quote:Originally posted by Reverend: If there were then I'd like to know how they got up there. Mind you, the same would apply to people in the Oberth's secondary hull. Perhaps they use hardwired transporters and pipe their molecules from one pad to another?
Hardwired transport pads...? Makes all the sense in the world.
posted
I'd be very surprised if there were a man-sized crawlway up the rollbar supports -- because those large phaser cannons kind of block the passage.
I suppose it COULD make sense to have some de-automated torpedo launchers on the training ship Enterprise... Didn't they make a big deal of direct control of weaponry from the Bridge in TMP, rather than the decentralized control rooms we saw in TOS?
Here's a weird idea... if the automated launchers were a new idea, perhaps they were deliberately placed outboard in case of malfunction. And then later designs just kept that configuration because it saved some internal space.
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quote: Hardwired transport pads...? Makes all the sense in the world.
Basically two transporters with their pattern buffers directly connected via some kind of conduit. Call it an internal transporter, on that side steps the risk of transporting through subspace.
quote: I'd be very surprised if there were a man-sized crawlway up the rollbar supports -- because those large phaser cannons kind of block the passage.
It would be muck easier to acess the torpedo pod via EVA suits or worker bees. There would have to be some kind of maintaince access if only for loading the torpedo magazines.
quote: Here's a weird idea... if the automated launchers were a new idea, perhaps they were deliberately placed outboard in case of malfunction. And then later designs just kept that configuration because it saved some internal space.
It's certainly possible and consistant with Sternbach's notion of the Mirandas being a reletively new design, compared to the Conni.
posted
The Miranda has to have a transporter up there in the Torp pod. There is no airlock or storage place for a couple of workbees....besides, in an evacuation situation, those guys would be screwed in slow little workbees.... Mabye during evac the guys manning the torpedo launcher just do the "kaylar coffin ride" inside an ampty torp casing!
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I think the crawlway idea could still have merit, though. Those super-hyper-mega-phasers-that-did-no-more-damage-than-regular-ones would probably require maintenance access, too. The crawlway would just go up the vertical pylon, through a spacious control room between the forward and aft megaphasers, and then along the horizontal pylon.
And you needn't really crawl - there should be space for a corridor about two meters high there (unless those radiator panels on the lower surface take up space internally). Or if not, you could simply tilt the gravity of the corridor so that it becomes a 45 degree stairwell (going *down* in both directions, of course, for ease of passage), so a two-meter fellow can stand upright on a corridor 1.5 meters high.
Some sort of manual backup access is extremely likely, even if direct transporter access exists, and even if regular maintenance is NOT needed.
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: If there were then I'd like to know how they got up there. Mind you, the same would apply to people in the Oberth's secondary hull.
That reminds me of one of the details Andy Probert pointed out to me about the E-D. He put a docking at the base of each nacelle precisely so engineering crews could get in there. His rationale was that the amount of energy thrown around in there was no immense that even shut down the engines would be dangerous (electromagnetic fields that might cook you, a la Jupiter) and so there's be no shirt-sleeve access. I'm sure there would be crawlspaces or Jeffries type tubes, but work crews would carry stuff via some kind of shuttle.
I know later they had the crew going up into the nacelles via other means, but that wasn't the original intention.
One other possible explanation for the crew manually working the torpedo room in TWOK would have been that the automated loader got damaged in the Reliant attack. That would work except those floor grills sure didn't appear to have any mechanical means of opening.
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The system could still have been 100% automated, and the floor grilles were there only because this special training vessel had her torpedo bay converted into a formal reception/inspection area, a function unnecessary aboard regular Constitution starships. We never really saw anybody actually touch the torps or anything, now did we?
Alternately, there could have been a manual element to the torpedo system of ST:TMP, but we never saw it because the camera was on the bridge. After all, in TOS, we learned that the phaser turrets were manned, even though this was shown in a single episode only - all others made it look as if the weapons were completely automated save for Sulu's manual trigger.
Personally, I believe in three different systems: fully automated, a bit risky but cheap (Miranda, New Orleans, what-have-you), largely manual and deliberately awkward (Enterprise in ST2), and partially man-tended and optimal (Enterprise in TMP, regular Constitutions, most starships).
Plus, I strongly believe that there are ships out there that do NOT have torpedo launchers at all. It should NOT be trivially easy to add torpedoes to a ship, or else all ships would be like (the artist-intended version of) the Akiras, bristling with tubes. Instead, torp-equipped ships should be a special breed, carefully built around that weapons system. At least in the TOS/TFS era where the ships aren't so humungous yet that engineers have problems inventing stuff to fill them with...
