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Scientific Accuracy of Star Trek
Chris2005
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Posts: 3,097Member
To not derail Jafit's thread anymore than it already has been... and I'm responding to Yaric's comment...
Well, Warp 1 is the speed of light, Neil said the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across, which a light year is 5.8 trillion miles, so at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to go across it, as for the warp scale in Star Trek, I asked the Okuda's about it, and they said the official TNG warp scale is in the Galaxy Class Tech Manual...
http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/engineering107/fig_61.png
Something interesting:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/breakthrough-brings-star-trek-teleport-a-step-closer-451673.html
Here's an interesting video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wO8yvV2UX0
Neil deGrasse Tyson made a statement in that bonus feature denouncing Star Wars more or less, lol.
I rather enjoyed listening to Deanna...
I think the fact that, even in star trek's own technicalities, the Enterprise would have to be traveling at warp 9.99 ALL the time to get anywhere in the galaxy (and even then you're looking at months to get anywhere) firmly places star trek in soft core category right there. :O
Then most of the episodes they're cruising around at impulse/warp 4 or something so they'd pretty much get NO WHERE over the entire 7 years of the entire series.
If you really get down to it, star wars is far more realistic/scientific than star trek. No transporters, no time travel, just light speed drives and phaser type guns that no one really questions, they just use them because in their lives and universe that's just what you do, it's common practice.
Anyways, it's all in fun and I myself always yearned for the technobabble scenes; it's what makes us engineers smile. Troy would show up on screen and start jibber jabbering about her feelings or something and made me want to turn off the TV.
Well, Warp 1 is the speed of light, Neil said the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across, which a light year is 5.8 trillion miles, so at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to go across it, as for the warp scale in Star Trek, I asked the Okuda's about it, and they said the official TNG warp scale is in the Galaxy Class Tech Manual...
http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/engineering107/fig_61.png
Something interesting:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/breakthrough-brings-star-trek-teleport-a-step-closer-451673.html
Here's an interesting video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wO8yvV2UX0
Neil deGrasse Tyson made a statement in that bonus feature denouncing Star Wars more or less, lol.
I rather enjoyed listening to Deanna...
Post edited by Chris2005 on
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The whole premise of the show was that they were 70,000 light years from earth, and it would take them 70 years to get home.
Which if you divide one by the other you end up with voyagers top speed being 1000 light years per year, or in other words, just over 3 light years per day.
A speed so ridiculously slow that vertually every episode and film before would have been impossible.
1 light year is 5.8 trillion miles or 58,000,000,000,000 miles, so 132 light years would be 58,000,000,000,000 x 132 which is 7,656,000,000,000,000 miles... the galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter which is 587,862,554,124,841,100 miles...
587 quadrillion 862 trillion 554 billion 124 million 841 thousand 100 hundred miles...
The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s or 186,282.3970512209 miles per second... and for those more tuned to Kilometers, 299,792.458 km/sec.
If all my math is right...
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And yet in the first episode of Enterprise, limited to Warp 5, they went to Rigel, a star ~900 lightyears away from Earth, within the space of a single episode.
We can sit here and find inconsistencies in the shows like a bunch of dorks, but it's just a TV show and it doesn't really matter.
Yes, I see... Bad science journalism that uses the name of a popular sci-fi franchise in their articles in the hopes of attracting peoples attention so that they'll read and generate page views, that totally does prove how right Star Trek is and how it's an accurate vision of the future.
Thread over. I'm convinced. Lets do something else.
Well, to be fair, many shows have such time inconsistencies, because they have a limited time... The Golden Girls for example, in one episode, they drive a good 5 hour drive in a matter of 3 minutes. Rigel is a triple star system that is 772.9 light years from Earth.
See, to me and many other people, it's more than just a show, it's aspiring, technological part aside... many people have went into fields because of Star Trek...
A video series from GeekBeat, talking about Star Trek tech that came true and to many people, that's their immediate connection to this technology, they're like "Star Trek had something like that..." Most of the people who create this stuff get inspiration from Star Trek...
Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMbcMjaRZTs
Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vE8l2oQy5w
She discusses the item on the ISS, but in fact, there's something more involved:
http://www.gizmag.com/scanadu-developing-medical-tricorder/20974/
As for the article, negating the Star Trek reference, which is irrelevant in my opinion, the subject of the article is all that matters, sure they reference Star Trek, but I've seen many article reference Star Wars as well or some other franchise... nor was I trying to say it "proves" anything in Star Trek... however, watch that video I posted as well, with Neil deGrasse Tyson, he's an astrophysicist (in case anyone doesn't know) and they discuss many things like warp drive and cloaking...
