Spoilers ST Prodigy - StarShips & Technology Season 1 Discussion

"Shuttlecraft Fuel Storage" is labelled as aft, where Voyager had a shuttle bay. Vehicle Replicator is highlighted seemingly in the forward area where Voyager kept its deflector array.

 

The second image shows a traditional torpedo, but the final image shows a new bullet shape torpedo with mid-range of 3,500,000 km, .75C speed, and 300 km "blast zone." A 300 km blast diameter is far in excess of just what 1.5 kg of antimatter would produce with 1.5 kg of matter.

I can get NukeMap only up to 100 MT, and it's atmospheric fire ball is only 6.1 km, with its light blast damage at 91.8 km. That torpedo is getting far more energy out than a realistic nuclear device.

I found another calculator with a higher limit. It takes 13,000,000 MT to create a 300 km radius fireball, but a "blast zone" implies the blast effect in atmosphere, on the other hand it is giving space range and space speed of an anti-spaceship weapon. Assuming planetary effects are a reasonable low end might be aiming far too low, so the blast zone might really be the fireball since there is no air in space to create a blast. But, assuming it means diameter, not radius, might be a reasonable low end.

In that case, 2,400,000 MT gets a 150 km radius.

On yet another hand, the torpedo could be extending its blast zone by other means, such as I don't know what space magic or frikkin bomb pumped lasers/phasers.

With their better transporter tech (which should mean better replicators), programmable matter, holographic hulls, and living hulls they should have on demand shuttles. They should flow like water in their disposability, limited only by dilithium.

We sort of have it in how they upgraded Discovery in, what is it, a week?

Maybe not, but their communicator should make holographic/shield suits for environmental and combat protection. It's such an obvious extension of the comm badge being a holoprojector and transporter.

I'm with you on this, dilithium should be replicatable, but it's considered a fringe concept. Too much adherence to the technical manual.

All it would take to keep mining dilithium making more sense than replication is if dilithium is too high up the periodic table, and therefore takes too much energy to make from scratch, at least without massive dedicated facilities in near solar orbit to harvest solar energy.

On that note, we should see a Dyson sphere built specifically to harvest energy to artificially mass produce dilithium.

Form a forcefield holding a vacuum, build a container around it, then pop some antimatter inside. When Wesley carries antimatter to with him it's in a transparent sphere no bigger than a baseball, so they have remarkably compact, safe storage devices. Safe enough they let kids play with stuff for private experiments.

The thing here though is Voyager fabricated warp coils from scratch for the Delta Flyer, twice. We've never seen anything saying they are unreplicatable. They are massive though, and that shuttle replicator shows us how objects larger than the replicator itself can be manufactured, they just move the replicator head around.

The closest I know is the Danube class runabout in TNG. I think the shuttle pods might be fusion powered. But, the average shuttles can go to warp, maybe warp 3-ish and that implies they should be carrying proper warp engines with dilithium and antimatter.

Another time is when Riker says a particular mineral water cannot be replicated. Another, earlier time, is when in "Code of Honor" they can't replicate a life saving drug. But, the only thing we have stated as unreplicatable are living things, and that's confirmed when Picard's energy has to be recovered to rebuild him from his recovered transporter pattern. I've always taken that to mean Star Trek has souls.

Also, I take all of that to mean the water and drug have living components the replicator cannot copy, maybe like a pickle or a drink carbonated through fermentation.

I have the impression most people assume antimatter cannot be replicated, but I figure antimatter probably is as easy to make as regular matter because it's just spin reversed matter. It skips all the problems of smashing particles together. Besides, the one thing Trek ships never run out of is antimatter, they only ever run out of deuterium and dilithium.

I think there is interstellar antimatter which could be collected by the Bussard collectors, but if there were enough out there to matter then the ships would never run out of dueterium since there is more matter out there than antimatter.

It would be a net energy loss. Even replicating antimatter should be a net loss, because making matter from energy should take more energy than you get out once reacted, even with a perfect 1:1 energy:matter conversion rate. This could be balanced out by reacting more deuterium with the antimatter than in a 1:1 ratio, so the resulting annihilation radiation causes a fusion reaction in the deuterium in a hybrid annihilation fusion reaction, or a more efficient antimatter triggered fusion reaction. That fusion reaction would then create enough energy to allow antimatter to be made, and the antimatter acts like a battery allowing a large quantity of energy to be stored at a loss, as apposed to gasoline which releases more energy than put it in.

