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Ugh, I just noticed this...
GhostStalker
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Aren’t these the same engineers who could turn rocks into replicators? The stupidity of this premise is making my head hurt. And I’m just bored enough to come in here and mention it...
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The active word here is FLY - to fly means to move through air using a wing to generate lift. Things in space aren’t flying, they’re throwing mass or energy out the opposite direction they want to go, and being pushed. Hahaha, yes the Borg cube is a brick, but even in an atmosphere it doesn’t have to fly, because it can utilize anti-gravity and thrusters to control its position.
It’s not like the Voyager was an airplane either. Basically the entire premise is silly.
Meanwhile to Apollo - yes the redundancy was the key advantage of the Borg cube, because every side was the front, any area could control the whole thing, you basically couldn’t target any one spot (until the PLOT demanded it in First Contact!)
Yeah, Star Trek is littered with all manner of inconsistencies that I can only chalk up to either lazy writing or else a deliberate attempt to not seem "too scientific" to not turn off more casual potential viewers. I am also sad to say that this was arguably most present on Voyager
Here are some examples I can recall off the top of my head, from pretty much every series.
- reporting temperatures in degrees Kelvin (the Kelvin scale does not use degrees).
- saying download for everything (most of the time they were actually uploading).
- referring to every planetary system as a solar system (when only our system is the solar system since our star is named "Sol").
- reporting EVERYTHING as "some kind of" ______ (*explosion* "REPORT!" - "Some kind of gravimetric sheer has done some kind of damage to our hull!" - "So you couldn't have just said 'Our hull has been damaged by gravimetric sheer? I mean we ARE supposed to be scientists here!")
I'm sure there are others, but the franchise is full of things like that, and I'd definitely include your observation of shoehorning principles of flight onto space travel among them!
Hehe, those are some good examples however I think the writers could justify them saying that those terms could be acceptable uses in the future as language changes.
Believe me, as a physicist, I know that Star Trek is rife with inconsistencies! Especially the new shows, where they (try) to use real world terms instead of technobabble. It’s much better when they use gibberish.
Well maybe I can get it back on track. You brought up cubes, when are we getting Balok’s cube in game cause it was awesome!
Some of the best threads ever, started off about one thing and morphed into something else
The rest are available on the wiki, just wait until you read Voluntary Assimilation.
https://stt.wiki/wiki/Faction_Missions#Borg
The bumble bee could not in theory fly, but in practice it could fly. Therefore the theory was wrong.
I guess there were key systems, but they were hidden, and buried deep within the cube. It was Picard's unique knowledge of the cube that allowed him to target one of these. Also, before that command, the fleet were randomly attacking different parts, concentrating all attacks on one location allowed them to take down the defences, and tunnel into the cube.
I don't like these shows to get too scientific, because when they do they get things wrong, or they have to create scenarios to get around scientific fact. Rather than explain how the transporters work, it is better for me that they just invent a few terms, and leave it to the viewers imagination. Having a pattern buffer is a lot better than having to explain half the ship is a memory stick for the transporter.
Funny you mention the transporter - I wrote a post a while back that’s relevant (Keep in mind I was referencing the attempts to clone Data...)
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They could have copied Data, or anyone, literally infinite times if they wanted. The answer's been staring them in the face since it was invented: The transporter.
It's debated whether the transporter just sends a "pattern" for other materials to reconstruct or it sends literally every atom in a person and reconstructs them. Either way, it's copying EVERYTHING about them, down to their memories. What people don't typically think about is that a transporter is basically doing the same job as a replicator, only one is designed to go 1:1 and one is designed to store patterns and make copies upon request.
We know Data's been transported before, so clearly his pattern can be deconstructed and reconstructed. We know Riker's pattern was duplicated by some (plot device) and Thomas was created. Effectively, he was cloned.
You could totally clone Data a million times if you wanted. Just save his pattern in the buffer and boom. Don't tell me it's not possible, because they've done it.
As a fan of accurate physics, I always laugh when a certain technology is presented in a work of fiction that could literally solve all of their problems, but isn't used as such due to plot constraints. For instance, whenever time travel is an option. If you had time travel, you could solve every problem ever. That's why they constantly have to put rules on it.
In any case, TL; DR is this: If you can transport, you can replicate, and you can duplicate. Hell, store a copy of everyone on the ship while they're on away missions! If they get killed, boom, produce the copy you stored when they beamed down! Don't tell me they don't have memory space in the buffer. If they can hold the data in there during transport, they can hold it til they come back.
Gone are any mundane concerns of simple cosmodynamics at impulse speeds...this is about the technological challenges of creating/maintaining a stable warp field around an oversized Borg vessel. Establishing a warp bubble on this scale, and continuing to displace all of subspace along a cube's "bow," is well beyond the engineering abilities of Starfleet. One (much smaller) starship can barely expand its warp field far enough to envelop a second (similar) ship...and just doing that will quickly tax any power systems currently in use.
"The eyes...are the groin...of the face." ~ Dwight K. Schrute III
In the United States we call this “putting lipstick on a pig.” But alas, while it’s a great attempt to make sense where little exists, I really doubt it‘s what the writer intended. Clue is the inclusion of the bumblebee.
Additional edit: I mean clearly the problem of scale is something we easily address even today. A Boeing 777 aircraft is a lot larger than a Boeing 737, but we’ve designed engines for both. I think that’s a cool pair to compare, seeing as how the entire fuselage of a 737 is the width of a single 777 (GE90-115B) engine’s diameter.