Hi, I'm F.J.'s daughter, and this is a really nice analysis of his SFHQ, and Sovik's animation is really good! Heartwarming to see that my dad's work is still discussed and relevant nearly 50 years after its publication.

"Looks like a giant snow globe ready to pop" 😂

It looks a lot like the Starfleet station in the 2009 Star Trek Movie. One central station surrounded by 6 round docking stations.

I feel like a grand opportunity was missed here to have a Yeager class loitering surreptitiously in the background.

Everything that is old is new again. You know what? I like it! This is what I think of when I think "Space Habitat". Wonderful as always, and props to Sovik, the master of animation!

Franz Joseph began writing and compiling the Star Fleet Technical Manual in 1973 after he and his daughter joined a local Trek fan club and was published by Ballantine Books in November1975.

It was only 2.5 km across? I thought it was at least 10. Each of those balls was supposed to be able to house three Constitutions with enough room for a destroyer to join them according to Starfleet Battles.

The Franz Joseph "Star Fleet Technical Manual" was first published in 1975, not the 1960's.

A correction - the station didn't rely on centrifugal force, as the cross section shows. The decks aren't arranged in circles paralleling the outer hull, but in lines straight across from one "joint" to the next. The effect would be only the sections in the center of each bulb would be level, with the floor curving up to an angle at the "joints".

An intriguing overlook into this Starfleet Headquarters station. While personally I don't think it's better than ESD or Yorktown, it is still overall an excellent design, and it would have been great to see this on screen in TOS. Showing the ideals of the UFP. I'm partially reminded of the Citadel from Mass Effect or Babylon 5 due to the original idea of it using spin gravity. Also, kudos to Sovik's 3D animation skills.

The station would work for spin gravity. According to most experiments a radius of 250m or higher should be able to comfortably support humans at 1g with little to no adaptation time based on known tolerances for angular and tangential velocity. The station core being 900m radius should more than sufficient for most if not all federation members. That being said the shape doesnt make sense for spin gravity. Yes it would work but its not optimised for space or ship docking. Ships would have to dock at the fastest spinning parts of the station making accidents more likely. If the station had star treg artificial gravity plating then it would be a decent design. As for spacedock, i always liked the look of it even if there are a few design flaws

The station is probably fine for spin gravity. Given the radius of the "ground" level of ~750m from the center, it would need to rotate at just slightly over 1 RPM to generate 1 G of centripetal acceleration. The jury's still out on how big a station really needs to be to fully avoid any kind of motion sickness due to circular motion, but this size and spin rate are probably going to be comfortable for humans (although who's to say if this is the case for non-human residents). You could also slightly lower the spin rate to generate a little less G-force to make it even more comfortable.

In my Head cannon, due to the increased reliability of interstellar communications what we see on Earth is also on Vulcan and the other founding member worlds with smaller Federation cities on the other member worlds depending on their standing with the Federation, for example The Klingons would have a space station while the Vulcans have a ground city that would house thousands, even in TOS era communications between planets measured in hours if not less. by the Movie era this was reduced to minutes, and by the next generation era you could have live communications parsecs apart. What this does is that you can have leaders of the various members speak with each other and deal with various issues while not even on the same planet, it would only be necessary to have councils of multiple member ambassadors for more pressing issues, like what was seen in Journey to Babel, an issue that if not resolved would have lead multiple members of the Federation to war. Loved the video, I have always had a place in my heart for the Franz Joseph designs.

The way that I see it, I don't see why Starfleet couldn't operate different kinds of Starbases. In my head canon, Starbase 1 looked like the design above, and was later replaced by the newer design, while towed and handed down to a more distant, backwater quadrant. Also, are you sure that these things depended on centrifugal-based gravity? The docking bays are located inside of the spherical pods on the outward ring, which would make docking extremely difficult (if not impossible) while they are spinning. Even if you could somehow program the computers to plot a course using maneuvering thrusters to force the ship to match the spin, or use tractor beams to latch onto the ship and bring them into the drydock pod, it just seems unnecessarily complicated to me.

