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Space is 2D, right? (lemmy.world)
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[-] Narrrz@kbin.social 57 points 1 year ago

I think most species probably align themselves to either the galactic plane or prominent orbital plane of the local star system.

the "up" & "down" directions would be completely arbitrary, though. there's no reason to think everone would decide on a standard for those.

and species without that certain sense of appropriateness, or an overt dedication to logic, would likely not bother with a standard orientation. and especially when in orbit over a planet, I think everyone would orient their "down" towards the surface.

[-] garyyo@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In more realistic scenarios, "down" is just defined by the direction of thrust. So approaching a ship, they will be down assuming you are decelerating to match their velocity, but they will be up if you are still thrusting towards them.

But all of that has almost nothing to do with how people will think of orientation to other ships since generally speaking you won't be using eye sight to communicate ship to ship. At that point an agreed upon down will be needed. Probably aligned with galactic or star system to establish a plane, and probably right hand rule to establish up and down. In general given that space is big and ships are small they will just be points on each others radar until they need to dock with each other so it doesn't really matter how people are actually oriented, as long as when they communicate what they say makes sense to the other side.

edit: or maybe down is towards the currently orbitted gravity well, like towards a planet/moon/star.

[-] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 1 year ago
[-] garyyo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Just remember that Orson Scott Card is a massive homophobe!

Good books though.

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 9 points 1 year ago

Space shuttles would typically orbit with their top side facing towards Earth. Probably because the bottom is completely covered with ceramic tiles.

[-] transmatrix@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, they’d also have the cargo doors open. All this was to radiate heat into space. Heat buildup and dissipation is a big problem in space as unlike on Earth there is no atmosphere to transfer heat to.

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[-] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social 44 points 1 year ago

Most realistic depictions are from the Klingons because tactically you should always face with your weapons oriented towards everyone at all times, including your allies.

[-] VindictiveJudge@startrek.website 14 points 1 year ago

And if you're a Romulan, especially your allies.

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 44 points 1 year ago

This is why the Borg uses cubes and spheres.

[-] LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

And whatever that shape from Picard was.

[-] EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

That was the Mass Effect Citadel, obviously. These Citadel ships are the borg’s perfect artistic form . . or something (?)

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[-] charonn0@startrek.website 39 points 1 year ago

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.

https://youtu.be/AkqZja1IBfk?t=129

[-] Steve@startrek.website 38 points 1 year ago

For a ship that never needs aerodynamic control, any shape at all will do so why do they all look like airplanes?

The Borg are the only ones who seem to get this.

[-] garyyo@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Realistically their does need to be some consideration but the medium they travel isn't air, but the occasional speck of dust, hydrogen atom, and other small stuff. It's not much but for interstellar travel there are still considerations needed, namely reducing your cross sectional area in the direction of travel. Long and thin gives you less drag since it hits less stuff.

Regardless the airplane looks doesn't make much sense anyway :)

[-] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Isn’t this due to the warp field? They ummm, have less warp drag?

[-] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not a trekkie, do they ever land in atmosphere on these ships? You would want aerodynamics for that to reduce drag and thus heat, but I'm not familiar enough to know.

I guess they probably have good thermal protections with their future tech, though.

[-] nxdefiant@startrek.website 28 points 1 year ago

Voyager does a few times. The Enterprise D did...once.

There are some alternate timeline shenanigans I will not speak of here.

[-] zurohki@aussie.zone 5 points 1 year ago

If you've got shields and antigravity, do you still need aerodynamics?

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago

The ships can land and take off at least some of them can but they don't fly around in the atmosphere they just go up and down they're either on the ground or they're in space but they can't really manoeuvre.

Except for that one episode of Voyager where they just kind of forgot about that, but I think that was hand-waved away by saying that they just made the shields into a bubble and so essentially from the air's perspective the ship was a sphere. That's apparently what the shuttlecraft do too, which is why they fall like a brick whenever they're shot down.

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[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

They don't even need to fly nose-forward. The Enterprise could exit warp at any damn orientation it wanted. Blasting across the alpha quadrant nacelles-first, like Powdered Toast Man.

[-] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 24 points 1 year ago

They actually do need to fly nose first, believe it or not! The warp bubble created by the nacelle has a front side and a back side. Essentially it bunches up space behind the ship and thins it out in front of the ship, turning space itself into a sort of wave that the ship surfs forward on.

This is what I remember from the TNG Tech Manual anyway

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

I'm not following. Ships would travel along the galactic plane, therefore they'd generally be in the same orientation.

[-] VindictiveJudge@startrek.website 29 points 1 year ago

Depends on the distance being traveled by both ships. The Milky Way is 1000 light years deep, so there's a lot of vertical room to maneuver. Mentioned locations at real star systems, like Wolf 359, are definitely not all on the same plane in any way. Possibly more relevant, though, is that 'up' isn't really much of a thing. Star systems can (and do) have their axis tilted significantly off of the galactic axis, so even if you define 'up' within a star system and orient your ship that way, you may wind up tilted weird when you arrive at the next system due to it having a different 'up'. You could define 'up' by the galactic axis, but that would still only apply to the one organization; there's no reason for the UFP, Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, and Dominion to all agree that one side of the galaxy is the top and the other is the bottom, but they do anyway. Humans couldn't even agree on which way to orient maps of our own planet for centuries.

[-] deadsenator@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

You guys keep this up and I might delete all my other subs.