This handily explains why it is deuterium which always runs out, because it is reacted at a rate far greater than 1:1, especially when the ship finds a new supply to top off. That's when they also top off their antimatter supply.

That's the one thing I really disliked about the scene. I would expect that kind of thing to be so completely safe a baby could crawl through without anyone being worried due to the system's awareness. Also it should have been aware enough to know massive errors were occurring during and just after construction and why and what to do to compensate. Or, just erect a forcefield around the whole thing while operating.

 

One of the shuttles in TNG's "Coming of Age" used dilithium to operate. Presumably it was for a M/AM engine.

 

New phaser and tricorder

 

Why the eff is there a grill in front of the emitter barrel on the phaser?

Why is there large Glowy LED icons with the StarFleet logo on the sides?

Whatever happened to making things look simple and not giving away the position of your officers when out in the field.

Having two giant glowly LED logos on the side of the phaser is a giant "Kill me, I'm standing right here" light bulb to the enemy.

Also, WTF is with the assymetric Tricorder?

How is that even remotely ergonomic?

 

Before the pictures opened, I was sort of expecting a new gadget called "phaser and tricorder". Seriously, why are those separate things to begin with? Even in the DIS scheme where everything else but the gun is integrated to the chest badge?

(Apart from that, training guns? As in, the opposite of field-compatible, even if functional?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

Actually, I do think it refers to a 300 km RADIUS fireball .
13 million Megatons = 13 Teratons.

This isn't impossible when you factor in the premise that UFP weapons use subspace technology to radically amplify on baseline effects.

Therefore 1.5 kg of matter and 1.5kg of antimatter DOES equal 64 MT, but only in a very crude/baseline manner without subspace technology amplifying the effects.
Given that all UFP technology uses subspace (torpedoes included), we have seen their weapons can also have a highly adjustable/variable yield ranging from nothing to an extremely powerful weapon.

TNG era mainly portrayed Gigaton level yields with Phasers digging into kilometers beneath the surface in seconds... and that was after they were set to roughly one tenth (or less) of their full strenght... and even then, chances of causing a chain reaction and killing all life on the planet in question was still there.

In DS9, we saw the combined Cardassian and Romulan fleet firing on the Founder homeworld... with each blast radius showing Teraton level yields.

Baseline numbers in Trek mean very little when you have advanced subspace technology radically amplifying your effects and overall energy... or in effect, they provide a BASELINE... not the enhanced effects due to use of subspace technology.

I wouldn't be surprised the same process is used in M/AM proccess of annihilation and why replicators were said to be able to in fact convert energy into matter (and not matter to energy and then back into matter, or matter to matter).
Because they apply subspace technology during the M/AM annihilation process, its likely that they are getting FAR more energy out of it than without it.
Therefore, the ship can have a relative stockpile of matter and antimatter, which on its own wouldn't last for say 5 years on a Galaxy class ship... but because they use subspace technology, they get far more energy out of every annihilation... and have a whole bunch of ways of STORING excess energy as we witnessed... not to mention that EVERYTHING on a SF ship is recycled with incredible efficiency.

Disco was upgraded in 3 weeks actually, but that seems like too long of a time for 31st century technology (programmable matter) which can technically do things in seconds.
In fact, transporters can already do that as well... but programmable matter is still useful because you can just reshape existing matter into whatever you need (which saves on replicator energy use).

Which is why I think the Disco was upgraded in the first week for the most part, and crew training was being conducted for rest of the time, whereas the DOT's were doing 'finishing touches' - possibly intentionally so they would familiarize themselves with Disco's new designs (which they would have to have uplodaded to their databanks) but working on the actual ship can sometimes differ - provide more than enough 'training' to avoid any mistakes.

To that effect, I don't see why dilitihum would be non-replicable. Its matter... and its structure is well known to SF... so it should be replicable.
Apart from that, I also think dilithium and M/AM would have been abandoned as power sources shortly after Voy got back (or certainly by the time of ST: Picard) home by using say a combination of different power sources such as Tetryon reactors, Thermionic generators and whatever powered the fake USS Dauntless (voy crew got intimately familiar with the vessel and it was mentioned that it didn't use Antimatter... dilithium was never mentioned either).

