Hi all, had a question! I am what might be called a casual Trekkie; I have watched pretty much every series and movie I could lay hands on, and TOS was a major part of my childhood, but despite a love of the franchise I am not "in the know" about some of the more technical or arcane details of the universe.
Recently I have started in on Voyager for the first time. While I will decline to comment what I think of the writing, something confused me. The USS Voyager on multiple occasions reenters and exits the atmosphere of M-class planets with a fair amount of indiscretion, something I hadn't thought possible! I had always been of the assumption that starships only reentered in emergency situations- And were more or less worthless once in the atmosphere. So can someone elaborate for me: Are many Federation ships capable of this? Or was it specific to that class of vessel?
In the TOS episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (which I just watched today by coincidence), the Enterprise appears within the atmosphere of 1940's Earth. It is chased by a jet. Fun times ensue.
In the early films, the Bird of Prey lands quite often.
So Voyager wasn't the first show to have that in it. Voyager is meant to be a smaller ship than most, it's supposed to be able to do stuff like that. I think the shields they have let them do a little handwaving to neglect atmospheric friction and such.
In the TOS episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (which I just watched today by coincidence), the Enterprise appears within the atmosphere of 1940's Earth. It is chased by a jet. Fun times ensue.
In the early films, the Bird of Prey lands quite often.
So Voyager wasn't the first show to have that in it. Voyager is meant to be a smaller ship than most, it's supposed to be able to do stuff like that. I think the shields they have let them do a little handwaving to neglect atmospheric friction and such.
Ah! Well, guess I had forgotten the other times it has been done then. Clearly I need to go rewatch TOS and TNG!
Voyager even landed on a planet or two but I think it's designed to do that unlike half of the Enterprise-D which fell victim to Troi's piloting skills...
HOW are they maneuvering in the atmosphere? The amount of force output by their thrusters would have to be ridiculously high to keep them up.
Well in Star Trek Generations they clearly could not stay up in the air, but in Voyager was one of the most advanced starships of its time. This is said a couple of times throughout the series also in the second season on the episode 38s ( I think) Janeway talks about how the ship was designed to be able to land on planets.
This is probably why the ship can use maneuvering thrusters in the atmosphere.
I think the crash in Generations was very much a matter of power. Generations wasn't the Enterprise D's only atmospheric entry. In The Arsenal of Freedom it was able to enter and then leave an atmosphere while the ship wasn't separated, i.e. it still had its warp core. Without the warp core connected, the saucer can't really do much. It can limp around at impulse, but generally it's stuck siting around and waiting for the stardrive or a tow to come pick it up.
One of the reasons that ships need the crazy power levels the warp core puts out is that half of the stuff they do is explained by bending space and altering fundamental laws of motion around them. The Bird of Prey in ST IV created less of a thrust wash than a small helicopter does when it took off, so it appears their ability to disregard physics still works in an atmosphere. In Aresenal, the Enterprise had its full capabilities and was able to exit the atmosphere again. In Generations it didn't, so it was doomed as soon as the explosion pushed them into an orbit that intersected the planet (assuming they didn't disconnect already in a doomed orbit).
I would also say they have some anti-grav abilities like the anti-grav sleds. How do you think shuttles do it without creating wash.
Voyager too I believe reconfigured their thruster for atmospheric use. I believe Paris stated something to this effect. Also it would not be too far flung to expect shields are used to reduce atmospheric drag effects.
Another thing some might note is that the RCS thrusters on Voyager we large for the ship size, you know the orange/brown things around the saucer, 4 of them. This would add the perception of increased power for atmo maneuvering.
With the Ent-D Saucer in Generations. remember they had just been blown to pieces by a BoP, who knows which systems had failed. Additionally it was actually the explosion of the star drive which pushed them into an uncontrollable descent to the planet. Under control the saucer may have survived, but the extra speed and the angle (coupled with lack of power) caused the crash... Troi should have flown in the other direction
The NX-01 also did atmsopheric entry at least once that I can remember, though it was much smaller than the later ships. And impulse engines have demonstrated the ability to move ships at a significant fraction of lightspeed, crossing star systems in a few hours, and manage to maneuver truly huge ships with relative grace. As such I imagine that the thrust output is something staggering, and that really the limitation on operating in-atmosphere is more a question of structural forces than anything else. Things like giant nacelles hanging off of slender pylons at weird angles probably would be subject to absurd stresses inside an atmosphere, whereas something like Voyager was a lot more compact and structurally sound than a Galaxy. Of course its all still super-science and a sharp turn in space still should have had insane shearing forces, but this is the same sort of sci-fi where constant thrust equals constant velocity.
