someone crawls out of the wreckage alive?

This is what was left of the ISD. I do not call that a 'landing' or an 'attempted de-orbit'. The ship lost control and crashed, period. It looks like it managed to level itself but that's about it.

apocolypse · Post by **apocolypse** » 2006-12-26 04:05pm

Winston Blake wrote: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.

That is interesting, thanks for the pics. I can't recall if the top pic was from Exodus or not, but it was from a similar angle, so it probably was just the view making the balance look off. Thanks again.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2006-12-27 02:50am

Winston Blake wrote: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.

The ant problem becomes a serious issue here. Just because it's practical for a two foot model to support its weight on four tiny legs clustered at its back end doesn't mean it's practical for an aircraft-carrier sized structure to be built the same way. Counterbalancing a saucer section that weighs a few pounds is a very different proposition from supporting tens of thousands of tons the same way.

On the counterbalancing issue, I believe Voyager is supposed to weigh 700,000 tons; way more than a ship of that size should weigh if it was of a similar density to RL sea vessels. Which suggests it has some kind of superdense fuel or components. If that weight is concentrated in the back of the ship it may help counterbalance the saucer section. But I'd really be more worried about the saucer section's central beam. The structural stresses on it must be incredible.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2006-12-27 03:04am

Guys, are we forgetting that the Voyager crew installed that "Laws of Physics Compensation Drive" they stole out of the Q Continuum? The same one that the Q took from the Borg using flintlock rifles? Yes, the very same one that the Borg originally took off of the floating pick up truck driven by the only two Ferengi in the Delta Quadrant? And if you remember, that's the same one the Marquis stole while murdering the president of the UFP, but even so, Janeway commissioned them and made them full fledged officers to serve on a Star fleet vessel.

I know you remember now.

Typhonis 1 · Post by **Typhonis 1** » 2006-12-30 08:54am

Isn`t Voyager supposed to be the same size as a Constitution class Starship?

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-12-30 10:59am

Kane Starkiller wrote: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.

The problem is not, as I understand it, with the ship itself, but rather with the effects the landing will have on the planet and its atmosphere. If you have a ship with huge surface area, if it's flying at any appreciable speed through an atmosphere, it will create devastating sonic shockwaves.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2006-12-30 04:03pm

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.

Usually I find myself agreeing with everything you say about starship design, but here, I'm going to have to disagree. I'm not disagreeing with your statement that ideally, large starships would never "land" (or to be precise, enter the atmosphere and land on the surface of an Earth-sized planet), but rather, I'm disagreeing with the idea that it would be pointless to design a spacecraft to make a planetary landing.

From a military perspective, the ability to land an entire vessel and unload a thousand or so troops and their equipment would be extremely useful as an alternative to transferring everyone to spaceplanes and hoping they don't fall victim to enemy AA emplacements on the surface near the landing area, something a heavily armored starship wouldn't have to worry about to the same extent. Yes, there are also scenarios where this wouldn't make sense, such as in situations where the enemy controlled heavy anti-spacecraft weaponry installations, and in those cases, the best approach would probably be Robert A. Heinlein's drop capsule system as described in his classic 1959 novel Starship Troopers.

From a civillian perspective, passenger service would benefit enormously from having the ability to make a direct planetary landing. Passengers hate being inconvenienced, and I think that people would pay a premium to be able to board one starship at their point of origin on Earth and ride that same ship all the way to their destination on Mutura Zoobliga, rather than having to board a spaceplane and then transfer in orbit. Add in the complexity of dealing with everyone's baggage and the benefits of direct surface-to-surface passenger service become clear. However, I also see there being a market for a spaceplane and potentially, orbital space port-supported interstellar passenger service, that would provide departures to a broader array of destinations with stopping service or airline-style hub service, and at lower prices.

