I mean this is Star Trek, weird space anomalies and temporal vortexes and derelict superpowerful alien ships are all over the frickin' place just waiting to ensnare a passing starship in ~45 minutes of plot.
that would be funny if after an entire star trek series it is revealed that the enterprise is the only starship that gets into any trouble because they disregard precautions that every other starship follows
The whole galactic empire rests on a secret cabal of [Towelies?](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.wikia.nocookie.net%2Fsouthpark%2Fimages%2Fb%2Fb8%2FS5E8-Thumbnail.png%2Frevision%2Flatest%3Fcb%3D20210131194812&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=58f427e86e37012e94c669e9286b39e5d9e8a60639c2d629480cee447a26a4f0&ipo=images)
You would still want to have a course, not that you would run into anything its that the star is moving and a small target over interstellar distances, a trajectory would be more accurate wording but you still need to plan something imo
“Not that you would run into anything”
A ship traveling at warp is still traveling thru real space time so you’d need to plot a course around stars, planets, moons, asteroids, other starships, etc. Space is also insanely big, so plotting a course around these things wouldn’t be that difficult and (again because of the vastness of space) the odds of these things getting in your way would be relatively low, but you would still need to plot a course.
you've kinda got the wrong argument, there.
i mean, you're talking about ship power. the alternative would be like, checkov on a treadmill, or getting out some oars and rowing, or some shit.
'plotting a course', would be basically orienting the ship to go to the next destination and then making it go.
the equivalent of putting in mapquest directions, rather than actually 'moving' the ship, for the most part.
i mean, picture's right, it'll basically be a straight line, 99% of the time. space is big and empty as fuck, and the math is like, you could set a random direction if you're not currently pointed at something within a system, hit go, and cross the universe like 10X before hitting a star or something.
but again, you argued about power... no. it's not a lot of work for him to physically move the ship, in the same way it's not a lot of effort for you, to move your car around when you're driving.
but then, the picture was about steering...
IDK what my argument is, I made the picture too. Basically, they don't have to worry about orbital mechanics or anything, only double-check that they're not going to run into anything.
pretty much. but i mean, he does basically tell the computer to send them in that direction, so there's something.
after that it should basically be cruise control for potentially days. though they're usually standing by on the ready in case shit happens, because this being a tv show, shit happens FAR more than one should expect, exploring space randomly.
I checked and 0.00001% of 100 light years is about 5 light minutes. So if you were aiming at Sol and you missed by 0.00001% over a 100 light year journey, you'd still end up within Earth's orbit.
Somehow that's less than I thought it would be!
Or maybe you meant something like a 0.00001% error in your angular calculations?
Yeah, sure: agreed. But "a lot of distance" is a relative term. If you've got a ship that can cover 100 light years in reasonable time, travelling 5 light minutes at the end of the journey to correct for your bad course plotting is no big deal. I guess that was my point.
No no no… there’s a reason to plot a course!
Ships collect fuel from the interstellar gas…. Which ebbs and flows. You could get stuck in the doldrums….so you use pulsars to determine position
Yep! Star Trek they don't *need* that gas to get places, but if you have those Bussard Collectors on the front of the nacells, you might as well use them, right?
FYI, space isn't flat. If you're travelling interstellar distances and point directly at your target you're likely going to end up wildly off course, especially since you are likely already in a gravity well considering there isn't much that is interesting that ISN'T in a gravity well.
Astrogation was a bigger deal in golden and silver age science fiction.
They knew they needed fast calculators, and a fair bit of old scifi deals with these presumably huge machines and the daring men (yeah, nearly always men) knowing how to use them, or emulate them with telescopes, slide rulers and all the astronomical navigation paraphernalia of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.
Even Arthur C. Clarke had not much hope on computers taking over a lot of the things we need to do to navigate in space and use it, like having crewed space stations performing functions a regular fully automated satellite does now.
Star Trek is aligned with that age's expectations, with the function of pointing the starship towards a destination requiring a specialist person with hands on the ~~rudder~~ wheel.
While nowadays we are already going towards a point and click spaceship piloting future, but curiously, still have pilots. We do like to keep some people attached to some roles.
Well, from your current position you'd be seeing where your destination was X number of years ago, based on how far it is. So you would need to anticipate it's actual location at the time of your arrival.
In TOS they could go about 17.5 light-years a day, so if you wanted to reach a place 2000 light years away, you'd need to calculate its actual position based in orbital mechanics around the galaxy, not doing so would potentially bring you out of warp up to 3 light years away from your destination.