As for how accurate a vision of the future... since our future hasn't gotten here yet, we can't say any franchise has an accurate vision of the future, but Star Trek in general is a future I strongly hope for, for many reasons... many people say, Star Trek is more than a show, it's a philosophy.
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2
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Maybe they're interstellar particles lit up as the deflectors shove them aside. Or maybe just a dramatic way to give the viewer the sense of motion.
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Ambassador Class
Did you guy ever look at the precise wording?
Science Fiction: "A genre of fiction in which the stories often tell about science and technology of the future."
So why don't you stop fussing about something that is not real yet and perhaps never will, perhaps will be in the future, or perhaps not even in our reality? It's all just imagination and if you don't want that kind of imagination then fine, there are plenty of Sci-Fis out there, go find one you can agree with more...
Who are addressing?
Well, no one is denying that Star Trek as a whole is still science fiction, but the fact is, a great many items of technology, now have exact or similar items that exist in the real world...
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"Luke, I'm your father."
"Noooooooo."
Many of the theoretical and practical models of reality (doable in reality of the times when the shows were produced) were simply transposed to Star Trek as 'fully developed practical models'.
Warp drive was an imaginative invention that spurred theoretical research into the subject - which was inconsistently used (on grounds of speed problems) in ALL Trek shows.
Mag-lev technology... in existence since 1960-ies. We had the ability to connect the entire planet by late 1970's with vacuumed mag-lev trains for example using heavy automation seeing how robotic arms were invented in 1956 and would be excellent for this type of task - but were released for general use in the early 1960's and were of course 'expensive' (even though we had more than enough raw resources and technology to reproduce them and implement them for specific tasks globally).
Trek used mag-lev on Earth in San Francisco for public transport mainly, and quite likely for the turbo-lifts on Federation ships.
For a technologically advanced species, they sure have a flare for using outdated technology - not to mention that I was appalled how some Humans were portrayed as keeping in line with many of the behaviors that most conform to today (which is unrealistic and utterly demented - but good for the 'drama factor').
By the mid 22nd century (let alone late 24th), technology would probably be so far ahead of anything we can conceive - seeing the changes we are experiencing in real life TODAY with heavier and heavier automation.
We already did experiments with transporter based technology in reality on a very miniscule scale... Trek merely expanded on it, so that tech already has far higher credibility than most scifi concepts.
I mean... we are talking about highly advanced culture that doesn't use money for artificially prohibiting access (which would need heavy automation practically everywhere - doable today on a global scale - so welders working on JJ's Enterprise is just an exercise in STUPIDITY), works for betterment of everyone, and also cooperates with 149 different cultures (by the late 24th century) in all fields - which would result in so much technological advancement in short periods of time that probably the many writers participating on the show couldn't wrap their (current day) brains around.
Star Trek if anything is sorely OUTDATED from a technological point of view in numerous ways compared to what we are capable of pulling off today (if our technology actually reflected our latest scientific knowledge and was made from superior synthetic materials that can be produced in abundance using state of the art methods of production - as opposed to the outdated inefficient junk we intentionally use now due to artificial constraints of the monetary system).
The replicator was a nice advancement (although seemed under-utilized) ... but post-scarcity is doable in reality was doable 100 years ago with intelligent use of technology/science.
Btw... why was agriculture so prominent in Trek?
Humanity invented Hydroponics in the first half of the 20th century in reality, and we had the ability to produce food in fully automated vertical farms since the second half of the 20th century without soil, pesticides, chemicals, GMO, independent of external weather conditions.
I mean... DS9 really made the Bajorans look like idiots who were struggling to grow food on infertile land (this goes for other aliens too)... while fully automated vertical farms would be fairly low-grade technology that they could have been helped with.I
I realize they were under Cardassian occupation for 50 years, but that didn't prevent the Federation from stepping in once the Cardies have gone. Technological solutions of our second half of the 20th century would be enough so solve most of Bajor's problems (including extraction of water from the atmosphere or from the sea)... I mean... Trek sometimes seems so... stupid. Inspiring most of the time, but stupid other times.
