Tech Mentioned In Episodes That Would Have Been Useful In Other Episodes

I still maintain that "When the Bough Breaks" would have been a far better episode if either (a) Beverly had been unable to restore the Aldeans' fertility, or (b) upon losing the children, Radue had refused all Federation aid and ordered the Enterprise to leave. It would have explained why the Federation never had access to their technology. Plus, more gravitas.

 

I don't think that Aldea could be hidden very well in "When the Bough Breaks".

They are led by strange sensor readings to the Epsilon Minos system.

http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/118.htm

Note that teh legend says that Aldea is within the Epsilon Mynos system.

I find it very hard to believe that the cloaking device around Aldea cuts off gravitational interaction between the planet and its surroundings.

Memory Alpha say that Aldea was hidden for "millennia" or for "thosuands of years", and I guesss that the episode itself says that.

Suppose that someone put a force field around the Earth that cut off all external gravity. Earth would continue travelling in a straight line and its path would no longer be bent by the gravity of the Sun, or by the gravity of the Galactic center.

As it happens the direction that the Solar systems travels in its orbit around the center of the galaxy is close to a right angle to the plane that the Earth orbits in. Earth orbits with a speed of about 29.78 kilometesr per second.

So Earth would leave its orbit around the Sun at a speed of about 29.78 kilometers per second, 1,786.8 kilometers per minute, 107,208 kilometers per hour, 2,572,992 kilometers per day, 939,785,328 kilometers per year, 9,397,853,280 kilometers per decade, 93,978,532,800.kilometers per century, and 939,785,328,000 kilometers per millennium.

That distance is about 0.099 of a light year. A small distance compared to interstellar distances, about 2 percent of the typical distance between a star and its nearest neighbor, but a long distance compared to interplanetary distances. I doubt that anyone would say that they were in the Epsilon Mynos system if they were that far from its sun.

And it turns out that the Aldean shield generator is destroying Aldea's atmospheric ozone layer, and the ultra violent ultraviolet rays from Aldea's sun are damaging the genes of the Aldeans.

The Astronomical Unit,or AU, is the more or less average distance between Earth and the Sun. If Earth was cut off from the Sun's gravity it would travel about 0.099 of a light year farther from the Sun every millennium. A light year is about 63,241.077 AU, so about 0.099 of a light year would be about 625.78 AU. The intensity of solar radiation falls off with the square of the distance, so at a distance of 625 AU the intensity of solar radiation would equal the radiaiton that Earth gets from the Sun divided by 625 squared, or one divided by 390,625, or only 0.00000256 as strong as the radiation Earth gets from the Sun.

I don't like sunlight much and wear protective clothing when I go outside, but even I wouldn't worry about the ultraviolet radiation outside at a distance of 625 AU from the sun. After all, the heated space suit I would have to wear in the vacuum outside - all the atmosphere having frozen solid - would block most wavelengths of radiation. And I wouldn't worry about any radiation penetating the buildings I was in either, since they would have to be heavily insulated and tightly sealed to keep the heat and the atmospehre inside

So it is my opinon that Aldea's cloaking device does not cut off Aldea from outside gravity. And so Aldea probably is still orbiting in its old orbit. If there are surviving records of Aldea's orbit it would be simple to calculate where it should be, even after thousnds of years, and bombard that position with your weapons if you want.

Even if there is no surviving record of Aldea's orbit, finding it shouldn't be too hard.

Of course all stars have circumstellar habitable zones where their planets receive the right amount of radiation from their star to have the right temperatures for life. So that means that Aldea should be somewhere farther from Epsilon Mynos than a spherical surface marking the inner border of the habitable zone, and somewhere closer than the spherical surfiace marking the outer border of the habitable zone.

And it is also a fact that the planets in a star system don't orbit in all sorts of widely different planes. Instead they all usually orbit in planes which are only slightly tilted compared to each other and to the plane of the star's rotational equator.

That also helps to greatly narrow down the possible location of Alda.

Since Aldea is not cut off from outside gravity it is probably still influencing the paths of outside objects with its gravity.

So to find Aldea all you have to do is calculate the orbits of the other planet s in the Epsilon Mynos system an dhow the orbit of each planet is slightly perturbed by the gravitational forces of the other planets, and predict the future posiitons of the planets And if a plant travels slightly faster or slower in its orbit. and arrives a tposiitns slightly off from where it should be, that planet must be perturbed by the gravity of some o ther body. The amound and direction of perturbing force will enable you to calculate the position of the perturbing object, in this case Aldea.

In the 19th century mathmaticians used deviations in the positions of Uranusa and Mercury to predict the existance and orbits of the planets Neptune and Vulcan (no, not that Vulcan).. Neptune was discovered as a result of those calculations, though it orbits the Sum much closer than was predicted.

The planet Vulcan, orbiting inside the orbit of Mercury, would have been found it it existed, and relativity provides an alternate explanation of the perturbatinos of Mercury.

