www.ditl.org

From the site...

Quite why you need to build a Starship within such a framework is a little bit of a mystery. A present day drydock isolates a ship from water so you can get at it for repairs, so the name implies that a Trek drydock should put the ship in a bubble of air so that work could be done in a "shirtsleeves" environment. There is slight evidence that this does actually happen - the contents of the champagne bottle which breaks against the Enterprise-B in "Generations" remain in their liquid state, indicating that the ship may be floating within a large bubble of air. Presumably this would be held within a forcefield of some sort.

However, even assuming that this was the case, the drydock seen in that movie was significantly different in appearance from this version. Also, if drydocks in general do indeed put the ship within a shirtsleeves environment then why were people wearing spacesuits to work on the ship in TMP? So it seems like this useful feature is not actually included.

My guess is that the framework provides some sort of power supply, lighting, a place to store construction materials and tools, etc. The Generations version also includes habitable areas, which the TMP version apparently does not.

Whilst the obvious part of power, light and logistic support are obvious... not-so is what else the drydocks could do.
What about a set of high-resolution sensors that allow not just the monitoring of construction progress piece by piece, but tracking and recovery of when something becomes debris? like, "Oops I just lost grip on my space-welder, it's floating aw- oh it's been beamed back to me, thanks guys!" or "Damn, we have a hatch and screw blown out-... oh right, tractor beams to catch anything that could become a problem big enough to be targeted by tractors and forcefields to catch what the tractor beams don't."

As for the translation of ground drydocks to space drydocks being 'shirtsleeves area but people are still in eva'... maybe it could be a case of enclosing a ship in a less-than-1 but greater-than-0 bar atmosphere where an EVA suit for long periods is still a must, but not a big deal to loose suit pressure in, and not too great a deal to deal with like... 10,000,000 m³ of volume to fill with air would be at 1bar versus...0.6 or so?

Keep in mind, googling "what bar airpressure is livable' results in this:

The lowest atmospheric pressure humans can brerathe in, with a pure oxygen supply on hand, is roughly around 12.22 percent sea level air pressure or 121.7 millibars, the pressure found at 49,000 feet.

I figure 0.6 vs 0.12 bar then to be around the point close enough.

other detail: the highest human settlement on earth is the town of la rinconada in the andes mountains at about 5,100 metres / 16700'. from an air pressure>altitude calculator (pressure at sea level 101325 Pa, temp 23'c) you get 0.5, so... 0.6 livable, comparable to 4200m or 13800'.

filling a huge volume like that with 1 bar of air is a bigger task that that same volume with 0.6 bar of air... but I guess it could be a more localized thing. the EVA suits is in the event of the volume's forcefield collapse, whilst also allowing for the eva suit's own event of a pressure loss event. and in both... transporters.

I figure that the dry docks we see like TMP or Generations are fitting out docks. In Navies usually they build the ship in a dry dock and then when launched they sit in the water while being fitted out. Traditionally they build ships on an angled slip way which is then launched to make room for that slip way.

Anyway, that's what I think. That Voyager episode where Deven was jumping into different periods of Voyager and one of them was when Voyager was in dry dock, did we see any ships under construction in them in the background?

We did see either the Enterprise or a Galaxy class ship being build inside a structure when Geordi was using a program with Leah Brahms, the designer of the engines.

The again we did see Cardassian and Dominion shipyards showing ships under construction similar to what we have seen with prior episodes.

IMO I don't see any reason not to have construction workers work in a oxygen environment while in zero G. Best guess is that super futuristic tool or equipment is very dangerous in oxygen rich environments?

Just about any tool is very dangerous in an Oxygen rich environment. Even a hammer could make a spark and set the air on fire. Let alone welding kit, which I'm pretty sure we've seen being used at some point.

IanKennedy wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2024 4:59 pm Just about any tool is very dangerous in an Oxygen rich environment. Even a hammer could make a spark and set the air on fire. Let alone welding kit, which I'm pretty sure we've seen being used at some point.

Well yeah. I would expect the 23rd-24th century to have that figured out. I was talking about typical breathing air. Like in the range of 20% oxygen range.

The way I see it is that if Starfleet built their ships with breathable air they would do it with forcefields. With the exception that everyone is equipped in case of a breach in the forcefield.

Fully enclosing the ship under construction in a air tight metal alloy barrier would work too until you need to tow in the parts for it to be installed, something the transporters are not capable of handling.

Or you keep the whole thing open like we have seen and just have the workers work in zero-G and air supplies with the dock itself having monitoring systems for them in case of an emergency transport.

