Spoilers ST Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Four Discussion

Maybe the self-replicating mines were powered by energy emissions from the wormhole? That's be a nice, consistent explanation for why they aren't used everywhere and aren't perpetual motion machines.

 

I don't see how.
The only thing that I recall in regards to wormhole detection are Neutrinos... they were never mentioned on-screen that they can be used as a power source (or that the Wormhole could be used as a power source).
I gathered the self-replicating mines used smaller power devices coupled with solar and background space radiation... and also, if a mine would explode, the nearest one to it would replicate a replacement in its place.

Its also possible several mines worked in tangent with each other (but the way the idea was proposed was that 1 mine could make a new mine).

 

@Vale What energy tech can fit in a power cell, the size of a coin, that can power a 32nd Century era TriCommBadge that allows for self Teleportation?

 

It doesn't really matter, the power output of Trek tech is literally impossible and what ever the plot demands. Otherwise Data's emergency transporter wouldn't have worked, nor Worf's comm badge rigged shield.

 

As regards the mines, my first assumption would be that the mines receive the energy to make new mines when the enemy attempts sweeping measures. After all, those tend to be energetic: blast waves and death rays would presumably feature energy bursts far greater than what is actually needed to blow up (and construct!) the mines themselves, since the enemy seeks area effect against targets it cannot really target.

After all, the dialogue specifically couples creation with destruction: "No matter how many the Jem'Hadar destroy, there will always be more" and all that.

On a more general note, things that make stuff disappear in Trek need not be particularly energetic. Transporters achieve that with apparent ease and economy, after all. "Phasing" seems to be much cheaper than "true" vaporizing, even if the former gets called by the latter name often enough. it's just that when you weaponize a transporter, and start phasing people with a gun, your energy or power requirements seem to go up. Perhaps due to the vagaries of targeting resisting recipients, perhaps because you need overkill in case the enemy has a shield or other phasing-blocking device or technique in place.

Or then the cheapness of transporting is the result of the process being two-way: what is spent at one end of the process is recovered at the other. And the tech can lend energy even when there is no certainty of the other end of the process ever happening.

Timo Saloniemi

 

You could say the same thing about Warp drive, replicators, transporters, shields, etc. Its a scifi show... nothing 'just works'... although we HAVE developed viable theories for Warp drive and even reduced energy requirements to something which would require for example conventional nuclear power.
Adding to that, an experiment was being run in London (2018) to convert energy into matter itself (aka, 24th century replication).

So, while some stuff certainly has theoretical grounds to work with in real life... others would be more difficult to reconcile.

Trek uses subspace technology in everything. I hypothesized that this is basically allowing for massive energy output capabilities we heard of (exawatts per second in Ent-D warp core when in idle state), phasers being in the gigaton range in TNG (when drilling holes at low yields in a planet's crust) and torpedoes going into Teraton range.

They have seemingly baseload energy production using M/AM and relatively standard output consistent with yields an outputs we would understand... however, it then goes a step further and uses subspace tech to radically increase energy outputs by over hudred thousand times - ish.
More advanced species would be able to refine the technology and improve on this process many times more... that's the only viable explanation I can come up with to reconcile some really huge numbers we were given in Trek - even though it violates thermodynamics yes, but then again, the 'heroes' frequently 'bend' the laws of physics - and I think a few scientific breakthroughs in the past decade alone claimed they were able to 'bend' a law of physics or two (unsure though, would need to check) - but I'd also wager that 'bending' a law of Physics in Trek is VERY different (less restrictions) compared to bending one in real life.

Subspace technology is used frequently in Trek to reduce a starship's mass to virtually small amounts, allowing for 0.25c speeds (minimum) at sublight and impressive maneuvering capabilities of capital ships which are more in line with how very small and maneuverable ships behave.

If they can do that, there's no reason to think that same technology can't be used to increase energy production to ridiculous levels (in-universe wise) and a host of other things

 

The Trekyards guys pointed out the remote hologram thing Stamets uses means Tilly and Adira had no reason to go to the station in person in episode 1.

 

By the same logic, Captain Burnham need not have piloted the workbee in person. Have we been given any information about drawbacks to the holographic presence technology in terms of power consumption, time to establish, or reliability? Is this just a case of our crew still thinking in 2250's terms because they aren't used to the current day possibilities?

