01-17-2023, 02:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-18-2023, 10:24 PM by FaceInTheCrowd.)
Unfortunately, we don't really know enough about the Enterprise's large scale handling capabilities to say what is or isn't possible for it.
The Enterprise's tractor beam easily held the Botany Bay. The following season we saw the Enterprise tractor and tow another starship. Could the Enterprise descend low enough into a planet's atmosphere and gravity while tractoring the Botany Bay and put it down on the ground, either whole or in pieces? Don't know.
Scott used a phaser pistol to do precision cutting into a bulkhead outside of Engineering. Could the ship's phasers be focused narrowly enough to cut up the Botany Bay? Don't know.
The large, blocky objects on the Botany Bay are apparently containers. There were five of them, with space for three more that would have gone all around the midhull. Any one of them would be too large to fit into the Enterprise's hangar, but if they were disconnected from their mounts they might be something that could be tractored or even beamed down if the entire ship was too much to handle. We don't know what the limits of the Enterprise's transporter was, but 15 years later the transporter on a Klingon bird of prey could handle 400 tons of whales and water.
And one more possibility is that Scott either managed to power up the Botany Bay or attach some sort of external impulse engine to it, put it down on the ground and then cut it up.
And yeah, I'm fairly sure that Khan was right about Kirk never bothering to check up on them. I think he did everything he could to keep the whole incident and the fact that his ship was taken over quiet. The log voiceovers about Khan having the ship might not have made it back to Starfleet Command.
The Enterprise's tractor beam easily held the Botany Bay. The following season we saw the Enterprise tractor and tow another starship. Could the Enterprise descend low enough into a planet's atmosphere and gravity while tractoring the Botany Bay and put it down on the ground, either whole or in pieces? Don't know.
Scott used a phaser pistol to do precision cutting into a bulkhead outside of Engineering. Could the ship's phasers be focused narrowly enough to cut up the Botany Bay? Don't know.
The large, blocky objects on the Botany Bay are apparently containers. There were five of them, with space for three more that would have gone all around the midhull. Any one of them would be too large to fit into the Enterprise's hangar, but if they were disconnected from their mounts they might be something that could be tractored or even beamed down if the entire ship was too much to handle. We don't know what the limits of the Enterprise's transporter was, but 15 years later the transporter on a Klingon bird of prey could handle 400 tons of whales and water.
And one more possibility is that Scott either managed to power up the Botany Bay or attach some sort of external impulse engine to it, put it down on the ground and then cut it up.
And yeah, I'm fairly sure that Khan was right about Kirk never bothering to check up on them. I think he did everything he could to keep the whole incident and the fact that his ship was taken over quiet. The log voiceovers about Khan having the ship might not have made it back to Starfleet Command.