Even in the Trekverse, odds are vastly against it ever hitting any inhabited planet.
Presumably, even though they’ve lost such things as “surge protectors,” they’re retained the “auto destruct” technology of 20th Century weapons to render themselves harmless once they travel beyond a certain distance.
One time I had nothing better to do so I took note of how many tribbles Spock said that there were in the storage compartment, based on the amount of time they had to reproduce. Then I verified by calculation:
It was an exact power of eleven! :eek:
Spock then rattles off a few assumptions that make this exact figure silly to contemplate.
Good grief!
Later he informs Cyrano Jones exactly how many years it would take for the job of picking up all the tribbles. (It’s somewhat shorter than his other option, the prison sentence.) But at least this time he only uses three significant figures. 
- “Jack”
Even if they didn’t, you would have to assume than any object fired in a random direction has a preposterously miniscule chance of ever hitting a planet, much less an inhabited one. In all likelihood, an object fired into space would never hit anything, and if it ever did, it’s exceedingly likely that it would fall into a star.
I did indeed, and I shall raise you A Fistful of Datas.
Worf made one out of his comm badge and bits of wire that could deflect bullets, he didn’t think about adapting one for phaser fire? Wouldn’t he be the joy of yellowshirts fleet wide? 
I know it’s been mentioned at least once, but the universal translator bothers me, although I am still glad that they have it because I do not want to watch a show where they never know what the aliens are saying. It is also annoying for only one person to know what is being said and then translate for others, like Hoshi and T’Pol did (and even more annoying when they understand what is said, but say nothing or say “you don’t want to know”). In fact, the lack of translation in some episodes is one reason that I do not like the “Enterprise” series very much.
The first problem with the translator is that it is instantaneous, but the meaning of words and sentences cannot be understood until they are complete, and even then the context of the conversation has to be known because figurative speech is often used (it is not good enough to have the translator know common figures of speech because figurative language covers far more than that). One example of this problem is the translation of Spanish to English. In Spanish, adjectives come after the noun, while in English it is the opposite. Therefore, instantaneous translation would be impossible. Another example is when words have multiple meanings. The translator would have to know what meaning of the word the speaker is using to translate properly (and the different meanings of words can be very different from one another, not just synonyms), although I suppose that you could tie the translator to a person’s brain (in a DS9 episode, they are located in the ears of Quark, Rom and Nog, so they may be in communication with their brains, with wires or wirelessly). Tying the translator to the person’s brain would also be needed to properly translate words, and even sentences (I have done a lot of translating), that are not completed (characters are often interrupted mid-sentence or mid-word).
The second thing wrong with the translator is that it can interpret the languages and dialects of species that the Federation, as well as the species that the Federation deals with and who may share information with them. For example, the translator works even when Voyager is lost in the Delta Quadrant and in other series when a species is encountered for the first time.
Another problem I have is with weaponry. We already have conventional (non-nuclear) weapons that would cause extreme damage (if not outright destruction) to ships the size the Federation uses when they are hit without shields, which often happens in many, if not all, of the series. This would happen even if they were using materials ten times stronger than anything (like titanium or carbon fiber) we have today. Also, you would think that less reputable species would use nuclear weapons. I suppose that you could reconcile this by saying that the shields are very good at absorbing the type of energy given off by nuclear weapons or that the people using the weapons would be in danger of being blown up, too. A counter for each of these explanations is that they could be used when the other ship’s shields are down or from a long distance. I suppose that since space-faring species are almost certain to have developed the capability to make nuclear weapons, that they might not be used because no one wants nuclear weapons to be used against them in retaliation. Although, that would require species to be clear-headed and logical, yet the shows are constantly encountering species that are neither of these things.
Finally, one wonders how the species that are so aggressive and uncooperative in nature, such as Klingons, could have ever developed the technology to travel the galaxy. Even if they stole a lot of technology, they would have had to develop the technology to get into space and have sophisticated weaponry to disable alien ships and steal their technology. They would need tons of scientists and technicians to pull this off. Also, even after the development of their “current” technology, they would still need many scientists and technicians to build ships and to reverse engineer and implement new technologies, whether stolen or developed “in-house”.
This was partially addressed in a DS9 episode, when a bunch of refugees came through the wormhole and thought Bajor was their prophecised new home. It took a few minutes of talking with the head woman before the translator kicked in.
I would assume, at least with Klingon, Cardassian, Ferengi, Vulcan, Bajoran, etc, the translator already has a language base set up and can translate even if the aliens are speaking in their native tongue. Then again, IIRC, English is the default language of airline pilots when communicating with air traffic controllers, even if they’re from another country*, so maybe the Federation, based in San Francisco, has a similar requirement.
*Correct me if I’m wrong on this, I got it from my mother, who was a flight attendant before she was married.
If the Universal Translator bothers you because of what it can do with languages, your head will probably explode when you realize that it also LIP-SYNCS.
-Joe
It is a needed plot device. Come up with something better.
There is a TOS episode where the bad guys lob a nuke at Enterprise; Kirk and Scotty (might be Spock) snicker as the shields absorb it.
Didn’t they have real problems, however, with the nuke chucked out by the Romulans in the episode where we first met them?
I think the Romulans had some plasma/disruptor thingie at that point.
HOw would a nuke work in space? You wouldn’t have a blast wave in a vacumn, just the radiation.
I’ve read a fairly technical account of it once. IIRC, there’d be a fireball and lots of hard radiation. It wouldn’t be too difficult to be outside the range of the fireball, though.
They did, but this is a nuke they sent out with debris as a trick, and it exploded only a couple of hundred meters away.
I don’t remember laughing at nukes. The Nazi planet episode had the Nazis sending a primitive missile with a nuke warhead, which they did pretty much laugh at. I think they just phasered it, though.
Yes, I remember now.
And this is exactly the reason that the Darmok episode makes absolutely no sense. The translator is always translating figurative speech. Why would it fail to work in just this one instance?
No cite currently, but I believe in the non-canon ST Tech Manual, it’s in relation to the galactic center, not the ship. I tried a quick google to back that up, and so far, no luck.
I seem to recall it specifically being explained the other way (that mark X referred to the ship’s orientation) in the first Lore episode, when Lore is pretending to be an idiot.
…is the economics of stellar/galactic empires. Any society advanced enough to travel between stars, has no need to colonize distant planets. Everything you need is here!
So the future is not likely to be a replay of Europe colonizing Africa (ca. 1890). Why travel to the sterellium mines of planet Gnork, when you can synthesize the stuff at home?
Or am i wrong-are those “dilithium crystals” only found on certain planets?
I don’t think they had full-blown replicators in Kirk’s time. Even if they had, even Trek isn’t so disconnected from real-world thermodynamics as to miss the obvious problem of using dilithium-powered replicators to make more dilithium. I rather suspect that the more potential energy a given object has, the more energy it takes to create it (i.e., the less efficient the replicator is). (Probably I should phrase that is the greater the difference in potential energy between the recruited matter and the replicated substance).
Either that or dilithium, like latinum, is simply something the replicator cannot fabricate.
I hate to ask this…but do we ever see latinum or dilithium being transported in a transporter? If so, that kind of blows that idea to hell.
-Joe