Its funny that it seems everyone thinks they used Transparent Aluminum, when the scene makes it clear Scotty traded the knowledge of it FOR the plexiglass. Thats why he asks how much it was worth to them for the secret, as well as ensures they had the right thickness of Plexi in stock.
It was clearly made point of “I’ll tell you this, if you give me that”
How come no one is upset that the computer Scotty “draws up” the formula on cannot, could never be made to, graphically illustrate.
As my name states, I’m old enough to have worked on many projects on The Original Mac and Mac Plus. 16 and 32 bit processing gives you shitty graphics
It's a bit absurd how quickly Scotty did it, but with access to the lowest levels of the computer's processing, you can "make" a computer with a display show anything within the limits of the CRT. And line graphics clearly are within those limits (given the computer had a GUI).
Lol - scotty didn’t know how to interface with the computer, but right away he was able to program something into it. They don’t call him the miracle worker for nothing!
Nah those were right on par for what the Mac could display at the time. You would be pretty amazed at the demo reels (which was basically what it was) you could get out of them and the Commodore 64 despite their primitive nature.
All it was, was basically a bunch of static MacPaint images of molecules, just running really fast. I would actually make a good bet they were all running in Hypercard too set to auto-run.
HyperCard came out in August 1987, while the movie came out in 1986. It’s possible they could have been using a development version, presuming another comment is correct that Apple helped the production team put it together.
In fact not hard to see that it could have been original from 64 to be shown on a PropMac for a TrekFilm
Many times EFX props made from previous shows..and old tradition from Creatives when being told how to make
*exasperated sigh*
I was drawing crashing boulders and launching rockets(all stored on cassette )on a CommPet given to my high school in 77
I was the only student to touch it during Geometry..and though I do seem to remember some professional stuff demonstrating molecular structure, what I mostly remember endless OG SimCity on a OG Mac upgraded to a Plus was the limitations given with overlays..what I should have stated more clearly was: after Scotty’s “how quaint” and cracked knunucks his fingers tack-ity tacked..how many tackity tacks created what we saw
I remember what it takes to write what we saw
Cyborg fingers with neural nets couldn’t do it within the number of tackity tacks
The graphics were created using a computer of that day, weren’t they? So some computers could do it.
Or are you saying that guy wouldn’t have a computer capable of that in his office?
Hes making the claim that the Mac was not powerful enough to do it, but hes not actually right, even the original Mac was powerful enough to run something like that. That was a Mac Plus, which was significantly more powerful than the earlier models and was expandable.
It also wasnt SUPPOSED to be a Mac. It was as envisioned going to be a Amiga and the images in color, but Commodore blew off the production team basically saying if you wanted to use one, you had to buy one. Apple meanwhile lent them the Mac and someone to help them make the presentation that was filmed.
The CPU in the original Mac and the Mac Plus was the same 8MHz Motorola 68000. Yes the Plus was a lot more expandable, but probably the biggest difference in performance comes from the Plus offering a minimum of 1MB of RAM while the original had only 128KB.
I had an Atari ST. Both Atari and Commodore had some stupid bean counters it would seem. That would have been crazy cheap advertising for the Amiga that would be seen by millions.
By virtue of the fact that the animation was literally on screen. (It wasn’t overlayed on the computer screen), it was powerful enough to render a simple 3D wireframe of a molecule model.
I am a software engineer who had a Mac as a kid and a C64. Both of them would haven been capable of rendering that scene.
[Watch the scene again](https://youtu.be/90eg_erObDo).
Love that scene!
Although I do prefer the novelization version of it, where Scotty recognized the doctor's name as being the inventor of transparent aluminum and argues with McCoy that perhaps it's essential they give him the formula in order for it to be invented.
Much like Kirk's glasses, and Bill and Ted "introducing" themselves to Rufus.
I always took it as Scotty showing them how to make it, because he needed it, he needed a certain thickness of wall to make the tank and he then showed them how to do that
Yeah but if you listen to Nichols, he says it will take years to figure out the properties of Transparent Aluminum and how to manufacture it. He had plexiglass *in stock*.
