Starship Scrapping - Part Two
Dead-Headed Tow
The former ship now becomes the responsibility of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers,
through their Ready Reserve Fleet Maintenance Unit. In fact, personnel from this unit will
usually have been on-site for the final week of the ship's shut-down, assisting in the
preparations. They will now
organize the tow of the unpowered vessel to her final berth. Once the Starbase's docking
tractor beams maneuvers the ship clear of the base, the towing vessel will take charge. If
the ship is large and must traverse heavy traffic areas, a special Notice to Spacefarers
is issued warning of
the special movement of an unpowered, large mass at slow velocities.
There are three Ready Reserve Force berthing facilities: at Qualor II (also the site of a
large commercial reclamation and storage facility); Gamma Theta IX; and Guderia. Those
ships earmarked for storage are docked to a special circular mooring ststion, in a radial
pattern. This allows for a centrally located power center, as well as maintenance
equipment and berthing facilities for the caretaker staff. All of the ships' Automatic
Maintenance systems can be monitored from the central hub. If necessary, caretakers can
board the vessels to investigate system malfunctions; this is usually done in atmospheric
suits without re-pressurizing the ship interior. While the berthing facilities themselves
are owned by Starfleet, they are designed by and are operated under contracts held by
private companies.
If a ship is recalled, it will be towed away from the Ready Reserve berth, and the process
will essentially be repeated in reverse. Usually this will
occur at a shipyard rather than a Starbase, as the ship will most likely require extensive
updating to current standards as part of its re-commissioning.
End of the Line
When the decision is made that a ship is past economic refurbishment, it is turned over to
the Federation Council's Asset Management Division. This fancy title denotes the
Federation department that disposes of unwanted materials, from worn-out space resonaters
to old starship hulks. The former starship is usually moved out of the ready reserve
berthing facility for final stripping of any useful materials. This task is either
preformed at a commercial starshipyard or, in some cases, in a clear area of space by a
contractor. Any usable equipment is reclaimed for use by various Federation departments.
The final stage is reclamation of the hull material itself. In the early years of
Starfleet this process was fairly primitive. The hulk was
generally sold to the highest bidder among what was then a small cadre of commercial
scrap merchants, most hailing from the Denaril system. They would tow their 'prize' to one
of the many asteroids in their system, and gently crash-land the ship using tractor-beams.
Once on the asteroid surface, the Denarians would proceed to cut up the hull pieces, and
the ship would slowly disappear until only a few major structural beams remained to ever
indicate that a pile of scrap had once been a proud starship.
Modern Scrapping Technology
However, even the act of disassembling a starship has not been immune from technological
progress. As starships became more advanced, their hull construction grew correspondingly
more sophisticated, employing exotic (and expensive) materials. Economic recovery of these
materials required greater sophistication than the 'slash-and-burn' techniques of the
Denarii. In addition, successful reclamation of these alloys would also provide sufficient
monetary reward to make investment in hi-tech salvage facilities feasible.
As a result, the starship scrapping industry has been transformed, with two large
companies (Praxilian Salvage and Alloys, and Ugona Reclamation) sharing over 85% of the
market between them. Their facilities are state-of-the-art. At Praxilian's Tegor II
facility, ships are positioned beneath the facility via large positioning tractor beam
arrays, each of which contains multiple, directable tractor beam units. These help
maintain the ship's hull integrity as major components are removed in a controlled
fashion. Tractor beam 'cranes', running on tracks on he underside of the facility, move
the major components up through large doors to the interior of the facility, where the
items are further broken down. Small tractor tugs also assist in the movement of
materials.
Ship hulks are systematically reduced to component materials in a well-ordered, precise
operation. An avaerage-sized starship can be totally
re-claimed in less than two weeks by one of these salvage facilities. The reclaimed
materials are shipped out on commercial spacecraft from the hangars located on the upper
surfaces, in between the two salvage bays. Naturally, there are not enough starships to
scrap to keep these facilities occupied full-time; they supplement their Starfleet work
with a variety of commercial ship scrapping and general alloy salvage and recovery
operations. But the high rate of return on starship recoveries is what first allowed the
investment in these monster 'shipeaters'.
And thus ends the life story of a starship. Beginning her days in glory, with pomp and
circumstance, and sent off to sail amongst the stars, if she
survives she will be sent to pasture for a well-deserved rest. And when her day is done,
she is not 'sunk-at-sea' as a wasteful piece of garbage. Her very sinews and fibers go
into production of new and better sisters, who will in their turn seek to explore the
worlds 'out there'.
Author - Lt.Cmdr. Kevin Radthorne, Chief Archivist, Starships
Characteristics Board
Date - March/April 1997
Biblography
Galactic Engineers Concordance - Volume 8, Number 2
Copied in whole by Lt.Cmdr Wayne Snyder, Chief Engineer