Can you see a ship go by at Warp speeds?

[blssdwlf]

Oh sure, nuclear war among it's inhabitants or THIS IS CETI ALPHA 5!! are virtual impossibilities

They kind of are. I repeat: if there's something on that planet that would render it uninhabitable in the time it takes for light to travel a few light years... hell, you're in an escape pod, it's not like you have a wide selection of choice landing sites. Your only real options boil down to "put phaser to head, pull trigger" and "pray real hard we get rescued before the talking apes lobotomize us all."

Heck, if you are in an escape pod then help is coming to you - not the other way around So there is nothing for you to repeat there

No, I was talking about a ship in trouble and needing a planet to shelter or what not or for looking for a specific item that could help them. For that, real-time (or FTL) sensors would be useful. Not years old sensor data.

On that note, it's worth keeping in mind that Kirk's FTL sensors didn't exactly warn him that Ceti Alpha Six was about to explode for no apparent reason.

Sure - but we don't know if they were just looking for a planet that's gonna explode. We just knew that Spock found a "habitable, although a bit savage, somewhat inhospitable" planet. For all we know, a giant high speed asteroid ala "The Paradise Syndrome" smashed into Ceti Alpha VI and blew it up which wouldn't have shown up on any initial survey of the sixth planet.

So keep in mind that in Star Trek, cataclysmic events can happen in any short period of time. Realistic? Probably not. But this is Star Trek

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Oh sure, nuclear war among it's inhabitants or THIS IS CETI ALPHA 5!! are virtual impossibilities

They kind of are. I repeat: if there's something on that planet that would render it uninhabitable in the time it takes for light to travel a few light years... hell, you're in an escape pod, it's not like you have a wide selection of choice landing sites. Your only real options boil down to "put phaser to head, pull trigger" and "pray real hard we get rescued before the talking apes lobotomize us all."

Heck, if you are in an escape pod then help is coming to you - not the other way around So there is nothing for you to repeat there

No, I was talking about a ship in trouble and needing a planet to shelter or what not or for looking for a specific item that could help them. For that, real-time (or FTL) sensors would be useful. Not years old sensor data.

If starships had the kinds of sensors that could pinpoint a specific "something useful" at interstellar distances, they'd have eliminated half the plots of Star Trek in the first place.

Sure - but we don't know if they were just looking for a planet that's gonna explode. We just knew that Spock found a "habitable, although a bit savage, somewhat inhospitable" planet. For all we know, a giant high speed asteroid ala "The Paradise Syndrome" smashed into Ceti Alpha VI and blew it up which wouldn't have shown up on any initial survey of the sixth planet.

Indeed. Sort of underscores the point that you won't see it unless you're specifically looking for it, and IF you're looking for it you've probably entered orbit anyway.

Besides, the whole "scan for life forms on that solar system way the hell over there" is incredibly story-limiting; it's just more "speed of plot" contrivance, since any time you need the sensors to NOT be that accurate for dramatic purposes you just conveniently forget they can do that. Better to acknowledge those limitations in the first place (which is consistent with canon, AFAIK) and err on the side of drama where Our Heroes have to "Go in for a closer look" when they really want to know what's going on with a particular planet.

 

[blssdwlf]

If starships had the kinds of sensors that could pinpoint a specific "something useful" at interstellar distances, they'd have eliminated half the plots of Star Trek in the first place.

Well I didn't say that Star Trek plots are all gonna be well written

Indeed. Sort of underscores the point that you won't see it unless you're specifically looking for it, and IF you're looking for it you've probably entered orbit anyway.

Most of the time, yes, they would've entered the star system by then. Although a couple of times all they needed to do was get close to the system to determine if there was life there or not.

Besides, the whole "scan for life forms on that solar system way the hell over there" is incredibly story-limiting; it's just more "speed of plot" contrivance, since any time you need the sensors to NOT be that accurate for dramatic purposes you just conveniently forget they can do that. Better to acknowledge those limitations in the first place (which is consistent with canon, AFAIK) and err on the side of drama where Our Heroes have to "Go in for a closer look" when they really want to know what's going on with a particular planet.

I suppose that is more the case post-TOS than during TOS run. I can only imagine Sulu ordering the Excelsior to "go in for a closer look" to figure out that Praxis looks like an apple core vs a long-range sensor scan.

There are a few stories from TOS that had the whole "long-range scan the hell over there" made more complicated (and thus not a simple solution) by clever writers. Clever solutions like it takes time to look over a distant star system and/or increase the number of star systems (or objects, like asteroids) to look over which slows down the search. Or introduce some interference like an ion storm or such. But these stories have to be done infrequently or they wear out their welcome...

Now TNG+ that's a different story and perhaps their idea of long range sensors is quite different.

 

[SpyOne]

As an interesting sidenote, Firefox wants to capitalize "Borg" seems like Mozilla has some trek fans.

Sadly, tennis seems more likely. The spell checker only recognizes that string of letters as a surname, which should be capitalized.
Now, if only I could figure out why my spell checker recognizes "Saudi" but not "Arabia".

 

[SpyOne]

Wow. I hadn't really thought about this, but I'm not sure it would be possible for a human eye to understand what it saw if the object was moving faster than light: the images you would receive would be so brief that I'm not sure they would register at all (most people can't perceive something under 1/10 second in duration).

For this reason I've always assumed a starship traveling at warp is nearly blind except by the limited picture it can get from subspace radar, which can only detect massive objects like planets and asteroids and other warp-driven vessels.

And yet, ships traveling at Warp seem to have a pretty good idea of what is around them. "It is an M-Class planet, Captain" and all that. Clearly they have access to FTL sensors that are pretty sensitive.

Would you need FTL sensors to know a distant planet is M-class? Theoretically we can already do that with current sensors, scanning for chemical traces like oxygen and carbon. Trek sensors are more sophisticated and more sensitive, but there's very little in Trek that ever requires them to gather real time information on distant planets/objects/ships other than their relative position and (in the case of planets) composition.

Perhaps I should have said, "It is a Klingon ship, approaching at Warp 7."
Point remains: ships traveling at warp are shown to have detailed awareness of their environment, suggesting refined FTL sensors.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Wow. I hadn't really thought about this, but I'm not sure it would be possible for a human eye to understand what it saw if the object was moving faster than light: the images you would receive would be so brief that I'm not sure they would register at all (most people can't perceive something under 1/10 second in duration).
And yet, ships traveling at Warp seem to have a pretty good idea of what is around them. "It is an M-Class planet, Captain" and all that. Clearly they have access to FTL sensors that are pretty sensitive.

Would you need FTL sensors to know a distant planet is M-class? Theoretically we can already do that with current sensors, scanning for chemical traces like oxygen and carbon. Trek sensors are more sophisticated and more sensitive, but there's very little in Trek that ever requires them to gather real time information on distant planets/objects/ships other than their relative position and (in the case of planets) composition.

Perhaps I should have said, "It is a Klingon ship, approaching at Warp 7."

I do believe I diectly specified that "warp driven vessels" is one of the few things FTL sensors can easily detect at a distance.