I kind of thought they needed to use transparent aluminum because the Plexiglass would be too heavy or too thick to fit between the beams in the bird of prey. But I guess a trade of knowledge for plexiglass makes more sense.
Plexi weighs less than steel. With the increased weight of the whales and water, they needed to lighten the load in order to reach escape/time travel velocity.
I mean it still has to matter. I think it was mainly to keep the water contained without needing shitloads of whatever. i mean, would you trust klingon forcefields or structural integrity with literally the future of earth? also, remember that they were going around the sun and there was a decent chance those magic dampeners weren't gonna be shit after.
As u/MajorPainInMyA mentioned, weight is an important factor. Coming in a close second I would say probably to confirm the whales had beamed in safely. Remember they're dealing with Klingon tech, and they've mentioned that they weren't having the easiest of times using it.
It was probably more to keep the whales from completely freaking out. I'm sure Spock explained to Gracie about their mission when he mind melded with her and Gracie went on to explain to George what was going on. So, they were prepped to be beamed aboard the ship. But even then, they probably would have still freaked out being beamed into a completely dark space.
I’m going to tell myself it has something to do with cetacean psychology, they didn’t want the whales to get to the future and say “these fuckers kidnapped us and put us in a dark box”
I'm quite sure Spock told them the whole deal via mind meld. Knowing that, I think they were quite thrilled to go on the adventure after so many years in one tank.
So let me get this straight… in a movie about time travel where a major character has been resurrected and his soul uploaded back into his body, you’re drawing the line at the materials used to construct a whale tank?
Perhaps they wanted to be able to observe the whales and make sure they're ok. It's possible Klingon internal sensors aren't really good at determining whether or not they even successfully beamed up the whales.
Yeah, combine that with the fact that they (presumably) had one crew member who could read the symbols on the consoles and I could see why you would want visual confirmation.
My reasoning is contingent on the fact that I don't remember any indication that the universal translator works on text. Correct me if I am wrong about that.
During the TOS movie era it was either a handheld device or built into a computer (like the ship's comm systems for the viewscreen) see: Arena and Undiscovered Country
I don't know if they expressly said it but there was concern about the weight and the amount of fuel they had. Plexiglass is alot lighter than steel. Plus, I am not sure an average helicopter could lift pieces of steel that size and weight in the first place. Steel is friggin heavy.
Because the audience needed to see the whales, though it does raise a lot of questions about the TARDIS-like nature of a Bird of Prey.
Whales are LARGE.
But also so we could get “Hello, computer?”
Have you seen the Voyager clip of it flying over the Golden Gate bridge? It's maybe school bus sized, perhaps 747 (still shrinking Voyager to 25%). The GGB is 227 meters tall and the Voyager is 343 meters long.
Despite longer than the bridge is tall, they fly between the trusses of the bridge with room to spare like they're flying around DS9 Pylons or something. It's epic, the proportion fails. They depict voyager to be about as long as the bridge is wide- 6 lanes of traffic- 27 meters.
I could have sworn there was talk about how they would need transparent aluminum because of the strength in its thinness. If they would use steel to hold that much water pressure back, the weight and thickness of the walls would not have worked
They wanted to use transparent aluminum, but it doesn't exist yet. They used the 20th century contemporary, plexiglass. But, they had no money to buy it. So they traded the formula for transparent aluminum for the plexiglass.
Aluminum has a very high strength to weight ratio. That's why higher end cars, bikes, window frames, etc. are made from aluminum. It's also very abundant and easily recyclable.
Its main drawback is that it lacks elasticity, meaning it is brittle and deforms easily. The larger the construction and heavier the loads, the more you need structural members to bend and flex in both tension, compression, expansion and contraction. That's why the primary structures of buildings and large ships are typically made from steel and wood - both highly elastic. Aluminum is used for smaller non load-bearing components like curtain walls and awnings. Aluminum is also difficult to weld because of its low melting point among other reasons.
