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I think re using older ships for other purposes is a great use of materials. It is almost canon to since it explains why we saw 150 year old ships in the war.

Teaos wrote:I think re using older ships for other purposes is a great use of materials. It is almost canon to since it explains why we saw 150 year old ships in the war.

I think it's a great idea and highly practical. In space, anything capable of interstellar travel can be put to use. The idea that it can't do anything worthwhile because it's not new is silly. There's a lot of unglamorous jobs that need to be done to run an interstellar civilization. Look at Cassidy's freighter ship in DS9... the thing looked, at least visually, decades old at minimum. Certainly at SOME point it must have been relatively state of the art. And that ship was doing everything from ferrying cargo to meeting with Tholians to smuggling weapons to the Maquis.

But if things do end up going wrong in space your kind of screwed.

Teaos wrote:But if things do end up going wrong in space your kind of screwed.

That's true even if you're in a brand new, state of the art ship. Short of some hocus pocus and double-crossing, the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E was almost destroyed barely a year out of spacedock, from its own self-destruct.

But old ships have much more chance of failing.

Teaos wrote:But old ships have much more chance of failing.

Not if the parts are easier to maintain, or replace.

In space, shouldn't hull life almost be infinite, due to the fact they are in a vacuum?

It has rather large forces put apon it.

Teaos wrote:But if things do end up going wrong in space your kind of screwed.

Correct, but I doubt the forces put upon a ship that's sitting pretty stationary in a single system, often not moving unless needed, would be very significant.

It's constantly under pressure from the air inside. It has the vibrations of all the equipment working inside it. Sure it might not be moving around but it is constantly under pressure of some sort.

That, and there is a minimal pressure on the outside due to small particles and debris travelling at several kilometers per second.

Deflector dish removes them.

While it has never been explicitly mentioned, there must be some sort of "subspace drag" because every kind of acceleration requires that a force is exerted upon the hull.

Bryan Moore wrote:

Teaos wrote:But if things do end up going wrong in space your kind of screwed.

Correct, but I doubt the forces put upon a ship that's sitting pretty stationary in a single system, often not moving unless needed, would be very significant.

You're forgetting things like radiation from the sun. While we're protected by the ozone layer a space craft would have no such protection and radiation, and I'm sure other factors I'm forgetting, would wear the hull down. Maybe not as fast as a similar craft on earth, but it would break down eventually.

ChakatBlackstar wrote:

Bryan Moore wrote:

Teaos wrote:But if things do end up going wrong in space your kind of screwed.

Correct, but I doubt the forces put upon a ship that's sitting pretty stationary in a single system, often not moving unless needed, would be very significant.

You're forgetting things like radiation from the sun. While we're protected by the ozone layer a space craft would have no such protection and radiation, and I'm sure other factors I'm forgetting, would wear the hull down. Maybe not as fast as a similar craft on earth, but it would break down eventually.

I'd tend to think that the amount of time it would take for solar wind to erode a starship hull would be so mind-boggingly long as to be completely moot for any practical purposes.