Botany Bay Artificial Gravity
- Thread starter uniderth
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Simple solution, they found a old derelict ship in India or had first contact early.
Khan's empire implodes, he retreats on the little bit of a still functioning space program left.
Khan provided satellites and/or space services to corporations cheap like India does today, the cheapest assumed to be bottom of the barrel, so isn't heavily researched by later engineers expecting genius advanced technology, but rather a cheap, shoe string budget. In reality, its a bit of both, enough to bore anyone but a antiquarian to death upon first glance.
Explains how Khan's ship got so far out (experimental warp drive died), how random early earth probes and cyro chambers could pop up absurdly far away.
Perhaps some parts of Khan's space program mothballed still was used over next century, use believed understood, but range of capability not quite grasped, as engineering specs more of a rough estimate than a rigorous tested certainty. Corporations bought it on the cheap..... one day satellite around earth gone..... found two hundred years on a quirky path into Klingnon space with a Bangladeshi flag on the side, still trying to link up with cell phones. Clearly a spy probe launched against the Klingnon Empire!
Further evidence Khan didn't grasp the tech- he left the AG on. I would of shut that off if I'm going for battery savings.
Khan's empire implodes, he retreats on the little bit of a still functioning space program left.
Khan provided satellites and/or space services to corporations cheap like India does today, the cheapest assumed to be bottom of the barrel, so isn't heavily researched by later engineers expecting genius advanced technology, but rather a cheap, shoe string budget. In reality, its a bit of both, enough to bore anyone but a antiquarian to death upon first glance.
Explains how Khan's ship got so far out (experimental warp drive died), how random early earth probes and cyro chambers could pop up absurdly far away.
Perhaps some parts of Khan's space program mothballed still was used over next century, use believed understood, but range of capability not quite grasped, as engineering specs more of a rough estimate than a rigorous tested certainty. Corporations bought it on the cheap..... one day satellite around earth gone..... found two hundred years on a quirky path into Klingnon space with a Bangladeshi flag on the side, still trying to link up with cell phones. Clearly a spy probe launched against the Klingnon Empire!
Further evidence Khan didn't grasp the tech- he left the AG on. I would of shut that off if I'm going for battery savings.
Early Earth artificial gravity could be alien tech quite openly - even though there is no face-to-face first contact with aliens until 2063, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence could be a public fact in the 1990s already. It's just that our time window is narrow: we see Earth in the summer of 1996 where even SETI freaks still think there's no ETI (VOY "Future's End"), and we know Khan left within 1996 ("Space Seed").
Early AG could also be alien tech for real but mistaken for Augment supertech at first. The truth could be revealed at any point, or remain undiscovered till the very end of ST:Nemesis for all we know. Perhaps the claim from TAS "Slaver Weapon" that an alien flying belt provided the secret is the ground truth of Earth AG history, known to our heroes by the 2260s (although it could also be the truth of much older AG history, that applying to the Federation and those of its members that had AG long before Earth did).
The one thing we can rule out is early AG going unnoticed altogether. It must have been pretty public knowledge in the 1990s to make its way into that cryosatellite of TNG "The Neutral Zone". Not to mention dirt cheap to keep on forever, or else a bunch of corpses would not be enjoying it centuries into their rest.
Timo Saloniemi
Early AG could also be alien tech for real but mistaken for Augment supertech at first. The truth could be revealed at any point, or remain undiscovered till the very end of ST:Nemesis for all we know. Perhaps the claim from TAS "Slaver Weapon" that an alien flying belt provided the secret is the ground truth of Earth AG history, known to our heroes by the 2260s (although it could also be the truth of much older AG history, that applying to the Federation and those of its members that had AG long before Earth did).
The one thing we can rule out is early AG going unnoticed altogether. It must have been pretty public knowledge in the 1990s to make its way into that cryosatellite of TNG "The Neutral Zone". Not to mention dirt cheap to keep on forever, or else a bunch of corpses would not be enjoying it centuries into their rest.
Timo Saloniemi
Wrong.
It was a half joking speculation/rationalization/extrapolation and not a statement of fact.
Everyone blames the budget for everything, hence my reaction.
The one problem with 1990s artificial gravity is that we're told that it took years to travel between planets until about 2018. It's hard to square having the ability to make one-gravity accelerations over a good-sized area and not be able to get from Earth to Mars in a couple of weeks. But, then, we're told so little about how the artificial gravity works that perhaps there is some reason it can't be used for propulsion.
I could see the technology proceeding in stages so that one-gee pull or push across a vast floor is the simplest achievement; more confined, room-by-room application (with those pesky null or reverse nodes) comes next; ramping it up to some sort of a zillion-gee push allows hulls to be gravitically polarized for defense; and tightening that effect into a beam gives you tractors. But giving a rocket engine practical non-Newtonian capabilities is closer to the latter end of the range, even though by 2018, something the size of Ares IV (to wit, Ares V coming to the rescue) can get to Mars in a week or two.
Perhaps warp drive basically involves nothing but messing with gravity, too, and discovering true mass-reducing impulse automatically results in the discovery of warp?
Timo Saloniemi
Perhaps warp drive basically involves nothing but messing with gravity, too, and discovering true mass-reducing impulse automatically results in the discovery of warp?
Timo Saloniemi
Maybe only the grav plates were barely functional in the 1990's but no inertisl dampening until Cochrane or later?
I'm comfortable putting artificial gravity as the centerpiece of so much Trek technology, including impulse and warp drives. And I'd be glad to also credit it with fusion being an energy-producing thing in the Trek universe, since gravitational confinement is the only energy-producing scheme that's been shown to work.
What are you responding to? The discussion is the clash of having artificial gravity in the Botany Bay and the "Neutral Zone" cryosatellite while not having it in the Ares IV, not about us not having AG in real life in the 90s but having it in the 90s in Trek.
It sort of touches upon the very thing: why the heck are the 2030s closer to our reality when the 1990s were so much more advanced?
The argument about WWIII resetting things is nice enough. But did something happen before the Ares IV, too, to cause a setback in spaceflight technology? And specifically in the artificial gravity part of it, because the "week to Mars" propulsion system better matches the post-2018 specs of there being no need for cryonics than the pre-2018 specs of interplanetary ships needing those.
Timo Saloniemi
The argument about WWIII resetting things is nice enough. But did something happen before the Ares IV, too, to cause a setback in spaceflight technology? And specifically in the artificial gravity part of it, because the "week to Mars" propulsion system better matches the post-2018 specs of there being no need for cryonics than the pre-2018 specs of interplanetary ships needing those.
Timo Saloniemi
Artificial gravity generators (for living quarters) in the 2130s may be too big, heavy and expensive for smaller spacecraft, especially those ships that operate less than a week from their home base.
Really, it just paints a picture of a UESPA that has chosen to focus their R&D on propulsion tech rather than creature comforts
Really, it just paints a picture of a UESPA that has chosen to focus their R&D on propulsion tech rather than creature comforts
It's not UESPA yet, but the ISA... FWIW.
Perhaps it's simply a matter of user preference: in such a small ship, Kelly can make the personal decision to switch off the gravity and enjoy the freefall, while something the size of a DY-100 would suffer a major disruption of operations.
Timo Saloniemi
Perhaps it's simply a matter of user preference: in such a small ship, Kelly can make the personal decision to switch off the gravity and enjoy the freefall, while something the size of a DY-100 would suffer a major disruption of operations.
Timo Saloniemi
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