Stars, planets and other Sci-Fi peeves

[Seismosaurus]

One thing that bothers me is the lack of appreciation for scale when it comes to spacecraft.

This generally applies to those shows and movies where the ships are a mile long, or miles long. Writers love to do that, but they very rarely demonstrate any appreciation of what that would involve.

Take a modern US aircraft carrier, which is around 330 m long. They carry 70+ aircraft and upwards of 5000 - 6,000 people. Scale it to one mile, 1,609 m. The volume has increased by one hundred and sixteen-fold! Such a ship would have a crew in the region of 630,000 people and be capable of carrying eight thousand aircraft!

Yet in sci-fi such ships typically have a crew in the hundreds, maybe the thousands. You hear a lot of excuses as to why it is so, but even accepting them the mental image you're left with is that you would be able to wander around in such a vessel for hours without ever meeting anybody, just because they're so empty.

And even if you did depict crews that size, running the ship would be very different to the things we see in movies. Being the Captain of a ship with 630,000 crewmembers would be like being the mayor of a city, not the captain of a ship.

Worse, the weapons and whatnot on these ships are usually tiny, man-scale stuff. Take a look at a battleship from world war II and the scale of the weapons compared to your ship. The laser guns (or whatever) on your sci-fi battleship are almost always miniscule in comparison. You should either see giant weapons, or hundreds and hundreds of small ones. Yet you almost never do.

I could go on and on. Giant ships shown with no appreciation of what their size would mean really bug the hell out of me.

 

[Belz...]

While we're at the topic of bogus science, the whole representation of science in movies bothers me majorly. And mostly because it's bogus for no good reason.

D) Scientists are arrogant and probe things that they should really just leave alone, because they don't know what they're messing with.

This one has crept into the public mind, too.

C) The only way to present a discovery is to present a fully working model that works on a full scale shuttle or even warship, and if it doesn't work the first time around, you're a failure and disgrace.

That's one of the reasons I didn't like the well-reviewed Minority Report. Apparently if the pre-crime system isn't 100% reliable, it's worthless. that idea permeates the entire movie.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

I could go on and on. Giant ships shown with no appreciation of what their size would mean really bug the hell out of me.

Example please?

I read your ideas about scaling up an aircraft carrier. Basically scaling up an aircraft carrier to the size you proposed merely means that people could live at normal city densities in those ships. Not really seeing a problem.

 

[Lurch]

Example please?

I read your ideas about scaling up an aircraft carrier. Basically scaling up an aircraft carrier to the size you proposed merely means that people could live at normal city densities in those ships. Not really seeing a problem.

If the crew and systems *don't require* the volume, then it makes no sense to go all Brobdignagian in dimensions. A smaller vessel is a smaller target that maneuvers more nimbly. And getting around inside is quicker. Design for function.

 

[HansMustermann]

While I would generally aggree with the idea that a practical spaceship wouldn't have ballroom-sized one-man dorms like in Star Trek and could probably be a lot smaller, I humbly present another idea: heat dissipation.

Take a look at those huge panels on the space station, and yeah, they're there to dissipate the heat from a tiny space station by SF standards. The issue is that in space you can't just transfer the heat to air like on Earth, so only radiation helps you. Granted, you could probably reduce them if you used a heat pump to make their surface hotter, courtesy of Messrs Stefan and Boltzmann, but even that only goes so far.

So I humbly submit that having a big outer shell could actualy serve a purpose. Namely that of heatsink. When you have to have whole square kilometres of heatsink just to get out the energy seeping from your engines and electronics anyway, it's not the worst idea to just make a huge wedge or saucer shaped hull with lots of space inside.

Granted, then what I'd also want to see is leaving some space between that heatsink outer hull and the inner hull -- kinda like the two hulls on a sub -- as spaced armour. Split it into airtight compartments, and you have some extra protection against explosive decompression of some room where the people are. Be it from battle or just grazing a grain of sand at relativistic speeds.

Basically it doesn't require VOLUME, but it might require SURFACE to get the heat out.

