ST III: Self destruct question

[HigHurtenflurst]

That's my rationale -- they were beaming down to the planet and Kirk wanted to make sure they weren't endangered by an M/AM explosion......

Of course, if that's so, then the ship falling into the atmosphere and the antimatter bottles detonating on impact (as I speculate) would not be according to Kirk's plan.

I always thought Kirk was trying to ensure the Klingon ship wouldn't be damaged by a huge detonation. He knew he'd need it to get away.

As for the bottles falling to the surface later, that makes no sense at all because the planet was already starting to break up. The bottles would presumably have gone down with the ship, though who knows why they didn't explode as containment would have failed at some point...

 

[Timo]

If a scuttling option is introduced specifically to keep collateral damage to a minimum, it no doubt makes use of emergency jettison of antimatter - the same mechanism that protects the ship in case of impending containment failure.

Indeed, it may be that "core ejection" in TNG is a mechanism intended principally to keep a dying starship from hurting others in formation with her, and is not expected to be of any help to the ship herself. Forcibly ejecting the core may in fact near-inevitably destroy a starship - but in a manner that prevents wider catastrophe.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

I always thought Kirk was trying to ensure the Klingon ship wouldn't be damaged by a huge detonation. He knew he'd need it to get away.

The thing is, the effects of such an explosion in vacuum would be far milder than its effects on an atmosphere. There'd be a powerful surge of radiation, but that's about it, since in vacuum there are no blast effects or shock waves (despite the tendency of Trek productions to get this absolutely wrong in every possible instance).

As for the bottles falling to the surface later, that makes no sense at all because the planet was already starting to break up. The bottles would presumably have gone down with the ship, though who knows why they didn't explode as containment would have failed at some point...

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, that the bottles went down with the ship. In the film, the interval between the explosion of the Enterprise in space and the big eruption as the Bird of Prey leaves is only about ten and a half minutes, and that seems to unfold in approximately real time. That's not very long at all for re-entry. For the Space Shuttle, the time from the initial de-orbit burn to touchdown was typically a bit over an hour, and from entry interface (contact with the atmosphere) to touchdown was about half an hour or so. So it's entirely plausible that the ten and a half minutes' worth of scenes in between -- "What have I done," finding Spock and Saavik, confronting Kruge, tricking Maltz to beam them up, taking control of the BoP -- could've taken place while the wreck of the ship was still spiralling down toward impact. After all, that's a very long way to fall. And we never actually saw it hit the ground.

And remember, the explosions were in the primary hull, and the engineering hull remained pretty much intact as the ship fell into the atmosphere. It's quite reasonable that the antimatter bottles could've retained containment all the way down.

 

[Timo]

...One wonders if there still are antimatter pods in the saucer, on Deck 11, as in "Errand of Mercy". Supposedly those were for the torpedo launchers, and there might not be any in the saucer after the refit (although see ST2 for a possible contrary view), but still.

Seriously, again, if a scuttling mode is devised that specifically caters for "low collateral", then care would be taken that the antimatter would not go down with the ship, nor impact a nearby planet just moments later. And Kirk's actions do suggest he expected the scuttling not to hurt the planet below. Or the Klingon vessel, as he had just been informed that the planet only had a few hours of life left.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praxius]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, that the bottles went down with the ship. In the film, the interval between the explosion of the Enterprise in space and the big eruption as the Bird of Prey leaves is only about ten and a half minutes, and that seems to unfold in approximately real time. That's not very long at all for re-entry. For the Space Shuttle, the time from the initial de-orbit burn to touchdown was typically a bit over an hour, and from entry interface (contact with the atmosphere) to touchdown was about half an hour or so. So it's entirely plausible that the ten and a half minutes' worth of scenes in between -- "What have I done," finding Spock and Saavik, confronting Kruge, tricking Maltz to beam them up, taking control of the BoP -- could've taken place while the wreck of the ship was still spiralling down toward impact. After all, that's a very long way to fall. And we never actually saw it hit the ground.

And remember, the explosions were in the primary hull, and the engineering hull remained pretty much intact as the ship fell into the atmosphere. It's quite reasonable that the antimatter bottles could've retained containment all the way down.

