New Treknology Into Darkness

[B.J.]

Also, the center of mass of the ship is irrelevant. Even if the ship were rotating as it fell, the conservation of angular momentum would keep the contents rotating with it. Only if there were angular acceleration on the vessel (as in the bridge crew trying to upright the ship as it fell) and there was a simultaneous gravity failure would anybody be tossed about.

Wrong. If the ship is rotating, the people inside are going to be slung to the extreme edges if there's nothing like artificial gravity holding them in place. If there were no air or bulkheads in the ship, sure, they'd just float in place while the ship rotates around them. But the instant the person hits a bulkhead or is acted on by the fluid (air) around them, some of the ship's angular momentum is going to be translated to them by way of a force. If nothing else acts on them, they'll travel in a straight line, eventually hitting the outer bulkhead of the ship they're in. However, if you have a continuous force from the ship by way of a rotating bulkhead or the contained air, that person will be pushed into a rotation around the ship, which imparts a centrifugal force which forces them to the outer bulkhead again.

Note that I'm just pointing this out in general, I'm not necessarily agreeing with the theory that this is what happened in the movie.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Every time the swimmers move their propellers, they change the direction of their motion, except that they didn't. This shows they weren't using propeller boots, no matter any bubbles.

I didn't see much movement with the legs apart from the minor adjustments you'd expect to see from somebody trying to maintain a particular direction or small adjustments to it. It seemed obvious to me they had thrusters or propellers or something in their feet and the scene reflected that.

I think you need to go back and watch it again.

At one point the Enterprise seems to be falling on its side, and Kirk has to leap over a cross corridor, from wall to wall. He is fearful that he will fall "down," meaning towards the Earth.

"Seems to be falling on its side"? Not based on the exterior shots, and I watched that scene very closely on the second viewing. I cannot actually recall a single moment where the Enterprise was falling stably in a particular orientation for more than a handful of moments. It was effectively in a constant multi-axis tumble the whole time, which is why nobody was ever propelled towards the ceiling.

But it is by no means obvious that the artificial gravity can even be tuned so that it points in a different direction.

Pretty sure that's what inertial dampeners are for.

Nor is anybody falling "down" that giant hotel lobby space ever so fortunate as to have the supposedly malfunctioning gravity reverse and slow his fall.

Gravity doesn't work that way, but even if it did, we wouldn't have really SEEN it since we only got to see the lobby for a handful of seconds when Kirk was running through it.

Also, the center of mass of the ship is irrelevant. Even if the ship were rotating as it fell, the conservation of angular momentum would keep the contents rotating with it.

And rotating with it would cause them to be accelerated AWAY from the center of gravity with a force proportional to their distance from it. The ship wouldn't need to be accelerating in the tumble at all; tumbling at a constant rate would produce the same effect, but it would be far less chaotic than what we've seen in the movie.

 

[stj]

Aside from not seeing any motion at a tangent, how fast was the ship rotating? I think there would have to be a rather large angular acceleration for this to be noticeable. You are of course correct in principle.

 

[Ronald Held]

Normally AGS and IDF work together to keep a constant 1g environment regardless of the maneuvering and accelerating TOS may not of mentioned the IDF but they must had had one.

 

[Pauln6]

Gary Seven's transport looked a bit different.

But apparently wasn't, since Kirk's hardware was so inconveniently compatible with it...

The problem I have with transwarp beaming is that something has to maintain the confinement beam until you reach the destination.

It clearly isn't the originating transporter, though, as transportees often rematerialize safely long after this transporter has been destroyed. Sounds like the confinement beam is self-maintaining, until the point where it no longer is, that is.

Well, except that it isn't clear why they can't just scan the volcano's interior and beam a device in with a timer, or why the volcano threatens the planet rather than just the local population, or what the device is actually supposed to do, since capping the volcano will just lead to pressure increasing until the volcano explodes with even greater force. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

We have previously seen that transporters have trouble penetrating about two kilometers of ordinary rock. Just add a smidgen of mysterium into the rock and you seriously reduce transporter performance. Not reliable enough for beaming a unique device into place - but reliability ceases to be a concern when it's the only way to extract a fellow officer.

Lol - yes but these explanations aren't all that satisfactory. Earth is moving fast, Qo'onos is moving fast. We can't beam you out of a volcano or from inside the katric ark (which in fairness might be shielded) but we luckily can beam you from one planet to a specific deserted location on another planet? Was it sheer luck that Harrison transported at the exact time that the planetary locations were aligned or can they beam through the hot centre of planets but not volcanoes?

 

[T'Girl]

If they're getting thrust from their feet, why would they move them at all? Every move would turn them I should think.

I also believe there was propulsion from their boots, like in the old Marine Boy cartoons. I immediately thought of Marine Boy in the theater when I saw the trial of bubbles.

Small movements of their limbs would enable them to maintain a straight line of travel. The Human body isn't a nice regular shape, we're "bumpy" in form. Not moving their limbs at all could have resulted in a gradual turn.

 

[Belz...]

