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Discovery Season 3 Discussion *spoilers obviously*

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  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 58,008 Community Moderator
    We never really saw a slingshot maneuver used after Kirk though. And an anomaly is a natural, unpredictable event.
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,501 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    We never really saw a slingshot maneuver used after Kirk though. And an anomaly is a natural, unpredictable event.

    You must be kidding, PIC and LD are the only Treks that haven't featured time travel (yet). And yes, Kirk is the last one shown using that particular form of time travel, but Enterprise E had no trouble opening a time portal using its deflector and chroniton particles so it is probably just a case of them having easier ways to do it by then than the slingshot.

    And in Assignment: Earth they are starting to use the slingshot technique for ordinary historical research, we only see Kirk and company doing it because they are the only ones we ever see doing anything since the show was tightly focused on that one ship and crew (as are all the Treks with their one hero ship/station and crew per show format).
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,360 Arc User
    edited October 2020
    valoreah wrote: »
    So for some reason most of the dilithium in the entire universe went boom. K. Season is shaping up to be a stinker so far.
    Really? You don't find the question of why dilithium, a substance so stable it can be used to channel the intense energies of a matter/antimatter reaction, went boom to be sufficiently intriguing? I mean, I can't even begin to conceive of how it could be a natural event, given the nature of dilithium (that's why Burnham said it was "impossible"), which leaves us with the twin questions of who was responsible and how such a thing could happen. I presume much of this season will be discovering (if you'll pardon the phrasing) those answers.
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    valoreah wrote: »
    So for some reason most of the dilithium in the entire universe went boom. K. Season is shaping up to be a stinker so far.
    Really? You don't find the question of why dilithium, a substance so stable it can be used to channel the intense energies of a matter/antimatter reaction, went boom to be sufficiently intriguing? I mean, I can't even begin to conceive of how it could be a natural event, given the nature of dilithium (that's why Burnham said it was "impossible"), which leaves us with the twin questions of who was responsible and how such a thing could happen. I presume much of this season will be discovering (if you'll pardon the phrasing) those answers.

    My main issue is why is a galactic Federation still dependent on Dilithium? It is the 32nd Century so some other cheap form of FTL travel better than Dilithium should have been invented by now.

  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,360 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    valoreah wrote: »
    So for some reason most of the dilithium in the entire universe went boom. K. Season is shaping up to be a stinker so far.
    Really? You don't find the question of why dilithium, a substance so stable it can be used to channel the intense energies of a matter/antimatter reaction, went boom to be sufficiently intriguing? I mean, I can't even begin to conceive of how it could be a natural event, given the nature of dilithium (that's why Burnham said it was "impossible"), which leaves us with the twin questions of who was responsible and how such a thing could happen. I presume much of this season will be discovering (if you'll pardon the phrasing) those answers.

    My main issue is why is a galactic Federation still dependent on Dilithium? It is the 32nd Century so some other cheap form of FTL travel better than Dilithium should have been invented by now.
    They've found multiple methods, but none as "cheap". He cited the limiting factors for at least three other methods of FTL, but warp is the least expensive available to him at that location - probably deliberately on the part of whoever runs the Mercantile.
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    starkaos wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    valoreah wrote: »
    So for some reason most of the dilithium in the entire universe went boom. K. Season is shaping up to be a stinker so far.
    Really? You don't find the question of why dilithium, a substance so stable it can be used to channel the intense energies of a matter/antimatter reaction, went boom to be sufficiently intriguing? I mean, I can't even begin to conceive of how it could be a natural event, given the nature of dilithium (that's why Burnham said it was "impossible"), which leaves us with the twin questions of who was responsible and how such a thing could happen. I presume much of this season will be discovering (if you'll pardon the phrasing) those answers.

    My main issue is why is a galactic Federation still dependent on Dilithium? It is the 32nd Century so some other cheap form of FTL travel better than Dilithium should have been invented by now.
    They've found multiple methods, but none as "cheap". He cited the limiting factors for at least three other methods of FTL, but warp is the least expensive available to him at that location - probably deliberately on the part of whoever runs the Mercantile.