Trek had an opportunity to show how we could use science and technology to solve problems - which later on degenerated into dumbing down everything for the sake of drama and ratings.
It has no docking ports for one yet it docks deflector-first, which is probably the least-appropriate arrangement available. You don't want a delicate, sensitive, vitally important and potentially radiation-emitting piece of equipment susceptible to damage by collision or impact in a situation where both are likely. (docking and undocking would entail a lot of mechanical stress and mechanical wear) They don't have the main gangway of a naval vessel running through the radar or communications array. You don't board an airplane through a door in the radar dish. That is just unrealistic engineering on the part of the Defiant's designers.
The other main issue is the frankly silly assertion that the ship does not have visible impulse engines when a) it has two circular ports that are obviously meant to be impulse engines on the backs of the warp nacelles and b) when an impulse drive is really just an advanced rocket motor that works due to rapid expansion of gas to generate thrust. I'm not sure how you expand gasses through a solid metal bulkhead as the tech manual indicates!
They could at least have said that the ship used some kind of reactionless engine, a sort of sublight version of a warp drive, say. But if that were possible in Trek tech, then why would any ship even need impulse engines at all - they could just use the warp drive at a lower power level for sublight travel and eliminate the complex, inefficient rocket engines. Engineering is all about making things as simple as possible. Therefore there has to be a reason ships need separate sublight propulsion systems because the vast majority of Trek ships are depicted as having such engines.
The ship also has what appear to be two decks worth of windows in the underside recess but even if we assume the ship is at the upper end of its likely size range (170m) there would barely be space there for one deck let alone two. Nobody ever raised the possibility that these were something other than windows. They could have been part of the cloaking system, or some sort of navigation or landing lights, but again, there is no precident for Trek ships to have that sort of design element, So again, it is something that makes absolutely no sense.
As for the lack of most of the external features we've seen on TNG era ships, yes, I agree that they would possibly be located underneath armour plating due to the ship's purpose as a warship. But there would have to be some kind of tradeoff in having, say, a transporter emitter under an armour panel, when one might assume the emitter is always located on the surface of the hull in all other starfleet ships because it wouldn't fucntion properly otherwise. They should have written in some kind of restriction to the ship's writers guide, such as perhaps reduced transporter range, or slower beaming, or reduced capacity - something to add to the engineering realism. Maybe the emitters could be retracted when not in use but again, it isn't something that was mentioned or shown, so we have to assume that nobody actually gave it a second thought.
These are just a few obvious techncial issues that should be pretty easy for anyone with even a small amount of engineering knowledge to see. You don't need to be a Trek tech expert to locically work out why this ship doesn't work as a piece of engineering compared to why, say, the Enterprise-D does.
I've done a massive amount of research on Defiant and I've learned that there is a great deal of inconsistency on the design. I started the "Precise Defiant" to determine the truth. Through the course of a year I learned that there were elements that needed to be separated from each other in the area of design. They come in three categories. These categories are separated because they were developed singularly instead of in unison with each other. Along those lines what you say in your opener might be true in the perspective of all 3 together. But because my work was for the express purpose of deciphering the truth about the model then surely the proof is in the details.
1. Model Design
2. Design Intent
3. Internal Layout.
1. The Model Design of Defiant is extraordinarily detailed because it is a small ship. My first efforts to decipher it's true dimensions started here after I determined that the visual record from the show has absolutely no value at all. The comparison of Defiant to it's contemporaries was wildly off. Defiant was constantly perched at DS9 and so were a multitude of other ships, Galaxy, Nebula, Excelsior, Galors, etc. When shown, Defiant is massively scaled up and so is the station. Injury on top of injury, the station was scaled up radically to fit other ships which means we can't look for the true of size in any visual on screen. But I digress...
Strengths:
-Lacks traditional structural weakness (Necks and Pylons)
-Effective use of volume ( Linear design has the fewest irrelevant volume issues.
-As a nimble warship it's firing arcs are concentrated forward but not exclusive
-Few portholes and obstructions for armor integrity (The few it has are VERY properly placed.
-Warp nacelles are enclosed and "Breathe" through the rear in an inter-cooler compartment with the appropriate volume to radiate heat into space
-For the first time on a Federation Starship, The Control Room "Bridge" is buried.
-The deflector is stored in a pod separate from the ship. (Other than the warp drive it's the single largest penetration through the hull) In other words a defensive liability made a non issue.