And just how large or small were the perturbatinos of Uranus which convinced astronomers it must have been perturbed by another planet?

Here is a link to a question and answer about that:

https://hsm.stackexchange.com/quest...he-orbit-of-uranus-which-led-to-the-calculati

So I find it very hard to believe that anyone could ever mistake Ceti Alpha V for Ceti Alpha VI as in WOK..

In 1844 Friedrich William bessel deduced from wobbles of Sirius that it had a companion star, the two stars revolving around their center of gravity. That unseen companion star, Sirius B, was discovered in 1862. ON eof the methods used in the present time to detect planets of other stars is to note changes in the radial velocityof stars as they wobble around their common ceters of gravity with their planets.

There are several other methods of detecting exoplanets, and some exoplanets have been detected thousnds of light eyars from Earth.

Such methods should not be forgotten in the era of TNG.

In the TOS episode "The Way to Eden":

Since Eden turns out to be inside Romulan space, they are using data about planetary orbits detected across the Romulan Neutral Zone and light years of space, or maybe data from long ago visits to those systems before the Romulans claimed them.

So I don't see how Aldea could have been hidden from those who wanted to find it.

 

Aldea was in a first-person episode, which means it followed a theme that had often been seen in TOS...
* Little or no serious science.
* Significant social commentary (i.e. the ozone layer)
* A powerful, mysterious alien or culture.
* The culture has to conform to Federation norms at the end (in this case, no shield, fully visible, and reproduce biologically).

Ergo, Aldea's place in the general Trek canon is an uneasy one at best. If we were going by good science, it would be hard for it to hide, given that it's orbiting a star that's easy to find. But one, we're not. And two, the Aldeans are no longer hiding, so it's irrelevant.

 

Assuming the cloak masks gravitic pull, naturally Aldea would not make its star wobble or its sister planets dance. The actual mystery would thus relate to why the planet chooses to orbit the star to begin with.

But assuming the cloak masks electromagnetic emissions and reflections, naturally Aldea woud not enjoy the light and warmth of its star, either. Except the Aldeans believe in the outdoors, having windows shuttered by curtains, with vegetation visible on the outside; dropping the cloak has no noticeable effect on the illumination levels.

Starships sailing under cloak can enjoy electromagnetic input from the outside world. There is likely to be a clever trick involved, so that the cloak does not leave a shadow of any sort, despite sucking in some photons for the crew retinas to consume. Such a clever trick could potentially work on gravity, too, so Aldea would enjoy the pull (along with the warmth and all) without reciprocating, and the star would fail to wobble.

One-directional gravity is very much a thing in Trek, with tractor beams that subject the target to powerful forces yet have basically no effect on the tractoring party. A perfectly cloaked yet orbiting planet isn't all that difficult to accept in the context.

(Conversely, if the cloak were of an exceptional two-way type, and all the illumination etc. within were artificial, the original question of why Aldea would choose to orbit the star would be accentuated. Why not sail in the depths of interstellar space instead? No myth or legend could follow the trail, then.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

This seems ill argued. Why should anybody think the Borg cannot adapt to gunfire? Picard fired one burst; the Borg always succumb to one burst of anything, be it bullets, death rays, knives or fists. And then they choose no longer to succumb.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Okay....first of all...nobody suggested that Aldea's cloaking device would "cut off" gravity between it and the other celestial objects in its system, or make it leave its orbit.
What I was suggesting was that the Aldeans might have a way of masking those gravity readings from the sensors of any ship passing by, or make them attribute it to some phantom object.

Which is exactly what I suggested in the post you quoted.
And well, depending on how exactly you can calculate the position of the cloaked planet, should still be a good protection against a wide variety of passing hostiles.

 

The very fact that (starship) cloaks implicitly can fool gravity sensors, combined with the general Trek mastery of gravitics in general, suggests that a party capable of cloaking an entire planet would not be bound by dull orbital mechanics in the slightest.

If ancient records suggested that Aldea orbits in fashion X, activating of the cloak should allow the Aldeans to nudge the planet to a slightly different orbit trivially enough, and then flip the switch that allows Newton to have a say again.

Nevertheless, our heroes think Aldea has been invisible for "centuries", and they themselves admit to "millennia". In that time, one might expect a thorough search to have taken place within the star system:

- For "centuries" at least, people who hear the phrase "cloaked in darkness" would have realized that a cloaking device was in operation.
- Mere "millennia" of invisibility would mean the myths would be so fresh as to be considered trustworthy, at least when it comes to picking the right star system.
- There aren't many mechanisms by which a search by enthusiastic parties could fail - many methods exist for defeating a wide range of cloaking devices, and even if some of them only work across short ranges, a hobbyist could easily spend 50 years of his life going back and forth with a ship or a fleet of drones.
- There is no accompanying legend of the Aldeans making such treasure hunters mysteriously disappear.
- Going to the system to have a look around is not particularly difficult: Picard was there, without having any known official excuse for being there, and just happened upon the burps from the failing cloak.