Both the military and the civillians would benefit from having large cargo spacecraft that could land directly. Not only would having large cargo spacecraft carrying tens of thousands of shipping containers in all probability be more economic than having tens of thousands of individual spaceplanes transporting the same material, but it would also allow for the easier transport of extremely bulky cargo, such as portable military installations and heavy industrial equipment, which would otherwise have to be disassembled and reassembled.

So in short, while I agree with you that in theory, having large starships be spacecraft that remain in the safety of the void for their entire existence is the ideal approach, I think that the potential applications for spacecraft capable of making planetary landings more than justify their existance.

However, in the world of Star Trek, this entire discussion (and Voyager's ridiculous landing struts) are pointless when you have transporter systems availible. The only point I can see behind Voyager landing would be if you were using it for one of the three applications I discussed, and the transporter system was either destroyed or rendered inoperative by a plot dev-err ion storm, that would not go away until whatever needed to be brought to the service would no longer be useful.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2006-12-30 05:57pm

I don't know. Voyager is of course ridiculous in this pose, but large starships landing doesn't bother me. What gets me is that the big ships that land don't have consideration put towards how they should be designed for such landings. I could buy, for example, the Acclimator landing, but the TradeFed Spheres just looked goofy in their landed cubbyholes.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2006-12-30 08:21pm

Depending on your fuel system, you could skim a gas giant's atmosphere for hydrogen or land on an ocean and crack hydrogen out of the water, so that you have fuel for your fusion powerplant. This might make it advantageous for a large starship to be able to enter and leave an atmosphere, however, there's no reason why embarked subcraft couldn't do the job (although RMThurmont's point should be taken, that this might likely increase the time it takes to gather fuel in this way). This is applicable for warships as well as civilian ships.

The only other reason I can think of for having a large starship land on a planetary surface is colony ships. But when they land, it's a one-way trip. They shouldn't be expected to take off again.

As far as Voyager is concerned, I don't see any reason for it to have this ability. I don't even recall Voyager ever saying how it replenished it's fuel supplies either. Like many things about this show, they simply did not think about the things they did, or obeyed their own premise.

NomAnor15 · Post by **NomAnor15** » 2006-12-30 08:37pm

Bounty wrote:
To be fair, there was that level in Rogue Leader...
That wasn't a landing, it was a plain crash. The ISD was wrecked beyond recovery - the hull had been split into multiple pieces and much of the ship had collapsed into itself.

Slightly off topic, but did you notice how that SD was far too small?

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2006-12-31 12:59am

As far as I can tell, the reason for Intrepid class ships being able to land is two part. 1: emergencies a la Star Trek: Generations. Since the saucer section doesn't detach (or at least hasn't been shown to be able to detach), there should be a mechanism for the ship to land, should it become necessary. This, of course would imply that the ship shouldn't be able to take off again, but that's beside the point. 2: Intrepids are designed (supposedly) to be deep space vessels. Sometimes this means months or even years away from space dock. The warp coils can't easily be overhauled in the middle of space, so the only other option would be to land the ship.

Having said this, I don't think the design of the Intrepid class is appropriate for routine landings, and the placement of the deflector can cause problems in emergency landings. An example of a class better suited to planet landings would be Nebulas, but that would require landing on the warp nacelles, which is possibly not a great idea for spaceships (shuttles can be excused from this).

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2006-12-31 01:21am

Braedley wrote:As far as I can tell, the reason for Intrepid class ships being able to land is two part. 1: emergencies a la Star Trek: Generations. Since the saucer section doesn't detach (or at least hasn't been shown to be able to detach), there should be a mechanism for the ship to land, should it become necessary. This, of course would imply that the ship shouldn't be able to take off again, but that's beside the point. 2: Intrepids are designed (supposedly) to be deep space vessels. Sometimes this means months or even years away from space dock. The warp coils can't easily be overhauled in the middle of space, so the only other option would be to land the ship.

Unfortunately, an emergency landing situation is not likely one which will allow a nicely controlled descent. In fact, in one episode we see the ship actually crashing on a planetary surface (one of those nice little reset-button episodes, of course).

