Monday, November 4, 2013

Updating Star Trek





Updating Star Trek.

What would you change about Star Trek to make it more scientifically correct and up-to-date?
How to make it more current and modern and scientifically accurate?
Star Trek was first aired in 1966, but even then it already had many major loopholes and scientific inaccuracies.
But 50 years later, nodody has bothered to correct those inaccuracies.
It is already about time for someone to come up with a good, more accurate, more likely prediction of the technological advances of the near future.
Below is my list of corrections:

- no artificial gravity
- no teletransporter
- no aerodynamic ships
- no Science officer
- no battles with the mother ship
- no humanoid aliens

- no artificial gravity
I understand that it would be very difficult to make a TV show in the 60's where everybody floats in the air weightless but we are not anymore in the 60's. Actually NASA has been producing footage of astronauts floating in space since the 60's but hollywood has almost never tried to duplicate that. Will artificial gravity ever be possible in the  future? Theoretically it is (still) impossible. The only way to have artificial gravity is by building a rotating circular spaceship. Stanley Kubrick's 2001 was the only film that I know that got it right.

- no teletransporter
That is also theoretically still impossible. The teletransporter was invented just because the writers of the original Star Trek didn't want to waste time having the characters travelling back and forth from planet to starship. But I think the actual invention of a teletransporter is highly unlikely, at least in the near future.

- no aerodynamic ships
To this day people still don't get this right! THERE IS NO AIR IN SPACE!! There is no need for the spaceship to be aerodynamic. Aeroplanes need to be aerodynamic because they travel through air and have to withstand air friction which can be reduced by an aerodynamic design.  Star Wars, Star Trek, Galactica, and many others, all make the mistake of having their spaceships aerodynamic. Again 2001 was the only one to get it right.

- no Science officer
It is practically ridiculous to have a "science officer", a dude that knows EVERYTHING about science. A more realistic scenario is to have a military crew responsible for protecting and piloting the spaceship and a scientific team assigned for the scientific research. It seems very unlikely that a soldier would be at the same time a scientist. At least they got it right with Doctor McCoy. The doctor is not an officer or a soldier, and he never assumes command of the starship.

- no battles with the mother ship
Star Wars got it right but not Star Trek. It is very unlikely that a huge spaceship like Enterprise would engage in battle directly. The Enterprise holds most of the crew that needs to be protected and never exposed to danger. Besides, for being so large, it will also be very slow and practically unmaneuverable. Instead, the Enterprise should be a  mother ship holding a fleet of small fast one-manned jet fighters to be deployed by the mother ship for the battle.

- no humanoid aliens
I understand that in the 60's it would be very difficult to depict non-humanoid aliens.
So all aliens are played by human actors. But of course this is not realistic. What are the probabilities that aliens will be humanoid?

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