How Do Starbases Work?
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- #startrek #science #technology
CORRECTION AT 00:55: The first manned space station was the Soviet Union's Salyut-1. Skylab was launched in 1973. This was purely an oversight, but as I do care about the accuracy of information, I have felt the need to address it in a Community post and pinned comment. I will aim to be more careful with fact-checking from here forward.
Humans have dreamed of living and working in space for centuries. We've had a semi-permanent presence in low Earth orbit for decades. But when it comes to the humongous space stations in Star Trek like Earth Spacedock, how do they work exactly? And could we build one IRL?
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- CHAPTERS -
00:00 Intro
00:52 Background
02:06 Size
03:14 Propulsion
05:10 Layout
06:32 Designations
07:53 Gravity
11:20 Final Thoughts
12:07 Outro 
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I think Earth Spacedock orbits higher than the ISS so, it may not need engines to keep itself-up.
it needs engines too stay stable in space in one point, try too see it like this, even the moon is bound too the gravity pull of earth itself, that means it doesn´t matter how far or close the spacedock is, it really needs impuls engines too stay stable in orbit around earth.
and one thing too spacedock is not flying around earth like the iss does, it stays in one point all the time, just earth is spinning not the spacedock with it. and for that it needs engines too stay in the the same position all the time because earth itself is not only spinning around it´s core it is also moving around the sun. thats why it needs engines too stay in the same positon around earth allways.
Also with lots of ships and materials coming and going, without some kind of "station keeping" thrusters, it's orbit would eventually become unstable.
@@nitehawk86 it would never stay in place not even for a second without engines.
@@Super-Godzilla99 that is a very misinformed assumption.
Technically speaking it will not as the orbit will constantly decay. The same as essentially every orbit in the universe. It is what we call, meta-stable. Given the correct attitude, this process could take millions even billions of years. Just look at the moon. It's been around for more than 4 billion years without any impulse engines. It will remain in orbit for the rest of the Earth's existence (apart from human intervention). It is a constantly decaying orbit, always losing energy through tidal forces, but on a nearly imperceptible scale.
A starbase will likely face bigger problems from mass changes. If, for example, the base is constantly creating and sending ships away, it will very much need those thrusters to counteract that.
@@TheTonyMcD
Don't know where you have your Informations from but it is wrong.
And the moon is not in any way stable, the only reason the moon don't crushes down too earth is, he is too far away. And the moon will escape earths Gravity at some point in the Future, in millions of years the moon will not be orbiting earth anymore. The distance are get larger every Minute, by a small amount but it is.
Earth spacedock is too much near earth so without engines it would fall down on it, even iss need engines too not fall down on earth, and space Dock is much larger.
Too not fall down and without emgines space Dock must have much much more distance too earth than it has in Star trek.
The gravity pull from earth is just too strong too stay there without engines and micro corections all the time.
And one point never ever do again, put these two together,moon and spacedock are very very different in all possible things.
Look it up how far away the moon is and Look it up how close earth spacedock is, that is an very very big difference.
Look it up how much mass the moon has and how much space Dock has, the moon also is orbiting earth much faster, earth spacedock doesn't move at all, alone too stand still in one point all the time, working against gravity it must have engines, engines too stay still where it is, engines too stay stabile, and engines too not crushing down on earth in the Future.
Great video but you don't need thrust to stay in orbit. The ISS needs occasional boosting because it is at such a low orbit that it is nearly still inside the atmosphere and faces atmospheric drag.
So, what's your favorite fictional space station or space station design?
EDIT: Also, looks like I accidentally left out that the USSR's Salyut-1 was the first manned space station, not Skylab, which was launched in 1973. And the ISS is actually 109 meters WIDE, which is the number I really cared about. Thank you to everyone for pointing these out--I always strive for accuracy, but sometimes things slip through. I'll try and be more careful in the future. Live long and prosper!
Babylon 5. Its an impressive size and design. Good reason to exist too.
DS9 is the only one I feel like I know. That crazy automated one always kinda freaked me out. RockOn 😎🌟
I enjoy the 2001 SO spinning concept. I wouldn't mind seeing that 5th season of enterprise btw!
Would Moon Base Alpha count? If so I might retract my last offer... but it seems more like, well, a moon base...
Babylon 4.
Great video, one small correction: The first space station was Salyut-1 followed by the more militarized Almaz series, *then* Skylab. All of which followed each other in quick succession in the 70s
Correct--I address this in the pinned comment. Thanks 👍 Glad you enjoyed the video!
That was a MASSIVE error.
Sky Lan ot part of it is at the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry along with Space Shuttle Columbia.
While Earth Spacedock appears in Star Trek as being in Earth orbit much like the ISS actually is. I always thought that Earth Spacedock is actually at either L4 or L5 of the Lunar Lagrange Points. L4 and L5 are the two points that objects placed there would have a stable orbit
L4 and L5 would be good places to keep such a station. However, those points are quite far away (~1AU) and when the station is shown on screen it is fairly close to the Earth. It looks like a higher orbit than ISS but also much closer than the moon.
agreed
@@Mastakazamhe said earth MOON Lagrange points… not earth SUN points… L4, L5 E,M points are about 250,000 miles… nowhere near an AU…
@@whochecksthis that's still far enough from Earth that it would look as small from Spacedock 1 as the Moon does from the Earth's surface.
