Spoilers ST Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Three SPOILER Discussion

[Go-Captain]

My interpretation of dilithium is it has to be an energy amplifier, which incidentally melds the regulator-powersource concepts. The amount of power Trek ships outputs is too high for real life antimatter, and in TOS the one time they use antimatter as a munition its destructive power is stated but is too powerful for real life by several orders of magnitude.

Dilithium as a perpetual motion machine (creating impossible levels of energy for a "small" input) also helps explain why dilithium as an integral part of warp drives is so enduring, and seen as inextricable. It's the easiest way to get the impossible power output required for mid to high warp speeds; it's low hanging fruit. Another way to put it is dilithium is wood before England's forests were used up and forced a switch to its gargantuan coal deposits. Coal is a better power source, but no one bothered until wood was running out because the investment to get coal is higher. Same thing happened with the switch from bronze to steel.

I stand by the idea that warp drive should work without dilithium, but by the standards of the period we might reasonably assume a dilithium-or-nothing attitude, as in cruising at warp <2.0 and using stasis is too slow for business and war. That being said, we should see fusion, antimatter, and fusion antimatter hybrid powered intrasystem warp cargo and defense ships sans dilithium, as well as sub-warp impulse only intrasystem ships. The former is desirable for reaching the Oort belt of a system in less than the span of months, while the latter is fine for inner-system work.

Also, someone's got to be crewing Detmer's post when she's off-duty, right? There should be at least one, maybe two other people who do the job as junior officers.

Depending on the number of shifts, there should be three to four helms people total. Since piloting a starship seems rather aircraft like I guess it would be their primary role, but they might have secondary duties in other sections during their other shift. That's if anyone has a second work shift, instead of 1 shift on, 3 off.

It's also possible that the symbiont took breaks between some hosts. if that's a thing they can do.

I think they can go back to the pool, and that would likely happen because the host selection is, if I'm remembering correctly, artificially small, and we know the symbiote is selective of who it will accept.

 

[Timo]

With the actually rather low number of officers and crew we see or hear about, running more than three shifts would be quite a burden. There's that one reference to Shift Five in "Runaway" - but perhaps the folks toiling at the shuttlebay cum cargo processing bay do more but shorter shifts, six against the three of the officers?

Certainly that bay is the least efficiently run in the entire Star Trek universe, with containers piling up as the show progresses, and blocking spacecraft access so that Booker apparently crushes at least one pile with his ship when entering... And never mind the suicidal-homicidal workbee pilots who buzz back and forth even when people are pointing phasers at each other in the bay, or escalating for the grandmother of all auxiliary craft wars, or trying to launch a time machine or whatnot. This while basically achieving nothing but the moving of the obtrusive containers from one end of the bay to another and back! I'm convinced this is because the ship lacks a proper cargo hold due to having been modified into a flying lab cum mushroom conservatory.

If anything, Season 3 shows this issue getting even worse...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

3X04 Forget Me Not

- We see the Discovery gym again. It's the same redress of the one-wall shuttlebay set we've already seen, however the middle "sparring" platform is no longer a good foot above the deck - it's more like a mat on the floor. Maybe it elevates itself for martial arts matches and sinks to floor level for more general use? Also the lighting is now warmer, and to the set dressers' credit all the equipment and props are pretty much the same as last year.

- On arriving at Trill, the commissioner appears as a hologram. I guess Pike's dislike of the system didn't stick, and people are free to show up as shimmering ghosts again. I suppose that Bryce didn't flip the "receive image as hologram" switch back to "on" when they went to Earth last week.

- This episode continues the Trekkian tradition of official meetings between visiting Starfleeters and local officials in the middle of nowhere. They weren't anywhere near the landing platform, and Michael and Adira were basically wandering around until the locals came to meet them. Did they purposefully direct them to land close to the caves, knowing that a symbiont was returning home? And to what end? Why didn't they just beam down - was this a leftover from the days that Trills didn't use transporters somehow?

