New Treknology Into Darkness

[Crazy Eddie]

Anti-matter imbalance allowed it in TMP - is there a fail-safe that prevents it?

Yes. It's called the Navigational Deflector. Under normal circumstances, it'll push things out of your way so you won't collide with it, which is what WOULD have happened in TMP if the deflector had been working properly.

Of course, the Enterprise had dropped out of warp before hitting the debris field, so any objects that were in its path before it dropped out of warp would have been pushed out of its path anyway.

If so, how did the JJprise warp into a debris field?

Very very quickly.

 

[Pauln6]

Anti-matter imbalance allowed it in TMP - is there a fail-safe that prevents it?

Yes. It's called the Navigational Deflector. Under normal circumstances, it'll push things out of your way so you won't collide with it, which is what WOULD have happened in TMP if the deflector had been working properly.

Of course, the Enterprise had dropped out of warp before hitting the debris field, so any objects that were in its path before it dropped out of warp would have been pushed out of its path anyway.

If so, how did the JJprise warp into a debris field?

Very very quickly.

Lol well the slight hitch is that the deflector can't push large objects like ships out of its way and the JJprise's full shields can't protect it from small debris. I'm really not seeing, "Well there are never any ships orbiting Vulcan so we'll probably be fine," cutting it from a legal or moral perspective. I'm still not seeing enough safety features to justify the risks warping into a solar system. The orbit of a planet is tiny compared to warping to the edge of the Oort Cloud for example.

 

[Timo]

Not all that tiny from the practical standpoint. Just go estimate how densely a fleet of a thousand ships would really be placed at an orbital altitude of a thousand kilometers above Earth - and then consider that a ship dropping from warp does so on a dime (viz. those many chase scenes). Medium Earth orbit should still be practically empty with a thousand starships waiting there, and quite safe for blind warping-in.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Pauln6]

Not all that tiny from the practical standpoint. Just go estimate how densely a fleet of a thousand ships would really be placed at an orbital altitude of a thousand kilometers above Earth - and then consider that a ship dropping from warp does so on a dime (viz. those many chase scenes). Medium Earth orbit should still be practically empty with a thousand starships waiting there, and quite safe for blind warping-in.

Timo Saloniemi

I suppose Earth could have parking orbits that ships warping in can book in advance but I don't accept that the Federation would let random ships warp into any old orbit they fancied just because the likelihood of crashing is low. We don't even know how likely meeting another ship really is since we don't know enough about how much traffic there is, although granted, it looks like Earth has very few starships at its disposal at any one time.

Still, how many lightning storms are there on the planet and how many people are struck by lightning every year? A crash is going to happen without steps in place to prevent it.

Still the parking orbit makes some sense. In most cases they would not want to violate a planet's 'airspace' so permission for a parking space in advance would make sense. Federation planets could just have beacons to guide ships in.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm really not seeing, "Well there are never any ships orbiting Vulcan so we'll probably be fine," cutting it from a legal or moral perspective.

Try to remember, though, that this is an emergency situation, so the fleet's probably booking it for Vulcan like a squad of police cars racing to the scene. They'd have the subspace radio equivalent of "sirens blaring".

Of course, if it hadn't been for Narada's drill jamming all the comms they probably would have gotten approach clearance from local Vulcan authorities too. The silence from those authorities was probably assumed to be related to their seismic troubles until the Narada opened fire on everyone.

I'm still not seeing enough safety features to justify the risks warping into a solar system. The orbit of a planet is tiny compared to warping to the edge of the Oort Cloud for example.

True as that is, starships are even smaller. The chances of accidentally warping into a collision course with another ship are infinitesimally small, even if the ships are dropping out of warp directly in an orbit that is used by commercial traffic.

Something to keep in mind: if you have 100,000 ships, satellites and space stations in geostationary orbit, anyone warping into Earth orbit could succesfully avoid a collision by dropping out of warp just 200 kilometers ABOVE geostationary orbit. You can go to impulse power and drop into geo, or bypass the geo belt altogether and drop to LEO.

Heavily populated worlds probably have a number of desginated orbital altitudes and inclinations that is set aside for arriving/departing space vessels and that local traffic avoids as much as possible just to keep everyone safe.