    Every single Borg Cube has Transwarp technology. They even had a Transwarp hub capable of instantly transporting Voyager vast distances in only a few minutes. Burnham is almost 800 years after Picard. It is insane to think that the galactic civilization can't come up with a better alternative to using dilithium in almost 800 years. The Burn is more than just dilithium burning and making most of the galactic dilithium supply nonexistent. The Galactic Federation should have their own version of the Transwarp hub capable of transporting Federation citizens from one side of the Federation to the other in minutes. Such a hub would not rely on Dilithium. Burning most of the Dilithium supply would not have fractured the Federation.
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,360 Arc User
    Another point: Dilithium doesn't "power" starships, it channels enormous energies from the reaction chamber to the warp drive. Lose your dilithium matrix and you can still generate power to run a starship, you just can't make it do "impossible" things like go FTL. Even the energies available from harnessing a quantum singularity don't make things transition to warp by themselves; stuff falling into an event horizon still obeys the laws of Einsteinian physics. The mining operation mentioned would be because even the Romulans never found a more efficient way to mediate the energy flows than dilithium.
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  • captainwellscaptainwells Member Posts: 718 Arc User
    edited October 2020
    szim wrote: »
    Well.. now I know what Star Trek looks like if you strip it of anything Star Trek. Star Wars, really. What is it with modern Star Trek and these annihilation fantasies anyway? Can't they write compelling stories anymore without the need to blow everything up that came before?

    It might help if the showrunners pulled a Rod Serling and brought in some genre writers that dealt with speculative science fiction as part of their day jobs and less faded fanboy staff personnel that think fudging the details a bit is all that is necessary?
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    Another point: Dilithium doesn't "power" starships, it channels enormous energies from the reaction chamber to the warp drive. Lose your dilithium matrix and you can still generate power to run a starship, you just can't make it do "impossible" things like go FTL. Even the energies available from harnessing a quantum singularity don't make things transition to warp by themselves; stuff falling into an event horizon still obeys the laws of Einsteinian physics. The mining operation mentioned would be because even the Romulans never found a more efficient way to mediate the energy flows than dilithium.

    The USS Phoenix was capable of limited warp travel without dilithium. Dilthium is just used as a method to regulate the matter-antimatter reaction in warp cores. So dilithium is useless without a reactor that uses matter-antimatter reactions. So a fusion reactor would be capable of warp travel provided that the fusion reactor provides enough energy to the warp core. Dilithium and dilithium matrixes is not something that makes the impossibility of FTL travel possible. So losing your dilithium matrix means that you won't have enough power to use the warp core not that you "just can't make it do 'impossible' things like go FTL."
  • capnmanxcapnmanx Member Posts: 1,452 Arc User
    I'm not sure it matters much that the Federation knew of alternative ways to travel through space; any interstellar alliance is going to feel the strain if it suddenly loses its interstellar infrastucture. Even if they did have the tech to make ships that did not require dilithium, it would still be hard to rebuild if they could not move resources or people about. Also, the destruction of their fleets would probably have done significant damage to their ability to make replacements too, since the spacedocks and shipyards tend to have ships in them.

    The dilithium blowing up thing is a little contrived I guess; but then, we are talking about a franchise where 'Q did it' is a perfectly rational explanation for literally anything (which isn't even nu-trek's fault). I'm hoping it was some kind of attack by a higher plane being that got tired of all these lesser races scuttling about; but I suppose we'll see.
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,360 Arc User
    valoreah wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    Another point: Dilithium doesn't "power" starships, it channels enormous energies from the reaction chamber to the warp drive. Lose your dilithium matrix and you can still generate power to run a starship, you just can't make it do "impossible" things like go FTL. Even the energies available from harnessing a quantum singularity don't make things transition to warp by themselves; stuff falling into an event horizon still obeys the laws of Einsteinian physics. The mining operation mentioned would be because even the Romulans never found a more efficient way to mediate the energy flows than dilithium.