A spin gravity station would look more like Babylon 5 where its a long cylinder to get max usable area.

It's likely that the capitol wouldn't be just one integrated station, but an entire network of facilities, multiple stations many free floating TMP style drydocks, planet or other bodyside installations, local mining operations etc. Rather than a capitol station or even planet, imagine a capitol system, an otherwise uninhabited location where allied worlds could come together and which would naturally become a hub of economics manufacturing education politics and military might. This has advantages when a 60s or even 90s TV budget is in effect, you can describe quite a lot with dialog, standard exterior shots such as those used to portray the planet of the week, location shooting representing ground locations, matte paintings of course, a model that can serve as both the central station, but be used to represent other purposely identical locations with little effort or cost.

What a wonderful episode! This was really fun thanks mate!!! 😊

It uses anti gravity to generate internal gravity starbases were meant to be fleet bases so needed to be able to support 10 to 12 ships on regular basis plus a few extra like a certain starship we all and love. You would originally build something smaller at first then upgrade as needed so almost none of these would be exactly the same no matter how far back from the borders it would be it would always retain some kind of military functions.

It's Babylon 5 before Babylon 5. There's also a Maguto sized flaw in the logic of equidistance: equidistance pre-supposes static borders. To be truly equidistant and take into account future growth, the station would have to be at the centre of the galaxy.

The other problem with the Frans Joseph design is that you have ships trying to dock with a moving berth.

Interestingly NASA have shown that, at least for months in space, the "minimum" artificial gravity needed to offset physiological problems is 0.5g, so about 5 m/s/s. Skeletal mass can be maintained by resistance exercise (simple rubber-band systems do just fine), so you don't need that much spin gravity to meet the basic need.

We don't know what the power requirements are for gravity plates or how far their gravity fields extend. It could be that with something that large, gravity plating would be used in some areas, but the majority of the facility would not have it due to power requirements.

4:37 Star Fleet Technical manual did not come out till 1975. So I don't think he came up with these designs in the late 60's but rather in the 70's. Starbase Snowglobe while spectacular in scope and scale it was way to grandiose for a starbase.

The problem i see with spin gravity, would be a ship chasing a docking port around the fastest moving part of the circle, the edge.. think of a ceiling fan, and try to touch the end of one of the blades while it even slowly moves. For me and my pilot skills... physics says no. Even tho i love this stations design...

Another very nice video. Thanks Mike. You do great work here sir. It is appreciated. 😎👍

You forgot the funnest fact about this design. It would make it to television (in a stylized form) thanks to the freaking CARE BEARS of all things when they did their Trek parodies.

The way you describe this station and it's needs and limitations makes me think of a different station: Babylon 5

This is probably by far my favorite video/post that you've shown. And that's saying something. I would really love to play Star Fleet Battles with you - presuming you as the voice are also the one responsible for the content. I'm just discovering with some channels that they actually us Voice Actors - which cool but also makes things feel a bit detached. Anyways - I really enjoyed this one.

Great video as usual !

