Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

THESE PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF WARP

Ok, we know from relativity that you can’t travel faster than light.  The way around that in the Star Trek universe is that you warp space, kind of folding it and shortening the distance between two points.  Then you are actually going at sublight speeds in the warp bubble, but the in another reference frame you are going faster than the speed of light.  That’s why Trek ships are designed the way they are -- these enormous space-warping nacelles are kept separate from engineering and the crew quarters.

This has a few consequences.  For one, you can’t just warp right out of spacedock.  This is quite well established in all previous incarnations of STAR TREK.  Can you imagine what warping space around a spacedock would do?  Oh let’s take all the space this dock is contained in and collapse it all together!  WRATH OF KHAN showed how you pilot a ship out of spacedock.


What a masterful scene that is.  In just a few minutes it simultaneously: shows off the majesty of the Enterprise, establishes how Kirk is truly no longer in command of the Enterprise and is uncomfortable with it, “humanizes” Lt. Saavik as being completely unexperienced despite her overconfident demeanor, shows that this scenario where Spock is in command, but Kirk is on the Enterprise, is awkward, provides no small measure of verisimilitude by drawing parallels between a space ship and a seafaring vessel, and on top of it all, allows the score to soar!  This is the problem with STAR TREK INTO STUPIDITY in a nutshell.  It discards these key moments that ground the characters in humanity, ground the fantastic elements in both the lore of the series and parallels to our reality, and provide breathing room and awe. 

In fact, they don’t even like to go to warp inside the solar system in real STAR TREK.  The stated reason is that they could run into something, like an asteroid.  But it makes sense for another reason too.  These ships are analogous to boats.  In a real boat, you don’t just go cruising at top speed through an area with a lot of other boats, or a residential area, because you make waves that are really annoying and possibly damaging to anyone who lives there.  There is an is an analogous situation with gravitational waves.  Einstein’s theory of relativity says that gravity distorts spacetime.  Once prediction is that orbiting neutron stars or black holes produce gravitational waves -- ripples in the very fabric of spacetime.  But it isn’t just orbiting superdense bodies, any large spacetime disturbance ought to do it, like, say, warping it to send a starship to superluminal speeds.  Hulse and Taylor won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for showing that two orbiting neutron stars are losing energy and spiraling into each other due to the radiation of gravitational waves.  We haven’t detected gravitational waves directly yet, but this may happen with the Advanced LIGO detectors come online in 2014.

 

 

DROP OUTS

It isn’t super-well established where Kronos is in Star Trek lore.  The most direct statement is that in STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, Archer says it is 4 days away at warp 4.5.  Since that is about 80 times the speed of light, that puts it at 80*300,000 km/s * 345,600 s in 4 days / 9.4e12 km/ly = 0.88 lighyears (ly).  That makes no sense -- the closest star to the Sun is about 4 lightyears away.  Kronos must be less than 90 ly away, because at some point on Enterprise, after they’ve visited Kronos, they say 90 ly is the farthest they’ve traveled.  Let’s be relatively conservative and say Kronos is only 10 ly away.

They get back from Kronos to Earth in about a minute in STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS.  How fast are they traveling?  If it would normally take you 10 years to get there, traveling at the speed of light, instead they do it faster by the number of seconds in 10 years divided by 60s in a minute. that’s c*3e8s/60s = 5 million times the speed of light.  And remember that is pretty much a lower limit because I chose such a close distance for Kronos.  That’s thousands of times faster than Starfleet ships are supposed to go, even the ones in the far future.  Our galaxy is about 100,000 lyr across.  At that speed you could cross it in 7 days.  So much for the plot of the entire run of STAR TREK: VOYAGER!

And another ridiculously stupid thing about the plot: they drop out of warp (actually they are kind of shot out, they don’t seem to actually try to stop the Enterprise), almost on top of the Moon.  The radius of the moon is 1700 km and it fills up the screen, so they must have been about 1000 km away from it.  Traveling at the speed above, if they had come out of warp literally one nanosecond later, they would have crashed into the moon.  Even if we want to be really ridiculous and say they were only traveling at the speed of light, they would have crashed into the moon 0.003 seconds later.

