The Trains of Star Trek

[Shaka Zulu]

That's right, I say that the United Earth Republic would have a maglev railway system for most of the planet Earth, and that other worlds would also have similar railways for their civilizations as well.

First off, United Earth's maglev systems:

The Cardassian Union:

The Romulan Empire

More to come; for now, tell me what you think of them.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Confining my comments to Earth: I doubt the operating authority would be United Earth. My impression has always been that Earth has several layers of subordinate governments, and I suspect trains would be operated at a lower level than the planetary government.

They may even still be operated by private business. Earth's economy is not capitalist the way we understand it today, but there's clearly still privately owned business, and it's possible even a major logistical need is still filled that way. But even if government run, it's probably at the State/Department/Province/whatever the layer of government above municipal is for regional trains, the municipal government for local commuters, and whatever replaced countries for long-distance trains.

How likely trains are depends a lot on your timeframe, too, I think, and what assumptions you make about the cost of energy for everyday civilians. (We know that starships have very, very cheap energy. We don't get a lot of information about how that translates to the average person's daily life.) But also on how efficient and reliable transporters are, which changes radically between TOS and TNG.

In the TOS era, there are almost certainly trains. Transporters are reliable enough for Star Fleet, but far from perfect, and routine liaison transport is still done by shuttle as much as transporter. By the Movie era - which is what your designs suggest to me - transporters are more common; I don't recall if it's in the move but the TMP novel has banks of public transporter stations replacing subways. By TNG transporter technology is used as a means of production, implying it's very mature and reliable.

Rail is a reliable and efficient way of moving large quantities over long distances, but it requires logistical hubs where smaller amounts of cargo or people get distributed to their final destination via other methods; it requires room to lay the rails; and it doesn't really like turning corners. Point-to-point transporter networks eliminate the last two problems, and if the transporter station is inexpensive enough to build, can vastly reduce the first. I suspect that by the TNG era, long distance and regional rail networks have been replaced by transporters, and local systems are probably on their way out.

As for the pictures:

They're pretty cool; the Earth ones do seem to fit into the TMP aesthetic, and the Romulan one feels right for TNG-era Romulans. The Cardassian ones are more generic sci-fi feeling to me.

Anyway, the whole idea entertained me long enough to type up these thoughts, so thanks for that!

 

[Michael]

@Shaka Zulu, this is the Fan Art section. As in art created by fans. While I’m sure you’re feeling some ownership of these images, since you prompted their creation, you didn’t actually make this art, which goes against the spirit of what this section of the board is all about. At the very least, it’s a good idea to include a note that what you’re posting is AI generated, and I would ask you to please do that in the future.

Truth be told, we have yet to codify how as a community we want to treat AI generated art on the board, as I’m sure more and more people will post what they’ve generated. Months ago we’ve had a forum discussion about this amongst posters, and IIRC the consensus was that at the very least AI art should be marked down as such. But since this is also an ongoing discussion amongst staff behind the scenes, there hasn’t really been any clear policy yet.

Since this seems to be mainly about envisioning and discussing technologies that would exist in the Trek universe, I’m inclined to just send this thread over to Trek Tech. Or were you planning to at some point include your own artwork?

 

[Shaka Zulu]

@Shaka Zulu, this is the Fan Art section. As in art created by fans. While I’m sure you’re feeling some ownership of these images, since you prompted their creation, you didn’t actually make this art, which goes against the spirit of what this section of the board is all about. At the very least, it’s a good idea to include a note that what you’re posting is AI generated, and I would ask you to please do that in the future.

Truth be told, we have yet to codify how as a community we want to treat AI generated art on the board, as I’m sure more and more people will post what they’ve generated. Months ago we’ve had a forum discussion about this amongst posters, and IIRC the consensus was that at the very least AI art should be marked down as such. But since this is also an ongoing discussion amongst staff behind the scenes, there hasn’t really been any clear policy yet.

Since this seems to be mainly about envisioning and discussing technologies that would exist in the Trek universe, I’m inclined to just send this thread over to Trek Tech. Or were you planning to at some point include your own artwork?

I did mean these pics as fan art, and I'm sorry for not mentioning that this is A.I. content; I'd like to continue to post the rest, if possible.

 

[Maurice]

Just my opinion: I think Generative AI images would overwhelm this forum. It's already popping up too many places on the board, and this area is for human-made stuff.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Okay, the rest of these, as promised:

The Klingon Empire:

GQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiIvZi9mNGQyYjlmNi0zM2QyLTQ4ZmQtYTdmMS0wNTRjYzZhOTA2ZGIvZGsyemIyNy0xZGNiY2M2ZC1jOTM5LTQyODYtYWZiNi0zNjM1ZjRlZDI2OGUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.S9F_5Q9w7fqYdvIS7fmDAG9pPnXh5oBCDjc_aFd-PB

These were done with Microsoft Image Creator.

 

[F. King Daniel]

We do actually see a few trains in Star Trek, going through tunnels in DS9 on earth and in Into Darkness. Shame we never get a closer look.

 

[Mage]

So, first of.... This is a neat concept, and well excecuted.

Second.... AI art.

There are two ways of doing. Just write a quick prompt and chuck it in to create the image. That's lame.
I know a few people that excel at AI art. Using the right AI that can create the right prompt that creates the right image takes time. My best friend can work on the prompt, tweaking it here and there, running it through several AI and image renders to create his final image....

I think the forum might be well of with its own section for AI art. There, the people that work with it can show and discuss it. Because yes, a lot of AI art is crap. Those that understand the tools know how to make something very nice.