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[-] echodot@feddit.uk 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sure but there are star systems that are above and below the exact ecliptic of the galactic plane. We're not on the ecliptic that's why you can't see the milky way as well in the southern hemisphere because we're kind of below it.

If a ship was travelling from Sol to Arcturus it would travel up (relative to the galactic plane) because we're slightly below it and it's considerably above it. The galaxy is very thin compared to its width, but it's still of thousands of light years high.

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I thought of that. Ships would also be traveling great distances, and account for elevation enroute. It's not like you'd get to the Enterprise then hang a hard up turn to meet their elevation. You'd travel at an angle.

[-] APassenger@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I can travel the galactic plane with my spaceship oriented any of 360°. Straight is straight.

What I don't understand is why they were even close enough for the image. If subspace comms are a thing, a solar system length may be just fine.

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

I don't think I've ever seen combat in Star Trek that takes place over a distance of more than a couple of hundred kilometres.

What's the range on a phaser or a torpedo, can it even go that far.

Long range weapons are so rare in Star Trek that when they do turn up they're basically what the whole episode is about.

[-] limelight79@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

If you were, say, across a solar system from a ship that fired a torpedo at you, you'd have that much more time to maneuver (or fire phasers) to destroy it. So for those maybe it's really about effective range - you have to be pretty close to the target simply because they'd just step out of the way.

Also, I think it's a reasonable possibility phasers would lose energy over distance. Otherwise, those missed shots would travel across the galaxy and blow up someone in the Gamma quadrant or something.

[-] thepreciousboar@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Don't forget about orbital mechanics. For a rendez vous between two ships you need a lot of maneuvers in opposite directions, it's not like shown in movies where the fly like airplanes. If two ships are close to each other they will likely be in different orientations and it would be a waste of energy to face each other since communications still happen at thens of thousands of kilometers of distance

[-] Madison420@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Bingo, ships travel in a specific way so their paths are more or less predictable.

[-] garyyo@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

Actually, space in general is mostly 2 dimensional, in that all the interesting stuff generally takes place on some sort of almost flat plane. A star system is generally on a plane, so is the galactic system, and for most planet+moons too. They just tend to be different planes so for ease of communication you will probably just align your idea of down with whatever the most convenient plane is. This of course is ignoring what gravity down is, as that changes as thrust does.

And as for ship alignment, yeah no one is going to worry about that till its time to dock, at which point the lighter vessel will likely change their orientation since its easier and takes less energy. Spaceships are not going to be within human sight range of each other most of the time, even being in relatively the same are. Space too big and getting ships close to each other is dangerous!

But in media that fucks with people's idea of meeting and seeing each other so for convenience of not confusing the audience you don't see that level of realism often.

The galactic plane is 1000 light years deep.

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Computer, zoom in and enhance on that vessel.

[-] fiah@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago

I guess that's implied in the command "on screen"

[-] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago
[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago
[-] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

“You guys are the worst”

We know

[-] WeirdAlex03@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

I knew this would be here

[-] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

What’s weirder to me is how ships are oriented to a planet. Especially if they left atmosphere just a while ago. So they left the planet and then decided to orient the ship and align the vertical axis of the ship with the axis of the planet just for looks.

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 year ago

It's to reduce the profile they expose to the planetary defenses.

  • Star Trek Production Excuses Intern, probably
[-] anteaters@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

KSP taught me what orbits are and Star Trek taught me that they are just not that important

[-] rbos@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

In fairness if you have basically unlimited thrust, maintaining a forced orbital position would be pretty cheap, you could hover as close as you want.

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[-] raz0rf0x@pawb.social 12 points 1 year ago

Their pattern indicates two dimensional thinking...

https://youtu.be/RbTUTNenvCY

[-] NeuronautML@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think in this context no ship would ever approach nose-to-nose. That's just for the viewers to see. I'd wager no two ships would come into less than around 1-5 km of each other if they weren't lining up flight paths for shuttles or docking. It's not like they need to "stand up" next to each other and "talk".

They would probably have formations they would assume while in transit or stopped, so it would probably be normal to cross paths with a formation flying upside down or in a perpendicular axis.

In case of just meeting and talking, they'd probably do it from wherever they happen to be, very far from each other, flying towards different destinations.

[-] CarlsIII@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

I don’t know, I think it would look fine to me.

[-] sus@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

do it right and it could even look very good and immersive. But at least with the skills, technology and budget of a 1966 TV show, and especially with certain wack ship designs it's far easier to just have everything oriented the same way

[-] octoperson@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Have you all forgotten that they directly addressed this in the show? https://youtu.be/Q9W7pvOLxmQ

[-] CerealKiller01@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Right, so, let's talk naval ships from the age of sail. There's no need for two sailing ships to face each other also, but that's inevitably how ships will meet on the ocean. The HMS Enterprise spots the HMS Defiant. They plot a course towards the Defiant. Defiant will eventually spot the Enterprise, and will alter its course. Both ships will meet with their bows facing each other. Same logic applies with spaceships, with two issues:

  1. There's actually no need for two spaceships to meet in order to talk or transfer people. I'll hand wave that away saying that's standard procedure, as the cost in time and energy to go from the beaming range to visual range is negligible, and even in the 24th century it's a good idea for ships in the middle of the vastness of space be as close to one another as possible in case of emergency.
  2. While both ships will change their pitch and yaw to face each other, there's no need to change the roll. This can also be hand waved - while there's probably a standard, absolute "up" (say, using the spin axis of the galaxy) altering the roll will allow both ships to use the same subjective "up".
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this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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