Season four spoiler question

kayajay · November 2021

Seriously, don't read any further if you haven't seen the first episode of Disco's season four.

What is a "Pathway Drive"? Apparently it's going into Voyager-J, Pathway reminds of Pathfinder, but I saw a throwaway comment somewhere about it having something to do with the Mirror Universe.

I'm not going to slag-off the episode by the way, but I was just curious if anyone knew anything more about this Drive.

naabal421 · November 2021

There's been nothing said about it beyond its name.

rattler2 · November 2021

Probably another experimental FTL drive. Starfleet has a long history of experimentation with different FTL methods.

In (off the top of my head) chronological order:

USS Discovery - Spore Drive - Successful, but in a legal gray area. Also discovered Spore Tech could threaten the multiverse if abused. Project shelved and classified.
USS Excelsior NX-2000 - Transwarp Drive - Failure, possibly through combination of ease of sabotage and overcomplicated nature. Contributed to restructure of Warp Scale? Project shelved and ship converted to standard Warp Drive.
USS Voyager - Warp 10 - Successful, but biological side effects rendered experiment a failure. Project scrapped.
USS Voyager - Slipstream Drive - Successful, but needs extensive refinement due to needing a craft ahead of the ship to relay data. Project shelved, most likely being looked over by S.C.E.
USS Protostar - Protowarp (?) - Status pending

Its also par for the course in experimental technology and Starfleet as well.

Genesis Device - Experimental Terraforming technology - Marginal Success, when used on proper target. Too easy to weaponize by hostile powers. Project shelved and most likely classified.
Pegasus Phase Cloak - Experimental Cloaking technology - Marginal Success. Developed in secret, possibly by S31 and sympathetic officers. Violation of Treaty of Algeron. Revealed by USS Enterprise-D after discovering wreck of USS Pegasus. Successfully deployed by USS Enterprise-D to escape an Asteroid. Project shelved per Treaty.
TR-116 Rifle - Experimental Weapon technology - Marginal Success. Developed as a counter to disabling effects of Dampening Fields and radiogenic environments on Phasers. Falls back on proven Projectile technology. Rendered obsolete with development of Regenerative Phasers. Project shelved, but may be viable for Anti-Borg operations.

jonsills · November 2021

As far as Starfleet knew, the spore drive was a complete bust - both ships with spore drive that managed to figure out the navigation issue were lost with all hands in apparent drive failures. (I mean, yeah, we know Discovery deliberately jumped 930 years into the future, and the bridge crew of the Enterprise knew, but Starfleet records show it was destroyed in a drive failure.)

Other than that, your analysis is correct. Also, Starfleet had begun researching different FTL methods even before the Burn - as the recap in the season opener reminded us, dilithium supplies had been drying up even before then. This "Pathway" drive, about which we know nothing besides the name, was apparently one of them, and now they're ready to install a prototype in the Voyager-J.

legendarylycan · November 2021

No one brought up the Soliton Wave Generator - Doctor Ja'Dar is sad.

jonsills · November 2021

Probably because when the soliton wave generator was tested, they almost destroyed an inhabited world. That's not really considered "successful".

legendarylycan · November 2021

It wasn't a list of successful alternatives, though, now was it?

starkaos · November 2021

The most disappointing thing about the 32nd Century is that the Borg was able to create a Transwarp Hub that connected distant parts of the galaxy together in the 24th Century and the 31st Century Federation still relies on dilithium and warp drives.

naabal421 · November 2021

starkaos wrote: »

The most disappointing thing about the 32nd Century is that the Borg was able to create a Transwarp Hub that connected distant parts of the galaxy together in the 24th Century and the 31st Century Federation still relies on dilithium and warp drives.

They explained this back in S3.

Before the Burn the Federation had transwarp. After the Burn the transwarp tunnels became so clogged with debris that trying to use them was considered suicide.

saurializard · November 2021

kayajay wrote: »

Seriously, don't read any further if you haven't seen the first episode of Disco's season four.

