“It is appearant in other sci fi too. I love X wing fighters, but the way the main gear folds into the engines has always bugged me form the time I saw one take off from Yavin in the film in 1977.”
“Anyway, an F-16 jet fighter has a front landing gear that would to the untrained eye appear to obstruct the engine intake ducting, but they just run the duct around the gear bay.”
An even better example would be the B-17 or B-25, whose main gear looks like they’re going right into the center of the engines.
Steve Atone-“I think we have the basis of a proverb here – sometimes, Trek fans can’t
see the appeal for the plasma conduits. The appeal of Star Trek, the core
appeal, is that it’s a place we’d like to live, an optimistic future
where everyone reaches their potential without compromise.”
I appreciate your civil reply, even if we do not agree. Let me show you respect by responding civilly; yet still disagreeing. I appreciated the time spent on the pipes. I never thought the scripts in TOS were formulaic. They were designed to be morality tales. Modern fables to compare our lives to some distant future, and therefore did have a classic manner to them. To those who made such possible, I offer my sincere thanks and appreciation.
I can see your point in the proverb, but respectfully disagree. The movie did not show me an optimistic future; for me it showed a group of kids in positions of power acting marginally responsible. A future where people master their passions in favor of the greater good is what I hope for, not one where people are blown to bits with a nod and a wink.
The rejection of this ‘old time’ Trek fan is in the hollowness of voice that Snack Trek offers; and the shameless effort to rip off ideas from Lucas and other entertainment forums, rather than build a thoughtful, intelligent message. Not everything on Trek needs to be serious, look at ‘A Piece of the Action,’ one of my favorite episodes, but it should be thoughtful and intelligent, or it disrespects the efforts of those who spent three days labeling pipes, and those writers who spent years of their lives, trying to create something…special.
I’d argue that very few Trek movies offered that optimistic a future, either. Perhaps their endings were happy ones, but only by contrasting it to dismal initial situations. One thing we should not hold against Abrams’ movie (OK, we should, but then it would be double-standardish) is it not being like the TV series. None of the movies were, really, not even Khan.
‘A future where people master their passions in favor of the greater good is what I hope for, not one where people are blown to bits with a nod and a wink.’
The acid test for this movie seems to be whether you ‘buy’ Kirk’s promotion.
I see it as *exactly* what you just said – Kirk masters his passions for
the greater good. He doesn’t lose them or moderate them or change them
very much, he learns to channel them. For me, one of the most interesting
things is that he *doesn’t* go on a journey, not even one as gradual as
Bond in the Craig films.
In a modern navy, any modern organization, it wouldn’t make sense. Star
Trek’s set in the future, in a utopian society. It identifies talent and
is flexible enough to adapt – you need an officer who speaks Romulan, you
grab an officer who speaks Romulan and they get to be communications
officer. Over and over in the movie, we’re shown that – *everyone* in Star Fleet is
capable and versatile and multi-talented, and in an emergency, they
don’t stop to look at resumes and decide that Bob’s been there three
years, so it’s only fair that he gets to stay, or that he’s a year
away from the necessary promotion or exam – the best man for the
job, all the time. Kirk’s bridge crew basically self-assembles from people
who prove they have the talents needed and who rise to the challenge.
Kirk *is* the right person for the job, for the same reason he was in
TOS and the movies – note that a lot of people have the information needed
to work out what’s happening on Vulcan, but he’s the one person who’s
pieced it together.
That’s why I see the movie as optimistic – Roddenberry rarely got the chance
to articulate it, and Trek all but abandons the idea at times, but ‘progress’
in the future isn’t just better technology and losing the bad stuff like
religion and other superstition, it’s that people will get better, and
that society and organizations will get better at serving those people.
Besides, they get a great joke out of the ship designs – ‘if the design
of the Romulan ship makes any sense at all, you’ll land in the cargo
bay’ … they land on the bridge.