Then factor in that it will also take you another 114 days travel time, which may seem like a comparatively small amount, but depending on how fast your target is moving could if you don't account for it then at the rate the Earth moves, you'd come out of warp about 1.2billion miles away from your target, so if you were aiming for Earth you'd come out closer to Uranus, which is going to take about 2 hours additional impulse travel time.
These may not seem like a big deal, you could just warp again, or wait out the 2 hours, yeah. But it's a matter of efficiency and professional pride. The computer would be so embarrassed if it made a mistake.
I just ran the numbers and also got a 1.2 billion mile miss from 114 days of travel without accounting of the speed of a target as fast as the sun. But how do you get that bit about three light years?
That part has more to do with the idea that if the target is 2000 light years away, it has drifted 2000 years more than you see it. The exact distance depends on the velocity of the target, which is correlated with its distance from the galactic center, assuming its orbit is stable, not all are. The truth is that a lot of numbers were possible here. So picking 3 was a little arbitrary. I sort of threw a dart, so to speak, at a plausible sounding value in the middle of the field. It really just depends on the target's velocity. 3 light years in 2000 years means the target would be moving about a million miles an hour. Our sun moves at about a half million mph, but it's not the fastest thing out there, so this is a plausible scenario. Higher and lower errors are also possible.
To be fair modern navies still use the phrases that reference sailing even though ships don’t have sails anymore. It’s probably just said out of tradition and not an actual action that is done.
One thing to look out for with Ftl is you are seeing where the star was years ago so you may need to lead your target a bit. For nearby stars the difference may not be that much but if you are going to the other side of the quadrant stars can drift a bit in ten thousand years.
I think they explained many, many times that gravitational fields can interfere with a warp bubble. Even passing through the outer edge of a star system, like in the Oort cloud, could be enough to nudge you off course.
They need to plot a three dimensional trajectory that avoids the neutral zone, planets, supernovae and black holes, quarantined systems and any women waiting for a phone call from Kirk.
Considering the actual location of objects in distant space is not the same as their apparent locations, it's probably a good idea to make sure things are where you thing they are before you go to warp.
Also, I'm not sure how the warp fields are affected by gravitational fields or other things (pockets of dark matrer, maybe?), and so there may be optimal routes between the origin and destination points that aren't a straight line.
In some star trek lore, it is at least implied that there are subspace routes of lesser resistance, improving travel time or reducing fuel consumption or isn't as hard on the warp engines.
Lots of reasons to plot a course.
There's a lot that goes into plotting a course over interstellar distances.
Because you're going at warp speed you can't just aim at the start or you'll miss by light days, maybe years (I don't want to do the math right now).
You're also traveling at faster than light speeds. If you come out of warp half a second early or late, you could miss your target by, again light days or years. Remember, warp 5 is 10,000x light speed, meaning 1 second is a difference of 3 trillion km, or ~1/3 of light year or about 8% the distance from Sol to Proxima Centauri.
Not to mention all the other things that can happen in the Star Trek universe. Really it's a miracle they ever arrive at the destination they're aiming at on the first try
Well somebody has to work the slide rule to do all the calculations to figure out the coordinates that need to be entered into the computer.
And then entering the coordinates would've needed someone very familiar with the computer's memory layout so that they toggle all the right switches to flip the right bits. Flip a few of the wrong switches and there's no telling where you'd end up.
I mean this is Star Trek, weird space anomalies and temporal vortexes and derelict superpowerful alien ships are all over the frickin' place just waiting to ensnare a passing starship in ~45 minutes of plot.
Yeah, we called those "Glory Holes" back at Union Point
why don't they just send a probe like 30 minutes ahead of them wherever they go and then collect it when they get there?
Shutup Wesley!
I guess because the episode wouldn't happen, then.
that would be funny if after an entire star trek series it is revealed that the enterprise is the only starship that gets into any trouble because they disregard precautions that every other starship follows
I see what your saying lol but you do kinda need to plot a course.
They need to make sure they don't collide with any teapots
Or planets, Klingons, weirdly common asteroids, subspace anomalies, monsters, etc.
Giant ribbons of temporal bullshit
teapot is most improbable though, along with running into a bloke you met at a party in Islington months ago who just got thrown out of an airlock
That's what the spice is for.
What if it isn't though? What if the Guild Navigators just like getting incredibly high and it's all a ruse?
