I've heard some bosun's whistles, or boatswain's calls now & then too
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- Thread starter Velocity
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Starfleet is an armed space navy that is always armed, and is the only service that formally fights wars on behalf of the Federation, excluding forming occasional alliances during war. Being a military or not does not nullify that fact. The Japanese SDF is still an armed force. The USCG is officially a military organization at all times that joins forces with the USN during war. Starfleet is formally by itself, excluding the aforementioned.
Didn't someone point out in this thread or elsewhere that if Starfleet was anything like the 21st century navy, you would never see a Lieutenant much less a Lieutenant Commander performing such mundane duties as operating the helm and steering the ship. The captain would give a course change order, the officer of the deck would repeat the order directly to the helmsman (an enlisted sailor) who would then execute the order.
I would guess that piloting a starship is a great deal more complicated and technical than piloting a boat. The helmsman we've seen in Trek are usually ensigns(like acting ensign crusher, ensign RO, or ensign Mayweather), or Jr LT's(like Tom Paris) I think Sulu was a full LT. I don't remember Jadzia's rank, but they had an interesting bridge crew on the defiant.
Or 19th or 20th century. Helmsman is an enlisted steering position, while navigator is a fairly senior officer, head of a small but important department. I suspect the OS setup was basically adopting the familiar aircraft pilot and co-pilot arrangement, but with nautical-ized titles.
It seems like it should be less complicated. On the water you're steering a ship through varying conditions of weather, sea state, sea room, visibility, traffic, soundings etc. In space it's just millions after millions of miles of nothing.
Except it isn't. Space is big, but it isn't empty.
Fuck sakes, just stop. Once this topic gets going, it never ends, and just devolves into "IS A MILITARY!"/"ISN'T A MILITARY!" being hurled ad nauseum until the thread gets locked. Yes, Starfleet has all the trappings of a military and performs the exact same duties as militaries. Yes, there are numerous (well, five) references stating Starfleet isn't a military. This forum has had this discussion countless times, and every one of them has turned into shit-slinging and immature behaviour by people on both sides of the argument. Like I said earlier, the issue will not have a satisfactory answer, as neither side of the argument can be effectively argued against.
If Starfleet was like any kind of organization, military or civilian, than you wouldn't have the higher-ranking officers being the ones who do all the work. That's simply not how the world works, you spend your career proving you can do a job just so you can achieve a position where you don't have to do the job. The senior staff sit in cushy chairs and bitch at their hardworking staffs to work harder, they do not do the jobs themselves. Yet, in Starfleet the high-ranking officers are the ones climbing in conduits and tubes and getting their hands dirty. Makes no sense.
While you are certainly right, they hardly ever presented it that way. Every episode is nebulas, dust clouds, asteroid fields, temporal anomalies, mine fields, event wakes, etc... In Booby Trap, Picard literally has to power everything down & coast it like a row boat lol. They always made it out like space travel was a precision maneuvering task, even at sub-light speeds
Yeah, I know, they had to make it interesting, but even so there is a LOT of time in many, many episodes where the helm team is just sitting there as the same starfield goes on and on and on. And when something does happen, the captain or F/O is right there to decide what to do. It doesn't really seem like something you'd need two highly-trained commissioned officers to handle.
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Early in TOS history, we get this exchange:
This is long before Ensign Chekov signed on, of course.
it's called watchstanding. In the US Navy, you stand hours and hours and hours of watch where nothing happens. 
In TOS, helm includes tactical control, and navigation likely involves split-second decisions should they unexpectedly drop out of warp or run across a subspace anomaly (plus, evasive manuevers).
Seasoned officers who attend many years of specialized training are probably necessary to perform these tasks.
I assume, anyway that the senior officers (your Sulus, Worfs, Parises) don't often serve full watches, but in fact takeover when they know they're approaching a destination, or suspect activity in a region.
We see thousands of times when a senior officer arrives or leaves their station and is immediately replaced by or replaces an n.d. Even when no watch change is apparent.
Seasoned officers who attend many years of specialized training are probably necessary to perform these tasks.
I assume, anyway that the senior officers (your Sulus, Worfs, Parises) don't often serve full watches, but in fact takeover when they know they're approaching a destination, or suspect activity in a region.
We see thousands of times when a senior officer arrives or leaves their station and is immediately replaced by or replaces an n.d. Even when no watch change is apparent.
Roddenberry was a bomber pilot, then a commercial pilot. In both (usually) the guy who steered out ranked the guy who navigated.
Uh, try paying attention next time. My posts were not debating if Starfleet is a military or not. No matter the case, it is still an armed space navy and a formal service. At its basic level the word "navy" means a group of ships. If it's in space, then it's a space navy. If it's armed, then it's an armed space navy. You cannot argue with that. Unlike the "military or not" debate, it is a satisfactory answer.
Starfleet does not have to be exactly like the modern-day navy to be a navy, which, at its basic level, is a group of ships. Its peculiarities might in part be explained by Paramount and CBS wanting to give the main cast priority in screen time. Whatever the case is, it is a navy because it is a group of ships.
While starships have navigators, it really doesn't seem as if navigators have anything to do. I mean, what do we witness Chekov doing, in crises or in routine maneuvers? Nothing much.
<Sits on Troi's couch, gets comfortable>Yes, he punches buttons. Quite possibly the ship would blow up if he didn't. But he never talks about his job, not before, during or after. There's no interaction. Is he deciding the fate of the ship all of his own, without bothering to keep Kirk on the loop?<Gets up, thanks, sneaks a peek or two when Troi turns away>
Might be the title is a misnomer. Perhaps the navigator monitors the movements of everybody else. Perhaps he aims the guns so that the helmsman can press the trigger. Perhaps the navigator is the politruk, reporting directly to HQ, and wearing black gloves on his off hours. Perhaps the navigator is the spare helmsman, waiting for his colleague to keel over.
Hard to tell. But just like Tintin never does any reporting, Chekov never does anything amounting to navigating - it's Spock who brings up the maps, even!
Timo Saloniemi
<Sits on Troi's couch, gets comfortable>Yes, he punches buttons. Quite possibly the ship would blow up if he didn't. But he never talks about his job, not before, during or after. There's no interaction. Is he deciding the fate of the ship all of his own, without bothering to keep Kirk on the loop?<Gets up, thanks, sneaks a peek or two when Troi turns away>
Might be the title is a misnomer. Perhaps the navigator monitors the movements of everybody else. Perhaps he aims the guns so that the helmsman can press the trigger. Perhaps the navigator is the politruk, reporting directly to HQ, and wearing black gloves on his off hours. Perhaps the navigator is the spare helmsman, waiting for his colleague to keel over.
Hard to tell. But just like Tintin never does any reporting, Chekov never does anything amounting to navigating - it's Spock who brings up the maps, even!
Timo Saloniemi
No, trust me, I've been involved in a few of these discussions. Even being so bold as to say "armed" or "navy" even without intentionally insinuating that this means the same thing as "military" is inflammatory enough to bury us in a shit-slinging rabbit hole that will prevent us from ever seeing daylight. It really is best to just avoid the subject. Entirely.
Money does not exist, (have we discussed this before?)
Early Starfleet represented Earth, some traditions had to go to get the Russians and Chinese on board and not starting their own fleet service lol
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