This is topic A smattering of tech observations from Cold Front (minor $) in forum Starships & Technology at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.


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Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
Wow. Cool episode. Yeah.

Anyway, a few things:

  • Engineering is fairly well-established to be on C-deck at the back of the saucer, and the various parts of the warp core are established through dialogue to be what we thought they were.

  • We see Enterprise dock with another decent-sized ship through the docking port on the side of the saucer. Nifty-doodle.

  • I can't say I've noticed before that those two bay doors on the top of the saucer actually appear to have equivalent egress doors on the saucer underside. There's also "NX-01"s painted on the underside of the saucer in the same places the NCC-1701 had them (ie one on the starboard side facing aft and one on the port side facing forward).

  • Silik crawls into the ship's guts somewhere on B-deck (on a schematic Tucker points somewhere a little aft of the bridge) en route to "Launch Bay 2." At this point in the episode, I got the impression they were referring to the doors I just mentioned that are port and starboard in the saucer. Anyway, he's confronted by Archer in a space somewhere near there, and then heads up through a hole and eventually into the control room of the launch bay. Said launch bay is of course the same set as the one we've seen every week, though there are no shuttlepods in place and instead we see pads 3 and 4 empty. Silik opens one of the two and jumps out (decompressing the room in the process), and the VFX sequence of him falling down to a waiting Suliban pod doesn't blatantly show which part of the ship he fell out of, although the implication is the main bay at the ass end of the saucer. My best attempt to figure this all out? Launch Bay 2 is in fact the space immediately ahead or behind of Launch Bay 1, with the former hosting Pads 3 and 4 and the latter hosting Pads 1 and 2. The two shuttlepods are normally kept in Launch Bay 1; Bay 2 is kept reserved for guest spacecraft. The problem is that the main shuttle parking space in that bay appears to be on E-deck, with the control room and gangways on D-deck. (And, one assumes, the Warp Core slightly forwards and a deck above that.) How Silik's B-deck access works with all this is kinda iffy. Additionally, the other saucer shuttlebays (if they are indeed that) aren't much better options. For starters, the set we saw had two doors in the floor (as opposed to one) and no large honking door in the ceiling. They'd theoretically be three decks high, encompassing C, D, and E decks, therefore also making them a wee problem for fitting with the dialogue and Trip's MSD-like schematic.

  • Crewmen live in smallish cabins with no windows and share a bunk with a companion. Daniels' cabin is E14, presumably putting it on E-deck.

  • There's a door or exit or something on the bridge on the starboard side near the front. It may well connect with a hallway running along (but outside) the starboard side of the bridge which terminates at those steps linking the bridge and the Ready Room (I thought I spotted such a passageway on one of those Entertainment Tonight-type videos some months ago)

    [ November 28, 2001: Message edited by: The_Tom ]


     
    Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
     
    The_Tom, I ripped B.E. for posting a thread about the ep when one already existed ... and indeed, while the points you bring up are very good (actually, mind-boggling), you couldn't have posted them in Mark's thread? Tsk.

    I don't know if we can say for sure that *all* enlisted guys' quarters look like that. Certainly, the Master Chief of the ship probably has his own cabin. Depending on where they're located, some crew might also have small windows or what-not.
     


    Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
     
    Two can play at the anal game, Jeff

    Mark's is about the Time travel side of things. Mine is about the show's new revelations about the ship. So nyah.
     


    Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
     
    You can play the anal game with yourself, The_Tom, but, uh, thanks anyway?


     


    Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
     
    I'm with Tom. We haven't even said time travel here ye-- crap.

    -Anyway, I'm with you on all points. As this is essentially a bottle show, we end up seeing a lot more of the ship than we have to date, including the corridor set, the consoles outside of engineering, some sort of equipment room with an access port in the ceiling, the inside of the lauch bay control room, and the airlock/docking port set. This last one will likely see some use as alien ships come-a-docking.

