darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
In LTBYLB, the fugitive Charonian had been on the lam in his stolen shuttle for MONTHS.
I'll take canon fact over fanon analogy, thank you.
Civilian Space Travel?
- Thread starter XKin
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In LTBYLB, the fugitive Charonian had been on the lam in his stolen shuttle for MONTHS.
I'll take canon fact over fanon analogy, thank you.
We could argue that no shuttle before VOY was ever shown at explicit warp speed. We could also argue that no craft referred to as a shuttle before TNG "Skin of Evil" was explicitly said to be making an interstellar journey. Most of the seemingly independent shuttling could in fact be a case of the starship dropping the shuttle at the outskirts of a star system and then going her own merry way - possibly because, as occasionally shown with the systems of Sol and Bajor at least, it sometimes is necessary to slow down to impulse when entering a star system, and thus to spend a lot of time going inwards. A couple of hours' ride on a shuttle would be a handy solution then, giving the starships more time to do starshippy things.
However, such argumentation would not reverse the fact that the shuttles in VOY, including types familiar from TNG, were explicated as being warp-capable. While it might not necessarily be that everything with nacelles goes to warp (remember that subspace fields, generated by subspace coils, are handy at lowering inertial mass and thus useful for sublight drive as well), it would be a fairly safe bet that all the things we hear called "shuttle", and even some of the things we hear called "shuttlepod", are capable of warp speed of some sort.
Not too much of it, tho: the highest ever quoted for a Starfleet shuttle would be warp 4 for the unseen Type 9 of VOY "Resolutions". But warp 3 is already a perfectly viable interstellar speed in most Trek.
Supposedly, then, "shuttle" can refer to shuttling between stars just as well as to shuttling between a ship and a surface. It's not as if the ranges of a space "shuttle" , a Boeing 737 intercity "shuttle" and a rail-moving airport "shuttle" are identical today, either.
Whether very small interstellar shuttles are popular or not might be a technology- and era-tied issue. ENT and TOS didn't have too many interstellar vessels significantly smaller than the hero starship; TAS was the first to really begin to show these, and may reflect the introduction of compact warp drives to civilian markets, perhaps slightly preceded by their introduction on Starfleet shuttlecraft.
Timo Saloniemi
However, such argumentation would not reverse the fact that the shuttles in VOY, including types familiar from TNG, were explicated as being warp-capable. While it might not necessarily be that everything with nacelles goes to warp (remember that subspace fields, generated by subspace coils, are handy at lowering inertial mass and thus useful for sublight drive as well), it would be a fairly safe bet that all the things we hear called "shuttle", and even some of the things we hear called "shuttlepod", are capable of warp speed of some sort.
Not too much of it, tho: the highest ever quoted for a Starfleet shuttle would be warp 4 for the unseen Type 9 of VOY "Resolutions". But warp 3 is already a perfectly viable interstellar speed in most Trek.
Supposedly, then, "shuttle" can refer to shuttling between stars just as well as to shuttling between a ship and a surface. It's not as if the ranges of a space "shuttle" , a Boeing 737 intercity "shuttle" and a rail-moving airport "shuttle" are identical today, either.
Whether very small interstellar shuttles are popular or not might be a technology- and era-tied issue. ENT and TOS didn't have too many interstellar vessels significantly smaller than the hero starship; TAS was the first to really begin to show these, and may reflect the introduction of compact warp drives to civilian markets, perhaps slightly preceded by their introduction on Starfleet shuttlecraft.
Timo Saloniemi
Why? How many civilians own ships capable of traversing the ocean? And how often do they bump into each other out there?
Then you should check your facts. You are wrong. It had been stolen two weeks earlier, and by the time Enterprise found it it was already leaking atmosphere.
Who's talking about traversing the ocean/galaxy?
We don't even see them buzzing around planets.
Go to Southamption or Monaco and you'll see hundreds of civilian vessels.
To be sure, space is big - even around planets. To get the sort of a traffic jam you see above Coruscant or Rubanis or Trantor, you wouldn't need thousands of small spacecraft. You'd need hundreds of millions to ensure that several would be within visual range of each other.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
We should see hundreds of millions of ships.
