Moral implications

[Kaziarl]

Ok, so I just watched Titan AE and I had a question that comes from the same moral implications as the use of the Genesis Torpedo. What would happen if you used the Titan near an inhabited planet?

 

[Unicron]

It would destroy the existing civilization in favor of its programmed matrix, as Spock said in TWOK. While that would certainly be a bad thing by moral standards, one has to remember that Genesis was not intended to be used on those sorts of worlds.

 

[Kaziarl]

I know what the Genesis did. My question is from watching Titan AE, could the Titan have the same effect?

 

[Unicron]

I haven't seen Titan, so unfortunately I can't be of much help there. My brain is tired, so I apologize if I didn't read your initial post clearly.

 

[JuanBolio]

Seemingly. It made short work of the ice rings and all surrounding matter, breaking it down and forming it into something new. A nearby planet would likely suffer a similar fate.

Any exceedingly powerful device, be it a propulsion system or a machine of creation, can be a deadly weapon if used in the wrong way. Take warp drive, for example. When you have ships massing thousands of tons zipping around at speeds many times that of light, you wouldn't need a Genesis Torpedo to destroy a planet. Even if warp drive couldn't turn a ship into a doomsday battering ram, say because warping the space time continuum does not impart actual velocity, impulse drive would still do nicely. A ship the size of the Enterprise striking a planet at a good fraction of the speed of light would make a dinosaur-killer-sized asteroid impact look like a small firecracker.

 

[Timo]

...Although impulse drive, too, may be "cheating" as regards Newtonian mechanics. The secret of achieving near-lightspeed may be that the impulse engines reduce the inertial mass of the ship to four and a half grams.

I mean, it's better to invent such imaginary limitations to these imaginary technologies, as long as nobody on screen actually uses them as weapons of mass destruction. We've seen enough villains intent on megascale mayhem develop exotic superweapons - we should assume traditional treknologies do not meet their needs.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JuanBolio]

Perhaps so, with the impulse drive. Still, with the level of technology commonly available to civilians in Trek, accelerating a massive object fraction of the speed of light should be a simple thing. Even a transporter could be used as a terrible weapon. And what about all these civilian ship flying around with M/AM reactors? A core breach in a planet's atmosphere would put Hiroshima to shame.

 

[think]

I just used the Genesis Matrix on the universe --- from the mirror universe because the universe had died.., essentially I jump started the universe again. there are no 'real' moral implications involved in that action be the universe was "dead" until then but I wonder if the Dead aliens really cared that I did that or not?

I am thinking from a moral standpoint and that this is a trek question hence it is posted here. Still in the end it was fun.

science officer
USS Eagle
sb118

 

[sojourner]

I just used the Genesis Matrix on the universe --- from the mirror universe because the universe had died.., essentially I jump started the universe again. there are no 'real' moral implications involved in that action be the universe was "dead" until then but I wonder if the Dead aliens really cared that I did that or not?

I am thinking from a moral standpoint and that this is a trek question hence it is posted here. Still in the end it was fun.

science officer
USS Eagle
sb118

You Sir, continue to astound me.

 

[Brolan]

I just used the Genesis Matrix on the universe --- from the mirror universe because the universe had died.., essentially I jump started the universe again. there are no 'real' moral implications involved in that action be the universe was "dead" until then but I wonder if the Dead aliens really cared that I did that or not?

I am thinking from a moral standpoint and that this is a trek question hence it is posted here. Still in the end it was fun.

science officer
USS Eagle
sb118

You (or someone else) must have done this a number of times. That would explain these feelings of deja-vu I have at times.