The other point actually makes no sense. If overhauling massive components like warp coils would not be easy in space, it would be impossible on a planetary surface. Try doing that sort of work in a 1g environment without shipyard facilities to manage the heavy lifting. And if an overhaul would not require actually removing any part of the warp drive, then landing the ship to do the work is redundant; you may as well just hang in orbit.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-12-31 04:48am

NomAnor15 wrote:
Bounty wrote:
To be fair, there was that level in Rogue Leader...
That wasn't a landing, it was a plain crash. The ISD was wrecked beyond recovery - the hull had been split into multiple pieces and much of the ship had collapsed into itself.
Slightly off topic, but did you notice how that SD was far too small?

There was an interview with the RS developers a few years back in a now-defunct Nintendo magazine. They were talking about the original RS and how they tried to properly scale all the turbolaser batteries, buildings and ships, but this ended up looking weird; they had to make the ships smaller and terrain featues absurdly big to make it all look 'right' from a behind-the-ship view. The same probably happened with the ISD - I don't see how you would be able to pick off the E-webs (or whatever the hell those machine gun nests were) on a full-scale ship.

Check the Kothliss commentary track, I think they say something similar there.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-12-31 09:20am

Scale wasn't the only thing wrong with that level. If an ISD in very high orbit crash-landed, it should devastate at least the surrounding landscape much as an asteroid would.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-12-31 09:31am

Surlethe wrote:Scale wasn't the only thing wrong with that level. If an ISD in very high orbit crash-landed, it should devastate at least the surrounding landscape much as an asteroid would.

But we know at least some of the crew survived and were fit enough to put up a defence when the wreck was attacked. That must put a limit on the speed at which she crashed, which in turn suggests that the crew managed to right and slow down the ship at some point (maybe when the backup bridge took over?) before impact but after the point where she could pull out of her dive.

But then again, that would make the massive damage all the harder to explain.

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2006-12-31 08:11pm

Patrick Degan wrote:
Braedley wrote:As far as I can tell, the reason for Intrepid class ships being able to land is two part. 1: emergencies a la Star Trek: Generations. Since the saucer section doesn't detach (or at least hasn't been shown to be able to detach), there should be a mechanism for the ship to land, should it become necessary. This, of course would imply that the ship shouldn't be able to take off again, but that's beside the point. 2: Intrepids are designed (supposedly) to be deep space vessels. Sometimes this means months or even years away from space dock. The warp coils can't easily be overhauled in the middle of space, so the only other option would be to land the ship.
Unfortunately, an emergency landing situation is not likely one which will allow a nicely controlled descent. In fact, in one episode we see the ship actually crashing on a planetary surface (one of those nice little reset-button episodes, of course).

The other point actually makes no sense. If overhauling massive components like warp coils would not be easy in space, it would be impossible on a planetary surface. Try doing that sort of work in a 1g environment without shipyard facilities to manage the heavy lifting. And if an overhaul would not require actually removing any part of the warp drive, then landing the ship to do the work is redundant; you may as well just hang in orbit.

You give good points, so let me explain myself a little further. In an episode of Voyager, Janeway actually lands the ship in order to carry out a much needed warp coil overhaul. Shuttles are shown as being used as cranes, something which would probably need to be done if the overhaul were to take place in space anyways. So it comes down to the pros and cons of each location. Lets assume for the moment that one method of replacing the warp coils involves lifting the segments straight up out of the nacelles, as was shown in this particular episode.

So on a planet, more force needs to be exerted in order to remove the coils, but the removed coils can simply be placed on the ground next to the ship in order to be worked on. Workers also don't need environmental suits in order to perform the work. The presence of gravity also means that when the time comes to place the warp coils back into the nacelles, the coils just have to be lifted in a manner that will allow gravity to properly align them in the vertical direction. Then steps just have to be taken to rotate them into the proper orientation.

