"Dead Stop" another fine piece of work!
JC Miller
get a first look at replication! Awesome show with a pallot
of massive proportions to work with.
Favorite scene: When Archer notices that Trip never repainted
the hull from when they bumped it, way back in "broken bow".
Trip: "I was getting around to it."
Too cool!
Jeff
wrote:
>Trip: "I was getting around to it."
Yeah, I thought that was funny.
DMS
in several months because the others were soooo bad), I thought the show
was just seriously long and slow (like all the others I've seen). It
would have made a worthwhile 30 minute episode, nothing more. In any
case, I'm not easily entertained enough to say it's good Trek, and I
have better things to do than sit through and entire hour *yawn* to get
a mediocre conclusion. The best redeeming value of the episode was when
they killed the worst character on the show. I thought maybe the
producers were finally getting the hint that some changes need to be
made. But no...
Voyager got somewhat better, and maybe Enterprise will too. But even
today I can't force myself to watch the first few seasons of Voyager.
Maybe I have a short attention span? Maybe I just think faster than the
show is going? Maybe I just need a fast-forward button?
Maybe I'll check back when season 3 starts.
DMS
KathyKynaston
> get a first look at replication! Awesome show with a pallot
> of massive proportions to work with.
what's a pallot? do you mean pallette?
Christine Leston
"JC Miller" <jcmi...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:DYCq9.4174$F53.3...@newssvr28.news.prodigy.com...
My immediate reaction was: how do you paint the outside of a starship in a
vacuum, interstellar cold, and zero gravity?
Maybe they were both joking.
C.M. Leston.
KathyKynaston
> My immediate reaction was: how do you paint the outside of a starship in a
> vacuum, interstellar cold, and zero gravity?
>
> Maybe they were both joking.
No problem. For any programme that thinks you can hear the engines in space
painting should be a doddle!
Anybody remember red dwarf where in the opening credits lister was painting
the ship?
Greg Heilers
>
>
> My immediate reaction was: how do you paint the outside of a starship in a
> vacuum, interstellar cold, and zero gravity?
>
> Maybe they were both joking.
>
> C.M. Leston.
[gvhtexas replies:]
Possibly joking, but still a do-able task. Even a simple cannister of spray
paint SHOULD work in such an environment, if handled properly. The only
concern would be the temperature. If the atomized pigment were to strike
the surface quick enough, I don't forsee a problem. (There would probably
be a need for the surface of the hull to be quite a bit above "space cold",
as well.)
JC Miller
of it, is like a warehouse item, right? lol
KathyKynaston
sure is, but thats spelt pallet
JC Miller
KathyKynaston
I find earlier episodes of voyager boring too, my attention wanders.It's
like watching a recording of a football match when you already know the
score, and all you want to do is get to the end. I also find the plots (if
any) very weak, or is that part of the same problem?
John Turner
"Christine Leston" <cle...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:e8_q9.534374$Ag2.20...@news2.calgary.shaw.ca...
>
> My immediate reaction was: how do you paint the outside of a starship in a
> vacuum, interstellar cold, and zero gravity?
>
Better question is, why paint the ship? What protection is gained by paint,
what
engineering or combat advantage is there? An all-over paint job would add
tons to the
mass of a ship the size of Enterprise.
This is another example of how Star Trek dinks around with space opera --
drawing
invalid extensions from cliches of conventional stories recast in an SF
frame. "Gee, if it's a ship it's painted right? Navy ships are painted."
Yes, but spacecraft aren't.
Paint turns out to be a nuisance in vaccuum. In the 1980s the U.S. orbited
the Long Duration Exposure Facility and conducted tests on Shuttle flights.
These experiments
demonstrated that conventional paint survives at best a few years exposed to
exotic
low-pressure chemistry in vaccuum, let alone exposure to ionizing radiation
or extreme
heat.
The paint applied to satellite boosters for weather protection on the ground
flakes and
falls off within months of reaching orbit, and presently such flakes are the
commonest form of space garbage impacting the Space Shuttle.
As for how to paint the ship in vaccuum, a fusible powder process would get
results
closest to what people think of as "paint". Electrostatic charge attracts a
fine powder
resembling copier toner to the hull, then a radiant heater melts the powder
in place.
Such coatings are basically hard plastics -- epoxy or polyester resin, often
carrying
mineral pigments such as metal oxides. They have the disadvantage that
their organic
molecules would be attacked by ionizing radiation and exotic low-pressure
chemistry,
eating them up within months of exposure to vaccuum and space.
A more desirable technique would be plasma coating. Plasma coating is a
widely employed process today and should work quite well in vaccuum and
microgravity.
Basically, an electric arc is struck inside a nozzle carrying high-velocity
gas. The
gas carries the arc out the tip of the nozzle, becoming a plasma along the
way.
Powder sifts into the incoming gas, melting and even vaporizing as it passes
through
the arc. Aim the nozzle at a surface and it's painted with the molten
matter, bam
that quick.
Heat transfer to the surface is actually quite low; plasma guns are
routinely used to
plate metals onto plastics and paper. You can safely metallize your bare
hand
with a plasma gun, or apply high-melting-point ceramic to a
low-melting-point aluminum
fry pan.
Yet coatings can be extremely heat resistant once deposited, withstanding
temperatures equivalent to molten steel. In space a plasma coating would
outlast
paint and would be far more intimately mated to the hull surface, almost
impossible
to rub off. An effective anti-wear coating would be far lighter than the
equivalent all-
over paint job.
Another possibility, oddly enough, is textiles. A great many spacecraft
built from
the 1970s onwards wear their own spacesuits of sorts stitched from fabrics
and
plastic films. A Voyager probe, for example, shows bare metal only on spars
and
small openings; everything else is seamed and sewn cloth. This is also true
of the Galileo and Cassini probes, all designed to operate for a decade or
more exposed to high radiation and vaccuum. By rights Enterprise should be
wearing pants!
And when it's time to launch shuttle they can unzip the fly. . . .
John Turner, Pret a' Teleportre
tom
Perhaps it is something that is just reffered to as ""paint""
Perhaps it is irrellavant since the show bites anyhow.
"John Turner" <joh...@gte.net> wrote in message
news:ap09ea$f64$0...@216.39.148.162...