Star Trek technology, how does it compare to our technology?

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, tater said:

I'm (once again) with Nibb31. Star Trek is fantasy, not hard science fiction, and any technologies we have, or will come up with that are anything like ST are strictly coincidental. 

ST TNG technology in a nutshell... add "-genic field" to, well, anything, and you have a new technology. This seems to be the rigorous method writers used to invent these plot devices, 'erm, technologies.

While this is certainly true, generations of engineers grew up on Star Trek, and used things they saw as inspirations to building some nifty devices.  I certainly remember a hand-held oscilloscope (voltmeters:the next generation) sold with the tag line "Mr. Chekov, I believe you dropped something."

"Did you tech the tech?" doesn't lead to hard science.  Hiring J.J.Abrams is worse.  But don't expect Scotty-wannabes to put down their soldering irons and stop making such toys.

[tater]

I don't think anyone questions that kids that love science fiction are perhaps more likely to go into science or engineering. I don't think that there is a link between specific technologies invented by writers (who generally don't have a clue about STEM stuff) and reality. 

If someone were to invent a warp drive tomorrow, a better explanation would almost certainly be, "because math" than "because Star Trek."

[magnemoe]

Think its more that Star Trek picked up some real science ideas during creation, primary the warp drive as an FTL who has some theoretical backing. They also used an technological language most other scifi don't try to describe how things work, they describe capabilities then important for plot. Even hard scifi like Martian don't tell the engine types as its not an part of the story. 

They got phaser from the laser who was an new invention then star trek was developed, Death rays goes back to 19th century scifi, the laser was the death ray come true. 
Others are good ideas who looks plausible. an universal scanner you point at thing like an pistol or camera. An small communicator, using an flip cover with microphone like many cell phones. The design is smart. 

Then you have the bad stuff, phasers who don't only shoot hole in stuff but make them go away in an small poof of smoke. This is high class magic, more far more unrealistic than dispelling demons.
The infamous teleporter, yes its an plot device to save landings but leaves plot holes so large you can pass an moon trough them. Why not store and recreate dead crew members? 
You turn the landing party into energy then recreate them hundreds of kilometer away without noticeable errors and without leaving energy. Something like an stargate you could point the other end where you wanted would be more realistic. 
 

[fredinno]

 

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

AUGH

???

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

J.J.Abrams is worse.

Jar Jar Abrams.

Edited February 2, 2016 by fredinno

[DerekL1963]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Actually mobile phones were directly inspired by Star Trek, and I doubt thats the only example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicator_(Star_Trek)#Relation_to_current_technology

Actually, the first mobile telephone was deployed in 1946.  The first depiction of a personal portable communications device in fiction was in the same year, and that device would be upgraded with video capability the year before Star Trek aired.  The guy who actually developed the handheld may have been inspired by Star Trek to do so, but given the general curve of technology only a fool or a blinded fanboy would  believe that it wouldn't have happened without Star Trek.

[K^2]

5 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

There are probably a couple of exceptions (like the Lexus Hoverboard...)

Lexus Hoverboard is a cheap publicity stunt. People have been riding magrails on type II HTSC boards in labs for years before that. Nobody made a big deal of it, because its not in the least practical without somebody laying down a rail for the thing to ride on.

So no, there are no exceptions. Technology is lead by science. Every once in a while, a new piece of tech gets name from science fiction. Robotics is the most widely known example. Another good example is warp drive. It might be called after the Star Trek counterpart, but it works nothing like the one in the show, and has been derived as a mathematical formula first and foremost. If it ever becomes practical technology, it'd owe nothing but the name to the show. And this is the case with every piece of technology we have. The inspiration of technology is from pure science. The inspiration for names or how it's presented visually can come from other sources.

[Exploro]

12 hours ago, Nikolai said:

That said, there are certain aspects of their engineering that seem sub-par by our standards, and engineering is strongly related to technology.  For example, engines that are about to undergo a warp core breach must be actively ejected from a starship.  That's just bad design.