One thing to consider regarding shuttle times of entry is that they're controlled entries which would be meant to be slower than an uncontrolled crash into a planet.

but to confuse the issue a bit more, a shuttle would take much less time to burn up at a slower speed than the Enterprise due to mass.

I would guess that the Enterprise crashed into the planet seconds after it was shown to come down in flames. Based on its size vs perspective it wasn't too far away from the crew when shown, but at the least it was certainly heading towards the surface.

Whether it hit land or ocean is unknown, but it did come down saucer first which would have absorbed much of the impact, perhaps delaying the time of the explosion.

 

[Christopher]

One thing to consider regarding shuttle times of entry is that they're controlled entries which would be meant to be slower than an uncontrolled crash into a planet.

Yes, and ten and a half minutes is much less than an hour.

but to confuse the issue a bit more, a shuttle would take much less time to burn up at a slower speed than the Enterprise due to mass.

I'm not sure of your physics there. Generally a larger mass would take more time to burn up. Also, that's irrelevant to the time it takes to descend from orbit to ground.

I would guess that the Enterprise crashed into the planet seconds after it was shown to come down in flames. Based on its size vs perspective it wasn't too far away from the crew when shown, but at the least it was certainly heading towards the surface.

You can't take special-effects visuals too literally, especially when they conflict with the laws of physics. Good grief, realistically the ship probably shouldn't even have fallen out of orbit at all. Orbit isn't just hovering, it's moving sideways very fast. In order to decelerate out of orbit, you have to direct thrust forward in order to slow down and let gravity take hold. Now, it's possible that the explosion of the saucer, the front portion of the ship, could've imparted some backward/decelerating thrust, but there's no way it could've cancelled out enough of the ship's velocity to cause it to plummet to the ground in mere seconds.

Anyway, from the shot in the movie, I think the ship is much higher in altitude than you think; for one thing, the fireball is probably significantly larger than the ship itself. And what you see as downward motion could be an optical illusion caused by perspective as it heads toward the horizon. The later shots in the sequence show it moving mostly horizontally with only a very slight downward angle. The images aren't too dissimilar to shots of the Columbia disaster in terms of the altitude and angle of the fireball, and there was still visible debris in the sky more than five minutes after the shuttle broke up.

 

[FormerLurker]

the thing with the non antimatter method of self destruct is that there is still a bunch of antimatter on board
I suppose if it was vented out into space it'd go up in small explosions as it came into contact with dust, micrometeors, interstellar gasses, etc instead of one big boom but it still has to be accounted for

Presumably a starship's antimatter bottles would be robust enough to withstand any conventional explosion without losing containment.

However, loose amounts of antiparticles floating around in space are no big deal. Space is actually full of antiparticles already; there are diffuse clouds of antiparticles caught in the magnetic fields of Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets, and there have actually been proposals made for harvesting them as a potential fuel source. Isolated antiparticles floating around in vacuum pose no real hazard, because they're so widely scattered. Sure, if the odd antiproton collided with your ship, there'd be a gamma ray and a few pions and neutrinos radiated from the impact, but that's nothing compared to the deadly soup of radiation that pervades space already. You might as well worry about getting hit by a raindrop while water-skiing.

The thing about antimatter is that it's only really dangerous when concentrated. It might actually be hard to make an antimatter bomb explode with as much power as a nuclear bomb. Sure, the explosive potential is dozens of times greater, but that's the whole problem -- the initial blast would be so powerful that it would tend to blow the remaining matter and antimatter apart almost instantly, so they'd stop annihilating and the explosion would fizzle out. You'd need to find a way to keep the reactants confined throughout the reaction, yet still release the energy at the end of the process. Or else pack them densely enough and collide them forcefully enough that the whole mass (and antimass) would annihilate pretty much all at once.

Well, nuclear warheads are detonated by slamming together highly polished hemispheres of plutonium as fast as a conventional explosion can propel them. Perhaps a M/AM warhead has one particle thick disks, spaced apart by a force field while being pressed together conventionally. Drop the force field, the disks slam together and BANG! Antimatter explosion.

 

[SicOne]

(1) Wasn't there a blurb in a tech manual that suggested that, when scuttled in proximity to a planet, a ship's antimatter pods were ejected with sufficient force to ensure they would clear the planet's gravity well and either continue into space or orient towards the local star and fire small RCS thrusters to steer towards the star to eventual destruction? I have a memory of reading something about this, but can't remember where.

