How to explain Starfleet forgetting alternatives to warp drive

Discovery’s 32nd century presents something of a conundrum…why is it that Starfleet and the Federation seems to have forgotten all of the alternatives to warp drive that they encountered in the 23rd and 24th centuries?

Let’s ignore the fact that dilithium was never the power source for ships, Starfleet was aware of multiple alternatives to warp before the 32nd century. Prodigy, in fact, introduces us to a brand new propulsion system, the protostar drive, that seems to much faster than traditional warp and doesn’t use dilithium. Prodigy also makes it clear that Starfleet was able to successfully reverse engineer the quantum slipstream drive from Voyager. They also seemed to ignore things like various gateways, under space, and Borg trans warp conduits.

Does it seem odd that the Federation never tried implement any of those technologies before the Burn?

 

1. Do we know that quantum slipstream drives don't use dilithium?
2. Maybe protostars that are compatible with proto-drive technology are hard to find.
3. Possibly, either of the two work in conjunction with warp drive, rather than instead of it. Maybe they're like SCRAM jets, which can only be engaged when the aircraft is running at high speed and altitude already.

 

They mention the Quantum Slipstream in Discovery S03E01. Presumably, it uses dilithium, as must the Proto drive.

Disco S3 even used an old transwarp conduit to travel in one episode... have you seen it, or just going from posts online?

 

No.

 

Even with alternatives, warp drive may still be the most common and relatively easy to mass produce form of FTL travel, IMO. The alternative propulsion systems may require more rare and exotic materials than dilithium possibly. If anything, the Burn showed that the Federation was not all-mighty and and nowhere near invincible.

 

As mentioned, Quantum Slipstream is available in the 32nd century, but it needs benamite crystals which apparently are even more rare than dilithium in the 32nd century.

As for the others, they presumably didn't work out in the long term as viable forms of FTL travel. Which I guess spells out how Prodigy must end.

 

All other forms of FTL travel proved untenable in the long term after more research was carried out, for a variety of reasons, but most of those reasons ultimately had to do with interference of those pesky statusquotronic particles.

 

Here's the thing, its 800-930 years after encountering those technologies.
No material could possibly remain 'exotic' (none of the technology encountered really used any exotic materials - some like Quantum Slipstream used benamite crystals which were INITIALLY said they COULD take years to make more) indefinitely.
What DISCO writers effectively did was handwawed away all of the technologies for the purpose of drama - aka, lazy storytelling to make the Burn more 'convincing' and DISCO relevant (again, 'lazy writing').

Also, DISCO writers seemingly cannot make up their minds on what it is they were triying to say.
They kept going about Dilithium exploding and how other methods of propulsion never worked... but even IF Dilithium is used for power generation (which initially it didn't - it simply refgulated M/AM reactions), achieving Warp speeds should be independent of the power source you use (aka, you simply need strong enough power source).

DISCO made it seem like every method of propulsion used its own unique power source... which is of course not accurate.

Quantum Slipstream (when it was first encountered on the fake Dauntless) apparently didn't use Antimatter at all (per the dialogue).
The Borg use Transwarp and 'unknown' method of power generation (nothing was said that they use dilithium and M/AM reactors).

The Romulans also used Forced Quantum Singularity as a power source in the late 24th century (no need for dilithium here).

So, a method of FTL propulsion is NOT intricately dependent on one power source or another... you simply need powerful enough energy source (which is the main problem of DISCO's Burn premise - aka, Dilithium was used as a power source, shortages ensued - despite the fact Dilithium recrystalisation tech existed since the late 23rd century - and then it suddenly blew up thanks to a downed UFP ship which had a sole Kelpien child that developed a mental connection between himself and the dilithium around him).

Starfleet encountered different (and more advanced/efficienct/more powerful) energy sources in 23rd and 24th centuries and had detailed scans of all of them.
UFP was even researching new power sources in the late 24th century by itself (Kriega Waves for one thing - the research of which actually SURVIVED).

To think M/AM and dilithium would still be used nearly 1000 years later is absurd - especially when we take into account the problem of dilithium mining and eventual shortages that would ensue, or the fact that technology and science evolve exponentially and SF/UFP would have conceivably stop using M/AM and Dilithium just after the late 24th century.

Then it also ignores most of the technology UFP actually has... such as replicators, highly adaptive computer algorithms that can do R&D themselves in a split second or hours at most, transporters, and of course programmable matter.
Neither of which are ever used to their fullest potential... even though they can easily be used to whip up NEW power sources almost instantly.