- What happened to Burnham's lab? We haven't seen it in action - and she's working on her "murder board" in her quarters. Her lab off the bridge would be the logical place to work on this, and we haven't seen it back in action this year. OTOH, she's also had the chance to decorate her quarters since she got back. [Aside - I recognize this was done more so that we can have a tender moment in her quarters than in the relatively impersonal lab.]

- Just piecing together the timeline here. Twelve years ago, Senna Tal sends a message out from Earth regarding Starfleet and promises to wait for anyone who wants to come; Earth's position on this sours pretty quickly afterwards. Then he hops aboard a generation ship with a bunch (?) of orphans and/or volunteers to go look for "Federation Headquarters", even though at the end of it we know he knew where it was. Probably not long after their departure, some two years ago Senna dies and the symbiont is passed to Gray; and probably not long after that, the ship is clobbered by a space rock and Tal ends up in Adira. Adira is subsequently found and brought back to Earth no more than a year ago, where she enlists with the EDF.

- To me, this means that Senna and the gang leaves Earth around two years ago, shortly before he dies. Earth bring Earth at this time, they don't seem likely to have ships out very far, and at sublight / low warp they aren't liable to get very far anyway. Thoughts?

Mark

 

[Ronald Held]

With prior Trill attitude, shouldn't all pools be protected by transporter inhibitors?

 

[DEWLine]

You'd think so re: the Mak'ala caves in particular.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Additional: Saru states that "our ship's medical officer" will be heading down with Adira, directly referring to Dr. Culber. It's not 100% foolproof, but I'm guessing he's the top of the medical team now; Dr. Pollard is still there (this week sporting a medical uniform variant of Cmdr. Nhan's skirt and pants/leggings) but is of a Lieutenant's rank. For the remaining crew of ~90, I'm guessing this is more than enough (plus the medical NDs of course). Voyager's regular medical crew was apparently one doctor and one nurse, albeit with a century of more advanced tech and a backup EMH to boot.

Mark

 

[Timo]

On arriving at Trill, the commissioner appears as a hologram. I guess Pike's dislike of the system didn't stick, and people are free to show up as shimmering ghosts again. I suppose that Bryce didn't flip the "receive image as hologram" switch back to "on" when they went to Earth last week.

Possibly in the 32nd century, these things can be projected at random spots without the compliance of the receiver. But that would work poorly with the previous case, where Ndoye would be particularly unlikely to worry about compliance...

So yeah, it's something the receiving user can select. And no doubt the regular holograms of the day are of much higher quality, but there's only so much one can do in terms of cross-compatibility: the Trill signal has to cope with 23rd century projectors, and might be doing a poorer job than the Earth signal did with the viewscreen machinery, relatively speaking.

This episode continues the Trekkian tradition of official meetings between visiting Starfleeters and local officials in the middle of nowhere. They weren't anywhere near the landing platform, and Michael and Adira were basically wandering around until the locals came to meet them. Did they purposefully direct them to land close to the caves, knowing that a symbiont was returning home? And to what end? Why didn't they just beam down - was this a leftover from the days that Trills didn't use transporters somehow?

I guess it's another two-wrongs-make-a-hard-left situation: the Trill dignitaries wholly expected the heroes to materialize at the Great Foyer of the Grand Hall, and had to hike towards the landing platform when hearing the sound of the approaching spacecraft.

What happened to Burnham's lab? We haven't seen it in action - and she's working on her "murder board" in her quarters.

One might say this is the New Burnham: she's keeping this personal project close to her chest, not being ready to share both because she has grown to distrust these strangers in the intervening year, and because Book emphatically wanted it that way after having to put up with the lil' conspiracy theorist for three months straight.

Just piecing together the timeline here. Twelve years ago, Senna Tal sends a message out from Earth regarding Starfleet and promises to wait for anyone who wants to come; Earth's position on this sours pretty quickly afterwards. Then he hops aboard a generation ship with a bunch (?) of orphans and/or volunteers to go look for "Federation Headquarters", even though at the end of it we know he knew where it was. Probably not long after their departure, some two years ago Senna dies and the symbiont is passed to Gray; and probably not long after that, the ship is clobbered by a space rock and Tal ends up in Adira. Adira is subsequently found and brought back to Earth no more than a year ago, where she enlists with the EDF.