Edit: Which, incidentally would also explain some of the designs with strangely low volume-to-surface ratios, like the wedges in Star Wars or the dishes in Star Trek. I mean, think about it. If you wanted to optimize for volume, at the same weight, you'd probably make it a sphere. Or if you get into aerodynamics considerations (which are real even in interstellar space at relativistic speed, because you sweep a lot of space, so you collide with a lot of atoms) you'd make it tube-shaped like a submarine. Both the star destroyers and most ships in ST actually seem to deliberately go for most surface for least volume, which is the most stupid thing you can do... unless you have a good reason to need that surface.

 

[Lurch]

Simply scaling up volume and surface area in step doesn't help to dissipate heat; it's worse. Area is a squared function while volume is cubic. Given the same proportions, smaller is better. Compare a mouse and an elephant, and the metabolic rates as determined by the ability to shed heat.

 

[Brainache]

I've often wondered how the Enterprise manages to always arrive at a destination with their ship time synchronised to whatever the local time happens to be. This also applies to meeting other ships out in space...

 

[Klimax]

Actually how starships are built is not explored or mentioned. (Part of !lot) so that's maybe what they're doing. In last two DS9 session Federation had problem with losing too many starships without replacements but precise reason is not mentioned. (Likely lack of crews)

See, they could just replicate the ship and the crew and they'd be fine.

And seriously, no one ever weaponized the transporters? That was the biggest issue I had. Every now and then you'd see a desperate gambit of some sort, but really; bring down the shields and transport a nuke to the enemy ship. For that matter, transport weapons directly outside the enemy ship (or mines into it's path) if you can't breach shields. Put heavy duty ones on the outside of the ship and transport, say, ground-based anti-ship installations into deep space. Make some on vehicles or other portable/mobile platforms to use for troop movement on the battlefield...instant flanking maneuvers. Yet we saw none of that.

ETA: Heck, for that matter, it's a device that turns matter into energy. Talk about weapons potential. Forget about transporting anything, just convert it to energy released in place. That's a freaking weapon...put those wimpy photon torpedoes to shame.

Replicating crew by transporter is quite inefficient (a lot of energy) and ethically at best dubious. And if one want to mass produce then there are better methods. (see Jem'Hadar)

Nice ideas, but forgetting one thing. You have to lower your shields to use transporter. Unless you had already disabled enemy's weapons it is tactically inadvisable course of action.

And in any other case it takes again a lot of power that might be missing from other critical systems.

i don't think yourIideas would really work all that well...

As for your edit. Quantum torpedoes.

Actually how starships are built is not explored or mentioned. (Part of !lot) so that's maybe what they're doing. In last two DS9 session Federation had problem with losing too many starships without replacements but precise reason is not mentioned. (Likely lack of crews)

We see ships in construction at various parts of the shows and movies, so we know they assemble them the old fashion way. Me, I'd replicate the ships, transporter-copy the best crews and conquer my enemies, building a great empire that would last forever.

Transport copy is very inefficient and duplicates not only bodies but minds too. (See Riker and his transport clone) It creates quite few problems. And anyway, Dominion. (DS9) Say hello to Jem'Hadar.
Actually thinking about it, replication takes quite a lot of energy too, so it is possible that they are creating smaller parts and assemble them simply to save energy. (And size of that thing would be brutal)

Jem'Hadar

 

[Klimax]

I've often wondered how the Enterprise manages to always arrive at a destination with their ship time synchronised to whatever the local time happens to be. This also applies to meeting other ships out in space...

Not that hard. If planet is in database then computer already ahs all the info it needs for adjustment. If unknown then calculate one from rotation of planet and then adjust to whatever locals use for UTC-equivalent.

And computer is far more powerful and per technical manual is in its own warp field to further increase speed of calculations.

 

[HansMustermann]

Simply scaling up volume and surface area in step doesn't help to dissipate heat; it's worse. Area is a squared function while volume is cubic. Given the same proportions, smaller is better. Compare a mouse and an elephant, and the metabolic rates as determined by the ability to shed heat.