So here is my take on this issue: Not many people know but Starfleet (UESPA) was not accepted as standard for the Federation fleet, before 2190's. And quite possibly was not standard in the training until 2220's. When infamous Klingon not so first contact happen. Where Vulcan commander fired in Klingons, as Vulcans used to do. Because Klingons was not aware that it was Vulcan in Federation ship, they assumed it was unjust act. As Klingons give pass to Vulcans believing them to be simply territorial, when Vulcans didn't understand that Klingons quote opera and assume that Klingon are insane. Anyway. When Starfleet actually become fleet of Federation. Its HQ was gradually moved on Earth for logistic reasons. But when Federation still operated separate founder fleets, balance of power was more important and it is when this station would make sense. So station most likely operated between 2160's (Archer Arena must be located there) and 2230's. When Earth become fully responsible for the operations. We do know that Federation president was on Earth during TMP movies. As side note. It was ironically because Earth was weakest of the Founding Members. When Andorians have powerful war fleet, Vulcans did have they massive Science Ships and Tellerites probably were merchants. Until 2190's Earth was operating mostly 100+ meter Frigates and exploring near Earth Frontier. And ironically because they technology was behind, they learn how to effectively integrate technology of the founders. What also was why they switch to Earth ship standard, as with expansion of Federations. Maintenance become huge problem! As side note. Classic TOS design actually is classic UESPA style. After foundation of Federation, unified Starfleet start adopting this style (before 2140's there were several different organizations). With first using it being famous Ceres class (UESS Bonaventure). So Bonaventure class was most likely looking similar, just more roundish. But many ships after 2190's were not actual UESPA ships and so derivative ships (Kelvin Era) tended to have darker civilian hulls. But with adoption of Starfleet standard, they were refitted into classic style after 2230's. The exception was Phase II design what was designed with sharp angles and darker colors. After the war with Klingon's, they design in-between TMP style as Klingons were confused by rapid changes of Federation ships.

every time he said Franz Joseph, I couldn't help but think of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph

I have that very book and love the designs in it. And I agree with you on your alterations.

Spin gravity won't be a problem, nausea-wise, until you hit at least 2 or 3 RPM, and humans might be adaptable up to 5 or 6; with a radius of 900m out to the habitat floor, a rotation of less than 1 RPM would make 1G. And I think that if you imagine it dates back to the 2160s, perhaps back then gravity plates weren't suitable for something this large. The real problem is that the docking balls are further out, and since they spin with the station, they would experience MORE artificial gravity than whatever you get in the habitat. The basement levels of the docking sphere should be something around 1.4G! A spin grav station should have its docking/hangar facilities near its rotation axis, not the rim.

Personally, i never liked the idea of docking all of your ships inside of a star base. As the overall scale of your ships increase, the base would have to be abandoned, or relegated to a lesser role. External docking would allow expansion and more rapid deployment in case of attack.

Nice touch on the music...

I can't speak for aliens, but the vast majority of humans would not have any negative side effects from centrifugal gravity at the scale of that station. The studies we have done show that this supposed vertigo effect is really quite minimal. People could very easily and quickly adapt to live quite comfortably in habitats as small as six meter in diameter. Well, comfortably in the sense that they wouldn't be nauseous from the pseudo-gravity.

The 26th century ships are the size of this station. What would the stations be like? I imagine the season 3 of Discovery Starfleet station paired up with the donut ships. They seem like 26th century designs, where the Enterprise J docks, like a waypoint, highway rest area for starships I always imagine the 32nd century as ships left over after the time wars and the burn. A reason why that small station would be in that time.

Maybe if you did the calculations you would realize how slowly such an object would need to spin to create the required force the formula is Fc​ = mω2r = mv2/r thus a station the size of the Proposed Starfleet HQ would only need to spin at 0.8628rpm to create a gravitational force of 10N/kg i.e Earth Gravity, in fact recent studies have indicated that no ill effects would occur at a speed less than 7rpm thus if you wanted to spin stabalise a ship you could do it as the minimum radius that provides a rpm of less than 7 and still produces a 10N/KG effect is just a hair over 19m ( round about the breadth of a Midway class carrier from the late 40s before the modernisation as for a ship like USS Enterprise CVN65 had a breadth of 78.4 m) a 19m radius rotational section can simulate Earth Gravity at 6.928 rpm a ship as wide as USS Enterprise CVN 65 would need to spin at 4.9521rpm to create a simulated gravity equal to that of earth.

Interesting what Franz Joseph did after the end of Austria-Hungary.

i have to say that despite disagreeing with you on some ships (Klingon B-10) but i think you got this one dead on. SFHQ feels like Treks version of B5 and i dig that

The name was a mistake. Especially with a uss yorktown in service

I always thought that Yorktown was a Constitution class Starship. It was NCC 1717.

