# Star Trek Tech Questions **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 19, 2009, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889 "2009-12-19T21:26:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/61 "2009-12-22T03:32:29Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Why? Other than stupidly perhaps having failed to give it attitude jets sufficient to accomplish the task, the size of the object wouldn’t have anything to do with its ability to rotate in empty space… Sure it would. Small lightly armored agile space fighter can spin and change directions suddenly and leave the pilot’s lunch three jumps behind. Bigass hulking heavily armored battleship can spin around, but once Adama gives the command, he’s gonna have time to go make himself a sandwich before the maneuver bears him any fruit. Inertia is a bitch sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/62 "2009-12-22T06:36:35Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > If you are not powering the shields identically (which capability is certainly a good idea; and Star Trek’s ships had that capability, on more than one occasion the captains direct that power be directed to things like the “forward” shields), it would be because you KNOW where the attack is likely to come from; which is certainly not the case with Kahn’s ship in the Nebula. True, that would be the most rational and logical thing to do, a pity those weren’t qualities Kahn was expressing much at the time. 🙂 > [@](#): > > Um, no, that would be the movie where they added a piece of GAS sensing equipment to the torpedo, allowing its guidance systems to track the gas emissions from the Klingon BoP. But the **capability** to follow such a track would already have to be there, else the torpedo wouldn’t be able to accomplish the trick. And, as I pointed out, we already have missiles that do that simple thing, and did at the time that the original series came out. There simply is no reason to assert that photon torpedos are line of sight objects; note that if this was true, the torpedo fired to the new planet at the end of STII wouldn’t have been able to land the way it did. Duh. Outside of Spock’s torpedo-bay fired coffin (clearly an ignorable special case, since it was also capable of surviving re-entry), are there any examples of torpedoes taking curved paths to that point? Yes, in the real world we have amazing aiming technology and all. We can hit pinpoints from miles away. And when Star Trek ships shoot torpedoes at each other? Well, even when combat systems are working, they tend to hit, well, somewhere on the enemy ship, but nowhere specific. We talk about how exposed the bridge is, why not just aim for the bridge? Or anywhere other than the “middle of the saucer” that shots tend to end up hitting? > [@](#): > > ETA: And the only time that I can recall that something “punctures” a ship in any of the episodes or movies prior to and including STVI is in STVI itself, where the ship’s hull is punctured. In all other cases, series or movie, the torpedo explodes when it arrives at its target, just like a torpedo would during WWII. I was not aware that any WWII torpedoes had antimatter in them. Yes, STVI was what I was specifically thinking of, but the end of STII is illuminating as well. Memory-alpha quotes the technical manual that a photon torpedo has 1.5kg of antimatter on them, which works out to around 64 megatons. Which did those final shots on the shieldless Reliant resemble more–64 megaton blasts, or a solid object at high velocity slamming into a ship and causing a lot of secondary explosions? > [@](#): > > You aren’t really asking this seriously, are you??? > > One involves simple rotation in place. The other involves actually moving the whole ship. One takes little or no time, one takes the time required for the movement to occur. One would already be accomplished before Kahn’s ship was in the area, and thus unlikely to be detected; one would be potentially detectable as it was occurring. > > Want to keep going with this? :dubious: Why do you think that rotation in place is simpler than a simple change in altitude? This is space, there’s no gravity to fight. Why do you think it’s faster? Why put extra rotational stress on a crippled ship staffed by cadets? ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/63 "2009-12-22T15:54:43Z")
\ So the ship will have more stress on it from rotating it 90 degrees than it would from accellerating it to return “upwards” to the same “level” it was before? Get real. I’ve made my point already, so I won’t belabor it. Attempts to “fanwank” the movie so that it makes sense are cute, but ultimately doomed to failure. There simply was no good reason in a 3-D battle for Kirk to do what he did. He did it because some writer analogized in his mind to the concept of a submarine (“whoa, neat idea I just had, let’s add some movement on the z-axis as a clever way to win the battle!”), but didn’t go the extra step of thinking what this truly meant in terms of fighting in space. Star Trek was particularly adherent to this stupidity; how often in the middle of space did you see ships “facing” each other with exactly the same “z” orientation? