posted
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.
Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
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.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
...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.
posted
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!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
A colony ship would probably need even [/i] more[/i] stuff carried along with it (particularly one of that era).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
But re your statement "if the cargo is what's motivating you," which is the case for freighters, not for colony ships.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