 

I would suggest that at the time, there was no need to worry about using holo presence tech on the station... because the area wasn't hit by the rocks until AFTER major repairs have been completed... although the transporter certainly went down at a 'convenient time'... sheesh, if anything you'd think SF would have insulated that system from going down so easily and that repair times would have been swift (aka, virtually instant) with programmable matter.

Burnham didn't have to pilot the workbee at all... someone else could have/should have done that most likely... but Michael wouldn't be the first captain in SF history to ignore the particular rule of having to stay on the bridge.

As for using holo presence tech... eh... already provided an explanation as to why this was so for Go-Captain.

SF crews tend to do things in person if the situation allows for it... using holo presence tech approach would be considered necessary under specific circumstances.

The crew also now had ample amount of time to get to know the extent of 32nd century technology... but its possible the crew may take a bit of time more to adjust to the 32nd century... although, this seems unlikely because I doubt SF would release them into active service if they hadn't largely grasped what 32nd century tech is capable of.

Also, its been an extra 5 months since the end of S3... so that's a LOT more time at the crew's disposal to get much more up to speed compared to 3 weeks that Disco underwent for its refit.

 

There should be multiple independent Transporter Rooms that have redundant isolated local power systems and are physically located far away from each other such that they don't depend on the power from main systems to do their jobs when all else fails and that there won't be cascading failures if one Transporter Room is hit, the others should be fine.

It seems like having multiple redundancy has fallen out of engineering favor in the 32nd century.

Stamets needing hours to repair the ONLY Transporter room on Discovery when minutes are available to solve the problem isn't good.

And their personal Tri Com Badge internal transporters failed for whatever reason (Environmental Jamming, Some type of interference with their transporter scanners / sensors, whatever that can out power the Tri Com Badge's personal transporter).

I'm betting we'll see more situations where their Tri Com Badge will have their internal transporter functions fail in the future after this instance.

But really, we all know why things happen. DISCO writers wanted drama, so they manufactured it whenever possible.

She still should've remote operated the Work Bee from the bridge.

It was a unnecessary risk IMO.

Her sense of risk isn't great, but she's a brand new Captain, so some "Green-ness" is bound to show.

It should be the default answer for most new/risky missions.

Losing a piece of Holographic Projection equipment isn't nearly as big of a deal as losing a person.

Hell, even losing a Soong Type Android Shell that is remote operated isn't that big of a deal.

There's a reason why many fields are using Robots for remote work, it's because the loss of machines are more acceptable than unnecessary loss of our workers / officers lives.

The current 32nd century incarnation of StarFleet might be short staffed.

Depends on how much down time they have had and free time to learn.

 

Indeed.
I don't MIND drama... but I do mind when its pulled out of rear end at every possible turn.
Whatever happened to writing engaging stories that FIT the technological setting?
Aka, create a story that actually MAKES USE of the technology in question.

For instance... instead, of forgetting the ship has a tractor beam, they could have still adjusted the ship to match the station's own trajectory and spin, THEN establish a tractor beam and a subspace field around the station to slow it down progressively.

Conduct repairs using prograamable matter virtually instantly, and then have the anomaly debris hit the area - but oh the shields should have lasted much longer than they have and the crew didn't even TRY using phasers to clear out some of the incoming debris.

This I'd agree with... but remember that automation and remote operation existed in 23rd an 24th century as well... just that they hadn't really made much use for those.

Disco needs to start making use of all the technology it actually has.

Agreed, though when you think about it, the station was (as far as the heroes were concerned) out of immediate danger, so maybe they haven't saw the need in doing that.

Agreed... and I found it EXTREMELY weird that even without the tether, Stamets was able to maintain holo projection on Booker's ship, but (conveniently) couldn't send the data back.

See for this, even if a Soong Type Android is a body, the consciousness could be predominantly stored in a Hologram on board with a portable emitter... use the actual body only when needed.

But, like everything else, I'm sure Disco writers will have just make up yet another excuse as to why this couldn't work.

Yes... but remember that some people on these forums expressed a notion that 'it would be boring otherwise'. .. its extremely likely that if its done correctly, people would actually like it... but as usual, Disco writers do the less intelligent thing.

This makes sense... until you remember the fact that Vance was ready to reassign all of Disco's crew to different positions across SF.

