Presumably everyone's already seen the wonderful news about the NX-01 being "retrofitted for war." My question is more of a technical nature...
Why the hell would anyone expect such a puny ship to credibly function as a warship? And where the hell are they going to magically get all these new weapons from... the Vulcan High Command?
Leaving the logistics aside, I'm wondering how possible it really could be to retrofit a ship like the pre-E to a completely different mission, short of a lengthy stint in drydock a la TMP.
Upgrading the phase cannons (and possibly adding more of them) seems like a fairly reasonable option... or at least one of the simplest. It'd require extra mountings, but Doug Drexler said that all those circular ports were designed just for that purpose, anyway. The only question would be one of sufficient power.
Assuming the rumors are correct, Reed's going to have a field day with his new Starfleet-issue photon torpedoes. The self-contained torpedoes are probably not a big deal... but what about storing those wonderfully volatile matter-antimatter warheads? There's got to be some kind of extra equipment needed for that...
Finally, the traditional defensive component, deflector shields. How the heck are they going to install reliable forcefield generators in such a short time?
Or are we actually going to be seeing some kind of time jump here, where we "skip" a year to give time for the ENT to get its refit? (Seems unlikely.)
I know we're not going to be getting any real answers on this for a while now, but it still seems like something that'll be very implausible without resorting to the quick-and-easy magic of the 24th century, most especially Voyager's never-show-damage hull...
Posted by Captain39 (Member # 1001) on :
Here's a thought, let's just blow up the ship and start over Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
I envision adding some sort of secondary hull
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:Why the hell would anyone expect such a puny ship to credibly function as a warship?
Minutae,
In the Inner Harbor, there's a WWII era submarine docked next to the Aquarium. Compared to a modern submarine, one could say exactly what you said about NX-01. The fact of the matter, though, is that by Earth standards of the time, NX-01 is not "puny", just as America's submarine fleet was not considered "puny" sixty years ago.
Posted by Griffworks (Member # 1014) on :
As a minor point of interest, NX-01 is fairly close in length as the TOS 1701, coming in at 225m long for NX-01, versus 288.6m for the TOS 'E'. Heck, the Miranda class isn't much longer than the NX-01 at 237.6m. Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by Griffworks: As a minor point of interest, NX-01 is fairly close in length as the TOS 1701, coming in at 225m long for NX-01, versus 288.6m for the TOS 'E'. Heck, the Miranda class isn't much longer than the NX-01 at 237.6m.
Doesn't matter, in terms of usable internal volume, the NX-01 is puny and built like a deck of cards.
As for Snay's argument, I think you forget that the NX-01 is puny, compared to all the other ships out there. We're not concerned with how NX-01 measure up to something in Starfleet's own future, but rather how well it compares with its contemporaries.
As for the updates and so forth, I think I'm gonna puke. Photon torpedoe is cropping up way too early, it's not something you can just stick on a ship and let it fly. Even in TNG, reactants are kept separately and loaded only during arming because the casings can't handle long term storage of M/AM. The NX-01's launcher's don't even have the necessary reactant injection equipment, the spatial torpedoes are self-contained devices that require no known external preparation. Besides, what happened to the comment about the Earth-Romulan War being faught with nuclear weapons?
And I'm seriously going to have an aneurysm if the NX-01 gets shields. You don't slap shield generators on a ship and call it a day either, not for any sort of useful protection. Besides, early shield generators would have been pretty bulky equipment, where is the NX-01 going to pack it without pulling a Voyager?
quote: As previously reported, Enterprise (which will be "retrofitted for war"), is set to head into a dangerous area of space known as the Delphic Expanse to track down the Xindi. According to the magazine, voyagers who enter this area of space "meet a shocking and grisly fate"Their bodies become anatomically inverted (skin on the inside, organs on the outside), yet they somehow remain alive."
