Does space dock even make sense?

[Imperial528]

The problem is that a uniform ring around the planet does not exert gravitational attraction due to shell theorem*, and by extension is not attracted by the planet either. Spinning it will not do anything to prevent this.

*Shell theorem was first proven by Newton, but is easiest to explain with Gauss' law for gravity. The short of it is that inside of a uniform hollow shell of mass (effectively, a hollow shell that is gravitationally charged) the net gravitational force inside the shell is zero, because the distribution causes all forces to cancel. Thus, objects inside the shell do not exert gravitational forces on the shell surrounding them, either. I believe uniform ring might exert gravitational forces along its axis, which would draw things towards the central plane, though I haven't done the calculations. However, it will not exert any forces parallel to the central plane. Therefore a ring built around a planet will drift over time, eventually causing it to collide with the planet.

[bilateralrope]

I really can't understand why Starfleet does not have more Halo like ring stations like big enough to go around planets big. See Corellia of starwars for reference.

What need do they have for a station that huge ?

Because once you have mining/manufacture ing in space all you have to do is just keep adding to the station and you can reach mind boggling sizes for very little cost.

You still have to justify that cost.

The more station you have the more ships they can service.

They can service all the ships they have with the current stations.

It could also be one heck of a last line of defense.
A ring around a planet would give firing arcs in all directions and if they could make a bubble shield big enough they could cover the planet with it. It would protect and allow control over beaming shenanigans.

Problem is, that only defends a single planet. Say you put one round Earth. It won't defend colony worlds out on the edge of Federation space. It won't defend Vulcan. It won't even defend Mars.

But a fleet is mobile. It can move to respond to threats.

It's a good idea, but a little mad in scale but look at what we gain.

You gain one planet that is stupidly well defended. At the cost of having to move a shitload of material from other projects, like the defense of the rest of the Federation. You know, the parts of it more likely to be attacked because they are on the edge. So it still looks like a stupid idea.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Even in low orbit your ring would be ~45,000 km long in circumference and it would (assuming it needs to move at the same speed as other stuff in low orbit) have to make one full revolution every 90 minutes or so. That's a monumental amount of material needed and a tremendous amount of inertia. As someone else said, if they have the resources to build that, they should have waaaaay bigger fleets/ships than they actually do. As in "enough ships to drown the entire Borg collective in starships."

EDIT: Oops, missed the second page and previous replies. Also, their two most dangerous enemies are the Dominion and the Borg - the Borg, who have a number of technological advantages and the Dominion who possess (as per "By Inferno's Light") at least enoguh knowledge to build a star-killing protomatter bomb. Putting a giant defensive ring around Earth would just make any potential enemy think "hmm...ok, how else can we do this?" Like, say, a protomatter bomb into the Sun, destroying Earth. Or diverting a whole bunch of big asteroids towards Earth. That's just two things off the top of my head that the giant ring (which again requires an appalling large amount of resources, most likely approaching small-moon levels of mass needed) would be utterly useless.

[JI_Joe84]

The problem is that a uniform ring around the planet does not exert gravitational attraction due to shell theorem*, and by extension is not attracted by the planet either. Spinning it will not do anything to prevent this.

*Shell theorem was first proven by Newton, but is easiest to explain with Gauss' law for gravity. The short of it is that inside of a uniform hollow shell of mass (effectively, a hollow shell that is gravitationally charged) the net gravitational force inside the shell is zero, because the distribution causes all forces to cancel. Thus, objects inside the shell do not exert gravitational forces on the shell surrounding them, either. I believe uniform ring might exert gravitational forces along its axis, which would draw things towards the central plane, though I haven't done the calculations. However, it will not exert any forces parallel to the central plane. Therefore a ring built around a planet will drift over time, eventually causing it to collide with the planet.

Ok I yield that to you're greater understanding of gravity.

[JI_Joe84]

What need do they have for a station that huge ?

Because once you have mining/manufacture ing in space all you have to do is just keep adding to the station and you can reach mind boggling sizes for very little cost.

You still have to justify that cost.

The more station you have the more ships they can service.

They can service all the ships they have with the current stations.

It could also be one heck of a last line of defense.
A ring around a planet would give firing arcs in all directions and if they could make a bubble shield big enough they could cover the planet with it. It would protect and allow control over beaming shenanigans.

