Navigation lights in space

[Timo]

Just a little bit of trivia that the designers of Star Trek ships don't seem to give much thought to:

Today's seagoing and airborne craft have right-of-way lights where red indicates port and green indicates starboard. These are carefully installed so that red cannot be seen from starboard and green cannot be seen from port. If you see red, then, you are seeing a craft whose bow points to the left, and thus the craft most probably is moving to the left of you.

Starships have right-of-way lights, too. Often they are poorly shielded, so red is easily seen from starboard and green from port. But that's not the worst of it - with starships, you can't tell which way is up, which removes most of the information content of seeing a green or red light! If you see red, the ship's bow might be pointed to the left, or to the right, up, down, or any direction in between...

Now, having a special light that indicates bow and is visible to both port and starboard (and up and down) would solve that problem. And the TOS Enterprise sort of has this, with a yellow light atop the bow (but not protruding much) - but confusingly, a similar light is found atop the shuttlebay, again defeating the right-of-way idea.

How would you devise a Star Trek navigation light system that restores practical value to the probably dramatically necessary red and green lights? Could this be retconned into being part of TOS, or TNG, or ENT? How extensive would be modifications on the models or the VFX have to be?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tiberius]

I think the lights are only used in areas like spacedock, where all the ships are oriented the same way anyway.

 

[Timo]

But you don't need any sort of lights inside spacedock, because that area is brightly lit by dockside floodlights, and you can see the bow, stern and direction of movement of the ship regardless of running lights...

Outside, there's no way of telling how the ships are oriented. On the night side of Earth, say, running lights might give crucial information about how the ships move in the more congested orbits. Not so, though, if the red and green lights don't get some help from a dedicated bow light, or from other innovative arrangements.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cary L. Brown]

But you don't need any sort of lights inside spacedock, because that area is brightly lit by dockside floodlights, and you can see the bow, stern and direction of movement of the ship regardless of running lights...

Outside, there's no way of telling how the ships are oriented. On the night side of Earth, say, running lights might give crucial information about how the ships move in the more congested orbits. Not so, though, if the red and green lights don't get some help from a dedicated bow light, or from other innovative arrangements.

Timo Saloniemi

I think that this is a combination of two things...

First, a nod to tradition.

Second, a way of identifying the orientation and aspect of a ship in the pitch black of interstellar space.

The TOS Enterprise, for example, has a pretty nice set of lights all around it (including those on top of the engine nacelles and another positive little one on the underside secondary hull on the central "deflector grip" element).

Basically, even if the ship was in pitch blackness, it would be possible to visually identify the orientation and motion of a ship with no other information provided, as long as you were within visual range.

Now, on-screen, this is never really an issue, because what we see is always "studio lighting" rather than realistic deep-space lighting. But I treat this as a "computer-enhanced" image. Maybe the lights are a key element of how the main viewscreen computer interprets and translates the real visual information (which is very scant) into something that the crew can see on-screen and easily respond to?

 

[Timo]

With a proper system of navigating lights, though, you could tell which way a ship of unknown or arbitrary configuration is going. You could discern the bow of a Borg Cube from its stern, starboard side or bottom at a glance if the Borg decided to assimilate the Federation Navigation Light Standard. Without such a system, you have to rely on recognition charts, and the red and green lights are superfluous.

It's a bit unsatisfactory to consider the reds and greens mere useless nods to tradition, is all...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Were there red-green lights on the TMP ship?

 

[jayrath]

They may have served future purposes of which we are entirely unaware. For example, they may be only the visual aspect of transponders that make orientation entirely clear. For example, if I were docking a shuttle, I'd sure want my long distance approach to visually verified.

 

[Maverisms]

Starship Navigation lights work just fine when you realize that they aren't meant to mimic ocean going light schemes. They mimic aircraft lights, and serve the same purpose.

Anyone who has watch aircraft landing knows that there are many angles that allow you to see both light sets. The main thing seeing the lights tells you is which way is right and which left. The motion of the lights indicates which way the aircraft is moving, and that tells you it's orientation.

