How Do Starbases Work?

#startrek #science #technology

CORRECTION AT 00:55: The first manned space station was the Soviet Union's Salyut-1. Skylab was launched in 1973. This was purely an oversight, but as I do care about the accuracy of information, I have felt the need to address it in a Community post and pinned comment. I will aim to be more careful with fact-checking from here forward.

Humans have dreamed of living and working in space for centuries. We've had a semi-permanent presence in low Earth orbit for decades. But when it comes to the humongous space stations in Star Trek like Earth Spacedock, how do they work exactly? And could we build one IRL?

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- CHAPTERS -
00:00 Intro
00:52 Background
02:06 Size
03:14 Propulsion
05:10 Layout
06:32 Designations
07:53 Gravity
11:20 Final Thoughts
12:07 Outro

[KunkMastrFlx]

just found out we missed out on a funny bit in Stargate SG-1. [Lt. Carter - "Sir I think this is an O'neill Cylinder." Col. O'neil - "A Me Cylinder?"]

[trickedraptor]

Just a quick correction, space objects like ISS have to stationkeep because of drag from the atmosphere, not gravity. Interesting video though

[kfcroc]

I think Earth Spacedock orbits higher than the ISS so, it may not need engines to keep itself-up.

[MilesTippett]

5:53 We now know, thanks to PIcard Season 3, Earth Spacedock is VERY well defended, and carries plentiful weapons.

[LostieTrekieTechie]

Great video but you don't need thrust to stay in orbit. The ISS needs occasional boosting because it is at such a low orbit that it is nearly still inside the atmosphere and faces atmospheric drag.

[BrennaUrbangirl]

While Earth Spacedock appears in Star Trek as being in Earth orbit much like the ISS actually is. I always thought that Earth Spacedock is actually at either L4 or L5 of the Lunar Lagrange Points. L4 and L5 are the two points that objects placed there would have a stable orbit

[comrade-princesscelestia]

Minor correction: the ISS only needs to use thrusters to counteract the drag from the atmosphere, and earth spacedock is clearly farther away than the ISS, by a lot, and wouldn't really need to worry about this

[TheFretts]

Great video, one small correction: The first space station was Salyut-1 followed by the more militarized Almaz series, *then* Skylab. All of which followed each other in quick succession in the 70s

[robbicu]

I keep watching your videos because you often throw your own humor and humanity in. I wish I could afford to support you on Patreon.

[mprojekt]

Favorite, fictional space station designs for me are deffo going to be spinning cuboctahedron and wheel stations, because of the Elite-series of games that I started playing in 1988, and O'Neill cylinders, such as the Side-series of space colonies at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, in Mobile Suit Gundam.

[OrangeRiver]

So, what's your favorite fictional space station or space station design?

EDIT: Also, looks like I accidentally left out that the USSR's Salyut-1 was the first manned space station, not Skylab, which was launched in 1973. And the ISS is actually 109 meters WIDE, which is the number I really cared about. Thank you to everyone for pointing these out--I always strive for accuracy, but sometimes things slip through. I'll try and be more careful in the future. Live long and prosper!

[troyspencer]

The Earth Starbase or Space Dock featured first in ST 3 SFS, is such a beautiful and awesome design. No one really wants to see a big rotating monstrosity, and Star Trek did it well with elegant designs and asthetics on their stations and ships. Thank you for a great video!

[MoonjumperReviews]

Nice video. It’s also interesting to note that most, if not all, “starbases” referenced in the original series were actually ground bases and not space stations at all. K-7 was Deep Space Station K-7, never directly referred to as a starbase, while the famous Starbase 11 was something of a small city on the surface of a planet. It was during the TNG era that space stations more commonly began to be called starbases.

[Mentorman]

Thanks for the vids, but gotta say, LEO (low earth orbit) has traces of atmosphere that produce drag that will eventually degrade the orbit and cause re-entry. Weight per-se has nothing to do with it. The object simply is in 'free-fall', or is simply ALWAYS dropping down a bottomless well. It doesn't hit the Earth due to it having exactly the same speed perpendicular (avoiding the terms of physics as possible here) or tangent to the surface, so the object in orbit is falling to the surface pulled by gravity, but is moving 'sideways' at the same speed. That means it falls, but is always missing the item towards which it is falling. Anything that disrupts this balance of gravity's pull and sideways motion will change the orbit.

[JohnDlugosz]

8:48 That's a lower-case omega, not any kind of omicron.
This (ω) is commonly used to represent angular velocity or frequency.

[DamienPagan]

A quick back of the napkin calculation about fusion rockets heavily implies that impulse can't just be a fusion rocket. My head canon is that the inertial control which allows for artificial gravity and inertial dampening is used to reduce the inertial mass of the ship, vastly increasing the efficiency of the fusion rockets.

[thegneech]

In TOS particularly, starbases were often planetary facilities or even mounted on asteroids... which were then blasted by the Romulans. >.> What you've created is "How Does Spacedock Work?" ;) But it's a cool vid anyhow.

[zebedie]

Low earth orbits tend to deteriorate due to a small amount of atmospheric drag.
With something that big you'd be better off just putting it into a higher orbit rather than trying to constantly thrust upwards. You may have to consider radiation shielding but that would require far less energy (in terms of generating an electromagnetic field) than thrusting something that big upwards continually.

[FigureUnboxing]

6:34 what I hate the most is the orientation in space. From viewer's eyes, the spacedock/ starbase looks tilted to the left. But when Enterprise flies out of the tilted starbase, it corrects its orientation according to the viewer's perspective. I mean, even galaxies tilt to the left or right... So there's no particular orientation in space!

[OllamhDrab]

It'd be cool to see a rundown on all the starbases we've seen, and also really ideas on how ground based Starbases interact with any space stations they may have., or vice versa, (here we seem to have to speculate a lot.)

I also would figure Spacedock doesn't need to course correct so often cause it has so much mass and presumably isn't in such a low orbit as we're used to in the real world, but it'd be much harder for the traces of atmosphere even in low earth orbit to affect anything that massive for a long time, I'd think, even without mad Federation fields technology to redirect any particle issues. It might even be a good way to keep that chunk of orbit clear of debris, have that station's navigational-deflector looking things just pull in the space junk or whatever. :)