@78 – And the utopian future went west with the Dominion War, Borg attacks, and the ongoing 24th century tie-in novels…. (Though I enjoyed all of them.)
Be great if this movie has indeed set us up for boldly exploring again.
Wow. Lots of passionate talk here. But I don’t think this requires a lot of in-depth analysis. That shot kind of sums up the movie for me. High cool factor while making little or no sense. If you can’t come up with “cool” that also makes sense, you’re not doing the job, IMO.
There’s a fascinating ‘future society’ document Roddenberry wrote in the seventies, one where he talks about the standard of living in Kirk’s time. It’s got stuff about clothes that automatically adjust for fashion and men and women using unisex bathrooms … but also some great stuff about what people are like, what drives them, what Africa looks like in the future and so on.
Anyone know what I’m talking about and have a link?
The keynote of it was that, throughout human history there’s been a sort of Moore’s law of standard of living – the average person lives like the richest person of two hundred years before. So that, by Star Trek time everyone will live like a Manhattan billionaire now, they’ll have the same opportunities of travel, education, entertainment and so on. It’s
a document that I think explains Star Trek’s future a lot better than Star Trek itself does, explains why Picard is so brilliant and seems to have done so much.
Steve Atone -That’s for your perspective; if you’ve had experiences in the military I can sympathize with your point of view. Many have made your point that our current military is bogged down with politics too much to be affective. I can’t speak in authority either way, but I’ll accept your word on that.
However, even though it is fashionable to say that a person’s resume is not important. A resume is not the only determination of a person’s skill, I agree. But it is an indicator of a person’s emotional discipline. What someone was willing to do to master a skill, not just depend upon luck or egotistically expect because ‘I’m so different,’ the rules don’t apply to me.
Kirk & crew in Snack Trek react like they are on a joy ride, jettisoning people they don’t like, killing people with a wink [which firs the definition of anti-social behavior], and engaging in sexual harassment with subordinates.
Any Starfleet that would promote this type of behavior needs to learn from the past; that, like Tiberius, hubris leads to serious problems. The movie plays more to appeal to the anti-social teen market:
JJ-“I can make Trek meets Porkies! Fund me!”
I respect our differences in this, but I believe that our future needs to be more than emotionally optimistic, it needs to be intellectually genuine. Watching Krik & Spock violate what we have already learned; killing enemies with glee leads to resentment, having affairs with subordinates leads to poor judgment, & doing what feels right regardless of what is rational…well, what’s the point of making the story? We’ve already been there. We’ve learned that those things are not wise. There is no point to making the film…
The acid test for this movie seems to be whether you ‘buy’ Kirk’s promotion.
See, for me this was easy for two very simple reasons:
1.) He’s James T. Kirk. Easily ’nuff said right there. It’s who he is. I would not expect anything less. To have Kirk go the “regular” route up through Starfleet would not be Kirk, IMO.
2.) He saved the friggin’ world first time out, as a cadet.
I love watching the character go from brash genius youth, to a commander before my very eyes. And not just a commander. James T. Kirk, the man, the legend. Of course he got E straight away. He’s James T. Kirk, eh.
And given who he was, a brash youth, it even allows for me to accept his kinda lingering ramble-rousing brashness at destroying Nero (not to mention Nero was still hell-bent on destroying Earth given the chance).
Long time Lurker here. I figured I should finally speak up. I think the look of the shuttlebay was just following the overall theme of the movie. Be big and as grandiose as you can be then add in a lot of explosions.
The whole shuttlebay (and the shuttle sequences themselves, in my opinion) was the movie trying to add in all the Viper flight sequences from BSG. I asked myself a lot during the movie, why don’t they just use the transporter here? How about here? I think it is because they wanted that BSG look in the film. I think the shuttlebay was there attempt to have the flight pod in the Enterprise. I agree with the earlier comment, even BSG’s flight pod’s made sense. When the Vipers had to make a combat landing before the ship could jump, there wasn’t a large beam in the way that sheared Viper wings and landing gear right and left.