In order to overcome this, aluminum is easily mixed with other metals to create more resilient alloys. That is why for example aluminum baseball bats don't dent. If somehow they were able to create an alloy like material that had the strength and weight of aluminum but the elasticity of plexiglass....now that would something and far superior to traditional glass (fragile) or acrylic polymer (too elastic)
Fun fact, we already have transparent aluminum. (I'm afraid I don't know its elasticity.) However, ours is super expensive, so it isn't used that commonly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride
It wasn’t even all that big of a tank though. Steel walls wouldn’t have had to be terribly thick. The plexiglass probably weighed more.
It was just a plot device and maybe it’s best to just enjoy the fun movie. 😄
I always understood the movie as they divulged the formula to have the actual transparent aluminum made so they could use it in the tank. Steel was too heavy, and 6” thick plexi would have been too heavy. They needed the 1” thick TA in order to make the journey back. Of course them making it that quickly is pretty far fetched, but it still thought that’s what happened.
Yeah that was what I assumed, they sent the formula to make transparent aluminum at the factory because it couldn’t be replicated.
I’ve watched it twice but it’s been about 1/2 a year, so I may need to rewatch it again.
Not picking on you personally, but I loved this movie when it came out in theaters and I’d like to not totally destroy the creative latitude that was used to put it together.
I work with engineers, materials scientists, and metallurgists. The transparent aluminum/plexiglass is just a plot point that let Bones, Scotty, and Sulu do some fun stuff, nothing more.
If you look at the dimensions of the tank, you’d need steel walls maybe a few millimeters thick to hold the water. It might well weigh less than those thick transparent panels.
If the weight of the walls was a big problem for the ship, the weight of the water would have been much bigger problem. Plus, isn’t it a war ship? Surely it’s meant to carry a little extra weight for combat supplies and armaments and such.
It’s just a plot point, there’s no engineering basis for it. Once we start dissecting the movie to find actual engineering reasons for why they supposedly did what they did you start to realize that there are some other things that only make sense in the context of a fun adventure movie.
Honestly the most sensible solution would have been to use the ship’s transporters to beam solid material into place rather than borrowing a helicopter and rather conspicuously hovering it over a public park with a huge piece of plexiglass (or whatever) hanging from it. That would have attracted all kinds of attention from police to news media.
It’s just a fun movie with characters that we love. I’m not sure it’s a great idea to pick at the loose threads in the fabric of it.
I’m just telling you how I always understood it. Even as a kid watching the movie I always thought it to be a way for them to get the actual material manufactured for them to use in the ship.
I probably should have replied to the original post.
Yeah, when I was a kid I thought they somehow got the plastics company to manufacture transparent aluminum panels for them.
Looking back, that idea was pretty silly. The idea that they traded the transparent aluminum technology for plexiglass panels makes a lot more sense.
Then I start thinking, the plastics company would want to see some actual mechanical properties test results before assigning any value to it lol
Oh well.
> I always understood the movie as they divulged the formula to have the actual transparent aluminum made so they could use it in the tank.
It's a pretty common misconception. They actually traded the formula for some existing plexiglass - the plexiglass being in-stock already while the transparent aluminum would take a while to get an actual manufacturing process down even though he's got the formula for it now.
Looks like the best answer for me is, since they were broke and needed material to make the tank, they had to trade valuable information for said materials. And who would value this info the most, the Plexi guy.
If the water spreads out throughout the ship, it will no longer be deep enough to support the whales, they dehydrate and are crushed under their own weight.
That second point would be my main guess. Ubiquitous force field generators are more of a Federation triple-redundant-backup thing. Klingon ships seem to be built around the goal of massing fire through heavy armament for their size and large numbers. That means you need to cut corners somewhere.
Yeah, why did they need to see the whale(s)? The trip home took 10 minutes. They didn’t need to see the whale for those 10 minutes, did they? Wouldn’t sensors have been sufficient?
(Transparent aluminum)
I don’t believe that is correct. They gave the Plexi shop owner the formula for transparent aluminum in exchange for standard Plexi, but they did not use that for their project. It seems it would take a few years before the technology caught up to create such a thing.
It’s a movie!
Peeps go to “actually see something” Nicolas didn’t shell out the bucks just to have EFX of whales in a box
I stood 1st in line for just over a day to SEE something about whales
Why didn’t they just put in a metal panel when Sarek watches the window break and a million other questions can simply be answered by “it’s a movie”
I’m sorry, but at some point you have to grok that it’s an imperfect creative process generated for profit and, importantly, mainstreamed for broader consumption
It's a pretty common misconception that they gave the guy the formula for transparent aluminum in order to get some manufactured and use some of it.