A couple of years ago I read a paper regarding potential use of antimatter/ matter reactions for weaponry. One of the key disadvantages was that unlike conventional nuclear weapons, anti-matter weapons had to be actively prevented from exploding. Hence with that in mind; a failure of any one of safeguards of the power plant aboard a typical starship as depicted in Star Trek to prevent uncontrolled antimatter/ matter reaction could conceivably be as disastrous as we see on TV.

However that said your post did get me thinking along you lines; had the writers ever thought it would be more advantageous to simply vent the antimatter reactant into space rather than jettison a giant piece of hardware in the event of an emergency?

Edited February 3, 2016 by Exploro

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Exploro said:

A couple of years ago I read a paper regarding potential use of antimatter/ matter reactions for weaponry. One of the key disadvantages was that unlike conventional nuclear weapons, anti-matter weapons had to be actively prevented from exploding. Hence with that in mind; a failure of any one of safeguards of the power plant aboard a typical starship as depicted in Star Trek to prevent uncontrolled antimatter/ matter reaction could conceivably be as disastrous as we see on TV.

However that said your post did get me thinking along you lines; had the writers ever thought it would be more advantageous to simply vent the antimatter reactant into space rather than jettison a giant piece of hardware in the event of an emergency?

Venting the anitmatter would be simpler than jettisoning an module, antimatter is stored in an magnetic bottle you need to reshape this to move the antimatter out the exit hole. 
Yes you need to open this to space but this is just to open or blow an hatch. 
Its also far safer, once the antimatter is in vacuum its harmless unless you hit something. An container would still explode very violently if containment fails so it would be as dangerous as an very high power nuclear bomb. An high g eject of an unstable container does not sound safe either.

Note that venting some of the antimatter would be useful for defense, nice to have an cloud of antimatter gass between you and incoming missiles. This give the emergency system an secondary use. 

[GeneralVeers]

15 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

You could pretty much rewrite any Star Trek episode by replacing technology and science with magic. It would work just the same.

Uhhhh.....no. With magic, the transporters could go right through anything (shields, armor, neutronium, The Fourth Wall, whatever). In fact, you wouldn't need transporters to transport. Incoming photon torpedoes could be magically turned into bunny rabbits or doves (except that it was a G rated series and they wouldn't have been able to show bunny rabbits and doves exploding in outer space). Humans wouldn't need space suits to go strolling around in outer space. They wouldn't need anti-gravity anything. They would have spellbooks instead of onboard computers, which would be pretty depressing without Majel Barrett as the computer voice. And it wouldn't take an entire one-hour episode to figure out who poisoned the tribbles or blew up the starbase or sabotaged the dilithium crystals or whatever. Just look in the damn crystal ball and see who did it.

And that's the reason there's never going to be My Little Pony in outer space. It would simply never work.

(wait, what did he just say???)

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Venting the anitmatter would be simpler than jettisoning an module, antimatter is stored in an magnetic bottle you need to reshape this to move the antimatter out the exit hole. 
Yes you need to open this to space but this is just to open or blow an hatch. 
Its also far safer, once the antimatter is in vacuum its harmless unless you hit something. An container would still explode very violently if containment fails so it would be as dangerous as an very high power nuclear bomb. An high g eject of an unstable container does not sound safe either.

Note that venting some of the antimatter would be useful for defense, nice to have an cloud of antimatter gass between you and incoming missiles. This give the emergency system an secondary use. 

Not to mention ejecting only the anti-matter would be cheaper, as engiens cost a lot.

[GeneralVeers]

15 hours ago, fredinno said:

Jar Jar Abrams.

........Fredinno??

That picture......was THE most creepy and disturbing thing I have seen anywhere on this entire web site.

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, fredinno said:

Not to mention ejecting only the anti-matter would be cheaper, as engiens cost a lot.

Ejecting engines has other downsides too who often make the engine cost irrelevant
KSP players doing hard landing on Mun know about this, having engine melt under aerobrake is even more embarrassing. 

[KSK]

18 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Think its more that Star Trek picked up some real science ideas during creation, primary the warp drive as an FTL who has some theoretical backing.

I read somewhere (goodness knows where so no link I'm afraid) that Roddenberry had enough of a science background to understand that starships powered by rocket engines wouldn't work, so used 'warp drive' instead. Not because it was remotely plausible or had any theoretical backing at the time, but because the alternatives would have looked even sillier.

