With nothing new about the movie and change in the air, the time has come to revive the Project Von Neumann, respecting advancement in computer power and tools and my skill at using them. (Not all of these columns can or will be interesting.) PVN addresses a problem that presented itself while considering drydock technology (as seen in TMP) and McKinley Station-type starship assembly frames. Namely, how small a structure would be required to scaffold a ship the size of the Constitution Class? It turns out quite small, namely the unfolding ship itself, given access to resources (human and otherwise) readily available at populated M-class planets.

PVN details a design approach for starship creation that involves self-replication. Launched from ground facilities or existing ships, the seedshuttle is a relatively helpless craft, with no propulsion of its own, yet containing sufficient crew, mass, and critical components to begin construction. The immediate goal of the process is to provide an internal pressurized volume for the crew, then to transfer energy sources to augment seedshuttle batteries until the M/AM systems are brought online.

Regarding the necessary Treknology two assumptions are made besides the usual and traditional tools: First, approximate energy requirements are calculated but (within "reason") freely provided in the simulation. Second is that eutactic nanotechnical methods can be used to relocate atoms. Having a "deck grower" that can produce nanostructures of arbitrary resolution is not physically impossible however implausible to today's stone knives and bear skins.

The PVN simulation will include hi-poly art for milestones and cutaways, and an interactive model programmed in the Orbiter space flight simulator. The mesh support in Orbiter is satisfactory, not exceptional but adequate, and the API is well ordered. There's little doubt that Orbiter expresses orbital mechanics probably better than anything less than NASA software, and last but not least is the considerable Orbiter community (both developers and Trek fans!).

So far the PVN scenario is complete to the aft section of Deck 16 (just forward of the control gallery over the hangar bay). The Project is being staged beginning with a seedshuttle mesh (no guts as seen in the cutaway, just the skin). Any other ship, including the many workbees provided at launch, can "log in" to the seedshuttle construction process using a new MFD programmed for that purpose. It's not clear at this point that the seedshuttle concept will survive the pressure from more realistically applied mathematics, we'll see. At this point the plan is to keep building till the carbon runs out.