And then!  To top it off, they start crashing into, what?  Not the Moon, the Earth!  I *think* some character mumbles something about them being caught in the Earth’s gravity, and they are all the sudden being pulled in.  Here’s where the movie gets a little cloudy, or maybe it is just my understanding of what was supposed to be going on.  Within a few minutes they are pulled from right next to the Moon all the way into the Earth’s atmosphere.  This is just insane

Rather than go through some equations about how long this would take, instead we can just look at the case of Apollo 13.  We launched a rocket from Earth, and due to a catastrophic failure of one of the oxygen tanks, they had to abort their lunar landing mission and move to a “free return” trajectory around the moon, and back to Earth.  “Free return” just means that you don’t have to fire the rockets to return to Earth, you just use lunar gravity to swing you back around to Earth, with some minor course corrections.  This is cool, because it tells us how long it takes a spaceship to “fall” back to Earth from the moon, if it can’t use its engines!  In the case of Apollo 13, it took about 64 hours.  Actually, that’s faster than it otherwise would have, because they did burn the descent engine two hours after swinging around the moon to speed their return to Earth by 10 hours.  Anyway, the bottom line is that it takes *days*, not minutes, for a spacecraft to fall to Earth from lunar orbit.

 

 

ANGULAR MOMENTUM

When the Enterprise is falling into the Earth, it looks like it is falling straight into it, as if the two are balls on a string being drawn to each other.  That’s not the way two bodies gravitationally attracted to each other work -- they approach each other on curved paths.  Have you ever wondered why everything in space orbits something?  It is because of conservation of angular momentum.

The most famous terrestrial example is an ice skater spinning.  When she draws in her outstretched arms, she starts spinning faster and faster.  The same thing would happen to the Enterprise as it fell to Earth.  It wouldn’t fall straight in, it would kind of orbit.  If it didn’t have the energy to make a complete orbit, it would still sort of half-loop around the Earth, and come in at an angle. 

What energy would it have?  Ignoring vectors, the formula for angular momentum (L) is L=rmv, where r is the distance from the axis of rotation to the thing rotating around it, m is the mass, and v is the velocity perpendicular to the line defined by r.  We can make a ratio of the angular momentum at the Moon’s orbit and the angular momentum as the Enterprise enters the Earth’s atmosphere.  Then, since angular momentum is conserved, and mass is conserved, these two quantities cancel.  We’re left with vE=vM*(rM/rE).  The ratio of the distance to the Moon to the Earth’s radius is about 60.  That means whatever transverse velocity the Enterprise had at the orbit of the Moon would be amplified by a factor of 60 by the time it reached Earth, just due to conservation of angular momentum. 

Would they have even crashed into the Earth?  The escape velocity of the Earth (the velocity needed to achieve orbit) is about 7 km/s if you are already in space (it is higher if you have to leave the surface).  And 7 km/s / 60 = about 100 m/s.  So if the Enterprise was traveling at 100 meters per second or more relative to the Earth when it was at the Moon’s orbit, it never would have fallen all the way to the Earth, it would have attained orbital velocity by the time it reached the atmosphere.  One hundred meters per second is not very fast -- that’s only ten times faster than a human can run!  That’s nothing for a ship that just dropped out of warp and is being hit by projectiles.  Just shoot a photon torpedo in the opposite direction and let the back reaction give you the tiny push to remain in orbit.

Fine, so you have to have them actually crash into Earth, because the script calls for it.  My point is, show them streaking into the atmosphere at an angle, not falling directly down on the Earth.  It is a small thing, but to anyone who knows science, it is glaring, and just shows that most people who worked on this movie know very little about physics and didn’t talk to anyone who did.

 

 

BEAM ME ACROSS THE GALAXY, SCOTTY

In the original STAR TREK series, they didn’t have the budget to show the Enterprise landing in every episode, so they invented transporters that could beam characters to the surface.  But to keep this from becoming a solution to any problem, it had to have limitations:  you can only do it over short distances, in certain conditions, etc.  There was a bit of silliness involved, because it meant that every episode they had to lose communication with the ship or lose transporter functionality.