The Earth Starbase or Space Dock featured first in ST 3 SFS, is such a beautiful and awesome design. No one really wants to see a big rotating monstrosity, and Star Trek did it well with elegant designs and asthetics on their stations and ships. Thank you for a great video!
@@geraldscott4302 gravity does seem too stop at the hull
@@toomanyaccounts I wonder what effect variable gravity would have on our biology?
@@geraldscott4302 don't forget the sweet spot from Enterprise that Mayweather showed us
What's ugly about a wheel?
Would a spin-gravity space-station be less ugly without the hub or the spokes? I'd design it without those. They'd be too difficult to maintain. At the hub, every direction would be down.
5:53 We now know, thanks to PIcard Season 3, Earth Spacedock is VERY well defended, and carries plentiful weapons.
This video ended up covering a lot more topics than I was expecting! 👍
Nice video. It’s also interesting to note that most, if not all, “starbases” referenced in the original series were actually ground bases and not space stations at all. K-7 was Deep Space Station K-7, never directly referred to as a starbase, while the famous Starbase 11 was something of a small city on the surface of a planet. It was during the TNG era that space stations more commonly began to be called starbases.
@@toomanyaccounts - yes, exactly. 👍
Awesome video bud! As an engineer, I got my love for science from ST. The best parts were the schematics of each vessel and starbases. Not to mention I always wanted to pull a Crusher and figure out how to make a forcefield from a tractor device, lol.
Tractors and fields go well together. See what I did here? Crusher would figure that one out
You did indeed do it justice. And you've definitely laid the groundwork for more material like this. Bravo.😁👍🏾
Thank you for this great video! Just wanted to add a few observations, from being a long time Trek fan and reading a lot of material that dealt with canon. In the TOS days, a Starbase was usually on a planetoid (Starbase 11, featured in "The Menagerie", for example) while of course, a station was in space, whether close to a planetoid (as with Spacedock, and later in TNG, Earth Station McKinley) or at a considerable distance ( Deep Space Station K7, and later, DS9 ) As to station and Starbase defense, in one canon book I read (sadly, the title escapes me) Spock was discussing with Kirk a possible war with the Klingon Empire ( unrelated to the events leading up to "Errand Of Mercy", however) where he mentioned the Enterprise was too remote to "get under the protection of the heavy guns on a Starbase", and as to those, the TNG Technical Manual , in it's description of phaser technology, stated that the guns on a Starbase, also known as Planetary Defense Emitters, were "Type X, and their exact output remains classified". If those were anything like the Pulsar Cannon in the original Battlestar Galactica episode; "The Gun On Ice Planet Zero", then they sure were very formidable weapons!
This is really a very interesting video, and compelling as well.
I would also ad that I really enjoy your lighting setup, it sets the mood in a really congruous fashion with the topic. With the blue splash, it’s almost like how the bridge was lit on the Enterprise upon docking early in The Search for Spock. Very nice touch. This being the first video of yours that I’ve watched, I don’t know if it’s your standard arrangement. But even if it is, it still works perfectly here.
It'd be cool to see a rundown on all the starbases we've seen, and also really ideas on how ground based Starbases interact with any space stations they may have., or vice versa, (here we seem to have to speculate a lot.)
I also would figure Spacedock doesn't need to course correct so often cause it has so much mass and presumably isn't in such a low orbit as we're used to in the real world, but it'd be much harder for the traces of atmosphere even in low earth orbit to affect anything that massive for a long time, I'd think, even without mad Federation fields technology to redirect any particle issues. It might even be a good way to keep that chunk of orbit clear of debris, have that station's navigational-deflector looking things just pull in the space junk or whatever. :)
Favorite, fictional space station designs for me are deffo going to be spinning cuboctahedron and wheel stations, because of the Elite-series of games that I started playing in 1988, and O'Neill cylinders, such as the Side-series of space colonies at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, in Mobile Suit Gundam.
In TOS particularly, starbases were often planetary facilities or even mounted on asteroids... which were then blasted by the Romulans. >.> What you've created is "How Does Spacedock Work?" ;) But it's a cool vid anyhow.
Those were called Earth Outposts (it hadn't been established yet that the Enterprise was working for the United Federation of Planets, rather than United Earth.
Hey man, loved this.
Especially about how gravity plating are low level warp fields, I’ve thought that too. I’ve had that thought before myself, plus that can easily be how the inertial dampeners for sublight travel work too. The field in the impulse engines or thrusters are coordinated in the computer with the lower level (but pervasive) fields in the deck plates.
Always like your mix of IRL theory and setting fake explanation. Something akin to O’Neill cylinders, Bernal spheres, and the similar other-shaped structures are almost certainly in our long-term future if we don’t kill all ourselves and the planet first.
