If KSP was realistic...

[Devric]

If KSP was realistic we would need a few more levels of warp speed...

http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

Mun seems so close now...

[technicalfool]

Ah, I remember that one. The developer seems to have added a "make the screen scroll at light speed" button since I saw it last.

Neat stuff.

[1101]

Nice. I couldn't bear to use the lightspeed scroll past Earth, though. Far too long.

KSP is roughly 1AU across isn't it?

[LordFerret]

Interesting. Reminds me of a discussion on the old Celestia forums about Star Trek warp speeds, the stars whizzing by (best demonstrated in Celestia with Pascal Hartmann's 2 million star database loaded). I've used Celestia in the past to demonstrate a photon traveling from the sun to Earth, the time it takes. Even cruising around the solar system at 10c... not as fast as one would think... even 1au/sec. Star Trek's warp speeds demonstrated required a multiplier of c in the thousands. lol

[lajoswinkler]

Interesting. Reminds me of a discussion on the old Celestia forums about Star Trek warp speeds, the stars whizzing by (best demonstrated in Celestia with Pascal Hartmann's 2 million star database loaded). I've used Celestia in the past to demonstrate a photon traveling from the sun to Earth, the time it takes. Even cruising around the solar system at 10c... not as fast as one would think... even 1au/sec. Star Trek's warp speeds demonstrated required a multiplier of c in the thousands. lol

Those light strikes were never advertised as stars, but specks of interstellar dust glowing because of ionization. So, a straw man you have made. *yoda*

[LordFerret]

Those light strikes were never advertised as stars, but specks of interstellar dust glowing because of ionization. So, a straw man you have made. *yoda*

What? Watching several episodes, old and new, the implication is clearly that they're stars, not ionized dust. Even some of the displays while the ship has been underway show charted stars moving in accordance to what was shown on the main viewscreen. There was extensive discussion about this in the old Celestia forums, by hard-core fans no less, and nobody ever suggested even a notion about what you suggest.

Edited January 7, 2015 by LordFerret

[LaytheAerospace]

The Star Trek star field effect has always irritated me, not just the speed, but the distance. Many of the stars are close enough to appear as well defined spheres! The Enterprise must be traveling through the galactic core to see so many stars that closely.

[LordFerret]

The Star Trek star field effect has always irritated me, not just the speed, but the distance. Many of the stars are close enough to appear as well defined spheres! The Enterprise must be traveling through the galactic core to see so many stars that closely.

Download and install Celestia v1.6, and load up Pascal Hartmann's 2 million star database - it's basically the old Tycho I & II catalogs... the star positions are (scientific) assumptions due to the fact the updated Hipparcos catalog wasn't available, and I don't remember if the new catalog is the default in the last release of Celestia (if it is, there's 2+ million local stars there). Anyway, load that up. The default FOV (as I recall) is equivalent to the human eye (and if it isn't, you can make it so, or whatever FOV you wish). Start cruising. According to discussions on the old Celestia forums (despite other previous commentary otherwise), it was stated that viewing stars on Celestia's Earth would be an equivalent setting of mag7 (or just under) with fuzzy dots for stars (atmosphere)... while out in space, as astronauts see, mag10 with points for stars (vacuum). Note the speed (in c multiplied) required for the Trek field effect.

Also, I'll make an assumption, that in Trek, navigating about in space, your course wouldn't exactly be a straight line (even with warp)... you'd have obstacles, or perhaps use the gravity of stars along the way to change course, or even just pass by in close proximity in using them as navigation reference points. It's space - do what you want.

*edit*

Being the old Celestia forums are dead, a little poking around, this is the closest reference I can find (regarding magnitudes)...

So, for realism, you can go to the Render menu, select View Options, and use the little sliding bar underneath "Filter Stars" to filter stars by their distance in light years.

According to http://celestia.teyssier.org/doc/opt_stars_visible.html:

"On the surface of Earth, our view generally includes stars of an apparent magnitude of +6.5 or less (the lower the number, the brighter the star). Setting this option to Magnitude 6.5 - 7.5 results is a realistic sky as seen from Earth on a clear night, with only about 3,000 stars visible."

According to http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=45851:

"The remotest heavenly body visible with the naked eye is the Great Galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda. A silver smudge in the sky gives the Andromeda Galaxy away - at a mind-boggling 2,200,000 light years from Earth, anyone can spot it! One of the closest galaxies to our own, the light we see is the result of 200,000,000,000 stars shining together. The spiral galaxy is said to have been discovered by German astronomer, Simon Marius, around 1611."

Edited January 8, 2015 by LordFerret
cite reference

[lajoswinkler]

What? Watching several episodes, old and new, the implication is clearly that they're stars, not ionized dust. Even some of the displays while the ship has been underway show charted stars moving in accordance to what was shown on the main viewscreen. There was extensive discussion about this in the old Celestia forums, by hard-core fans no less, and nobody ever suggested even a notion about what you suggest.