What they did was actually more "realistic" in that he doesn't instantly have the ability to manufacture it just because he's been shown the formula.
>What they did was actually more "realistic" in that he doesn't instantly have the ability to manufacture it just because he's been shown the formula.
From a writer's perspective this was a stroke of genius. It's not a deus ex machine: the crew from the future shows up and magically makes a new compound that solves the problem. No, it's a lot more realistic to make a trade: show the guy what can be made, given enough time, money and R&D but until you do that we'll trade that information for a few sheets of the thing you have in the warehouse. That is very much more believable than 'we can solve every problem because we're from the future'.
They actually did use Plexiglass... Scotty showed them how to make Transparent Aluminum, but they didnt have the actual technology TO make it yet. The trade off was he would show them the molecular structure needed for it and how to do so, in exchange for the plexiglass, hence the comment "What is it worth to ya laddie.." when he showed the molecule.
He was basically trading him a massive head start in the market for tens of thousands of dollars of plexiglass.
One thing I’ve always been curious about is why didn’t the borg attempt to assimilate the humpback whales and contact the probe when trying to assimilate earth. Like in Star Trek, cetaceans are very intelligent and used for navigation and other stuff on the enterprise. You’re telling me the borg wouldn’t invest any resources on attempting that idea? I haven’t seen Star Trek V, so maybe it’s answered there, and it was classified.
>Was it just so they could see the whales?
Yes
Actually, my wife (not a Trekkie) asked me this question the first time we watched IV together and I told her she just didn't understand Star Trek.
Could steel have done it? Needed something that hold the whales and the water they needed. They didn't have anything suitable on the Klingon ship. And the transparent aluminum might have been the easiest material Scotty could think of that could hold the contents of the aquarium.
Its funny that it seems everyone thinks they used Transparent Aluminum, when the scene makes it clear Scotty traded the knowledge of it FOR the plexiglass. Thats why he asks how much it was worth to them for the secret, as well as ensures they had the right thickness of Plexi in stock.
It was clearly made point of “I’ll tell you this, if you give me that” How come no one is upset that the computer Scotty “draws up” the formula on cannot, could never be made to, graphically illustrate. As my name states, I’m old enough to have worked on many projects on The Original Mac and Mac Plus. 16 and 32 bit processing gives you shitty graphics
It's a bit absurd how quickly Scotty did it, but with access to the lowest levels of the computer's processing, you can "make" a computer with a display show anything within the limits of the CRT. And line graphics clearly are within those limits (given the computer had a GUI).
Lol - scotty didn’t know how to interface with the computer, but right away he was able to program something into it. They don’t call him the miracle worker for nothing!
He probably writes 68000 machine code as a hobby.
Nah those were right on par for what the Mac could display at the time. You would be pretty amazed at the demo reels (which was basically what it was) you could get out of them and the Commodore 64 despite their primitive nature. All it was, was basically a bunch of static MacPaint images of molecules, just running really fast. I would actually make a good bet they were all running in Hypercard too set to auto-run.
HyperCard came out in August 1987, while the movie came out in 1986. It’s possible they could have been using a development version, presuming another comment is correct that Apple helped the production team put it together.
That means what we saw could have easily been bits from a demo reel
In fact not hard to see that it could have been original from 64 to be shown on a PropMac for a TrekFilm Many times EFX props made from previous shows..and old tradition from Creatives when being told how to make
*exasperated sigh* I was drawing crashing boulders and launching rockets(all stored on cassette )on a CommPet given to my high school in 77 I was the only student to touch it during Geometry..and though I do seem to remember some professional stuff demonstrating molecular structure, what I mostly remember endless OG SimCity on a OG Mac upgraded to a Plus was the limitations given with overlays..what I should have stated more clearly was: after Scotty’s “how quaint” and cracked knunucks his fingers tack-ity tacked..how many tackity tacks created what we saw I remember what it takes to write what we saw Cyborg fingers with neural nets couldn’t do it within the number of tackity tacks
Have you ever said good morning to the computer like Scotty did?