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i agree to the 'mostly automated' theory, especially when you start to think of the more technical aspects of the job.. i believe the 1701 was mostly unmodified during the five-year mission in TOS (Roddenberry's intention was that the ship was far out the whole 5 years, not recieving modifications very often.. that's why he balked at showing 23rd century Earth)..
for example.. the Balance of Terror phaser crews.. the command to fire was given from the weapons station on the bridge, but obviously those guys down there had jobs. i can see them coordinating with the sensory (and the bridge weapons panel) for targeting, and checking the charge of the weapons, modifying the intensity of the blast, running the Deadley-Pinke� coolant systems that made sure the phaser cycled properly, timing the cool-down and recharge phases, and , yes, physically servicing the phaser apparatus.
while the bridge could obviously fire the phasers, all of these minute details would be more efficiently handled by people on site, especially since the weapons fire panel on the bridge seemed to be either double tasked with helm or navigation. do you want to distract your pilot with monitoring the phaser banks status and regulating their power and temperature, or would you rather have him only go through the trouble of verifying a ready light on his board before firing?..
this still allows phasers to be fired without full phaser crews, just not as efficiently. there would be power falloff from approximated monitoring, since the automated system might miss a lot of things that the phaser control crews normally went through (as seen again in Balance of Terror, when the phaser didnt shoot, they did have to circumvent that and manually fire from the phaser room)..
i see the same thing happening with torpedoes.. (i favor the less complicated explanation that the 1701 refit was mostly unmodified between TMP and TSFS). even though lifting the grating was done by a numerous crew, it could be done by one or two people, just not as quickly.. remember, after that the torpedo was loaded and launched fairly automatically.. the robot arm placed it on the track, and into the launcher..
of course, i feel the same way about this setup as i do about the TOS phasers.. sure, so you could fire a torpedo on automatic, but its a lot more efficient to have a crew monitoring the loaing in case of a jam, setting the coolant levels, monitoring the exhaust or whatever. if the torpedo was jolted out of place and no one was there to verify it, you could have a rather nasty misfire, i think, with basic computer control.
i think that the TSFS automation failure was a problem of computer programming/capacity. asknig the computer to read all of the internal sensors on the ship and then tasking it with changing the settings on dozens of systems, rather than having crew doing it manually, must have taxed their processor. perhaps they needed a few more gigaquads of RAM.. was that the UFP blue screen of crash behind Kirk?.. beside if the Klingon torpedo hit severed data lines that monitored and allowed the computer to regulate any vital system, any attempt to reroute the entire computer's capacity through remaining data lines would be akin to downloading Nemesis from a P2P on a 56K modem ( ) .. it would just be too slow to keep up..
BTW i have to disagree on one ponit, i think that most vessels, as a matter of course, must have launchers of some kind. as i've said before, the Federation probably doesnt have only one level of torpedo/probe launcher.
Galaxy tubes can fire large spreads of torpedoes simultaneously, while other ships seem severely limited to one ata time, every few seconds. its nots like US Navy ships have only one type, class and size of missile. There are dozens of different launcher types capable of different ranges, payload sizes and launch speeds. i think that most ships have launchers, but you are right, not all of them need to be as powerful as 1701's even.
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wow, did i really get the last word?
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quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike: (Roddenberry's intention was that the ship was far out the whole 5 years, not recieving modifications very often.. that's why he balked at showing 23rd century Earth)..
Are you sure? I thought he baulked at showing 23rd century Earth because it would be really, really, really, really, really expensive.
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plus, Roddenberry thought that 23rd century Earth would include everyone naked having sex in the park.
And THAT is why we revere him so..
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Good analysis of the weapons automation, Mike. I think you're right, for the most part. It definitely makes sense.
But I'm reminded of the scene from "The Undiscovered Country" where Spock and MCCOY were the only ones seen working performing "surgery" on a torpedo. Though it was a fairly tight shot anyway, it didn't seem that the launchers required as many people as in TWOK.
(Of course, the Enterprise-A was a newer or newly refitted ship anyway, and so they could have more advanced launchers anyway.)
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It is also possible that the tube within which Spock and McCoy were working was part of the system we saw in ST2 - more specifically, the part extending forward of the small hatch into which the rail-under-the-grilles shoved the torpedoes.
The deck 13 facility where Scotty studied the torpedo inventory and where Spock and Valeris spoke of Kirk's predicament could in turn be the facility just above the deck of ST2 - the one of which we only saw a circular balcony. That would be the logical place for the torpedo magazine and for its control systems. Even the deck count jibes with the Johnson/Probert count, IIRC.
So the differences between the systems (and the TMP system, for that matter) could be largely cosmetic.
Incidentally, what do you remember of the torpedo tube set from VOY "Future's End"? Any similarities to what we saw here? Any noteworthy differences?
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) .. it would just be too slow to keep up..
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