Federation Starships use registry marking lights. These should not only serve to indicate the ship's designation but also her direction of travel. The orientation of the the navigation lights to the registry lights tell you everything you need to know. Which way she's facing, whether you are above or below her, etc.

I doubt they planned it that way, and the lighting choices post TNG tend to drown out the registry lighting, but I don't think there's much need to criticize.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Just a little bit of trivia that the designers of Star Trek ships don't seem to give much thought to:

Today's seagoing and airborne craft have right-of-way lights where red indicates port and green indicates starboard. These are carefully installed so that red cannot be seen from starboard and green cannot be seen from port. If you see red, then, you are seeing a craft whose bow points to the left, and thus the craft most probably is moving to the left of you.

Starships have right-of-way lights, too. Often they are poorly shielded, so red is easily seen from starboard and green from port. But that's not the worst of it - with starships, you can't tell which way is up, which removes most of the information content of seeing a green or red light! If you see red, the ship's bow might be pointed to the left, or to the right, up, down, or any direction in between...

Now, having a special light that indicates bow and is visible to both port and starboard (and up and down) would solve that problem. And the TOS Enterprise sort of has this, with a yellow light atop the bow (but not protruding much) - but confusingly, a similar light is found atop the shuttlebay, again defeating the right-of-way idea.

How would you devise a Star Trek navigation light system that restores practical value to the probably dramatically necessary red and green lights? Could this be retconned into being part of TOS, or TNG, or ENT? How extensive would be modifications on the models or the VFX have to be?

Timo Saloniemi

Doesn't this sort of beg the question as to why a starship flying around in deep space would be trying to VISUALLY navigate relative to another nearby vessel? Especially when various types of sensors can give you that kind of information without ever actually needing to SEE the other ship visually (and even when they DO make visual contact, the image is always displayed on the main viewscreen, which makes no attempt to represent bearing or distance).

Frankly I'm inclined to toss ANY similarities to modern running light setups as purely coincidental and assume these little blinkies serve some other purpose entirely. Most REAL spacecraft aren't equipped with navigation lights and use other implements--mainly radar/lidar and graphical visual targets--to navigate in formation with each other, and some combination of these is likely to be more useful on starships.

If I was a betting man, I'd wager the starship's navigation lights are relativistic navigational implements. Their blinking pattern is set to a universal time interval or their exact color to a very specific visual frequency. A passing spacecraft traveling at relativistic speeds could therefore quickly determine the other ship's relative velocity just by measuring the doppler shift in either its frequency or the timing of the blinks. Your sensors would be able to analyze these from huge astronomical distances and tell you instantly what direction he's moving and at what relative velocity.

 

[Timo]

I guess there exists a niche in the distance range where blinkies become informative. Say, at 10-10,000 km, the human eye could well discern a single red or green light from the dark background, even though it would be a mere dot whose state of motion would be near-impossible to determine. On a 2D playfield, that would already tell him a lot. At closer ranges, he could see shapes, and at longer ranges, he would need visual aids. But a lot of spacecraft maneuvering would happen at 10-10,000 klicks, including combat by small craft that have windshields, and cargo hauling and maintenance by like. Just because a system has a limited application range doesn't make it useless or not worth having.

In 3D space, the color of the dot would tell next to nothing, though. Which is the driving force in my quest: the blinkies are there, and the human eye could use them at a certain range niche, but only if there was added information. At closer ranges, multiple lights at various points of the spaceframe would do the trick, but at that point the lights would already be superfluous. The range niche for a system with, say, three lights (red, blue, yellow) would be narrower than in 2D applications. But it might still exist...

If I was a betting man, I'd wager the starship's navigation lights are relativistic navigational implements. Their blinking pattern is set to a universal time interval or their exact color to a very specific visual frequency.

