Mark 4

[Tallis Rhul]

The bearing system for star trek is one that we all hear mentioned often on screen... heading/bearing blah mark blah, if I remember rightly one being taken from the centre line of the ship (heading I think) and one being taken from the ship's relative position to the centre of the galaxy (bearing...I think).

The mark relates to vertical position.

Why in the hell is everything on mark 4 (that seems to be the only mark they've mentioned for nearly all of season 2... it was mark 3 once mind, which isn't far off)? Are they travelling downwards?

 

[SilentP]

Mark (in the context of the show, if I remember the Encyclopedia) is a measurement of the angle from the horizontal plane an object is to the observor.

Basically it's taking the normal heading 'circle' (i.e. heading 000, is ahead, heading 090 is to your right etc.) and turn it on it's side along the centre line of the ship, so that now mark 000 is still ahead, but mark 090 is directly above you (or directly below you, I can't completely remember).

 

[Timo]

...But if there really is a statistical bias towards "mark four", it's just another symptom of the general phenomenon where starships all seem to fly in the same plane, oriented the same way.

Or then the bearings most often given in ENT are of targets that cleverly approach our heroes from the side because they know that the torps point forward and aft and the phase gun turrets are on the upper and lower surfaces of the saucer.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tallis Rhul]

Mark (in the context of the show, if I remember the Encyclopedia) is a measurement of the angle from the horizontal plane an object is to the observor.

Basically it's taking the normal heading 'circle' (i.e. heading 000, is ahead, heading 090 is to your right etc.) and turn it on it's side along the centre line of the ship, so that now mark 000 is still ahead, but mark 090 is directly above you (or directly below you, I can't completely remember).

yeah, that's right, mark is elevation basically, with 90 being straight up and 000 being straight ahead.

...But if there really is a statistical bias towards "mark four", it's just another symptom of the general phenomenon where starships all seem to fly in the same plane, oriented the same way.

Or then the bearings most often given in ENT are of targets that cleverly approach our heroes from the side because they know that the torps point forward and aft and the phase gun turrets are on the upper and lower surfaces of the saucer.

I like the second one. You would have thought it could have been mark 5, or mark 6 or anything a bit different maybe once or twice!!