Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 3x10 - "The Last Generation"

[Pauln6]

We know from DS9 that a warp field can be used to alter the mass of an object.

Well do you have any evidence that a warp powered ship with artificial gravity, inertial dampening field, structural integrity field, and various subspace manipulation tools can't?

Ever thought about where Odo's mass goes when he transforms into a lightweight bag someone picks up?

Exactly. Also the D made some pretty quick moves in the series. Even on encounter at farpoint it made quick turns. Not as quick as what data could do though.

The Ent-D was not in an atmosphere so there was no air resistance. Also, we know warp fields can reduce mass and inertial dampeners can "cancel out" inertia. So it is not unreasonable to assume that Trek tech would be able to make a large ship maneuver very quickly.

Honestly anything we know about physics NOW can't really be applied to what starships should or shouldn't be able to do because it's all based on space-magic.

What I liked about Star Trek was that it's fictional physics had a sound grounding in real world physics unlike Star Wars where it's airy fairy and hand waved away for the children. TOS inspired a lot of people to become real world scientists and engineers and I would lament it if that was cast aside for a cool visual so an episode can finish on time with a mind-numbingly simple idea.

I genuinely want to be inspired by the Trek tech. I rather liked the way the TMP refit had an impulse exhaust and thrusters for direction but that bad girl was manoeuvring in sensible majestic arcs, not right angle turns. She looked and moved like a ship. Smaller shuttles and work bees are there for delicate manoeuvres.

So, the warp field can reduce the mass of an even bigger starship but isn't that designed to prevent mass increasing exponentially at extreme speeds? Plus warp engines need to be engaged. I would not have thought it was sensible to reduce the ship's mass below its baseline but it has been a long time since I watched Voyager.

You would still need forward, sideways, up, down, and reverse thrust to be so nimble and you would need to be able to do these things while travelling forward at speed. A massless photon can do it. So are they implying that the mass of the ship has to be reduced to practically nothing? That sounds like a bad Idea.

It just feels... lazy and lame! Send in the X-wings!

 

[DarrenTR1970]

It has just occurred to me how annoying it is that the modern writers think that something heavier than a cruise liner can perform hairpin turns just because it is in space.

I had similar beef with the NuEnterprise doing the same in an atmosphere.

One of the fastest ships to cross the Atlantic was the S.S. United States on its maiden voyage in 1951 at an average speed of 34.6 knots. During the crossing it reached a maximum speed of 38.32 knots. At trial it reached a speed of 42 knots. Not bad for a cruise ship.

 

[Sci]

What I liked about Star Trek was that it's fictional physics had a sound grounding in real world physics unlike Star Wars where it's airy fairy and hand waved away for the children. TOS inspired a lot of people to become real world scientists and engineers and I would lament it if that was cast aside for a cool visual so an episode can finish on time with a mind-numbingly simple idea.

I genuinely want to be inspired by the Trek tech. I rather liked the way the TMP refit had an impulse exhaust and thrusters for direction but that bad girl was manoeuvring in sensible majestic arcs, not right angle turns. She looked and moved like a ship. Smaller shuttles and work bees are there for delicate manoeuvres.

So, the warp field can reduce the mass of an even bigger starship but isn't that designed to prevent mass increasing exponentially at extreme speeds? Plus warp engines need to be engaged. I would not have thought it was sensible to reduce the ship's mass below its baseline but it has been a long time since I watched Voyager.

You would still need forward, sideways, up, down, and reverse thrust to be so nimble and you would need to be able to do these things while travelling forward at speed. A massless photon can do it. So are they implying that the mass of the ship has to be reduced to practically nothing? That sounds like a bad Idea.

It just feels... lazy and lame! Send in the X-wings!

Sorry, but Star Trek has long since abandoned any pretense of real-world physics. It was already space magic by the early 1990s. You're just reacting to your subjective aesthetic dislike of this choice. Which is fine, your dislike of it is fair and legitimate, but you don't actually have anything objective to back it up with -- it's just a matter of taste.

 

[Racefuel]

CGI has also allowed for much more dynamic maneuvering abilities vs having to repeat the same model movement 5 times exactly because you have to do composition shots for the hull, the matte cutout, the hull lights, the deflector and then engines.

More complex the manuever, the higher the chances of a desync in the VFX which would have been bad enough as is.

 

[SJGardner]

I genuinely want to be inspired by the Trek tech. I rather liked the way the TMP refit had an impulse exhaust and thrusters for direction but that bad girl was manoeuvring in sensible majestic arcs, not right angle turns. She looked and moved like a ship. Smaller shuttles and work bees are there for delicate manoeuvres.

"Sensible majestic arcs" presuppose gravity though, and mostly cater to the audience's expectation that a starship should move like a naval battleship, hence its sluggish, large-arc turns. When Star Trek switched to CGI, they merely switched over to have starships move like fighter aircraft, suggesting it was mostly a factor of motion-controlled physical models vs. CGI after all. If anything, 24th century technology should surely allow a starship in zero gravity to make such tight turns.

Compare it to Babylon 5 that has stuff like a spacecraft firing its maneuvering thrusters to turn 180° around its vertical axis while inertia continues to carry it in the direction it was heading in so that it could fire on its pursuers. And even they decided to introduce technobabble that allowed ships, even capital ones, to appear more high-tech through being capable of quick maneuvering.

 

[Gepard]

Once you've invented reactionless, space-time warping drives, you don't need thrusters or any kind of conventional rocket drive anyway.

If something like Star Trek's warp drive existed, the resulting ships we build around them would bear no resemblance in form or function to how Trek has typically depicted them. I'm fine with the D zipping around like a UFO because, realistically, it probably could.