When you see the support infrastructure of TOS, it makes sense why the ships are so small.

While I do definitely Still prefer Earth Space Dock by design and purpose The SFHQ isn't bad for it's time. It reminds me a lot of Babylon 5. Build in Neutral Territory to serve as a meeting point for many alien species to talk, trade and live alongside. Deep space nine never gave that sense of a living, breathing "city/town" in space that Babylon 5 did with it's different sections and districts. I feel like this Yorktown would give that sense of scale. As for the ability of the station to be self-sufficient. Food-Wise agricultural technologies would have developed far beyond what we have now. With Cheap efficient cultivated meat. Genetically engineered crops that can be grown quicker, yield more etc. Even if it doesn't completely offset it's requirements. The effort of offsetting it somewhat is still very worth it.

No gonna lie, I loved the Franz Joseph Star base designs. The and Gundamn Colonies really made permanant space settlement seem real possible to me. What about spin gravity supplemented by gravity plates uses less power as all they do is adjust to prevent vertigo. Plus with spin gravity if the plating fails, you still have gravity even if it causes vertigo.

Always enjoy your vids. Have you seen the toroidal stations in Elite Dangerous? They are beautifully detailed. You can see the parks, and fields, and buildings through their translucent roofs. One thing that annoys me from a practically standpoint with spacedock and Yorktown. That's an enormous amount of resources which could build thousands of starships. Yorktown was especially annoying being built on the edge of Federation space. To quote someone "It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid."

Being absolutely massive, it would generate gravity through centrifugal force, like the Citadel in Mass Effect. As far as size, I imagine it being around the same, about 7.2 kilometers in diameter, 1800 meters thick. I don't think it would have been deep space, it would have been the first large scale orbital habitation built before the fleet, sometime just after 2151.

Of all the starbases we see in trek (all formats and franchise) the one design i approve of the most is Jupiter station. It looks like the same yard that built the saucer section built its many individual structures

1:07 seconds in and I feel like that simple top down view of Starfleet HQ is what they used in Strange New Worlds, they just made the round starship births artificially created giant sized shoreleave terrariums.

I don't like the idea that Starfleet just up and moved to Earth because the technology was better in the planet. If this was established and thriving, they'd keep using it until they were forced to stop. So, an alternative narrative would be that it was either destroyed by a hostile threat, lacking the defenses of a nearby planet to prevent that, or that some flaw in the technology went critical and forced an evacuation. In this latter, I would have that flaw be prevalent throughout the fleet, but ships and planet-side starbases were able to be retrofitted fairly easily, while the HQ was not. The HQ station was eventually fixed, but by then the actual headquarters had moved to Earth and Earth Spacedock. In either case, the advantages of being near a planet outweigh the disadvantages of favoring one particular planet for HQ, at least in the eyes of those living at the time.

So basically it’s a 23rd century version of the 32nd century Federation Headquarters from Discovery?

The station would need a lot of power just to produce the levels of light required for the plants to be healthy. The light would have to be as bright as the apparent brightness of the sun when viewed from Earth, and be relatively consistent in that brightness throughout the station. Good luck with that.

Can someone explain 2:31 - how can any object be vertical or horizontal in space and what does it have as a focal point?

Cheers

I actually had a conversation with someone regarding this station about whether it was featured in first issue of the "Star Trek: Early Voyages" comics. The idea being that the USS Enterprise is seen inside of one of the spheres. 3:22 Even if it was JUST Starfleet it would make it more than just (feel like) an arm, or extension, of Earth's fleet like in "Star Trek: Enterprise". In FASA General Order 1 was mostly created to make sure that Starfleet's military might could not be abused. I am personally not really happy with how the new series makes it sound as though the Prime Directive is the same as the original General Order 1 when that is clearly not the case. "TOS: A Piece Of The Action" clearly states that the Horizon visited before the "Non-Interference Directive" went into effect. Either General Order 1 did not exist or it did not include non-interference yet. 14:22 Wasn't the planetoid Babel meant to serve as a neutral meeting ground? 15:54 I personally like to think that Starfleet Command would keep it around to serve as an "emergency" Headquarters.