Gaaaaaaah! *chews through duranium plates*
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
Maybe they will just give it replacated armor and leave the weapons as is. Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Ehm. Right. Retrofitted for war. T'Pol getting an even tighter catsuit. They're really desperate now, aren't they? And yet they manage to make it sound even more cheap and awful than it is now. I can't wait to see how bad this is going to be and what kind of ridicicous things they'll do before the series is cancelled after season 3 Posted by Cartmaniac (Member # 256) on :
*shivers at the thought*
quote:Leaving the logistics aside, I'm wondering how possible it really could be to retrofit a ship like the pre-E to a completely different mission, short of a lengthy stint in drydock a la TMP.
How possible? Impossible. It'd require taking the ship apart down to its spaceframe, then putting it back together again from the keel up. There are economical & practical limits to what can be accomplished through refitting, even with energy/matter conversion technology on hand.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
Aw shit: "incorporating a warship into Season 3"...**check**
On top of previous Season 3 parallels:
*New* mysterious asskicking race enters the picture
*New* type of torpedo enters the picture
Chick in tight*er* catsuit
Chick with a *new* hairdo
The only previous Season 3 parallels they have yet to achieve is:
Stealing a Romulan cloaking device
Destroying a few Borg cubes
Getting cancelled!
What else *new* and *unique* can Berman conjure up next??
Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
Prehaps they are some kind of very crude early version? A strait-up matter-antimatter warhead with no guidance, no tracking and a low yield?
Maybe it's a nuclear-explosion-pumped laser warhead of a sort... hence the term "photon torpdeo..."
One could also suppose that the Earth has many other nasty inventions but didn't see fit to include them on a peacefull explorer?
Then again... these ARE the people who are giving us a New and TIGHTER catsuit for T'Pol so I'm not holding my breath. Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Ummm... no. Refititng does not mean taking it down to the framework and uild back up. Take a look at the US Naval ships between the 20's and the 60's The US was able to replace the turrets and put the same size turrents but far more powerful and with a longer range on their batteships. They were able to cut down the super structure, and build anew within a year. They were able to replace the boilers which litterally in on the keep of the ship without cuttinf gigantic holes in the ship. Keep in mind that the Japanese was able to lengthen their Kongo class Battlecruisers, add armor, make them faster, and reclassify them as battleships. Though not seriously real battleships, but on paper, they appeared to be.
You guys are just blowing way out of proportion.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: Prehaps they are some kind of very crude early version? A strait-up matter-antimatter warhead with no guidance, no tracking and a low yield?
I'm not sure you can have a low yield M/AM reaction... Also with no guidance or anything it wouldn't really be much use.
quote: One could also suppose that the Earth has many other nasty inventions but didn't see fit to include them on a peacefull explorer?
Not gonna be a peaceful explorer much longer... I mean really, if they were gonna get ready for a war you'd think they'd either upgrade an existing warship or begin to build new ones. Seems to me they're trying to do too much with the one ship; originally it was going to be a small, poorly equipped and armed explorer, bravely pushing out into the unknown. Now, in what looks to be a rather blatent ploy to inprove the ratings, they've decided to make the same ship a super warship.
Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
quote:Originally posted by Wraith: I'm not sure you can have a low yield M/AM reaction...
SURE you can! Just use less antimatter! Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by Matrix: Ummm... no. Refititng does not mean taking it down to the framework and uild back up. Take a look at the US Naval ships between the 20's and the 60's The US was able to replace the turrets and put the same size turrents but far more powerful and with a longer range on their batteships. They were able to cut down the super structure, and build anew within a year. They were able to replace the boilers which litterally in on the keep of the ship without cuttinf gigantic holes in the ship. Keep in mind that the Japanese was able to lengthen their Kongo class Battlecruisers, add armor, make them faster, and reclassify them as battleships. Though not seriously real battleships, but on paper, they appeared to be.
