More Trek Trivia

Cafe Society
1

After reading this thread describing times the Enterprise left the galaxy I came up with a few questions of my own:

What’s the fastest spacecraft in Trek and how fast did it go?

What’s the farthest distance a person can be teleported?

What’s the greatest mass that can be teleported from the surface of a planet like Earth into high orbit?

Which species can interbreed and produce live offspring? Humans and Klingons? Klingons and Romulans?

Has any Trek civilization built a Dyson Sphere or other megastructures?

2

What’s the fastest spacecraft in Trek and how fast did it go?
Voyager had a horrible episode where they broke warp 9 in an experimental warp shuttle. They then proceeded to mutate into large Newts.

What’s the farthest distance a person can be teleported?
In a TOS episode with Gary 7 and Teri Garr it was shown that they had a transporter beam that could go for lightyears. Of course the Q could beat that for Teleportation.

Which species can interbreed and produce live offspring? Humans and Klingons? Klingons and Romulans?
Yes to both.

Has any Trek civilization built a Dyson Sphere or other megastructures?
There were more than one artificial planetoids but I don’t recall anything on the scale of a Dyson Sphere or Ring World.

3

I have a vague recollection of a ship in the Animated Series travelling at warp 36 or so. Some people don’t like using the Animated Series as an example, though.

Warp in general wasn’t always treated with a certain… consistency. In the old Trek Technical Manual, warp was cubed to describe the multiple of the speed of light. So, warp 2 was 2x2x2 = 8 times the speed of light. Warp 7 was 7x7x7 = 343 times the speed of light and so forth.

In Next Generation, that was changed to some sort of asymptote. So, warp speed was some multiple of the speed of light, but the maximum value in the universe could be warp 10 (but it was an asymptote, so it took infinite energy to reach that level – unless Wesley was diddling with the widget banks), which would be a lot like using an Infinite Improbability Drive, except no whales.

Unless you were travelling back in time specifically *for *whales, in which case, no bowl of petunias.

By the ship’s transporters, usually about orbital level. Other creatures, species, and miscellaneous hyperintelligent glowing post-production effects have been able to teleport people much much farther. Kirk and Co. were transported many light years to Triskelion to fight, and Gary Seven was mid-beam to Earth from a hugely far away place.

The biggest I can recall is the mass of lots of people and their gear. The transporters we saw in the series had six pads, so if you figure 100 kilos per person, that’s about 600 kilos. Round up to say 800 kilos to account for excessive makeup, maybe?

In the Technical Manual and the blueprints, there are cargo transporters, which don’t have individual pads, but big transporter “areas”. I can’t recall those having a mass-limit specified, though.

It would be easier to ask which can’t. Star Trek is a very promiscuous universe and most anyone can comingle with anyone else. Offhand, I can’t recall seeing an Andorian/whatever hybrid, or a Horta/whatever hybrid, but I blame Bad Attitude for the former and, well, the latter, too. Plus, you never know what might happen to a Horta in the middle of orgasm, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting their private parts near it.

Yep, in one episode of Next Generation, Scotty has discovered a Dyson Sphere and locked himself there in a transporter matrix. Oddly enough, however logical Dyson Spheres are (and relatively simple to construct, compared to some of the constructs I’ve seen in the show), I can’t recall mention of them in any of the series.

Never saw a ringworld, either, or a discworld, but I suspect those are, er, copyrighted.

4

Well, we know that Humans and Klingons can, as there’ve been several examples (Worf’s first “mate”, K’Ehleyr, and B’Elanna Torres). I can’t remember a canon Klingon-Romulan mix, but since Humans and Vulcans can interbreed (Spock), and Romulans and Vulcans are fundamentally the same race, it seems likely.

This all goes to an episode from late in the run of TNG (the name escapes me), in which it was learned that most (if not all) of the humanoid species in the galaxy were from a common stock, placed on their homeworlds by a distant predecessor.

I suspect the answers to a lot of your other questions come down to, “as much / as far as the plot dictates”.

5

Special guest author Hunter S. Thompson?

6

The Dyson Sphere episode of ST:TNG was “Relics.”

7

In That Which Survives the Enterprise went at least Warp 13.2

(But apparently the Warp scale changed over the years).

8

It’s not cannon, but Saavik was half-Vulcan/half-Romulan in the novelization of Wrath of Khan.

9

A little addendum.

