Why not create ships with solar sails?
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
How would solar sails help them make long distance trips? Solar sails are only effective for travel within a solar system. It was only because of some funky warp corridor that exist between Bajor and Cardassia that the ancient Bajorans were able to take their solar sails to Cardassia.
Not a warp corridor.
The solar sail ship encountered tachyons which accelerated the ship to warp.
Yeah, they were specifically mentioned as being slow, and they would only work between systems that have that sort of natural tachyon anomaly anyways.
Solar Sails or any form of sail are for people without enough power to run some sort of FTL engine.
...Heck, even at sublight, you probably need gravity manipulation to make them useful. At which point you might just as well manipulate your way to the next planet or star on gravitics alone.
The writers really did a good job there, having Book list a couple of options, and a couple of plausible reasons why they aren't any good, and make it quite clear this is not an exhaustive list. If you want to make your car move, there are alternatives beyond gasoline, but none of them are any good if for some reason "all high energy hydrocarbons suddenly Burn" or whatever. Sure, you can have atomic cars, and sails on cars, and so forth; you can even pedal your way from town to town. Society as we know it will collapse nevertheless.
Timo Saloniemi
The writers really did a good job there, having Book list a couple of options, and a couple of plausible reasons why they aren't any good, and make it quite clear this is not an exhaustive list. If you want to make your car move, there are alternatives beyond gasoline, but none of them are any good if for some reason "all high energy hydrocarbons suddenly Burn" or whatever. Sure, you can have atomic cars, and sails on cars, and so forth; you can even pedal your way from town to town. Society as we know it will collapse nevertheless.
Timo Saloniemi
Maybe they should create transporter relay stations. Sort of like that gate bridge on Atlantis that allowed them to dial back to earth in the later seasons. Also they should have figured out Scotty's long distance beaming by now seeing as how it created it 1000 plus year in their past.
Jason
Jason
Yes, they should also have figured out long distance beaming because Kira was left in possession of Empok Nor at the end of "Covenant" including the Dominion's long-distant transporter.
But that was in a different universe
And yes yes, now I remember it was Spock Prime’s formula
Or then that was Dukat mindfucking her, and simply sedating her for the duration of her trip from DS9 to Empok Nor in a crate aboard a Pakled freighter.
We never saw the Dominion use this supposed Dominion transporter! Perhaps they were the origin of the tech, but only as a piece of propaganda, a nonexistent weapon like certain utterly fictional pieces of WWII hardware...
Timo Saloniemi
Then when did they sedate her? She was conscious, she sparkled, she sparkled again and appeared at Empok Nor still conscious.
Eris used the long distance transporter first.
After both incidents they looked for other ships within normal transporter range and didn't find any. Maybe cloaked - but we never saw the Dominion using cloaking devices.
Eris used the long distance transporter first.
After both incidents they looked for other ships within normal transporter range and didn't find any. Maybe cloaked - but we never saw the Dominion using cloaking devices.
So they sedated her in between. Happened to Kirk in "The Outrageous Odona", too...
Although just putting the transporter on hold is doable. Again, Kirk did it in "Day of the D'oh" right before everybody started acting real stupid.
Or then beamed to a proximal but cloaked ship. It's equally possible to postulate Dominion cloaks and Dominion long range transporters, because neither was seen in the show. Although a cloak has an excuse for not being seen!
Timo Saloniemi
The original idea in "Jem'Hadar" apparently was that Eris pressed the suicide button in her bracelet, to show how ruthless the Dominion was. But then we learned the Vorta aren't into suicide. Or into Dominion, if it involves suicide...
Neither long range transporters nor cloaked ships are preferred explanations. Onscreen evidence for both is absent (although in the case of invisibility devices, that's a plus), while speculation for both is cheap (and the heroes are allowed to participate). So it really boils down to offscreen evidence. Apparently, Worf thinks he has some. And the question then becomes, is that for real, or a lie?
The Dominion lies a lot. Dukat lies a lot. Indeed, just plain telling the truth would seldom even occur to either. But transporting across lightyears should occur, yet doesn't - the Dominion never does that. Why not? It would be really helpful and all.
In contrast, if the Dominion flew around in invisible ships a lot, we'd only get what we do get: them knowing a lot about everything while our heroes know little.
The Dominion does invisibility a lot, with the Jem'Hadar... I wonder: if those guys all concentrated a lot, could they make a ship invisible? But Dukat could make ships invisible easily enough, given that even Quark has access to bargain-basement cloaks.
Timo Saloniemi
Neither long range transporters nor cloaked ships are preferred explanations. Onscreen evidence for both is absent (although in the case of invisibility devices, that's a plus), while speculation for both is cheap (and the heroes are allowed to participate). So it really boils down to offscreen evidence. Apparently, Worf thinks he has some. And the question then becomes, is that for real, or a lie?
The Dominion lies a lot. Dukat lies a lot. Indeed, just plain telling the truth would seldom even occur to either. But transporting across lightyears should occur, yet doesn't - the Dominion never does that. Why not? It would be really helpful and all.
In contrast, if the Dominion flew around in invisible ships a lot, we'd only get what we do get: them knowing a lot about everything while our heroes know little.
The Dominion does invisibility a lot, with the Jem'Hadar... I wonder: if those guys all concentrated a lot, could they make a ship invisible? But Dukat could make ships invisible easily enough, given that even Quark has access to bargain-basement cloaks.
Timo Saloniemi
Because ships with solar cells as they're only or primary propulsion system cannot attain FTL speeds?
You actually wouldn't need natural tachyon streams.
You could use the same technique behind laser propulsion and create a Mass Relay type system of Tachyon beams propelling light sail movement between solar systems.
And on a note, not that slow, Sisko traveled multiple lightyears in a matter of minutes.
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