    Where does it say that singularity drives required dilithium?
    Where does it say they didn't? We don't have answers yet, which is why we're tossing around speculations.

    There has been precisely one episode of DSC season 3 aired so far. We know only what the event known as the Burn was, we don't know yet how or why it happened because those questions were unimportant to Book, the only person in the 32nd century we've had an extended conversation with so far. Perhaps the administrator of the Starfleet outpost has more data; Burnham hasn't asked yet. Maybe somebody else will have those answers. Hell, maybe by the time she finds the Discovery, they might have found out.

    If you want a show where every mystery is neatly wrapped up inside a single episode, you might want to stick with TOS and TNG, because even DS9 used story arcs.
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    valoreah wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    Another point: Dilithium doesn't "power" starships, it channels enormous energies from the reaction chamber to the warp drive. Lose your dilithium matrix and you can still generate power to run a starship, you just can't make it do "impossible" things like go FTL. Even the energies available from harnessing a quantum singularity don't make things transition to warp by themselves; stuff falling into an event horizon still obeys the laws of Einsteinian physics. The mining operation mentioned would be because even the Romulans never found a more efficient way to mediate the energy flows than dilithium.

    Where does it say that singularity drives required dilithium?
    Where does it say they didn't? We don't have answers yet, which is why we're tossing around speculations.

    There has been precisely one episode of DSC season 3 aired so far. We know only what the event known as the Burn was, we don't know yet how or why it happened because those questions were unimportant to Book, the only person in the 32nd century we've had an extended conversation with so far. Perhaps the administrator of the Starfleet outpost has more data; Burnham hasn't asked yet. Maybe somebody else will have those answers. Hell, maybe by the time she finds the Discovery, they might have found out.

    If you want a show where every mystery is neatly wrapped up inside a single episode, you might want to stick with TOS and TNG, because even DS9 used story arcs.

    But we only know one part of the Burn not how it caused the Federation to collapse. Destroying the majority of dilithium in the galaxy would not cause losing contact with the rest of the galaxy since there are numerous forms of FTL travel available even if some are expensive or slow and the existence of a galactic communication network like the Hirogen sensor network.
  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,360 Arc User
    valoreah wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    Where does it say they didn't?

    To the best of my knowledge, TNG where it was first mentioned Romulan warbirds using artificial singularities.
    The D'deridex uses an artificial quantum singularity. And Starfleet (and apparently Klingon) ships use matter/antimatter reactions. Again, dilithium crystals are not a power source. They enable the energies employed to be channeled into a warp drive. (And, as has been pointed out, if you're willing to still take years between stars, low-yield warp drives can operate without dilithium - the Phoenix, for instance, wouldn't have had access to dilithium, as apparently it's not found on Earth.) We don't know if the Roms used it, although given available data it seems likely. We also don't know why they haven't taken over the galaxy - maybe they all decided to follow the teachings of Surak, maybe they wiped themselves out in a massive internecine war, maybe they made a Q mad, maybe we just haven't seen them yet.

    Your complaint, and continuing argument, is based upon a misunderstanding of the available information, and of the lack of same.
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    valoreah wrote: »
    jonsills wrote: »
    Where does it say they didn't?

    To the best of my knowledge, TNG where it was first mentioned Romulan warbirds using artificial singularities.
    The D'deridex uses an artificial quantum singularity. And Starfleet (and apparently Klingon) ships use matter/antimatter reactions. Again, dilithium crystals are not a power source. They enable the energies employed to be channeled into a warp drive. (And, as has been pointed out, if you're willing to still take years between stars, low-yield warp drives can operate without dilithium - the Phoenix, for instance, wouldn't have had access to dilithium, as apparently it's not found on Earth.) We don't know if the Roms used it, although given available data it seems likely. We also don't know why they haven't taken over the galaxy - maybe they all decided to follow the teachings of Surak, maybe they wiped themselves out in a massive internecine war, maybe they made a Q mad, maybe we just haven't seen them yet.

