Telescopes in the late 24th century

[Timo]

And that's why it's a problem in Star Trek rather than a problem for Starfleet.

If they simply didn't make their systems Klingon-proof, Klingons would win every battle and that would be that - a perfectly valid feature of the Trek universe as such.

But since we see Klingons don't win every battle, it follows that Starfleet does harden its systems against Klingon software attack. And a line from a telescope to the viewscreen would be among the easiest to Klingon-proof, as it's wholly internal. A bit like the British not needing to make the wardrobes of their castles French-proof even if they need to French-proof the ramparts and gates and potentially even the shafts to the privies and kitchens.

Yet here the Klingons can mess with the optics-to-viewscreen connection, which creates an impossible Star Trek inconsistency rather than a mere possible Starfleet problem.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Aren't some versions of the cloaking device just that...tricks that make the optical sensors not see the object. Or nebula that can blind or distort even the optical sensors on a starships, when looking out a window would see the object?

 

[Unicron]

The Romulans actually tinkered with modified cloaks in Starfleet Command 3 - instead of making their ships invisible, they disguised themselves as Klingon and Starfleet ships and then attacked the other side, hoping to drive the alliance apart. The plan ultimately failed, but the Romulans did some significant damage in the process.

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[Kemaiku]

That's just the 2155 drone weapon tech weaponised on their own ships.

 

[Timo]

The Carey novel Dreadnought! describes a Vulcan visual obfuscation device that indeed force-feeds false imagery directly to the sensors of the opposing ship, rather than creating it around the device and then letting the sensors see it; the solution of looking out through the window is not suggested.

No comparable description of a cloaking device operating principle is used in onscreen Trek. All the decoys out there are "actual holograms", in ENT and VOY alike.

Sensors are indeed possible attack paths into a starship, as they crave input, rather than fighting against such. But they are obvious attack paths, and Georgiou's ship ought to have defenses. And although it is an old ship, T'Kumva isn't supposed to be in possession of cutting edge tech, either. Then again, he does have the cloak - even though it cannot explain the means of obscuring the Beacon, it may hint at him having other high tech for that purpose.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David cgc]

It'd probably depend on exactly how the visual sensors work on a Trek ship. They obviously aren't just pure optical telescopes feeding into regular image sensors like we have today; considering the resolution we've seen (people walking around on streets from high orbit, ships hundreds of thousands of kilometers away), we'd see a giant mirror or lens assembly on the outside of the ship. So it's something more exotic than a big electric eyeball, which could make it sensitive to interference that wouldn't affect someone just looking at it.

In the current world, most consumer-grade digital cameras don't filter out infrared light the same way eyes do, so they can see a light if you point a remote control at them, or if you photograph an electric stove, it glows a bright blue-purple rather than the dull red you'll see looking at it. You could use that to jam cameras today (I feel like I've heard about people who can't wait to live in techno-dystopia putting IR-blasters on eyeglasses to keep their faces from being visible on security cameras). There could be a similar flaw in whatever crazy virtual telescope gets invented in the next hundred and fifty years.

 

[Ronald Held]

Everything seem to use subspace sensors, so the exact workings are a mystery.