OT: Revised Edition Star Trek

[El_Phil]

The problem with running away from "Teh Borg" is that they can run harder and faster than you can. And they wont stop. Ever.

Something I did forget, tachyons have their own inherent causality problems. As in very serious, casual loop type problems, if they exist in classical sci-fi terms. Of course they don't, being products of special relativity theory they are far more complex.

For this reason I'm changing my mind and going exhaust route, which bypasses any possibilty of temporal rubbish.

What am I saying? Warp drive has awful problems of it's own so it doesn't matter does it?

[NullAshton]

HEY! No erasing tachyons just because they have time travel! Temporal 'rubbish' makes for an interesting plot line, when used correctly!

[El_Phil]

When has it been used correctly? Very rarely is the answer and when it's bad it's awful.

Besides this is about a consistent Trek. Time travel cannot be consistent in any causal universe.

Tachyons can only got so quick and conform with relativity if they have negative mass. This makes interaction with them (like detecting them) somewhat tricky. What you end up doing is trying to detect the result of collisions and other such things. Hence the lack of evidence (bar one debated incidence).

[NullAshton]

So, have tachyons have negative mass? Don't have any problems with it.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Hmm...Could the energy shields in ST be artificial (Quantum) mass?

[Suicide Junkie]

Energy shields are pretty hard to rationalize.
But at the very least we can try to make them consistent.

Are they leaky or solid?
Limited charge, or work until the generator is damaged?
What is allowed to penetrate?

[NullAshton]

The shields in star trek use gravitons, projecting a force on incoming weapons. Beam weapons are refracted and disappated. Technically, they are leaky, as the more they are damaged the more leaks through. But armor dissapates the damage that goes through quite nicely. They work as long as energy can be fed to the shields, and can be redirected from other systems, such as weapons or life support. Subspace weapons penetrate them, however subspace weapons have unpredictable effects on life.

[Suicide Junkie]

Various episodes sure do like to throw in the solid-but-limited-charge thing though.

[NullAshton]

Bah. Leaky shielding when it gets into the 10% region.

[Suicide Junkie]

Of course, there are also many episodes that use the perma-leaky shielding.

Shields are almost certainly based on a plotiton field.