"Miracle" tech in Science Fiction

[Gatefan1976]

Honestly, to me, as you start learning more hard science, nearly all of the sci-fi shows become fantasy; same with philosophy but everything becomes fantasy. But there is a good amount of inspiration to be drawn from sci-fi.

*Chuckles to himself*

One thing that has always been a miracle thing to me in space sci-fi is that the ships always manage to jump or arrive or travel through unobstructed empty space. Granted, most space is empty but still when they are traveling at high velocities and such (motivating an inconsistency later on). I mean, are they actively mapping out the region of destination in real-time prior to arriving to find a safe place to pop out, or map out things beforehand with scout ships, or just pressing a button and just blindly hoping it's empty space?

As you say, long range sensors.

Now about the inconsistency, there's one other thing that could possibly make sense which is large range sensors. Now the complexity of these sensors would have to be very high, because they'd not only be able to map out relatively static objects but dynamic objects as well along with their relative trajectories. It would have to be so taxing to figure out those things and figure out a safe path.

Why would it be hard? These are "relativly" close objects.

I guess they do do this in the end and always manage to find safe places to drop out and 'jumps' maybe circumvents the issue altogether. But how are these sensors operating? Circumventing spacetime altogether? I mean, it's kind of like when you look out at the night sky, and everything star you're seeing, you're seeing them as they were years ago, not how they are now. Are the sensors circumventing the time differential altogether?

No, they are just not a static object looking at things light years away like we do when we look at the sky.

This brings me to my inconsistency, if they do have such complex sensors and consider the complex computer responsible for such things, when they are in battle, couldn't they always figure out when, where, and how to hit enemy ships with the computer, after sending in an initial wave to compute firepower capacity?

They do, they constantantly do this. It's only with new manuvers or rotating shields or so on that they fail.

Couldn't they relay the information of the relative motions of the enemy ships to a ship that sends out missiles with 'jump' capacity right next to the enemy ships and just blow them up with high accuracy and just wipe the floor with the enemy?

"Jump capability"?
do you mean transported or warped, because both have thier faiings that preclude such an Idea. Transporters have issues with locking on to high velocity targets and making the transported object..... "viable", and warp speed weapons are in use in the Alpha quadrant anyway.

The accuracy would be high because they're getting real-time information and just have the computer compute high level precision of missile jumps to just wipe out the enemy. Sorry if none of that makes sense, ignore it then.

It's not that it doesn't make sense, more like it's not viable in trek tech. I mean, consider something like "the picard manuver" where you make a limited warp jump in "combat space" and if it works you CAN do exactly what you are suggesting, but the timing has to be so precice that one failure leaves you a smear across someones shields or flys you into some kind of other solid object. It CAN be done, but not without risk.

 

[Jim of WVa]

Relativistic Baseball

Think you guys might find this interesting:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

lol, if there are spaceships that can accelerate those gigantic things close to the speed of light then surely then can accelerate a baseball towards an enemy ship and watch the fireworks, lol

Just keep clicking next to read more interesting stuff on the site

That page illustrates the technical difficulty inherent in accelerating a spaceship to a large fraction of c.

The Destiny would not survive a second against a baseball traveling at 0.9c.

 

[Overmind One]

That page illustrates the technical difficulty inherent in accelerating a spaceship to a large fraction of c.

The Destiny would not survive a second against a baseball traveling at 0.9c.

Something I would like to know...what type of energy weapon could shoot "bullets" of energy like we see in BSG and the new Trek? Beams make sense, like phasers and those Ori weapons, But what sort of physics could allow that? I cant even speculate.

 

[Bluce Ree]

Something I would like to know...what type of energy weapon could shoot "bullets" of energy like we see in BSG and the new Trek? Beams make sense, like phasers and those Ori weapons, But what sort of physics could allow that? I cant even speculate.

Balls of plasma. There was a show on Discovery Science that went into great detail.

 

[Gatefan1976]

Jacketed plama blasts.

 

[Joelist]

It would need to be a ball of plasma - how else would you have it in a non-beam form?

I should note that NuBSG had no beam or energy bolt weapons. The weapons were either missiles or projectile weapons (Galactica main armament was mass drivers):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

 

[Overmind One]

Balls of plasma. There was a show on Discovery Science that went into great detail.

Ah...but at projectile speeds, wouldnt the "shell" lose cohesion?

 

[Bluce Ree]

Ah...but at projectile speeds, wouldnt the "shell" lose cohesion?

Good question. I don't remember the mechanics of it. I'll see if I can dig up a reference to that episode or some info on it.

 

[shavedape]

That page illustrates the technical difficulty inherent in accelerating a spaceship to a large fraction of c.

The Destiny would not survive a second against a baseball traveling at 0.9c.

It also wouldn't be able to withstand entering a solar corona. There was so much wrong scientifically with that plot device that it can only be described as "magic-miracle tech".

Yet one more reason why that lousy show failed and deservedly so.

 

[mzzz]

*Chuckles to himself*


As you say, long range sensors.


Why would it be hard? These are "relativly" close objects.


No, they are just not a static object looking at things light years away like we do when we look at the sky.


They do, they constantantly do this. It's only with new manuvers or rotating shields or so on that they fail.

"Jump capability"?
do you mean transported or warped, because both have thier faiings that preclude such an Idea. Transporters have issues with locking on to high velocity targets and making the transported object..... "viable", and warp speed weapons are in use in the Alpha quadrant anyway.


It's not that it doesn't make sense, more like it's not viable in trek tech. I mean, consider something like "the picard manuver" where you make a limited warp jump in "combat space" and if it works you CAN do exactly what you are suggesting, but the timing has to be so precice that one failure leaves you a smear across someones shields or flys you into some kind of other solid object. It CAN be done, but not without risk.

Hey gatefan1976, if you happen to reply to my posts in the future, could you not cut it up and reply like that? I kind of mentally black out seeing that. But, eh, whatever floats your boat.

Again, the long range sensors have that time differential problem, unless they have figured out how to exceed information transport past the speed of light and would have to quite a bit beyond speed of light, c, due to active real time mapping while flying through space ftl. Their computer processing would also exceed c and would also be much faster due to active real time mapping while flying through space ftl. Figuring out transport of a bomb during battle with that sophisticated of a detecting machine along with 'way faster than human processing capability' computers, a battle would be child's play for them.