So the cloak would need to pass remarkable muster to dodge the bullet for centuries. Ability to eliminate star wobbles or other gravitic signs would be quite vital there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Remember that the planetary cloak is not Aldea's only defense. It has a shield strong enough to stop any of the Enterprise's weapons, and a repulsor beam that can kick a starship at least 12 light years (3d travel at 1500c) in seconds.

I rewrote a less cringy ending to that one once... the Enterprise got the children back, but Radue ordered them to leave, refusing to share the knowledge he had offered, or accept any help. Data reported that the Aldeans had their shield back up, and the fluctuation that he and Riker had beamed through was corrected now: there was no going back. As the Enterprise left the system, the planet shimmered back into invisibility for the last time.

 

...But as said, there's no history of Aldea-hunters mysteriously going missing. So apparently Aldea never uses that weapon, or any other.

Unless they happen to have an amnesia ray in their arsenal. But was it off to be cleaned the day Picard came?

Timo Saloniemi

 

I suppose that in theory, the Aldeans could have snatched the children, beamed one of their digital archives to the Enterprise, cloaked, shielded, shifted their orbit enough that they couldn't be detected, and been home free. At least until Wesley figured out that his hunger strike wasn't going to do it, and took a more active role. He was quite intelligent, after all.

As for an amnesia ray, they had the technology to scan a person and determine their gifts and abilities from that scan. So who knows what other tricks they had up their sleeve?

 

...And what reasons they had for not pulling them out in this particular situation? They appear willing to use force, but perhaps some of their guns are as badly off as their cloak, and they succeed in hiding that fact by bluntly wielding the things they can.

A subtler approach might have protected them in the preceding centuries. But now that they really need a way to manipulate outsiders, they are already suffering from malfunctions that deprive them of the means. Machinery may be breaking down, or then people are, as the dwindling numbers of old codgers lack the manpower for maintenance, operations, or even training of use.

Timo Saloniemi

 

In the canonical ending (the Federation assists the Aldeans so that they can have children of their own), the Federation could certainly assist them with repairing their gadgets as well, and in the process get a good look at that mega-shield and repulsor beam, plus anything else they might find interesting.

That's why the darker ending is better: it explains why the Federation never got their hands on any Aldean tech: they had effectively condemned the Aldean people to oblivion, and the latter had no interest in sharing.

 

Given the Federation has failed to use enough tech they should have gotten their hands on to fuel whole threads here, explaining one away seems moot. I'm fine with the happy ending.

 

Well, it was kind of cute to see Picard get a stuffed Tribble pinned on him. But I guess they could have done that with the grim ending too.

 

The ending we got should work well enough. The last couple of generations of Aldeans have forgotten how to work their gear and study their environment. Picard solves their immediate problems for them, and shows them that their grandparents knew how to do that sort of stuff without assistance. Picard then leaves, confident that the Aldeans will re-learn.

Well, assume Picard is right. Just about the first thing the Aldeans would do, after realizing they can go it alone, would be to again totally isolate themselves. They have the shield, which is not an immediate threat to them, and as long as they don't invite any hostile prodigies in, it's also invulnerable. They don't need the cloak, but if they want to, they can now cloak themselves from the sun's radiation, too. And if Picard's team could cure the infertility off screen, so could the newly self-confident Aldeans. After all this occurred to them, sharing might not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Didn't they say in the end that the Aldeans could not use the shield or cloak again because the infertility issues and radiation sickness would return?

It's why he said, "The legend will die. But the people will live."

 

Yes, but that was a lie. The planet is fine with a few generations on shielding, after which the Aldeans can reset: drop the shield, heal the infertility, restore the ozone layer, and turn on the shield again. Repeat ad infinitum, without need for Federation help.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I actually like that, and it provides a certain grim poetic justice to the ending we got. Radue was a decent enough person, but he was quite arrogant, and guys like him don't take humiliating defeat well. He accepts Federation assistance to save his people from extinction, but as soon as he no longer needs them, he chucks them out. Who knows, maybe with some judicious re-engineering, the shield and cloaking device can be run without depleting the ozone layer. End result, Aldea goes pure isolationist; the Federation gets its seven kids back (thanks to Wes, they were now more trouble than they were worth anyway), but loses out on tech that could have saved millions had it been available in the Dominion war. They don't even get the knowledge Radue originally offered as compensation.

 

The UFP doesn't really need Planetary Cloaking.

StarFleet already has Phase Cloak, and cloaking a Planet is not inline with UFP policy.

The Planetary shields however, along with that repulsor energy bolt that shoves StarShips.

Those are the real valuable tech that the UFP can learn from.

Imagine "The Borg" comes by to a UFP planet and they get ping-ponged into a Star by repulsor bolts.

=D