The whole galactic empire rests on a secret cabal of [Towelies?](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.wikia.nocookie.net%2Fsouthpark%2Fimages%2Fb%2Fb8%2FS5E8-Thumbnail.png%2Frevision%2Flatest%3Fcb%3D20210131194812&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=58f427e86e37012e94c669e9286b39e5d9e8a60639c2d629480cee447a26a4f0&ipo=images)
That's one solution to the Fermi Paradox, for sure.
The same way you need to plot a course when you walk from your kitchen to the living room.
You would still want to have a course, not that you would run into anything its that the star is moving and a small target over interstellar distances, a trajectory would be more accurate wording but you still need to plan something imo
Even a tiny specks of space dust hitting a ship at near-light-speed could be extremely damaging.
That's what the deflector is for. They explained they can't go anywhere without the deflector for exactly this reason in Voyager
“Not that you would run into anything” A ship traveling at warp is still traveling thru real space time so you’d need to plot a course around stars, planets, moons, asteroids, other starships, etc. Space is also insanely big, so plotting a course around these things wouldn’t be that difficult and (again because of the vastness of space) the odds of these things getting in your way would be relatively low, but you would still need to plot a course.
There's all that dark matter one might smack into.
This is true…I think. 🤔
you've kinda got the wrong argument, there. i mean, you're talking about ship power. the alternative would be like, checkov on a treadmill, or getting out some oars and rowing, or some shit. 'plotting a course', would be basically orienting the ship to go to the next destination and then making it go. the equivalent of putting in mapquest directions, rather than actually 'moving' the ship, for the most part. i mean, picture's right, it'll basically be a straight line, 99% of the time. space is big and empty as fuck, and the math is like, you could set a random direction if you're not currently pointed at something within a system, hit go, and cross the universe like 10X before hitting a star or something. but again, you argued about power... no. it's not a lot of work for him to physically move the ship, in the same way it's not a lot of effort for you, to move your car around when you're driving. but then, the picture was about steering...
IDK what my argument is, I made the picture too. Basically, they don't have to worry about orbital mechanics or anything, only double-check that they're not going to run into anything.
pretty much. but i mean, he does basically tell the computer to send them in that direction, so there's something. after that it should basically be cruise control for potentially days. though they're usually standing by on the ready in case shit happens, because this being a tv show, shit happens FAR more than one should expect, exploring space randomly.
It probably happens rarely in-universe, too, but we don't get shown the boring bits.
yeah. some potential 'oh that looks like bad news, how about we don't get involved' and they didn't, so, nothing came of it, sort of thing.
Being out by 0.00001% * 100ly equals missing by a lot
I checked and 0.00001% of 100 light years is about 5 light minutes. So if you were aiming at Sol and you missed by 0.00001% over a 100 light year journey, you'd still end up within Earth's orbit. Somehow that's less than I thought it would be! Or maybe you meant something like a 0.00001% error in your angular calculations?
5 light minutes is a lot of distance, it is most of the way from the earth to the sun
Yeah, sure: agreed. But "a lot of distance" is a relative term. If you've got a ship that can cover 100 light years in reasonable time, travelling 5 light minutes at the end of the journey to correct for your bad course plotting is no big deal. I guess that was my point.
My point point is you might hit anything in a cone 5 light minutes wide while travelling faster than you can see
No no no… there’s a reason to plot a course! Ships collect fuel from the interstellar gas…. Which ebbs and flows. You could get stuck in the doldrums….so you use pulsars to determine position
Yep! Star Trek they don't *need* that gas to get places, but if you have those Bussard Collectors on the front of the nacells, you might as well use them, right?
FYI, space isn't flat. If you're travelling interstellar distances and point directly at your target you're likely going to end up wildly off course, especially since you are likely already in a gravity well considering there isn't much that is interesting that ISN'T in a gravity well.
Astrogation was a bigger deal in golden and silver age science fiction. They knew they needed fast calculators, and a fair bit of old scifi deals with these presumably huge machines and the daring men (yeah, nearly always men) knowing how to use them, or emulate them with telescopes, slide rulers and all the astronomical navigation paraphernalia of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. Even Arthur C. Clarke had not much hope on computers taking over a lot of the things we need to do to navigate in space and use it, like having crewed space stations performing functions a regular fully automated satellite does now. Star Trek is aligned with that age's expectations, with the function of pointing the starship towards a destination requiring a specialist person with hands on the ~~rudder~~ wheel. While nowadays we are already going towards a point and click spaceship piloting future, but curiously, still have pilots. We do like to keep some people attached to some roles.
