Correct Physics in Trek

[Ronald Held]

They played baseball in a holodeck? If so things ate suspect because an entire field cannot physically fit inside one.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Maybe the holodeck resembled a police telephone box on the outside?

 

[sojourner]

I've noticed the interior lighting seemed to follow correct physics.

 

[Maurice]

...Enterprise was either moving at .25C (the purported "full impulse power" of starships) or .5C (as in "warp point five").

The .25c thing was a TNG tech manual thing. In TMP it's pretty clear warp point five means half light speed, because—as I noted previously—Jupiter at its farthest from Earth would take 1.8 hours to reach at half lightspeed.

Might be mistaken but doesn't dialouge in TMP tend to indicate full impulse is .5c?

Nope.

SCOTTY: Engineering to bridge. Impulse power at your discretion.
KIRK: Impulse power, Mr. Sulu. Ahead warp point five.

That's it.

 

[Ronald Held]

It seems that radio and other em based devives work according to our laws of Physics. Anyone think kf a counterexample?

 

[Maurice]

Well, in TMP the Enterprise uses maneuvering thrusters to leave the drydock, which means that the ship is changing its angular momentum in relation to the dock, so the ship either leaves the dock behind or slows down its own orbit enough that the dock pulls away from it.

Actually, simple relative motion applies on a scale this small; Enterprise could maneuver relative to spacedock as if both were motionless in space. For those kinds of small maneuvers, for anything above about 1000km orbit it'll take several hours for the differences in their orbits to become apparent.

However, if Spacedock is rotating, all bets are off. If the Enterprise is 'free floating' inside of the spacedock 'mushroom top', it would need constant thruster action to maintain relative position inside the enclosed space. One assumes there is some sort of inertia-imparting field that fixes this, but that's certainly not real physics!

I was referring to the drydock. The shroomdock is just silly.

 

[Ronald Held]

It seems as if natural objects obey tbe laws of newtonian or relativitic mechanics. Is that always true in Trek?
what about nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, or antimatter/matter annihilation not used for propulsion or power generation?

 

[zephramc]

In TNG:S1 (Arsenal of Freedom), a saucersection-less Enterprise dives into the atmosphere and builds up heat from friction. The plama/flames/whatever are visible. This also happens in S3 (Deja Q).

In STV, Captain Kirk slipped and fell off of El Capitan. Gravity was correctly displayed as Kirk plummeted to his death (he was of course rescued at the last second by Spock who wore gravity defying jet boots or something).

 

[MacLeod]

The .25c thing was a TNG tech manual thing. In TMP it's pretty clear warp point five means half light speed, because—as I noted previously—Jupiter at its farthest from Earth would take 1.8 hours to reach at half lightspeed.

Might be mistaken but doesn't dialouge in TMP tend to indicate full impulse is .5c?

Nope.

SCOTTY: Engineering to bridge. Impulse power at your discretion.
KIRK: Impulse power, Mr. Sulu. Ahead warp point five.

That's it.

So if full Impulse power is supposdly .25c, then how can warp .5 be impulse?

Full is another way of saying maximum, .5 is double the maximum impulse speed. A bit of a stretch.

 

[Psion]

Might be mistaken but doesn't dialouge in TMP tend to indicate full impulse is .5c?

Nope.

SCOTTY: Engineering to bridge. Impulse power at your discretion.
KIRK: Impulse power, Mr. Sulu. Ahead warp point five.

That's it.

So if full Impulse power is supposdly .25c, then how can warp .5 be impulse?

Full is another way of saying maximum, .5 is double the maximum impulse speed. A bit of a stretch.

Full impulse (or half impulse, one quarter impulse, etc.) doesn't define a speed. It defines an acceleration. At full impulse, the engines are pushing as hard as they can, and (over time) the ship will go faster and faster. At half impulse, the ship will also go faster and faster, it'll just take twice as long to reach the same speed.

