Flare Sci-Fi Forums: McKinley

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

What's the purpose of McKinley's 8 arms?

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

McKinley's 8 arms are docking arms, IMHO. They connect to a ship's docking ports.

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Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :

Though I can't fathom needing eight docking arms unless there's some sort of emergency and the crew needs to evacuate as quickly as possible.

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I'm not sure that they connect to the docking ports (at least not all of them). I think I've seen pictures of McKinley wrapped around the E-D like a claw (in fact wasn't there a pic of that in All Good Things?) Why it does this? I don't know. Perhaps to give service craft and technicians easier access to the ship and hull.

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

http://www.sdce.de/technik/raumstationen/56/oben.gif http://www.sdce.de/technik/raumstationen/56/steuerbord.gif http://www.sdce.de/technik/raumstationen/56/vorne.gif http://www.sdce.de/technik/raumstationen/56/hinten.gif

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Posted by The Vorlon (Member # 52) on :

An example...
http://sapphireeclipse.3dworlds.org/Renderings/[email protected]

They seem to just secure the ship in place. Granted, they never seem to directly touch the hull, perhaps they are used in helping the ship maintain it's own position (some of of visual reference?) or as an emergency system to hold the ship, should it's RCS system fail... They could also be used for positioning large pieces of superstructure during construction of a new ship (like giant shuttle arms?)...

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Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

They could just use tractor beams to hold the ship in place

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Posted by The Vorlon (Member # 52) on :

They could, but what if power is lost, for some reason? (anomoly, alien attack, etc.) Having something solid is very failsafe, plus saves energy...

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Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :

Wait, the Enterprise-C was built at McKinley?

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

Yes, according to the TNG:TM the E-C was built there.

I hope this new Okuda-book will show us the E-C's dedication plaque to confirm this.

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Posted by spyone on :

The Arms seem to come in close to the mooring tractors on the Galaxy Class. I suspect that these mooring tractors are not able to work at very long range, so the arms provide something close by. While the RCS system could hold the ship in place, this structure allows the RCS system to be taken off line. In fact, the arms probably have their own tractors, so the ship can shut down all power if nessicary.

We have seen shots of Utopia Planetia that have frames like the McKinley Station one, so it is possable that the single frame the Enterprise was docked to in that episode was NOT Earth Station McKinley, but rather was a single structure of a larger complex.

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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

My guess is that the Spider assembly as seen on TNG is simply a separate part of McKinley. What I'm trying to say is that McKinley is not necessarily a single structure. There may be a central facility for Earth Station McKinley itself, as well as separate facilities for Warp Engine Manufacturing, one that creates the hulls of these starships, one that does repairs, yadda yadda yadda, and of course, those "Spider Assemblies".

As for the claw here's a possible theory: The claw extensions fold inwards in order to keep the ship safely secure to the dock in order to facilitate repairs, upgrades, and the such. Otherwise, a very large Tractor Beam would be required to keep the ship in place, which would absorb a lot of power. There are possibly many smaller Tractor beams in those claws, but they take significantly less power than Larger beams.

Also observe that the facilities are in an orbit around Earth. Anything can dislodge ships from their facilities and send them crashing into Earth if they are only kept in place by a Tractor Beam. My guess is that the Claws will prevent this from happening. I can also speculate that each spider assembly has its own propulsion system in order to keep the facilities in synchronized orbit.

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[This message has been edited by Tahna Los (edited July 06, 2000).]

Posted by The Vorlon (Member # 52) on :

Certainly, McKinley Station is a collection of a dozen or so orbital docks, just like The San Francisco Yards is not likely composed soley of the drydock that the E-nil was refitted in... The E-B's drydock from Generations is also part of SFY, and the E-E was most likely also built in a box-type drydock at SFY.

The confusing part is the name, McKinley STATION does imply only one. Perhaps it's actually McKinley Yards, and that was A McKinley station, one of many...

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I'm not all that sure that any sort of station-keeping measures are really needed except in emergency situations. One something starts moving in space it keeps moving in the same way until something hits it. Once the ship is aligned with the position and rotation of the station, it shouldn't need to be held in place by anything. Though, here's a thought: when we saw the Ent-B in it's box, there was a substatial mooring coming from the top of the box and connecting to the aft saucer section I believe. Maybe there is a similar device on the central portion of these spiders that connect with a more substantial part of the ship.

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Posted by Basill on :

The Vorlon wrote:

"The confusing part is the name, McKinley STATION does imply only one. Perhaps it's actually McKinley Yards, and that was A McKinley station, one of many.."

I always assumed that Mckinley was a large grouping of docks like San Francisco Yards or Utopia Planetia Fleet Yards. But now that you mention it "Earth Station Mckinley" as Riker called it in BOBW II, does seem to imply a single facility. Perhaps Mckinley station is just one dock that is part of the larger San Francisco Yards. Although I prefer the many Mckinley units theory, I am no longer sure it jibes. thoughts...

Basil

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Posted by Joshua Bell (Member # 327) on :

>>>
One something starts moving in space it keeps moving in the same way until something hits it. Once the ship is aligned with the position and rotation of the station, it shouldn't need to be held in place by anything.
<<<

That would be true in open space, but the situation is quite different in planetary orbit. The linear velocity of an orbit is dependent on the distance from the center of gravity of the object being orbited, and does not correlate to an angular velocity. Objects in lower orbits must travel faster than those in higher orbits.

As an example, to if you are in a ship in orbit at 1000km and wish to catch up with something ahead of you in the same orbit, you do the following: First, fire thrusters *ahead* of you to slow down. This will cancel some of your orbital momentum, and you literally fall into a lower orbit. But your new orbit is lower, so you orbit faster - catching up with the target. Once you're close you fire your *aft* thrusters to speed up, which boosts you into a hire orbit - where you orbit more slowly and can dock with the target.