In space, everything needs to be tethered, or brought inside. The sections of plating that cover the nacelles need to be stored somewhere during this operation, and it's already been shown that the shuttle bays wouldn't be large enough for this, therefore, a tractor beam would need to be used at least periodically in order to keep the pieces from flying away for the week or so that it takes to overhaul the engines. More care also needs to be taken in order not to damage the coils when they are reinserted into the nacelles, as they can't simply be dropped in place. Notice how I haven't even mentioned performing the work on the coils. The work could be performed in space, but that's more tethering, enviro suits, etc. The work can't really be done in the shuttle bay, as active shuttle operations are still ongoing because they are needed as cranes. The only other option is to beam the segments into a cargo bay. Let me also remind everyone that we have no idea if the segments would fit inside either the shuttle bay or a cargo bay.

To me it seems that performing this type of work in space is more trouble than it's worth.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2006-12-31 08:25pm

Braedley wrote: You give good points, so let me explain myself a little further. In an episode of Voyager, Janeway actually lands the ship in order to carry out a much needed warp coil overhaul. Shuttles are shown as being used as cranes, something which would probably need to be done if the overhaul were to take place in space anyways. So it comes down to the pros and cons of each location. Lets assume for the moment that one method of replacing the warp coils involves lifting the segments straight up out of the nacelles, as was shown in this particular episode.
So on a planet, more force needs to be exerted in order to remove the coils, but the removed coils can simply be placed on the ground next to the ship in order to be worked on.

They can be placed right next to the nacelles in zero g. Your point being?

Workers also don't need environmental suits in order to perform the work.

Granted. Minor disadvantage as opposed to the MASSIVE ones a groundside operation entails.

The presence of gravity also means that when the time comes to place the warp coils back into the nacelles, the coils just have to be lifted in a manner that will allow gravity to properly align them in the vertical direction. Then steps just have to be taken to rotate them into the proper orientation.

Horseradish. Properly aligning them is tons easier AND more precise in a zero g environment. What little reaction mass (if any) needs to be expended in doing so is easily less than what is needed to lift the coils inside a gravity well.

In space, everything needs to be tethered, or brought inside.

Garbage, and garbage.

The sections of plating that cover the nacelles need to be stored somewhere during this operation, and it's already been shown that the shuttle bays wouldn't be large enough for this, therefore, a tractor beam would need to be used at least periodically in order to keep the pieces from flying away for the week or so that it takes to overhaul the engines.

Complete hogwash. You put the plating 300m to the left of the nacelle, guess what, IT'S GOING TO STAY THERE FOREVER ALL ON IT'S OWN. Given there will be no forces acting on them to MAKE them fly away why pray tell would the plating section move?

More care also needs to be taken in order not to damage the coils when they are reinserted into the nacelles, as they can't simply be dropped in place.

Quite the contrary, actually. In zero g you can use almost arbitrarily small force to reinsert them as you don't have to fight gravity. To do the same in a gravity well, you actually have to compensate said gravity.

Notice how I haven't even mentioned performing the work on the coils. The work could be performed in space, but that's more tethering,

Which isn't neccessary,

enviro suits,

Which are worse than having to deal with gravity how?

etc.

DO elaborate on that.

The work can't really be done in the shuttle bay, as active shuttle operations are still ongoing because they are needed as cranes. The only other option is to beam the segments into a cargo bay. Let me also remind everyone that we have no idea if the segments would fit inside either the shuttle bay or a cargo bay.

Completely irrelevant as there's no reason the work can't be done in space.

To me it seems that performing this type of work in space is more trouble than it's worth.

To me it seems you haven't thought this through.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-01-01 12:05am

RThurmont 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.
Usually I find myself agreeing with everything you say about starship design, but here, I'm going to have to disagree. I'm not disagreeing with your statement that ideally, large starships would never "land" (or to be precise, enter the atmosphere and land on the surface of an Earth-sized planet), but rather, I'm disagreeing with the idea that it would be pointless to design a spacecraft to make a planetary landing.