Additionally it was actually the explosion of the star drive which pushed them into an uncontrollable descent to the planet.
Not the star, it was the warp core breach when the stardrive section blew up before they reached safe range. The supernova destroyed them (and the entire planet for that matter) shortly after the crash, so when Picard stopped the supernova from happening at all, the Enterprise still crashed.
Of course its all still super-science and a sharp turn in space still should have had insane shearing forces, but this is the same sort of sci-fi where constant thrust equals constant velocity.
One of the most commonly mentioned bits of tech in the shows is inertial dampeners. Ships in Star Trek can negate inertia, which does a lot of things: It keeps the crew from being converted into a viscous smear against the rear bulkheads during warp acceleration, prevents shearing force in a turn, reduces lethal effect to dramatic effect on weapon strikes, and it's also why ships lose speed when they lose thrust - inertia's what would keep them going.
One of the most commonly mentioned bits of tech in the shows is inertial dampeners. Ships in Star Trek can negate inertia, which does a lot of things: It keeps the crew from being converted into a viscous smear against the rear bulkheads during warp acceleration, prevents shearing force in a turn, reduces lethal effect to dramatic effect on weapon strikes, and it's also why ships lose speed when they lose thrust - inertia's what would keep them going.
Many Star Trek starships have a displacement in the range of many megatonnes yet in spaceflight they are extremely nimble and do not obey Newtonian orbital mechanics in combat. I.e., ships swoop in graceful curves, stop on a dime, without the use of any visible thrusters or counter-thrust maneuvers as would a present-day chemical rocket.
The inertial dampeners more or less negate G forces on the ships' structure and inhabitants and also shield them from external effects (ship produces its own gravity anyway). The explanation that it changes apparent mass of the vessel too is an interesting take on the subject as aforesaid by @hevach.
Its when such 'sci if' technology fails that we start to see the true massive size of Star Trek ships - the saucer of the Ent-D crash landing, the Ent-E ramming the Scimitar on "full impulse" yet apparently being dragged down by its own mass, the Scimitar again using Newtonian thrusters to pull away from the collision - these are some of the cases where "mass reduction" of the ship were obviously non functional.
As for how a very big ship can re-enter the atmosphere without breaking into pieces due to aerodynamic stress, simple.
They can negate gravity pull, right?
Present-day spacecraft enter at something like Mach 25, based on the Space Shuttle's flight parameters. There is no way it can slow down from orbital velocity of 7 ++ km/s, so it slows down just enough that the peregee of its orbital path touches the atmosphere and uses atmospheric friction for re-entry braking.
A sci fi ship with antigrav tech could fly to a point above the planet's atmosphere, kill its velocity above ground to a low speed (or even "zero" or geostationary), and then just descend vertically.
No airspeed = no aerodynamic stress except for atmospheric turbulence etc. That's how Voyager appears to drop into the atmosphere - at a rather low airspeed of about 200-500 km/h if I recall right.
It may also have flown over 'Frisco at about 1000kmh after a temporal event but that too is subsonic and won't result in any destructive aerodynamic stresses or shockwaves, but it won't matter anyway if it has active "warp field aerodynamics" that again negates any flight or warpspeed stresses on the hull.
My thanks goes to the person who replied to my observation that the JJ Trek Enterprise was built on the ground in Iowa - it would be massively difficult to launch the huge 900m long ship into orbit conventionally but with AG tech, just float her out into space, easy as pie.
As a bottom line I would say that newer ships do have a method for controlled flight and landing on a planet (as seen with the Voyager), and even older vessels may be configured (shield, dampeners, hull, gravity, ...) to be capable of atmospheric flight, though not landing.
Just look it from a different point of view - nobody thinks twice about a spaceship entering a region with a dense nebula, aside from being even more cautious about what may lurk in it. Although 'dense' in a sense of deep space is still on another scale as the density of an atmosphere, same physics apply. Add the gravity of a planetary mass, and you're right there.
Voyager only landed on four planets:
season 2 ep 1
season 4 ep 24
season 6 ep 7
season 7 ep 8
Besides, any other ship especially the galaxy wouldnt be suitable to even enter into a planetary atmosphere, the prometheus could because it's shaped in an aerodynamic fashion (very arrowhead shape). even if something like the Galaxy did get into the position where it would land, the saucer head alone must weigh far more then the engineering section, so basically the thing would head dive right into the ground. Kinda surprised voyager was able to land without the front tipping over.
