The book was. The movie was "The Year We Make Contact", though I don't believe that actually appeared in the title sequence. Been a while.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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Another alert to MinutiaeMan's e-mail account, ha, ha!
By pure definition a Dyson's Sphere is 2-AUs across, which is in a word; Big. Not nearly as BIG as space, but Big none the less. The same size as the V'ger cloud by a not particularly amazing coinsidence (post-Director's Edition edit.)
The Death Stars on the other hand while also falling into the eternally vague catagory of 'big' are 'only' the size of small moons. So while one may be quite a bit bigger than the other neither even approaches the size of a 2-AU diamature sphere...which is of course Big.
posted
Of course, it's assinine to think that nobody had discovered the dyson sphere before the Enterprise. Literally dozens (if not hundreds) of nearby solar systems would have to be broken down for the sphere's raw construction materials- even if the sphere was only a few feet thick. If you had that kind of power, why build a Dyson Sphere in the first place?
The only option is that the Sphere's creators could make "fake matter" by directly converting the star's energy output into nearly massless solid material ....but that speaks of nearly unlimited energy manipulation capabilities so why bother harnessing one star's power?
It's grandiose, but pointless.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Well, the Dyson Sphere's builders could also have perfected the technology of creating matter with a zero-point energy field, similar to what was supposedly used to create more self-replicating mines around the Bajoran wormhole.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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The whole point of Dyson's speculation was that it would take only the amount of material available in our solar system to construct a cloud or sphere or what have you that would surround the sun and swallow up all its energy. So you don't need hundreds of planetary systems by any means. A couple of jovians and a smattering of rock and you're good to go. Beyond that, the other point is that a star thus surrounded would literally disappear. All or almost all of its emitted energy would be collected, and thus no one could see it directly.
Now, admittedly, in Star Trek they've got fancy gravitational sensors, and could perhaps more easily notice that a star didn't appear to be where something star-sized should be, but space isn't a trivial place to look for things. Consider black holes, which behave a lot like a dyson sphere in some ways. Sure, we've found some, but if you were to list every black hole in the Milky Way and pick one at random, the odds are we'd have no idea of its existence.
Having written all this it occurs to me that we do have the problem of the Jenol*n, a ship apparently host to retirees, running into it, but it was a Real Starfleet Ship, so maybe they were taking the long way around to Old Man's World.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Y'know, the Dyson Sphere might contain several trillion times the volume of the Death Star, but it's only several thousand times the mass. It's far bigger on that scale, but not quite so mind-bogglingly so.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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First of all, Beautiful. These are some seriously nice charts. However,
First point you have the size of the Executor off by about 10,000 meters. SSDs are only 8,000 meters long. The Eclipse on the other hand is 17.5km long.
Second, the largest Mon Cal I can find is 1,200 meters. This is for both the MC80 and MC90 classes.
Not trying to burst any bubbles or point out what is wrong just thought you might want to be as accurate as possible. This info comes from the essential guide to vehicles and vessels and SWRPG starships of the galaxy. The Eclipse is solely from the essential guide.
Again great work, better then I could ever do. Me and graphics programs hate each other.
-------------------- The Poster formally known as Tec.
Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Epoch: First point you have the size of the Executor off by about 10,000 meters. SSDs are only 8,000 meters long. The Eclipse on the other hand is 17.5km long.
Executor Class Command Ships are between 17.4 and 17.9 km long, based on evidence from the movies.
Any source that says they are some other length is wrong.
Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Epoch: First point you have the size of the Executor off by about 10,000 meters. SSDs are only 8,000 meters long. The Eclipse on the other hand is 17.5km long.
Second, the largest Mon Cal I can find is 1,200 meters. This is for both the MC80 and MC90 classes.
Epoch, not that I don't appreciate the input, but did you take a look at the links to my sources? There's a pretty thorough analysis of the size of the Executor at TheForce.net. Although the official stat is 12 km, and several books have even more erroneously stated 8 km, the definitive figure, based on direct screen analysis, comes out to the length I used -- 17.8 km.