You're thinking strictly in terms of feature set, and not in terms of the practical nuts-and-bolts design decisions that have to be made in order to make this possible. In order to design a spacecraft to withstand ground landings, you must make massive changes to its structure. You also have to deal with the fact that you are wasting huge amounts of energy dropping an entire ship into a gravity well and then raising it out again when you really only need to move a tiny fraction of that ship's mass. These design changes cannot realistically be inconsequential, nor can they be without cost and compromise to the core function of the ship. Any time you add a feature within a spaceframe of a given size and cost, you must compromise something else, and this is no small feature.

From a military perspective, the ability to land an entire vessel and unload a thousand or so troops and their equipment would be extremely useful as an alternative to transferring everyone to spaceplanes and hoping they don't fall victim to enemy AA emplacements on the surface near the landing area, something a heavily armored starship wouldn't have to worry about to the same extent. Yes, there are also scenarios where this wouldn't make sense, such as in situations where the enemy controlled heavy anti-spacecraft weaponry installations, and in those cases, the best approach would probably be Robert A. Heinlein's drop capsule system as described in his classic 1959 novel Starship Troopers.

From a civillian perspective, passenger service would benefit enormously from having the ability to make a direct planetary landing. Passengers hate being inconvenienced, and I think that people would pay a premium to be able to board one starship at their point of origin on Earth and ride that same ship all the way to their destination on Mutura Zoobliga, rather than having to board a spaceplane and then transfer in orbit. Add in the complexity of dealing with everyone's baggage and the benefits of direct surface-to-surface passenger service become clear. However, I also see there being a market for a spaceplane and potentially, orbital space port-supported interstellar passenger service, that would provide departures to a broader array of destinations with stopping service or airline-style hub service, and at lower prices.

Both the military and the civillians would benefit from having large cargo spacecraft that could land directly. Not only would having large cargo spacecraft carrying tens of thousands of shipping containers in all probability be more economic than having tens of thousands of individual spaceplanes transporting the same material, but it would also allow for the easier transport of extremely bulky cargo, such as portable military installations and heavy industrial equipment, which would otherwise have to be disassembled and reassembled.

So in short, while I agree with you that in theory, having large starships be spacecraft that remain in the safety of the void for their entire existence is the ideal approach, I think that the potential applications for spacecraft capable of making planetary landings more than justify their existance.

It's not just a safety issue; it's a "jack of all trades, master of none" issue. Dilution of design goals is historically one of the biggest blunders typically made by managers in charge of an engineering project, and the ability to land the entire ship is a design goal which works directly against other design goals such as maximum efficiency for space travel and combat.

Sci-fi is chock-a-block with "jack of all trades" designs or "jack of all trades" weapons, and I find it both tiresome and unrealistic. When performance is king, you need to specialize. Nobody is out there trying to build a race car which doubles as a stretch limousine, despite the fact that you could probably think of many uses for this feature.

However, in the world of Star Trek, this entire discussion (and Voyager's ridiculous landing struts) are pointless when you have transporter systems availible. The only point I can see behind Voyager landing would be if you were using it for one of the three applications I discussed, and the transporter system was either destroyed or rendered inoperative by a plot dev-err ion storm, that would not go away until whatever needed to be brought to the service would no longer be useful.

Even if they used shuttles, it would make more sense than seriously compromising the efficiency of the entire spacecraft in order to add landing functionality.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2007-01-01 05:44am

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that all starships have planetary landing capabilities, but rather, that a specialized subset (express passenger spacecraft, troop transports, and heavy lifters) have that capability.

You're thinking strictly in terms of feature set, and not in terms of the practical nuts-and-bolts design decisions that have to be made in order to make this possible. In order to design a spacecraft to withstand ground landings, you must make massive changes to its structure. You also have to deal with the fact that you are wasting huge amounts of energy dropping an entire ship into a gravity well and then raising it out again when you really only need to move a tiny fraction of that ship's mass. These design changes cannot realistically be inconsequential, nor can they be without cost and compromise to the core function of the ship. Any time you add a feature within a spaceframe of a given size and cost, you must compromise something else, and this is no small feature.