…and now I notice a doubled-up clause which the letterbox of editing field on mobile (as a remote for my TV) made me miss. Can’t edit it now that you’ve hearted it though!
Acceleration at mind-boggling rates requires some massive canceling out to avoid turning the crew into paste. >.> In a lot of ways, artificial gravity is almost required for believable SF.
@@thegneech That depends on whether you're accelerating using sub-light engines or warp engines.
When you're traveling at warp, you're not really "accelerating through space", you're actually taking your space with you.
@@uncaboat2399 True. Impulse engines can still accelerate mighty dang fast, tho!
@@uncaboat2399 yeah, that’s why I said sub-light inertial dampeners, as the Alcubierre drive would theoretically not need any of them.
Though there’s explicit dialogue stating they need them for _something_ for warp speed in Trek, but that’s going to be an entirely different coordination system given it’s a different engine.
Plus if we bear in mind the the warp drive can run at warp factors below 1 for sub-light travel, and the impulse drive can get up to 25-50%c, then perhaps they actually always have to use _both_ for the initial jump to warp? _Enterprise_ shows the earlier ships have pretty rough “warp transitions” even with inertial dampening, so the inertial dampeners for FTL could be purely for the enter and exit stage of flight and useless in the middle.
And that might be kinda compatible with the Alcubierre-type calculations too - we currently have no idea how that shower of high energy particles the ship will run into/expel outwards as it enters/exits the bubble will actually affect the whole experience.
But I was definitely thinking about the “if inertial dampeners are down and we do evasive manoeuvres, we get thrown everywhere” thing in my comment, as seen in at least _Enterprise_ S4 and _Beyond._ And that time Geordi gets thrown around the turbolift.
It’s still pretty beefy accelerations to cancel out, to be able to stay standing with a cup of tea vs getting thrown on the ceiling. But it’s probably well within the gravity plating’s abilities to generate an acceleration in the opposite direction as the engine, pretty much instantaneously as the helm officer does their thing. (Very much like how IRL you’d need ship thrusters to activate automatically in the opposite vector to compensate for the thrust produced by turrets, railguns, etc.)
Another excellent video!! What a great topic too. Oh, and yes please indeed do make a video about the unproduced 5th season of Enterprise!
Such an underrated series. Oh, what could have been.
Minor correction: the ISS only needs to use thrusters to counteract the drag from the atmosphere, and earth spacedock is clearly farther away than the ISS, by a lot, and wouldn't really need to worry about this
I like the designs from Elite: Dangerous when it comes to starports. Specially the Coriolis configuration.
Dyson sphere by far would make the ultimate space habitat. Unlike the show's explanation, I think we would need to create the interior surface to more of Mars' orbit of the Sun instead of Earth's. Starbase One would have made my list of best starbases but they never really elaborated on the interior during the shows. They mostly focused on the docking command center and a restaurant in the movies(I think). Considering the cost of launches today, it does amaze me that we haven't taken the steps to create a drydock of sorts either in Earth orbit or the moon's orbit. Creating an actual spaceborne starship. It would be nice to see what we could achieve if we managed to focus our energies on this sort of future. Instead of discovering new and better ways to kill each other.
just found out we missed out on a funny bit in Stargate SG-1. [Lt. Carter - "Sir I think this is an O'neill Cylinder." Col. O'neil - "A Me Cylinder?"]
I believe I saw somewhere online that the real construction cost of building something like the Enterprise from the 2008 movie was about 400 billion, from some contruction engineers eyeballing the construction while it was on the ground. Now imagine how much money a floating starbase would cost to construct that DWARFS the enterprise that can hold several of them stationed in it.
Videos like this are the reason I have subscribed. Keep them coming!
Makes sense a Starbase is a collection of Facilities located in orbit and on the ground. As for Starbase 1 both in Discovery and I forget which book it was Starbase 1 was located outside of Sol both as a Station and Ground Facility. The Romulans would attack Star Base 1. But Spacedock above Earth was not considered Star Base 1
Star Trek Enterprise had a great concept for space stations in a single episode. The station was run on autopilot and provided recreation services while your ship was repaired.
Seems much more practical than maintaining a crew while waiting for visitors. Honestly surprised the federation didn't run with this idea and deploy repair/refueling stations near every star.
No need of refueling in Star Trek 😉
OrangeRiver - You just brought up an excellent point when talking about artificial gravity. Modern warp drive ideas _exploit_ the curvature of space-time to side-step the speed of light barrier - specifically, if you can move the space around a vessel FTL, you don't technically have to move the ship itself FTL. While objects themselves require infinite energy to move at light speed, spacetime itself may experience no such limitation.
The implications of what you said are therefore most interesting. The discovery of the graviton, or some manner of artificial gravity that isn't a use of some other force to simulate gravity, would basically be a way to achieve FTL travel. Of course, there's other problems with this like the need to negate inertia, or artificial shipboard gravity interfering with the ability to warp space-time such that propulsion works right. Still, as every powergamer has observed at some point in their life, "every finite number can be reduced to 0." Alcubiere's warp theories, and the ideas built on those, are basically that "Munchkin's First Law" in practice.