Problem is, that only defends a single planet. Say you put one round Earth. It won't defend colony worlds out on the edge of Federation space. It won't defend Vulcan. It won't even defend Mars.

But a fleet is mobile. It can move to respond to threats.

It's a good idea, but a little mad in scale but look at what we gain.

You gain one planet that is stupidly well defended. At the cost of having to move a shitload of material from other projects, like the defense of the rest of the Federation. You know, the parts of it more likely to be attacked because they are on the edge. So it still looks like a stupid idea.

Well if you're going to a colony world then you're going to have to accept certain risks/discomforts. After all it is a colony world.
Vulcan and others can build their own ring station or just rely on their fleets.
Earth is the center of attention for an alarmingly high number of super weapon attacks. This points to a need for greater security for the planet.
Shure more ships could do more in more places but how are you going to service them?
As for the cost, there should be more commerce going on than we see for a space power like the federation.
Make a portion of the ring a place where cargo ships can off load civilian stuff. Any thing from raw ore to people. From the ring they could just stay up there, living and working or transport to the surface.
It makes no sense to take raw ore to the surface when they are mined in space and you have space ships to build/maintain in space.
You also need a space for manufacturing those parts/ships. A station with plenty of room and gravity makes sense for this. Right?

[Gandalf]

You also seem to overlook that the ring around Corellia services a galaxy wide Republic/Empire. A galaxy of ships can get to and from there in decent time. Earth doesn't have that. It services the Federation, and the travel times are exhorbitant in comparison. So decentralisation makes way more sense.

As for ore processing, that is way more efficient to do onsite.

[Lord Revan]

You also seem to overlook that the ring around Corellia services a galaxy wide Republic/Empire. A galaxy of ships can get to and from there in decent time. Earth doesn't have that. It services the Federation, and the travel times are exhorbitant in comparison. So decentralisation makes way more sense.

As for ore processing, that is way more efficient to do onsite.

Earth is also not even the primary ship building location in the Sol system, that would be Utopia Planitia shipsyards in the orbit of Mars.

We know that fleets of less then a hundred capital scale ships seem to be the norm for the federation even for larger battles. There's not really a need for a large orbital ring like Correlia or Kuat(at least in the EU) have.

[bilateralrope]

Well if you're going to a colony world then you're going to have to accept certain risks/discomforts. After all it is a colony world.
Vulcan and others can build their own ring station or just rely on their fleets.
Earth is the center of attention for an alarmingly high number of super weapon attacks. This points to a need for greater security for the planet.
Shure more ships could do more in more places but how are you going to service them?
As for the cost, there should be more commerce going on than we see for a space power like the federation.
Make a portion of the ring a place where cargo ships can off load civilian stuff. Any thing from raw ore to people. From the ring they could just stay up there, living and working or transport to the surface.

Your willingness to fuck over colony worlds because they can't be defended by your expensive project, but are defended by the fleet you want to replace, doesn't help your case.

Constructing one of these around every major Federation planet just cranks up the cost.

How many attacks on Earth managed to do anything to the surface ?
The only one I can think of in the prime timeline was the Breen attack during the Dominion War. Both Borg attacks were stopped in space.

Starfleet does a good job of stopping the threats the Federation faces, and they weren't even building dedicated warships (except as prototypes) until the Dominion war. The Federation remained one of the major military powers in the Alpha Quadrant even without dedicated warships. So the Federation doesn't need more ships, certainly not enough to justify this ring.

What use does the ring have for commerce when the cargo can just be transported directly to its destination ?
As for why we see so few cargo ships, I'm thinking it's because replicators can create most things the average citizen would want, so there isn't much demand for commercial shipping.

It makes no sense to take raw ore to the surface when they are mined in space and you have space ships to build/maintain in space.
You also need a space for manufacturing those parts/ships. A station with plenty of room and gravity makes sense for this. Right?

The Federation already has ship manufacturing facilities in space. Mainly in orbit of mars (which your ring around Earth can't defend). But probably a few in other star systems. Even if they are only the facilities that were being used by a species until they joined the Federation.

[Jub]

Constructing one of these around every major Federation planet just cranks up the cost.

What cost? It should be well within the capacity of any faction in Star Trek to automate everything about building such a space station from the mining and refining of the raw materials to final assembly. The only real cost would be time, I'd say energy but Trek can't need energy overly much if they haven't bothered to build, or even start building, Dyson swarms around their stars yet.