Refitting a gun-armed warship is a hell of a lot different from refitting a starship. Ship between the 20's and 60's are about as complex as a wind-up toy compared to something like the NX-01. Not to mention those ships were being refitting with what would be considered conventional technologies of the time, for example tried and tested propellent-pushing-projectile-out-of-barrel, up scaled a bit, for the most part, at most a missile launcher here and there. Here, we're talking about adding brand new technologies that Earth isn't suppose to have experience with into a spaceframe designed never to be seriously armed, AFAWK. Photon torpedoes wouldn't be quite so hard if they replace their launchers, but the technology shouldn't even be available that early. As for shields, that would require reworking the entire hull and the interior. Unless they plan to beam the shield generators and modifications into place, in which case I'm going to cry.
quote:You guys are just blowing way out of proportion.
No! You have no honor! Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by Matrix: Ummm... no. Refititng does not mean taking it down to the framework and uild back up. Take a look at the US Naval ships between the 20's and the 60's The US was able to replace the turrets and put the same size turrents but far more powerful and with a longer range on their batteships. They were able to cut down the super structure, and build anew within a year. They were able to replace the boilers which litterally in on the keep of the ship without cuttinf gigantic holes in the ship. Keep in mind that the Japanese was able to lengthen their Kongo class Battlecruisers, add armor, make them faster, and reclassify them as battleships. Though not seriously real battleships, but on paper, they appeared to be.
You guys are just blowing way out of proportion.
I disagree. Sure, refitting is definitely plausible. I've never disputed that myself -- read my original post again.
My problem is that given the format of the series, it's eminently obvious that the refit of the NX-01 is going to happen in a matter of WEEKS, not months or a year. Sure, any of the equipment is replaceable or can be reasonably installed... but what's the timetable?
In addition, the NX-01 has always been shown as vastly outgunned by most every alien ship out there -- Klingons, Vulcans, even the tiny Suliban ships in numbers (whose numbers would add up to one capital-type ship). The NX-01 is already considered to be the best and toughest that the Earth Starfleet has to offer; how can they make such enormous leaps in tech in just a couple of years? I'm pretty certain the Vulcans aren't providing technical assistance here...
Oh god, I just thought of another special possible addition: a tractor beam and forcefields. 24th century, here we come! Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I really don't see how Photon Torpedoes are much of a jump from their current tech. They have matter. They have anti-matter. How hard can it be to stick it in a tube and point it at something? And who says that they are going to be guided?
And as for the comment that they should refit their existing warships, two thoughts arrive:
1/ Maybe they are, and 2/ Maybe they don't have any warships. And even if they do, Enterprise is fastest ship they have. It makes sense to power up it's weapons so that it can do hit and run missions, or whatever.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Just playing devil's advocate here... One of the things we can say is that most of the new technology we will be seeing on board the NX-01 will actually be old technology. Stuff that was supposed to be install on the ship before it left spacedock, but because it left early. The question remains why they didn't just load the stuff onto the ship and let Tucker take care of it, probably didn't trust him with it.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Interesting argument, J, and that *could* be true to a certain extent. However, it makes no sense that they would wait until the last minute to install deflector shields and a revolutionary torpedo system. The NX-01 was scheduled to LAUNCH in a couple of weeks... they've got to have been putting the final touches on the ship, ready to test its engines and all that.
(Actually, Reed had never heard of photon torpedoes before "Sleeping Dogs," so it's a safe bet those will have to be brand-new developments.)
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Also, although NX-01 did leave spacedock early, it did have new stuff that didn't get installed in time onboard, namely the phase cannons. It seemed like that was the only major new system that needed to be plug-and-played, as Archer didn't see the need to return to Earth after they were installed.
As for photon torpedoe, the difficulty with it is not the guidence system, but rather the warhead/propulsive system. I simply don't think that Starfleet has the technology to build a M/AM containment device that is also a warhead and an engine during the ENT-era, even if they leave the engine bit out and go with an existing propulsion drive. We've seen the warhead on the spatial torpedoes, they're tiny little things, so the rest of it is just engine and guidence. That's a lot of engine and guidence, and very little space for a warhead. So no way Starfleet can say, modify existing spatial torpedoes to carry a M/AM load, and shoot them out of existing launchers. While M/AM containment system can be considered off-the-shelf technology, its application as the component of a small and portable warhead cannot. Photon torpedoes require more than just M/AM held separately and mixed when detonated, they require an efficient annhilation rate to work properly, otherwise its just a giant flare. So whatever effective containment/warhead system they might come up with during that era would be huge and bulky, probably more suitable for sticking inside a shuttle pod and dropping on a planet.