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/64 "2009-12-22T20:21:48Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Nothing new about the first two questions, but it appears that warp can be reversed - they went into Full Reverse Warp to escape the Romulan weapon in “Balance of Terror”. In “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” in his captain’s log, Kirk mentioned that it took full warp power in reverse to move the Enterprise away from the black star that caught the Enterprise in its gravitational well. ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/65 "2009-12-22T21:10:24Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > \ > > So the ship will have more stress on it from rotating it 90 degrees than it would from accellerating it to return “upwards” to the same “level” it was before? Get real. This board is about fighting ignorance, so fight mine. It seems to me that executing a half-barrel-roll will certainly cause different types of stress on the ship than altitude changes. Is that not the case? Furthermore, we know that targeting systems in the nebula were shot, so the two ships have to get very close to one another to hit. So after executing this roll, the Enterprise would still have to make an altitude change to get close enough to fire. If the ships were hundreds of miles away from each other, then yes, rolling would probably be more effective (and faster) than altitude changes. But they’re not–they’re getting within one or two ship lengths of each other. The height difference between a firing position underneath the Reliant and behind the Reliant would be, what, 1 km or so at most? (reference on that is the Enterprise’s listed length of 300 meters) If you’re going to claim that flipping a ship over is better than just going up a kilometer or so, that’s going to need more of a cite or explanation than just attempting to insult and belittle anyone who disagrees with you. > [@](#): > > I’ve made my point already, so I won’t belabor it. So far as I can tell, the only point you’ve made is that, yes, the Enterprise **can** change its orientation, but you’ve done a very poor job actually giving reasons why they would do it. > [@](#): > > Star Trek was particularly adherent to this stupidity; how often in the middle of space did you see ships “facing” each other with exactly the same “z” orientation? :rolleyes: This is actually a more interesting general question. Why would a spacefaring civilization generally have all of its spaceships in the same orientation? And while there is not much in the way of physics to force such a thing, perhaps the psychology of it still makes sense. Once we get to a point where we can build manned spacecraft and not be completely slaved to function, I suspect that we may well start building them with “tops” and “bottoms,” just because that is what we are used to. Once you do that, a planetary system convention of what “up” is really doesn’t seem that unreasonable. The physics might not require it, but it might be easier to just make the convention rather than trying to have everyone just get used to ships flying sideways and upsie-down or whatever. You obviously could still do it if you wanted to or had to, but I think that having ships encounter each other right-side-up most of the time is probably not really all that strange. Now, Star Trek probably does take it to too much of an extreme–even with this postulation, there is no reason that the Klingons would have the same “up” as the Federation. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/66 "2009-12-22T21:24:40Z")
> [@dzeiger](#): > > … > I was not aware that any WWII torpedoes had antimatter in them. > … It’s clear then that you’ve never read a history book. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/67 "2009-12-22T23:31:39Z")
> [@dzeiger](#): > > Now, Star Trek probably does take it to too much of an extreme–even with this postulation, there is no reason that the Klingons would have the same “up” as the Federation. I don’t understand this. Why wouldn’t the Klingons have the same right-side-up as humans? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/68 "2009-12-22T23:44:20Z")
Star Trek related-hijack: I mentioned to a co-worker that I was able to buy copies of the second, fourth and sixth Star Trek movies on Blu-Ray from Best Buy for eight bucks each during the Black Friday sale. He was surprised by this, because he wasn’t aware of any Star Trek movie other than the one that premiered this summer. FYI, he’s 26 years old. Wow, did I feel old, as I’ve seen most of the films in their original releases, although I’m too young to have watched TOS when it was first broadcast. ---