It's only worse if you actually fill that volume with more stuff that generaters heat. Having the same number of people and equipment on a bigger ship doesn't actually make the problem any worse, since it's the same heat to vent. Simply arranging the panels of the ISS in a ISD-style wedge shape around it won't make the dissipation any more problematic, if you don't actually bring more people and equipment on board.

Hence, yes, you would have a disparity between the number of crew and such and the volume of the ship.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Interesting. What would stop people using the technology to make clones instead of destroying the thing they scanned?

There's actually the bones of an answer to that one in QM. There have been some experiments that show the possibility, if I understand this correctly, of creating a particle at location B in the exact same state as a particle at location A, provided information on the state of the particle at location A is destroyed in the operation. If both particles remained in existence then it would be possible, for example, to measure the momentum of particle A and the position of particle B precisely and thus to violate the Uncertainty Principle, but so long as the original state is lost then the Uncertainty Principle is not violated. That principle would, of course, make the transported extremely dangerous, because it would completely destroy the person at the transmitting end, and any signal error would result in them not being reconstructable at the receiving end.

Dave

 

[Belz...]

Replicating crew by transporter is quite inefficient (a lot of energy)

How is it inefficient? It replicates an entire object or person! All you need is to input energy into the system. I can think of no more efficient way to produce something: no human intervention, no construction material, very little waiting time; all you need is a large solar collector and M/A reactor.

and duplicates not only bodies but minds too.

I mentioned that as a positive already: no need to train your troops in multiple.

Say hello to Jem'Hadar.

The Jem'Hadar are grown biologically. Very inefficient.

 

[Klimax]

How is it inefficient? It replicates an entire object or person! All you need is to input energy into the system. I can think of no more efficient way to produce something: no human intervention, no construction material, very little waiting time; all you need is a large solar collector and M/A reactor.



I mentioned that as a positive already: no need to train your troops in multiple.



The Jem'Hadar are grown biologically. Very inefficient.

Explain how it is more inefficient then expending lots of energy on transport-based duplication. Also having effectively mono-thinking army is not precisely good idea. If you wanted such thing then you can outright go Borg-way.

Also, "all you need energy". Yes, but that amount of energy is on bit different scale by the time you get to starship sizes. Reminder: We are talking about civilizations that routinely use multipole MARA reactors for regular operations!

Also size of that replicator for starships would be different matter then even regular industrial sized ones. You are assuming things just scale easily...

 

[Seismosaurus]

Example please?

Examples of giant ships?

Take the star destroyer. They're one mile long. If anything they're larger than a scaled up aircraft carrier, because they're far wider for a given length. So projecting 600,000+ crew for a star destroyer would be extremely conservative. Yet they only have a crew of 35,000. A carrier crewed to that density would have about 250 people on it.

The Executor Super Star Destroyer was 1,600 times bigger than a Star Destroyer. Yet it only has a crew of 280,000, eight times as many. If it was populated like a present day carrier is, it would have a crew of close to one billion people. Or alternatively, a modern carrier crewed to the density that an SSD is would have a crew of two people, at most. Two!

Similar story with the Enterprise-D in Star Trek. Though it's much, much smaller than the above ships, a Galaxy class ship is still huge - on the order of fifteen times the size of an aircraft carrier. Yet the war version of the ship in Yesterday's Enterprise can only carry six thousand troops, and is very crowded. With six thousand people aboard, that ship would feel practically empty. With the normal 1,000 crew, it should be a great rarity to see anybody walk past anybody else in a corridor - something that happens all the time.

Hell, Dax said that they "pack them in" on a Constitution class, which is over half the volume of a carrier but has a twelfth of the crew aboard

I read your ideas about scaling up an aircraft carrier. Basically scaling up an aircraft carrier to the size you proposed merely means that people could live at normal city densities in those ships. Not really seeing a problem.

The problem is that that's exactly what we would expect these huge ships to be like - flying cities, with tens of millions of people in them and all that comes with that. But in reality we almost never see them treated that way. Being Captain of an SSD wouldn't even be like being the mayor of a town, it would be more like being the President of a country three times the size of America - and the Captain and his deputies would have as much involvement in the day to day running of any given department of the ship as Trump has in running any given state in the US.