(2) If the large surface explosion we saw as the BoP broke orbit of Genesis was indeed caused by Enterprise's AM supply going bang all at once upon impact with the planet, wouldn't it have been more of an earth-shattering kaBOOM a la Alderaan rather than a continent-sized explosion? I don't know how much AM Enterprise carried or if they had a greatly reduced supply since she was indeed due to be decommissioned soon, but I was thinking that even if she was carrying the minimum needed for a multi-light-year journey from Earth to Genesis to Vulcan, it would be enough that the simultaneous energy release would be more than sufficient to vape the planet.

 

[Praxius]

I'm not sure of your physics there. Generally a larger mass would take more time to burn up.

Isn't that what I said?

I just said the shuttle would take less time to burn up because it's smaller. I just said it backwards.

Also, that's irrelevant to the time it takes to descend from orbit to ground.

Well if we're going to reference the time it takes a space shuttle to safely land on Earth, my comments are relevant because for a space shuttle to land on earth safely, it needs to go at a certain speed and angle to reduce the chance of it turning into a fireball.

Thus the little over an hour reference is kind of irrelevant as that time of a controlled re-entry and safe landing of a small craft has little to do with a crash landing of a destroyed starship of a much larger size.

I'm not saying 10 mins in the movie from self destruct to crashing into the planet is or isn't plausible, but the conditions of a shuttle re-entry is not the same or close to as being a decent reference for time regarding the Enterprise crashing into the planet.

You can't take special-effects visuals too literally, especially when they conflict with the laws of physics. Good grief, realistically the ship probably shouldn't even have fallen out of orbit at all. Orbit isn't just hovering, it's moving sideways very fast. In order to decelerate out of orbit, you have to direct thrust forward in order to slow down and let gravity take hold. Now, it's possible that the explosion of the saucer, the front portion of the ship, could've imparted some backward/decelerating thrust, but there's no way it could've cancelled out enough of the ship's velocity to cause it to plummet to the ground in mere seconds.

While I'm aware of all the technobabble and how it all works
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeLqsvFO31o[/yt]
At 21 seconds, you already see the explosion causing thrust which pushes the ship into a downward movement.

The force of the overall explosion of the saucer afterwards was more than enough to propel the Enterprise way out of orbit and if that wasn't enough, gravity would simply do the rest.

It was clearly burning up in the atmosphere seconds later.... it was certainly not going to orbit around the planet again.

That forward thrust you speak of was indeed cancelled out by the explosion in the saucer section. It was enough force to make it spin backwards before entering the atmosphere.

Anyway, from the shot in the movie, I think the ship is much higher in altitude than you think; for one thing, the fireball is probably significantly larger than the ship itself. And what you see as downward motion could be an optical illusion caused by perspective as it heads toward the horizon.

That's a bit more extreme speculation than my position, but if you're happy with it, so be it.

Whether one wants to argue over physics or special effects in a movie... the bottom line is it's a movie. This is what happens in the movie, therefore.... well.... it happened.

The fireball is indeed much larger than the ship, but of course fire needs oxygen and from the shots in the above video, the Enterprise was clearly heading towards the planet, it was no longer orbiting and therefore, is not going to make another pass around the planet before it crashes.

 

[Christopher]

Well if we're going to reference the time it takes a space shuttle to safely land on Earth, my comments are relevant because for a space shuttle to land on earth safely, it needs to go at a certain speed and angle to reduce the chance of it turning into a fireball.

Thus the little over an hour reference is kind of irrelevant as that time of a controlled re-entry and safe landing of a small craft has little to do with a crash landing of a destroyed starship of a much larger size.

I'm not saying 10 mins in the movie from self destruct to crashing into the planet is or isn't plausible, but the conditions of a shuttle re-entry is not the same or close to as being a decent reference for time regarding the Enterprise crashing into the planet.

I could also cite things like Skylab or Mir falling out of orbit. Mir was intentionally burned up in the atmosphere, but it also took over an hour from the final deorbit burn to the point of impact. So it doesn't matter whether you're talking about a survivable re-entry or a burnup -- it still takes a significant amount of time for a spacecraft to fall out of orbit, because physics.