Regarding Gary Seven’s transporter: “Spock discovers that the transporter beam originates more than a thousand light years away.” ( Assignment: Earth (episode) | Memory Alpha | Fandom )

Kirk, Uhura, and Checkov are transported to Triskelion, and although there isn’t a definitive call as to how far it is, the Enterprise had been travelling at warp 2 for a while before they determined that the ion trail led to a trinary star system “11.630 light years” away. So, presumably, that transporter operated at greater than 11.630 light years distant, which, frankly, kicks ass. ( The Gamesters of Triskelion (episode) | Memory Alpha | Fandom )

Only one Dyson Sphere has been encountered in the Star Trek universe, in the episode Relics ( Dyson sphere | Memory Alpha | Fandom ), although it beggars the imagination that someone could be bright enough to build a Dyson Sphere, yet dumb enough to build one around an unstable star. I mean, it’s not as if we’re running out of stars, y’know?

In the episode “The Counterclock Incident”, “Spock says [the alien ship] is traveling at a speed which should be impossible to reach, a velocity on the order of about warp 36.” ( The Counter-Clock Incident (episode) | Memory Alpha | Fandom )

And here’s the skinny on transporter range: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Transporters#Range

10

Roddenberry established for Next Generation that warp 10 was the theoretical, unreachable limit at which the object in motion would occupy every point in the space-time continuum.

Next Gen was pretty good about observing that law until the finale, with Riker’s upgraded Enterprise warship travelling at warp 12, if memory serves.

11

Yep. The Heart of Gold hit warp 10 pretty regularly. :smiley:

12

You guys know your Trek. Lemme see if I can think up any more:

Are there in species in Trek that live (or can survive for an extended period of time) in the vacuum of space?

How old is the most aged human in Trek? What’s the life expectency for humans? Klingons? Vulcans?

Have any 21st century illnesses survived in Trek, like cancer, diabetes, or the common cold?

How long does it take to built a craft like the Enterprise?

13

Man, you people are a bunch of NERDS! I can say this with a fair bit of confidence because I knew almost all of the correct answers off the top of my head (I had a momentary lapse of memory regarding Gary Seven. D’oh).

I love this place. :smiley:

14

Are there in species in Trek that live (or can survive for an extended period of time) in the vacuum of space?
There have been several energy beings that can.

Have any 21st century illnesses survived in Trek, like cancer, diabetes, or the common cold?
Yes but these are all curable. Kirk did suffer from an eye disorder that was not.

How long does it take to built a craft like the Enterprise?
That varies by need and funding like naval ships today.

15

There are several species out there. There’s the giant amoeba thingy from TOS; the space baby that suckles power from the Enterprise’s engines in TNG and a few others, no doubt.

I don’t recall anything definitive in the canon, but people seem to survive much longer in the future. IIRC, Leonard McCoy is something like 107 or so in the premiere of TNG and there are a couple other examples of very, very old humans as fairly commonplace. Vulcans are established in TOS as having much longer life expectancies than humans, surviving comfortably into their 150s at least. I’m not entirely sure if they spent a bunch of time discussing Klingon life expectency, but three of Kirk’s Klingon adversaries show up in an episode of DS9, still in fighting form 75 years after TOS.

The disease question sort of depends on which series you’re loking at. I distictly recall Bones saying in one TOS episode that the common cold is still out there, but I also recall Dr. Crusher saying it had been cured. Cancer, diabetes, and other such dieases seem to have been solved (although male pattern baldness is apparently still out there).

Again, I’m not sure if there is a definitive answer to construction times for starships, but I’d assume you can roughly equate those times to the time frame for building a modern battleship in our time. Anyone know better than that?

16

The Crystalline Entity and the “Space Baby.” Others, too, those just spring to mind.

This would probably Flint at over 6000, though he’s probably dead by now.

McCoy was 137 when he visited the Enterprise-D on it’s maiden voyage, with no indication that he was an extraordinary specimen.

Sarek was 203 when he died, again with no indication that he was extraordinary, other than his illness.

Only the cold is mentioned specifically, but there is a passing reference to it being something passe.

If memory serves, the Next Gen episode “Eye of the Beholder” implies that it takes months or years to build a Galaxy-class ship, but I don’t remember a specific time being given. The Defiant was built after Wolf-359 to address the Borg threat but didn’t see active use until the third season of DS9.

17

In addition to the other answers.

In the TOS episode That Which Survives Losera (sp?) short circuits the matter/antimatter bypass system which causes the engines to runaway well past their designed power and the Enterprise reaches W13.6 or something like that speed. Nomad’s torpedoes approach the Enterprise at Warp 15 which is 3375c using the old and much better system of velocity calculation.

18

I’m probably wrong, but wasn’t his eye condition fixable with something that he was allergic to? Which begs the question, why haven’t they cured allergies?

19

Kirk was allergic to Retinax V, if memory serves.

20

:: looks into the thread, sees all questions already answered, and leaves with a sigh of disappointment ::