Good video! Didn’t see this one coming…I think you have little crush on the TOS era

70s not 60s. I was in junior high when the tech manual came out and I'm not that old yet. Good video, but you're assuming g=9.8m/s^2 in the facility. Would it have to be that high?

I'm always for a round of geeking out over something from THAT book. Did you already do the Ptolemy class? nevermind I'll go look

It certainly makes for a very interesting and compelling design. Of Starfleets head quarters being politically neutral and useful infrastructure stopgap in the heart of the federation in its early days. As they recover from Earth Romulan war and put in place the necessary infrastructure in the core worlds era to provide its ships and services with a logistics and command base to move out and explore beyond the federation core territories.

I’m old Trek. I have the first printing of that tech manual. So thanks for reviewing this. Can’t remember, did you mention Starbase 1 and how the Romulans destroyed it in your Romulan War series?

Unlike starships, Starbase would last centuries. I’d assume that Spacedock existed prior to, and concurrent with, TOS.

Canonically, the Federation DOES have a neutral capital. The Enterprise takes 30-some ambassadors, including the reps for Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar there to vote on admitting Coridan. Older sources indicated multiple Starfleet Academies, which would suggest multiple Branch HQs. Earth - Galaxy Exploration Command Andor - Military Operations Command (And SFMC) Centaurus - Merchant Marine Command Tellar - Corps of Engineers Vulcan - Sciences I'm curious what your issue with Spacedock One is. (FWIW, if ships back in to the docks on this Starbase, then they can exit in a hurry if needed. A modification, making the space door open wider, would allow all three ships to exit at once.

Personally I love how they put so much effort into future proofing for the future members of the federation but completly missed the ball with technology advances. For example the need to be self sufficient still exists by TNG but the mere existence of replicators nearly elimites for artifical farms And the docking spheres were designed for contemporary ship sizes, which we know get extremely large by TNG era or even the move from constitution to excelsior class added nearly double the length making it so that no ships could be housed after a century of use. And god forbid someone think of visiting with a universe class. I am glad that the concept was revisited in disovery and even expanded on with federation/starfleet HQ not being a station but just a large ship which had advanced so far technologically that it was whatever was needed at the time

The need for spin gravity may have been obviated by the mass of the base as the size of 2.5km across is insufficient space to provide cityspace and farmland while also providing spacedock facilities for 18 ships of at least the same size/mass as a constitution class vessel like the Enterprise.

So its basically like the Citadel from Mass Effect or Bab5 station

I guess when the station was no longer considered active, it became an interstellar archive?

I felt if you need a star fleet headquater in the style of a station you might as well use the Star base 1 design and enlarge it, or earth space dock enlarge it too.

Imagine that out there in space is the old HQ building that was handed over to civilian management. Working as a space hotel and resort. And trade junction. Imagine what it looks like with all sorts of modifications and upgrades and extensions put on it from the civilian management.

Any ships that are docking with this would have to match the rotational spin, this would be a very tricky and possibly dangerous manoeuvre. Also the garvity in the docking spheres would be greater than the habitat ring, would'nt that crash the ships into the docking spheres outer hull ?

I like that we're composing a Super International Space Station.

Yorktown from Beyond would have looked perfect as the Discovery 32nd century federation HQ.

I can think of one VERY good reason for using Centrifugal force rather than Artificial gravity. Redundancy. Considering the political situation at the time, a saboteur/terrorist striking at this thing could cause some severe distress by shutting off A.G. to a structure as large as this. Both to the people and potential the structure itself. 'Course, I completely misunderstood the Tech manual drawings of the "floors" as positioned around the core like Ferris Wheel cars, so what do I know.