I keep watching your videos because you often throw your own humor and humanity in. I wish I could afford to support you on Patreon.
Thanks for your drive, hard work, and sharing OrangeRiver.
I would love to see a companion video to this on starships. And possibly a follow-up video on non-earth colonies. And then another on how different faction types (Star Trek or otherwise) can raise political and economic capital for major undertakings.
Such a series could be huge for any person looking to create stories in the scifi medium. Or for anyone looking to figure out how to plan out the human journey into our solar system and across the stars.
Ok, where to start. I'll start with the main warp engines. Matter is injected into the top of a dilithium crystal. At the same time antimatter is injected into the bottom of this crystal. Normally this would cause an annihilation explosion, but the crystals regulate the released energy and create a a tuned plasma stream. This is used to power the warp coils, thereby making warp travel possible. What isn't used by the coils is shun\ted into the EPS system for powering other systems.
The impulse drive is called impulse because it is an internally metered pulse. A tablet which can cause an atomic reaction is bombarded by lasers. They then use force fields to contain this and compress it in on itself. They do this several times using lasers. The matter and energy have nowhere to go so they create waves in space. The ship simply rides the waves.
The explanation of Warp came from The Next Generation Technical Manual. The explanation of impulse came from the novel First Contact, where George kirk, XO of the Enterprise under Captain Robert April gets inadvertantly sent along with his ship into Rihanssu (Romulan) space.
And Warp drive isn't that far out there. Miguel Alcubierre proposed such a system in 1995 although even he admitted it was a thought experiment, as the energy required was more than was contained in the universe. But Dr. Harold White wrote a couple of papers detailing how he had refined that so no negative energy was required and that while the energy required would be high, very high, it was not unmanageable. But grav plating is definitely out there. And it seems to always be he last thing to frail on a starshio, But I can understand that. They don't have a way to create zero gravity on a soundstage.
But for a rotating space station, you don't have to spin it very fast for 1G. For a space station with a radius of 3 km, achieving 1G would require a spin rate of 0.5459729074503967 Revolutions per minute. You could round it down to half a revolution per minute and get virtually 1G. A bit less but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Although the rim speed would be a bit more then 380 miles per hour.
Source of above calculation is www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/
Just ignore the Angular Velocity and the Tangential Velocity for the time being. Just input the radius and make sure the x per second/minute is set, and the required g-force, usually 1 gravity. The calculator will calculate the rest.
On a station with a radius of 3km, I'd recommend an outer rim speed of 379 mph. That would get you just a hair under 1G with a net rotation speed of 0.539 rpm.
8:48 That's a lower-case omega, not any kind of omicron.
This (ω) is commonly used to represent angular velocity or frequency.
_Absolutely correct._ And force is traditionally represented with the uppercase F.
I'd like to see your take on Space Colonies in the Gundam Seed universe.
I enjoy your content and Find you informative. Thank you for doing this video on a topic that many Fans of star trek in joy as part of a complete space adventure
A quick back of the napkin calculation about fusion rockets heavily implies that impulse can't just be a fusion rocket. My head canon is that the inertial control which allows for artificial gravity and inertial dampening is used to reduce the inertial mass of the ship, vastly increasing the efficiency of the fusion rockets.
Correct. This is done in the first episode of ds9, Emissary, to get ds9 to the mouth of the wormhole.
I think you should start a series on “Larry Niven’s Known Space”. Unfortunately it’s only in book form; but would make a great video series.
If you make an episode about the unproduced fifth season of Enterprise you'll definitely gain a subscriber here!
For things of the size and mass of Earth Spacedock, visuals in film and media show it being not in low earth orbit - would take far more power to keep it in orbit than would be practical. It's likely at a lagrangian point, with thrusters and impulse engines being used to keep it there if something were to cause it to "drift" out.
Great video.
Fascinating subject. I particularly developed an interest in the starbases in ST after I watched the ep Family in TNG. I was left wondering was McKinley Space Dock named after McKinley Rocket Base that featured in TOS ep Assignment Earth. I read around the subject over the next few years (pre-net of course)
I concluded that McKinley Rocket Base was invented instead of referring to the real-world US space rocket base of Patrick Air Force Base in Florida because this was used by the NSA whose existence did not become public knowledge until the Senator Frank Church report in the mid-70s.
In my head canon McKinley Rocket Base was beside McKinley National Park in Alaska. I could not imagine the National Park being host to a nuclear powered rocket base. Not after (now renamed) Denali was designated an international biosphere reserve in 1976. But that was in the future of the 1968 ep.
Wow this video was pretty awesome! I admire all the work you put on the videos you make! Keep up the good work! 🖖
Excellent work on an information heavy subject. Looking forward to more on this topic.
6:34 what I hate the most is the orientation in space. From viewer's eyes, the spacedock/ starbase looks tilted to the left. But when Enterprise flies out of the tilted starbase, it corrects its orientation according to the viewer's perspective. I mean, even galaxies tilt to the left or right... So there's no particular orientation in space!