[Bill Phil]

16 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Actually, the first mobile telephone was deployed in 1946.  The first depiction of a personal portable communications device in fiction was in the same year, and that device would be upgraded with video capability the year before Star Trek aired.  The guy who actually developed the handheld may have been inspired by Star Trek to do so, but given the general curve of technology only a fool or a blinded fanboy would  believe that it wouldn't have happened without Star Trek.

It certainly helped with idea of the flip phone. 

Mobile radios were used in WW2, the difference between a mobile phone and a mobile radio is probably very little. Especially since operators connected lines...

[magnemoe]

5 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

It certainly helped with idea of the flip phone. 

Mobile radios were used in WW2, the difference between a mobile phone and a mobile radio is probably very little. Especially since operators connected lines...

On the other hand the key technology with cell phones is the cells. Star trek don't use linked cell phone towers but direct communication like radio, this is often more practical than phones for stuff like exploring uninhabited planets

 

17 minutes ago, KSK said:

I read somewhere (goodness knows where so no link I'm afraid) that Roddenberry had enough of a science background to understand that starships powered by rocket engines wouldn't work, so used 'warp drive' instead. Not because it was remotely plausible or had any theoretical backing at the time, but because the alternatives would have looked even sillier.

Yes, he might also has read some theories. the way it work and the warp numbers are just fiction. 
its an general agreement that FTL is needed for space opera. 
 

[KSK]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

On the other hand the key technology with cell phones is the cells. Star trek don't use linked cell phone towers but direct communication like radio, this is often more practical than phones for stuff like exploring uninhabited planets

 

Yes, he might also has read some theories. the way it work and the warp numbers are just fiction. 
its an general agreement that FTL is needed for space opera. 
 

I would dispute that but it was certainly needed for a show like Star Trek.

[Nikolai]

10 hours ago, Exploro said:

A couple of years ago I read a paper regarding potential use of antimatter/ matter reactions for weaponry. One of the key disadvantages was that unlike conventional nuclear weapons, anti-matter weapons had to be actively prevented from exploding. Hence with that in mind; a failure of any one of safeguards of the power plant aboard a typical starship as depicted in Star Trek to prevent uncontrolled antimatter/ matter reaction could conceivably be as disastrous as we see on TV.

Just to clarify: "Disastrous" isn't the key problem here.  Any attempt to control energies that permit starhopping is going to be potentially hazardous.  The problem is closer to what you hint at in the rest of your message:

10 hours ago, Exploro said:

However that said your post did get me thinking along you lines; had the writers ever thought it would be more advantageous to simply vent the antimatter reactant into space rather than jettison a giant piece of hardware in the event of an emergency?

That's more what I meant to get at.  In order to keep the crew safe in the event of a warp core breach, a Galaxy-class starship must fire up some engines and push the warp stuff out.  Thus, whether or not the crew stays safe depends on the proper activation of a complex system (that has its own failure modes and so forth).

Far better to take a system that would normally eject the warp cores all the time, but restrains itself from doing so only if things are working as expected.  (Some disciplines call this a "dead man's switch"; the right action is taken even if the operator is incapacitated.)  For example, have the warp cores ready to be expelled by exceedingly simple technology at all times (e.g., springs under compression) that are held in check by the proper operation of the system (e.g., electromagnets that will only operate if the power plant is generating juice within a tight band).  Then, if the warp core is unstable, it gets ejected into space automatically, without the need to activate a separate, complex system that cannot be tested beforehand and that may or may not work properly.

Those electromagnets might fail very infrequently when they're not supposed to, but believe it or not, that's what you want.  You want a system that, when it errs, still keeps people safe.  (They might have to wait to be towed or whatever, but no one's going to get blown up because the ejection rockets didn't work.  In other words, the failure of a "dead man's switch" is vastly preferable to the failure of an active system.)  We use techniques like this in power plants now, so it's kind of inconceivable that the super-engineers of Star Trek don't employ similar principles.

[fredinno]

6 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

........Fredinno??

That picture......was THE most creepy and disturbing thing I have seen anywhere on this entire web site.

But it's true.

"Jar Jar (Abrams) is the key to all this." -George Lucas.