When Kirk orders "Ahead warp .5" in ST:TMP, he may have been telling Sulu to use impulse engines to accelerate to a speed equivalent to whatever warp .5 is equal to.

 

[Ronald Held]

In TNG:S1 (Arsenal of Freedom), a saucersection-less Enterprise dives into the atmosphere and builds up heat from friction. The plama/flames/whatever are visible. This also happens in S3 (Deja Q).

In STV, Captain Kirk slipped and fell official of El Capitan. Gravity was correctly displayed as Kirk plummeted to his death (he was of course rescued at the last second by Spock who wore gravity defying jet boots or something).

Atmospheric friction in an atmosphere seems to have occured a few times.
Planetary gravity seems to be cortect be correct but with powered vehicle orbits, it is hard to say it always like our rules.rules

 

[Maurice]

Might be mistaken but doesn't dialouge in TMP tend to indicate full impulse is .5c?

Nope.

SCOTTY: Engineering to bridge. Impulse power at your discretion.
KIRK: Impulse power, Mr. Sulu. Ahead warp point five.

That's it.

So if full Impulse power is supposdly .25c, then how can warp .5 be impulse?

Full is another way of saying maximum, .5 is double the maximum impulse speed. A bit of a stretch.

Nothing says full impulse is .25c. TNG's tech manual years after TMP suggested it as a top limit for normal impulse operations, but it doesn't say it's the maximum velocity that can be achieved.

 

[Knight Templar]

It is possible that "Warp .5" is the ship using a low power warp field to reduce the apparent mass of the ship (which we know warp fields do) so that the impulse engines can push the ship far faster than normal.

 

[Tiberius]

Full impulse (or half impulse, one quarter impulse, etc.) doesn't define a speed. It defines an acceleration. At full impulse, the engines are pushing as hard as they can, and (over time) the ship will go faster and faster. At half impulse, the ship will also go faster and faster, it'll just take twice as long to reach the same speed.

When Kirk orders "Ahead warp .5" in ST:TMP, he may have been telling Sulu to use impulse engines to accelerate to a speed equivalent to whatever warp .5 is equal to.

That doesn't make sense to me. By this logic, it is possible for a ship going at 0.1 impulse to be going faster than a ship going at full impulse simply because the first ship has been travelling for longer.

Besides, impulse is always referred to as a SPEED, not an ACCELERATION. Picard says, "Increase speed to half impulse." No one';s ever said, "Increase acceleration to half impulse."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Full impulse (or half impulse, one quarter impulse, etc.) doesn't define a speed. It defines an acceleration. At full impulse, the engines are pushing as hard as they can, and (over time) the ship will go faster and faster. At half impulse, the ship will also go faster and faster, it'll just take twice as long to reach the same speed.

When Kirk orders "Ahead warp .5" in ST:TMP, he may have been telling Sulu to use impulse engines to accelerate to a speed equivalent to whatever warp .5 is equal to.

That doesn't make sense to me. By this logic, it is possible for a ship going at 0.1 impulse to be going faster than a ship going at full impulse simply because the first ship has been travelling for longer.

"Faster" as measured by what? Space is a vacuum, a vast emptiness with very little in it to use for measuring velocity; if one ship is traveling at 800,000 miles per hour and the other is traveling 800,050 miles per hour then how fast are they really traveling relative to one another?

More importantly, if one ship has been accelerating at one quarter impulse all day and the other goes to full impulse for an hour -- but in the opposite direction -- which one of them is going faster?

In the real world, navigating in space is a lot more complicated than "Go that way, medium fast. Call me when we get there." It shouldn't be any different in Star Trek, even if they talk about it as if it were simple.

Besides, impulse is always referred to as a SPEED

And wrongly at that, since even in Star Trek, all velocities are relative. For two ships traveling side by side at full impulse power, their relative velocity is exactly ZERO no matter what their engines are doing.

The only thing in space you can measure objectively (without an external reference point) is acceleration. Otherwise "speed" is meaningless without a fixed point of reference, which maneuvers at impulse power usually lack.