As for the Mon Cal cruiser, take a closer look at the label. "Home One" was a different ship from any of the others. Take a look at the scene just before the Rebel fleet jumps to hyperspace in "Return of the Jedi" -- as the Falcon is flying through the fleet, it takes FOREVER to pass the full length of Home One -- meaning that it's much bigger than most other ships in the fleet.
That's why Home One is larger than the other Mon Cal ships I've got on my chart.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
Sorry I should have made mention to the fact that I wasn't disagreeing with the Home One size, just mentioning the sizes for the standard Mon Cals.
And yes I did see the links, but with all of the confusion on the net it does seem to me that a hard source would be a better idea to use for the size. The arguements are very good for a 17km SSD but due to confusion on the parts of EU writers the standard length of an SSD is 8km. Also the Eclipse was always intended to be far larger then an SSD but the only given length for it is 17km. While that isn't much of an arguement it does lead to some questions about what has become the accepted lengths.
-------------------- The Poster formally known as Tec.
Registered: May 1999
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quote:Also the Eclipse was always intended to be far larger then an SSD but the only given length for it is 17km.
Well, given that I've never read any of those books (comics?) with the Eclipse in it (isn't that the story about the cloned Emperor and the aftermath of Thrawn's death?), I'm not going to worry too much about that. If you look closely, the only "Star Wars" ships in my chart are from the movies, with the sole exception of Timothy Zahn's trilogy and duology (which is why I included Lando's shieldship from Nkklon).
quote:While that isn't much of an arguement it does lead to some questions about what has become the accepted lengths.
You mean like the length of the Defiant?
So it's different. My sources are coherent and based off of a specific source. I'm not simply regurgitating the official line or someone's random and ill-informed assumption. I'm sorry if that doesn't agree with your own perspective, but it's my chart. (Not trying to be confrontational, just explaining my point of view...) REQUEST:
I watched Sci-Fi's "Farscape" marathon yesterday, and I'm starting to think that I might have underestimated the size of the Peacekeeper Command Carrier. Would anyone be interested in performing an independent analysis of the size of the Carrier with respect to the Leviathans that were seen in Crais's fleet group? I made the rough guess of about 5 kilometers (or about 3.5 times Moya's length), based on the shots we saw from the first season, mainly in "Premiere" with the still-captive Leviathans in the fleet after Moya's escape. But I think that may be a serious underestimation.
I've also remembered another potential source, but I haven't found a screenshot of it -- the scene where Moya was captured by Commandant Cleavage (ahem; Grayza) and brought to Scorpy's Carrier, in "Into the Lion's Den, Part II: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing." IIRC we get an awesome shot of Moya from across the bow of the Command Carrier; but the shot was all too brief and I don't have a clear memory of it. A nice picture there would be appreciated.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: Although the official stat is 12 km, and several books have even more erroneously stated 8 km, the definitive figure, based on direct screen analysis, comes out to the length I used -- 17.8 km.
So the Executor is destroyed by a fighter 2970 times smaller than itself. That's like a hummingbird destroying the Connie refit.
The defining moment where the Empire was finished, right there. Cash in your Imperial 401K's and post your resume on Galacticmonster.com.
Admiral Piet's last words: "I knew it- I'm surronuded by assholes!!!"
-------------------- 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 if you threw a C4 explosive pack into the command bridge of a Nimitz-class carrier, while it was cruising next to a 5-mile wide/half-mile deep whirlpool, they'd be kind of way up shit creek too.
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
Registered: Aug 1999
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But a Nimitz class would have shot the fucker down!! And even with 80% of the ship a horrible buring wreck, the Benjamin Franklin stayed afloat back in WWII.
Good thing Vader was dead at the end of Jedi. There'd be some chokin' over that cluster fuck.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Yes, imagine Vader's surprise when opening the hatch to his Death Star Quarters and seeing a smoldering, vertical Super Star Destroyer nose penetrating the ceiling.
Vader: "My ship!!!" Piett: *sticks sooty head out through escape hatch* "Ah yes, about that..."
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