Star Trek levels of civilization/technology

[Deckerd]

Scientific analysis of Star Trek science is meaningless to science. It is, however, hugely entertaining for geeks. This thread reads like one of the arguments from The Big Bang Theory.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, it would be futile to argue about Star Trek while ignoring antigravity and FTL drives - but even less plausible to argue about antigravity and FTL drives while acknowledging all the current beliefs about gravity and lightspeed. Something must give, and if it's not today's scientific ideas, then it's the totality of onscreen Trek instead.

Or the most significant part of it, anyway. Fiddling with Newton's laws won't yield anything interesting or relevant about the behavior of starships; it won't explain observed behavior or predict so far unobserved things. Newton should still hold for the behavior of a hand phaser kicked from Commander K'lumsy's hand by Kirk, or for the falling of Viceroy Vici'ous down a bottomless shaft, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Or the most significant part of it, anyway. Fiddling with Newton's laws won't yield anything interesting or relevant about the behavior of starships; it won't explain observed behavior or predict so far unobserved things.

Sure it would. You'd just have to allow for a tiny bit of artistic license and a slightly larger amount of fridge logic. One theory I'm not overly fond of, for instance, is that the action of the ramscoops drawing interstellar hydrogen creates a drag force on a starship that entirely explains why they maneuver in an airplane-like manner; shutting off the ramscoops allows them to move in a newtonian/spaceship-like way, but they would again swoop/bank like planes once the scoops are turned back on (the starships and fighters in "Wing Commander" and the old Battlestar Galactica are sometimes explained as working this way).