As for the alien probe attack Earth... God, you'd think B&B would have gotten tired of bad stuff just waltzing into Sector 001 like the place was defended by Canada. For crying outloud, if the Sol System was so poorly defended, I wonder how the Federation has survived for as long as it did.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
I don't see how well defended we could expect Earth to be at the point. Against a foe of even TOS era technology, Earth's current level couldn't withstand much of an attack. And remember that Earth has been defenseless from planetary invaders for the past few dozen millennia, and we seem to be doing okay.
It seems to me that Earth relied on the expanse of the Federation as its primary defense net, at least until Wolf 359. As for the Breen, I do believe it was stated that Starfleet destroyed all of the attacking ships, so it was probably luck and keen tactical manuevering that allowed them to get that close to Earth in the first place.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by David Templar: Photon torpedoes require more than just M/AM held separately and mixed when detonated, they require an efficient annhilation rate to work properly, otherwise its just a giant flare.
How? Surely matter and anti-matter mixing is going to produce a lot of energy in a fairly violent and extreme manner? And surely things standing next to it aren't going to fare to well?
Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :
For any particle interaction (including deuteron/anti-deuteron annihilation, which is what we're really talking about here - the electrons and positrons contribute very little to the output and in fact may make the whole process messier) certain conditions must be satisfied.
The two particles must come within a certain distance of each other (this distance is known as the cross section of the reaction) and said distance is variable depending on the energy of the particles (so a reaction between slow moving particles and one between fast moving particles may be very different).
As soon as the first pair of deuterons annihilate there will be high energy photons flying off and these may interact with the remaining deuterons, changing their energy or their trajectory. Hence unless the reaction is carefully managed you will not get anywhere near the yield you want.
Photon torpedoes need to manage the reaction in such a way as to produce an effective explosion.
Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :
Designing, building and refitting ships of their current technology has always been proportional. Ships from the 1800's always took a few months to refit. Ships from the 1990's has always took months to refit. For example, the USS George Washington, (my ship ), took six months in drydock to do repairs on her. This includes adding and replacing tehcnology, reparing equipment. Just because it's advanced does not mean it has to take years to put it into a ship. Maybe for someone in the 21st century trying to put a 24th century piece of technology, then I can see that.
Besides, I think the first several centuries are more like Sailing Era, where technology a hundred years ago isn't that primitive as it would be today. As I once said before, the difference between technology of a hundred or even two hundred years in Star Trek is not from 1903 to 2003, but rather, 1960's compared to the 2003. Take a look at the carrier Enterprise, not much a difference in technology compared to the others? Right? Just age. She's the fastest, most over powered piece of shit in the Navy right now and we're pround of it.
The way I see it, Earth will be gaining tons of new tehcnology from the Vulcans and other powers in less than ten years, when the Federation is founded or they combine forces to defeat the Romulans. Somehow in that war, Earth will become a important ally to the point that everyone will look at them for help.
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
Posted by Fleet-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
How nice... maybe Enterprise will go the way of TOS... after 3 seasons. I don't see why Enterprise can't be refitted into the Akiraprise within a few months but reusing the ST: IV plot about the invading alien probe? Oh god that's horrible. It's one thing for Earth to be attacked... but by a force that we have never heard of before using a plot that happens in the next century? At least have the Romulans blow up the planet so there is a reason Earth goes to war with the Romulans. Damn, apparently no one at Paramount or B&B knows Trek history. I hope that at the end of this show someone pushes the damn Temporal Reset Button so this series is wiped clean from the Trek Universe. Bring on TAS...
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), took six months in drydock to do repairs on her. This includes adding and replacing tehcnology, reparing equipment. Just because it's advanced does not mean it has to take years to put it into a ship. Maybe for someone in the 21st century trying to put a 24th century piece of technology, then I can see that.