Honestly, I couldn’t enjoy the movie. I ended up walking out. Now don’t get me wrong, I very much wanted to give it a chance. When the little problems in the story start to get bigger and bigger, you start seeing more flaws than enjoying the movie.
I apprecaite your comments. My dad was a pilot for 40 years…so I have been around airports and aircraft for alot of my life…I realize the Xwing is fictional with systems that we don;t understand or can make today…but when I see that I still think fans and compressors and an exhaust.
As far as the shuttle bay they are also launching and recovering shuttles. True a futuristic landing bay might not need a runway…even the new BSG probably didn’t. I look at the bay on teh JJ prise and jsut think I wouldn;t fly into that.
Nick Meyer once said that any sci fi film no matter how advanced the tech is still needs thigns to connect us today’s world…so even with tractor beams and autofligth systems, I still think of a traditional approach to a carrier…line up for visual, call the ball and all that.
The more I inspect that pic, the more I think that the real landing bay is supposed to consist of just the sunken area at the lip of the fantail. All the insides we see is shuttle storage only volumes, with a concession to direct inner access useful for moving cargo and intense traffic cases. About why not using the transporter, it could be that it actually is being used simultaneously to all that shuttle activity, given the suddenness of the emergency.
(of course, the main reason was to make it look cool, but I think it can be justified, too)
Looking at the shots, it does seem to me that the area in the bay where the shuttles would enetr, and on that level going inward, is relatively clear. I suspect that the idea was that a shuttle flies in, hovers for a mooment, and then lowers to either the landing area aft or into a storage pocket somewhat more forward.
I also suspect that the thinking behind the structure would also be that, if a shuttle was in serious distress, it probably wouldn’t be coming in on its own power. That’s where the landing tractor beams come in.
As for the size debate, I think what some folks forget is that it impacts our thinking in two ways. First, a number of comments have been made to the effect that the movie didn’t really change the characters (which I think is mostly, but not entirely, true), and the movie itself probably bears that out, to a point. But for those of us who think of the Enterprise as a character, transforming her size that radically is truly transforming a character, and it’s impacting us the same way. Second, with so much else that people who care about Star Trek’s world have built being based on the sizes of things that we’ve seen, that radical a change isn’t just about one ship. It domino effects everything. And, at least for me, a dismissive, “It’s an alternate universe, deal with it” doesn’t cut it.
‘Course, what can I say? In my entertainment terminology lexicon, “reboot” and “fail” are pretty much interchangeable.
All that said, my other, bigger problem is that I saw the film–3 times–and I don’t for a minute believe that the ship is anywhere near 700 meters long. Except for the overblown Engineering interiors, everything else *on the screen* fit with a roughly 300-meter long ship…including the shuttlebay, which I think occupies a larger portion of the secondary hull than did the bay in the original, which might also be throwing off people’s size estimates. Also, the secondary hull looks a bit wider, albeit less high, than the TMP ship, thus we have Engineering much higher (partly within the lower section of the thicker, heavier dorsal) and a larger, deeper shuttlebay.
Now I’m beginning to remember exactly why I stopped associating with Trek fans in the late 80s, and spent most of the next 20 years just enjoying Star Trek (the good and the bad) on my own. For all this talk of respect and Roddenberry’s vision of the future, I see so much cynicism and bitterness here. Sad.
I’m wondering if the whole reason the girders are there in the VFX is to match practical ones in the live-action shuttlebay sequences. Is this a ‘casualty’ of using a real-life location for the shuttlebay? Did we even see the shuttlebay in the film in that manner? I can’t remember.
Trying to recall, and coming up empty so far. Seems like a “variable operational-geometry” situation here judging by the pix posted thus far. More as I’m able to revisit the movie theatre for another viewing.