    Your complaint, and continuing argument, is based upon a misunderstanding of the available information, and of the lack of same.

    The reason why people might mistakenly associate dilithium with power is the lack of mention about antimatter. We never hear about the antimatter supplies running low, but there are a few mentions of running low on dilithium crystals.
  • trillbuffettrillbuffet Member Posts: 861 Arc User
    khan5000 wrote: »
    > @phoenixc#0738 said:
    > (Quote)
    >
    > Banned and destroyed is the ultimate in lazy writing. NOTHING ever discovered can be retracted like that, knowledge is one genie that can never be stuffed back in the bottle. Especially when it is so easy to do with a warp powered ship that Trek is full of ships that have done it accidentally.
    > (Quote)

    Knowledge can very easily be stuffed back in the bottle...depending on how widespread that knowledge is. Is the slingshot effect common knowledge? I don’t think so since I believe Kirk and company are the only ones to use that method(I could be wrong). Kirk’s logs and the formula get classified by Star Fleet and locked away by Temporal Affairs. Your average captain and/or civilian doesn’t know about it. Temporal War happens. Time travel devices and ships are destroyed and banned. Slingshot effect, which was kept from the general public, is deleted and forgotten. Can someone accidentally discover the slingshot effect...sure but in an era where everyone is dilithium deprived not too many people are gonna be warping towards a sun.

    I'm just amused because under this thought process I can stick the invention of the wheel and discovery of fire in the classified vault and no organization or species will ever figure it out on their own because starfleet has classified it. So what we have learned here is that starfleet has put an invisible wall around every star in the universe and throughout time. Not to mention as well all temporal anomalies, transporter malfunctions, etc etc have all been destroyed so they cannot be discovered throughout time so then all of the time travelling methods used to destroy all the time temporal travelling technology have also been destroyed yeah okay I can get behind that yeah seems totally doable.
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    khan5000 wrote: »
    > @phoenixc#0738 said:
    > (Quote)
    >
    > Banned and destroyed is the ultimate in lazy writing. NOTHING ever discovered can be retracted like that, knowledge is one genie that can never be stuffed back in the bottle. Especially when it is so easy to do with a warp powered ship that Trek is full of ships that have done it accidentally.
    > (Quote)

    Knowledge can very easily be stuffed back in the bottle...depending on how widespread that knowledge is. Is the slingshot effect common knowledge? I don’t think so since I believe Kirk and company are the only ones to use that method(I could be wrong). Kirk’s logs and the formula get classified by Star Fleet and locked away by Temporal Affairs. Your average captain and/or civilian doesn’t know about it. Temporal War happens. Time travel devices and ships are destroyed and banned. Slingshot effect, which was kept from the general public, is deleted and forgotten. Can someone accidentally discover the slingshot effect...sure but in an era where everyone is dilithium deprived not too many people are gonna be warping towards a sun.

    I'm just amused because under this thought process I can stick the invention of the wheel and discovery of fire in the classified vault and no organization or species will ever figure it out on their own because starfleet has classified it. So what we have learned here is that starfleet has put an invisible wall around every star in the universe and throughout time. Not to mention as well all temporal anomalies, transporter malfunctions, etc etc have all been destroyed so they cannot be discovered throughout time so then all of the time travelling methods used to destroy all the time temporal travelling technology have also been destroyed yeah okay I can get behind that yeah seems totally doable.

    The slingshot effect would be impossible to put in the bottle since you just need someone crazy enough to slingshot around a star at high warp. In fact, NASA has used a slower variation of it for interplanetary travel. The spore drive would be easy to put back in the battle since it requires a special type of spore for it to work. Most technology will eventually be discovered while some technology requires a spark of inspiration or completely by accident for it to be created.

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