Genesis

[MetalPants]

So, do you think they ever fixed the Genesis program? I'd hate to think they did all that research to just put it in a file somewhere and forget about it.


And whatever happened to the moon that thye experimented on? Is it still a tropical paradise in the middle of a moon? Or did its structure collapse and degrade like the planet's?

 

[Brian]

I had always imagined that the moon's interior was stable. Since it didn't require as much energy as the full planet, whatever problem David "fixed" with protomatter was not a factor there.

 

[USS Triumphant]

David was in charge of the data backups, and he wasn't a very good scientist - illicit material in the project itself, and he used the same Travan-1701 2 KiloQuad cartidges for waaay too long and they went bad. Khan got the whole shebang, and there were no good backups.

Seriously, though, I would imagine that once knowledge of what Genesis could do got around to the other political powers, as it was already shown to be doing in ST:III, some sort of treaty was put in place to prevent development/use of such weapons. (I know Genesis wasn't supposed to be a weapon, but Krige wasn't wrong - and the thought of what happens when you use the device on an already-inhabited world need not be discussed.)

 

[Brian]

Probably another treaty that forbids the Federation from developing it, but lets all the other powers have at it.

 

[sbk1234]

^^^But of course, Section 31 secretly has the plans and has some of these "doomsday" weapons at its disposal.



Too bad they never went with that idea.

 

[Deks]

If the Federation is prohibited from using a certain piece of technology, then there's a pretty good possibility that the Feds would continue research so they know how to defend themselves from it.

Plus, Section-31 is bound to have exploited all of the forbidden techs on their own and probably has using them on their own, and later the Feds themselves if the treaties that prohibit the uses of those techs are negated sometime in the future or new ways of using them safely are devised.

 

[Timo]

Regarding that moon, or more exactly the asteroid Regula, my hobby-horse here is that it was the Genesis planet.

After all, it appeared to be the only solid object of appreciable size in the system, and Genesis was detonated within that system (within just a few impulse-minutes of Regula, that is). And Genesis was designed to transform a dead moon into a living planet - and probably wasn't capable of facing a markedly different challenge, considering how only the technologically backward Khan could have reprogrammed it, and how even the very makers of the device had claimed that they could not "cram a single byte" to the already high-strung system...

Thus, the cave would be gone at the end of ST3 where the planet supposedly breaks up. A neat package as such.

As for whether Genesis would be a good superweapon, it's still a torpedo. Starfleet supposedly has defenses against somebody torpedoing its precious planets; if it didn't, "conventional" antimatter warheads would already have erased life from Earth and carried the Klingons to victory. So what if Genesis can do with one shot what antimatter technology might need five torps for - one can always ripple-fire, and it's easier to saturate defenses with well-understood and probably cheap antimatter torps than with complicated and no doubt expensive Genesis warheads.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

It's just one more of the numerous inconsistencies and loose ends in the Trek mythos.

 

[Brian]

Regarding that moon, or more exactly the asteroid Regula, my hobby-horse here is that it was the Genesis planet.

After all, it appeared to be the only solid object of appreciable size in the system, and Genesis was detonated within that system (within just a few impulse-minutes of Regula, that is). And Genesis was designed to transform a dead moon into a living planet - and probably wasn't capable of facing a markedly different challenge, considering how only the technologically backward Khan could have reprogrammed it, and how even the very makers of the device had claimed that they could not "cram a single byte" to the already high-strung system...

Thus, the cave would be gone at the end of ST3 where the planet supposedly breaks up. A neat package as such.

The genesis wave expanded until it had accumulated enough matter to complete its matrix, consuming the nebula in the process. Regula was not inside the nebula. It is possible, however, that as a nearby object it may have been consumed.

 

[Timo]

In practice, Regula was inside the nebula - the visual effects were all around the planetoid, and the distance from Regula to what our heroes considered the "border" of the nebula was just a few lightminutes at best, as established by the travel times and speeds of the ships. And in any case, the eventual Genesis planet closely orbited a single bright star, which probably was the same star that Regula orbited since there were no alternate light sources in evidence there.