Yes, but that would have been doable by the 25th century already (or 100 years later).
In fact, keeping all that technology in a commbadge is obscene since its easily removed from the wearer.
A more sensible solution would be to integrate the technology on a microscopic level (or slightly larger) and just copy/paste it throughout the surface area of the entire uniform. Given the size of tricorders, commbadges, personal shield emitters/wristbands and power packs, and even sight to sight portable transporter in the 24th century, I don't see why their innards couldn't be miniaturized and duplicated ad nauseum and networked together to provide a far bigger capability in regards to scanning, communications/translation, power generation, personal shield strength, personal transporters, etc.


Create microscopic billions of copies of similarly powerful different tech (comms, translators, sensors, holographics, pattern buffers, shield generators and power packs), line the ENTIRE uniform surface area with that flexible technology, network it together, and you get a FAR more powerful version of everything that cannot be simply removed from the wearer by removing the commbadge. In fact, the uniform could ADHERE to the wearer because its made of programable metamaterials while simultaneously allowing the wearer's skin to 'breathe' - so it would be programmed to be part of the wearer and cannot be simply removed without the wearers explicit consent.

Plus, unfamiliar alien species wouldn't know this, so they would remove only the badges, but leave the uniforms on the crew... resulting in the crew just pulling out weapons out of their storage buffers (integrated into the clothing), along with a tritanium or polymer bassed suit similar to the red angel which can be used for combat and lined with personal shields (or just generate personal shields around the wearer and leave the armor for later if it becomes needed).

This could also be linked to the wearer's brain more or less so they can activate given technology on demand with a thought when its needed. And while neural interfaces weren't a 'thing' until after Voy returned home in the original timeline where it took the ship 16 years to get back, I'd imagine that by the 25th century the technology we saw in the 31st/32nd century would already be executed and be far more powerful than what was shown.

Waste of a Dyson Sphere if you ask me, which could be used for something far better (such as creating more Dyson Sphere's across UFP space [most stars] and then collectively use their networked technology to create more in close dwarf galaxies, and make a new one in say Andromeda galaxy to create a stable/artificial subspace corridor and investigate the radiation that was reported in the 23rd century by the Kelvans.
The Dyson Sphere's (or at least Swarms - which would be eminently easier to build and achieve the same results), could be used for R&D of new clean power systems, automated R&D, etc.

As I said, VOY encountered and recorded data on at least 3 different and advanced power sources, none of which needed dilithium or used antimatter.
The UFP was also engaged in power source R&D during TNG... Kriega Waves (which was highly promising)... and all that data survived.

Disco writers were just incredibly lazy.

The Voyager crew didn't have the benefit of a vehicle replicator.
What they COULD have done is linked all onboard replicators together, then tied them into the transporter system, and just materialized the whole thing from scratch.
Instead, it looks like they replicated smaller parts and assembled them by hand... which to be fair is absurd given they have antigrav sleds, computerized automation and tractor beams... all of which could do this easily enough.
And dating back to 100 years earlier, they DID have hovering sensor drones and repair bots for ships... so stands to reason same tech could and would be used for construction inside ships for repairs and maintenance.

 

-(Non-Exocomp?) industrial servo mechanism! Delightful! Very similar design to the ones Dr. Farallon modified in Tyran System.

-Jankom’s (mining?) suit isn’t airtight(?) and therefore really isn’t doing anything? Maybe he’s not fastened the helmet properly?

-A Tellar sleeper ship (probably pre-Federation?) is a very reasonable origin for Jankom.

 

Unfamiliar with the reference.

He probably hadn't put it on properly. It was extremely odd that he was able to smell the gasses on the outside if he wore a space suit.

Indeed. At least it provides one piece of a potential puzzle which doesn't involve temporal schenanigans.
And the galaxy is HUGE.
The sleeper ship could have delivered the Tellarites anywhere in the DQ and Voy would have never encountered any Tellarites.

A similar premise could be applied to other AQ species we saw.

 

Warp taking people to places has been there since the very beginning: Kirk considered it impossible in the pilot episode, yet it did happen. Supposedly there is no trick to traveling at warp 47,000 other than being lucky enough to survive: warp engines can always do warp infinite when properly motivated, and just tend to blow up when you exceed designed safety margin for too long.