You're arguing about a self-imposed scarcity here.

[bilateralrope]

Constructing one of these around every major Federation planet just cranks up the cost.

What cost? It should be well within the capacity of any faction in Star Trek to automate everything about building such a space station from the mining and refining of the raw materials to final assembly. The only real cost would be time, I'd say energy but Trek can't need energy overly much if they haven't bothered to build, or even start building, Dyson swarms around their stars yet.

You're arguing about a self-imposed scarcity here.

Huh ?

Sure, they don't need more energy than they currently have access to. But how does it follow that they would automatically have enough energy to build these rings ?

For the material cost, we are talking about dismantling some major object in the Sol system to get enough material. Which comes with the cost of upsetting people, especially if that object has people living on it.

[Jub]

Huh ?

Sure, they don't need more energy than they currently have access to. But how does it follow that they would automatically have enough energy to build these rings ?

For the material cost, we are talking about dismantling some major object in the Sol system to get enough material. Which comes with the cost of upsetting people, especially if that object has people living on it.

You always need more energy either to make exotic materials via atom smashing or simply to continue to expand your territory. Being able to build megastructures on command or move the entire solar system using your star as an engine are also bonuses to building a Dyson swarm around your star. That they haven't done so must mean they're either mentally deficient in some way or have already cracked infinite energy some other way. Take your pick.

Just the non-dwarf planetoids from the asteroid belt ought to be enough to build the ring. Or maybe disassemble a rocky moon or some other body that you'd basically have to inhabit a space station to live on anyway. There's plenty of mass in the solar system that won't really be missed and that enable to you do some really fun mega-engineering.

Really Trek should be living more like the culture than they are and there's no logical reason why they aren't doing so. Especially since the ideas required to do so have existed since the late 30's IRL. There's no excuse for Trek, or really most sci-fi, being as underdeveloped as they are.

[Esquire]

Oh, I don't know. 'It turns out there were hidden problems in this incredibly complex gigantic megastructure that made it not-actually-worth-doing' isn't that illogical. Maybe there's a weird subspace eddy that broke the first test section; maybe there's a non-Newtonian physics principle that only becomes obvious at solar-engineering scale which makes it prohibitively expensive to build; maybe the Romulans blew up all the plans and then they invented warp cores so it wasn't necessary anymore.

[Gandalf]

You also seem to overlook that the ring around Corellia services a galaxy wide Republic/Empire. A galaxy of ships can get to and from there in decent time. Earth doesn't have that. It services the Federation, and the travel times are exhorbitant in comparison. So decentralisation makes way more sense.

As for ore processing, that is way more efficient to do onsite.

Earth is also not even the primary ship building location in the Sol system, that would be Utopia Planitia shipsyards in the orbit of Mars.

We know that fleets of less then a hundred capital scale ships seem to be the norm for the federation even for larger battles. There's not really a need for a large orbital ring like Correlia or Kuat(at least in the EU) have.

Yeah, even if you consolidated all ship building in the Federation to Earth, with everywhere else being upkeep facilities, an Earth ring is going to be over two hundred thousand kilometres in circumference. I'm pretty sure that's enough for the whole Starfleet to park there comfortably while you built another one next to it.

[Jub]

Oh, I don't know. 'It turns out there were hidden problems in this incredibly complex gigantic megastructure that made it not-actually-worth-doing' isn't that illogical. Maybe there's a weird subspace eddy that broke the first test section; maybe there's a non-Newtonian physics principle that only becomes obvious at solar-engineering scale which makes it prohibitively expensive to build; maybe the Romulans blew up all the plans and then they invented warp cores so it wasn't necessary anymore.

The onus is on you to prove that any of your made up reasons actually prevented anything. Given that we know you have none, you can fuck right off.

Also, I said a swarm, not a shell or sphere. There's no real mega-engineering involved aside from calculating orbits and given that Trek has reactionless drives you can just use a combination of solar sails and engines to keep the stations in position. You also don't need plans that modern Earth doesn't already have theoretical design studies on so it's unlikely that a lack of plans is a serious issue. You'll have to do better to justify not swarming stars as a means of energy production.

Even the stellar ring, the largest megastructure I proposed, should hold up once we add in tensor fields. Even assembly should be easy either with tractor beaming the sections together or designing them to interlock and beaming them into place all at once to keep the acting forces balanced.

