posted
So, any reason why the Federation, hundreds of years in the future and with the resources available to 100+ fully developed planetary economies, can't build a fraction of the ships the U.S. could build in World War II?
The real problem isn't material, anyway. It takes four years to train a Starfleet officer, and at least several months, one imagines, for various crewmen. It takes three days to grow a combat-ready Jem'Hadar.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Starfleet would have to build more ships than everything made in WWII during peacetime alone (assuming they add a new member wprld every couple of years) to patrol the expanding frontier.
Good points on the crew requirments: I wonder if starfleet would have instituted a draft if the Dominion War dragged on another couple of years (or if one of the Federation's founding worlds fell).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Do we know there *isn't* a draft on? Picard seems to have volunteered (judging by his applying before standard entry age), but we don't really know about the others.
quote: So, any reason why the Federation, hundreds of years in the future and with the resources available to 100+ fully developed planetary economies, can't build a fraction of the ships the U.S. could build in World War II?
The same reason why Denmark or Spain, builders of hundreds of first-rate warships in the 17th and 18th centuries, haven't managed to build a single space combatant so far?
posted
If there were a draft on, Jake would have been far less carefree. Unless you think Jake-O got the same treatment GWB did because of his daddy being the Bajoran Jesus.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I think that a draft that hits one out of every 342,000 able-bodied man, woman or assorted other would serve Starfleet just fine, and still not quite drive fear into the hearts of youngsters...
posted
Using the wartime economy of the US as an example, Starfleet would have over a million ships.
However the peace time economy allows the US to build only one fleet carrier every three years. About 100 planes, a handful fo subs and cruisers. In WW2, the US was able to build about 20 fleet carriers, 10 battleships, hundreds of destroyers, 100 smaller carriers and nearly a hundred thousand planes, in a four year period.
So the Federation up until the couple of years leading up to the war, the Federation was at a peacetime economy. That's my theory at least.
I'm willing to bet that Starfleet before the war and during the war started to shift it's focus instead on large ships like the Galaxy class but smaller ships such as the Defiant and Sabre class. Perhaps the largest would have been the Akira class.
To get on topic: TOS 1,600 to 2,000 ships. Seems like a nice number with no evidence to back it up. TNG: 6,000 to 10,000 ships. I think most of you know the answer.
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Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Matrix: I'm willing to bet that Starfleet before the war and during the war started to shift it's focus instead on large ships like the Galaxy class but smaller ships such as the Defiant and Sabre class. Perhaps the largest would have been the Akira class.
That explains all the "kitbashes" well enough....
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Registered: Jan 2003
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(Pats himself on the back, ticks a box in the calendar.)
Basically, I meant that the capacity to build seagoing warships at date X may not be a relevant measure of the capacity to build spacegoing warships at date Y. Even the United States currently couldn't build a single space shuttle per year, no matter how much it wanted. And it's not just that it's politically, financially and technologically unprepared to build further space shuttles, period. The *order of magnitude* of the job is simply different from that of churning out cruisers in the 1940s.
There could be many limiting factors even in the vast UFP when it comes to shipbuilding. A whopping 25% of your population can probably become Rosie the Riveter in a time of crisis, but only 0.00000001% of it can become Oppenheimer, and only 0.0000000000000000001% can become Einstein - and you need the latter in order to build starship-type thingamabobs just as much as you need the former.
posted
Yeah, but, all that work was done two hundred years prior to the onscreen action, and nothing has suggested that warp engines, for instance, are particularly difficult or expensive to manufacture. The Federation puts them on shuttles and runabouts, even.
The very setting depends on a whole host of similarities between a fictional space navy and real-world wet ones, and I see no reason to think that this particular case is meant to diverge from that.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
That'd be like saying your Rosie the Riveters are all equal to Orvill and Wilbur Wright, which they weren't.
Once technology becomes commonplace, you no longer need the giants of the field (Oppenheimer and Einstein), you simply stand on their shoulders.
Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
But the percentage of space shuttle builders at Rosie level is not the same as the percentage of Liberty ship builders at that level. To get even a "series production" shuttle off the air, you need academically trained people to turn most of the screws and solder most of the wires, or at least one academician to look over every five riveters' shoulders.
The same is true to a lesser degree of aircraft, which are a bit closer to Liberty ships but not quite there yet. A Liberty can stall in mid-ocean and await repairs. An Airbus stalling in mid-ocean won't be good publicity. It's not that aircraft are newer tech - it's that aircraft are more demanding tech. And there's no indication that a greater percentage of world population could build aircraft today than fifty years ago, despite advances in training and social conditions.
(Indeed, there are *more* poor and uneducated today, relatively and absolutely speaking. Will their eradication, one way or other, markedly alter things in the Trek universe?)
We simply can't tell whether a starship will be built by a slightly retarded button-pusher kid who got this easiest of all jobs as a sort of charity, or by a team of Wesleys who swim in cold sweat 24 hours a day to get the job done. Granted, TNG tech *theoretically* makes it possible that once a ship is designed, building her is a no-brainer. But the big TNG ships still are full of bugs, and moreover appear to be individuals with different bugs on different ships. There may be a need for a hands-on, design-as-you-build approach, which simply can't be handled by the majority of your population. Not today, not yesterday, and in all likelihood not tomorrow, either.
posted
Timo, your point about varying degrees of technical difficulty is indeed worth noting, and I'd say a lengthy and ongoing design process is nearly canon, from what little we've seen on the subject (the whole Leah Brahms thing, for instance), but what is tripping me up is that, from my point of view, building starships is obviously not intended, within this particular fiction, to be a feat of exceptional difficulty. I mean, I guess the gap in our readings just goes to show how little time the subject has been given on TV.
But, I do think your shuttle example is fundamentally misleading. The space shuttle's problems are well known and the source of much discussion elsewhere, but I think we can agree that there is a major difference between building the first partly reusable spacecraft (whose design specs were famously yanked around between civilian and military requirements) and constructing spacecraft (or anything, really) within a mature industry.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Add to the discussion that the Space Shuttle represents the pinnacle of current spaceflight technology. Sure, it takes dozens of specialists years to build just one shuttle (just as it might a Galaxy class starship) but just as servicable- at a known and much lower tech level- are Soyuz capsules (which may, I suppose, be compared to a Miranda or Excelsior class).
There would likely exist a happy medium between extremes- those uber-specialists each may lead teams of highly competant, if not quite as uber-skilled, starship construction workers.
I doubt the guys that asssemble the warpcore are the same ones that build the spaceframe or paint on the ship's name and registry.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
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posted
Here's an interesting fact from TNG's third season. When Riker, Troi and Lwaxana are taken hostage by the Ferengi, Data and Wesley talk about the academy. Data tells him that 90% of those who finish the academy are not transferred to Galaxy-class starships. Assuming that there are six Galaxys, each with a crew of 1000, there are only 60,000 new ensigns each year. Just taking the statement from Wolf 359 into concideration (40 ships equal 10,000 people) either starfleet has been constantly growing at a constant rate over the past decades (few retirements/deaths) to maintain such a fleet or there are (better: were during TNG) much less ships in service than we currently think. For comparison: The DS9TM assumes that the Cardassian military recruits more than half a million new troops each year.
Registered: Nov 2001
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