Which photos are they exactly?
"you broke your little ships"
- Thread starter sojourner
- Start date
First Contact does imply that Star Trek exists canonically in the Trekverse...
No canonical ones, but since journalists have covered historic Earth events long before, and long after, that first warp test, you can bet someone was recording for posterity when the Vulcans landed.
The "fading out" gag was a reference to "Back to the Future".
If the sci shows she was familiar with didn't have ships that looked anything like the Enterprises, she wouldn't assume it. It isn't exactly a foregone conclusion for her to come to when first seeing those things.
She wouldn't assume their ships? So, this you know to be a fact? There's nothing unlikely about her assumption, she's on a ship herself, and models of ships are not uncommon on ships. The models are roughly similar, they have what are similar to warp nacelles which she's building and bear a resemblance in shape to what she's building. She's also an engineer, and could easily make the assumption that they are ships.
It's more bothersome to me the model ships were apparently made of plastic (or some other fragile material) and were easily broken by Picard, including the case's window. Isn't it more likely the case "glass" would be transparent aluminum or some sort of plastic material in order to prevent injury during attack and why wouldn't the ships me made of gold or some other metal (which we know humans in the 24c don't value as a precious material for profit.)
But, nope, a glass window and easily broken plastic ships is what makes sense apparently!
But, nope, a glass window and easily broken plastic ships is what makes sense apparently!
It's a durable, strong, material that can do the same work as glass only take up less space (Scotty in TVH says a 1-inch thick piece can do the same work as 3" piece of plexiglass.) Further, when you're on a ship where things are occasionally knocked around blown up, and shaken it'd probably make sense that whatever clear material you use would be one that wouldn't shatter into thousands of sharp death shards.
And I'd suspect pretty much all significant pieces of glass in windows, doors and display cases these days is made of tempered glass for the safety factor alone.
Difficult to argue with that.
These are folks who don't use seat belts, or make holodecks that will try to kill you when the program faults rather than shut down. Is it really so surprising?
All good points, but largely irrelevant when discussing whether or not glass or transparent aluminium should be used in a display case.
Well, they did build that particular display case out of a material that behaves like tempered glass, which is probably the safest possible solution. (Perhaps Starfleet has perfected the manufacturing of properly transparent sugar class?)
We don't know how transparent aluminum is supposed to behave. But we have seen that the big dome on top of the E-D bridge breaks in long, sharp, deadly shards - much as we might expect from a substance that has metallic properties! Perhaps good for structures that have to take immense stresses; if something like that breaks, then shards are the least of your problems. But probably overkill for interior decoration.
Yeah, "overkill" shouldn't count when your supermaterials come without a price tag... But perhaps transparent aluminum, while strong in low-thickness applications, is not sufficiently transparent for those cases where looks matter, and is much heavier than a comparable thickness of safe tempered glass?
Timo Saloniemi
We don't know how transparent aluminum is supposed to behave. But we have seen that the big dome on top of the E-D bridge breaks in long, sharp, deadly shards - much as we might expect from a substance that has metallic properties! Perhaps good for structures that have to take immense stresses; if something like that breaks, then shards are the least of your problems. But probably overkill for interior decoration.
Yeah, "overkill" shouldn't count when your supermaterials come without a price tag... But perhaps transparent aluminum, while strong in low-thickness applications, is not sufficiently transparent for those cases where looks matter, and is much heavier than a comparable thickness of safe tempered glass?
Timo Saloniemi
Unfortunately artists don't always want to make displays out of the most durable material available.