 In STAR TREK (2009), the writers wrote themselves out of a plot hole by disregarding the way beaming works, deciding that their Scotty was so smart he came up with a way to beam people anywhere, any time.  This is a classic example of sacrificing the future to pay for the present.  To the (sort of) credit of the creators of STAR TREK OUT OF SANITY, they don’t just ignore this disaster, for better or worse, transwarp beaming is now a part of this new TREK universe.  Kind of.  Just as before, it is ignored when it is convenient.  As in, almost all of the time.  For example, why can’t Starfleet just transwarp beam the bomb into the volcano?  Why can’t they just beam the villain back from the planet he escapes to?  Why do they need super-advanced stealth torpedoes, when they can now just beam a bomb directly onto a planet or near a starship?  Why didn’t they just beam the Starfleet commanders out of the room being attacked?  (You’d think “fire alarms” in the future would just beam everyone in the room to a safe place).

This is a problem that plagues every aspect of this new incarnation of Trek:  “red matter” from the 2009 STAR TREK obviates the need for any other kind of weapon, magic blood means you can revive the dead, automated starships mean you now don’t need a crew, transwarp beaming means you don’t need starships at all!  It is lazy writing for a moment of kewl-factor, ignoring the fundamental consequences down the road.  The original Trek universe was one with a rules and a logical underpinning.  That’s absolutely necessary for the audience to buy into such a fantastical concept.  In this one, it seems almost anything goes, and things just happen willy-nilly because the writers wrote it that way.

 

 

WHO BUILT MY BATTLESHIP?

A major plot point in STAR TREK INTO OBSCURITY is that a new class of starship is secretly being built in Jupiter orbit.  Stupidly, the characters refer to the location of this starship as a set of coordinates, as if the thing is static in space and not in orbit around a planet.  Yes, I realize there are four coordinates, as if time is one of them.  Still doesn’t work.  Astronomers don’t use coordinates like this for a reason.

Ok, so they’re building a giant new starship that is bigger, faster, and tougher than the Enterprise, and is so automated it requires almost no crew AND CAN EVEN BE RUN BY A SINGLE PERSON.  This is moronic.  First of all, why risk the lives of hundreds of people at any point in the future by having a huge crew on a starship?  And second, this means the Enterprise has to be rebuilt for the next movie, because there is no way Starfleet is sending them out there in light of the Klingon threat with obsolete tech.

Also, why does this badass starship have giant, cavernous hangars with hangar doors that are about ten feet in diameter?  And why would the crew be “private security” if clearly tens of thousands of people in Starfleet know about this operation.  First, it is a project of the admiral in charge of Starfleet.  Second, he has a whole research division devoted to it.  Third, it takes thousands of people to build a modern aircraft carrier -- a starship is surely no different.  Clearly this is a project approved at the highest levels of Starfleet and whatever government exists on Earth in the 23rd century.  They are going to be pissed about Kirk’s meddling.

 

 

COINCIDENCES

In my review of this movie’s predecessor, I mentioned how it was a crazy coincidence (i.e. lazy writing) that out of all the area on a planet, Kirk crash-lands right next to where Spock is hiding in a cave, and just happens to run into that cave.  At least you could kind of explain that by saying that the Enterprise sent Kirk to near where the Starfleet base was, and that’s where hobo Spock was hanging out too.  But in this movie, our heroes head to an abandoned part of Kronos, only to be intercepted by Klingon warbirds, leading them on a chase through this area of the planet.  Just when our heroes think they are free, they are surrounding by Klingons and forced to surrender.  And who should just happen to be hanging out exactly where they land?  Our villain, John Harrison!  And it wasn’t because they knew where he was -- they might have initially been headed to his last known coordinates, but then they got diverted by the chase.  To keep this scientific, let’s say they are traveling at the speed of a 747:  250 km/s.  If they are being chased for a 100 seconds, that means they traveled 25 km on the surface.  Even if they knew John Harrison was somewhere along that line that they had traveled, and he could have run there from 100m away, there‘s still only a 1 in 250 chance that they wold have landed near him. 