In fact, the UFP using M/AM and Dilithium predominantly (alongside fusion) didn't make sense... those would be fairly basic technologies for spacefaring organisations... so, to think that NONE of the UFP species invented anything better is ridiculous.

Methods of propulsion... SF encountered a whole lot of them too... even Benamite crystals would NOT potentially take years to make more of over time because the more you study and use said technology, the process of improving methods of production for those technologies would also advance over time.
In mere 10 to 50 years after using Quantum Slipstream, it wouldn't take them years continuously to continue making new crystals.
They'd also invent a method to slow down the degradation of the said crystals or even recrystalize them (like they do with Dilithium).

Most of what DISCO did was just handwaving for the purpose of drama... nothing more and nothing less.
They should have created a more advanced future and have DISCO find itself on the side where its an antique instead would SF would have had to find relevance for the ship and its crew... more out of pity and as a 'thank you' for saving all life in the galaxy.

 

It's easy to say "lazy writing" or "lazy storytelling" when a narrative goes in a direction you disagree with, but the idea that any material that's initially rare or difficult to mass produce will always cease to be eventually puts too much stock that things will always move forward. Some things stick and some things don't, even if they seem to be otherwise absolute game changers in a given field. And the reasons why some inventions don't take can be varied and can even go against conventional wisdom, but make sense in other ways.

 

Within the scope of Trek... it really doesn't make sense.
Replicators would improve in overall efficiency and functionality (even if they couldn't replicate some things initially in the 24th century, they'd be able to do so in the 25th or 26th at the latest).
Progress on this wouldn't stop... in fact, UFP would do what it can do improve R&D in this area to make things that were not replicable before replicable.

Programmable matter is another change that aids in construction of complex materials (next to replicators).

It is lazy writing when the writers decided to simply handwave it all away for the purpose of drama, ignoring the in-universe technology and the fact that things don't just 'stop' just because at one point it was deemed 'time consuming' (which again, wouldn't be the case as time goes on).

The sense of 'progression' was utterly gone. I didn't feel as if I was looking at a 800-930 years into the future... at best, it looked like we were seeing stuff that would have happened 50 to 100 years into the future past the 24th century (maybe 200 years if I'm being generous).

 

Dilithium is only used to regulate a matter/ antimatter reaction. It's not a fuel source.

Now, I can be convinced that it is a substance that not replicatable, weare's down to a point that recrystalization is useless and needs to be mined. But each ship only uses what? 2-3 kilos??
And entire moons are made of the stuff, and there have been warp capable civilizations for millions of years. Just happens to run out 6-700 years into the federation's existence?

Rather them have used the Omega molecule as the reason .. But im not the writer.

 

I'm not too put out by the 32nd century technology.

The Dominion was supposed to be 2000 years old and they weren't super advanced. As far as Trek technological development goes, there seems to be a technological plateau then you just evolve into energy beings or something.

 

I hate those…

 

But seemingly groundbreaking inventions that have come and then quietly gone away has been done continuously in Trek since TOS. As said before, some things stick and others don't for various reasons. As far as a "natural progression" of technology, there tend to be an ebb and flow of things there.

 

If you work backwards from the writer's intentions that there be some cataclysm that fucked up space travel and things went to shit, then no, it makes sense that every single method of propulsion would ultimately fail somehow. It's not how I would have preferred it to go.

 

They already had a readymade solution to that. TNG established that warp was damaging subspace. That could have been the catalyst. Additionally, the omega molecule also damaged subspace. Either one of those would have been viable alternatives to what we got. I suspect that the Disco writers were not familiar with either of those.

 

They didn't want to make traveling at warp impossible, just hard. And more importantly they wanted it to be a solvable problem. By the time discovery arrived in the 32nd century the problem wasn't that the people couldn't travel at warp at all, it was that dilithium was super rare which is a very different problem than subspace being destroyed.

 

Indeed. Trek tech often feels very static, and new discoveries are limited in their impact.

 

Dilithium never powered starships. Dilithium was used to align frequencies in plasma that caused decay to occur that resulted other engine components having the necessary energy to warp space around the ship to reduce the amount of mass placed on a the ship, as the ship travelled faster and faster.

Other warp drives probably used very rare and hard to find minerals that were part of the engine components or involved someone human attachment to the engine to make it work. With dilithium in abundance, dilithium would be more valuable as a commodity of trade and negotiations between different planets within the Federation.

 

The idea that a scarce substance would become less scarce after centuries of use seems... counter-intuitive.