Low earth orbits tend to deteriorate due to a small amount of atmospheric drag.
With something that big you'd be better off just putting it into a higher orbit rather than trying to constantly thrust upwards. You may have to consider radiation shielding but that would require far less energy (in terms of generating an electromagnetic field) than thrusting something that big upwards continually.
What I have often wondered, why does the gravity plate still work when all other ship systems are down?
They're powered by plot armor.
@@nodak81 I thought it might be some self generating nano tech that some how magnetify the effect of the gravity in particular plates of the ship without spreading into connecting plates.
Gravity plate can only power down when the special effects budget gets above a certain level. They have to hook the accounting department up to the fusion reactors.😃
Because it would be awkward to show all the characters floating around
Gravity plating has really good capacitors. Also the biggest worry for life support would be the CO2 scrubbers. CO2 buildup will cause the crew to lose consciousness and stop breathing well before O2 is depleted and presumedly before the temperature drops due to how insulated the starship is.
love your approach to these kind of videos, mate
Thanks. I love that you are always thinking of Star Trek. Aren't Gravitons adjustable? Like when on Enterprise someone mentions there being less gravity on a cargo ship to make work easier.
Absolutely loved this. Id listen to you going into detail about all the technobabble on the show. Cant wait to check out your channel - have a good day!
Funny enough you can actually see spacedock/ Starbase 1 in under construction in discovery briefly in the season finale I think
I bet the Federation could construct some truly epic O'Neil cylinders.
It rivals the size of Babylon 5, which also has its power core at the far end of the station. It seems to me that life support should be closer to living quarters or have multiple locations.
It depends on what "Live support" means. When its the central core where for example Oxygen and Water is treated, you want to have that near the fusion reactor. But yes, there should be small stations in the living area where they pump the air into the cabins
Starfleet in general always has backups on backups on backups when it comes to life support, so I would expect at least as much redundancy from Spacedock.
@@acmenipponair The living quarters would already need plenty of power for heat, light, replicators, air scrubbers, computers and whatever else they have. Wouldn't it be easier to move power to the living quarters than to move bulkier air and liquids back and forth? Don't they recycle waste using replicator technology which could be in every kitchen and bathroom? I would think a larger plasma conduit or whatever they use to carry power would take less space than the air and liquids would need. Something as vital as life support should also be decentralized with more than enough redundancy to compensate for many localized failures.
I always assumed that MIR, ISS and even the future Starfleet space stations were kept in place at various Lagrange points so that they wouldn't need to rely on thrusters.
The only reason the ISS needs thrusters is because its orbit is so low that it is touching very thin atmosphere. Higher orbits are quite stable because there is nothing to slow them down. For example, the moon doesn't need any thrusters to keep it in orbit, and it's not at a Lagrange point.
I don't think anything as heavy as a space station core module has ever been transported beyond low earth orbit.
That is NASA repeated mistake of putting space stations in low orbits. We should be putting them up like 75000 to 90000 miles above Earth or Luna or Mars or Venus,. eventually over all the big moons & planets & some Asteroids & dwarf Planets of our Solar System! NASA & US Space Force is a step in good right direction!
@@Grauenwolf exactly. Those mountaintop Lagrange points actually require more station-keeping thrusting than a regular orbit.
@@robertaguilar2124 It isn't a NASA mistake ... every foot of altitude requires more energy and satellites that high would demand that a higher portion of the booster's mass be dedicated to thrust. This reduces payload and increases the cost of operation dramatically.
you can avoid the need for thrusters on your base if you put it further away from the planet to avoid the atmospheric drag which is the cause for needing those thrusters in the first place, which would be a altitude of approximately 2000 km (the ISS is around 400 km altitude).
and it's absurdly dumb to not put weapons platforms in orbit around your home planet or any other important planet for that matter.
Better to have weapons and not need them than the other way around.
Considering spacedock's size I would think it orbits at least halfway between earth and Luna's orbit. And they probably have to take spacedock's mass in consideration when it's orbital position was selected.
@@kdrapertrucker Maybe a Lagrange point?
@@randystegemann9990 Stuff at Lagrange points still need thrusters. Think of a lagrange point as the "top of the hill" as far as gravity goes. Objects at the lagrange points orbit them so they can stay stable, but even a little push can cause the orbit to "slide off" and into the gravity well of whatever object the lagrange point is on. (Earth or the Sun in the case of Earth-Sun L2).
James Webb and others at L2 have little thrusters to keep its orbit stable. Though they won't need to fire them much, it is necessary.
@@nitehawk86 My point is that they would likely need them less. Earth-Moon L4 and L5 are relatively stable, with minor perturbations from the Sun and other bodies. Of course, nothing is perfect.
Your work is consistently informative and well balanced between science and fiction, thanks man.
Thank you so much!
I am writing a sci fi / fantasy novel in which faeries are actually extra dimensional people who use a technology advanced enough that humans can't see its workings. Before the fae faded into myth, human who saw their tech working thought they were seeing magical spells and effects. This video placed an image of a faerie space station in my head that has rotating rings for gravity and a long strait portion for ships to dock with. Videos like this one really spark my imagination. Thank you for making this video!
