I'll say it again, what it all boils down to is the fact that we've never seen a Trek ship demonstrate the ability to change its heading from one point of the compass to any other at even a micro-miniscule fraction of the speed of light, one ambiguous line of dialogue in a single episode notwithstanding. What we have seen is a multitude of space battles and other scenarios where such an ability most certainly would have been used if it were possible, but wasn't.
Actually, it had to have been used all the time if we are dealing with ships that move faster than the speed of light (and we never saw the Enterprise fire in any other direction but forward).
Not true. FTL
translation does not require FTL
rotation (a literal FTL rate of turn). In your own personal version of the fictional Trek universe (which is what we're really talking about here) you could certainly
allow it but there is no logical rationale to
require it merely for the ship to move faster than the speed of light.
Stop and think what this would look like. Every shot from TOS where we're looking forward over one of the nacelles or from a low 3/4 view as the ship veers off-screen onto a new course heading, the ship would simply disappear like a soap bubble. Every shot from alongside where the ship arcs away gracefully into the passing stream of stars, the ship would just snap from one trajectory to the other like a rebounding pool ball. There would be no such command as "hard about" since all turns would be effectively instantaneous and effortless. In short, about half the ship F/X shots and most of the maneuvering tactics in TOS would have been completely different.
In the later series with their more sophisticated F/X technology, every space battle would have consisted of enourmous starships flitting around like tiny gnats or gas molecules bouncing around inside a pressure chamber, each of them a fuzzy blur spraying phaser blasts and photon torpedoes in all directions like the Death Blossom in
The Last Starfighter. Even if you just dismiss all Trek after 1968, it still doesn't fit with what we saw in TOS.
As for the phasers only firing forward, also not true. Prior to TOS Remastered, phasers were seen firing from at least three different locations on the lower primary hull and at two or three different elevations in episodes like
The Doomsday Machine and
Who Mourns for Adonis. At the very least, they are not limited to a single, narrow firing arc. Now, if you really want to argue that we never saw them firing in any other directions, i.e. above or to the rear, and therefore they did not exist, you go right ahead, but I'll turn that argument right back around on you with the idea of FTL rotation; we NEVER saw it, therefore it does not exist either.
And the Enterprise isn't an airplane. It's direction of travel isn't effected by a change of orientation of the ship once it is at some speed.
It is if warp drive only works in a direction parallel to the warp engines, which is consistent with every example I can ever recall seeing in Star Trek. I don't remember a starship ever flying at warp sideways or straight up or down when it wasn't out of control for some reason, certainly not in TOS. Regardless, I never made that assertion before and I'm not making it now. I'm even willing to allow that Kirk's "pivot at warp two" command in
Elaan of Troyius involved rotating the ship off-axis from its warp trajectory, but that still doesn't mean the
rotational speed was faster than light or anything close to it.
I want to be crystal clear about this: my objection is to this notion of literally rotating or "pivoting" the ship at a turn rate faster than light, NOT to rotating the ship
while traveling faster than light.
And I said it before... as Trek went on it became more steampunked. The TOS movies were all a giant step backwards! Your model (as beautiful as it is) is a giant step backwards. Roddenberry's changes to the Enterprise models just before film of The Cage were a giant step backwards.
We may quibble over the "giant" part but I don't disagree from a purely realistic, technological point of view. I would actually go further and say that many aspects of TOS are a giant step backwards from where we are NOW. Everything from chunky, single-function communicators and mechanical chronometers to clicking computer relays and monotone computer voices. Let's be honest, the real 23rd century is not going to look anything like TOS or probably anything else we can presently imagine.
In the mean time, the
Enterprise is really nothing more than an entertainment vehicle. You could turn it into a featureless organic blob or a shiny sphere with no recognizable engines, weapons or any other familiar details and that might be considered a giant step
forward in terms of realistic technological advancement, but it would be pretty unimpressive in a Ships of the Line calendar.
If you really want to be technically nitpicky about it, just try to imagine the front of the ship traveling at warp speed in one direction, the back of the ship traveling at warp speed in the opposite direction and the ship's center of gravity not moving at all. Anybody want to ponder the warp physics equations for that one? Yeah, I know, it's all fictional, but jeez...
It has the same implications as accelerating from normal speeds to any warp factor... acceleration that would (as you attempted to put it earlier) create the same forces as a black hole. If warp works at all, it easily works for all these ways.
It very much depends on the nature of warp drive. Arguably, going to warp is not even a form of acceleration in Newtonian terms and doing something like spinning the warp bubble with the ship inside it probably wouldn't be either, so I'm not going to say it's impossible on that basis. However, it would add levels of complexity to the warp physics equations for the simple fact that you're adding variables, and even more so if you allow the ship to pivot off-axis from its warp trajectory, i.e. fly sideways.
The point of my comment (actually made in the part you didn't post) was that you can rationalize pretty much anything in a fictional universe
if it doesn't conflict with what's already been shown. Otherwise you're just playing in your own personal version of that universe. I fully admit that's what I'm doing with my redesign of the TOS
Enterprise and, unlike you, making no attempt to pretend that's the way it "really" was despite all evidence to the contrary.
The problem is people like yourself who can grasp it and need to bring it back to today's understanding of physics. You accept warp speed to make getting to the far off places possible, but you don't accept it when the full implications are made clear. The Enterprise doesn't need to be modernized... but audiences really do need to be modernize.
I assume you meant "can't grasp it." I'm sorry to be so ignorant and such a problem for you but I'm afraid pedantic condescension is no subtitute for persuasion--or enlightenment. I'm fully capable of grasping it, but the truth is I'm not even
reaching for it. I never set out to move the TOS
Enterprise design forward in any literal-minded sense and I frankly don't give a damn if you seem to think there's some sort of Shaw's Law requiring that. I changed some things I didn't much like about the original design and added a few things that helped connect it to
The Cage version, the TMP refit and a few other things that struck my fancy. If you don't like it, you're perfectly welcome to avoid every example of... well, pretty much everything Trek-related I've ever posted online, if it will help you avoid having your sensibilities violated.
And with that, I believe I've wasted quite enough of my time here.