Alternately, the generation ship action was before Senna Tal left Earth - that is, Tal was inside Senna and then Grey aboard that generation ship, on a quest to find Starfleet, a dozen years before present. Then disaster struck, Adira got Tal, and the two were whisked to nearby Earth, presumably by folks ignorant of Tal or uninterested in forwarding the information (say, the bots of the ship). During transit, Tal manages to send a message "Meet me at Earth, the backwater where my lifepod is headed now, and save me from my cruel fate and I'll tell you where Starfleet is", but this is only ever heard in part by the heroes. And then the medically compromised Adira goes to stasis so that she can go on being sixteen forever.

And then they actually reach Earth, where Adira recovers, with this odd urge to get off the planet ASAP. Which is of course because Tal is stuck inside a body that refuses to talk to it, but keeps on manifesting, sending out further messages that go unheard, and for some reason faking a departure and a death, while Adira is aware of none of this.

To me, this means that Senna and the gang leaves Earth around two years ago, shortly before he dies. Earth bring Earth at this time, they don't seem likely to have ships out very far, and at sublight / low warp they aren't liable to get very far anyway. Thoughts?

Ndoye probably wasn't too hot on this project to find Starfleet - but somebody on Earth quite possibly was, and the generation ship might actually have launched from Earth, rather than being chartered by Senna or whatever. Might have been Senna Tal's personal project, and the ship was "looking for" by means of "sailing straight to". Earth never had much truck with that, but they did engage in rescue ops after the "I told you so!" disaster.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Struggling to think of a reason their little personal transporters aren't transwarp beaming them across the galaxy... beyond "the writers don't want it" of course.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Struggling to think of a reason their little personal transporters aren't transwarp beaming them across the galaxy... beyond "the writers don't want it" of course.

Distance might be a exponential function of power along with signal integrity issues.

 

[Ronald Held]

Isn't the power for those personal transporters land based? Assuming non folded space ones, wouldn't there need to be relays?

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

The personal transporters may access energy from extradimensional space, or some not-on-the-chest location. While I doubt the writers really thought that far ahead, it's still not likely that the little modules would contain the power AND the tech to do all the fun stuff. Maybe the one Book had tapped into a local power source (and coordinate system) to work?

As for transwarp beaming, both that and the Dominion's interstellar transport tech (to say nothing of the Nyrians of Voyager, or the Borg's assimilated spatial trajector, etc.) are all things that may require dilithium for all we know, or are simply not viable due to the nature of whatever the burn did. Again I think it's a matter of the writing not keeping up with the wealth of non-dilithium tech out there, and that we're not supposed to think too much about all those one-off episodes.

Mark

 

[fireproof78]

Struggling to think of a reason their little personal transporters aren't transwarp beaming them across the galaxy... beyond "the writers don't want it" of course.

Somebody died.

 

[Deks]

Distance might be a exponential function of power along with signal integrity issues.

32nd century would probably find ways around that and have power sources the size of a coin which equate to starships power outputs of about 300 year old starships (those from the 29th century).

From the Kelvin universe we know a 23rd century small ships power output could have beamed Khan almost anywhere in the quadrant.
By the 32nd century, those personal trasnporters should be able to beam people across the galaxy on a single charge. but after that you may need to wait 30 seconds before you can beam again.
To beam yourself outside the galaxy into another one you might require relay stations... but by the 32nd century, why not simply carry the signal via hypersubspace?
You don't technically need relay stations for this type of beaming, the signal simply needs to be strong enough to carry itself via subspace or hypersubspace much like a starship does when its traveling at Warp/QS/TW/whatever.

