When I run into other ships in space games I usually orient myself to be head on with them. Unless I’m trying to murder them, then I try to go wherever their guns aren’t. Maybe Star Trek just skips showing that part.
I always thought that it was the computer adjusting the view for the crew. I mean its not a window its a screen.
I think it’s both.
They probably align to the orientation of the galaxy they are in. Or even the solar system.
You only have 2 orientations like that.
3, you can also treat the center as down.
Clearly transporters can’t compensate for relative orientation so its universal courtesy to align your ships so guests don’t transport in upside down.
Every time a person transports the transporter annihilates the universe and rebuilds it around the transportee but just a little to the left or right depending where they want to go
But the ships are always sideways relative to planet surfaces?
Btw, the klingon ships are made for atmospheric maneuvers?
Can’t tell if this comic just doesn’t get it or put zero thought into it. And there is several examples throughout the various series where two ships don’t align to each other.
There are several reasons why the ships would always face each other, from common courtesy to defensive posturing.
When two ships face each other its like an nonverbal way of saying “we see you” or “you have our attention”. Orientation also plays apart in this. Of course there is no real reason to orient so both ships face “up” thanks to artificial gravity, but it’s also something that could be seen as polite and etiquette as getting on the same level as the other meeting them half way.
For defensive purposes, it also makes sense to nose towards a potential threat or adversary as within star trek the shields are strongest at the front (thanks to deflectors and navigational shielding) as well as the best/most accurate sensors to get a good reading. Additionally the forward arc of the ship will likely have the most overlapping weapon arcs, especially for ships like klingon bird of preys with fixed disruptor cannons facing forwards. This posture also tends to keep primary engineering, where the reactor/warp core is situated, obscured and defended, so if the ship wants to make a swift retreat their primary means of doing so is less likely to be damaged or disabled, and if you engage an FTL retreat towards a foes rear that foe needs to turn about and reorient themsevles to give chase, giving more time for the retreating party to take evasive action and avoid further intercepts.
Also, when playing space games, I automatically roll to align my ship’s up vector with the ships I encounter, without thinking about it. So I guess human nature plays a role too.
Pulsar?
Star Citizen
I hate this take. It doesn’t look stupid at all, it looks cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE
Boldly going forward cause we can’t find reverse
Gosh seeing that “rage” tv bug in the corner is nostalgic.
I couldn’t find the original.
Yeah I wasn’t judging at all mate. Just reminds me of my childhood, sneaking back up at night to watch the music videos :)
This is why I appreciate the scene in Undiscovered Country where Kronos One glides into view, seeming to align itself to the Enterprise’s orientation.
Star Trek VI is the best Trek movie by far. I mean Trek is always best in an episodic TV format so the movies generally don’t have a reason to exist. But VI was needed to give a send off to the original cast. And it gives some commentary on the cold war which was relevant at the time and fit into Trek canon since TNG was a thing by then so we knew the Klingons and Federation made peace.
And yeah it had a lot of details in there. I always loved the universal translator constantly screwing up… Shakespeare in the original Klingon, old Vulcan proverbs about Nixon. The antigrav failing on the Klingon ship, and yeah ships not just behaving like ships floating in water. It nailed everything.
it suprises me that this sentiment isn’t more common. i don’t hate the other movies, but they’re more movies with the Trek characters and world than they are Star Trek in a movie format. with it’s allegorical but ultimately hopeful story, VI really did feel like Star Trek proper, just with a bigger budget and longer runtime. The Motion Picture had the same spirit but loses points for just bolting 2001 and the Nomad probe episode together, and I’d like to think that Into Darkness could have been a modern-at-the-time Undiscovered Country if they didn’t spend the whole runtime failing to be a modern Wrath of Khan
Yeah I think a story about an arms buildup and a defense industrial complex just doesn’t work well in a movie. In real life it’s about subtle influences on politics not “pew pew pew”, there’s not even any opportunities for passionate speeches. Just “maybe it’s bad to put so many resources towards building warships and once you have them you might be tempted to use them to justify the expenditure… someday.” In the real world it’s a trend over time, so how do you make a compelling story about that? If you deviate too much to make it more interesting it’s not accurate to the real world, and then it’s more like a fictional problem.