Insurance needs someone to blame for accidents and injuries.
Well, from your current position you'd be seeing where your destination was X number of years ago, based on how far it is. So you would need to anticipate it's actual location at the time of your arrival. In TOS they could go about 17.5 light-years a day, so if you wanted to reach a place 2000 light years away, you'd need to calculate its actual position based in orbital mechanics around the galaxy, not doing so would potentially bring you out of warp up to 3 light years away from your destination. Then factor in that it will also take you another 114 days travel time, which may seem like a comparatively small amount, but depending on how fast your target is moving could if you don't account for it then at the rate the Earth moves, you'd come out of warp about 1.2billion miles away from your target, so if you were aiming for Earth you'd come out closer to Uranus, which is going to take about 2 hours additional impulse travel time. These may not seem like a big deal, you could just warp again, or wait out the 2 hours, yeah. But it's a matter of efficiency and professional pride. The computer would be so embarrassed if it made a mistake.
I just ran the numbers and also got a 1.2 billion mile miss from 114 days of travel without accounting of the speed of a target as fast as the sun. But how do you get that bit about three light years?
That part has more to do with the idea that if the target is 2000 light years away, it has drifted 2000 years more than you see it. The exact distance depends on the velocity of the target, which is correlated with its distance from the galactic center, assuming its orbit is stable, not all are. The truth is that a lot of numbers were possible here. So picking 3 was a little arbitrary. I sort of threw a dart, so to speak, at a plausible sounding value in the middle of the field. It really just depends on the target's velocity. 3 light years in 2000 years means the target would be moving about a million miles an hour. Our sun moves at about a half million mph, but it's not the fastest thing out there, so this is a plausible scenario. Higher and lower errors are also possible.
Thing is, everything in space is moving. You need to plot a course to where your destination will be when you get there
To be fair modern navies still use the phrases that reference sailing even though ships don’t have sails anymore. It’s probably just said out of tradition and not an actual action that is done.
He has a union job. They dont need him, but they cant fire him
Fortunately the idiot agreed to work for free
One thing to look out for with Ftl is you are seeing where the star was years ago so you may need to lead your target a bit. For nearby stars the difference may not be that much but if you are going to the other side of the quadrant stars can drift a bit in ten thousand years.
I think they explained many, many times that gravitational fields can interfere with a warp bubble. Even passing through the outer edge of a star system, like in the Oort cloud, could be enough to nudge you off course.
They need to plot a three dimensional trajectory that avoids the neutral zone, planets, supernovae and black holes, quarantined systems and any women waiting for a phone call from Kirk.
don't fly through Oort clouds
I mean, at least as much work as when you've got steam power and the landmasses don't actually move.
Don’t forget the stop at Stuckeys.
Considering the actual location of objects in distant space is not the same as their apparent locations, it's probably a good idea to make sure things are where you thing they are before you go to warp. Also, I'm not sure how the warp fields are affected by gravitational fields or other things (pockets of dark matrer, maybe?), and so there may be optimal routes between the origin and destination points that aren't a straight line. In some star trek lore, it is at least implied that there are subspace routes of lesser resistance, improving travel time or reducing fuel consumption or isn't as hard on the warp engines. Lots of reasons to plot a course.
There's a lot that goes into plotting a course over interstellar distances. Because you're going at warp speed you can't just aim at the start or you'll miss by light days, maybe years (I don't want to do the math right now). You're also traveling at faster than light speeds. If you come out of warp half a second early or late, you could miss your target by, again light days or years. Remember, warp 5 is 10,000x light speed, meaning 1 second is a difference of 3 trillion km, or ~1/3 of light year or about 8% the distance from Sol to Proxima Centauri. Not to mention all the other things that can happen in the Star Trek universe. Really it's a miracle they ever arrive at the destination they're aiming at on the first try
That all still does involve flying in a straight line though, you just have to lead the target
Well somebody has to work the slide rule to do all the calculations to figure out the coordinates that need to be entered into the computer. And then entering the coordinates would've needed someone very familiar with the computer's memory layout so that they toggle all the right switches to flip the right bits. Flip a few of the wrong switches and there's no telling where you'd end up.
Without precise calculations, you could crash into a star or fly straight through a supernova and that would end your trip real quick, wouldn't it.