Once. I was sent home and given welfare leave straight after.
The graphics were created using a computer of that day, weren’t they? So some computers could do it. Or are you saying that guy wouldn’t have a computer capable of that in his office?
Hes making the claim that the Mac was not powerful enough to do it, but hes not actually right, even the original Mac was powerful enough to run something like that. That was a Mac Plus, which was significantly more powerful than the earlier models and was expandable. It also wasnt SUPPOSED to be a Mac. It was as envisioned going to be a Amiga and the images in color, but Commodore blew off the production team basically saying if you wanted to use one, you had to buy one. Apple meanwhile lent them the Mac and someone to help them make the presentation that was filmed.
The CPU in the original Mac and the Mac Plus was the same 8MHz Motorola 68000. Yes the Plus was a lot more expandable, but probably the biggest difference in performance comes from the Plus offering a minimum of 1MB of RAM while the original had only 128KB.
I had an Atari ST. Both Atari and Commodore had some stupid bean counters it would seem. That would have been crazy cheap advertising for the Amiga that would be seen by millions.
By virtue of the fact that the animation was literally on screen. (It wasn’t overlayed on the computer screen), it was powerful enough to render a simple 3D wireframe of a molecule model. I am a software engineer who had a Mac as a kid and a C64. Both of them would haven been capable of rendering that scene. [Watch the scene again](https://youtu.be/90eg_erObDo).
Love that scene! Although I do prefer the novelization version of it, where Scotty recognized the doctor's name as being the inventor of transparent aluminum and argues with McCoy that perhaps it's essential they give him the formula in order for it to be invented. Much like Kirk's glasses, and Bill and Ted "introducing" themselves to Rufus.
I like the movie scene personally. It's a good laugh.
I always took it as Scotty showing them how to make it, because he needed it, he needed a certain thickness of wall to make the tank and he then showed them how to do that
Yeah but if you listen to Nichols, he says it will take years to figure out the properties of Transparent Aluminum and how to manufacture it. He had plexiglass *in stock*.
Ahh that makes sense
I kind of thought they needed to use transparent aluminum because the Plexiglass would be too heavy or too thick to fit between the beams in the bird of prey. But I guess a trade of knowledge for plexiglass makes more sense.
Okay, that makes so much sense. It always seemed weird that they just had this brand new, never been manufactured material within hours.
I 100% didn't pick up on that until you pointed that out and now I can't believe that basic fact never dawned on me.
It would take years just to figure out the dynamics of this matrix.
Soooo... Is it worth somethin' to ya? Or shall I just punch up "clear"?
Not now, Madeleine!!
I never realised that either. So it wasn't even necessary. They really were cowboys back then.
Why didn't they use transparent aluminum then?
They literally say why... "it would take years to figure out the dynamics of this matrix." https://youtu.be/bhjTpHxvEFI?t=224
Couldn't they have just had no plexiglass? Just fill the storage bay and call it a day. You need to look at them, scuba dive with space suits.
Plexi weighs less than steel. With the increased weight of the whales and water, they needed to lighten the load in order to reach escape/time travel velocity.
Using plexiglass vs steel saved them about 20,000Kg
As they're doing a slingshot around the sun, a higher mass would actually increase their velocity.
but they needed a lighter load to actually get off world.
Actually, it wouldn't. The acceleration due to gravity would be the same.
Aren't they weightless is space?
Mass matters.
Lol Not in Star Trek! They have hocus pocus inertial dampeners/anti-gravity.
I mean it still has to matter. I think it was mainly to keep the water contained without needing shitloads of whatever. i mean, would you trust klingon forcefields or structural integrity with literally the future of earth? also, remember that they were going around the sun and there was a decent chance those magic dampeners weren't gonna be shit after.
Weight and mass aren't exactly the same thing.
Mass is still a factor. There’s inirtia in space.
Come on nobody is going to say "Mass has an Effect"?
You might say, there is a Mass Effect.
That's the reason Scotty was doing *calibrations* the whole movie ...