Back in the TOS days there was a general belief that the saucer section could detach and land. I'm not sure which, but it was in one of the old Bantam Books. Bjo Trimble's "The Star Trek Concordance" maybe? I think the original blueprints also suggested landing gear for the saucer section.
The ship itself, though, could not land. I don't remember which episode it was, but at some point this was definitively established.
I was surprised that those teeny-tiny little landing struts did not break off.
Simple physics would demand that the Voyager would tip over and fall on its crew (ex-saucer) section as soon as everything has been turned off. With a crew section that large it simply must be unbalanced.
Next, the bottom parts of the landing struts cover quite little area on ground. With that much weight distributed on that little of the planet's surface (soil and rock at the best, sand at the worst), the ship would surely sink into the ground until it rests on the engine section and the front of the crew section.
So, one can explain away this by requiring that gravity generators still must be active at all times to shift the center of mass and make that thing much lighter than it is supposed to be.
Back in the TOS days there was a general belief that the saucer section could detach and land. I'm not sure which, but it was in one of the old Bantam Books. Bjo Trimble's "The Star Trek Concordance" maybe? I think the original blueprints also suggested landing gear for the saucer section.
The ship itself, though, could not land. I don't remember which episode it was, but at some point this was definitively established.
The struts even made it into the model - the triangular panels on the bottom of the saucer. The idea was that the saucer was the landing craft and the stardrive section was basically a strap on engine.
The budget demands of going with that plan were ridiculous, though, needing two additional models, miniatures of terrain sets and locations, and a large movable set piece for shots where part of the saucer would be in shots with actors.
The shuttles and transporters were made just to get rid of the landing saucer, and the strut hatches were retconned into lifeboats.
They brought the idea back after the Galaxy's saucer separation was shown off in the first episode, though, but in the form of the irreversible emergency separation most of us have heard of.
The answer as to why Voyager is able to land on planets is because the ship has been specifically designed for it.
The Galaxy Class (and most other Starfleet capital ship classes) are unable to do so.
So, if for whatever reason Starfleet thinks athmospheric landing capabilities could be beneficial for the outcome of a mission, they would have the option to call in an Intrepid Class starship.
As for atmospheric flight, we have seen a lot of starship to do so: NX-01 did that once at least, a Constitution class was in Earths atmosphere once, the Galaxy class scratched an atmosphere once or twice, and even Siskos Defiant had been in "atmospheric" situations.
Im about to lay in some non-Trek science, so apologies if this isnt what you wanted to know.
I think you have to consider that metallurgy and power generation has far exceeded our current modern day capacities in Trek. Its hard to believe that in a few hundred years there have been no new advances in steel, metal alloys, ablative shielding, aluminum manufacturing, etc. not to mention the exotic materials available outside Earth. Ships are likely to be more lightweight, much stronger, and more agile. I really doubt they would "tip" over just because they look like it. What's weight distribution inside also matters quite a bit.
A matter / Anti-matter reaction core puts out significantly more power than any power generation we can dream of today. That is science based on discoveries with the expensive production of antimatter in RL. Even a plasma thruster undoubtedly puts out more inertia in a single burst than a full burn of the most powerful rockets of today, especially if we consider what we see them moving and the speeds as which they do it. Its likely that, other than the warp drive, we never see thrusters work at full potential on screen, just like on jets today the hardest work on the engines is take off and landing, not while they cruising.
Atmospheric re-entry is probably not related to these. What really makes the difference is trajectory. Its entirely possible that all of these ships are capable of atmospheric flight as most of them are fairly aerodynamic. And its safe to assume if your shields can withstand phaser bursts you can take the heat and intertia of a controlled re-entry as space shuttles do it today. In a controlled descent and with the power generation we expect from ships of this era, I think the Voyager-esque landings make sense.
Enterprise D crash is the only instance I can think of that seems to defy this logic. But remember that the Enterprise D was on an uncontrolled descent after taking massive battle damage as well as being hit with a shockwave just prior to hitting the atmosphere. But its possible, in fact practical, that the saucer is capable of atmospheric flight if not the entire ship. So basing the lack of re-entry on this one instance seems unfair.
The Technical Manual of the Enterprise itself states that the Saucer was designed for atmospheric entry and landing in case of emergencies (but not starting again). I think the problem in Generators was really the battle damage the entire ship took.
Comments
In the early films, the Bird of Prey lands quite often.
So Voyager wasn't the first show to have that in it. Voyager is meant to be a smaller ship than most, it's supposed to be able to do stuff like that. I think the shields they have let them do a little handwaving to neglect atmospheric friction and such.