At 21 seconds, you already see the explosion causing thrust which pushes the ship into a downward movement.

The force of the overall explosion of the saucer afterwards was more than enough to propel the Enterprise way out of orbit and if that wasn't enough, gravity would simply do the rest.

As I said, you can't take the fanciful representations of movie special effects too literally. Physics does not work the way the visuals pretend they do.

For one thing, it's completely wrong to assume that thrusting downward would cause a ship to fall out of orbit. As I've already explained, a ship in orbit is not standing still, but is moving forward rapidly enough to cancel out the centripetal pull of gravity and put it in a circular or elliptical path around the planet. It's that balance of the inward pull of gravity and the forward motion of the ship that defines the orbital path. Thrusting the ship downward doesn't slow its forward motion, and thus it doesn't take the ship out of orbit; it just makes the orbit a bit more elliptical. You'll move slightly closer to the planet, but you're still moving forward fast enough to overshoot it. The only way to actually decelerate out of orbit is to thrust backward, to slow down your forward motion so that gravity pulls you inward.

Not to mention that the explosion that "pushed the ship downward" was in the bridge module, forward of the center of mass. It wouldn't have caused the whole ship to descend, it would've just pushed it into a slow tumble while its center of mass continued on the same trajectory.

That's why you can't use the visual effects as evidence for the physics of the situation. The cause and effect those shots depict are simply impossible. Visual effects are figurative representations, artistic devices meant to convey a general impression to a lay audience. They need to be understood as approximations or simplifications of the "real" thing. (This is true of most visual and practical effects. For instance, real bullets don't spark on impact, but sparks are used as a visual representation of impacts for the audience's benefit.)

It was clearly burning up in the atmosphere seconds later.... it was certainly not going to orbit around the planet again.

I never said it had to. I said it took ten and a half minutes to complete a descent, and that's a fraction of the time it would take to complete a single orbit of an Earthlike planet. The Space Shuttle typically took 90 minutes per orbit. When Mir deorbited, it took 24 minutes to cover only about 45 degrees of longitude -- 1/8 of the Earth's circumference -- in the final 100 vertical kilometers of its descent. Because that's still thousands of horizontal kilometers, and even at a few thousand kilometers per hour, it's still going to take a fair number of minutes to cover that great a distance.

So I never said anything about making another orbit. I'm just pointing out that it takes longer to fall out of orbit than you're assuming. Ten and a half minutes is actually an implausibly short amount of time for it.

Whether one wants to argue over physics or special effects in a movie... the bottom line is it's a movie. This is what happens in the movie, therefore.... well.... it happened.

But that's exactly my point. The movie doesn't show the actual impact, it doesn't address the fate of the antimatter, so there's enough room for interpretation. The fact that it doesn't show it is what gives me room to use my own creativity and consider possibilities beyond what we were shown.

If you want an interpretation that fits better with your assumptions, how about this: as I recall, Mr. Scott's Guide suggested that the type of self-destruct used in TSFS involved jettisoning the antimatter bottles for later safe retrieval. So even if, for the sake of argument, the body of the ship crashed with the physically ludicrous haste the visuals suggested, it could still be that the bottles didn't quite manage to get into a safe orbit and took ten minutes longer to reach the surface and rupture. There are always possibilities if you're willing to be creative.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

For one thing, it's completely wrong to assume that thrusting downward would cause a ship to fall out of orbit. As I've already explained, a ship in orbit is not standing still, but is moving forward rapidly enough to cancel out the centripetal pull of gravity and put it in a circular or elliptical path around the planet. It's that balance of the inward pull of gravity and the forward motion of the ship that defines the orbital path.

Right. Think of it as the ship (or Mir or whatever) is already falling when in orbit, just that the planet is "sliding out" from under it at the same rate of the fall. Hence, orbit.

On the other hand, the movie is consistent with Star Trek physics. In The Naked Time, when Reilly turned the engines off, the ship's orbit started to decay. Similarly, in Court Martial, the orbit was affected. These instances at least featured a slow decay, which in itself is realistic. In Star Trek III, it was portrayed more like the effect of an airplane running out of fuel while in flight.