I'm sick and tired of watching the Enterprise for example approach a planet that just looks like a matte painting. They need to texturise the Star Trek universe to show it buzzing with activity.
Why buzz with activity? That's so awfully tiresome. You could spend all that time in your holosuite instead...
No, seriously, why would people be buzzing around in space? It's not that exciting. And there are more efficient ways to exploit space than having lots of moving vehicles swarm around.
Timo Saloniemi
No, seriously, why would people be buzzing around in space? It's not that exciting. And there are more efficient ways to exploit space than having lots of moving vehicles swarm around.
Timo Saloniemi
Aesthetically I think it would look good.
A background detail that gives the viewer the impression that things are active and are happening in the Star Trek universe.
Why? As Timo pointed out, space is big: Unless there was some huge space jam, seeing hundreds of millions of ships at one time would look odder than the matte painting they'd be juxtaposed against. And even if for some bizzare reason there were hundreds of millions of ships in orbit, would an apporoaching spaceship be able to visually locate them? Even from a low orbit, all other ships would probably look like a tiny dot (at best). Not quite the same thing, but when you look up in the sky, how many planes do you see? Unless you live near an airfield, I'd guess between zero and two. There are almost always thousands of planes in the air at any given time, but from your limited perspective, things don't look all that busy.
As far as the original question goes, it seems to me that civilian space travel is quite common. There's quite a bit of direct evidence, but also indirect evidence: All of those folks living (and working) on other colonies have to have some means of getting from point A to B.
...OTOH, many of them seem to have gone to outer space in order to pursue a career in organic farming.
These luddite-variety colonists probably wouldn't see a need to travel in space much after settling on their planet of choice. They wouldn't import or export much, either, during those early years (decades, centuries?) when their colony consists of a TNG- or DS9-style village of a couple of hundred people.
Timo Saloniemi
These luddite-variety colonists probably wouldn't see a need to travel in space much after settling on their planet of choice. They wouldn't import or export much, either, during those early years (decades, centuries?) when their colony consists of a TNG- or DS9-style village of a couple of hundred people.
Timo Saloniemi
Honest to god, I stood in the company parking lot at lunchtime a few weeks ago getting some warm sun on my face (no windows in my part of the building), and I counted 12 aircraft visible all at once, from 6 or 8 airliners passing by at high altitude, to a private jet taking off from Teterboro 4 miles north of us, to an airliner on approach to Newark, 10 miles to the south. I think the Fox news chopper cruised over the highway too.
Yeah, we're a busy spot here, but I'd say that's what a spaceport should look like too. Certainly not hundreds of ships milling about, but, like any good airport or marina, certainly at least a dozen ships in motion.
There are hundreds of satellites in orbit about the earth right now. How many do you see when you see a picture of earth?
That's the real world/universe though.
Star Trek is not.
Therefore real universe examples mean little or nothing.
In "Close Encounters" Spielberg had the mothership rising up from behind Devils Tower. He said it made no sense, but it didn't matter because visually it worked.
In the same sense, showing SOME traffic at least around planets in Star Trek would make it more visually convincing that the Trek universe is alive and active.
I don't see the problem with it.
While the problem would originally have been technological-financial (how to film even one starship affordably, let alone several), there could also be a dramaturgical reason to it. If space is really teeming with activity, how come our heroes are the ones who have to sort out the mess of the week? Why not one of those others?
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
It's called "verisimilitude."
I can't believe someone is arguing that Star Trek is too realistic.
Why wouldn't shuttles increase in range and capability as technology progressed, miniaturized and evolved? A warp capable shuttle is much more useful than a sublight one, and if you can give it a respectable range, why not?
Plenty of people do, just not many people use their craft to it's fullest potential.
It doesn't need to be realistic.
Besides, it's a little odd to defend Trek as being realistic by having no visible traffic around planets, when it's the same show that has included Q appearing a ball of light with three snake heads.
I would say civilian space travel is actually a pretty common thing. And it won't cost you a million bucks or so to go up in a shuttle.
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