They have the tech to build things our modern understanding of physics say should be impossible and yet they don't because TV writers are generally ignorant and unwilling to write innovative sci-fi.

[Esquire]

Wanna dial that back a notch? I'm just saying that any number of things might have made this completely fictional universe the way it is for in-universe reasons, even though we all know the real efficient cause is that Paramount executives aren't physicists.

[Jub]

Wanna dial that back a notch? I'm just saying that any number of things might have made this completely fictional universe the way it is for in-universe reasons, even though we all know the real efficient cause is that Paramount executives aren't physicists.

Not specific to you, but if people are going to argue that a ring/space station/new starship costs too many resources or too much energy or whatever I'm going to point out how stupid that line of reasoning is. There's nothing we know of in-universe to prevent any faction in Trek from growing exponentially and building whatever they desire. Thus any argument against any given construction project must be one of social factors or stupidity.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Maybe there's a cultural element to it. What if orbital rings are associated with very militaristic cultures, like the Promellians, who would have been known to most nonhuman Founding Members, as well as the Deltan, Rhaandrites, Zakdorn and other Fed members. Humans would simply follow this archaic prejudice and avoid building any structures that might trigger their allies. The Klingons are just canonically stupid, so that's why they don't have any.

[Jub]

Maybe there's a cultural element to it. What if orbital rings are associated with very militaristic cultures, like the Promellians, who would have been known to most nonhuman Founding Members, as well as the Deltan, Rhaandrites, Zakdorn and other Fed members. Humans would simply follow this archaic prejudice and avoid building any structures that might trigger their allies. The Klingons are just canonically stupid, so that's why they don't have any.

Has there ever been a historical example where a nation didn't build infrastructure because of another culture having done so? I can't think of anything like that in human history.

[Sea Skimmer]

No question you would need enclosed space docks. For radiation protection of work crews, after all said workers might spend whole careers working in open space, retention of lost tools, protection of key systems (while taken apart) from long range spying, micrometeorite protection and a couple other reasons.

But you could get basically all of this from a double sided sheet metal wall framed around some small stringers. It certainly wouldn't need to be elaborate.

And the idea of directly building the space dock inside of a major space base, as the Federation does, is terminally stupid for reasons that literally became a major plot point in TNG. If the damn ship explodes, which it might considering its powered by anti matter and contains hundreds of high yield weapons, it will destroy or at least badly damage the entire base.

In real life we disarm warships, or at least download the most dangerous stuff, before we put them into major yard periods, but the Trek Space Bases seem to have no provisions for external docking at all. The DS9 station while not amazing, would be vastly safer as a base for armed warships.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Maybe there's a cultural element to it. What if orbital rings are associated with very militaristic cultures, like the Promellians, who would have been known to most nonhuman Founding Members, as well as the Deltan, Rhaandrites, Zakdorn and other Fed members. Humans would simply follow this archaic prejudice and avoid building any structures that might trigger their allies. The Klingons are just canonically stupid, so that's why they don't have any.

Has there ever been a historical example where a nation didn't build infrastructure because of another culture having done so? I can't think of anything like that in human history.

Starfleet famously did not build warships for hundreds of years. They let their ideology overcome practicality a number of times. I could easily see them avoiding certain structures that would seem too military to some of their member species.

In real life, if I recall, the Hind helicopter was built the way it was because Soviet doctrine at the time said all helicopters had to carry passengers. Even attack helicopters.

[Jub]

Starfleet famously did not build warships for hundreds of years. They let their ideology overcome practicality a number of times. I could easily see them avoiding certain structures that would seem too military to some of their member species.

In real life, if I recall, the Hind helicopter was built the way it was because Soviet doctrine at the time said all helicopters had to carry passengers. Even attack helicopters.

What does any of this have to do with not building useful infrastructure? You can talk about military hardware design or, in the case of the UFP, lack thereof but what does this have to do with building a rather useful orbital ring?

Once again I ask you to show me a historical example of a nation refusing to build infrastructure because another nation whose ideology they disagree with already built it.

[bilateralrope]

Starfleet famously did not build warships for hundreds of years. They let their ideology overcome practicality a number of times. I could easily see them avoiding certain structures that would seem too military to some of their member species.