 

[Timo]

It should be considered that the Star Trek definition of "orbit" probably isn't "freefalling around the local rock". Starships are powerful machines that can maintain high levels of thrust seemingly indefinitely. They can choose whether to do freefall or not - and there are very few arguments working in favor of freefall. "It saves fuel" is a non-starter, because saving fuel is pennywise and grounds for court-martial if it detracts from any other concern. "It is safer in case of total and prolonged loss of power" shouldn't be very high in the priority list, either: if you prepare principally for disasters, you get nothing useful done.

Presumably, a starship orbiting a planet with a starbase on it would hover above the starbase, for shortest and fastest access possible (Trek access is beeline, be it transporter beams or shuttlecraft); loss of power would then result in decay, but not one ending in a crash atop the starbase, not unless we're talking really low original altitude.

A starship orbiting Genesis wouldn't have any preferred location to hover over, though. Or would she? Kruge might be motivated to hover over his surface team, for transporter access (those don't work over the horizon), and for the tactical advantage of waiting where Kirk will eventually be coming anyway.

Why does Kirk come to that exact location, then? Dialogue makes no suggestion he would already have spotted David, Saavik and Spock. But he would probably know things like the original orbital parameters of the Grissom and the coordinates of Spock's coffin and select his orbit accordingly, thereby ending within a couple of thousand kellicams of Kruge.

As for "The Naked Now", a freefall orbit might be assumed (once the trouble with the local outpost was sorted out, that is) - but the blame might go to the dying planet and its gravitational oddities. And who knows what gravitational mischief the slow death of Genesis was causing already?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praxius]

As I am on my phone I won't respond in great detail, but in regards to Mir, that too was not a good example as that too was a controlled deorbit. It was controlled to ensure as much of the station burned up and secondly it was controlled to ensure any remaining debris wouldn't land in any populated areas.

It's deorbit was done in three stages, the first was to reduce it's speed, the second was to reduce it's orbital height, etc.

The reason why it is not a good example is how it was presented. The argument was that it took over an hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir#Final_days_and_deorbit

And yet this claims that:

Reentry into Earth's atmosphere (100 km/60 mi AMSL) of the 15-year-old space station occurred at 05:44 UTC near Nadi, Fiji. Major destruction of the station began around 05:52 UTC and most of the unburned fragments fell into the South Pacific Ocean around 06:00 UTC.

Which is 8 mins from reentry to breaking up + another 8 mins for when the debris smacked into the ocean.

Far from being over an hour.

The other factor is that we're not talking about the same thing happening to the Enterprise as it wasn't slowly thrusted into the atmosphere, it was blown up and propelled into the atmosphere.

Speed of orbit is irrelevant if you have enough force to change the direction of that travel.

And I am also more than aware that the Enterprise wasn't stationary because if it was, than chances are it wouldn't have skirted across the skyline as it did, but rather plummet like a rock (see Star Trek Into Darkness for a rough example)

Hypothetically if the Enterprise and Bird of Prey were stationary, which is also plausible, then they may have been not in orbit at the time in the first place and just outside of main gravitational pull but when the Enterprise self destruct, again, the force of the blast most likely was enough to propel it into the gravitational pull and thus, what we see in the movie.

Using controlled reentry techniques as a basis of argument is flawed, even when the reentry is designed to destroy the object.

One can argue Physics and link all the documents they want until the cows take up smoking, if those physics and the argued information doesn't relate, it simply doesn't relate..... And shuttle reentry and space station deorbits do not relate. They are completely different scenarios.

 

[Christopher]

Right. Think of it as the ship (or Mir or whatever) is already falling when in orbit, just that the planet is "sliding out" from under it at the same rate of the fall. Hence, orbit.

Exactly. The downward pull is already as strong as it's going to get. It's how fast you're moving forward that determines whether you loop around the planet entirely or spiral in to collide with it.

On the other hand, the movie is consistent with Star Trek physics. In The Naked Time, when Reilly turned the engines off, the ship's orbit started to decay. Similarly, in Court Martial, the orbit was affected. These instances at least featured a slow decay, which in itself is realistic.