 

[Belz...]

Explain how it is more inefficient then expending lots of energy on transport-based duplication.

They replicate coffee. Obviously they have the ressources to spare. And I've already explained it: faster, fewer ressources, no need to mine, no workoforce required, etc.

Also having effectively mono-thinking army is not precisely good idea.

Have you ever seen army training? The whole point is to reduce individuality to a minimum and enforce a strict hierarchy.

Also, "all you need energy". Yes, but that amount of energy is on bit different scale by the time you get to starship sizes.

Irrelevant; you just scale up energy production and replicators.

You are assuming things just scale easily...

Are you asking me to imagine the use this magical technology realistically? That's like saying that the US can't just mass-produce cars by scaling up assembly facilities.

 

[3point14]

Examples of giant ships? <SNIPPED)

I see what you're saying. You are making the assumption that the same number of crew are required per cubic yard of wessel which I'm not really sure holds. The more advance the technology the more one person can deal with.

Any pretense at realism (which there isn't, I realise) would mean that about 9/10 of a SSD would be fuel or empty fuel tanks.

 

[Belz...]

Examples of giant ships?

Take the star destroyer. They're one mile long. If anything they're larger than a scaled up aircraft carrier, because they're far wider for a given length. So projecting 600,000+ crew for a star destroyer would be extremely conservative. Yet they only have a crew of 35,000. A carrier crewed to that density would have about 250 people on it.

The Executor Super Star Destroyer was 1,600 times bigger than a Star Destroyer. Yet it only has a crew of 280,000, eight times as many. If it was populated like a present day carrier is, it would have a crew of close to one billion people. Or alternatively, a modern carrier crewed to the density that an SSD is would have a crew of two people, at most. Two!

Similar story with the Enterprise-D in Star Trek. Though it's much, much smaller than the above ships, a Galaxy class ship is still huge - on the order of fifteen times the size of an aircraft carrier. Yet the war version of the ship in Yesterday's Enterprise can only carry six thousand troops, and is very crowded. With six thousand people aboard, that ship would feel practically empty. With the normal 1,000 crew, it should be a great rarity to see anybody walk past anybody else in a corridor - something that happens all the time.

About the 1701-D, there's plenty of open spaces for gymnasiums, holodecks and other such recreation, quarters are pretty huge compared to military vessels (you could probably fit 40 people in an officer's quarters!). So you expect a low density. There are other issues with this, but at least with the Enterprise they have an excuse.

With the Star Destroyers, well, that's what happens when you just want big ships for your sci-fi world.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

If the crew and systems *don't require* the volume, then it makes no sense to go all Brobdignagian in dimensions. A smaller vessel is a smaller target that maneuvers more nimbly. And getting around inside is quicker. Design for function.

But a crew staying for a long time on a ship does require more space. Nothing cited so far seems to be at odds with the idea that large ships with crews staying for a long time would want to be populated at some lower density than an aircraft carrier or an Apollo command module.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Examples of giant ships?

Take the star destroyer. They're one mile long. If anything they're larger than a scaled up aircraft carrier, because they're far wider for a given length. So projecting 600,000+ crew for a star destroyer would be extremely conservative. Yet they only have a crew of 35,000. A carrier crewed to that density would have about 250 people on it.

But 35,000 sounds perfect if you simply accept the idea they aren't populated like an aircraft carrier but are merely populated like a large city. 35,000 people per square mile is a city like density.

The problem is that that's exactly what we would expect these huge ships to be like - flying cities, with tens of millions of people in them and all that comes with that.

Which of your examples would be reasonably expected to have tens of millions of people on them? Only one example (Executor Super Star Destroyer) you cited might support tens of millions at a city like density. And probably not actually if you allowing for large open spaces that are meant to be large enough to give a feeling of being out doors.

Looks like a non problem to me.

 

[alfaniner]

Now that it's becoming common, I see replicators as being similiar to 3D printers that construct something if needed, or just materialize whatever food is called up from galley storage.

And seriously, no one ever weaponized the transporters?

Scotty did, sending the MOAB to the Klingon engine room (The Mother of all Broods).