IIRC, there weren’t any live-action shots of the bay itself. We saw the characters in corridors on the lower levels, heading toward the bay, and then we cut to the shuttle interior as they were preparing to take off.
‘Course, the interiors of the whole secondary hull are so haphazard that it was rather hard to get a handle on what was going on, and where the characters were.
I’ve got an ex-marine buddy who drove M1A Abrams’ off of carriers and back to shore, after gulf war 1 and said that he had an average of 6″ clearance on either side of the tank.
Besides, a US Marine helio pilot could land a blackhawk at a picnic with out knocking over a dixie cup, so a Fed shuttle pilot should be able to avoid girders with with counter-grav & computer controlled flight covering his arse.
Gary Kerr hit me with this one last night. Consider:
Another thing I don’t think anyone has mentioned: you’ve got this monstrous ship, with a cavernous hangar bay, that’s exploring space umpteen zillion light years from home – yet the hangar bay, with its slanty beams, accommodates only this year’s model of long, skinny shuttlecraft. What if a wider Starfleet ship or alien vessel needs to land in the hangar bay? What if the ship’s automated landing system isn’t operational, either from accident or from battle damage. Do you play “thread the needle” when landing? Flexibility of use should be a major design objective for the hangar bay on a ship that’s usually operating far from home base.
I know this is a very late entry. Just to point out that I am watching Abrams’ Fringe series (which is preposterous but real fun, sort of his take on X-Files), and it seems to me this one was his test ground for the use of flares, as far as I see.
“It is appearant in other sci fi too. I love X wing fighters, but the way the main gear folds into the engines has always bugged me form the time I saw one take off from Yavin in the film in 1977.”
“Anyway, an F-16 jet fighter has a front landing gear that would to the untrained eye appear to obstruct the engine intake ducting, but they just run the duct around the gear bay.”
An even better example would be the B-17 or B-25, whose main gear looks like they’re going right into the center of the engines.
Steve Atone-“I think we have the basis of a proverb here – sometimes, Trek fans can’t
see the appeal for the plasma conduits. The appeal of Star Trek, the core
appeal, is that it’s a place we’d like to live, an optimistic future
where everyone reaches their potential without compromise.”
I appreciate your civil reply, even if we do not agree. Let me show you respect by responding civilly; yet still disagreeing. I appreciated the time spent on the pipes. I never thought the scripts in TOS were formulaic. They were designed to be morality tales. Modern fables to compare our lives to some distant future, and therefore did have a classic manner to them. To those who made such possible, I offer my sincere thanks and appreciation.
I can see your point in the proverb, but respectfully disagree. The movie did not show me an optimistic future; for me it showed a group of kids in positions of power acting marginally responsible. A future where people master their passions in favor of the greater good is what I hope for, not one where people are blown to bits with a nod and a wink.
The rejection of this ‘old time’ Trek fan is in the hollowness of voice that Snack Trek offers; and the shameless effort to rip off ideas from Lucas and other entertainment forums, rather than build a thoughtful, intelligent message. Not everything on Trek needs to be serious, look at ‘A Piece of the Action,’ one of my favorite episodes, but it should be thoughtful and intelligent, or it disrespects the efforts of those who spent three days labeling pipes, and those writers who spent years of their lives, trying to create something…special.
Respect,
The DC
One is only ever able to see what one is capable of seeing. Beauty, and message, are indeed in (or not in) the eye of the beholder, eh.
LLP,
deg
I’d argue that very few Trek movies offered that optimistic a future, either. Perhaps their endings were happy ones, but only by contrasting it to dismal initial situations. One thing we should not hold against Abrams’ movie (OK, we should, but then it would be double-standardish) is it not being like the TV series. None of the movies were, really, not even Khan.
‘A future where people master their passions in favor of the greater good is what I hope for, not one where people are blown to bits with a nod and a wink.’
The acid test for this movie seems to be whether you ‘buy’ Kirk’s promotion.
