Default Technologies

[Dumbbell]

If we were to put a “Star Trek” label on it, what technologies would be our defaults? There should, of course, be no end to imagining up technologies for use in a Star Trek setting. But, as we have seen, technologies come and they go. There are usually, however, just a few mainstream technologies that have come to define Star Trek as we know it. That is, if you were to imagine a different or a whole new Star Trek, what technology must be included for it to be Star Trek?

What are the defaults?

 

[Timo]

The cheapskate shortcut ones. Trek is defined by its teleporter that takes away the need to do motion-control shuttlecraft; by its rayguns that make targets disappear instead of burning holes in them; and by its majestic starships that barely move, again making life easy for the motion-control folks as compared to their Star Wars counterparts.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dumbbell]

Oh, that’s harsh! True, but harsh.

So,

1. Transporter technology (dematerialize/rematerialize complex structures, such as living creatures)
2. “Phaser” technology (stun, kill, or disintegrate in seconds)

But, slow-moving starships? I know what you mean by saying that. Slow-moving starships in Star Trek have,

3. Warp drive (ferry majestic starships and their crews between stars and planets in time for their next episode)

4. Deflector screens or “shields” (deflect energy and matter)

I would have to add another obvious one along the same line of reasoning that you brought up…

5. Artificial gravity (generate the pull of a planet such as Earth but with the mass of a carpet)

 

[publiusr]

It isn’t harsh… just elegant.

 

[Dumbbell]

I think the artificial gravity technology is the most outrageously bogus one but the most necessary one to make a story in space but without weightlessness.

Really, if we could generate gravity with the downward pull of a planet but that stays only in the ship, or deck, or even room, and with a device as small and convenient as a carpet, and with a power source that virtually never dies even when all else has failed… Surely, we would have the ability to do anything at all!

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I'm assuming the Gravity Panels have some sort of internal Battery that allows it to run independently once main power from the vessel is disconnected.

It should be able to run autonomously for quite a while.

 

[Dumbbell]

Probably internal batteries that store kinetic energy, so as long as you're walking around, you'll always have gravity.

Same like the forcefield window panes, maybe. Main power could be out but you'd still have forcefield windows on.

But if you could apply that technology to gravity and forcefields, you could apply it to simpler things like warp drive, transporters, and phasers.

 

[Timo]

Might be gravity manipulation would involve "changing the setting" by summoning incredible forces of nature - after which the setting would remain changed until further application of the forces. That is, gravity is forever, even on an otherwise dead starship, unless you shock it with the energies of two photon torpedoes...

A lot of Trek seems to assume that currently assumed laws of nature, especially as regards the more fundamental ones on conservation or balance, do not apply: something is made of nothing, or nothing out of something, willy-nilly. It might be all this becomes possible when something gives - if one learns to change the setting on inertia without needing to flip another setting elsewhere for balance, all conservation laws may break down, and transporters and warp drives suddenly become possible.

Then again, subspace. If one enjoys access to parallel realms, one can dump stuff there to break symmetries in our native realm. Subspace might be a (theoretically or at least practically) bottomless sink of momentum or charge if need be. Or the famed phased realm is. And make-disappear guns might be but the very coarsest application of the dumping process.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dumbbell]

Good call. So...

Subspace is the limbo of the material universe. Just wait until Starfleet figures out how to reclaim whatever forces were dumped there over all of time... Or until the universe decides to reconcile its limbo on its own. Dun-dun-daaah!

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Technically, Tom Paris experienced that limbo between Regular Space & SubSpace. He encountered a Astral Eddy which he entered which took him to the Interfold Layer.

 

[publiusr]

I wonder if we might be able to see something like that one day.

Our atmosphere certainly has an ability to change..

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[Dumbbell]

Except it wouldn't be random...