The deeper layers where Star Trek is realistic...

Of course the warp drive of Star Trek is far from being realistic. They are travelling light years within hours - and that isn't realistic.

But is travelling light years within hourse the essential aspect to the watchers? What the watchers see simply are vsible very quick manoevers and travels - the don't see the distance and velocities and velocities of tens of billions of kilometers per hour are far beyond what a watcher can imagine.

So what do the watchers see really? According to my informations New Horizons travelled the distance from Earth to Moon within 9 hours while the Apollo missions travelled that distance within three days - 72 hours. And my travels from Hamburg to Switzerland require 7 to nine hours for less than 1000 kilometers - a passengers needs one hour for 5 kilometers in average. This illustrates that Star Trek in the deeper layers is based on velocity differences within what watchers can imagine and observe and experience in reality. 300,000 km within 9 hours can easyly be related to 1000 km within nine hours - which is an equivalent to Star Trek. Star Trek seems to stimulate imaginations which fit into the comparison between New Horizons, Apollo and a car.

Yust a thought and a thesis only.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Just this moment I have become aware of another such aspect of Star Trek - it simply is a parallelism merely.

Mankind - represented by NASA - will return to the Moon more than 40 years after the first landing there. In Star Trek it is said that at the time Captain Picard commands the Enterprise nothing has been heard from the Romulans since 50 years - and just that time they return and there is a difficult contact to them.

Mankind returns to the Moon after more than 40 yaers while the Romulans return to their borders with mankind/Federation of United Planets after 50 years.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

yeah don't know if anyone saw it but there was a prog' on startrek last night. Had how it was coming real. One example was *Data* listening to music and an Ipod haha nice, not so advanced afterall

In respose to the comparison of the time it took Apollo missions to get to the moon vs. the time it took New Horizons to PASS the moon is missing the point I think.
Apollo missions planned to go into orbit aroudn the moon, stop there and return.
New Horizons doesn't even plan to stop at Pluto, but will speed by and continue on into the Kuiper Belt.

Since New Horzions was not attempting to stop there they could carry much higher speed to drastically reduce the travel time. Unlike Apollo which had to carry enough fuel and resources to slow down at the moon, then break lunar orbit and return.

On the website the data mentions

The website is:http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/missionFAQs.html


Orbital mechanics is not my strong point by any stretch (others can enlighten here) but it seems the trade off between fuel, speed and transit time depends on the mission type and the resources of the probes projected lifetime. Use up too much fuel course correcting on the way or trying to enter orbit and you could lose it completely or take years to months of the useful service life.

Hello, eddieg2,

I'm not sure if you are referring to the initial post but I merely had in mind to point out that regarding fascination, show and special effects the numbers aren't essential but what the people see or assume to see only.

So that intial post hasn't to do with physics. During the sound trek extremely fast movements are shown - which still really will be slower than the velocities of Apollo, New Horizons or even light years or parsecs per hour or day.

Not the velocities and speeds the captains etc. are speaking of are relevant but what the eyes of the watchers see - these both are different...



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting." - Ernest Rutherford

To what degree might a fully crewed ISS be compared to science teams of the Federation of United Planets? In the original series there were several planets and asteroids where sience teams were located and in The Next Generation I remember one team at least. I leave out all people having exiled to planets and asteroids.

In the Archer-series there is a station orbiting Earth but I don't know this moment if its focus was science or if it included science only. The station was destroyed by the reptilian Xindi-species.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

In one episode Star Trek used what the article "Harnessing Asteroids and Comets to Travel the Solar System" ( www.space.com/businesstechnology/techno ... 61026.html ) is talking about: space travel inside an asteroid.

In that episode an asteroid was detected that endangered a planet. Dr. Leonard McCoy found out that he got a deadly disease.

Investigating the asteroid it turned out that it was a space vehicle in its inner side. Dr. McCoy decided to stay there because it seemed to be the only chance to escape death.

Spock identified the script as the one the Fabrini-civilisation used that vanished when its sun became a supernova ten thousand years ago. So the Fabrini used the interior of an asteroid to travle to another star. ...

...

Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

One concept I had been thinking of would be an effort to drill into a rubble pile asteroid, and place a very large (heat-shieleded esxplosive with in it.

This space rock would then be pushed closer to the sun and turned molten.

The explosive would go off--and with any luck at all, you have instant glass blowing--the asteroid becoming a hollow sphere of glassy rock.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/INESAPTR1.html
http://www.ieer.org/reports/fusion/chap4.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon

From a different perspective another detail of Star Trek seems to be a step closer now to ve reallistic - althought it is not at any deeper layer.

Under www.wissenschaft.de there is an article today telling that american scientists succesfully integrated extremely small wires into living cells - equipping those cells with a port for wires. They hopw to become capable this way to investigate and - very interesting - to control biological processes in and between cells one day.

The cells applied were cultivated non-adult stem cells from mice and non-adult human kidney cells.

The wires - nano tubes it seems - are actually connect to the interior of the cells but NOT foreign bodies.

The scientists explicitly talk aboiut manipulation of biological processes in living cells.

This reminds to the Borg from my point of view.

The article refers to Woong Kim (University of California, Berkeley) et al.: Journal of the American Chemical Society, Online-Publication, DOI: 10.1021/ja071456k ( pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/jacsat/asap/html/ja071456k.html ).



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

I just this noon read an article under www.welt.de that an australian has been operated at his brain awaken.

This article also says that the opeartion team has trained the operation by a particular software which imaged the brain three-dimensionally.

This reminds me to a few scenes in Star Trek - The Next Generation or in Voyager where operations are tested prior to the real operation at one of the Holodecks.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)