# Star Trek General Q&A **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 6, 2009, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065 "2009-07-06T12:32:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/21 "2009-07-07T09:44:46Z")
> [@CrazyChop](#): > > Thanks to the most recent Star Trek movie, I decide to rent a few DVDs of the series. I don’t like the look of the TNG (partly because of Star Trek: Nemesis, I guess), so I started with Voyager. > > I have some questions about Trekdom - others feel free to ask too! - and have decided to engage the Teeming Millions for help > > 1. Is it possible to collide into something at Warp Speed or is it like instant teleportation? Yes, it’s possible. Hence they have the main deflector array, of which I’m dubious. But it seems to work most of the time, unlike that notoriously unreliable transporter, and of course, the warp drive. > [@](#): > > 1. Is it possible to fire weapons while at warp speed? Indeed, it is. Both phasers and photon torpedoes have been used at warp speed. Of course, the phasers shouldn’t work since they’re merely a particle/energy beam, which should still be bounded by the speed of light. But let’s not let that in the way of good graphics! > [@](#): > > 1. With so many people being flung about in battle, is there an official reason why officers are standing and not seated and strapped down? Well, the inertial dampening system, of which I’m also dubious. It comes and goes based on how powerful the writers want an enemy to appear, thus sweetening the victory. > [@](#): > > 1. Why on earth does it take so long for the Voyager to get back to the Alpha Quadrant if Captain Sulu can do a tour of the Gamma (or is it Beta?) in seven years? It has nothing to do with the name of the places; it has to do with the distance between them. How far does it take to get to the east coast from somewhere within the United States? Well, that depends: leaving from Western North Carolina, or Hawaii? That’s a rough idea of the distance (though not actually scaled). > [@](#): > > 1. Why on earth would the Commander and the Captain be sent for an Away mission at the same time? Isn’t that too risky? Actors want money; screen time = money. Being on the ship when the action’s on the planet makes screen time harder to get. Besides, if we didn’t see them together on the planet intermixing with low level functionaries aboard ship, rumors would be flying among the NCOs and junior officers that the Captain and First Officer were one in the same. As we all know, a conspiracy at the highest echelon of power in a particular Trek universe can lead to a 2 part show to resolve the problem. It would suck after watching for two weeks to find out that actually the Captain and First Officer are different people when we knew it all along from merely having read the opening credits, right? ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/22 "2009-07-07T16:24:48Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > re question #1 – if warp speed collisions are possible, why hadn’t some marginal dissident group tried piloting ships at warp into planets, or planetary cities? I’d think there would be a fairly devastating impact. Someone did that once, but then they really beefed up starport security across the galaxy to prevent it from happening again. It became a bitch of a long line to get onto a spaceship though. ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/23 "2009-07-07T18:38:31Z")
> [@CrazyChop](#): > > 1. With so many people being flung about in battle, is there an official reason why officers are standing and not seated and strapped down? Shuttlecrafts are occasionally shown with seatbelts. Also, in a deleted scene from _Nemesis_, Picard is shown a brand-new automatic seatbelt function in the captain’s chair. He responds by saying something like “finally!” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/24 "2009-07-07T19:08:52Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > … it would have taken them much less time if Janeway didn’t stop for every two-bit planet and tourist trap along the way. To be fair, with a ship that big someone always needed to go to the bathroom whenever they passed a rest area. ---
**Author:** ![2nd\_Law](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/f475e1/32.png) [@2nd\_Law](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2nd_Law)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/25 "2009-07-07T19:57:09Z")
Something I’ve been wondering about is when the Star Trek timeline diverges from real life – we know the Romans were the same, and WWII, but by the 1960’s there are some differences (AFAIK there were never “orbital nuclear platforms”). Is there an answer to this? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/26 "2009-07-07T20:25:59Z")
City on the Edge of Forver. 1930s. A homeless man vaporised himself with McCoy’s phaser. No one went back to prevent his death. That is in OUR timeline, because in the timeline that lead to the Federation that man sobered up and did some stuff in the 1950s that he wasn’t able to do in our timeline because he was dead. ---
**Author:** ![2nd\_Law](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/f475e1/32.png) [@2nd\_Law](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2nd_Law)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/27 "2009-07-07T20:41:56Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > City on the Edge of Forver. 1930s. A homeless man vaporised himself with McCoy’s phaser. No one went back to prevent his death. That is in OUR timeline, because in the timeline that lead to the Federation that man sobered up and did some stuff in the 1950s that he wasn’t able to do in our timeline because he was dead. It’s surprising that a character referred to on Memory Alpha as “[Rodent](http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_Humans_(20th_century)#Rodent)” would have such a big effect on our timeline – no 1990’s Eugenics wars, etc. Butterfly effect, I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065/28 "2009-07-08T04:59:21Z")
> [@2nd\_Law](#): > > It’s surprising that a character referred to on Memory Alpha as “[Rodent](http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_Humans_%2820th_century%29#Rodent)” would have such a big effect on our timeline – no 1990’s Eugenics wars, etc. > > Butterfly effect, I suppose. I believe the official Star Trek position is that they still happened, but in a way that most people during the time didn’t know about it. And that World War III got pushed till later, (No reference for the first part, second part in TNG:“Encounter at Farpoint”) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-general-q-a/502065.md?page=1)