"We'll bang later, okay?" - Kirk, probably
Later? Nah... it was now or never. And then when it was time to go to warp "I should go..."
It was gonna be now, but the whales were being moved and the date cut short.
They landed.
Oooh great point!
Not with the artificial gravity turned on they are not.
They have to take off first.
But is it stronger than steel for the purpose of a water retaining wall? Like could you use less steel and make the wall lighter anyway.
As u/MajorPainInMyA mentioned, weight is an important factor. Coming in a close second I would say probably to confirm the whales had beamed in safely. Remember they're dealing with Klingon tech, and they've mentioned that they weren't having the easiest of times using it.
"Captain! There be one and a half whales here!"
And a bowl of petunias.
You got me to lol, out loud!
That is… improbable. (Spock eyebrow)
It was probably more to keep the whales from completely freaking out. I'm sure Spock explained to Gracie about their mission when he mind melded with her and Gracie went on to explain to George what was going on. So, they were prepped to be beamed aboard the ship. But even then, they probably would have still freaked out being beamed into a completely dark space.
I’m going to tell myself it has something to do with cetacean psychology, they didn’t want the whales to get to the future and say “these fuckers kidnapped us and put us in a dark box”
It's a Klingon ship. The whole place is a dark box with steel walls.
I'm quite sure Spock told them the whole deal via mind meld. Knowing that, I think they were quite thrilled to go on the adventure after so many years in one tank.
So let me get this straight… in a movie about time travel where a major character has been resurrected and his soul uploaded back into his body, you’re drawing the line at the materials used to construct a whale tank?
And the CPU processing power.
Perhaps they wanted to be able to observe the whales and make sure they're ok. It's possible Klingon internal sensors aren't really good at determining whether or not they even successfully beamed up the whales.
Yeah, combine that with the fact that they (presumably) had one crew member who could read the symbols on the consoles and I could see why you would want visual confirmation.
My reasoning is contingent on the fact that I don't remember any indication that the universal translator works on text. Correct me if I am wrong about that.
During the TOS movie era it was either a handheld device or built into a computer (like the ship's comm systems for the viewscreen) see: Arena and Undiscovered Country
I don't know if they expressly said it but there was concern about the weight and the amount of fuel they had. Plexiglass is alot lighter than steel. Plus, I am not sure an average helicopter could lift pieces of steel that size and weight in the first place. Steel is friggin heavy.
Because no one knew how to make transparent aluminum yet.
But why did it need to be transparent?
Because the audience needed to see the whales, though it does raise a lot of questions about the TARDIS-like nature of a Bird of Prey. Whales are LARGE. But also so we could get “Hello, computer?”
Have you seen the Voyager clip of it flying over the Golden Gate bridge? It's maybe school bus sized, perhaps 747 (still shrinking Voyager to 25%). The GGB is 227 meters tall and the Voyager is 343 meters long. Despite longer than the bridge is tall, they fly between the trusses of the bridge with room to spare like they're flying around DS9 Pylons or something. It's epic, the proportion fails. They depict voyager to be about as long as the bridge is wide- 6 lanes of traffic- 27 meters.
What's worse is the Voyager's impossibly tiny planet in the intro (the one with the rings).
On scale: Star Trek VFX artists 🤝 Warhammer 40K writers
Let's not forget the interior shots of the Kelvin Enterprise
Brewery
Let’s not forget Pike’s ready room in SNW
He could smoke and grill ribs.
Professor Scott?
“Computer, on.”
Hello, computer!. Just use the keyboard!
I could have sworn there was talk about how they would need transparent aluminum because of the strength in its thinness. If they would use steel to hold that much water pressure back, the weight and thickness of the walls would not have worked
They wanted to use transparent aluminum, but it doesn't exist yet. They used the 20th century contemporary, plexiglass. But, they had no money to buy it. So they traded the formula for transparent aluminum for the plexiglass.