    -The corridor Reed exits the bridge has a matching one on the other side - we don't really know where it goes, but given how the bridge sits on the external shots we see, and where the ready room is, my guess is that the door Reed went through leads to a gangway down to B-Deck. the portside corridor probably does the same thing, or there might be room for the hallway to lead to an auxilliary entrance for the turboshaft, or to match up with wherever that door portside aft of the situation room goes.

    -Did anyone notice the crewman rank thingies were back too? This time, it was that roundish thing with only one bar to its right. Methinks someone actually put thought into making the enlisteds rank system make sense for once.

    -Also, the Pre-E has 50,000 movies in its database, though the best it could find for movie night was "Attack of the Killer Androids". Hm.

    -Chef still kicks ass. Hello, children!

    -Anyone notice that Archer spends practically no time in his chair? He's almost always walking around the bridge instead of commanding stuff from his appointed place.

    -Re: Engineering location. Yes, it's most definitely in the saucer, though the way Tucker points it out it's squishes into the starbard side of the ship, which makes no sense.

    -Hey, didn't they say there were several ships in the nebula? What happened to the rest of them? Could one of them have been with Daniels' plan, as Silik said?

    Mark

    [ November 28, 2001: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]


     
    Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
     
    Two more things that I missed:

    -The rifles are back, as mentioned in another thread somewhere. After checking my grab from "Fight or Flight" I think they're the same ones as before.

    -Tucker mentioned something about the warp drive using "gravimetric distortion" ? Perhaps they're retconning Trek tech to match up with our current thinking of "real" warp drives as outlined by that Welsh guy whose name escapes me?

    [ November 28, 2001: Message edited by: The_Tom ]


     
    Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
     
    How I see the deck plan of the Enterprise NX-01:

    Deck A-Bridge, Situation Room
    Deck B-Top deck of engineering
    Deck C-Main deck of engineering
    Deck D-Top deck of shuttlebay, Airlock (starboard)
    Deck E-Main deck of shuttlebay, Crew Quarters, Mess Hall

    I have no trouble with the sequence of Silik. We weren't shown his progression from that room at J-38 to Launch Bay 2. He may have made several detours to get to that bay, detours we weren't shown for reasons of time compression.
     


    Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
     
    Well, it's not the fact that Silik could have made some more progress offscreen as the fact that he picked wiggling through a port on B deck to be the easiest way to get to a facility two and three decks down.

    The docking port's on E deck, by the way.
     


    Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
     
    What's this J-38 thing, though? In theory, the ship could have ten decks, but the shuttlebay ought to be up from deck J, not down. Was a location specified as J-38, really? If so, then we can't assume E-14 necessarily means a cabin on E deck, either...

    In any case, we seem to have learned more of the ship in this episode than in all the other post-pilot episodes put together. Heck, at this point of the respective first seasons, we knew practically nothing about the E-D or DS9 or Voyager's internal layout, let alone technical details of their inner workings.

    Timo Saloniemi
     


    Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
     
    Well, there is an observation window placed a deck below the drop bay, and a little forward. It is possible this is the room J-38.
     
    Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
     
    Just a note: when the shuttle pods have dropped from the ship in past episodes, you can clearly see four launch doors on the underside of the ship. This seems to match up very well with your description of the launch bay set (I haven't seen the ep yet) but I'm still a little puzzled by the fact that there were no pods in those slots. The pods have always dropped from the forward two launch doors indicating that that is where they are stored.

    I dunno. I'll wait until I see it. Maybe that will clear my head.
     


    Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
     
    I think it was established earlier that Enterprise had only two shuttles ...

    ... it could just be my imagination, tho

    $$$ minor for upcoming new eps ... $$$

    $

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    In a future episode, Enterprise returns to Jupiter station to outfit with new plasma weapons of some type. Maybe in addition to launching without all their armaments, they also launched without all their shuttles.
     


    Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
     
    I dunno - those empty bays have proven useful on at least two occasions, notably when they captured that Suliban cell ship. I think that they only have two pods, with possibly a third on standby in a machine shop or something.

    I also think the grappler gadget is actually a module attached to the launch arm, that is locked on and deployed as necessary. It would make sense to keep at least one bay empty for visiting or additional unplanned craft.

    And hey, who knows? One of the big tech complaints in Voyager is their unlimited shuttle count and lack of an explanation thereto - perhaps they're keeping that in mind. IIRC, the original Voyager bible stated that she had only two shuttles (Odd, since the smaller E-Nil supposedly had four). Then again, the shuttle complement or breakdown has never been explained in *any* canon evidence, so...

    Mark
     


    Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
     
    How did Archer managed to survive the decompression? He should be dead right now.
     
    Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
     
    He held his breath.
     
    Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
     
    Weren't we supposed to be seeing some sort of Event Hoizon decommpresion effect with him?
     
    Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
     
    I think they've probably got a third pod stashed away somewhere...at least, I think it would make sense if they did. It seems like you'd want a backup in addition to your two "on call" pods. If they don't have a third one, my guess is that they at least have enough parts to build one.

    Decompression hasn't ever really been done all that realistically in Trek, I don't think. It's not just a lack of oxygen involved. The pressure and temperature changes would almost certainly be fatal. But then, I'm no expert.

    Reminds me of the Stargate ep where they were trying to rescue Teal'c and O'Niell from a run away death glider and they had to jetison into space before the ring transportrs could grab them. But it was ok because it was "only for a few seconds"... I never really bought that.
     


    Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
     
    re: Engineering

    Well, there goes my theory about Engineering actually being on the Lido Deck...

    Re: Archer

    Ya, he'd be dead.
     


    Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
     
    Everything I've read about being exposed to vaccum suggested that you could survive for as long as you could go without oxygen, but depending on where you were you might have a really bad sunburn. Probably some bruising from burst capilaries, but nothing too bad for the brief time Archer was exposed. It's also better to expel your breath than to try to hold it, so as to lessen the pressure problem.

    [ November 29, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]


     
    Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
     
    I would have suspect that there'd be a good deal of radiation in an area like that, shouldn't Archer have caught a few rads when the doors opened?

    You exhale when faced with a vacuum, otherwise your lungs explodes. Or so they say.
     


    Posted by mrneutron (Member # 524) on :
     
    quote:
    Originally posted by Ryan McReynolds:
    Everything I've read about being exposed to vaccum suggested that you could survive for as long as you could go without oxygen, but depending on where you were you might have a really bad sunburn. Probably some bruising from burst capilaries, but nothing too bad for the brief time Archer was exposed. It's also better to expel your breath than to try to hold it, so as to lessen the pressure problem.

    [ November 29, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]


    I think 2001 got it right, and it agrees with what you say. Remember Dave Bowman blasting the hatch on his pod and blasting himself into the Discovery airlock? Everything I've read indicates that you could survive in a vaccum for a while, but it would be a very unpleasant way to go if you didn't get some pressure back real fast.
     


    Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
     
    In TNG's "Disaster," we see Dr. Crusher and LaForge decompressing the cargo bay. They survived (but barely). Dr. Crusher also explained the consequences of being in a vacuum. If I recall correctly, there's a great force on the lungs to exhale, bursting of the surface capilleries of exposed skin, and disorientation from the lack of oxygen to the brain. When it comes to television and movies, they're still confused on what happens in to the human body in a vacuum. Knight Rider, for instance, portrays it as causing the body to explode. Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Event Horizon have shown it to be tolerable for a short while.
     
    Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
     
    J-38 wasn't mentioned in the episode (besides, that would imply J-deck, which is about two stories below the sensor dome). No idea where t.e. pulled it out of. Silik snuck into the ship's guts at Service Junction 59 on B deck, which Tucker pointed out on the first canonical side-cutaway we've seen (which looked pretty damn close to Bernd's).
     
    Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
     
    Might be interesting: Human exposure to vacuum
     
    Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
     
    It would be physically impossible for Archer to not only have held on to the gantry against the force of the vacuum, but to pull himself up from a hanging position. Likewise, it would have been impossible for Bev and Geordi to hang on to that ladder or whatever it was.
     
    Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
     
    Alien spoilers
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    At the end of the movie, when Lt. Ripley sends the alien into deep space, she fastens herself into her chair with a harness. After harnessing herself, she opens the life pod's doors. The force of this action can be seen as she is nearly torn from the deck from the ship's interior. I think this and 2001: A Space Odyssey are the most accurate, speaking as a hypothesis, as to what happens when the interior of a ship is exposed to space. Thankfully, no astronaut has ever had to face this situation in the past decades of space flight.

    [ November 29, 2001: Message edited by: targetemployee ]


     
    Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
     
    We might also give some credit to Trek, and specifically "The Naked Now". Thankfully, we did not see the scene where the bridge crew of the Tsiolkovsky was ejected into space, but Data did make it clear they were "blown" out, not "sucked".

    What is trying to pull you into space is the expansion of the air that is behind your back when you face the vacuum. If you are close to a wall, the force will be negligible, as in the Trek cases of "Covenant" (where the victim was pressed flat against first the inner door, then the floor) and "Disaster" (where the victims stood close to the inner wall, and the cross section of the bay was so huge that air could easily escape past them. And once the air is gone, so is the force that might shove you out.

    Even in "Cold Front", I suspect hanging on to a railing would be significantly more plausible than hanging on to the wing of a flying aircraft, James Bond style. And people can "walk" (or crawl)on aircraft wings in real life, climbing up from the cockpit to the wingtop support pole and back in an airshow spectacle. Fighting air resistance might not be quite as hard as it seems. Not that I'd try...

    Timo Saloniemi
     


    Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
     
    Didn't he only pull himself up after the pressure had been equalized? The launch bay was sealed, so once all the air had flowed out, he wouldn't have had a problem moving about.

    But still must be a pretty strong guy to have held on as long as he did, as well pull himself through the exit doors as he did. I wouldn't call it 'impossible' by any stretch.

    -MMoM
     


    Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
     
    J-37 was a piece of circuitry, not a room. Just like that L-47 (the first 47 in ENT, IIRC) in "Fortunate Son".
     
    Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
     
    Y'know, come to think of it, there's really no difference between being "blown" and "sucked" (commence giggling...cease giggling). I mean, when you use a straw to drink something, you'd say you were "sucking". However, all you're doing is creating a vacuum.

    So, the liquid gets "blown" into the vacuum of your mouth just like crewmen get "blown" into the vacuum of space.

    Or, the liquid is "sucked" out o the cup by the vacuum of your mouth just like crewmen are "sucked" out of the ship by the vacuum of space.
     


    Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
     
    quote:
    Y'know, come to think of it, there's really no difference between being "blown" and "sucked"

    *snicker*
     


    Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
     
    Actually, there is a big difference. One of the two will result in a painfully inflated bladder.
     
    Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
     
    I've managed to get my greasy little hands on a fairly low-quality .wmv copy of Cold Front and grabbed (following backflips through MS Movie Maker (godhelpusall) and then a re-encoding as an .avi so my shite player would actually not register a black screen) this sideview available here of the NX-01. Bernd might want to have a close look... OTTOMH the shuttle "control tower" room on F-deck sticks out a bit more than Bernd's got on his diagrams, but aside from that his currect version looks pretty darn accurate. Good show!

    [edit: it would appear freeservers has hopped aboard the anal-retentive bandwidth bandwagon. going to the subdirectory ought to be ok, though]

    [ December 17, 2001: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
     


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