Loving it already.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Starlock]

I guess there exists a niche in the distance range where blinkies become informative. Say, at 10-10,000 km, the human eye could well discern a single red or green light from the dark background, even though it would be a mere dot whose state of motion would be near-impossible to determine. On a 2D playfield, that would already tell him a lot. At closer ranges, he could see shapes, and at longer ranges, he would need visual aids. But a lot of spacecraft maneuvering would happen at 10-10,000 klicks, including combat by small craft that have windshields, and cargo hauling and maintenance by like. Just because a system has a limited application range doesn't make it useless or not worth having.

In 3D space, the color of the dot would tell next to nothing, though. Which is the driving force in my quest: the blinkies are there, and the human eye could use them at a certain range niche, but only if there was added information. At closer ranges, multiple lights at various points of the spaceframe would do the trick, but at that point the lights would already be superfluous. The range niche for a system with, say, three lights (red, blue, yellow) would be narrower than in 2D applications. But it might still exist...

If I was a betting man, I'd wager the starship's navigation lights are relativistic navigational implements. Their blinking pattern is set to a universal time interval or their exact color to a very specific visual frequency.

Loving it already.

Timo Saloniemi

Which explains why Workbees, Travel Pods, Vulcan Long Range Shuttles, the USS Enterprise and the USS Reliant all seemed to have the same "blinking" pattern...?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

A starship, alone, in deep space has no need for blinking external lighting, or "self-illumination" either for that matter... except for pure psychological effect upon the crew of the craft itself, I suppose.

A starship, observed at tens of millions of kilometers distance, by the naked eye, is invisible even with blinking lights. So in those cases, the light serve no purpose. However, with a "telescope" (whether optical or "sensors-based") the lights would be visible, even if the ship is not. You could recognize the ship, and some information about the ship's behavior, in much the same way a blind person reads Braille.

In combat or fleet operations siutations, where the ships are "mere" hundreds of kilometers apart, these lights would be very useful for manual navigation purposes, using visual identification. But, of course, what we see on-screen (either on a main viewer or on our TV screens) is not the same was what dialogue describes, so it's very fair to say that the visual representations are computer-augmented representations, not direct visual data.

Which leads me back to the idea that the flashing lights are used as a form of "computer Braille" to be used in creating the augmented visual displays we're used to seeing.

The computer, using all available information, can project a good "representative" view on the ship's displays to allow the crew to properly plan and execute maneuvers. And with these lights, you can do so without needing to use active sensor scans, but instead merely use passive "visual" returns.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

Looking at First Contact opening, Enterprise seems to have 6 lights that blink first, then two more that blink after that, and so on. Out of the 6, 4 are on the back of necelles, 1 on the belly, and one behind bridge. The two are on either side of the soucer. The first 6 immediately paint the outline of the ship from any angle and tell you about the direction the ship is moving in. Even if you're looking from the front, you can tell if it's coming or going. I guess the other two further help outline the vessel?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

A starship, alone, in deep space has no need for blinking external lighting, or "self-illumination" either for that matter... except for pure psychological effect upon the crew of the craft itself, I suppose.

A starship, observed at tens of millions of kilometers distance, by the naked eye, is invisible even with blinking lights. So in those cases, the light serve no purpose. However, with a "telescope" (whether optical or "sensors-based") the lights would be visible, even if the ship is not. You could recognize the ship, and some information about the ship's behavior, in much the same way a blind person reads Braille.

In combat or fleet operations siutations, where the ships are "mere" hundreds of kilometers apart, these lights would be very useful for manual navigation purposes, using visual identification. But, of course, what we see on-screen (either on a main viewer or on our TV screens) is not the same was what dialogue describes, so it's very fair to say that the visual representations are computer-augmented representations, not direct visual data.

Which leads me back to the idea that the flashing lights are used as a form of "computer Braille" to be used in creating the augmented visual displays we're used to seeing.

The computer, using all available information, can project a good "representative" view on the ship's displays to allow the crew to properly plan and execute maneuvers. And with these lights, you can do so without needing to use active sensor scans, but instead merely use passive "visual" returns.

