Trek 09 Starfleet weapons, organization, etc. [Spoilers]

[Anguirus]

^ I believe the ship is actually called the Jellyfish.

I assume you refer to this image posted in the Size thread.

You assume incorrectly. I'm going from memory. I looked specifically the second time I watched and saw an NCC as well as a USS in subsequent shots.

Sorry that I can't prove it, but I suggest that you either watch the film again or wait for the DVD.

[erik_t]

I probably will be seeing it again, but I'm not so personally invested in the issue that I will watch unblinking

If you saw it in another frame, that's fine.

[JGregory32]

The more I think about the drill the less I think it was originally intended to be an actual drill. Nero claims his ship is a mining ship right? Then could one of the things they mine not be Gas Giants? It could have been originally built to be lowered into a Gas Giants atmosphere to a depth where gas concentrations and pressure are high enough to make mining viable. Nero could have modified the head into a drill in the 25 years before the attack on Vulcan.
It seems to make a little more sense this way, Miners on a ship might not know how to make super fantastic weapons but they know how to build and modify drilling equipment.
That's my two cents on the drill for what it's worth.

[General Zod]

The more I think about the drill the less I think it was originally intended to be an actual drill. Nero claims his ship is a mining ship right? Then could one of the things they mine not be Gas Giants? It could have been originally built to be lowered into a Gas Giants atmosphere to a depth where gas concentrations and pressure are high enough to make mining viable. Nero could have modified the head into a drill in the 25 years before the attack on Vulcan.
It seems to make a little more sense this way, Miners on a ship might not know how to make super fantastic weapons but they know how to build and modify drilling equipment.
That's my two cents on the drill for what it's worth.

Think about what you're saying here. You're saying you expect them to need a drill . . .something normally used on hard and rocky objects. . .against a gas giant?

[JGregory32]

Think about what you're saying here. You're saying you expect them to need a drill . . .something normally used on hard and rocky objects. . .against a gas giant?

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the boom that is physically attached to the ship was originally intended to gather gas from Gas Giants, in essence 'mine' them of natural and exotic substances. In the 25 years between arrival and the destruction of vulcan the boom is modified with some kind of emitter.
The boom and the ship look like they were designed together so the boom must have a purpose. As several people have pointed out making it a dedicated drilling platform makes no sense therefore it must have some other purpose. A method of collecting gasses where it would be inadvisable to take the ship seems slightly logical.

[General Zod]

Think about what you're saying here. You're saying you expect them to need a drill . . .something normally used on hard and rocky objects. . .against a gas giant?

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the boom that is physically attached to the ship was originally intended to gather gas from Gas Giants, in essence 'mine' them of natural and exotic substances. In the 25 years between arrival and the destruction of vulcan the boom is modified with some kind of emitter.
The boom and the ship look like they were designed together so the boom must have a purpose. As several people have pointed out making it a dedicated drilling platform makes no sense therefore it must have some other purpose. A method of collecting gasses where it would be inadvisable to take the ship seems slightly logical.

I fail to see how collecting gasses makes sense for something described as a mining ship. "Collecting gas" is not what most people would think of when you talk about mining unless you explicitly mention gases.

[JGregory32]

Shame on you Zod. How could you forget Cloud City and it's proud mining tradition?

I'll admit that mining a Gas Planet at first sounds a little odd but I seem to stumble across it every so often in sci-fi.

BTW Don't we still say we're mining oil and natural gas? Even though they're a liquid and a gas respectively we still use the same phrase.

[General Zod]

Shame on you Zod. How could you forget Cloud City and it's proud mining tradition?

I'll admit that mining a Gas Planet at first sounds a little odd but I seem to stumble across it every so often in sci-fi.

BTW Don't we still say we're mining oil and natural gas? Even though they're a liquid and a gas respectively we still use the same phrase.

Drilling for oil and gas is the general term. But that still implies we have to cut through something solid to get to it.

[JGregory32]

Well what term would you use for obtaining gasses from a Gas planet?

[General Zod]

Well what term would you use for obtaining gasses from a Gas planet?

No idea, but it certainly wouldn't be mining.

[tim31]

Harvesting, and even that's a misapplied term if you haven't actually cultivated the product.

[Oskuro]

Extraction

[TithonusSyndrome]

As for the Spock savior of the universe thing going on. Well here I think Spock was mistaken, I think the government did have evacuations going on, and did have their own team of scientists working round the clock on this. Spock's role is important because here he is acting as the Ambassador for the Federation and the Vulcan Science council. I think the Romulans knew his approach wouldn't work and were setting the stage to blame the destruction of the planet on the Federation to give the Romulan people an external enemy to focus on and save their own skin.

The thing that makes a lot of this bullshit backstory even more frustrating is the fact that Nimoy has long reserved the image of being concerned with Trek's legacy and unwilling to be a part of scripts he considers pandering and formulaic, and with this film even held carte blanche with the writers to demand that they go back and rewrite, but that was all pissed away. I don't expect Nimoy to know about how black holes work or anything, but even just lines like "threatened the whole galaxy" should've made him just say to Abrams on set "hey this is dumb and I'm saying something different."

[Darth Wong]

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the boom that is physically attached to the ship was originally intended to gather gas from Gas Giants, in essence 'mine' them of natural and exotic substances. In the 25 years between arrival and the destruction of vulcan the boom is modified with some kind of emitter.

So let me get this straight: you figure that a device which was originally designed to act as a giant straw could be "modified" into a device which can drill into the core of a planet? That's like saying that perhaps somebody modified a garage air compressor into a gigawatt-class laser.

The boom and the ship look like they were designed together so the boom must have a purpose. As several people have pointed out making it a dedicated drilling platform makes no sense therefore it must have some other purpose. A method of collecting gasses where it would be inadvisable to take the ship seems slightly logical.