The other option would be human-easy space suits, and there are thin mesh nets between the arms of a drydock.

Human-easy = the human can survive in vacuum, but it is almost like working in a shirt-sleeve environment.

Thin mesh nets = helps keep larger stuff from drifting away, and is effectively invisible when viewed from a distance

By working in a vacuum you don't have to worry about fires or explosive decompression.

Pressure testing on a new starship might have the ship pressurized up to 3x normal pressure, with all force fields active at max strength. If a location starts losing pressure, you know you have a leak from that location and know where to start looking. As you close up leaks, you keep on testing, turning off one force field in a location at a time. Once all the internal force fields are off, you keep it that way for 3-4 days to make sure the hull will hold.

Coalition wrote: ↑Mon Sep 09, 2024 10:50 am The other option would be human-easy space suits, and there are thin mesh nets between the arms of a drydock.

Human-easy = the human can survive in vacuum, but it is almost like working in a shirt-sleeve environment.

Thin mesh nets = helps keep larger stuff from drifting away, and is effectively invisible when viewed from a distance

By working in a vacuum you don't have to worry about fires or explosive decompression.

Pressure testing on a new starship might have the ship pressurized up to 3x normal pressure, with all force fields active at max strength. If a location starts losing pressure, you know you have a leak from that location and know where to start looking. As you close up leaks, you keep on testing, turning off one force field in a location at a time. Once all the internal force fields are off, you keep it that way for 3-4 days to make sure the hull will hold.

One of the things that is missing is that in TMP we saw workers with their own propulsion flying around doing things. Even Spock and Kirk used those suits. I honestly cannot remember seeing that elsewhere after the movie. Seems to be just regular space suits with magnetic or whatever boots, but no propulsion.

The best analog for these types of workers is today's underwater welders. Fully trained as divers and fully trained as welders.

For all we know the reason why Starfleet ships are built in those drydock 'boxes' is because those are just giant forcefield emitters for each rib or arm of the structure.

Though thinking about it, having giant sealed structures where the ships are built before towed to those open space structures could explain why Starfleet doesn't have a huge fleet. They just don't have the space and would require Building more of those construction yard space stations which would take time and alot of resources in itself.

McAvoy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2024 11:47 pm One of the things that is missing is that in TMP we saw workers with their own propulsion flying around doing things. Even Spock and Kirk used those suits. I honestly cannot remember seeing that elsewhere after the movie. Seems to be just regular space suits with magnetic or whatever boots, but no propulsion.

The best analog for these types of workers is today's underwater welders. Fully trained as divers and fully trained as welders.

For all we know the reason why Starfleet ships are built in those drydock 'boxes' is because those are just giant forcefield emitters for each rib or arm of the structure.

Though thinking about it, having giant sealed structures where the ships are built before towed to those open space structures could explain why Starfleet doesn't have a huge fleet. They just don't have the space and would require Building more of those construction yard space stations which would take time and alot of resources in itself.

Space has an advantage, in that it is mostly empty and there is plenty of it.

The Federation has over a hundred homeworlds, and I would expect that they have decent industrial capability. Compare something like Newport News to the entire United States, and that would be the rough guide between Industrial production in a major shipyard to the Federation.

You could even have multiple levels of industry:
1) Component fabrication. In surface factories where possible/practical, in zero-G foundries where needed, etc. These are the Replicators, Warp coils, Plasma Conduit segments, Structural beams, Structural Integrity generators, shield generators, individual phaser emitters, individual transporter pads, various consoles/panels, windows, etc. These are assembled in large lots and either transported or shipped up to various assembly yards in orbit.
2) Structural Assembly yard. The structural components are put together into recognizable parts of a Starship. For example they are not assembling the entire saucer of the Enterprise, but they are assembling the individual beams that go out from the center. These are then sent to the Ship Assembly Yard.
3) Ship Assembly Yard. This is where the ships start o take place. Structural members are put together to form the skeleton of the ship, and careful eyes can often determine what class of ship is being built based on the pattern of the ribs. Power Conduits are put in place, basic computer systems are connected, etc. The ship is sealed up and pressure tested, so the new crew and yard personnel can continue fitting out the vessel.
4) Free floating. The ship no longer needs an Assembly yard, but is parked in a close orbit just in case. Crew and Yard personnel are putting in the finishing touches, and there are still transporter pattern enhancers on board just in case. After this will be the shakedown cruise.

I'd also expect that during peacetime the Federation ships are built to last multiple decades. This takes far more time to get right compared to building a ship that will need a refit after five years (i.e. during the Dominion War).