And it doesn't sound likely that the Genesis wave could have converted the nebula into a planet, as the device was never deliberately built to do such a thing. How could it improvise in such an impressive manner when its creators considered it a limited, already tasked device? At best, I could see the wave transforming the nebula into a free-floating space jungle or something.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FordSVT]

Regarding that moon, or more exactly the asteroid Regula, my hobby-horse here is that it was the Genesis planet.

After all, it appeared to be the only solid object of appreciable size in the system, and Genesis was detonated within that system (within just a few impulse-minutes of Regula, that is). And Genesis was designed to transform a dead moon into a living planet - and probably wasn't capable of facing a markedly different challenge, considering how only the technologically backward Khan could have reprogrammed it, and how even the very makers of the device had claimed that they could not "cram a single byte" to the already high-strung system...

Thus, the cave would be gone at the end of ST3 where the planet supposedly breaks up. A neat package as such.

As for whether Genesis would be a good superweapon, it's still a torpedo. Starfleet supposedly has defenses against somebody torpedoing its precious planets; if it didn't, "conventional" antimatter warheads would already have erased life from Earth and carried the Klingons to victory. So what if Genesis can do with one shot what antimatter technology might need five torps for - one can always ripple-fire, and it's easier to saturate defenses with well-understood and probably cheap antimatter torps than with complicated and no doubt expensive Genesis warheads.

Timo Saloniemi

Well, lets face it: the Genesis weapon would simply be one more potentially devastating weapon that these incredibly sophisticated cultures would be able to throw at each other if mutually assured destruction was the goal. From weapons that blow up suns to slamming asteroids into planets to fleets of ships that can melt continental plates to bio and chemical weapons and nano-technology. The don't use them because, like today, even the Klingons know that (at least when fighting cultures with similar levels of technology) using WMDs will only provoke their use in return. Kill every human on Earth and every human left in space will spend the rest of their lives trying to pay back the favour. Sane Romulans wanted nothing to do with Shinzon's plan.

One thing the Genesis device has in its favour is that it doesn't leave an irradiated, crater-pocketed wasteland in its wake.

 

[Timo]

...But it may leave a wasteland full of useless, poisonous plants and animals, and may strip the topsoil and even some deeper strata of desirable minerals in favor of its "new matrix". One wonders how carefully the results can be programmed into the device... and whether it would be easier, cheaper and more efficient to build the device so that the new matrix was defined as "lots of ashes".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Regarding that moon, or more exactly the asteroid Regula, my hobby-horse here is that it was the Genesis planet.

After all, it appeared to be the only solid object of appreciable size in the system, and Genesis was detonated within that system (within just a few impulse-minutes of Regula, that is). And Genesis was designed to transform a dead moon into a living planet - and probably wasn't capable of facing a markedly different challenge, considering how only the technologically backward Khan could have reprogrammed it, and how even the very makers of the device had claimed that they could not "cram a single byte" to the already high-strung system...

Thus, the cave would be gone at the end of ST3 where the planet supposedly breaks up. A neat package as such.

As for whether Genesis would be a good superweapon, it's still a torpedo. Starfleet supposedly has defenses against somebody torpedoing its precious planets; if it didn't, "conventional" antimatter warheads would already have erased life from Earth and carried the Klingons to victory. So what if Genesis can do with one shot what antimatter technology might need five torps for - one can always ripple-fire, and it's easier to saturate defenses with well-understood and probably cheap antimatter torps than with complicated and no doubt expensive Genesis warheads.

Timo Saloniemi

Well, lets face it: the Genesis weapon would simply be one more potentially devastating weapon that these incredibly sophisticated cultures would be able to throw at each other if mutually assured destruction was the goal. From weapons that blow up suns to slamming asteroids into planets to fleets of ships that can melt continental plates to bio and chemical weapons and nano-technology. The don't use them because, like today, even the Klingons know that (at least when fighting cultures with similar levels of technology) using WMDs will only provoke their use in return. Kill every human on Earth and every human left in space will spend the rest of their lives trying to pay back the favour. Sane Romulans wanted nothing to do with Shinzon's plan.

One thing the Genesis device has in its favour is that it doesn't leave an irradiated, crater-pocketed wasteland in its wake.

Except for afterwards when the planet in question blows-up.