posted
I've never had a proper go at designing a space station before, first time for everything. This is supposed to be the predecessor to the mushroom spacedock from the later movies, when I started sketching it out I had the idea that when it was retired, it was converted into the fleet museum. That way the station itself is an exhibit.
posted
NICE! Makes a nice relation to FJ's Starfleet Headquarters design.
-------------------- joH'a' 'oH wIj DevwI' jIH DIchDaq Hutlh pagh (some days it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps in the morning) The Woozle!
Registered: Nov 2002
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posted
Correct, there are meant to be three large 'starship' sized drydocks there. the reasone I replaced the other two is that the drydock image itself is quite elaborate and takes up quite a bit of memory and three of them would really slow things down. As for the pod docks, I imagine that they are assembly facilities for moderately large hull sections as well as being standard spacedocks for the smaller classes of spaceships. The shuttlebays are those dark grey boxes just under the upper 'mushroom' section.
posted
N�mero uno: A Constitution cannot fit inside any of those three structures simply becuse they are not completely hollow shells. They have an internal structuer which would pervent such a large ship from even getting in the door.
Num�ro deux: The drydock is capable of some limited telescoping, but this function is very limited because of the mechanical nature of the structure. To put it into perspective, it can probably expand to accommodate a Federation-Class dreadnought (as FJ drew it) and retract to about two thirds the length it is currently depicted as. However in this state it isn't much use as a dry-dock since most of the mooring beam emitters and the hard dock armatures would be way out of alignment for most vessels. The best it could probably manage for smaller ships is adequate illumination for minor hull repair and inspection.
posted
As I said in e-mail, I like this as a candidate for the (primary) orbital part of Starbase 11 in TOS. The attached dock structures would be for limited and finishing work (i.e., the Intrepid was in one of those and was going to be moved out to make room for Enterprise). Other free-floating docks would be out far enough that any explosions wouldn't damage the station.
For Starbase 1, I personally combine the write-up from the DS9 novel "Time's Enemy" with Ralph McQuarrie's concept painting of the hollowed-out asteroid, reproduced in "The Art of Star Trek".
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Jonah is correct that the free orbiting type drydocks (as seen in TMP) would handle anything the integrated structures couldn't accommodate.
However there appears to be some confusion as to what this station actually is. I designed it as the predecessor to the big mushroom station seen in ST:III onwards, presumably the primary facility of the San Francisco Shipyards. I assume Starbase-1 and Spacedock-1 are two entirely different installations, I'm not even sure where SB-1 would be located, Alpha Centauri perhaps?
As for the Starbase-11 connection, I see problem with that facility also using this station design as it's central orbiting hub.
posted
Unfortunately, this starts to lead into speculation on the Federation's shipbuilding and manufacturing capabilities at various points in its history...
F'r instance, were the "dozen like her" comments about the Enterprise in TOS due to the limitations of shipbuilding, or attrition from hostile powers and anomalies-of-the-week?
When were the various shipyards established, and how extensive were they at different times? I think it plain to say Utopia Planitia wasn't always as big as we saw in "Relativity", but when did it reach that size, and how long did that expansion take?
All this leads back round to the question of whether the mushroom was built all at once over the course of a few years, or expanded upon a smaller core over the course of a century.
This is a subject very much at the forefront of my Treknological musings lately, as I've been firmly entrenched in my Jeffries-verse fleet extrapolations for the last month or so...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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