A closer cluster of nearby smaller galaxies for example would be accessible, but to reach say Andromeda galaxy... you might need relay stations between galaxies (like the hybersubspace MIDAS arrays used in the 24th century... only 810 years more advanced - meaning, you'd probably need to plant just 1 such advanced station between Milky Way and Andromeda to be able to ensure signal integrity of a personal transporter... if you were beaming from a ship though, it would be able to send the signal easily to Andromeda).

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

32nd century would probably find ways around that and have power sources the size of a coin which equate to starships power outputs of about 300 year old starships (those from the 29th century).

I'd prefer not breaking the mechanics of the Trek Universe by having too compact and powerful of a energy source in the size of a coin, that's too game/storyline breaking/broken IMO.

Just being able to beam over up to 100 km locally is pretty damn good IMO.

From the Kelvin universe we know a 23rd century small ships power output could have beamed Khan almost anywhere in the quadrant.

I'd rather there be more limits to transporting distance then no limits like that.

That's WAY too powerful and breaks the universe IMO.

I'm thinking of this from a "Balance" purpose.

And the Novelization for ST:ID explains that entire scenario better than the movie.
It makes ALOT more sense in the novels.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Transwarp_beaming
According to the novelization of Star Trek Into Darkness, beaming to Qo'noS for Khan was a more complicated plot. The small portable transwarp beaming device on the jumpship only had enough power to beam Khan to an automated cargo station on Earth's orbit. From there he accessed a heavy-load transporter to beam onto an unmanned vessel in orbit of Luna. Khan had equipped the ship with another unauthorized transwarp device wired into the empty ship’s engine. Utilizing the entire energy output of the engine for a single massive burst, he could have beamed anywhere in our galactic region. Transporting to Qo'noS completely burned out the device, so no one was able to follow him using it.

The limitation shouldn't just be on power source, it should also be on the emitting dish / antenna.

Usually when you want to send a signal from a StarShip, you have large Transporter signal pads mounted on the hull for transmitting, those are usually pretty big, so the signal integrity can travel quite the distance.

A personal Site-to-Site transporter, even one the size of a modern day Walkie-Talkie should be limited to just up to 100 km without repeaters and clear line of sight and range should be affected by objects in it's way and the density of all the objects should affect signal strength.

I'm trying to not put tech that is too OP in such a compact form.

 

[Timo]

Somebody died.

That's hardly a reason to stop doing an important thing. Heck, most advances in transportation began with hordes of people (including inventors, financial backers and celebrities) dying in the attempt to no detriment of the development and fielding process. And most exert a regular death toll today.

Also, why worry about dying when you press the transporter button when the greater odds are that a courier high on truth serum will blast you to colorful vapor for random no-reason?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

And the Novelization for ST:ID explains that entire scenario better than the movie.
It makes ALOT more sense in the novels

The novel is Alan Dean Foster totally retconning what the movie shows us. In the movie, Scotty explicitly calls Khan's bag a "portable transwarp beaming device" with the co-ordinates set to Kronos. And that Khan materializes in the same pose he vanishes from the jumpship says it all.

I don't think it breaks the universe, I think it massively changes the universe. But no more than our mobile phones do today versus tech in the 70's. Remember when research meant physically going to the library instead of opening the Google app? Our breakthough was moving data, theirs is people and items.

And IMHO it's a big shame they didn't want to follow up and deal with the consequences. Give me proto-Q humanity teleporting around the galaxy and resetting their age and health with each jump!

 

[Deks]

I'd prefer not breaking the mechanics of the Trek Universe by having too compact and powerful of a energy source in the size of a coin, that's too game/storyline breaking/broken IMO.

I don't think we'd be breaking any mechanics of Trek universe... especially because we know that subspace technology drastically enhanced baseline effects from the M/AM reactors for example by orders of magnitude to begin with.
Besides, its in line with demonstrating technological progression.

Also, the Na'khul mentioned to the Nazi in Enterprise that in their century (31st), there are power cells the size of a coin...

Just being able to beam over up to 100 km locally is pretty damn good IMO.

