Earth to Vulcan in 30 minutes - a possible solution?

[Admiral Buzzkill]

It's been stated that Starfleet in this universe uses advanced future technology derived from scans the Kelvin made of the Narada;

Has it?

I'm sure that's what one of the writers has said in an interview somewhere.

So? It's not in the movie.

Superbrain Chekov needed to invent a method to beaming them in motion in the last second.

He didn't "invent" (or "inwent") anything - at least not during that scene. It was something he knew how to do, which the transporter operator evidently didn't. Now, it's possible that he figured out the technique during training, or it's possible that it was something he was taught, or it's possible that it was a hypothetical that he'd studied and thought this was a real good chance to test.

What he did not do - and this is in the dialogue, in the movie, unlike some of the stuff being spouted here about "future technology" - is invent the technique on the fly during the events shown.

It's in the movie, people. So get it right.

Oh, and, Chekov had quite a bit more time to make his adjustments for Sulu and Kirk's motion than the operator on duty did with Amanda.

 

[timelord1010]

Maybe the next movie will have the Enterprise "jump" thru space like ships on the recent Battlestar Galactica. That way they can immediately show up at New Vulcan or Andoria from Earth.

The 30 minutes to Earth doesn't bother me, what bothers me is the beaming of Kirk and Spock from Saturn's moon Titan to the Narada in Earth orbit. That's almost halfway across the solar system, and the only person to be transported a long distance before in Trek was Gary Seven and that was by a race far more advanced than the Federation.

 

[Sci]

Maybe the next movie will have the Enterprise "jump" thru space like ships on the recent Battlestar Galactica. That way they can immediately show up at New Vulcan or Andoria from Earth.

The 30 minutes to Earth doesn't bother me, what bothers me is the beaming of Kirk and Spock from Saturn's moon Titan to the Narada in Earth orbit. That's almost halfway across the solar system, and the only person to be transported a long distance before in Trek was Gary Seven and that was by a race far more advanced than the Federation.

Negatory. The Dominion was established to possess some very long-distance transportation technology in DS9. Skrain Dukat even managed to beam Major Kira off of Deep Space 9 and onto Empok Nor, a couple of sectors away, after he'd gone rogue.

It's entirely possible that Scotty invented what SpockPrime calls "transwarp beaming" during or shortly after the Dominion War in the Prime Universe based upon his earlier intra-solar system beaming techniques and upon Dominion technology. And while intra-system beaming was never depicted as normal, it was also never depicted as impossible. We can justify it if we suppose that the power usage makes it a fairly unreliable form of beaming that is either prohibitively power-consuming or has enough failures that it's only used in extreme emergencies.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Assuming anyone actually cares about the technical plot hole of Earth-Vulcan travel time--and most of us don't--it's explicable with one very simple thought: Chekov's broadcast was repeated at the same time, every day, for four days, at the beginning of the day shift. Then just switch "three minutes" to "three days" and be happy. Which, first of all, explains how Kirk was able to HEAR the announcement despite being still sedated and, second of all, leaves room for a more realistic timeline on the attack on Vulcan.

Nero didn't invent Red Matter himself and I doubt he knows off the top of his head how to use it to destroy a planet. The siesmic disturbance only makes sense if the Narada entered orbit and immediately fired off a little glob of red matter on Vulcan, only to watch a tiny black hole swallow up a tiny island somewhere and then collapse. A few more experiments, and Nero figures out that it won't work unless the red matter is delivered directly to the planet's core. Then it's "deploy the drill!" time, just as Starfleet finally arrives.

If Vulcan had any fleet or planetary defenses in orbit, the Narada had four days to annihilate them. The distress signal was probably their first confused call for help before Nero nuked their communication center and silenced them for good. That would ALSO explain why no one on Vulcan bothered to call Starfleet and warn them that there was a giant Romulan battleship hanging over their planet.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Negatory. The Dominion was established to possess some very long-distance transportation technology in DS9.

And the Enterprise beamed two people aboard Tin Man from a similar distance.

 

[mswood]

Yeah lets face it as much as we (I assume) love Trek. It is not, nor has it ever been internally consistent. Not within each series or between the series. The fact that a good part of it makes sense is really surprising.

Clearing in TOS (show not films) the reason people stood still was for the effect. But clearly they had the ability to beam from most likely multiple locations (like beaming people up from damaged ship's Mudd's ship and the Klingon ship) and they have also beamed people up in positions that aren't standing positions (see Galileo 7), so clearly there is some wiggly room. In the TOS films we do see them moving and talking through beaming, hell even swimming.