Picard says, "Increase speed to half impulse." No one';s ever said, "Increase acceleration to half impulse."

Encounter at Farpoint:

PICARD: From this point, no station aboard, repeat no station, for any reason will make use of transmitted signals or intercom. We'll try and take them by surprise. Let's see what this galaxy class starship can do. (to Worf) Lieutenant, inform engine room to prepare for maximum acceleration.
WORF: Aye, sir.
PICARD: Records search, Data. Results of detaching saucer section at high warp velocity.
DATA: Inadvisable at any warp speed, sir.
PICARD: Search theoretical.
DATA: It is possible, sir. But absolutely no margin for error.
PICARD: Using print-out only, notify all decks to prepare for maximum acceleration. Now hear this, Maximum, you're entitled to know, means that we'll be pushing our engines well beyond safety limits. Our hope is to surprise whatever that is out there, try and outrun it. Our only other option is to tuck tail between our legs and return to Earth as they demand.

They use "acceleration" and "speed" interchangeably for the most part, the same way the average person uses "mass" and "weight" interchangeably. They are related concepts, but "weight" and "speed" are both meaningless concepts in space, even if they are incorrectly used to describe things that DO make sense.

 

[Silvercrest]

Atmospheric friction in an atmosphere seems to have occured a few times.

There was Jake Kurland's shuttle, on a bad descent and blazing like a torch. You know, the one which deliberately increased its angle of approach and somehow still didn't burn up.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, he sort of did the whole "Skip off the atmosphere" thing, hitting the atmosphere at high speed and then using aerodynamic forces to drive himself up into a higher altitude. It's not really impossible. It's just highly improbable in a spacecraft with the lift-to-drag ratio of a bar of soap.

 

[Silvercrest]

I thought the skip-off-the-atmosphere thing only worked at shallower angles, not steeper ones. I'm not a physicist, but it seems like you'd burn up sooner if you increase your angle. You're hitting the thicker layers of atmosphere sooner and causing friction to work that much faster.

 

[RobertVA]

Unless the magical inertial dampers are working the problem with a steep atmospheric entry might be high G forces on the crew and crushing/breakup of the spacecraft structure.

With a spacecraft entering an atmosphere I'm wondering if the heating isn't so much friction in the respect most people think of it or the tremendous temperature increase that would occur as an object traveling at fifteen thousand MPH or more compesses air that was a fraction of a second ago was at near vacuum pressure. That would be the similar principle that makes the output of a CO2 fire extinguisher so cold; pressure drops chill gases and compressing makes them hotter (same energy in a different volume).

 

[Maurice]

Encounter at Farpoint:

PICARD: From this point, no station aboard, repeat no station, for any reason will make use of transmitted signals or intercom. We'll try and take them by surprise. Let's see what this galaxy class starship can do. (to Worf) Lieutenant, inform engine room to prepare for maximum acceleration.
WORF: Aye, sir.
PICARD: Records search, Data. Results of detaching saucer section at high warp velocity.
DATA: Inadvisable at any warp speed, sir.
PICARD: Search theoretical.
DATA: It is possible, sir. But absolutely no margin for error.
PICARD: Using print-out only, notify all decks to prepare for maximum acceleration. Now hear this, Maximum, you're entitled to know, means that we'll be pushing our engines well beyond safety limits. Our hope is to surprise whatever that is out there, try and outrun it. Our only other option is to tuck tail between our legs and return to Earth as they demand.

They use "acceleration" and "speed" interchangeably for the most part, the same way the average person uses "mass" and "weight" interchangeably. They are related concepts, but "weight" and "speed" are both meaningless concepts in space, even if they are incorrectly used to describe things that DO make sense.

I don't think those terms are being used interchangeably in that example. Picard is calling for maximum acceleration in order to surprise Q, and the references to speed are all related to the speeds at which the saucer separation will occur, all of which would be warp speeds regardless of the acceleration curve.