From our perspective? Sure.
From Trek's perspective? No. Site to site transporters in 24th century could already move you way more than 100 km.

I'd rather there be more limits to transporting distance then no limits like that.

Its' called 'transwarp beaming' for a reason my friend.

That's WAY too powerful and breaks the universe IMO.

I'm thinking of this from a "Balance" purpose.

Not too powerful at all... it would simply necessitate a change in how the story is handled... aka, it would simply have to be 'scaled up'.

And the Novelization for ST:ID explains that entire scenario better than the movie.
It makes ALOT more sense in the novels.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Transwarp_beaming
According to the novelization of Star Trek Into Darkness, beaming to Qo'noS for Khan was a more complicated plot. The small portable transwarp beaming device on the jumpship only had enough power to beam Khan to an automated cargo station on Earth's orbit. From there he accessed a heavy-load transporter to beam onto an unmanned vessel in orbit of Luna. Khan had equipped the ship with another unauthorized transwarp device wired into the empty ship’s engine. Utilizing the entire energy output of the engine for a single massive burst, he could have beamed anywhere in our galactic region. Transporting to Qo'noS completely burned out the device, so no one was able to follow him using it.

The limitation shouldn't just be on power source, it should also be on the emitting dish / antenna.

Yes, but you have to understand that was from a 23rd century perspective and technology.
Not 32nd century.
The game would shift dramatically in 930 years to the point where any limitations would technically speaking, 'evaporate'.

Usually when you want to send a signal from a StarShip, you have large Transporter signal pads mounted on the hull for transmitting, those are usually pretty big, so the signal integrity can travel quite the distance.

And we've seen site to site transporters in the 24th century capable of transporting you anywhere within a certain radius... on Voyager, it was able to move both Kim and Paris from Earth into a spacedock in orbit (for comparative purposes, the ISS is about 400 km above Earth's surface).

A personal Site-to-Site transporter, even one the size of a modern day Walkie-Talkie should be limited to just up to 100 km without repeaters and clear line of sight and range should be affected by objects in it's way and the density of all the objects should affect signal strength.

I'm trying to not put tech that is too OP in such a compact form.

Subspace sensors with superluminal computers and adaptive algorithms in the 24th century already eradicate those limitations (all of which are present in a simple comm-badge).

Compact form or not, we managed to miniaturize and merge a large number of separate devices (telephone, calendar, calculator, scanner/video camera, etc...) into a small portable device that fits in your hand in a span of a few decades (the computational power of which far exceeds a supercomputer from just 20 years ago).

We're talking about 930 years here.
Most technology from 24th century would be reduced in size and power requirements to the atomic or subatomic by that era and require relatively low amount of energy to run (or energy requirements wouldn't be an issue since a power cell the size of a coin would be enough to power such a multi-purpose device that has everything indefinitely).

All I'm saying is that as technology improves radically over a short period of time (nevermind massive period of time - which is inevitable), the said story will need to be modified to accommodate this.

Otherwise the writers shouldn't have pushed Disco so far into the future.

 

[fireproof78]

That's hardly a reason to stop doing an important thing. Heck, most advances in transportation began with hordes of people (including inventors, financial backers and celebrities) dying in the attempt to no detriment of the development and fielding process. And most exert a regular death toll today.

Also, why worry about dying when you press the transporter button when the greater odds are that a courier high on truth serum will blast you to colorful vapor for random no-reason?

Timo Saloniemi

It is a reason that I often see, especially in Trek, and is especially true for what I see with humanity right now.

I agree that most innovations will have a death toll. I also think that the Federation has demonstrated a tendency for an extreme overreaction, i.e. genetic engineering, due fears of risks of consequences, no matter how low the odds.

 

[NCC-73515]

What's the problem with 32nd century holograms? Blink and you'll miss them.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

3x05 “Die Trying”

USS Nog, NCC 325070. Named for the first Ferengi in Starfleet.

USS Voyager, NCC-74656-J. Named for the little ship that could.

Wow, what a dry week for tech..! :P

Mark