The question of how feasible it would be to incorporate this feature, I would argue, is to a certain extent dependent on the design of a typical spacecraft in the context that we're talking about. Now if we move to the Star Wars universe, where most spacecraft seem to have awesome capabilities in terms of acceleration, one could assume that the typical spacecraft would already have sufficient engines to be able to make a planetary landing. Thus, the challenge of the gravity well is negated. In Star Trek, where starships are considerably less powerful, this becomes more of a point. in Star Wars, at any rate, all you would have to worry about, theoretically, would be aerodynamics, heat shielding and landing gear, and from the appearance of their spacecraft, it doesn't even look like they worry about that much, but instead rely on their shielding systems to deal with atmospheric friction. In Star Trek, shielding is presumably good enough to handle re-entry as well, since we've seen the original Enterprise operating at moderate altitudes on Earth, and clearly that ship's hull is less than optimal in terms of aerodynamics.

So clearly, in the Star Trek universe, the question shifts to one of how powerful their propulsion systems are. If the impulse engines of the "typical" Federation starship are not powerful enough to propel that starship from the surface to an orbit of an Earth-type planet, then I would agree with your above point. If they are, however, bearing in mind the well-demonstrated ability of standard Federation shielding to withstand re-entry and atmospheric friction, I would argue that compromises needed to adapt certain types of specialized starships for planetary landings would be "worth it." The design challenges would primarily be in terms of arriving at the optimal configuration to allow for easy landing and efficient loading and unloading of cargo.

If you take ST-style shielding or powerful engines out of the equation, however, then the feasibility of planetary landings for large spacecraft is obviously reduced.

It's not just a safety issue; it's a "jack of all trades, master of none" issue. Dilution of design goals is historically one of the biggest blunders typically made by managers in charge of an engineering project, and the ability to land the entire ship is a design goal which works directly against other design goals such as maximum efficiency for space travel and combat.

That's perfectly valid. However, ultimately, the question becomes, is it worth the cost of compromised performance and increased manufacturing costs to have a single starship be able to carry a payload from the surface of one planet to the surface of another, without needing the services of a docking station and/or a flotilla of shuttlecraft. In my previous post I outlined three applications for this approach (and one can easily think of others where it could have some use), so I would argue that the question is ultimately whether or not its economically and technically feasible to create a dedicated spacecraft for those purposes.

Sci-fi is chock-a-block with "jack of all trades" designs or "jack of all trades" weapons, and I find it both tiresome and unrealistic. When performance is king, you need to specialize. Nobody is out there trying to build a race car which doubles as a stretch limousine, despite the fact that you could probably think of many uses for this feature.

Performance is relevant in the context of looking at how well a specific design is meeting its objectives. Thus, the shift away from companies talking about how technically excellent their products are, towards how those products help the buyer accomplish their objectives.

Also, while a limousine doubling as a race car is an amusing take on compromised design, I would point out the recent spate of "crossover" vehicles which are designed to combine the best aspects of different classes of automobiles into a single product. You have cars and SUVs fused in products like the Ford Edge, and you have sports cars and luxury cars fused in the growing category of four-door coupes. Then there's the Maybach, which (according to one of their spokesman during the unveiling in 2002) could outperform some Ferraris with its 12 cylinder engine, but which is otherwise one of the largest and most luxurious passenger cars on the market. And I did once see a Masserati stretch limo being driven through downtown Burbank...