Where is that implication? I don't remember any. Looks more like your wishful thinking. Present the facts.

Too bad I can't find the info on this. Even since the imbeciles restarted the franchise and added pixie dust trails behind ships, and Google became a smartass which thinks it knows better than the person searching, it's quite difficult to find it.

I recall very well (and I've checked it by watching TNG), those trails vanish out of existence as soon as the ship drops out of warp. I've never seen those trails coalesce back into background stars.

As there is such thing as interstellar particles and they're hitting the warp bubble or the shields or whatever imaginary thing there is in the series, ionization is expected given the huge energies the situation would carry.

That, plus the fact the stars can't visibly move at the speeds involved.

What you did was a strawman argument. You've presented the idea that those trails are stars, and then you attacked it and condemned the memorable part of the franchise as something stupid.

When explaining stuff, first pick up the facts, then draw conclusions, not backwards.

[LordFerret]

Those light strikes were never advertised as stars, but specks of interstellar dust glowing because of ionization. So, a straw man you have made. *yoda*

That issue is nothing more than speculation by some who've brought the idea/topic up on Reddit (and elsewhere), Trek itself makes no 'official' statment - cinematic license.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/1x4nw6/star_trek_what_are_those_white_streaks_you_see/

"Warp Propulsion

"Star streaks" Whenever a Star Trek ship is at warp, it seems that always several stars are flying by when looking at the main viewscreen or out of a window. The effect was probably created only to emphasize the high speed of the ship. It is quite obvious that these "star streaks" can't be actual stars, because even at high warp a ship would pass by only one or two stars per hour but definitely not several stars per second. Here "passing by" means that the relative angle changes by more than 90 degrees, resulting in such an effect like the "star streaks".

" - http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/treknology-power.htm

The popular Memory Alpha site doesn't even address the topic other than to define the specifics of warp drives and types and limitations, based on episodes. The first jump to warp in Star Wars is likely the closest thing to reality, although they did exaggerate it a bit... light streaks jumping into black. The notion that the light streaks seen were actually 'ionized dust' didn't even become a topic of discussion about what they actually were until about the time TNG came out. The assumption, by so many, was that they were in fact star streaks.

Where is that implication? I don't remember any. Looks more like your wishful thinking. Present the facts.

Too bad I can't find the info on this. Even since the imbeciles restarted the franchise and added pixie dust trails behind ships, and Google became a smartass which thinks it knows better than the person searching, it's quite difficult to find it.

I recall very well (and I've checked it by watching TNG), those trails vanish out of existence as soon as the ship drops out of warp. I've never seen those trails coalesce back into background stars.

As there is such thing as interstellar particles and they're hitting the warp bubble or the shields or whatever imaginary thing there is in the series, ionization is expected given the huge energies the situation would carry.

That, plus the fact the stars can't visibly move at the speeds involved.

What you did was a strawman argument. You've presented the idea that those trails are stars, and then you attacked it and condemned the memorable part of the franchise as something stupid.

When explaining stuff, first pick up the facts, then draw conclusions, not backwards.

There was a least one episode where that did exactly happen, but I don't know which one so I can't cite it for you... but that's exactly what they did do visually. Trek has changed the visualizations a number of times, with good reason - traveling at ftl is 'boring'.

At warp/ftl speed, they improperly show movement/trails, doppler streaks. Again, cimatic license. In reality, you'd likely not see much of anything except perhaps foggy light at the end of a deep dark tunnel. Here's a valid demonstration of what you would likely see...

http://www.adamauton.com/warp/

Now, back to my original statement; Celestia and ftl travel. Were you able to see more than fuzzy light at the end of a dark tunnel, Celestia shows proper movement of the star field you're traveling through, minus the actual proper motion of those stars themselves (fixed positions). You have to keep in mind that Celestia's goal wasn't to portray the visual effect of ftl travel.

[rtxoff]

Star Trek shows many unrealistic things in their shows. Warp drives, transporter beams, gravity generators, deflectors are only a few of them. Picking onto an unrealistic star field effect seems a bit senseless. Also we can only assume what it might or might not be. As long we don't build such an warp ship all discussion about this is pure speculation. ST was made by quite a long list of people, you can't expect of all of them to have complete knowledge in various physical fields. Also ST was not made for the science audience. It was made for a broad spectrum of rather normal people and they inspired a few generations of people with it later later might have become scientists because of ST. The real message rodenberry tried to tell us was how humanity could evolve into a better future eliminating some basic problems in our society and not how warp ships will travel through the galaxy. The later was just a stylistic element to tell a story and even that most of us know that all this technolgies are unrealistic the show was and is still very entertaining for me.

[Devric]

Pled effects