Mass Effect's "Jump Zero" was pretty cool. It's kilometres in sIze and kilotonnes in mass but in a world with ftl travel its beyond Pluto but lightyears before you hit anything. Meaning you can shuttle to and fro and it wont crash or distort anything for a long time
Antimatter reactors are used to arm photon and quantum torpedoes. Phasers and shields can be powered by any power source even auxiliary (battery) power, but torpedoes are antimatter based/charged weapons.
So the presence of antimatter reactors on a base just means it is a military installation with torpedo defenses. Otherwise impulse power would be sufficient.
Not a Starbase? Earth Space-dock, Lya Station Alpha & Starbase 74, 84 & 133 are the biggest in the Federation The one that I fell in love with is the Yorktown in Star Trek: Beyond, the best Kelvin universe Trek.
I just love your work, thank you.
Great job explaining starbases and spacedocks.
Thanks for the vids, but gotta say, LEO (low earth orbit) has traces of atmosphere that produce drag that will eventually degrade the orbit and cause re-entry. Weight per-se has nothing to do with it. The object simply is in 'free-fall', or is simply ALWAYS dropping down a bottomless well. It doesn't hit the Earth due to it having exactly the same speed perpendicular (avoiding the terms of physics as possible here) or tangent to the surface, so the object in orbit is falling to the surface pulled by gravity, but is moving 'sideways' at the same speed. That means it falls, but is always missing the item towards which it is falling. Anything that disrupts this balance of gravity's pull and sideways motion will change the orbit.
Love it! It would Make sense that if you have technology that can bend or warp space, then you would have the technology to bend or warp space under your feet to simulate gravity. Let alone create a small warp field above your ship to cancel out the space-time warping affects of the planet to allow you to hover. ( antigravity ) A lot of people think that warp drive is automatically faster than the speed of light, but it really depends on how much power you put behind the warping effects. Just a little bit of power and you can warp space enough to move slowly forward. Put in a crap ton of power and you’re moving faster than the speed of light. Put in an unimaginable amount of power and you’re warping space so badly that you start to rip the space time continuum.
I remember reading the enterprise tech manual and when they talked about manipulating gravity like that it got me thinking that they should be way more technologically advanced and wouldn't need plasma thrusters to keep space docks and space stations in orbit, let alone move ships. Right?
Just a quick correction, space objects like ISS have to stationkeep because of drag from the atmosphere, not gravity. Interesting video though
It is also possible that they could have stationed Earth Spacedock in one 9f the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, that way they can stay in a relatively stationary position around the Earth with minimal thruster use.
The Expanse has a great episode where the wounded people need a gravity centrafused environment to heal people with major injuries
The expanse played on many realistic scenarios on how spaceships could fly in the solar system with artificial gravity created by acceleration forces. When they slow down they have magnetic boots. Funny space stations in the show all people need the boots since they are not moving. And when people get killed it’s funny to see them stay upstanding and balancing around their magnetic boots still activated
On the top of the scale of massive ring structures, there are also Ringworlds whose size is an orbital radius around a star.
We actually can calculate the "real" size of Space Dock. By using the Enterprise-A as a reference, for which the specifications have long since been determined and are ST dogma, we can calculate the rest of it. For instance, the Enterprise 1701A primary hull is 142 meters across (71M each side of centerline). The space doors then, by the video, are about 10 meters larger on each side for a total span of about 162 meters. From there, the general exterior specification can be calculated. This presents a fairly serious continuity problem, however. The USS Excelsior has a primary hull width of 185 meters. Additionally, the USS Enterprise-D was shown entering Space Dock. The Enterprise-D had a hull width of 467 meters. That's about 3 times wider than the space doors. While the discrepancy with the Excelsior is inescapable, you might conclude that a newer space dock was constructed, but there is no evidence to support that.
"....Starbase 74 notwithstanding."
you just earned a new subscriber, and YES PLEASE on the ENT 5th season vid! this is great content!
Thanks Tom! I actually posted the Enterprise video a couple weeks ago: ruclips.net/video/w5wHj5CsTS4/видео.html
great channel, love the TOS and TNG content
Wasn't it in series 1 of Discovery that Starbase 1 is mentioned and of course eventually seen - this was where Admiral Cornwell was having the Discovery headed and then froze when she saw the station on screen with a Klingon insignia on the outer hull?
This was after the ship had returned from the Mirror Universe and she had led a boarding party on the ship when it had returned and after giving the crew a debrief of what had happened since they had gone to the other side, after she said she had seen the Discovery destroyed - obviously a mirror version of it I am guessing, so howthey get another version for series 2/3 I can't remember with Captain Tilly baffles me - temporal mechanics
I think in the series 1 finale we also see an sort of early construct of the spacedock facility as well its a very brief glimps with the camera movement.