I see it as *exactly* what you just said – Kirk masters his passions for
the greater good. He doesn’t lose them or moderate them or change them
very much, he learns to channel them. For me, one of the most interesting
things is that he *doesn’t* go on a journey, not even one as gradual as
Bond in the Craig films.
In a modern navy, any modern organization, it wouldn’t make sense. Star
Trek’s set in the future, in a utopian society. It identifies talent and
is flexible enough to adapt – you need an officer who speaks Romulan, you
grab an officer who speaks Romulan and they get to be communications
officer. Over and over in the movie, we’re shown that – *everyone* in Star Fleet is
capable and versatile and multi-talented, and in an emergency, they
don’t stop to look at resumes and decide that Bob’s been there three
years, so it’s only fair that he gets to stay, or that he’s a year
away from the necessary promotion or exam – the best man for the
job, all the time. Kirk’s bridge crew basically self-assembles from people
who prove they have the talents needed and who rise to the challenge.
Kirk *is* the right person for the job, for the same reason he was in
TOS and the movies – note that a lot of people have the information needed
to work out what’s happening on Vulcan, but he’s the one person who’s
pieced it together.
That’s why I see the movie as optimistic – Roddenberry rarely got the chance
to articulate it, and Trek all but abandons the idea at times, but ‘progress’
in the future isn’t just better technology and losing the bad stuff like
religion and other superstition, it’s that people will get better, and
that society and organizations will get better at serving those people.
Besides, they get a great joke out of the ship designs – ‘if the design
of the Romulan ship makes any sense at all, you’ll land in the cargo
bay’ … they land on the bridge.
[MINOR POCKET BOOKS SPOILER AHEAD]
@78 – And the utopian future went west with the Dominion War, Borg attacks, and the ongoing 24th century tie-in novels…. (Though I enjoyed all of them.)
Be great if this movie has indeed set us up for boldly exploring again.
Wow. Lots of passionate talk here. But I don’t think this requires a lot of in-depth analysis. That shot kind of sums up the movie for me. High cool factor while making little or no sense. If you can’t come up with “cool” that also makes sense, you’re not doing the job, IMO.
To each his own.
OK … tried Googling something and can’t find it.
There’s a fascinating ‘future society’ document Roddenberry wrote in the seventies, one where he talks about the standard of living in Kirk’s time. It’s got stuff about clothes that automatically adjust for fashion and men and women using unisex bathrooms … but also some great stuff about what people are like, what drives them, what Africa looks like in the future and so on.
Anyone know what I’m talking about and have a link?
The keynote of it was that, throughout human history there’s been a sort of Moore’s law of standard of living – the average person lives like the richest person of two hundred years before. So that, by Star Trek time everyone will live like a Manhattan billionaire now, they’ll have the same opportunities of travel, education, entertainment and so on. It’s
a document that I think explains Star Trek’s future a lot better than Star Trek itself does, explains why Picard is so brilliant and seems to have done so much.
Steve Atone -That’s for your perspective; if you’ve had experiences in the military I can sympathize with your point of view. Many have made your point that our current military is bogged down with politics too much to be affective. I can’t speak in authority either way, but I’ll accept your word on that.
However, even though it is fashionable to say that a person’s resume is not important. A resume is not the only determination of a person’s skill, I agree. But it is an indicator of a person’s emotional discipline. What someone was willing to do to master a skill, not just depend upon luck or egotistically expect because ‘I’m so different,’ the rules don’t apply to me.
Kirk & crew in Snack Trek react like they are on a joy ride, jettisoning people they don’t like, killing people with a wink [which firs the definition of anti-social behavior], and engaging in sexual harassment with subordinates.
Any Starfleet that would promote this type of behavior needs to learn from the past; that, like Tiberius, hubris leads to serious problems. The movie plays more to appeal to the anti-social teen market:
JJ-“I can make Trek meets Porkies! Fund me!”
