Invisible wrote:

> Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> 
>> Its movieland! Good science almost never makes for good drama.
>> 
>> Its like Captain Picard saying "Full stop!" on the Enterprise, and in ten
>> seconds they are at relative dead stop from going several hundred times
>> lightspeed.
> 
> Never mind the "minor detail" of the fact that "stationary" doesn't
> exist in outer space.

Correct - "relative dead stop". Apparently according to The Bible (the
Enterprise Tech Manual I bought in '92) StarFleet uses the galactic center
as navref.
 
> Or that you don't actually need engines in order to move, only to
> accelerate or deccelerate.
> 
> Or the fact that things don't make that "swoshing" noise in space. In
> fact, they don't make *any* noise!

How boring would that be?! Its part of what I love about old TNG episodes,
the "thrummmm" sound of the Enterprise is orbits
yet-another-planet-with-human-looking-aliens-and-hot-alien-chicks-only-distinction-is-a-new-head-piece.

>> I wonder exactly how much energy you'd need to decelerate ten
>> grammes of mass, from, say, 100 * c to 0 in ten seconds - if
>> Einsteinian "thou shalt NOT exceed, or even closely approach, C" did not
>> apply. Nevermind a gigatonne starship.
 
> Well, the fastest starships reputedly reach Warp 10 (i.e., 10c). Never
> mind the "minor detail" that this would cause the ship to travel
> backwards in time, and have an imaginary mass. (Irony?)

... and need infinite energy to move an infinite mass that occupies all
points in the universe simultaneously. Sounds painful.
 
>> But it isn't good drama to have the crew become a biological soup one
>> molecule thick against the viewscreen each time Geordi or Wesley steps on
>> the footbrake, thus exposing them all to 100000000000000000000000000G of
>> deceleration.
> 
> Perhaps you're forgetting the Inertial Dampers?

No, I intentionally -ignored- them! :) 

As I ignored the SIF (structural integrity field) and the artificial gravity
generators, the navigational deflector, subspace radio, etc. etc. and all
the other fanciful things you apparently "need" for supralight space travel
and five year space missions. (And discovering hot alien chicks on remote
planets.)
 
> Even the teleporters have Hiesenburg Compensators on them...

:-) the thought of uncertainty with a matter dematerialisation and
transportation device gives me the willies! Or could it possibly make you
LOOSE your willy? Along with other bits?
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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