Posted: 4/8/2005 3:50:34 PM EDT
| ...on star trek when two space ships meet they are always oriented in the same way. I mean its space so their really isnt any up or down. Stuff like that always bugs me. I cant be the only one who has thought of stuff like this. |
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You can imply, if you watch long enough, that there is some kind of protocol for the two ships to follow when they rendezvous, such as establishing a common plane. So they can pose for the imaginary camera that just happens to be following themn around wherever they go. |
Ever notice that the phaser pistols don't have sights? 
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What always bugged me was the science fiction from the 50's and 60's that talked about terraforming mars. Mars has no magnetosphere, as soon as mars's core cooled and stopped creating a magnetodynamic force, it's atmosphere was stripped off by solar radiation. If the Earth didn't have such a large moon that created the tidal forces that it does, the Earth would have cooled and lost its magnetic field long ago, which would preclude life. I'm drunk, don't mind me. |
Actually phasers are two weapons in one. A type-I phaser fits into a type-II, boosting the output. I think thats why the type-I's had a red light beam and the type-II had a blue or in a couple episodes green/yellow.    Then there is always the Type-III phaser rifle (group buy?) And the early model Laser Mk-2, which is a relec compared to a Phaser.But the best party favor is by far the Photon Grenade and launcher. |
As often as those consoles explode, do you REALLY want to strapped to one?
They orient themselves to the same plane whenever they meet. They also use directions such as galactic north, south, east, west, etc. so once you have the four cardinal directions it's not too difficult to establish a standard up and down. Artificial gravity is constant in a ship and only older vessels need to provide more than a miniscule amount of power to the system. They can adjust its intensity, but because it's such a basic function it's very difficult to take out. You could probably provide gravity to a ship with a AA battery. |
Back to the original nerd question. The galaxy is "roughly" on the same plane, so it makes sense that ships would travel on a linear path between two planets and not take some dramatic parabola.  On the other hand, I never understood the whole "neutral zone" thing since you could always take the parabolic course. WTF is a "border" in space anyway
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The graviton current flowing in superconducting rings that produces the artificial gravity takes some time to spin down. Don't ask me how I know that... Jim |
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So... why does a phaser vaporise a boulder (or tree or whatever else you happen to be hiding behind) and not vaporise you? Plus, where's the collateral damage? Also, what happened to phaser power in TNG? In the original series a phaser would disintegrate a tank. In TNG, the landing party would shoot it out wiht the BG's hiding behind rocks and trees. And they would get WOUNDED no less. WTF happened? Was there a 23rd century Feinstein? CW |
It eliminates the eventual "you're the one that's upside down" argument so that more important conversations like "get the fuck outta Federation space" can take place in a reasonable amount of time. CW |
Space 1999 |
1999 has come and gone, and we don't have spaceships like that (or phasers) - it'd be cool, though. |
Yeah, but I guess in the 70's they thought we would be more advanced by now. www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1066/Mptv/1066/9635-0006.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0072564
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Damn, beat me to it. Yeah, the non-geeks don't wanna know how we know this shit. They would *really* think we're nuts. 
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It was alluded that Picard and Crusher had an afair shortly after Wesley's father died, and the bad juju that produced kept them apart. Also, sexual tension is good for a tv show. EDIT: I'm just glad they finally answered the old question of why origial series Klingons looks so much differant from movie/TNG klingons. They joked about it in DS9 but waited for the end of the last season of Enterprise to explain it. Beyond the whole "we had a limited budget and shity movie makeup industry in the 60s and 70s, get over it" explanation for it. |
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I didn't watch that series, so I didn't know they mentioned it. What was the reasoning? I often thought about the orientation question, and always figured it was just one of those things we weren't supposed to notice. I did see one show of TNG where the Enterprise changed it's orientation as they approached another ship, but I can't remember which episode it was. 
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Roddenberry was a Naval Officer, IIRC. There is a whole "science" behind ST. In fact, many of their devices, such as a PAD, are actually in use. |
There are different power settings on the phasers, duh. |
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We're both wrong. Army Air Corps. |
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I didn't see that in his bio. Hmm, maybe he didn't want people to know? |
Yeah, but in the original series all you had to do was phaser a BG and the BG dissapeared. In TNG, phaser hits just winged 'em. A kinder, gentler Federation? Also, in the original series a phaser could put out a wide pulse that would knock all the BG's out. What happened to "phasers on stun" in TNG? CW |
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In Enterprise the Klingons found out about the human's successes with genetic manipulation which eventually led to the Eugenics Wars (Kahn & the Botany Bay and all that). They did a tie in with Dr. Sung. Before he started making cyborgs he was doing genetic research making new perfect humans based on old "1990s" genetics successes. Klingons though that there might be a danger of humans getting back into Eugenics and outstripping them physically so they ripped off the human experiments and started making their own super soldiers. Experiments backfired and it created a disease that quickely spread throughout the entire Empire. Klingons were expecting to go extinct in a matter of years. A treatment was found but required sometype of sci-fi explained gobbedly gook blending of human and klingon dna into a sirum. Treated Klingons lost their cranial ridges (bumpy heads)...but hey, they were still alive. The deformity was expected to breed itself out of the race within a few generations. |
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Apparently you can transport any object from any point in space to any other point in space using their transporter technology. If that's the case, why bother with a transporter room where people can go and stand on the transporter unit to get beamed, Scotty? WTF? Why not just say, "Scott, you bitch. Transport me directly from the planet's surface to the bridge. Skip the damn transporter room!" |
IIRC it has something to do with signal strength. Less chance of getting something wrong in the dissasembly/reassembly if you stand on a transporter pad. Which brings to mind, what do the fat people do? I'm not sure two pads would work. (Not that I ever saw any fat people on ST). CW |