Something tells me that they should have provided a few 32nd century 'natives' on Disco as tech and science advisors (and other fields for security and tactical) and trainers for Disco crew - while reassigning a few (equal number) of low ranking Disco crewmember to SF HQ or other ships in the fleet for their own re-training (aka, keep existing majority of the Disco crew intact... just re-assign a few low ranks we never knew of were there).

I'd say they had plenty of time considering that the crew acted as a Dilithium delivery service for 5 months.

 

Fire the DISCO writing staff. That's the only real solution.

Start a new Star Trek show from scratch, get people who give a damn about continuity, logic, & internal consistency.

The Tether was just a dumb physical rope with no extra functionality. They just used Programmable Matter because it's ultimately more flexible than a rope and self repairing compared to a dumb rope.

The issue is that they didn't carry enough Programmable matter to extend the length even further.

They were obviously using Hyper SubSpace Radio comms to get such low latency real time Full Duplex Holographic communications.

Remember, Barclay was one of the core team members on Project PathFinder that developed Hyper Subspace communications.

Long Distance, Low Latency communication across the Galaxy shouldn't be an issue any more once you have enough repeaters to get a clear signal to the target.

Vance could be REALLY short staffed.

Look at how few StarShips he had in his fleet.

Hard to say, you know that Discovery's crew loves to get into trouble & mischief.

 

Hopefully they hire you and Deks. That will make it entertaining.

 

At least we aren't short on Technological ideas.

 

Oh, for sure.

 

I wouldn't mind Disco continuing if the writers actually managed to writer proper stories without using ridiculous excuses for why tech isn't working.

I can understand the fact previous Trek employed the same method, but at least half the time we got a reason behind why this is so... here, it just seems like they're not even trying... but I was hoping Disco would have stopped with that trend and do BETTER.

Well, actually Burnham DID mention the programmable matter tether was used as a way to maintain communications link to Booker's ship near/inside the anomaly so that Stamets could use the holo interface itself.
So it had several uses... but as I said, this stopped making sense when the tether was released (which meant that Stamets holo link should have stopped and all comms to the ship were to be non-existent).

Also, they could have used the freaking tether itself to act as a sensor array (it IS programmable matter... it could have just housed a VERY long line of sensor arrays).

And as this episode established... programmable matter works in this anomaly.

Plus, the fact they had communications after releasing the tether (which still amazes me), implies by very definition they could have sent the data out.

The problem was that Disco was hit by anomalies which damaged their aritificial gravity generators (yes, 24th century used artificial gravity plating, however, if I'm not mistaken, an artitificial gravity generator ALSO played a part) and it was forced to pull back.

So, on a level we could argue that Disco didn't have enough Programmable matter to extend the length even further... but... its programmable matter... which means the ship carries more separately for other functions (such as Turboshafts), and it could have converted some crates in the shuttlebay (or excess matter on the ship) to programmable matter to extend itself much further.

Technically that stuff is supposed to work fast (from what we saw) and it would also be extremely efficient to the point where say converting a certain amount of regular matter into programmable matter would effectively give you a massive surpluss of the stuff.
And the crew by this point (specifically Tilly) also knew how to use programmable matter and even modify it.

I am well aware on who was involved with the Pathfinder project... but we have no evidence to suggest the premise they used Hypersubspace comms for these transmissions since nothing of the kind was mentioned.

And also, even without repeaters, a message would still be received with just a single 24th century MIDAS array across the galaxy easily enough for 1 time per month comms... that would have still allowed for UFP to coordinate until they could rebuild enough repeaters (during the Burn) and prevent a collapse.

Plus, all SF ships should be using some ridiculously more powerful derivative of this technology that was invented in the proceeding centuries.
We can't just assume things 'stopped' after VOY's return... that's utterly bonkers (and why I think the setting more accurately describes 25th century... not 32nd).

That were just ships docked at UFP/SF HQ... the remainder of the fleet was dispersed throughout what was left of UFP space putting out 'brushfires'.

The fleet was diminished yes, but Vance certainly didn't bat an eye at putting an entirely 32nd century crew on Disco to replace original 23rd century crew initially (before he trusted them more)... so my thinking is that he would have found the officers to do so.

Even 38 remaining member planets would probably still have billions of people per planet (at least)... and I'm thinking even MORE people would have volunteered to join SF to try and keep the UFP together.