If that were the case, a starship could effectively enter a kind of "stealth mode" just by turning off its running lights. That seems a bit too simplistic for me, especially considering the kinds of advanced signal processing and pattern recognition software likely to be available three hundred years from now.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

A starship, alone, in deep space has no need for blinking external lighting, or "self-illumination" either for that matter... except for pure psychological effect upon the crew of the craft itself, I suppose.

A starship, observed at tens of millions of kilometers distance, by the naked eye, is invisible even with blinking lights. So in those cases, the light serve no purpose. However, with a "telescope" (whether optical or "sensors-based") the lights would be visible, even if the ship is not. You could recognize the ship, and some information about the ship's behavior, in much the same way a blind person reads Braille.

In combat or fleet operations siutations, where the ships are "mere" hundreds of kilometers apart, these lights would be very useful for manual navigation purposes, using visual identification. But, of course, what we see on-screen (either on a main viewer or on our TV screens) is not the same was what dialogue describes, so it's very fair to say that the visual representations are computer-augmented representations, not direct visual data.

Which leads me back to the idea that the flashing lights are used as a form of "computer Braille" to be used in creating the augmented visual displays we're used to seeing.

The computer, using all available information, can project a good "representative" view on the ship's displays to allow the crew to properly plan and execute maneuvers. And with these lights, you can do so without needing to use active sensor scans, but instead merely use passive "visual" returns.

If that were the case, a starship could effectively enter a kind of "stealth mode" just by turning off its running lights. That seems a bit too simplistic for me, especially considering the kinds of advanced signal processing and pattern recognition software likely to be available three hundred years from now.

Well, despite this not being evident on-screen, I've always assumed that this was really what they were doing in "Balance of Terror." The idea of talking softly was meaningless in that episode (though they were clearly trying to follow the model of WWII submarine dramas). But shutting down various externally-detectable systems (including those lights) would be a key element of how they went "dark" in BOT.

Now... I didn't say that JUST turning these off would make a ship "stealthy." You're totally mis-reading my comment... I mean, totally misreading it.

I was not saying that the ship turning off its lights would be all that dramatically "stealthed" and I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

What I DID say was that the other ships in formation would not be required to use active, high-energy scanners in order to know the basic of the ships they were interacting with.

In other words, it allows the OBSERVER to be more stealthy, not that it allowed the OBSERVED to be more stealthy.

Obviously, shutting lights down helps in stealth a bit. But think about modern aircraft (which is a topic many orders of magnitude simpler than dealing with spacecraft millions, or trillions, of miles apart in deep space). Which allows you to be more easily detected by an enemy... having your navigational lights on, or having your radar system on?

 

[FalTorPan]

Navigation lights have no practical use in Trek's future, particularly since we're dealing with space vehicles that need not always travel "forward."

 

[Timo]

In the general case, though, they do. In practice, they do "sideways" and "backwards" about as often as today's waterborne ships do, and "up/down" is reasonably rare as well.

"True" spacecraft in Trek, such as the workbees and travel pods, don't appear to have red and green navigation lights; they just have beacons for attention. But shuttles already move just like starships, and thus more or less like aircraft or ships, making the question of adjusting the red/green system for the occasional 3D consideration an interesting one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

A starship, alone, in deep space has no need for blinking external lighting, or "self-illumination" either for that matter... except for pure psychological effect upon the crew of the craft itself, I suppose.

A starship, observed at tens of millions of kilometers distance, by the naked eye, is invisible even with blinking lights. So in those cases, the light serve no purpose. However, with a "telescope" (whether optical or "sensors-based") the lights would be visible, even if the ship is not. You could recognize the ship, and some information about the ship's behavior, in much the same way a blind person reads Braille.

In combat or fleet operations siutations, where the ships are "mere" hundreds of kilometers apart, these lights would be very useful for manual navigation purposes, using visual identification. But, of course, what we see on-screen (either on a main viewer or on our TV screens) is not the same was what dialogue describes, so it's very fair to say that the visual representations are computer-augmented representations, not direct visual data.