So it would only stand to reason that if a species does warp at all, its representatives are already everywhere: they have proven they are adventurous and risk-taking and interested in the outside universe, and they have the means. And once they succeed, they succeed quick: Columbus took ages to cross one little pond in comparison with what warp can achieve, in absolute terms as regards travel times, even if we ignore the relative ones. Months from Earth to Ocampa might be slow going for those who succeed by chance and foolish courage. It's just that so very few do.

Timo Saloniemi

 

To prevent contact with the emitter.

Because trademarks are important.

That went out when commanding officers are dressed in gold uniforms with flashy rank braid that reflect light. That was a plot point in a TOS book and how Kirk was captured by Romulans.

It's not...for humans. As you're found of noting, Doctor, I am not human.

 

Dilithium may not be a 4-D object, which can be replicated?

 

I like them. The phaser finally has a versatile enough looking interface to do all the things it has done in the past, and still looks like a tool instead of a weapon. I hope that green ring is a visual aiming system, like the TOS Type II flip up optic. If it can project holograms it will be great. Though, it's a bit cumbersome looking.

I hope to see them accidentally setting phasers incorrectly a bunch of times, just like with the miss communication with rerouting power. In DS9, Kira noted them as being harder to learn than the Cardassian equivalent. Besides, mixing a less than lethal weapon with a deadly weapon is recipe for disaster in real life.

The tricorder is neat, I always liked the Nemesis tricorder, and this is a nice mix of modern touch screens, a PADD, and moving mechanical bits of classic tricorders.

 

ST:TNG “Quality of Life” Farallon’s Exocomps are said to be modified from common industrial servo mechanisms- to me it looked like the object Gwyn cut in half for Murf to eat was one of these.

 

As in, what is commonly used by law enforcement and militaries, at least in the United States with several agencies? Or replicas that are designed to get a new user familiar with the weight and handling without being lethal. Those exist.

 

Oh.
THAT.
You mean that what Gwyn cut in half was a servo mechanism?
Could be. Looks certainly close enough to be something on which the Exocom might have been based on.
At least we know SF ships in the 24th century DO have automated drones going through the ship... probably performing maintenance, repairs, cleanup, etc.

 

So here are some Screen Caps of the Landing Struts.

They seem to be using a "Snow Board" style landing strut with a few small trainer struts to the side, in the middle of the "Snow Board"

The Fore Cargo Door also acts as a 4th contact point that is a flat bladed front ski pole as well.

It's a very interesting design IMO.

 

Hallucinations happen in the mind

If only Voyager had had that in Timeless when they crashed on the glacier - gliding away in style

 

Here's ScreenCaps of the new Rover:

They call it "The RunAway".

My issue with it is, why is the aft light off-center and to the left?
Why isn't it centered if they were only going to have one rear light?
Why not go with 2x lights on the rear?

It's interesting how "The RunAway's" front window is not quite a force field, but a quickly replicated / dematerialized solid window.

Here's more shots of the new Unknown-Type ShuttleCraft:

I swear it looks like a flying stretch limo with how much space they put in that thing.

Ok, I took the time to do some real calculations of ProtoStar's LxWxH based on Kate Mulgrew's height.
With that info figured out, I calculated Rok Tahk's height.
After that, I figured out roughly how wide is the shuttle bay at the lowest point.
Then I figured out how tall ProtoStar is, which then lead me to it's Length / Width.

Kate Mulgrew = 5'5" = 1.651 meters
Rok Tahk = 6'8.2" = 2.0376 meters
ProtoStar's:
- Height = 37.5825 meters from Top of the Bridge's glass dome to bottom of Cargo Bay hull
- Length = 284.5236 meters from (Tip of Nose to End of Nacelle)
- Length = 217.7331 meters from (Tip of Nose to End of Tail)
- Width = 166.0572 meters from (Outside of Nacelles)
- Width = 126.4323 meters from (Outer Edge of Saucer)

That puts in a revised scaling for ProtoStar to look like this:

 

It just occurred to me that they could be separate emitters for redundancy and/or different settings. I think the DST TMP/WOK phaser fired not from all LEDs on the lower settings