The Star Fleet Technical Manual was first published in 1975, not the 60s

Ok: The Starfleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph Designs was published in 1975. Well after TOS was off the air. I have two copies, So!!

“When was this constructed?” At the dawn of the third age of mankind. Oops, sorry, wrong franchise.

The Starbase Yorktown in Beyond was a monstrosity. It made no sense and is what I would expect from JJ Abrams & Co.

Autodock engaged --waiting in queue--

Think id rather have a Frontier class but Great vid, cheers

I'm kind of fascinated by the possible pros & cons of traditional sci-fi artificial gravity vs large centrifugal force based simulated gravity. Intuitively, recreating the force of gravity generated by the mass of the entire Earth *must* require just gobs of power, right? But so does bending the spacetime continuum to attain superluminal speeds. So it does seem like the two technologies go hand-in-hand on a starship. But one could posit that given a large enough structure that does not need to travel at warp speeds, there would be a certain amount of frugal wisdom in designing it to use centrifugal gravity. Waste not want not and all that. Also if tens of thousands of people are living there long term, having super tall ceilings with nothing but open air is a feature, not a bug. People want at least the passing illusion that they can go to an "outside". Still, I think given we see sci-fi artificial gravity even in the shuttlepods of the NX-01, I think we must assume that there is some "weird trick" to the technology that makes it reasonably cheap, energy wise. And that being the case, it's pretty reasonable to think that chances are they'd take advantage of this even when designing super large stations.

I just assumed that Earth was for all intent and purpose the equivalent of Switzerland/Geneva of the Federation hence why Starfleet and the federation is HQ'd there

The Franz Joseph starbase Yorktown is neat, but I prefer the one from Star Trek Beyond personally.

Cool. Not familiar with this. Its a bit like space dock in 09 . With the docking ports. Ish Babylon 5 is a bit like it internally

The music choice is a nice nod to Kubriks take on spin gravity

Those plates go around the edges of the disk.

LDSS Nauvoo (OPAS Behemoth/Medina Station) intensifies ;)

They built suburbia in space. Truly a reflection of its times.

Wait a second, you induce artificial gravity by spinning and then you put the place where space ships (which are usually designed to operate in an environment that does not subject them to much gravity) are meant to dock in 6 spheres on the outside, where they will feel the full force of the spin induced gravity? _Why would you do this?_ Also, why do you think 2 kilometers of radius (for the main body) would be too little for that spin induced gravity?

Don't think in the 1960s he though this drawing have a video about his fictional station 60 years later 😂

It sounds like the Babylon 5 station which is a diplomatic station built-in neutral territory between several major governments in the show Babylon 5. The only big difference is instead of a Star Trek's large Sphere or Disc shaped space station. Babylon 5 is a cylinder shaped space station with the five miles long habitable areas of the station is from the ducking bay at the front of the station to the fusion reactor at the rear. Which is probably another mile. And that's not even counting third Quarter or third mile long cargo stabilizers at the front. Don't Quote me on that, I don't know the overall of B5.

So. its what Babylon 5 became then? I'm not criticising by any means in regards to either show. I love them both dearly, it just sounds like this description matches Babylon 5 pretty well. I'll get my Vorlon. 😳

9:16 this image it look like the space colony from the 1979 gundam anime.

What biomes would be represented in the station? Each member planet will have different ecologies. Will they each get a section? We can't just dump all the marine species in the same aquarium!

,,, the name of the place: Starfleetilon Five!

👍🖖

the docking bay shoud be in the middle (similar to Babylon-5)

Didn't the diagram indicate that each docking pod could hold 8 vessels?

Better question is how long it took to build this monstrosity.

Star Trek's original Babylon Project.

Where did the Alpha Centurions house themselves? 😊

Starbase Enterprise