I don't seem to remember any mention of it here, but Starship Modeler has 3 nice new closeup shots of the Conestogahere, here, & here.
Larger than I thought. Also shows that artificial gravity was around just 8 years after first contact. Vulcan "gimme" maybe?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
How does this prove that artificial gravity is around? The ship is clearly meant to operate IN gravity, but not necessarily WITH it... A multi-year journey without gravity would certainly be uncomfortable when you got to a planet, but not impossible.
But in regards to artificial gravity, if I remember right, the Conestoga had a 20 year journey to get to Terra Nova. I would think that some sort of gravity would be essential for a trip that long, and they don't seem to have a centrifugal section. However, it might have an internal one that we can't see.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Aha. I did not go back far enough. I did not know they dated from my "period of rest."
A 9-year journaey actually. As for artificial gravity, look at the layout: a "traditional" vertically stacked deck arrangement parallel to the axis of travel, as on a ocean vessel. I don't think that such a ship would be built with that arrangement without AG.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
...Unless she was meant to land on her belly and become a big badass building on the surface. Which is sort of implied but not quite confirmed in the episode.
Anyhow, since warp drive doesn't seem to produce Newtonian thrust, it would not help matters if the decks were stacked in the direction of flight. Perhaps Earth had found a cure for the ailments of weightlessness that could be injected to the body, thus making gravity machinery unnecessary, and promting the designers to go for a psychologically pleasing deck structure?
Personally, I think AG was around long before the Vulcans came. Probably in the 1980s already, given the existence of "mundane" applications such as SS Birdseye and Botany Bay in the 1990s. Since it's so ubiquitous in the Trek universe, it's probably fairly easy to discover: even primitive Earthlings could do that, especially if helped a bit by Henry Starling's 29th century patent violations...
Would early AG transform the face of Earth for ST4, or "Future's End", or "Past Tense"? Not necessarily, if it couldn't be ramped up to more than one gee. There'd be hovercars and the like, but perhaps not until a couple of decades of miniaturization.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Look at that ship's (which I love, BTW) forward window placement- it should be waaay bigger than the NX-01 -which only makes sense if the cargo is what's motivating you to spend several years traveling to deliver it- you'd awnt to haul as much cargo as possible, -plus consmables!
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
It's a colony ship, not a freighter. (A fine distinction, perhaps.)
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
A colony ship would probably need even [/i] more[/i] stuff carried along with it (particularly one of that era).
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
But re your statement "if the cargo is what's motivating you," which is the case for freighters, not for colony ships.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Well, kinda both- to a captain, the "cargo" could be whatever -either way, you'd want a ship that can cram as much cargo (whatever the reason) as possible to make the journey cost-effective (even if you're only considering the crew's time).
Maybe they just transported cows like on Firefly- I could easily see a "livestock deck" on something that size.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)