But even in this film they are always asking the crew to stand still when beaming so it does appear to be more standard practice. Which again does in fact fit established original universe rules.

As to the idea that the Federation would have a huge leap in technology due to a few scans from the Narada is fairly laughable. Not that they would have scans, and that someone might have transmitted some of that data (or all of it) either in a black box, through subspace, or even on one of the shuttles. Whats laughable is the idea that this would give the Federation a vast amount of technology.

It shouldn't. Look at all the advanced races that the Federation has meet, studied, scanned, ect and look at all of the advances that have been made. They are quite small.

In fact what is far more likely to have happened is that the scans pushed for a stronger military aspect to Starfleet, a thorough research of the aliens and races of that area (thus discovering Romulans and their appearance at a much earlier time, and research into means of improving weapons, and shields. Doesn't mean that they would be successful.

Take the Borq and Dominion. The federation had 3 known encounters with the Borg. With far more time (and even face time on a ship) to scan interiors, weapons, shields, ect. Yet even with that a huge amount of research they never figured out a way of shielding them, or weapons capable of stopping their weapons.

With the Dominion (with even closer levels of technology) for all their contacts and in the face of an all out invasion of the alpha/Beta Quadrant. It wasn't until they actually captured an enemy vessel and studied it that they were able to make tactical upgrades.

 

[Tyralak]

As soon as the Kelvin was destroyed, a new universe was born and in this universe JJ Abrams is God and whatever he says happens. If that means whole solar systems are closer together than previously thought, or farther than ever before, or some mysterious magical drive was developed or Timbuktu was floating in space, then that's what it is. That doesn't mean we trek fans can't analyze and nitpick to death though.

I sort of had the same thought, but phrased a bit differently. It ties in with why the new Enterprise is so freaking BIG in the new continuity. Nero's interference could have altered Starfleet's priorities. Made them more militant, more focused on drive technologies, larger ships, better weaponry, etc.

 

[pookha]

If that were the case, Kirk and Sulu would have been no more than a stain on the convulsed and soon-to-be-collapsing Vulcan landscape, and the story would have needed a different ending.

Superbrain Chekov needed to invent a method to beaming them in motion in the last second.
And they weren't able to transport Spock's mother because she was falling.

did you watch the movie???
did you watch tos???

what was done is sorta comparable to beaming the crew out of galileo as it went plunging back to the atmosphere in tos.

but the difference and what the transporter operater mentioned is that between the weird gravity effect on the planet plus the speed they were traveling was making it harder to get the lock.

what chekov did and it is there in his dialog is he was able to compensate for the changes in the gravity field that was probab;y causing havoc with what is probably a targeting computer for the transporter.
something tos also probably had since they were also beaming people off of moving ships.

amanda was different.
for one since sulu and kirk took so long to fall chekov had more time to do something.
also with amanda the whole cliffside came down and on top of her.
if she had just "fallen " off it would have been different.

and the gravitational changes were even more extrememe by then as the planet was entering into its final death throes.

 

[JarodRussell]

and the gravitational changes were even more extrememe by then as the planet was entering into its final death throes.

Yeah, that's the silly part about it. One black hole is only one source of gravity. There are no extreme changes. And a black hole that eats a planet has eventually the same mass. Which means the gravity doesn't change.

And Chekov outcalculating a 23rd century targeting computer is pretty cool. Actually, what he did was inventing a method they didn't use before (probably entering a new "formula", like Scotty and Spock did to do the "transwarp beaming"). Which is also silly because there is no difference from people falling, or being on a moving spaceship. Even a planet moves.

And as said, the gravity stuff is technobabble nonsense.

also with amanda the whole cliffside came down and on top of her.

Strange, I clearly saw that she was already in the beam, and the cliff came down, and she was on top of the cliff.

 

[Timo]

That Amanda was so violently yanked away by something below her, even when already gripped by the beam, would seem to lend credence to the idea that there was some weird stuff going on with gravity. And since we're not quite dealing with a "simple" black hole here, but with the two-step process of this fictional red matter and then the black hole, I wouldn't find that surprising at all.

