The Helm & Navigation stations' design on DSC

And quite easy for irate aliens to snatch.

 

I never got this. This is one of those silly examples, where a total realistic portrayal of something is deemed "unrealistic" und merciless bashed.

You do know NASA operates their starships with Joysticks, right? It's one of the most intuitive control options ever. Big ships use it. Drone pilots use it. Often they even use common gameplay joysticks, because why reinvent the wheel?

If I'm honest, I want to see more Joysticks in Star Trek, especially in shuttles and other craft. Where they are perfectly useful. Or with the big ships, in docking or special combat manoevers. Not only because it's realistic, but at least partially to see the fan outrage.

 

Thank you! THAT'S EXACTLY why I HATE joysticks in Star Trek! Why would a starship from the 2260's or 2390's have technology that belongs in 1980's space craft??? It makes it look less advanced, not more! Next thing will be rockets instead of nacelles because, you know, that's what NASA uses also!

 

I used to think that too, but now I agree with Rahul, while joysticks don't look "high tec" and therefore seem wrong, I'm shrugging to see how what other method would be more intuitive and response for basic fine maneuvering (although I did wonder if there should two joysticks (rigged as either X/Y axis control & Z-axis control, or port & starboard?).

 

Joysticks are not only in 1980's spacecrafts. They are in 2016's spacecrafts as well, you know? They are also going to be on the 2030's-50's spacecraft that will bring us to Mars, too. Basically, as long as we will have starships with human pilots, they will have Joysticks. So yeah, go get them!

They are just a basic intuitive control device. And a very good one at that. As long as we will have levers, knobs, buttons, switches and steering wheels for movements in 2D enviroments, we will have Joysticks for vehicles in a 3D environment, weather that'll be in space, the ocean, or the atmosphere.

 

Yet the point still stands. They had spacecraft with joysticks in 1966. Yet both Gene Roddenberry (an Air Force pilot) and Matt Jefferies (also an Air Force pilot AND an aviation engineer) didn't want them and didn't include them. Why? Because, like I already said, it would have made Enterprise look like an contemporary spacecraft and not a starship from 300 years into the future!

 

It should look futuristic to us and not look similar to what it does in TOS. Most of the technology that was portrayed in earlier Star Trek's is now outdated.

A Periscope viewer is useless.
An earpiece that looks like a microphone sticking out of someone's head is useless.
Flipphone communicators are dated.
Huge tricorders will look very dated.

If they want to appeal to a younger generation, they will make this technology look like it's futuristic.

 

Your examples all use joysticks in an environment where control surfaces are able to affect yaw, pitch and roll through a medium - atmosphere or water. So while the UI metaphor is okay, equating travel through a medium to spaceflight is not. I don't remember how reaction control is achieved in a shuttle or other spacecraft, but if joysticks are used in space maneuvers, they would be better examples to use. Shows like Star Trek and Star Wars use physics of science fiction where they appear to use space itself as a medium to affect attitude, but you were using real examples, so let's go with those real spaceflight examples first.

 

Not sure how authoritative this page is http://www.buran.su/sts-composition.php, but it seems to suggest that the joystick is the primary X-Y-Z controller even in space for the Space Shuttle, though this can be supplemented by various push buttons for more complex maneuvers.

 

OR he didn't put them in because there simply was no money at the time for more sophisticated controls...? And they had to get creative with cardboard boxes and glued some jelly on them to pretend they are buttons?

I mean, as soon as they got some money, they introduced levers et. al in TMP.
Spock had a Joystick on his spacesuit in TMP:

https://borgdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/spock-orange-suit-sttmp.jpg

The only reason we never saw a joystick in TOS might be that we never saw short range manoeuvers in classic Trek. If there were any shown, we would probably have seen Joysticks even earlier...?

Yes, in fact ALL manned spacecraft use Joysticks. From Gemini, Apollo, Spaceshuttle, the future Orion capsule, to the Russian ones, the Soyuz, Buran etc. They are just that good to control 3D movement (with an additional lever for thrust).
It's not used on planes that much, because there rising up and down is determined by aerodynamic lift, so you need other mechanics to control that. But when lift isn't a factor - like in slow submarines (especially scientific ones) and space - there just isn't another option that let's you control movement and speed in three dimensions with just two hands with such precision.

Thus all future human controlled manned spacecraft are probably going to have one. Or something equivalent. If only for docking and short distance maneouvers.

 

Joysticks may be fine for sublight spacecraft, or interplanetary spacecraft, or spacecraft with Newtonian propulsion systems. They don't work at all with FTL starships, or interstellar starships, or starships with non-Newtonian propulsion systems such as impulse and warp drives.

 

Yeah, I don't want to see them changing their course at Warp speed with Joysticks. That'd be stupid. But Star Trek's Impulse drive is a Newtonian propulsion system. That's where it's name comes from. And it's well established that Trek ships have RC thrusters. So whenever they do a docking manoever - it's probably their computer that does the work. But if a human should do it - or they have to control their shuttle while it's barely working - they gonna unpack the Joystick.

 

Exactly! As soon as they had money they still didn't put joysticks on the Enterprise bridge!

 

Because, as we learned in Insurrection, there's a special console coming out of the ground in the rare case a human pilot is needed for manual steering

 

Personally, the only thing I thought was wrong with that scene was how simplistic and puny the "manual steering column" was.

Travel at FTL - and even long distances at STL - are probably mostly controlled by something like keyboard inputs quering the computer for the most efficent routes against known starcharts (kinda like a Space Google Maps), likewise most - though not all "evasive patterns" - would be something like a drop-down context menu navigated by keyboard or touchscreen. On the other hand, precision maneuvers like docking procedures and the times when the Captain orders "Come around to X" or "Hard to Starboard" or similar are Reaction Control Systems commands (which are a thing in the RW, BTW) and would be most efficiently handed by something like a joystick or yoke/control wheel.

 

Errrrm...... spaceships. Spacecraft. You know what I mean. Those thingys out there in space. English is not my first language. Anyway, nice discussion @Captain of the USS Averof