So in general while I agree with you that seriously compromising a design to achieve planetary landings would be a bad idea, I think that quite possibly, given the level of technology in Star Trek, and certainly given the apparent level of sophistication of Star Wars spacecraft, that in those environments, the level of compromise would not be serious.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2007-01-01 01:13pm

Braedley wrote:
Patrick Degan wrote:
Braedley wrote:As far as I can tell, the reason for Intrepid class ships being able to land is two part. 1: emergencies a la Star Trek: Generations. Since the saucer section doesn't detach (or at least hasn't been shown to be able to detach), there should be a mechanism for the ship to land, should it become necessary. This, of course would imply that the ship shouldn't be able to take off again, but that's beside the point. 2: Intrepids are designed (supposedly) to be deep space vessels. Sometimes this means months or even years away from space dock. The warp coils can't easily be overhauled in the middle of space, so the only other option would be to land the ship.
Unfortunately, an emergency landing situation is not likely one which will allow a nicely controlled descent. In fact, in one episode we see the ship actually crashing on a planetary surface (one of those nice little reset-button episodes, of course).

The other point actually makes no sense. If overhauling massive components like warp coils would not be easy in space, it would be impossible on a planetary surface. Try doing that sort of work in a 1g environment without shipyard facilities to manage the heavy lifting. And if an overhaul would not require actually removing any part of the warp drive, then landing the ship to do the work is redundant; you may as well just hang in orbit.
You give good points, so let me explain myself a little further. In an episode of Voyager, Janeway actually lands the ship in order to carry out a much needed warp coil overhaul. Shuttles are shown as being used as cranes, something which would probably need to be done if the overhaul were to take place in space anyways. So it comes down to the pros and cons of each location. Lets assume for the moment that one method of replacing the warp coils involves lifting the segments straight up out of the nacelles, as was shown in this particular episode.

So on a planet, more force needs to be exerted in order to remove the coils, but the removed coils can simply be placed on the ground next to the ship in order to be worked on. Workers also don't need environmental suits in order to perform the work. The presence of gravity also means that when the time comes to place the warp coils back into the nacelles, the coils just have to be lifted in a manner that will allow gravity to properly align them in the vertical direction. Then steps just have to be taken to rotate them into the proper orientation.

And... they can't use tractor beams while hanging in space to do any of this?

In space, everything needs to be tethered, or brought inside. The sections of plating that cover the nacelles need to be stored somewhere during this operation, and it's already been shown that the shuttle bays wouldn't be large enough for this, therefore, a tractor beam would need to be used at least periodically in order to keep the pieces from flying away for the week or so that it takes to overhaul the engines. More care also needs to be taken in order not to damage the coils when they are reinserted into the nacelles, as they can't simply be dropped in place. Notice how I haven't even mentioned performing the work on the coils. The work could be performed in space, but that's more tethering, enviro suits, etc. The work can't really be done in the shuttle bay, as active shuttle operations are still ongoing because they are needed as cranes. The only other option is to beam the segments into a cargo bay. Let me also remind everyone that we have no idea if the segments would fit inside either the shuttle bay or a cargo bay.

No, a tractor beam would not be needed to periodically keep the pieces from flying away; there is no reason for anything to simply fly away on its own from the ship once it's position relative to the ship is stabilised. The only reason anything would fly away is if momentum is imparted to it. Furthermore, doing this kind of work within a gravity well is only going to increase, not decrease, the chances of damage because of misalignment. You also overlook the fact that Federation envirosuits do have extravehicular manoeuvering units (ST:TMP) and that space workers have never required tethering due to their EMUs. Shuttlepods with tractors can also facilitate reinstallation of warp coils with a smooth alignment into the spaceframe.

To me it seems that performing this type of work in space is more trouble than it's worth.

That's because you're really not thinking this problem all the way through: moving large masses around in a gravity well is always going to be far more problematic than moving them around in zero-g.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2007-01-01 04:40pm

RThurmont wrote:So clearly, in the Star Trek universe, the question shifts to one of how powerful their propulsion systems are.

FYI if a ship can manage a sustained acceleration of more than 9.81 m/s^2 (1 G) then its engine is powerful enough to push it out of the gravity well of Earth. In practice if you were designing a landing-capable spacecraft you'd probably want an acceleration of at least 15-20 m/s^2 to give you a decent margin and allow you to take off from higher gravity planets.