Star Trek technology that you just can't believe

Much of the technology in Star Trek and other Sci-Fi that used to be pure fiction has already been invented or is in the process of being developed, but some things I think just aren't going to happen.

3-D technology is making huge advances, and engineers are currently working on perfecting something that resembles a holodeck, but I don't think that holo-projections will ever have a solid "feel" to them- at least not when the participants don't have sensors wired all over their bodies.

Even less believable to me are Universal Translators as presented by Star Trek. I *can* believe a device that would offer an audible computerized voice translating another language as it's being spoken, but you would still hear the speaker talking in their original language. Much like when you hear a human translator and the original speaker both talking at the same time.

But no way you're going to hear English (or whatever other language the hearer speaks), emanating from the mouth of the foreign speaker.

What technology do you believe will or won't be invented?

 

Star Trek has some pretty farfetched technologies by today's standards, but I'm not going to say that any of them are impossible, but I do think many of them will work differently than has been explained in Star Trek. For instance, I think virtual reality will advance to the point where it is functionally equivalent to the holodeck, it will just work in a much different way. I think if transporters ever exist, folding space or creating a micro-wormhole would probably be a lot easier than matter/energy conversion. 3D printers will eventually be able to do everything a replicator does.

Any prediction four centuries in the future is just a stab-in-the-dark guess anyway, so I won't discount anything.

 

Though I think that a version that can reproduce inert material at a remote location may someday be possible, I don't think that a transporter will ever be developed that can safely transport a living being from one place to another.

I'm not sure if faster-than-light travel will ever be possible, and time travel, as portrayed in Trek, is never going to happen.

On the other hand, a lot of the advancements in medicine and clean "free" energy that we see in Trek are maybe only decades away. We already have present-day versions of the PADD, the communicator, the library-computer, Uhura's earpiece, and 3D printing is certainly the first baby-step toward the replicator.

 

@ Data´s Cat

First of all a hearty welcome to the TrekBBS, I hope you´re going to enjoy it.

As to your question, there really is no technology I find unbelievable in Star Trek. Who knows what is going to be possible in 300 or 400 years, what kind of technological advances are going to be made. If you think backwards 300 or 400 years, and you could tell someone of the 16th century about our present day technology, that person would probably not believe a word you´re saying. Even when they made TOS they invisioned a few technologies as "far out" and in the distant future that are already part of our daily lives less than 50 years later.

That of course is a concession being made for the benefit of the TV audiences, since everything else would be terribly distracting. In the early episodes of ENT they showed a glimpse of what it would be like, if they actually show that translation process in conversations. I for one am glad, that they´re "cheating" a little in that department

Mario

 

The one time I shook my head and went "No f--king way!" was the Voyager episode "Ashes to Ashes", where former crewman Lynsey Ballard had died, been shot into space, been recovered and resurrected by aliens and in the process turned into a member of their species. She now had a big bald purple peanut head.

She wants to be made human again, and the Doc starts on cosmetic surgery.... he gives her an injection which shrinks and reshapes her skull. An INJECTION!!!


Somehow that bothered me more than the Genesis Device, which is pure magic.

 

The big three are warp drive, transporters, and time machines.

The rest of the unbelievable technology usually comes in one-off episodes or comes in the form of production necessity. Like, artificial gravity without a spinning ring is unlikely.

 

Thanks for the welcome! You can call me Spot.

Ummm yeah, that's a little hard to believe. And what about when one species of humanoid goes under cover as another species? A quick little medical procedure and *POOF* a Bajoran becomes a Klingon, or a human becomes a Romulan. And then *POOF* they're changed back!

 

Although totally scar-less surgery is probably going to be a medical breakthrough we will see soon in RL and superficially, such technology could allow a human to be externally sculpted to resemble a person of another race or species (and returned) making that person being able to pass even the most basic of medical inspection does seem far fetched, since even things as simple as pulse rate and blood pressure, will be off let alone doing a blood test and a dna scan.

 

Holodecks are hard for me to believe. To me, they stole that idea from the X-men's danger room. I can see recreating locations that can fit in the same space as the holodeck, maybe even water, but recreating entire cities and planets, or even people, it is hard to swallow. I think it would be easier to create a matrix-like virtual environment people plug into.

Universal translators I think will exist partially, but will have to be programmed based on known languages. Not something that uses telepathy or something, though.

Time travel: simply, I don't think it is possible to go back and forth through time, as if it were a place.



Transporters: I can see something like that working, but only see inanimate objects being able to be transported.

Warp drive: I think one day there will be some form of FTL travel, just not like Star Trek. Maybe more like BSG.

 

Most of the "impossible" Trek technology is just a bit of convenient shorthand for the viewers' benefit. Nobody really wants to see the characters obsessing over a translated language for 45 minutes, or watching somebody undergo cosmetic surgery for hours on end, etc. If all the Trek tech was made absolutely realistic, it would be boring as all get out. So it's just dramatic license, nothing more.

 

Then I guess it's a good thing that any time someone has been medically examined on the show that their disguise has been seen through.

 

The transporter. At least in the sense of breaking down a human body and reassembling it.

 

I never say never, and the period of Trek is 200 + years away so looking back to where we were 200 years AGO, almost everything we take for granted now would have been unimaginable back then. Hell, a lot of the stuff that has been developed just since TOS first aired is pretty incredible. All that said, I suspect transporting living objects and warp drive will be the last things to be developed from Trek. Time travel is just a fantasy that I don't think that will ever happen.

 

Bones, with the help of his medical tricorder, figured out that Arne Darvin was a Klingon in about ten seconds.

 

I find the tech that moves the story along, like warp drives and instant alien translation, to be more than acceptable. The one that really sticks in my craw is when the holodeck seems to have no limits. I don't have a problem with it recreating certain stuff. But when they have it doing something like the Worf promotion scene in Generations, where you have one character falling into a holographic ocean, presumably falling at least 50 ft or so, while the rest of the crew is on the ship laughing it up, it seems to pass the point of acceptance, at least for me.

 

Transporters.

 

I'm one who never says never with technology. I think the least likely to happen, at least in the way it works on Trek, is transporters, but I'm not discounting any possibilities when it comes to entertainment (holodeck) and medical technologies.

 

I've got to go with transporters. Great for story telling, but based on pure magic.

 

Well any technology sufficiently advanced...

 

Transporter that can transport life forms.

Universal Translator



Maybe nots would include solid holograms and true artificial gravity.


As for FTL ? Well the concept of tachyons is there and if can find a way to cover a ship in a tachyon bubble you could get it to go FTL.....in theory.

Replicators are already in there infant stages and I think that "free" enegry is alreday here but just being sat on.