Also, if John Harrison has this device that can beam him anywhere in the galaxy, why did he go to the Klingon homeworld?  Why did he bring massive guns and carry them around on the planet?  An Earth man wandering a Klingon planet with a giant gun.  That doesn’t attract attention.  None of it makes any sense.

I could go on about a great many things: why did they need the villain’s blood when they had 72 superhumans on the ship, how can you just kick a nuclear reactor to get it restarted, why didn’t they beam Kirk to sickbay, etc.  But I’m just tired of all the nonsense in this movie.  This isn’t science fiction, it is just a Michael Bay-level mindless action film shoehorned into an overly convoluted, senseless plot.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/62867

[Buster's Uncle]

[Geo]

On the Vulcan uniform, home-made, or bought?

On the movie review, what these writers fail to understand, is that glaring inconsistencies are scripted in for a a reason: they make a (partial?) living out of it. 

[Unorthodox]

I could do better ears...

[Buster's Uncle]

But can you do hotter?

...

Star Trek creator to become part of space archive
Associated Press – 1 hour 37 minutes ago..

 
LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — Remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife and the actor who played Scotty will get a final resting place in the "Final Frontier" under plans announced Thursday to launch a space archive.

The project is being developed by the Houston company Celestis, which for years has offered a service that takes partial remains into space and then brings them back.

Celestis announced the new project a day before a launch from Spaceport America takes its 1,000th capsule into space. Ashes from the Roddenberrys have been on previous flights.

But this time they will stay in space. Plans call for the archive to be launched with a large experimental solar sail planned by NASA next year. The public can pay to have digital files, photos and DNA samples included. Also on the mission will be hair from science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/star-trek-creator-become-part-space-archive-193223046.html

[Unorthodox]

But can you do hotter?

...

I could try to convince the boss if you really want...

[Buster's Uncle]

hEt's a babe.  Pleez?

[Geo]

Only if you ask her prettily :nono:

[Unorthodox]

hEt's a babe.  Pleez?

She says no to a vulcan, yes to a starfleet uniform.  Would consider a klingon, romulan, or bajoran (sp) as well. 

Local Comicon in Sept.  Shatner and Frakes...

[Buster's Uncle]

This is gonna end up being fake Star Trek, isn't it?

[Unorthodox]

She is the TNG fangirl. 

[Buster's Uncle]

We haven't had anything new from wassername in a while, so:

[Buster's Uncle]

'Star Trek' Superfans Restore Galileo Shuttlecraft to 1960s Sci-Fi Glory
Tariq Malik, Managing Editor
Date: 29 June 2013 Time: 05:00 PM ET

The Galileo shuttlecraft from TV's "Star Trek" is shown fully restored after a yearlong project led by Trek superfan Adam Schneider of New Jersey. The restored Galileo was unveiled on June 22, 2013 at Master Shipwrights Inc., in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. CREDIT: SPACE.com/Karl Tate

A life-size spaceship prop from TV's original "Star Trek" series, once lost and in shambles, has been lovingly restored to its former glory by die-hard fans for a new mission: to live long and prosper as a museum piece.

After nine months of restoration, the Galileo shuttlecraft — a life-size spaceship prop from the iconic 1960s science fiction TV series — was publicly unveiled last week in a ceremony amid loud cheers from a crowd of "Star Trek" fans and friends on hand to see the ship before its sendoff to its final frontier. It shipped off Space Center Houston, the visitor's center for NASA's Johnson Space Center, on Wednesday (June 26).

"This is amazing," "Star Trek" superfan Adam Schneider told a crowd of more than 350 friends and fellow fans as he unveiled the restored Galileo on June 22 in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. Schneider bought the huge Trek spaceship prop at auction with the specific goal of restoring it and donating it to a museum for the public to enjoy. "Despite spending [nearly] 50 years basically outdoors, for a prop built to last a year or two, she's ready for her next journey."

Schneider unveiled the fully restored Galileo shuttlecraft, at Master Shipwrights Inc., a boat restoration company that performed the work on the Trek prop. Schneider's wife Leslie broke a bottle of champagne to commemorate Galileo's resurrection, but only off to the side so as not to damage the ship.