How can the phrase "cold fusion" be reconciled as somehow referring to the previous?

I just hope the term means something completely different in the 23rd century because otherwise it's a bit silly.

How can the Enterprise be bigger on the inside than the outside?

It isn't. Or it's a TARDIS.

How can concrete floors be a useful spaceship construction material?

I didn't spot that.

The first thing that really hurt suspension of disbelief were the scenes with the swimmers effortlessly swimming down. After all, a split second before they didn't even have masks on!

They had mask when they got inside the ship.

Assuming that the order they have those pics in matches the arrangement on the desk, then the ringship was *before* the Phoenix. Considering that everything else was arranged chronologically, what does that mean for the history of warp flight? Perhaps the ringship was an earlier failed experiment? Or maybe not quite failed, just a stepping stone to actual FTL flight?

No I think it was post-Phoenix. An early Vulcan-like annular warp drive design, from what I read. Of course we don't have anything official on it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Aside from not seeing any motion at a tangent, how fast was the ship rotating?

Is the wrong question.

The question is "How far are you from the axis of rotation?" and also "Exactly how much sideways force were all those people experiencing in those scenes?" To the latter question, probably less than you'd think; they're falling way too slowly for that, and Chekov's "gotcha" moment on the catwalk sort of hints they were being pulled sideways at something like one third of a gee or less.

But let's be generous and call it a full G. If they were only a hundred meters from the ship's axis of rotation, that would be consistent with a turn rate of about 18 degrees per second; that is, a rate at which it would take the ship a full ten seconds to tumble 180 degrees. That, IMO, is quite a bit slower than the ship appears to be tumbling; OTOH, the catwalk is in engineering, probably much closer to the ship's center of gravity, so the rotational velocity at that moment could easily be twice that.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Lol - yes but these explanations aren't all that satisfactory. Earth is moving fast, Qo'onos is moving fast. We can't beam you out of a volcano or from inside the katric ark (which in fairness might be shielded) but we luckily can beam you from one planet to a specific deserted location on another planet?

A repeated theme in this movie that seemed surprisingly consistent: it's a lot easier to beam someone DOWN than it is to beam them back again. Thinking back, this seems to be the case in the STXI as well: beaming Spock down to the surface is a pushbutton operation, but beaming him and the council back to the ship is "I have your signal. Don't move! Transport in five... four.. three... OH NOES!"

TOS is actually what set the precedent for this one. Apparently beaming people down is so easy that you don't even need to have a solid understanding of where you're beaming them to, hence Kirk accidentally beams two security officers into deep space because he never bothers to check to see whether or not the Enterprise is anywhere near the beamdown site.

Was it sheer luck that Harrison transported at the exact time that the planetary locations were aligned or can they beam through the hot centre of planets but not volcanoes?

With transwarp beaming, you can go through just about anything, including shields, warp fields, the hulls of starships, water tanks, etc. However, you have to really know what you're doing and your equations for your destination solution have to be perfect, otherwise the transwarp beam will wander off target and god only knows where you (or Admiral Archer's prized beagle) will end up.

Actually, we understand from that Enterprise episode "Daedalus" that transwarp beaming isn't technically all that challenging, all you're really doing is piggybacking a transporter signal on a subspace carrier wave. The trick is getting the payload to materialize at the proper destination; if you miss your target, you either wind up in a random place on the far end of the universe, or you fail to materialize at all and wind up floating in subspace until somebody can dig out your pattern and rematerialize you.

 

[Timo]

hence Kirk accidentally beams two security officers into deep space because he never bothers to check to see whether or not the Enterprise is anywhere near the beamdown site.

More exactly, one of Kirk's redshirts beams down two doomed shirtmates because the ship has been taken over by paranormal kids who have the power to tell people to do stupid things and see false images. Spock seems surprised that the planet Triacus is nowhere to be seen, yes - but there's nothing to say the other guy wasn't seeing the planet right there when he beamed down the redshirts moments before.

As for the movie, why should the transporters of Harrison and Kirk behave in like manner? Harrison has a wholly different piece of technology available to him; even if there's no fundamental difference in operating principle, we know that a transporter isn't a transporter isn't a transporter. Some have less range, some have more. Some have less penetrating capacity, some have more. Some struggle with materials others can handle with ease. And Harrison is supposed to have under-the-counter tech while Kirk has off-the-shelf.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

It's the concept I find silly, not the internal consistency, although Scotty's proposal was beaming to planets in the same system and he beamed about 1 light year onto a ship at warp in the first movie. They moved the goalposts quite considerably by beaming Harrison 90+ light years.

But then the concept of being able to beam onto an enemy ship without triggering an automated alarm for unauthorised transports which leads said ship to automatically lock onto your signal and beam you straight to a holding cell is very silly as well and that's been used over and over and over again.

