We welcome to the cave designer and illustrator Matt Cushman, the artist behind some of our favorite science fiction cutaway illustrations from Star Trek and Star Wars. Matt shares with Adam his new massive cross-section poster of the original USS Enterprise, sized as large as the original 11-foot filming model. We scrutinize the details of this incredible piece and learn all the ways Matt made sense of the interior layout based on what was shown in the original series episodes!

  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
    451·
    9 days ago

    I admire the nerdaciousness of it all, but, frankly, Star Trek is not hard SF and never will be no matter how hard anyone tries to make it so. It’s a fun exercise, and if it makes watching the show more fun for you, great! But please don’t get into arguments about how many light years you can get out of 1kg of dilithium crystals (and not because everything would depend on the lattice structure OBVIOUSLY).

    • Courtney (she/her/they) @lemmy.blahaj.zone
      17·
      9 days ago

      Pffft with the recrystalization capabilities of 24c tech, that question is just an unfair comparison for older ships anyway. The Connie Enterprise wouldn’t be able to travel nearly as far even if both ships travelled at 1x light speed. Lattice structure is only part of the equation.

      In this 14-part video series I will be breaking down the hard science of dilithium in star trek…

    • rozodru@piefed.worldEnglish
      5·
      9 days ago

      yeah take ST tech with a grain of salt. When I was a kid I went to the Star Trek Exhibit in Toronto and my Uncle bought me a set of blueprints of the Enterprise-D. In said blueprints some decks had massive tubes that contained fish/dolphins swimming around like Darwin on SeaQuest DSV. I have no idea what they were for or why they were even there.

      • Repple (she/her)@lemmy.world
        11·
        9 days ago

        Cetacean crew members have been canon since TNG, though much more obvious since lower decks brought the whales to the forefront.

        In TNG, tursiops crew members were mentioned in the technical manual as well as the blueprints, but more importantly their facilities near the holodeck can be seen in ship diagrams on screen. Cetacean ops is also mentioned by name in Yesterday’s Enterprise.

      • SatyrSack@quokk.auEnglish
        51·
        8 days ago

        Cetacean Ops is all about navigation. Dolphins, etc. are used to freely moving about in 3D space in ways that bipeds like humans are not used to, so they are a natural fit for navigating a vessel through 3D space. Their minds are just wired to think that way better than ours.