Yonada

[Wingsley]

In "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky", it is clearly understood that the Fabrini inhabitants of Yondada believe their mega-colony-ship is a "world" and that they've been accustomed to living in it for at least 10,000 years.

The Yonada is supposed to be 200 miles across. (I like the "remastered" version, BTW, although I don't understand how you can stand on the "surface" and see orange sky.) Given this, the ship must have an enormous capacity.

We never see how the Fabrini maintain their cave-dwelling lifestyle. It's obvious that the Oracle's telepathic abilities are useful to maintain an orderly, cooperative culture that would be necessary for multi-generational spaceflight. It would seem that an asteroid-ship of that size would have a capacity for hundreds of thousands of passengers, if not millions. All this and the asteroid itself would still offer enough raw materials to derive from if needed.

The one thing I don't understand is how the lights stay on and the people are fed and can consume water, etc. How can these practical matters be maintained for thousands, if not millions, for millenia?

 

[Captain Robert April]

I would think that would depend on the chemical makeup of the asteroid itself and how the internal arrangment was set up.

 

[Ronald Held]

How well of a closed ecosystem did the Creators design is important. I presume their internal power is based on the power source of the engines(fusion?).

 

[Albertese]

I was always of the opinion that the "surface" of Yonada was actually enclosed and the "sky" was really an artificialy lit ceiling. That way the old guy in the start of the episode could have conceivably climbed the wall and touched the "sky" ceiling. And subsequently freaked out.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. Yonada probably isn't a spinning O'Neill habitat, but rather a "conventional starship" with parallel decks dug into the rock. The decks could be longitudal if the ship uses classic Trek artificial gravity, or normal to the thrust axis if the gravity is produced by the reaction engines.

There would be little use for "open air" in such a ship, but for psychological reasons the creators would have dug at least one large cavern which they would disguise as a valley surrounded by mountains, with a fake sky as the ceiling.

I'm not sure whether it's realistic to have nearly 100% perfect self-repair abilities built into such a ship. Perhaps the ship was built to be only 99% proof, with lots of margin for error: the inhabitants would be instructed to gradually abandon those sections that become unusable, there being plenty of "refuges" within the gigantic volume.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[felixofgolden]

Page 68 of Shane Johnson's Worlds of the Federation kinda shows that. A core surrounding by a hollow asteroid with the sky inside.