What does that have to do with these space stations? Well, even a difference of a few meters is significant. The strain on a large object in space - which spans several different orbital velocities - is non-negligible. These are called tidal forces. See "Dragon's Egg" by Robert L. Forward for the more extreme example of orbiting a neutron star, where these tidal force must be compensated for.

(As an aside, this is one of the reasons why shuttle astronauts experience microgravity, not zero-gravity. A shuttle-borne crystal growing experiment will have very different results than a crystal experiment in deep space or in free-fall towards the Earth or the sun.)

In the case of Earth Station McKinley, since its center of mass looks to be offset by tens of meters from the center of mass of the ship, the two objects will tend to diverge, meaning energy (or structure capable of resisting the strain) must be used to keep them together.

A physical contact at a few brief points along the hull might be enough - if both structures are composed of super-resilient materials (which they presumably are). Federation gravity technology or inertial damping fields might be enough to compensate for this, but some magic must be invoked.

Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

"Perhaps Mckinley station is just one dock that is part of the larger San Francisco Yards"

But then "San Francisco Yards" would be on the dedication plaques of ships, which were built at McKinley.

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Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :

Here are my thoughts on McKinley:

It was mentioned as a repair facility in TNG, yet Voyager was built there. We saw the facility in Redemption because of the Sutherland, yet the ship was docked in a different configuration of the drydock we saw the Enterprise-D in.

I think that the Earth Station McKinley facility, as the TNG Tech Manual places it, is a facility with many drydocks and repair facilities.

Okay, you can begin to take my thoughts apart now...

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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

The Claws probably have some form of docking clamps or another. I will also point out that you can't simply access the ship through one door just to make repairs. Having only one port means that unless the facility starts generating power for Transporters, you're going to get a big bottleneck of personel in that single docking area.

As for Tractor beams, they are probably activated in low power in order to maintain the structural integrity and to make sure the ship is locked in place. Situations may request that the Tractor Beams be set to a higher setting when, say, the Spider Assembly needs to move the ship to a different area to be retrofitted with its Warp Engines.

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Thanks to Joshua Bell for that explanation. I stand corrected. Though this does bring up an interesting point: If it is so hard and presumably energy intensive to keep these two structures together, why not build ship yards in interplanetary spacewhere differences in orbitable speeds would be far less? I suppose building them in planetary orbit is one sure way to make sure that they will move as the solar system moves through the galaxy...

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Posted by Joshua Bell (Member # 327) on :

Re: building ships in places other than planetary orbit

Yes, it would be easier to build them either in solar orbit or a much further orbit than is shown (e.g. geostationary orbit) where the tidal forces are negligible. In those cases, a dropped tool will merely remain in place, rather than quickly moving away in its new and quite different orbit.

Re: planetary orbit so they keep up with the solar system

Not necessary. They can be in solar orbit and will dragged along with the rest of the solar system. Failing that, they can be merely orbiting the galactic core just like the sun is. Of course the sun is also bobbing up and down within the galactic plane and not moving in a simple elliptical orbit, but that's probably too slow to be noticable over the liftime of a space station.

Keeping them in planetary orbit is a good idea, though, if the cost to maintain structural cohesion is less than the cost to transport goods from low orbit to high orbit. If they can only beam materials and personnel to low orbit, the benefits might outweigh the costs.

Also, as I alluded to before, the mere fact that Federation starships, with their gangly nacelles and pylons, aren't pulled apart in low orbit means the Feds are able to compensate for these tidal forces. A low level IDF or SIF may do the trick.

We can turn this around and use it for a reason to have such elaborate spaceframes around vessels under construction. Perhaps they're generating compensatory gravity fields to produce true zero-g conditions within transporter range of the planetary surface?

Posted by Sunspot (Member # 77) on :

I thought Voyager was built at Utopia Planitia... ("Relativity")?

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Posted by Trip Tucker (Member # 297) on :

I think Voyager was only launched from the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards, not built there.

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

Voyager's plaque says Earth Station McKinley.

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Built at McKinley. fitted out at UP.

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Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :

There is the same problem with the Defiant:
plaque: Antares Fleet Yards
Sisko: Utopia Planitia

Or the E-B:
plaque: nothing!!!
TNG-TM: Antares Fleet Yards
Generations: Sol-System, maybe San Francisco FY

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Perhaps Sisko "helped design it" at Utopia Planitia, then sent his designs via email to Antares Fleet Yards for execution?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :

Meaning the Defiant was designed at Utopia Planitia, but the actual construction at Antares, Timo?

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Exactly - or, better still, design work at the big Starfleet design center of UP, but construction work at one of the many facilities of the Antares Fleet Yards corporation, in this case its Bajoran Sector facility.

To further extrapolate on the diversity of dockyard naming:

McKinley Fleet Yards might be named after Earth Station McKinley (it inself named after a guy or gal called McKinley, probably, since why name it after Mt. McKinely when it can't really be synchronized with the location of this off-equator mountain anyway), but would include numerous smaller construction units in the vicinity, or even in other star systems. San Francisco Fleet Yards would be an older corporation named after the city instead of a space station. Utopia Planitia yards would in turn be named after the geological feature, instead of a city or a station, because the surface components would be located in that geological area.

So the naming wouldn't be all that systematic. Instead, there would be various traditions and trade names in use. Most of the "Yards" we hear about wouldn't really be physical locations, but subcontractor corporations for Starfleet, only named after physical locations.

Timo Saloniemi