Ah! Well, guess I had forgotten the other times it has been done then. Clearly I need to go rewatch TOS and TNG!
HOW are they maneuvering in the atmosphere? The amount of force output by their thrusters would have to be ridiculously high to keep them up.
Well in Star Trek Generations they clearly could not stay up in the air, but in Voyager was one of the most advanced starships of its time. This is said a couple of times throughout the series also in the second season on the episode 38s ( I think) Janeway talks about how the ship was designed to be able to land on planets.
This is probably why the ship can use maneuvering thrusters in the atmosphere.
One of the reasons that ships need the crazy power levels the warp core puts out is that half of the stuff they do is explained by bending space and altering fundamental laws of motion around them. The Bird of Prey in ST IV created less of a thrust wash than a small helicopter does when it took off, so it appears their ability to disregard physics still works in an atmosphere. In Aresenal, the Enterprise had its full capabilities and was able to exit the atmosphere again. In Generations it didn't, so it was doomed as soon as the explosion pushed them into an orbit that intersected the planet (assuming they didn't disconnect already in a doomed orbit).
Voyager too I believe reconfigured their thruster for atmospheric use. I believe Paris stated something to this effect. Also it would not be too far flung to expect shields are used to reduce atmospheric drag effects.
Another thing some might note is that the RCS thrusters on Voyager we large for the ship size, you know the orange/brown things around the saucer, 4 of them. This would add the perception of increased power for atmo maneuvering.
With the Ent-D Saucer in Generations. remember they had just been blown to pieces by a BoP, who knows which systems had failed. Additionally it was actually the explosion of the star drive which pushed them into an uncontrollable descent to the planet. Under control the saucer may have survived, but the extra speed and the angle (coupled with lack of power) caused the crash... Troi should have flown in the other direction
Not the star, it was the warp core breach when the stardrive section blew up before they reached safe range. The supernova destroyed them (and the entire planet for that matter) shortly after the crash, so when Picard stopped the supernova from happening at all, the Enterprise still crashed.
One of the most commonly mentioned bits of tech in the shows is inertial dampeners. Ships in Star Trek can negate inertia, which does a lot of things: It keeps the crew from being converted into a viscous smear against the rear bulkheads during warp acceleration, prevents shearing force in a turn, reduces lethal effect to dramatic effect on weapon strikes, and it's also why ships lose speed when they lose thrust - inertia's what would keep them going.
Many Star Trek starships have a displacement in the range of many megatonnes yet in spaceflight they are extremely nimble and do not obey Newtonian orbital mechanics in combat. I.e., ships swoop in graceful curves, stop on a dime, without the use of any visible thrusters or counter-thrust maneuvers as would a present-day chemical rocket.
The inertial dampeners more or less negate G forces on the ships' structure and inhabitants and also shield them from external effects (ship produces its own gravity anyway). The explanation that it changes apparent mass of the vessel too is an interesting take on the subject as aforesaid by @hevach.
Its when such 'sci if' technology fails that we start to see the true massive size of Star Trek ships - the saucer of the Ent-D crash landing, the Ent-E ramming the Scimitar on "full impulse" yet apparently being dragged down by its own mass, the Scimitar again using Newtonian thrusters to pull away from the collision - these are some of the cases where "mass reduction" of the ship were obviously non functional.
As for how a very big ship can re-enter the atmosphere without breaking into pieces due to aerodynamic stress, simple.
They can negate gravity pull, right?
Present-day spacecraft enter at something like Mach 25, based on the Space Shuttle's flight parameters. There is no way it can slow down from orbital velocity of 7 ++ km/s, so it slows down just enough that the peregee of its orbital path touches the atmosphere and uses atmospheric friction for re-entry braking.
A sci fi ship with antigrav tech could fly to a point above the planet's atmosphere, kill its velocity above ground to a low speed (or even "zero" or geostationary), and then just descend vertically.
No airspeed = no aerodynamic stress except for atmospheric turbulence etc. That's how Voyager appears to drop into the atmosphere - at a rather low airspeed of about 200-500 km/h if I recall right.
It may also have flown over 'Frisco at about 1000kmh after a temporal event but that too is subsonic and won't result in any destructive aerodynamic stresses or shockwaves, but it won't matter anyway if it has active "warp field aerodynamics" that again negates any flight or warpspeed stresses on the hull.