 

[Timo]

Hmm... Sensor tech is something our Starfleet heroes supposedly excel in, as opposed to their brutish opponents. Nevertheless, we have seen Kirk and Picard's teams struggle with locating one of their own inside the Enterprise, let alone with reliably tracking an intruder. I'd say TOS has every excuse not to feature capturing of intruders by intraship beaming; TNG is on shakier ground, but the nuTOSMovie realm still isn't obligated to be capable of anything of this sort.

Intruder alerts might be largely based on detecting penetration rather than presence, and if the means of penetration is innovative enough, it will go unnoticed. Quite possibly, countermeasures or even detection mechanisms for transwarp beaming will not be invented until several decades into this new timeline...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DaleC76]

There are some wonderful new ideas in the new movie Into Darkness, are there not? Surely worthy of discussion?

How could a wet suit make a person survive a long fall, then sink effortlessly and then swim unaffected by water pressure. Particularly without visible helmets.

How can a hand-held devise pump massive quantities of heat from equally massive quantities of lava, without generating more heat as required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

How can the phrase "cold fusion" be reconciled as somehow referring to the previous?

What power source could be in a ring sufficient to create the explosion in London? Could enough antimatter be inside the containment ring?

How can we reconcile the notion of warp drive with any determinate "speed" with the travel times in the movie?

Why can't the Klingons detect the vessel when it's leaving, after a patrol disappears, that they couldn't detect when it arrived?

How can the Enterprise be bigger on the inside than the outside?

How can concrete floors be a useful spaceship construction material?

How can we justify the enormous empty spaces inside the Enterprise?

How did the Federation abolish Newton's First Law of Motion, so that people who fall off rails in a free falling spaceship[/] would immediately fall even faster even though the Earth's gravitational field is unchanged?

Lastly, why would the Federation design a ship so that the crew could fall to its death?

Don't forget the handheld communicators powerful enough for someone at the NZ to have a conversation with someone on Earth. In REAL TIME.

 

[B.J.]

Assuming that the order they have those pics in matches the arrangement on the desk, then the ringship was *before* the Phoenix. Considering that everything else was arranged chronologically, what does that mean for the history of warp flight? Perhaps the ringship was an earlier failed experiment? Or maybe not quite failed, just a stepping stone to actual FTL flight?

No I think it was post-Phoenix. An early Vulcan-like annular warp drive design, from what I read. Of course we don't have anything official on it.

Saw the movie again this past weekend. The ringship was just before the Phoenix. Personally, I'd still like to think of it as an important sub-warp stepping stone. Nothing really to contradict that from all its appearances.

A repeated theme in this movie that seemed surprisingly consistent: it's a lot easier to beam someone DOWN than it is to beam them back again. Thinking back, this seems to be the case in the STXI as well: beaming Spock down to the surface is a pushbutton operation, but beaming him and the council back to the ship is "I have your signal. Don't move! Transport in five... four.. three... OH NOES!"

I think in this movie Chekov said something specifically along the lines of the receivers are damaged. But I guess the transporter transmitters were okay.

New question: This was a blink-and-you-miss-it thing, but where did they launch the captured ship from? It was way too quick (like 1/2 second), but it looked to me like it was a square shaped door/hatch along the side of the Enterprise somewhere, not the aft shuttlebay.

Also, where is the "aft warp nacelle", behind which is the life support systems that Khan refers to?

 

[Timo]

Don't forget the handheld communicators powerful enough for someone at the NZ to have a conversation with someone on Earth. In REAL TIME.

I don't understand this bit. Why would a hand communicator be a less likely way to talk from star to star than a starship communicator? Both are likely to simply hook up to an existing network anyway. It's not as if the hand communicator would have been operated far away from all possible boosters, now is it?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Harvey]

Long distance communication in Trek has always been instantaneous...unless the plot demands it to take time.

 

[Ronald Held]

This maybe SOT but do the jj phasers have one 1 stun setting or kill? Khan was stunned repeatedly while a higher setting would have fell him in less time.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think the phasers have two "modules" with a general power setting for each, which sort of implies that "stun" and "kill" are totally separate types of energy altogether.

Not that it matters much, but the "Star Trek" videogame suggests that the stun setting doesn't actually produce unconsciousness except at VERY high power levels and otherwise just causes extreme dizziness and disorientation.

 

[stj]

Long distance communication in Trek has always been instantaneous...unless the plot demands it to take time.

Yes, and it has worn very badly. The new team should have had the balls to redesign the treknology. They didn't need a bigger Enterprise, they needed one that could feed our willing suspension of disbelief, just a scrap. We want to believe, we just need something beside a slap in the face!

 

[Pauln6]

Don't forget the handheld communicators powerful enough for someone at the NZ to have a conversation with someone on Earth. In REAL TIME.

I don't understand this bit. Why would a hand communicator be a less likely way to talk from star to star than a starship communicator? Both are likely to simply hook up to an existing network anyway. It's not as if the hand communicator would have been operated far away from all possible boosters, now is it?

Timo Saloniemi

The fact that the conversation took place is not an issue since it would hook up to the nearby transmitter of the ship and the station. What is silly is that Scotty could engage in an unauthorised conversation on a secure facility without them noticing.