I respect our differences in this, but I believe that our future needs to be more than emotionally optimistic, it needs to be intellectually genuine. Watching Krik & Spock violate what we have already learned; killing enemies with glee leads to resentment, having affairs with subordinates leads to poor judgment, & doing what feels right regardless of what is rational…well, what’s the point of making the story? We’ve already been there. We’ve learned that those things are not wise. There is no point to making the film…
Except $$$$$$$$$. Kinda shallow.
The DC
Don- Nice and concise! Kuddos!
The DC
Steve Atone:
See, for me this was easy for two very simple reasons:
1.) He’s James T. Kirk. Easily ’nuff said right there. It’s who he is. I would not expect anything less. To have Kirk go the “regular” route up through Starfleet would not be Kirk, IMO.
2.) He saved the friggin’ world first time out, as a cadet.
I love watching the character go from brash genius youth, to a commander before my very eyes. And not just a commander. James T. Kirk, the man, the legend. Of course he got E straight away. He’s James T. Kirk, eh.
And given who he was, a brash youth, it even allows for me to accept his kinda lingering ramble-rousing brashness at destroying Nero (not to mention Nero was still hell-bent on destroying Earth given the chance).
Just how I see it, eh.
LLP,
deg
Long time Lurker here. I figured I should finally speak up. I think the look of the shuttlebay was just following the overall theme of the movie. Be big and as grandiose as you can be then add in a lot of explosions.
The whole shuttlebay (and the shuttle sequences themselves, in my opinion) was the movie trying to add in all the Viper flight sequences from BSG. I asked myself a lot during the movie, why don’t they just use the transporter here? How about here? I think it is because they wanted that BSG look in the film. I think the shuttlebay was there attempt to have the flight pod in the Enterprise. I agree with the earlier comment, even BSG’s flight pod’s made sense. When the Vipers had to make a combat landing before the ship could jump, there wasn’t a large beam in the way that sheared Viper wings and landing gear right and left.
Honestly, I couldn’t enjoy the movie. I ended up walking out. Now don’t get me wrong, I very much wanted to give it a chance. When the little problems in the story start to get bigger and bigger, you start seeing more flaws than enjoying the movie.
Hopefully that makes sense to everyone.
Simon
I apprecaite your comments. My dad was a pilot for 40 years…so I have been around airports and aircraft for alot of my life…I realize the Xwing is fictional with systems that we don;t understand or can make today…but when I see that I still think fans and compressors and an exhaust.
As far as the shuttle bay they are also launching and recovering shuttles. True a futuristic landing bay might not need a runway…even the new BSG probably didn’t. I look at the bay on teh JJ prise and jsut think I wouldn;t fly into that.
Nick Meyer once said that any sci fi film no matter how advanced the tech is still needs thigns to connect us today’s world…so even with tractor beams and autofligth systems, I still think of a traditional approach to a carrier…line up for visual, call the ball and all that.
Movie opens next weekend here in HK.
That… looks… like… timelord tech
I’m just glad they brought back the TMP penguin greys Pike had on at the end of the film. They rocked.
The more I inspect that pic, the more I think that the real landing bay is supposed to consist of just the sunken area at the lip of the fantail. All the insides we see is shuttle storage only volumes, with a concession to direct inner access useful for moving cargo and intense traffic cases. About why not using the transporter, it could be that it actually is being used simultaneously to all that shuttle activity, given the suddenness of the emergency.
(of course, the main reason was to make it look cool, but I think it can be justified, too)
@89 – Now that WAS cool! And seemed to look remarkably in place with the other uniforms.
Looking at the shots, it does seem to me that the area in the bay where the shuttles would enetr, and on that level going inward, is relatively clear. I suspect that the idea was that a shuttle flies in, hovers for a mooment, and then lowers to either the landing area aft or into a storage pocket somewhat more forward.