-The model is EXTREMELY well hard-pointed.
2. Design Intent In a large way Design Intent has already been addressed above. However the scaling of the ship has us questioning with so much that went right in model design what happened here. The blame on scale has to actually start with DS9. We all know that Trek is notoriously bad with scale anyway but they KNEW DS9's Design Intent would have it docking MASSIVE ships at it's Arms. They also knew that the Promenade would be featured prominently on the show with the large Exterior Windows being a signature of size on the model. They failed on both ends. The Promenade Windows should be 4 or 5 stories tall if it was the size which could Dock Galors and Galaxy's. We also see that the very terrestrial sized runabouts would nearly be the size of Defiant if the station was scaled up to fit a Galaxy Classes too, since they would fit snugly on those landing pads. (which means the DS9 model fails part of it's design intent badly.) These VFX shots were ordered from nearly the beginning.
From here Defiant was born 3 years later when no scaling had been established at all. The problem began immediately once Defiant was deigned to be a "smaller" ship. But I'll do you one better. Apparently Jim Martin knew the problems with scaling and added the only reference to the ships size to the model, It's portholes on the underside of the ship. Knowing how large they normally scale up the station these windows give the only clue that Defiant is larger than she appears. Jim Martin doesn't supervise VFX shots so this was the only way he could show scale in design intent. As a result Defiant can be scaled as large as 250 meters long, equitable to a Miranda Class Starship. As a physical feature those windows occur on every rendition of the model: CGI and Physcial and speak more to the design intent on the model than all the other typical factors such as Tech manuals, VFX shots and MSD's. (All of which have little agreement with the model itself in anything other than shape)
3. Internal Layout
The worse starts here. We all know it and we've all been to the Ex Astris page on scaling which bullet points the issue with the MSD, but he concludes a size of 120 meters REGARDLESS of the most consistent feature which give us a size comparison. Those aforementioned portholes. But of these the MSD is the worse offender.
-The MSD is photo shot of the models side plan view. (Literally a photo) It was taken and then traced out which is why if taken too literally it shows a rather peculiar shape to the front of Defiant's Warp engine (bottom). This is the same photo used in the Tech manual which has been gradient-ed (likely in Photoshop) to appear as a true parallel (orthographic) side view with no perspective. (Thank you Farshot for that Revelation). If there were any true drafting plans for the Defiant, then Sternbach and the creator of the MSD didn't have them.
My Conclusion
I won't go over all the details...but suffice to say I no longer consider anything on the MSD's or the Tech manual (however official) to be relevant in speaking of Defiant's size or internal layout. Farshot agreed with this assessment (a game modeler). As a drafter (my profession) I determined that Defiant's MSD was a joke...merely a characterture and frankly so were the episodes which depicts shuttle craft being launched from Defiant, torpedoes coming from no where in rear, MSD's that show Landing skids, where there certainly is none and shuttle craft (if the ship could hold them) where there obviously are none. None of the people who developed these plans used the one tool available to create their parameters for the Defiant's Design...namely Defiant it's self.
Thus I don't find fault with the model but with the other artist, writers, graphic artist and illustrators who obviously didn't have a clue. This is about the production team.
Addressing Issues
-No docking ports.
True but these features maybe hidden. The most offending problem is the forward docking port which if were hidden we should see a seam for the panel from which it emerges. (this is a design FAIL on part of the Model Designer Jim Martin you knew that the ship would be docked regularly at the station and left it to the VFX to determine the method.)
-Docking Deflector first.
This isn't a design issue. The deflector isn't a sensitive piece of equipment nor does it seem to have a vital role as some ships, like the Miranda and the Centaur, have none at all. In fact this is a plus as it places entry through the pod combining two necessities into a very small weak point between two hulls. If the model is corrected then the top forward tip of the nose would open along a seam to allow passage into the deflector and there would be a single passage way from the deflector to the Defiant's main hull. That passage is neatly concealed between two hulls and likely reinforced.
-Docking and undocking Stresses
Docking and undocking would entail no more stress than any other ship in freefall or zero G. Especially considering mooring and tractor beams we know hold these ships in place. (The ISS and the Shuttle had no such problem) DS9 is equipped with variable docking collars to allow for a range of sizes. Ships experience the most torsional Stress, not while docked, but rather during maneuvers. Different parts of the ship will not accelerate with the engines at the same time. Defiant's Deflector is secured with up to 7 restraints seen on the model itself and four of those points are actually designed for torsional stress. (In other words designed to flex) which is likely not necessary in a ship that's supposed to be only 120-170 meters long.