This is why I think Disco should have gotten say 5 or 10 people from 32nd century who are well versed in all areas of SF 32nd century operations, away mission procedures, science, technology, tactical, etc. to train and advise the existing crew.

The dialogue didn't suggest the crew got into any trouble during those 5 months... they were just on a supply run delivering Dilithium... which is admittedly odd, because the writers love throwing this ship and crew into seemingly ridiculous situations which are 'reality as we know it ending' every single season.

 

Post Burn, little redundancy due to power constraints?

 

Do you really think that's going to change given the lack of turn-over in the writing staff and the way things are going on DISCO? I'm not hopeful.

We're both disappointed with reality.

Here's a transcript of the scene about the tether that I made:
Burnham:
- Yes, which is why you'll be going as a holo

Stamets:
- Oh. Well, in that case...

Burnham:
- Your body will be right here on Discovery the entire time

Stamets:
- The anomaly creates enormous distortions.
- We might not be able to maintain a holo signal.

Burnham:
- Right, which is why we'll be using a tether to help Book's ship maintain proximity to Discovery
- And, if we have to, we will use it to pull him out.
- <Facing Culber> And I want you on the bridge, listening in on comms
- Let me know if you have any reason for concern.

Culber:
- Yes, Captain.

You mis-remembered the scene. The tether is only used to make sure Book's ship maintains proximity to Discovery so that their Holo-graphic Signal is within good proximity range given the distortion's disturbance to subspace radio.

Basically they wanted to be within good WiFi range and the Tether was there to gurantee that incase the worst case scenario happened.

Or that they wanted to deliver the data in-tact to discovery without SubSpace WiFi in a murky environment jamming and muddling up the signal.

What's more reliable than sending in data going through heavy SubSpace Radio interference?

Deliver the data in person and transfer it directly from Storage Drive onto the parent vessel to disseminate to the rest of the folks who needs it.

No need to send corruptable data over Wireless if you can avoid it. Especially given how many times we see Stamets Holo Projection fritz out.

Given how important the sensor data is, you want every bit to be as accurate as possible.

Not corrupted because you send the data over WiFi in a spotty area.

There's a reason why Sneaker-Net is still useful for critical data.

Also, don't forget that Book's ship is private property and not StarFleet standard issue. There might be Hardware/Software compatibility issues with his Sensor Data or other aspects of his sensors that prevent him from sending all that volume of data over WiFi.

In the world of Aviation, proprietary hardware is quite common. Not every piece of kit works with every other manufacturers piece of kit perfectly. There's no guranteed common standard in many aspects of Aviation Hardware.

There are some standards, but not everything is guranteed to work with other makers devices.

You're expecting too much out of the DISCO writing staff.

What was once "Hyper Subspace" in the 24th century, just might be the standard SubSpace communication and the term "Hyper" has been dropped.

Let the DISCO writers do their thing in explaining why they can't figure things out.

The setting feels more like a parallel world then a direct lineage from Berman-era Trek.

And there's not that many StarShips left.

Vance may not be the best Admiral you know. Especially given a staffing shortage.

You give the writers TOO much credit to expect them to think through all these basic world building elements.

I concur, DISCO should've gotten a few 32nd Century natives to integrate into their crew.

They might not have been "In Trouble", but they might still be busy doing milk runs.

 

Plenty of places to visit during those "milk runs", I'll bet!

 

Except the station did have major ongoing issues, and the reasons were a complete unknown. And as Mike McDevitt points out, even Burnham didn't do it with the work bee, and that probably could have been remote controlled without a telepresence hologram. Even Book could have done the hologram thing with his ship.

So far, the only time I think using a remote hologram would be inappropriate is in the ep 1 teaser diplomacy scene. "You're not actually here? You don't trust us! I'll kill you for that." Pew pew.

There are loads of implications for this technology I'm sure we will never see play out. If we're dealing with Federation places it can fully replace beaming and physically traveling. Why even bother with consoles except as backups when you can seamlessly put your mind into a machine. Why are empaths a big deal when a mind machine interface that good exists, the spore drive control should be a solved issue. Why, if Stemats' two way connection was ongoing, could the data not be transmitted the same way as the hologram control. Was Stemats actually in the ship as a disembodied photonic being, thus there was no connection, but he and Book both didn't realize Stamets really was there and at risk?

So far season 4 DIS ships are extremely soft and missing loads of technology.