Well, actually the decay should probably have taken weeks in those cases, and it wouldn't have happened at all unless the ship had been in a low enough orbit to be impinging on the outer fringes of the atmosphere, creating drag.

In Star Trek III, it was portrayed more like the effect of an airplane running out of fuel while in flight.

Actually this is another thing fiction routinely misrepresents: airplanes that run out of fuel in flight can glide safely for hundreds of miles and dozens of minutes, if they're high enough. They don't just plummet to the ground, because they're aerodynamic. If the engines go out, sure, they start to decelerate and descend, but the glide ratio is high enough that, for a fast-moving jet at high altitude, there should be plenty of time to find a safe place to land. The laws of aerodynamics don't stop working just because the engines do. (This is why so many plane-crash scenes in movies and TV these days involve something happening that causes the pilot to push forward on the control throttle, thereby angling the plane downward faster than if it were simply gliding.)

As I am on my phone I won't respond in great detail, but in regards to Mir, that too was not a good example as that too was a controlled deorbit. It was controlled to ensure as much of the station burned up and secondly it was controlled to ensure any remaining debris wouldn't land in any populated areas.

I'm sorry, but you're getting it backward. A controlled deorbit is a deliberate deceleration to cause the vehicle to descend toward the planet. Mir was already in a decaying orbit, but it was caused to decay faster so that its re-entry trajectory could be controlled and it could be ditched safely. An explosion in space, something not designed to decelerate the ship, would probably not cause it to fall out of orbit at all. And if it did, the deceleration would probably be far less, because it was entirely accidental, and thus it should take much longer to deorbit.

Realistically, the debris of the Enterprise should've just hung there in a diffuse cloud orbiting the planet and gradually spread out into a debris ring. That's what usually happens when satellites break up in orbit. Any decay of the debris should've occurred over weeks or months.

And yet this claims that:

Reentry into Earth's atmosphere (100 km/60 mi AMSL) of the 15-year-old space station occurred at 05:44 UTC near Nadi, Fiji. Major destruction of the station began around 05:52 UTC and most of the unburned fragments fell into the South Pacific Ocean around 06:00 UTC.

Which is 8 mins from reentry to breaking up + another 8 mins for when the debris smacked into the ocean.

Far from being over an hour.

You misread my post. It was over an hour from the final deorbit burn -- the thrusting manuever that turned its orbital trajectory into a descent trajectory -- to the moment of impact. The final deorbit burn occurred at 05:08 UT. It took over half an hour to descend from its orbital altitude to the altitude where it began re-entering the atmosphere, which is where you're starting the clock. Final impact was at 06:04 UT. (Okay, that's slightly under an hour, but deorbit is still a very different thing from re-entry.)

The other factor is that we're not talking about the same thing happening to the Enterprise as it wasn't slowly thrusted into the atmosphere, it was blown up and propelled into the atmosphere.

Speed of orbit is irrelevant if you have enough force to change the direction of that travel.

Again, the point is that the force has to be directed in the right way. It has to be directed backward, not down. You're talking about "propelling" a ship toward the planet, but that's gravity's job. The velocity of the ship is working against the pull of gravity, moving the ship forward fast enough that it overshoots the planet surface. As I said, pushing the ship toward the planet will just change the angle and eccentricity of its orbit, make it more cometary. The way to descend from orbit is to slow down and let gravity take over.

Hypothetically if the Enterprise and Bird of Prey were stationary, which is also plausible, then they may have been not in orbit at the time in the first place and just outside of main gravitational pull but when the Enterprise self destruct, again, the force of the blast most likely was enough to propel it into the gravitational pull and thus, what we see in the movie.

That's not how it works. There's no "edge" to the gravitational influence of a planet -- it extends infinitely outward, decreasing by the inverse square law. If you're ten times as far away, you'll only feel 1/100 the attraction, but it will still be pulling you in, just more slowly. That's why you need to move laterally in order to stay in orbit. You can't avoid being pulled inward by gravity -- all you can do is move forward fast enough to overshoot the surface and loop back on your own path. The only way to maintain a "hover" over a given spot is by applying continuous thrust, a so-called forced orbit. In that case, if your engines gave out, then you would start to descend.

