Star Trek Discovery

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Star Trek Discovery

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I'll just leave this here!

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Jude
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Jude »

"The Uploader has not made this video available in your country" :rage:
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Primula Baggins
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Primula Baggins »

Or this one! Though I guess this happens much more often the other way around. . . .

It will show up here, certainly.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Alatar »

Search Youtube for: Star Trek Discovery Test Flight. Should be there somewhere!
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by narya »

The test footage revealed at ComicCon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqm9HSYbf0o

And someone's commentary here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_S9HaVMzSQ

The comment section for the second video is fun. Such earnest Trek scholarship! ;)
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Lalaith »

Oooooh, shiny! :banana:
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Primula Baggins
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Primula Baggins »

I'm just having a happy reaction to the name "Discovery." That's what I wish there could be more of in modern Trek—seeking out new life, and new civilizations.

And not bumpy-forehead human races with intractable political problems that resemble our own, or the famous Entire Civilization with Just One Wrong Idea That the Captain Fixes with a Speech. I mean real "science fiction adventure." Oh, please!
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by yovargas »

But what if it's a really good speech?
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists


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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Primula Baggins »

Only if the foreheads are really bumpy. So they're, like, true aliens despite having the same internal physiology, biochemistry, and American middle-class values.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Maria
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Maria »

"Aliens" that interbreed with humans and produce fertile offspring are not a different species.
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by JewelSong »

Way to suck the joy out of Star Trek, Maria.

Besides, there was a Next Gen episode that explained all that.


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Maria
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Maria »

I must have missed that episode.

dictionary.com wrote:(spē'shēz, spē'sēz) A group of organisms having many characteristics in common and ranking below a genus. Organisms that reproduce sexually and belong to the same species interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Primula Baggins »

Ursula Le Guin's handwave for lots of humanoid aliens was that all the worlds in our neighborhood were colonized by the same intelligent race. Then you can have biochemical compatibility (if you assume entire ecosystems were planted along with the intelligent people) that lets people from different planets eat the same food. I don't recall that she ever went so far as to have races from different worlds interbreed, though.

Having alien races interbreed, eat the same food, etc., isn't allowed in serious SF any more. Even Le Guin's handwave introduces more problems than it solves now that we know so much more about genetics. But the roots of Star Trek were in a different era (really the forties and fifties), when a story could contain many scientifically impossible elements and still be considered SF just because it took place in the future, or on another planet, or had robots and rayguns.

These days it seems to be generally OK to have maybe one impossible story element. Usually it's interstellar travel based on scientific principles that don't exist and never will. But you could probably argue that we've lost some of that good old "sense of wonder" now that interstellar romance has gone the way of the dodo.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by JewelSong »

Maria wrote:I must have missed that episode.
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Chase_(episode)


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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Inanna »

Which reminds me - Prim, is that rotating thing in Martian etc possible? Is it accurate?
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Primula Baggins »

Rotating thing in what? Sorry, don't recall exactly what you mean.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Inanna
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Inanna »

Yes - given the amazing specificity of that Q...

I meant in the space ship they use to travel. The rotating disc to simulate some form of gravity. The latest Neal Stephenson book also had it - as part of the ISS.
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Primula Baggins »

It's complicated.

That rotating disc would in fact produce artificial gravity, directed outward from the center of the disc, so the arrangement they had with people climbing down ladders to rooms set along the outer wall of the disc would work.

However, there's a problem with Coriolis force—basically the effects of your feet moving faster than your head as you stand on the floor of one of those rooms. Your inner ear perceives that, and the usual effect is strong nausea. The only way to combat this is to have a disc or ring that rotates slowly—about two times a minute is the threshold I've heard. To get one full Earth gravity, that means the ring has to be 250 meters across. That's 820 feet, so to get from the center to the "floor" you'd have to descend 410 feet through gradually increasing gravity—like taking the stairs from the top of a 40-story building, which means there would have to be elevators.

Of course, we don't know how much artificial gravity would be just enough to prevent the damage caused by long-term weightlessness (bone loss, muscle atrophy, other more subtle effects). Maybe one-third gravity (like that on Mars) would be enough. That would reduce the diameter of ring that was needed, but it would still be quite large—something on the order of 80 meters or 262 feet. (I found a handy graph and the actual equations here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity.) Obviously the ring in the spacecraft in The Martian was nothing like that large. So they fudged it. The principle is right, but the engineering to make it practical would be enormously complicated.

That's why there isn't one of those rings on the ISS.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Inanna »

You are awesome, Prim. Thank you.
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Re: Star Trek Discovery

Post by Primula Baggins »

This is also why I had "pseudograv" in my Hidden Worlds books. (It worked on space stations but spaceships were too small.) It just made it easier to tell a story.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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