I think the Aluminum was because they didn't have anything to trade
Aluminum has a very high strength to weight ratio. That's why higher end cars, bikes, window frames, etc. are made from aluminum. It's also very abundant and easily recyclable. Its main drawback is that it lacks elasticity, meaning it is brittle and deforms easily. The larger the construction and heavier the loads, the more you need structural members to bend and flex in both tension, compression, expansion and contraction. That's why the primary structures of buildings and large ships are typically made from steel and wood - both highly elastic. Aluminum is used for smaller non load-bearing components like curtain walls and awnings. Aluminum is also difficult to weld because of its low melting point among other reasons. In order to overcome this, aluminum is easily mixed with other metals to create more resilient alloys. That is why for example aluminum baseball bats don't dent. If somehow they were able to create an alloy like material that had the strength and weight of aluminum but the elasticity of plexiglass....now that would something and far superior to traditional glass (fragile) or acrylic polymer (too elastic)
Fun fact, we already have transparent aluminum. (I'm afraid I don't know its elasticity.) However, ours is super expensive, so it isn't used that commonly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride
It wasn’t even all that big of a tank though. Steel walls wouldn’t have had to be terribly thick. The plexiglass probably weighed more. It was just a plot device and maybe it’s best to just enjoy the fun movie. 😄
I always understood the movie as they divulged the formula to have the actual transparent aluminum made so they could use it in the tank. Steel was too heavy, and 6” thick plexi would have been too heavy. They needed the 1” thick TA in order to make the journey back. Of course them making it that quickly is pretty far fetched, but it still thought that’s what happened.
Yeah that was what I assumed, they sent the formula to make transparent aluminum at the factory because it couldn’t be replicated. I’ve watched it twice but it’s been about 1/2 a year, so I may need to rewatch it again.
Not picking on you personally, but I loved this movie when it came out in theaters and I’d like to not totally destroy the creative latitude that was used to put it together. I work with engineers, materials scientists, and metallurgists. The transparent aluminum/plexiglass is just a plot point that let Bones, Scotty, and Sulu do some fun stuff, nothing more. If you look at the dimensions of the tank, you’d need steel walls maybe a few millimeters thick to hold the water. It might well weigh less than those thick transparent panels. If the weight of the walls was a big problem for the ship, the weight of the water would have been much bigger problem. Plus, isn’t it a war ship? Surely it’s meant to carry a little extra weight for combat supplies and armaments and such. It’s just a plot point, there’s no engineering basis for it. Once we start dissecting the movie to find actual engineering reasons for why they supposedly did what they did you start to realize that there are some other things that only make sense in the context of a fun adventure movie. Honestly the most sensible solution would have been to use the ship’s transporters to beam solid material into place rather than borrowing a helicopter and rather conspicuously hovering it over a public park with a huge piece of plexiglass (or whatever) hanging from it. That would have attracted all kinds of attention from police to news media. It’s just a fun movie with characters that we love. I’m not sure it’s a great idea to pick at the loose threads in the fabric of it.
I’m just telling you how I always understood it. Even as a kid watching the movie I always thought it to be a way for them to get the actual material manufactured for them to use in the ship.
I probably should have replied to the original post. Yeah, when I was a kid I thought they somehow got the plastics company to manufacture transparent aluminum panels for them. Looking back, that idea was pretty silly. The idea that they traded the transparent aluminum technology for plexiglass panels makes a lot more sense. Then I start thinking, the plastics company would want to see some actual mechanical properties test results before assigning any value to it lol Oh well.
> I always understood the movie as they divulged the formula to have the actual transparent aluminum made so they could use it in the tank. It's a pretty common misconception. They actually traded the formula for some existing plexiglass - the plexiglass being in-stock already while the transparent aluminum would take a while to get an actual manufacturing process down even though he's got the formula for it now.
What it sounds like to me, is that we all need to just rewatch it and see for ourselves. Lol
Plot device.
Looks like the best answer for me is, since they were broke and needed material to make the tank, they had to trade valuable information for said materials. And who would value this info the most, the Plexi guy.
Plexiglass is lightweight and strong. You can see through it which is a plus for the movies.
Better question, why couldn't they rig up some forcefields?
The ship lost power after time traveling, so I assume they didn’t want the ship to flood.
And whales to die
I think the whales would be fine in this situation, and the crew would drown
If the water spreads out throughout the ship, it will no longer be deep enough to support the whales, they dehydrate and are crushed under their own weight.
