What technology will date us in the future?
What technology will date us in the future?
In The Original Series in the 60s, people had no idea what the future would look like or what technology would look like. In one of the early episodes, they had a paper print out machine on the bridge that looked like a fax machine, which was considered futuristic in the 1960s.
Like the example of the Enterprise fax machine, what technology or system do you think are we displaying in the current Star Trek shows that will show how dated we will become in the future?
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My guess is .... big giant spaceships
I think that future tech will have much smaller craft or technology to move people from one star system to another.
The giant starships we highlight in the shows today will be looked at in the future in the same way we look at people in the 1900s who thought that big giant cruise ships over the ocean would be the best way to travel around the world in the future.
I mean it's not the best way to travel, but there have never been more cruise ship passengers than today.
The concept of cruise ships to another star was done really well with this book, which I highly recommend if you can find a copy:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/388947.The_Transgalactic_Guide_to_Solar_System_M_17
Here's the cruise ship:
A luxury hotel:
And where would you be without entertainment?
Even skipping the point of travelling between star systems in the future, as that is highly doubtful at best, that's not a principle I subscribe to.
It's usually way more economical to go for scale rather than individualism, let's look at some examples.
Travelling by bus or train is way cheaper and more efficient than travelling by car. Travelling by cruise ship/ferry is way cheaper and more efficient than getting your own boat. Travelling by passenger plane is way cheaper and more efficient than travelling by business jet which in turn is more efficient than getting your own little plane, which might not even be able to get you where you want to go.
Generally, especially when involving long distances and the material needs associated with it, having a big enough vessel to share the costs and limit the need to restock (en route) to a minimum.
Bar safety, logistical and cost concerns, we could already cram a nuclear reactor in a car or a bus. We don't because it simply doesn't make sense.
I see no reason why that logic wouldn't apply to some magical device that would enable interstellar travel, even if it would be able to instantly teleport you to your location without having enormous energy requirements.
Weirdly shaped starships.
- Why wouldn’t they be mass-symmetrical around the propulsion?
- why are some vertically oriented? Are these people constantly using elevators?
- what’s with this saucer on a sausage thing ? There’s a lot of inefficiencies in building, maintaining, and using the ship.
- If there is ever a time when a Starship can fly in an atmosphere, there’s going to have to consider aerodynamics
Where do you think they would put a bowling alley for those long extended away missions that last for months?
Around the edge of the saucer. They have gravity control, so there’s no reason why the same direction needs to be down or why a curved surface can’t be “flat” (neither uphill nor downhill)
If I remember correctly the original designer's ideas were that the nacelles were meant to be dangerous to be around, so they had to be separated from crewed areas, the saucer section was supposed to be a habitable life-boat in case of emergency, and the lower body was for mass storage, cargo, and main engineering. But over time startship design has ignored most of these concerns. In-universe I guess you could say nacelles got better shielding, replicators got better, so there was less need for space for non-reconstitutible cargo.
I think the opposite. Economies of scale would make it better to build HUGE. Kilometer long ships that can do everything you need with tons of redundancy. This means whole families can come along. Everyone has jobs, and every job is covered.