 

[Racefuel]

And with intertial dampers there wouldn't be piles of goo on the wall from where g-forces crushed the crew into puddings

 

[Farscape One]

The only Borg cube we saw on Lower Decks if I'm not mistaken was holographic. Otherwise, we hadn't seen any other Borg appearances (except in hallucinations?).

EDIT: We have seen the actual Borg cube and drones of lower decks yes... but that Cube could have been the same one from Prodigy.

As for Prodigy... that cube wasn't active. It was in heavy sleep mode. It was for all intents and purposes inactive... and it was explained in the episode they lost the ability to use the nanoprobes.
The cube in question only went into sleep mode probably because it suffered damage. At this point its been years since Endgame, and if the cube was initially damaged, going into sleep mode may have helped this cube repair some of that damage, but the Borg on that cube didn't seem to have access to the larger Hive... they were in effect on their own/isolated.

And they went back to sleep after Prodigies interfered... maybe not for long, but its possible that the cube in question is the Artifact.

There was a single Borg kid with a class in the far future, with the statue of the most important offucer in Starfleet... Miles O'Brien.

Whether it's one from the Cooperative in "UNITY" or grom something else, we don't know.

 

[Farscape One]

And with intertial dampers there wouldn't be piles of goo on the wall from where g-forces crushed the crew into puddings

Or break every bone in your body like what happened to the Jem'Hadar in "THE SHIP".

 

[Belz...]

I genuinely want to be inspired by the Trek tech. I rather liked the way the TMP refit had an impulse exhaust and thrusters for direction but that bad girl was manoeuvring in sensible majestic arcs, not right angle turns. She looked and moved like a ship. Smaller shuttles and work bees are there for delicate manoeuvres.

1701-D was always an insanely maneuverable ship, despite her size. We see it in certain TNG episodes; a good example is in Time Squared where it spins around 180 degrees in just about a second.

 

[137th Gebirg]

They were pretty zippy during the Dominion War sequences as well.

 

[Turtletrekker]

1701-D was always an insanely maneuverable ship, despite her size. We see it in certain TNG episodes; a good example is in Time Squared where it spins around 180 degrees in just about a second.

Ensign Gates to the rescue in "Relics".

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[The_Baroness]

This all said the D wasn't that maneuverable in Cause and Effect was it....

 

[Pauln6]

Once you've invented reactionless, space-time warping drives, you don't need thrusters or any kind of conventional rocket drive anyway.

If something like Star Trek's warp drive existed, the resulting ships we build around them would bear no resemblance in form or function to how Trek has typically depicted them. I'm fine with the D zipping around like a UFO because, realistically, it probably could.

LOL. Yeah but then once you've introduced fungus power or transwarp beaming you don't need warp drives. Just because they CAN write something into the show doesn't mean you should. ;-p

But you guys are right. I think the Enterprise peaked with the battleship-like Refit. Everything after that was a step away from peak Trek!

 

[jackoverfull]

The only Borg cube we saw on Lower Decks if I'm not mistaken was holographic. Otherwise, we hadn't seen any other Borg appearances (except in hallucinations?).

EDIT: We have seen the actual Borg cube and drones of lower decks yes... but that Cube could have been the same one from Prodigy.

As for Prodigy... that cube wasn't active. It was in heavy sleep mode. It was for all intents and purposes inactive... and it was explained in the episode they lost the ability to use the nanoprobes.
The cube in question only went into sleep mode probably because it suffered damage. At this point its been years since Endgame, and if the cube was initially damaged, going into sleep mode may have helped this cube repair some of that damage, but the Borg on that cube didn't seem to have access to the larger Hive... they were in effect on their own/isolated.

And they went back to sleep after Prodigies interfered... maybe not for long, but its possible that the cube in question is the Artifact.

the artifact was around and assimilating Romulans after the virus, though.

 

[Romulan_spy]

So, the warp field can reduce the mass of an even bigger starship but isn't that designed to prevent mass increasing exponentially at extreme speeds? Plus warp engines need to be engaged. I would not have thought it was sensible to reduce the ship's mass below its baseline but it has been a long time since I watched Voyager.

Yes, warp fields can be used to prevent mass increasing exponentially at extreme speeds when used for going at warp speed. But there are also static warp fields that reduce mass without pushing the ship into FTL. It depends how you configure the warp fields.

 

[Racefuel]

They were pretty zippy during the Dominion War sequences as well.

You can see the *huge* increase in agility in the Defiant when they went from the physical model (The Search, etc) to the CGI model

 

[Pauln6]

You can see the *huge* increase in agility in the Defiant when they went from the physical model (The Search, etc) to the CGI model

Defiant and Voyager are much smaller ships. I can be a bit more forgiving there.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Yes, warp fields can be used to prevent mass increasing exponentially at extreme speeds when used for going at warp speed. But there are also static warp fields that reduce mass without pushing the ship into FTL. It depends how you configure the warp fields.

A few comments:

First off, mass does not increase with speed. This is a misunderstanding of special relativity. The mass is always constant. It's the relativistic energy that increases.

Second: in real Alcubierre warp bubble theory, the starship is motionless, so there are no relativistic effects on the crew (time dilation, etc...). It's the bubble that moves with FTL speed.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

One of the fastest ships to cross the Atlantic was the S.S. United States on its maiden voyage in 1951 at an average speed of 34.6 knots. During the crossing it reached a maximum speed of 38.32 knots. At trial it reached a speed of 42 knots. Not bad for a cruise ship.

"At that speed they could run over my daughter's stereo and not hear it."