Starships are akin to Submarines, not surface vessel. There is no reason why running a gangway near a pod for sensors is any more deleterious than running one near a deflector (like Voyager) or through a Torpedo bay) like Constitution Refit). Space is at a premium. It's about efficiency. If Defiant is six to eight decks tall as the model implies then certainly it may be isolated properly. The only problem comes in with a small Defiant which would not have the room for the docking mechanism for the passage off the ship nor the mechanism for attachment with umbilicals and seals and reinforced partitions to the Main Hull, nor the Deflector itself, nor for probe storage either...
(So that is another Strength to the Model Design of the Defiant.)
-The apparent lack of Impulse engine hardpoints.
We don't know what the circular recess in the back of the ship are. (They are not on the warp Nacelles, rather they are apart of the ship's aft main structure.)
Secondly we don't know how Impulse engines works. The Tech manuals heavily contradict the series VFX shots of the ships in motion as there have been a great multitude of occasions of ships retrofiring impulse engines with no forward impulse engines for retrofire. So quite indubitably the Tech Manuals are horrendously wrong.
List of ships Retro Firing without Retro Impulse Engines:
Constitution 2x, Constitution Refit 3x, Galaxy Class +5x Voyager 1x, Defiant 2x.
With no sign of retro impulse engines nor any sign of vector exhaust its truly a wonder how the myth of Rocket Impulse Engines has persisted for so long. This is elementary physics and the manuals ignore this rather blithely. Of course some have suggested that forcefield play a vectoring role for thrust but not only is this a bad design using powered options to steer the ship, but we've seen ships execute retro fire in environments such as the Mutara nebula in which it was established that no such field could exist. Thus since impulse engines use some sort of "Driver Coil" they must be another form of field propulsion.
List of ships with Impulse Engine Placement Problems.
Akira Clas;s (While it's Pylons are directly clear even focused exhaust attenuates very quickly from the nozzle. It also doesn't allow for vectoring (if there was any) which would defintely scorch the pylon when the ship vectors up.
NX-0;1 Has the same problem as Akira in the opposete direction (unnecessarily it has a set of engines which don't put the pylons in danger.
Excelsior MKII: Obviously the new set of Impulse Engines would melt down the Warp Drive's nacelles.
Galaxy X: Which places a huge nacelle strut in front of an even larger Impulse engine than the Galaxy normally has.
(That's one of many Failures on the part of the tech manuals)
Why ships have Impulse engines if they are like Warp Drive?
Trek has established many times, especially in Star Trek II and it's script and during the second Borg Encounter that the Impulse Engine is an auxiliary power unit. The ship's Emergency Power is capable of jump starting the impulse engines and the impulse engines have enough power to engage magnetic confinement in the warp core (main power). In case of Combat situations many ships don't operate Warp Cores which can singularly operate All tactical systems (weapons & shields) during combat for long durations. Only one ship in Trek has been known to operate nearly normal without a warp core (The Enterprise-E)
Trek has also established in DS9 that impulse engines travel much faster than the .25 C the Tech manual insist upon. During certain occasions Bashir and others have said hundreds of years instead of thousands of years to cross light years.
Concerning Windows on Defiant
Others do entertain that these recesses may not actually be windows. There is no proof or evidence at all for such an assertion. It's merely based on the Desire to keep Defiant a small ship that these ideas are entertained at all. The Designer Jim Martin, has already determined that they are indeed windows of a single deck. (at least from what I've seen)But that was after the fact of attempting to determine the length o the ship by VFX who fumbled the ball in the first place. They are the most recognizde feature on the model when compared to every other model (other than the warp engine and bussard scoups) and it would be an error to throw out the most consistent feature on the model that gives us a size estimate simply because it doesn't fit ones belief in a small Defiant. That's circular reasoning.
-Defiant's surface features and Hardpointing.
What can I say...the Tech Manual Fails again. I can only point to the fact that Defiant Transports 4 instead of six people at a time that could possibly appease this problem. But otherwise it is what it is and I don't consider it a design flaw since I don't have information on it's function beyond the number of pads and the standard rip offs from the TNG Tech manual.
All this goes toward proving that the Model should be the only determining factor as to the design of the Defiant.