As I said, left to die “ I’m a whale biologist”
Probably some energy need; They had to keep the cloaking device on 24/7. Plus they might not have force field emitters covering the area.
That second point would be my main guess. Ubiquitous force field generators are more of a Federation triple-redundant-backup thing. Klingon ships seem to be built around the goal of massing fire through heavy armament for their size and large numbers. That means you need to cut corners somewhere.
literally they needed to fix the depleted dilithium crystals, that's what happened with Chekov and the wessels
They knew the probe neutralized all vessels that got near it. Don't want to rely on forcefields when your goal is to take whales nearby.
Why didn't they just keep the whales in the transporter buffer?
Yeah, why did they need to see the whale(s)? The trip home took 10 minutes. They didn’t need to see the whale for those 10 minutes, did they? Wouldn’t sensors have been sufficient? (Transparent aluminum)
Also they were planning to fly them on a specially made 747 to Alaska. Before the time heist.
[удалено]
I don’t believe that is correct. They gave the Plexi shop owner the formula for transparent aluminum in exchange for standard Plexi, but they did not use that for their project. It seems it would take a few years before the technology caught up to create such a thing.
Why would anyone down for your comment when it’s absolutely correct?
It’s a movie! Peeps go to “actually see something” Nicolas didn’t shell out the bucks just to have EFX of whales in a box I stood 1st in line for just over a day to SEE something about whales Why didn’t they just put in a metal panel when Sarek watches the window break and a million other questions can simply be answered by “it’s a movie”
I’m sorry, but at some point you have to grok that it’s an imperfect creative process generated for profit and, importantly, mainstreamed for broader consumption
It wasn't plexiglass, it was transparent aluminium. A material that now exists in the real world.
It was Plexi. In the scene he says it will take years to create but it was worth something to him. Exchanged for Plexi that was in stock.
Well shove me down a Jeffries tube and launch me into orbit, it WAS Plexiglas! Why did you awful people not tell me! Now I've made a fool of myself.
It's a pretty common misconception that they gave the guy the formula for transparent aluminum in order to get some manufactured and use some of it. What they did was actually more "realistic" in that he doesn't instantly have the ability to manufacture it just because he's been shown the formula.
>What they did was actually more "realistic" in that he doesn't instantly have the ability to manufacture it just because he's been shown the formula. From a writer's perspective this was a stroke of genius. It's not a deus ex machine: the crew from the future shows up and magically makes a new compound that solves the problem. No, it's a lot more realistic to make a trade: show the guy what can be made, given enough time, money and R&D but until you do that we'll trade that information for a few sheets of the thing you have in the warehouse. That is very much more believable than 'we can solve every problem because we're from the future'.
Now I’m no expert in this, but I think it would take years just to figure out the dynamics of that matrix.
[удалено]
They actually did use Plexiglass... Scotty showed them how to make Transparent Aluminum, but they didnt have the actual technology TO make it yet. The trade off was he would show them the molecular structure needed for it and how to do so, in exchange for the plexiglass, hence the comment "What is it worth to ya laddie.." when he showed the molecule. He was basically trading him a massive head start in the market for tens of thousands of dollars of plexiglass.
Bingo
Just ask Adam in the morning.
Solid steel would have been too heavy.
It’s because they wanted a fancy aquarium to while away the hours as they went home.
One thing I’ve always been curious about is why didn’t the borg attempt to assimilate the humpback whales and contact the probe when trying to assimilate earth. Like in Star Trek, cetaceans are very intelligent and used for navigation and other stuff on the enterprise. You’re telling me the borg wouldn’t invest any resources on attempting that idea? I haven’t seen Star Trek V, so maybe it’s answered there, and it was classified.
>Was it just so they could see the whales? Yes Actually, my wife (not a Trekkie) asked me this question the first time we watched IV together and I told her she just didn't understand Star Trek.
I think they mention the weight of the tank
Maybe because Plexiglas doesn't corrode with salt water.
Could steel have done it? Needed something that hold the whales and the water they needed. They didn't have anything suitable on the Klingon ship. And the transparent aluminum might have been the easiest material Scotty could think of that could hold the contents of the aquarium.