posted
I always based it on that the Enterprise and the Excelsior had to fit in the Spacedock so the doors would be in the ballpark figure of 200 meters. Now the Galaxy class' saucer is about the same length as the Excelsior class so that would be about 500 meters. So find out the dimensions of the Spacedock and mulitply that by 2.5 and you get a good general idea of how large these stations are. I think it's the largest man-made object (aside from Ocean World and Unimatrix 1) that was built in Star Trek.
With the size of Starbase 74, I think its possible to have smaller doors somewhere on the bottom about the same size as the ones in ST 3.
------------------ Predict the unpredictable, but how do you unpredict the unpredictable?
posted
Freeman Dyson is very human. He's a physicist, professor, author, and futurist. Among his many interesting and intricate ideas is an object now called a Dyson's sphere, which he postulated might be constructed by a very advanced species. He suggested that looking for these objects might be a good way to start a search for intelligent extraterrestrial life.
posted
Of course, what he didn't say was HOW to look for them. How do you spot a star when it's closed up in a metal ball? Look up in the sky and say "no star over there, must be a Dyson sphere?"
------------------ Luke Ford: "What's it like having a dick in your ass?"
Zoe: "Imagine taking your bottom lip and pulling it over the top of your head. You get used to it but it does hurt."
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
To say nothing of the most obvious element: gravity.
A metal sphere....encasing a STAR, & possibly some planets.
If a star the size of Sol (no, not YOU, Sol..!) ALONE can generate enough of a gravity well to hold 9 or 10 planets & an asteroid belt, plus several Oort & Kuiper objects in its sway....think about how massive the well of a Dyson sphere must be.
That's why I never questioned why Jenolan crashed, but DID question how it & Enterprise survived being crunched into soup cans.
------------------ "Reading snow is like listening to music. To describe what you've read is like explaining music in writing." ---Smilla Jaspersen
posted
The dyson sphere wasn't THAT big. It is about the same diameter as the earth's orbit, about 2 AUs, there were no planets inside because the habitable region was the inner surface of the sphere itself. Infact the whole point of it was to not have to live on a planet, the inner surface area of such a structure is equivilant to....a very big number of m-class worlds.
------------------ We attack tommorow, under cover of daylight!
posted
NOO! Not the control-bridge/airbase/US-Marshal guy milking everyone on information and getting things done!!
I don't want to think about how awful it must be to be forced to live in a D-sphere. I'm depressed enough as it is... I mean, in order for it to hold together, the crust must need to be immensely thick, but the doorway the ships passed through wasn't more than 300 meters tops! AAARRGH!!!
------------------ Here lies a toppled god, His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, A narrow and a tall one.
posted
Wait. Is gravity not based on the mass and/or density of an object? If a dyson sphere is what everyone says it is, wouldn't it have a relatively low density due to the fact that it is almost completely hollow inside? No, wait, I think I understand. It doesn't matter when something's that freakin' huge.
Wait again, how does everything on the inside of a Dyson sphere stick? Does the whole thing rotate? But that doesn't make sense because then there would be areas of relatively low to nil centripetal force. I think I'm actually getting dumber as I continue this post.
posted
Well, rotating the thing would create stresses that would tear apart all known materials. Come to think of it, building the thing immobile and just letting the star's gravity pull on it would create stresses that would tear apart all known materials, too. But in Trek, we aren't dealing with known materials. They have things like "neutronium" which, if it is the least bit like real neutronium (and simply contained within forcefields and gravity nets to make it practicable), might withstand the forces even if it were just about 300 meters thick.
And artificial gravity nets would keep the people walking on the inside of the sphere, too. Some sort of forcefields would hold the air in, since AG probably wouldn't reach "high" enough since it should decrease rapidly. If it did decrease slowly, to the square of the distance like real gravity does, then the pulls of the opposite sides of the sphere would simply cancel out and the inner surface would still be weightless.
Some sort of forcefield and tractor beam gadgetry would probably also be needed to keep the star centered on the sphere. And the waste heat would have to be radiated away somehow - Dyson originally never thought anybody would be living *inside* his spheres, where the star's energy would all be trapped.
All in all, the sphere wouldn't be an inert object but rather an active machine. Pull the plug on some vital piece of machinery, and it would all come to a grim end.
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