If the red matter were doing its strange thing when Kirk and Sulu were falling, then it would make sense that an overassuming computer that was trying to track people falling towards a planet would fail due to this false assumption. Chekov could then just as well turn off the computer, since no program could predict truly erratic movement.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Skydiving crew possess communicators and life sign monitors. Amanda didn't. Her death is a little more believable, although it isn't clear why the transporters aren't keyed to emergency transport as soon as life signs go dead on the monitors.

The long-distance beaming is the most annoying thing. Beaming was originally intended to be a basic device to move our heroes around as a quick way of advancing the plot. Even if you could convince me that it was ok in the movie since only our heroes use it as the plot dictates. Try playing an RPG where it's possible to beam millions of miles. As I said, the Romulans could beam a bomb onto a Federation vessel or any uncloaked ship could for that matter - it's not as if Federation ships raise shields every time they detect a ship 2 light years away. They should have playtested the plot.

 

[EJA]

That Amanda was so violently yanked away by something below her, even when already gripped by the beam, would seem to lend credence to the idea that there was some weird stuff going on with gravity. And since we're not quite dealing with a "simple" black hole here, but with the two-step process of this fictional red matter and then the black hole, I wouldn't find that surprising at all.

Then why was only Amanda pulled down, and not Spock or any of the Vulcans? IMO this whole "you need to stand motionless to be beamed up" idea just doesn't fit into the Trek mythos; it didn't apply in it's past (The crew of the NX-01 were able to beam over Captain Archer when he was violently ejected into space in "The Augments"), and it doesn't apply in its future (The Genesis planet was tearing itself to bits in TSFS, but Kirk and Spock didn't fall out of the transporter beam, did they?)

 

[Hartzilla2007]

One black hole is only one source of gravity. There are no extreme changes. And a black hole that eats a planet has eventually the same mass. Which means the gravity doesn't change.

So your saying a BLACK HOLE has the same gravity as a planet.

I didn't know a planet had a gravity field so intense that even light can't escape it.

 

[JarodRussell]

One black hole is only one source of gravity. There are no extreme changes. And a black hole that eats a planet has eventually the same mass. Which means the gravity doesn't change.

So your saying a BLACK HOLE has the same gravity as a planet.

I didn't know a planet had a gravity field so intense that even light can't escape it.

Please, go to school.

 

[M'Sharak]

One black hole is only one source of gravity. There are no extreme changes. And a black hole that eats a planet has eventually the same mass. Which means the gravity doesn't change.

So your saying a BLACK HOLE has the same gravity as a planet.

I didn't know a planet had a gravity field so intense that even light can't escape it.

Please, go to school.

Or you could have said "Yes, a planet which collapses into a black hole still possesses the same mass the planet did originally, and would therefore exert the same gravitational attraction."

Instead, you insulted him. Please don't do that again.

 

[EJA]

Is it actually stated in the film that the loss of Amanda was due to her moving? It would have been easier to accept if her pattern just deteriorated while in transit and they lost her. Better than that not standing still nonsense, and would still have been dramatic and tragic.

 

[JarodRussell]

Or you could have said "Yes, a planet which collapses into a black hole still possesses the same mass the planet did originally, and would therefore exert the same gravitational attraction."

I already said that. Why repeat myself?


An insult? You are kidding, right? Maybe I should have said "read a book on it". Or "try google." Or "ask your teacher." All of that implies that he doesn't know anything about what he's talking about.

 

[Tom Servo]

Or you could have said "Yes, a planet which collapses into a black hole still possesses the same mass the planet did originally, and would therefore exert the same gravitational attraction."

I already said that. Why repeat myself?


An insult? You are kidding, right? Maybe I should have said "read a book on it". Or "try google." Or "ask your teacher." All of that implies that he doesn't know anything about what he's talking about.

If you are gonna critique this Trek for errors in natural space phenomena, you will have to critique all of Trek, because Trek has never been totally accurate in that regard.

It seems most of the problems you have with this film can be found with all of Trek, which negates your argument against the film.

 

[EJA]

So let me see if I've got this right: The reason people had to be motionless to be beamed up in ST09 was due to the black hole devouring Vulcan and screwing up transporter accuracy?

 

[JarodRussell]

If you are gonna critique this Trek for errors in natural space phenomena, you will have to critique all of Trek, because Trek has never been totally accurate in that regard.

It seems most of the problems you have with this film can be found with all of Trek, which negates your argument against the film.

Yeah right, and if I did that, next thing you tell me "You have to critique all of the films in that genre!"

I clearly remember I said before that just because Trek did it before, I didn't like it back then, and I certainly don't like it now.