So yes, it is hypothetically possible that the ship could've been in a powered hover and the loss of power caused it to descend. But it is also hypothetically possible that it behaved the way I'm proposing. All I'm saying is that it's a possibility. The fact that other possibilities exist does not exclude the one I'm suggesting. There's room for multiple options.

 

[Marsden]

... Why does Kirk come to that exact location, then? Dialogue makes no suggestion he would already have spotted David, Saavik and Spock. But he would probably know things like the original orbital parameters of the Grissom and the coordinates of Spock's coffin and select his orbit accordingly, thereby ending within a couple of thousand kellicams of Kruge. ...

Timo Saloniemi

You know, it never occured to me, but Enterprise really should have been able to detect the explosion of Grissom. I mean if you can track a warp trail through space, I'd think the explosion would have left particles of a particular kind in much higher concentration in the local area. I don't think it's a plot oversight because they were pretty sure something bad was going on, but it is a techincal oddity.

Or we can blame Chekov, who more than anyone is alternatingly very skilled or a moron as the plot dictates.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Well, actually the decay should probably have taken weeks in those cases, and it wouldn't have happened at all unless the ship had been in a low enough orbit to be impinging on the outer fringes of the atmosphere, creating drag.

And all of this would have been such an easy fix in the movie, too...

 

[Nebusj]

On the other hand, the movie is consistent with Star Trek physics. In The Naked Time, when Reilly turned the engines off, the ship's orbit started to decay. Similarly, in Court Martial, the orbit was affected. These instances at least featured a slow decay, which in itself is realistic.

Well, actually the decay should probably have taken weeks in those cases, and it wouldn't have happened at all unless the ship had been in a low enough orbit to be impinging on the outer fringes of the atmosphere, creating drag.

It's a little more in-universe plausible in ``The Naked Time'', since the ship was supposed to be in an extremely low, tight orbit above a planet that's (somehow) imploding, and irregular lumps of mass do wonderful things in making satellites crash. (Granted, e.g., the Apollo sub-satellites of the Moon needed months to crash, but that can be gotten around since we don't know what the orbital height for the Enterprise was and just how lumpy Psi 2000's mass was supposed to be.)

In ``Court-Martial'' the constraint is a little more obviously that there's no drama in ``he's sabotaged the engines! We have only seven months to repair them before we fall out of orbit''. Still, it must be admitted many of the orbits of manned capsules in the early 60s were by our standards extremely short-lived --- John Glenn's Mercury capsule was only guaranteed to stay in orbit about eleven hours. If the Trek producers had orbital lifetimes like that imprinted on them, then, particularly, Finney's plan makes tolerable sense.

 

[Christopher]

Still, it must be admitted many of the orbits of manned capsules in the early 60s were by our standards extremely short-lived --- John Glenn's Mercury capsule was only guaranteed to stay in orbit about eleven hours. If the Trek producers had orbital lifetimes like that imprinted on them, then, particularly, Finney's plan makes tolerable sense.

I dunno, I think TV/movie writers assume that ships in orbit are like airplanes in flight, and must therefore plummet out of the sky if they lose power. And as I discussed above, screenwriters even underestimate how long a plane could stay in the air without power.

 

[eyeresist]

the thing with the non antimatter method of self destruct is that there is still a bunch of antimatter on board.

Presumably the antimatter tanks are designed to withstand heavy impacts and "conventional" explosions. They are probably the strongest part of the ship.

Kirk never had suicidal tendencies: all his TOS "threats of scuttling" were bluff, as we learned in "By Any Other Name" where he refused to even consider blowing up the ship, despite the fate of the entire galaxy being at stake. This considered, I doubt he would have blown up the ship in ST:TMP, either... He would just have used Scotty's End Of Everything button as an ace in his sleeve in negotiations with V'Ger.

And yet he did destroy the Enterprise in TSFS. Hmmmm.... I have wondered, why didn't they beam over to the BoP and try to commandeer it? (which is what they end up doing anyway)

 

[Christopher]

Hmmmm.... I have wondered, why didn't they beam over to the BoP and try to commandeer it? (which is what they end up doing anyway)

For one thing, they were outnumbered by the Klingon crew, so that wasn't even an option until the end when the BoP was empty except for Maltz. Second, the BoP had shields. They couldn't have gotten aboard without getting them to lower their shields.