In real life, if I recall, the Hind helicopter was built the way it was because Soviet doctrine at the time said all helicopters had to carry passengers. Even attack helicopters.

What does any of this have to do with not building useful infrastructure? You can talk about military hardware design or, in the case of the UFP, lack thereof but what does this have to do with building a rather useful orbital ring?

Once again I ask you to show me a historical example of a nation refusing to build infrastructure because another nation whose ideology they disagree with already built it.

The Federation didn't build warships for centuries because they didn't need them. They became a major military power without them. Megastrctures for energy generation look very similar to me. Sure, they will generate a shitload of energy. But the Federation already has plenty of energy production for what it wants to do. They have no need for more.

So please show us your evidence for the Federation having some way to use that energy in a useful manner. Oh and, since the Federation doesn't like to expand by conquest, military uses don't count, unless you show an existing threat that can't be dealt with by the Federations current means but could be dealt with if they just threw more power into their existing tech.

[Jub]

Megastrctures for energy generation look very similar to me. Sure, they will generate a shitload of energy. But the Federation already has plenty of energy production for what it wants to do. They have no need for more.

That's nonsense, given that they still have scarcity and have had issues rapidly building up new ships when faced with a threat. You always need more energy and should always be expanding. To fail to do so means that you need more energy and material harvesting.

So please show us your evidence for the Federation having some way to use that energy in a useful manner. Oh and, since the Federation doesn't like to expand by conquest, military uses don't count, unless you show an existing threat that can't be dealt with by the Federations current means but could be dealt with if they just threw more power into their existing tech.

The Federation doesn't need to expand by conquest, you idiot. If they merely colonized the stars within 50 light years of Earth they'd already have 134 systems rather than the 150 systems in a federation of 8,000 light years that is canon. If they Dyson swarmed these stars they'd be able to support trillions of sentient beings around each star rather than the pathetic 985 billion they have around 150. If they expanded that 50 LY shell around the earth to 100 LY they'd hold 511 systems and be easily able to move from system to system as they wish.

To spread out, to insist on only colonizing Earthlike planets the UFP creates tensions by claiming territory they don't need and can't currently fill. They're wasteful elitists only wanting to live on the choicest of planets around the choicest of stars while being too useless to properly use the resources they should have access too. They stifle their own stated goals of peace and harmony by being wasteful and cause wars because of it.

Is that not reason enough to fully utilize the space you already have rather than spreading out needlessly?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I thought the 150 worlds only referenced the home worlds of member races. There are plenty of tiny little colonies we see onscreen. The Crystalline Entity would have been a bigger deal if it was harvesting 1/150th of the Federation at a time every other year.

As for why they don't build orbital rings-- they don't need to? Besides, how would using millions of ships' worth of material to build not ships help the Federation have more ships right now?

As for dyson swarms or whatever, do we know how they make all the antimatter for their ships? Perhaps they can use some sort of transporter effect or catalyst to make matter into antimatter, and thus have no need of more power taken from stars. We certainly never hear of power shortages caused by a lack of antimatter or fuel for their fusion reactors.


Besides, my main point was that the Federation would shoot themselves in the foot to avoid even the appearance of becoming a military power. A lot of their seemingly oblivious policies no doubt rest on that foundation.

[Jub]

I thought the 150 worlds only referenced the home worlds of member races. There are plenty of tiny little colonies we see onscreen. The Crystalline Entity would have been a bigger deal if it was harvesting 1/150th of the Federation at a time every other year.

Even so, they're not exactly using the space they have very well.

As for why they don't build orbital rings-- they don't need to? Besides, how would using millions of ships' worth of material to build not ships help the Federation have more ships right now?

If you can build a ring in a reasonable time scale it means massively upgrading your mining and production infrastructure. That capacity can be used for things other than just rings which means greater ability to produce anything, not just said ring. I assumed that much would be obvious.

As for dyson swarms or whatever, do we know how they make all the antimatter for their ships? Perhaps they can use some sort of transporter effect or catalyst to make matter into antimatter, and thus have no need of more power taken from stars. We certainly never hear of power shortages caused by a lack of antimatter or fuel for their fusion reactors.

We don't exactly spend many episodes focusing on Star Fleet logistics, for all we know that could be the bottleneck keeping your average citizen from owning their own space ship Star Wars style. Plus, Stars could end up as small potatoes next to collecting energy from dumping matter in black holes.