My favourite trek station has to be that of spacedock, also the same design for other Federation facilities like Starbase 12 etc, its a spectactular design though I would hope that these facilities that are in deep space and such are properly armed with phaser arrays, probably unmanned attack fighters as well as I dount they will have a designated ship or task force assigned to such facilities
You definitely need to do a video on Enterprise's 5th season for sure
5:44 That a really interesting point that I never realize before, that Sol doesn’t have a massive orbital defence grid like other main star systems of other species.
Small correction. Real space stations only require orbital adjustments because there is still a VERY thin atmosphere at low earth orbit that very slowly slows the orbital speed. At higher orbits, this isn't a problem. Low earth orbit is only about 250 miles above earth.
I gotta say that these constructions must undergo upgrades periodically. I noticed the doors for space dock are closer in size to Constitution and Excelsior size and needed to be enlarged to allow ships like the Galaxy Class access to the interior of Earth's space dock interior facilities. Loved the video and the knowledge of impulse drives and how they produce propulsion as well! Thank you so much!
The most practical space station from sci fic is Babylon5. That we could build in the future.
It's still pretty unrealistic. The basic concept of an O'Neal cylinder is sound but the station as shown wouldn't work at all. The inhabitants would die in short order.
The ISS doesn’t need thrusters to stay in orbit because of its size. Those thrusters are not used continuously to keep the station from falling.
Orbit is achieved by making an object’s lateral velocity high enough that the vertical acceleration imposed by gravity is insufficient to make it hit the ground; but also low enough that it doesn’t just fly off into space. You may have heard that orbiting objects are falling, they’re just going sideways so fast that they always miss the planet.
Instead, the problem is that station’s altitude. It is kept low enough in orbit that there is a small but significant amount of drag from the tenuous atmosphere still present at that altitude. That reduces the station’s lateral velocity enough that eventually the orbit will decay. From time to time the thrusters (together with the thrusters of docked spacecraft like Soyuz or Dragon) are therefore used to boost the velocity back up to the usual 17,500 mph necessary.
A space station like Spacedock doesn’t have an orbital problem because of its mass. Orbital mechanics does care about mass, but it cares much more about velocity. Once any object, whether a micro satellite or the Moon, has reached the correct orbital velocity, it’s not going to stop unless another force acts on it - such as the friction of the thin atmosphere at the altitude of the ISS.
Spacedock does have a very large cross-section, so rather like a big ship vs a small boat, it would encounter more friction if it orbits as low as the ISS. On the other hand, as a massive object (in both senses of the word) it also carries more momentum and will be harder to slow than the ISS.
Spacedock probably does require larger thrusters for boosting, if only because boosting that much mass requires either longer burns or more thrust, but it will not be boosting continuously just because it’s bigger and more massive.
Indeed, if Spacedock were to be boosting itself all the time, that would make docking considerably more difficult, and ships docked would require very firm docking points to remain their position relative to the station itself.
You can see this if you search for a video of the Space Shuttle making a course correction with an astronaut free floating in the cabin. When the shuttle accelerates, the astronaut appears to drift, because the acceleration doesn’t apply to the objects or astronauts inside unless they are strapped down.
When the ISS boosts, as I mentioned it usually does so with the assistance of docked spacecraft. To avoid dangerous shearing forces being sent through the docking ports, the velocity vector of the acceleration is usually carefully aligned directly through the spaceship and docking port. Imagine having to work that out with however many shuttles and starships are present in Spacedock at any one time.
I haven’t read anything about Spacedock’s orbital altitude, but I suspect it’s rather higher than the ISS. That would save a lot of headaches and concerns about atmospheric drag and reboosting of orbits.
I love your videos! Please make the teased video! Pronunciation note: centrifugal should rhyme with centripetal.
You forgot to mention that the starbase would/should be visible from the surface of Earth.
re: Gravity plating, there is a real world example of doing this, but (obviously) it would never scale, is where a super conducting magnet can negate gravity, and has been done to small creatures like fish and frogs to levitate them.
Realistically, even the "spinning" space station would never work in real life, entirely due to the fact that if it has to move on an axis, with moving parts, those parts would wear. It could only work if it was a byproduct of propulsion, and even then, what's to prevent the station from spinning out of control (eg resulting in lateral inertial forces.) There would effectively need to be a computer dedicated to ensuring that the station's thrusters are fired to keep the station in rotation and to prevent it from spinning in other directions that might tear it apart.
Very interesting history lesson and Star Trek info. I always thought that the thumbnail was a starbase and that a spacedock was the framework facility that the ships would fly into for repairs, which is apparently a drydock. Some Star Trek video games still call spacedocks starbases.
You are forgetting about the L points (LaGrange points, where gravitational pool of Earth is equalized with that of Moon and thus negated). Dock could sit right at L1
Time for another Star Trek series set on a space station/starbase.
The Axanar production has an awesome starbase design in a special effects RUclips video worth looking up.
You don't need continuous thrust input to keep an orbit, you just need eventual thrust corrections depending on the mass (not size), orbital altitude and speed.