**Author:** ![FordTaurusSHO94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f07891/32.png) [@FordTaurusSHO94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordTaurusSHO94)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/69 "2009-12-22T23:56:34Z")
As a 26-year old, I’m surprised he’s never heard of Star Trek. I remember watching the last few seasons of TNG when I was 10 or 11 and several episodes of DS9. I just recently saw my first episodes of Voyager, I’d like to see more. Of the movies, I’ve seen 2,4,6,7,8,9,10, and 11. As a Picard fan, I’ll have to mention that First Contact is my favorite. 6 is my favorite of the TOS crew. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/70 "2009-12-23T01:18:15Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > I don’t understand this. Why wouldn’t the Klingons have the same right-side-up as humans? If their ecliptic plane is different from ours, their baseline reference for space travel could be affected. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/71 "2009-12-23T02:04:04Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > If their ecliptic plane is different from ours, their baseline reference for space travel could be affected. I would expect the baseline out in deep space would be the orientation of the galaxy itself. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/72 "2009-12-23T02:09:10Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > If their ecliptic plane is different from ours, their baseline reference for space travel could be affected. The only reason I can see for having a relative “right side up” would be if several vessels were maneuvering in a small space, say around a space station. If you were close enough to be in danger of colliding, you’d want to be sure the other guy’s red maneuvering lights really were on the port side relative to you. 🙂 The general rule with aircraft in danger of collision is to turn to starboard I believe, to be sure that you turn away from each other. Were one of you bottom side up in relation to the other, you would turn into each other. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/73 "2009-12-23T02:15:32Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > If their ecliptic plane is different from ours, their baseline reference for space travel could be affected. Oh, I see what you’re saying. If a ship left Klingon, and another ship left Earth and they both dropped out of warp in the same area, they wouldn’t both be right-side-up in relation to each other. What I had in mind was simply that when two ships approach each other, it’d be natural for them to adjust so both their ups and downs were the same. They don’t show that very often in SF, true. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/74 "2009-12-23T02:19:18Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > What I had in mind was simply that when two ships approach each other, it’d be natural for them to adjust so both their ups and downs were the same. They don’t show that very often in SF, true. But we do see that happen in _Undiscovered Country_. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/75 "2009-12-23T02:25:44Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > it’d be natural for them to adjust so both their ups and downs were the same. If I were the Captain of a Federation vessel and a Klingon dropped out of warp near me, it would be natural for me to adjust my position to shoot at him, just in case. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/76 "2009-12-23T02:31:48Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > If I were the Captain of a Federation vessel and a Klingon dropped out of warp near me, it would be natural for me to adjust my position to shoot at him, just in case. 🙂 I would assume if your ship wasn’t designed to fire straight ahead, and instead you cocked your ship so the main guns on your underbelly were pointing at the Klingons, it’d be considered sort of provocative. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/77 "2009-12-23T02:33:16Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Oh, I see what you’re saying. If a ship left Klingon, and another ship left Earth and they both dropped out of warp in the same area, they wouldn’t both be right-side-up in relation to each other. What I had in mind was simply that when two ships approach each other, it’d be natural for them to adjust so both their ups and downs were the same. They don’t show that very often in SF, true. [geekish nitpick]The name of the Klingons’ home planet is “Qo’noS”, rendered in Federation Standard as “Kronos”.[/gn] ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/78 "2009-12-23T02:39:11Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > I would assume if your ship wasn’t designed to fire straight ahead, and instead you cocked your ship so the main guns on your underbelly were pointing at the Klingons, it’d be considered sort of provocative. Yeah, but what’s he gonna do about it? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/79 "2009-12-23T02:49:07Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Yeah, but what’s he gonna do about it? 🙂 I dunno. Are we talking DS9 Klingons? Those guys couldn’t take a Girl Scout ship. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889/80 "2009-12-23T02:55:45Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > I would assume if your ship wasn’t designed to fire straight ahead, and instead you cocked your ship so the main guns on your underbelly were pointing at the Klingons, it’d be considered sort of provocative. I dunno, isn’t waving a knife at a Klingon kinda like their equivalent of a friendly wave?😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-questions/521889.md?page=5)