"This means a lot to everybody, all the fans," said Mike Stein of Nutley, N.J., who commands the U.S.S. Justice fan club and was one of the many "Star Trek" fans attending Galileo's unveiling. "This is going to be an inspiration of what our vision for the future was for the people who will see it."

One fan, amateur astronomer  and retired psychiatrist Willie Yee of New Paltz, N.Y., drove to see Galileo in a white Toyota Prius modified to look like a "Star Trek" shuttlecraft, complete with a Federation flag symbol, Trek logo and striping and a bunch of Tribbles (fictional fuzzy critters from the show) in the trunk.


Warp speed to Houston

Galileo's new home is the museum Space Center Houston, which is located next door to NASA's Johnson Space Centerin Houston, Texas, the home base for the U.S. astronaut corps and Mission Control. There, the "Star Trek" shuttlecraft will be presented with other Space Age relics to help convey the history of the U.S. space program. Galileo will be formally unveiled at Space Center Houston on July 31.

"This will be a centerpiece in their display showing the linkage between science fiction and real space travel," Schneider said, adding that Galileo predated NASA's own space shuttle fleet by more than a decade. "This will be the iconic piece in the best possible home at the gateway of the manned space program. [Galileo Shuttlecraft to Land at Space Center Houston (Video)]

The Galileo shuttlecraft made its "Star Trek" debut in 1967 in the episode "Galileo Seven," in which the ship ferries crewmembers (including commander Spock) from show's starship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, down to the surface of a hostile planet. The Galileo is damaged, leaving the crew to find a way to survive until they can be rescued.

Built by car customizer Gene Winfield, the Galileo shuttlecraft is about 23 feet (7 meters) long and has 5.5-foot (1.7 m) ceiling height. It was primarily made of painted wood and sheet metal over a steel frame. The huge prop appeared in seven Trek episodes before the series was canceled in 1969 after a three-season run.

"This is easily the largest 'Star Trek' prop in the wild, and this is a spaceship," Schneider said. "It's not a chair, it's not a ray gun … it's a spaceship."


Galileo's real-life trek

After the original "Star Trek" TV series cancellation, Galileo's voyage truly began. The shuttlecraft was initially donated to a school for the blind, and then resold to a series of collectors and would-be restorers until June 2012, when Schneider bought the Trek prop in an online auction. He has not disclosed the cost of Galileo or its restoration.

But Schneider's goal of restoring Galileo for donation seemed a daunting challenge. By the time obtained Galileo, the shuttlecraft was in bad shape. Time and the elements had left Galileo little more than a shade if its former self. And the shuttlecraft did not come with an instruction manual either, Schneider said.

"My plan right away was to buy it, figure out what to do to restore it, and then to donate it," Schneider said. "I was told by an awful lot of people that it was too far gone, that too many years had passed, that it would be too hard."

Working with his partner "Star Trek" blogger Alec Peters, Schneider and the team at Master Shipwrights — led by craftsman Hans Mikatis — tracked down vital details about Galileo to restore it as accurately as possible. By tapping into the expertise of that fan base, Schneider and Peters were able to identify key details for Galileo such as the markings on the side not facing the camera during its television appearances.

One Trek fan even built a key component for Galileo's restoration, a small compartment filled with electronic-like gear mounted to the aft of the shuttlecraft.

"There are no plans of the ship, as built, that we've ever found," Schneider said. "But there are a lot of pictures of it, and a lot of fans."

Now, with Galileo one its way to Houston (it was shipped overland by truck) the end of its long voyage is in sight.

"I hate to admit it, but I think Adam and I are going to miss you," Leslie Schneider told the shuttlecraft during its unveiling. "Live long and prosper, Galileo, and warp speed to Houston."

http://www.space.com/21784-star-trek-galileo-shuttlecraft-restoration-unveiled.html

[Buster's Uncle]

(click to show/hide)

Hitler reacts to new Star Trek movie

Whoever wrote this really knew their stuff, even if this does Godwin the issue...

[Buster's Uncle]

William Shatner Star Trek Billy Blackburn's Rare Home Movies

Can anyone name all the episodes in this?  I reckon I can. 

I'm so lonely.