Define "slightly logical".

[Darth Wong]

As for the Spock savior of the universe thing going on. Well here I think Spock was mistaken, I think the government did have evacuations going on, and did have their own team of scientists working round the clock on this. Spock's role is important because here he is acting as the Ambassador for the Federation and the Vulcan Science council. I think the Romulans knew his approach wouldn't work and were setting the stage to blame the destruction of the planet on the Federation to give the Romulan people an external enemy to focus on and save their own skin.

The thing that makes a lot of this bullshit backstory even more frustrating is the fact that Nimoy has long reserved the image of being concerned with Trek's legacy and unwilling to be a part of scripts he considers pandering and formulaic, and with this film even held carte blanche with the writers to demand that they go back and rewrite, but that was all pissed away. I don't expect Nimoy to know about how black holes work or anything, but even just lines like "threatened the whole galaxy" should've made him just say to Abrams on set "hey this is dumb and I'm saying something different."

Indeed. This is the same guy who went apeshit on Kim Cattrall for taking a nude picture of herself on the set.

[Nephtys]

Why can't the boom be assumed to be necessary for purposes of reducing atmospheric effects? It's pretty damn long, if it reaches far enough that Kirk and Sulu potentially could have hit ground in a minute or less of falling.

Now the spikes and scary bits, I laughed at that in the theater. We can probably ignore that, since the most logical conclusion I can think of involve those being there just in case dragons attack it.

In any case, why is it necessary to drill so deeply? Even if half-assedly drilling won't produce the same effect, even a very minor event based on the scale of what happened to Vulcan looks like it'll hose a habitable planet. Like if 1/50th of a chunk of the Earth just vanished, who knows what havoc that'd play on the ecosystem.

[Erik von Nein]

I want to know why they thought drilling into the bay was a good idea. Or why the drill wasn't flying about madly, since it didn't appear to have anything stabilizing it.

[Bounty]

I want to know why they thought drilling into the bay was a good idea.

Symbolism. When Narada arrives you see Nero scanning the surface and the HUD shows the Federation symbol as it marks San Francisco. He picked SF as a target because it's the absolute heart of the Federation.

[Nephtys]

I want to know why they thought drilling into the bay was a good idea. Or why the drill wasn't flying about madly, since it didn't appear to have anything stabilizing it.

So he can fake out the audience by *almost* hitting the Golden Gate Bridge.

Duh.

[Erik von Nein]

I want to know why they thought drilling into the bay was a good idea.

Symbolism. When Narada arrives you see Nero scanning the surface and the HUD shows the Federation symbol as it marks San Francisco. He picked SF as a target because it's the absolute heart of the Federation.

Well, yeah, but drilling (especially with a giant energy bean) into the bay would make it extremely difficult. In addition to the vaporization (or whatever) of the ground below the bay there's also the tons of water between the surface and the bottom, not to mention the water that'll flood into the area being drilled.

It'd be easier just to start vaporizing the federation H.Q., then dump the bomb into the hole where the H.Q. used to be.

[AMT]

And do we have some source for this claim about their policy, other than you?

Apparently not according to the Q&A. Withdrawn

[Connor MacLeod]

its convoluted, but given how the Red stuff is employed it seems to be triggered by certain conditions, and its likely those conditions (hot stuff undre pressure I'm guessing) affect its propogation/expansion. Maybe the hotter/more pressed the stuff is the better it works. Who knows. The weapon reminds me alot of the Point Singularity Projectile nonsense from Andromeda (and about as plausible, but what the hell.) They need to drill to get to the hot stuff, I'd guess. Maybe they can't trigger/sustain the reaction any other way? That might imply definite limitations on their power generation/fuel supply capabilities then, or maybe its just more efficient.

I'm also still convinced we shouldn't be trying to rationalize the "drill on a chain" as being part of the original specs of the design. They were in the alternate timeline for quite awhile, its quite likely they needed to jury rig things at some point (and the Drill, stupid as it is, would be more sensible as some sort of jury rigged solution than as a deliberate design decision I think.)

[Patrick Degan]

I want to know why they thought drilling into the bay was a good idea.

Symbolism. When Narada arrives you see Nero scanning the surface and the HUD shows the Federation symbol as it marks San Francisco. He picked SF as a target because it's the absolute heart of the Federation.

Well, yeah, but drilling (especially with a giant energy bean) into the bay would make it extremely difficult. In addition to the vaporization (or whatever) of the ground below the bay there's also the tons of water between the surface and the bottom, not to mention the water that'll flood into the area being drilled.

It'd be easier just to start vaporizing the federation H.Q., then dump the bomb into the hole where the H.Q. used to be.

Not only that, it would further justify Kirk getting the captaincy of the Enteprise under the circumstances: the people about to judge him for cheating on Kobayashi Maru along with the next four graduating classes of the Academy would all have bought the farm in one stroke.

[Questor]

Here's a thought: Uhura was addressed as lieutenant a few times in the movie.

Could the Academy be some kind of Grad School, rather than/as well as an undergrad institution like the academys we know?

That would also fit with Saavik being a lieutenant and taking the Maru as some kind of commanding officers school exercise. (I've read a little about similar schools in the USN, I think). That would also fit with McCoy going to some kind of OCS.

I guess my question is, would Kirk's promotion make more sense if he was already an officer (implied by the fact that he was considered qualified to serve on a starship) and the Kobiyashi Maru was part of some kind of post-graduate education for a rising star?

[Erik von Nein]

I don't think he was necessarily qualified to serve so much as they were desperately trying to fill out the crew requirements of any ships they had in the area with people who knew the functions well enough. Especially since they only thought of the mission to Vulcan as a humanitarian crisis.

Didn't they also refer to Chekov as an ensign?