I also suspect that the thinking behind the structure would also be that, if a shuttle was in serious distress, it probably wouldn’t be coming in on its own power. That’s where the landing tractor beams come in.
As for the size debate, I think what some folks forget is that it impacts our thinking in two ways. First, a number of comments have been made to the effect that the movie didn’t really change the characters (which I think is mostly, but not entirely, true), and the movie itself probably bears that out, to a point. But for those of us who think of the Enterprise as a character, transforming her size that radically is truly transforming a character, and it’s impacting us the same way. Second, with so much else that people who care about Star Trek’s world have built being based on the sizes of things that we’ve seen, that radical a change isn’t just about one ship. It domino effects everything. And, at least for me, a dismissive, “It’s an alternate universe, deal with it” doesn’t cut it.
‘Course, what can I say? In my entertainment terminology lexicon, “reboot” and “fail” are pretty much interchangeable.
All that said, my other, bigger problem is that I saw the film–3 times–and I don’t for a minute believe that the ship is anywhere near 700 meters long. Except for the overblown Engineering interiors, everything else *on the screen* fit with a roughly 300-meter long ship…including the shuttlebay, which I think occupies a larger portion of the secondary hull than did the bay in the original, which might also be throwing off people’s size estimates. Also, the secondary hull looks a bit wider, albeit less high, than the TMP ship, thus we have Engineering much higher (partly within the lower section of the thicker, heavier dorsal) and a larger, deeper shuttlebay.
My few credits, anyway…
Best,
Alex
“Just another reason not to see this movie.”
Now I’m beginning to remember exactly why I stopped associating with Trek fans in the late 80s, and spent most of the next 20 years just enjoying Star Trek (the good and the bad) on my own. For all this talk of respect and Roddenberry’s vision of the future, I see so much cynicism and bitterness here. Sad.
First! (second time around
)
Get some rest, Doug. Then regale us with the tree mystery tomorrow. Good night!
I’m wondering if the whole reason the girders are there in the VFX is to match practical ones in the live-action shuttlebay sequences. Is this a ‘casualty’ of using a real-life location for the shuttlebay? Did we even see the shuttlebay in the film in that manner? I can’t remember.
Trying to recall, and coming up empty so far. Seems like a “variable operational-geometry” situation here judging by the pix posted thus far. More as I’m able to revisit the movie theatre for another viewing.
IIRC, there weren’t any live-action shots of the bay itself. We saw the characters in corridors on the lower levels, heading toward the bay, and then we cut to the shuttle interior as they were preparing to take off.
‘Course, the interiors of the whole secondary hull are so haphazard that it was rather hard to get a handle on what was going on, and where the characters were.
Best,
Alex
I’ve got an ex-marine buddy who drove M1A Abrams’ off of carriers and back to shore, after gulf war 1 and said that he had an average of 6″ clearance on either side of the tank.
Besides, a US Marine helio pilot could land a blackhawk at a picnic with out knocking over a dixie cup, so a Fed shuttle pilot should be able to avoid girders with with counter-grav & computer controlled flight covering his arse.
Multiple-redundancy built into the shuttle’s computer hardware and software, almost a certainty.
Gary Kerr hit me with this one last night. Consider:
Another thing I don’t think anyone has mentioned: you’ve got this monstrous ship, with a cavernous hangar bay, that’s exploring space umpteen zillion light years from home – yet the hangar bay, with its slanty beams, accommodates only this year’s model of long, skinny shuttlecraft. What if a wider Starfleet ship or alien vessel needs to land in the hangar bay? What if the ship’s automated landing system isn’t operational, either from accident or from battle damage. Do you play “thread the needle” when landing? Flexibility of use should be a major design objective for the hangar bay on a ship that’s usually operating far from home base.
I know this is a very late entry. Just to point out that I am watching Abrams’ Fringe series (which is preposterous but real fun, sort of his take on X-Files), and it seems to me this one was his test ground for the use of flares, as far as I see.