Which leads me back to the idea that the flashing lights are used as a form of "computer Braille" to be used in creating the augmented visual displays we're used to seeing.

The computer, using all available information, can project a good "representative" view on the ship's displays to allow the crew to properly plan and execute maneuvers. And with these lights, you can do so without needing to use active sensor scans, but instead merely use passive "visual" returns.

If that were the case, a starship could effectively enter a kind of "stealth mode" just by turning off its running lights. That seems a bit too simplistic for me, especially considering the kinds of advanced signal processing and pattern recognition software likely to be available three hundred years from now.

Well, despite this not being evident on-screen, I've always assumed that this was really what they were doing in "Balance of Terror." The idea of talking softly was meaningless in that episode (though they were clearly trying to follow the model of WWII submarine dramas). But shutting down various externally-detectable systems (including those lights) would be a key element of how they went "dark" in BOT.

Now... I didn't say that JUST turning these off would make a ship "stealthy." You're totally mis-reading my comment... I mean, totally misreading it.

I was not saying that the ship turning off its lights would be all that dramatically "stealthed" and I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

What I DID say was that the other ships in formation would not be required to use active, high-energy scanners in order to know the basic of the ships they were interacting with.

In other words, it allows the OBSERVER to be more stealthy, not that it allowed the OBSERVED to be more stealthy.

Obviously, shutting lights down helps in stealth a bit. But think about modern aircraft (which is a topic many orders of magnitude simpler than dealing with spacecraft millions, or trillions, of miles apart in deep space). Which allows you to be more easily detected by an enemy... having your navigational lights on, or having your radar system on?

All valid points, except that
1) The navigation lights would normally be useless unless the ships are flying in formation, which they very rarely are and
2) Low-energy sensors like lidar and short range directional radar are just as effective in this regard with the advantage that they can actually provide precise data a computer can use.

Visual targets are only useful for human beings who are evolved to take visual cues. Programming a computer to recognize and interpret a visual target is a lot more complicated than programming them to send a laser beam to each other constantly updating their navigation data.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In the general case, though, they do. In practice, they do "sideways" and "backwards" about as often as today's waterborne ships do, and "up/down" is reasonably rare as well.

"True" spacecraft in Trek, such as the workbees and travel pods, don't appear to have red and green navigation lights; they just have beacons for attention. But shuttles already move just like starships, and thus more or less like aircraft or ships, making the question of adjusting the red/green system for the occasional 3D consideration an interesting one.

I cannot and will not interpret this as anything more than the severe limitations of late 80s/early 90s VFX and frequent reuse of old shots. It's enough to know that Star Trek's reputation for scientific accuracy is somewhat exagerrated, especially when it comes to the movements of spacecraft.

STXI doesn't seem to have this problem, though, as lateral motion and roll/yaw moves seem a lot more common even for larger vessels. I'm disinclined to think there's any technical reason Prime Universe vessels don't have similar maneuverability; it would otherwise defeat the purpose of installing a dozen reaction control thrusters all around the hull.

 

[Timo]

You can't blame the banking U-turns of the E-D on "VFX tech shortcomings"! That was a purely artistic choice, and it's difficult to see why the similar movement of the TOS vessel (even if seen in shorter and more ambiguous snippets) would be any more related to VFX shortcomings. If they wanted, TPTB could have shot Kirk's ship going sideways. But Trek starships just plain don't do that.

RCS thrusters have never been indicated to play any role in controlling a starship's motion when the impulse engines are blasting or the warp engines are humming. They appear to be a special system for maneuvering when the usual engines are shut down or idled - of very limited use and low power, but OTOH of very high visibility if they do see use. Just watch "Booby Trap" to see that we couldn't really miss RCS activity if it were taking place...

Even in STXI, starships move bow first so often that red for port, green for starboard makes sense. Or would, if we also had something like blue for top and yellow for bottom...

Timo Saloniemi