My thanks goes to the person who replied to my observation that the JJ Trek Enterprise was built on the ground in Iowa - it would be massively difficult to launch the huge 900m long ship into orbit conventionally but with AG tech, just float her out into space, easy as pie.
Just look it from a different point of view - nobody thinks twice about a spaceship entering a region with a dense nebula, aside from being even more cautious about what may lurk in it. Although 'dense' in a sense of deep space is still on another scale as the density of an atmosphere, same physics apply. Add the gravity of a planetary mass, and you're right there.
I think the Voyager had atmospheric / landing thrusters.
season 2 ep 1
season 4 ep 24
season 6 ep 7
season 7 ep 8
Besides, any other ship especially the galaxy wouldnt be suitable to even enter into a planetary atmosphere, the prometheus could because it's shaped in an aerodynamic fashion (very arrowhead shape). even if something like the Galaxy did get into the position where it would land, the saucer head alone must weigh far more then the engineering section, so basically the thing would head dive right into the ground. Kinda surprised voyager was able to land without the front tipping over.
The ship itself, though, could not land. I don't remember which episode it was, but at some point this was definitively established.
I envy you
Voyager tended to make up it's own rules, and the writing/plot/story was all over the place.
Catherine "I'll ignore your advise and opinion" Janeway, and Ships Councillor Chakote
I was surprised that those teeny-tiny little landing struts did not break off.
Simple physics would demand that the Voyager would tip over and fall on its crew (ex-saucer) section as soon as everything has been turned off. With a crew section that large it simply must be unbalanced.
Next, the bottom parts of the landing struts cover quite little area on ground. With that much weight distributed on that little of the planet's surface (soil and rock at the best, sand at the worst), the ship would surely sink into the ground until it rests on the engine section and the front of the crew section.
So, one can explain away this by requiring that gravity generators still must be active at all times to shift the center of mass and make that thing much lighter than it is supposed to be.
The struts even made it into the model - the triangular panels on the bottom of the saucer. The idea was that the saucer was the landing craft and the stardrive section was basically a strap on engine.
The budget demands of going with that plan were ridiculous, though, needing two additional models, miniatures of terrain sets and locations, and a large movable set piece for shots where part of the saucer would be in shots with actors.
The shuttles and transporters were made just to get rid of the landing saucer, and the strut hatches were retconned into lifeboats.
They brought the idea back after the Galaxy's saucer separation was shown off in the first episode, though, but in the form of the irreversible emergency separation most of us have heard of.
The Galaxy Class (and most other Starfleet capital ship classes) are unable to do so.
So, if for whatever reason Starfleet thinks athmospheric landing capabilities could be beneficial for the outcome of a mission, they would have the option to call in an Intrepid Class starship.
As for atmospheric flight, we have seen a lot of starship to do so: NX-01 did that once at least, a Constitution class was in Earths atmosphere once, the Galaxy class scratched an atmosphere once or twice, and even Siskos Defiant had been in "atmospheric" situations.
I think you have to consider that metallurgy and power generation has far exceeded our current modern day capacities in Trek. Its hard to believe that in a few hundred years there have been no new advances in steel, metal alloys, ablative shielding, aluminum manufacturing, etc. not to mention the exotic materials available outside Earth. Ships are likely to be more lightweight, much stronger, and more agile. I really doubt they would "tip" over just because they look like it. What's weight distribution inside also matters quite a bit.
A matter / Anti-matter reaction core puts out significantly more power than any power generation we can dream of today. That is science based on discoveries with the expensive production of antimatter in RL. Even a plasma thruster undoubtedly puts out more inertia in a single burst than a full burn of the most powerful rockets of today, especially if we consider what we see them moving and the speeds as which they do it. Its likely that, other than the warp drive, we never see thrusters work at full potential on screen, just like on jets today the hardest work on the engines is take off and landing, not while they cruising.
Atmospheric re-entry is probably not related to these. What really makes the difference is trajectory. Its entirely possible that all of these ships are capable of atmospheric flight as most of them are fairly aerodynamic. And its safe to assume if your shields can withstand phaser bursts you can take the heat and intertia of a controlled re-entry as space shuttles do it today. In a controlled descent and with the power generation we expect from ships of this era, I think the Voyager-esque landings make sense.
Enterprise D crash is the only instance I can think of that seems to defy this logic. But remember that the Enterprise D was on an uncontrolled descent after taking massive battle damage as well as being hit with a shockwave just prior to hitting the atmosphere. But its possible, in fact practical, that the saucer is capable of atmospheric flight if not the entire ship. So basing the lack of re-entry on this one instance seems unfair.