Gravity isn't a homogeneous force because we aren't talking about an idealized perfect homogeneous solid sphere, hence it oscillates, just like the magnetic field. Also, any interaction between large astronomical bodies, planets, moons and stars creates alteration in the gravity and magnetic fields.
Low orbits can also have some interaction with upper atmosphere, as people have stated.
In case of a big space station, like the ones in Star Trek, they need a very far orbit because of the excessive mass, but you can sustain such mass at a small fraction of the distance between Earth and the Moon, just considering the proportion between masses.
We could try to speculate the spaces tation mass and determine an ideal orbital distance.
Obviously, the apparent orbit used in screen (tv series and movies) might not be correct, being mostly an aesthetic choice for the photography.
I'd be interested in a vid on a season 5 for Enterprise
There were actually 7 Salyut Space stations launched between 1971 and 1982, whereas Skylab was launched in 1973. However, Skylab was the first space stations which was occupied by people who survived their spaceflight.
Saw this in suggestions, always love tech run downs, boson particles are fascinating and wanting to learn more about them even if gravity manipulation is off the table for now... The level of tech expansion would probably be terrifying to see if/when a proper manipulation would be discovered as most of all tech would become outdated, especially if the energy efficiency was decent
Some people think graviton is a placeholder for an electromagnetic forrce we have yet to figure out.
Just finished a watch through of Deep Space 9 and I finally understand. Great videos, I always walk away with at least a little better understanding of that world.
Nicely Done👍🏾
Please make a video covering enterprise season 5
1> Yes you should do that video. 2> Yes or no could we build it? You just talk about technology used and what we have. Yes we could build one using rotational tech 2001 style. There are a few videos on youtube covering this topic and long term space habitation.
Also EPS does not vent directly out the impulse exhaust. EPS is an electroplasma, think of it as a plasma carrying an electrical charge that is piped through the ship to extract vast amounts of power for things like replicators, etc... The impulse reactors are literally that, reactors placed in the impulse housing, they convert fuel into plasma thrust. There is no direct tie in to the EPS system other than to provide initial kick power like a sparkplug to get the reaction going.
The other thing keeping the spacedocks in orbit is sheer momentum. The main thing which slows satellites in LEO is, basically, friction against the traces of atmosphere. Square/cube law means the mass of the station per cross-sectional area is much higher, so it takes a lot longer for the orbit to slow down. On the other hand, tidal forces will tend to push the station out, so the right balance could see the orbit maintaining stability indefinitely. Failing that, a mechanism similar to that used in David Brin's "Tank Farm Dynamo" might be usable; run a current through the station to push against the Earth's magnetic field.
In geostationary orbit there would be little to no real reason for propulsion. So not a lot of energy required for that reason, and about 35,000km out. Docks and other things could be added over time to eventually incircle earth.
Ngl you got me with the Thumbnail
How does an enormous space station stay in orbit? The answer is "not like the ISS". That has a relatively low mass but an insane surface area due to the solar panels, radiators, and strut construction. So, it's got a ton of drag sucking the momentum out of not-so-much mass. Star Trek space stations aren’t just enormous, they’re massive. And they're smooth, like Sean Connery James Bond smooth. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a drag/mass ratio 100 times better than the ISS. So, instead of needing an orbital boost from a cargo ship every few months, they could get by with a boost from a giant space tug every few decades. Couple of tugs making their way from system to system at low warp could keep all the stations in the Federation in orbit. Or, you simply make that part of the duty of all the starships that use the station. It's got way more traffic than the ISS, and the starships have "slightly" more delta V than a Dragon, no slight to Elon.
I read a really good Star Trek book called "Vanguard" I think it was written by David Mack, and was about a Starbase. The pic on the cover looked exactly like the earth starbase
Essentially a Starbase is a generic term for any off-world non- or semi-mobile construction intended for human (or other lifeform) habitation. that's pretty much all they are, it can be as small as a two-room apartment or as large as a small moon. Functions vary considerably, with standard Starfleet starbases basically being orbital cities with all the associated facilities
Nor Class which DS9 seems like the smartest type of station design, plenty of docking areas, section the habitat ring and docking ring can be sealed off in an emergency and it just uses its space well. Earth Spacedock with its massive ship hanger just screams hubris to me.
Nor class stations were ore processing facilities, earth spacedock is a harbor.
One of the problems with those big doors was that they were just barely able to squeeze Excelsior through it in Star Trek III. But later a similar shot shows the vastly bigger Enterprise-D flying through it with the same clearance. The production team reused the same model and just scaled it up. Doh. Though, perhaps in the time of TNG Starfleet just built Spacedocks much bigger to fit their bigger ships.
I have always been a little miffed by the lack of Enterprise S5. I'd love it if you do make a video on the topic! 🤓
I actually posted one a couple weeks ago! ruclips.net/video/w5wHj5CsTS4/видео.html
Excellent video... and I thought I was a trekkie.... very informative video, thank you.
Awesome video thanks 🙂 have you ever thought of doing a video with Isaac Arthur? Came across him via video with Up and Atom (another awesome channel) now never miss him and seems you and Isaac would be really interesting 🤔