Here’s my retcon. The science of inertial dampeners are such that you have to be precisely aligned perpendicular to galactic north for maximum effectiveness.
galactic north
This isn’t entirely unreasonable to determine, since the galaxy is a big disk and you could map that as a 2D plane. For the most part, ships are traveling across the plane between planets, in the same way that a ship flying from Earth to the Moon or Earth to Mars would be flying through a plane perpendicular to the two bodies. Not a lot to visit above or below the plane, and the shortest distance would be between two points, so…
That’s last pane is essentially an eve online screenshot
This is why the Borg are true geniuses. Spheroid ships are good from any perspective.
They’re not. It’s better to be disk shaped for combat because you present a minimal cross section to an enemy “in front” of you. If you are the attacker, you can chose your attack to face the side of the enemy ship and minimize your own damage / maximize theirs.
A cube is not stealthy and equally easy to hit from all sides. It’s weird that the Borg use it because they don’t think up their own ideas; they just copy. And no other species uses cube shaped ships. This is a minor plot hole.
The Borg didn’t want to be stealthy and assumed they could always adapt to a threat.
Think of the house you live in. There have been plenty of idealists proposing various domed, turreted, or cylindrical building, but lack of straight walls would make it damn annoying to arrange the furniture. Similar to cargo ships: we used to have hull shaped but now the most important concern is rectangular shipping containers. Extrapolate to spaceship design, and a cube is most efficient for crew quarters cargo storage
Houses are generally cookie cutter because they are easier to build that way. Spaceships are custom made because they are the only thing keeping your insides from boiling in space.
I read this one story long ago where there was a war between two spacefaring civilization. One was technologically advanced but fewer in number. However their attempts to improve their technological edge, worked toward eventually every ship being custom, unique …… until they lost the war under the weight of unique parts and maintenance that made their ships too expensive to keep running.
Even space ships need a supply chain, parts p, service, repairs. If we do ever become a spacefaring civilization, we’ll need many copies of relatively few unique models, like we already do with aircraft, cars, ships, and houses
You can trust the mass produced spaceships if you want, but I think they’ll end up like Boeing.
I wonder how ship design would change if odd orientation were normalized
Idk, most navigation would be along or close to the ecliptic plane of the system, wouldn’t it
Another question for you- Would it be close to the system’s ecliptic plane so that you have a per-system standard or would it be close to the galactic plane for an intergalactic standard? Maybe some civilizations would choose one and some the other.
But that still means they shouldn’t always meet with both having the same side ‘up.’ Sometimes one should be 180 degrees from the other.
How do we know that all the alien ships we’re seeing for the first time aren’t actually upsidedown?
But shouldn’t they stay that way because that’s their standard?
Assuming orbital mechanics matter, which in Star Trek they dont seem to matter.
If you are going to and from points within a solar system, probably but not necessarily. Every transfer made between gravitational influences increases the chance that you will enter at an angle to the equatorial plane, especially if the two influences are not coplanar traveling between solar systems would likely have you entering at a significant angle. Furthermore, approaching a ship at a low velocity means slowing down as you approach them, so even if you do approach coplanar, it would be engines first and not nose first (unless star trek vessels have an ability to reverse their propulsors? I don’t know if that’s ever been shown aside from by approaching things nose first). The expanse showed this aspect of space interaction well with the flip and burn maneuvers
Starfleet ships basically maneuver like they’re weightless
massless?, which, mathematically, they probably are. Inertial Dampeners are mostly mentioned in reference to stopping Worf from smashing into all the science stations every time the ship accelerates, but if inertia isn’t affecting the ship, they can basically do whatever they want. Even a tiny amount of thrust would be enough to put them in reverse from Full Impulse. Add to this that the ships aren’t held together by their superstructures, but by their Structural Integrity Fields, and really, a Starfleet vessel could be constructed in basically any shape. They just look like they have a front because humans like it that wayId also propose that the ships are built with up and down with the additional factor of navigation. Humans typically spend their entire lives in gravity so it’s probably easier for humans to navigate a massive ship when it is built like it’s in gravity so the crew onboard can focus on their jobs instead of figuring out what direction is the engine room. Additionally we always see that every ship in the show also has artificial gravity onboard. Making a amorphously designed ship even more confusing to navigate/traverse.
between solar systems
FYI, there is only one solar system in the universe.
Source:
There are many planetary systems like ours in the universe, with planets orbiting a host star. Our planetary system is called “the solar system” because we use the word “solar” to describe things related to our star, after the Latin word for Sun, “solis.” — NASA
Something something traditional practice based on nautical custom, therefore something alignment for better something something.
seems like it would be common protocol to achieve the same plane. like, the ships are designed to slowly modify their stature as they meet.