What is a "Pathway Drive"? Apparently it's going into Voyager-J, Pathway reminds of Pathfinder, but I saw a throwaway comment somewhere about it having something to do with the Mirror Universe.

I'm not going to slag-off the episode by the way, but I was just curious if anyone knew anything more about this Drive.

Didn't they say that starting 500 years before the events of DSC S3, the Mirror Universe have completely diverged from the Prime one?

Though, if anything,

Mentioning this tech just in the same episode where a planet-destroying-&-displacing gravimetric anomaly (which, by the way, they handled very well, fast, out of nowhere, utterly horrifying and devastating, pure cosmic horror) shows up is unlikely to be a coincidence. And if not related, is definitely gonna help solve the crisis.
Also, Archer spacedock is SOOOOOO gonna get destroyed with how much emphasis they placed on it. Not too much but just enough.

kayajay · November 2021

A bit like the Spore Drive, it could be that it was classified. It might have been unviable for mass distribution (because if it is a real baby star, then you can only find so many of those), but it doesn't make sense that Quantum Slipstream would be abandoned as a primary propulsion method in 32c. I SWEAR I could remember Booker mentioning it and we know that the Dauntless didn't use antimatter and that Voyager's knock-off used "benamite" crystals, (whatever they are). Yeah, they took years to synthesize, but they were clearly able to be synthesized.

I still say that until they knew the cause of "The Burn", using Dilithium was suicidal, but there were alternatives to have switched to. By the 32c, Coaxial, trajector, artificial wormholes, transwarp hubs/networks or something else should have been being used, instead of just bog-standard old warp.

jonsills · November 2021

Book said that benamite was even harder to get hold of than dilithium. "...unless you've got some benamite, and nobody does..."

phoenixc · December 2021

The thing is, dilithium crystals are the regulators in matter-antimatter reactions, so it does not matter what the actual FTL drive is, if it is powered off a M/aM reactor it would have the same problem from the burn that the Fed warp drives had.

legendarylycan · December 2021

So that proves artificial singularity ships wouldn't have been affected, because their power comes from Hawking Radiation, not matter-antimatter reactions.

jonsills · December 2021

Still would have been affected, because quantum singularities are tricky little things. Hawking radiation is what's able to escape the event horizon due to quantum fluctuations; the "smaller" and less massive the hole, the more quickly it evaporates. The last stage of evaporation tends to be explosive, as remaining trapped mass/energy is released quite rapidly. (You can see this in-game whenever a Romulan ship is destroyed.) Disrupt the singularity's regulators, and soon your ship exists only in the most theoretical of senses, whether this is because the singularity evaporated and destroyed you, or because it overrode the containment fields and swallowed all the mass in its vicinity.

The key is that dilithium is used to regulate power flow into a warp drive, due to its existing half in normal space and half in subspace. Disrupt that linkage, and it no longer shunts power into the warp drive, leading to core overload - warp cores explode because the matter-antimatter reaction goes out of control, and singularity cores just become singularities. Existing transwarp corridors still exist, but are clogged with the debris of dead starships and thus extremely difficult to navigate, and methods like quantum slipstream still work but depend on something even more rare than dilithium. Other FTL methods are too slow - warp drive can apparently function without dilithium if designed to do so (Starfleet ships aren't), but tops out at warp 2.2 so you need months or years between stars, and FTL sails barely exceed c unless you manage to hit a friendly astrophysical phenomenon. (It is apparently technically possible to create an artificial wormhole, but attempts to do so destroyed everything within two lightyears when the Gorn tried it, so now it's regarded as both illegal and criminally stupid. If my suspicions about the DMA are confirmed later this season, it may be even more dangerous than currently believed - the Gorn may have been fortunate that theirs merely went nova.)

starkaos · December 2021

While the Romulan Empire has Dilithium mining operations at Remus, there is no evidence that Romulan Singularity Drives use Dilithium. However it is more likely that due to Romulans becoming a bunch of refugees after the Hobus Supernova, they lost the ability to create Singularity Drives. Especially, if the Romulan Shipyards and the facility to create Singularity Drives were in the Romulus system.

If the Romulan Republic is considered canon, then either the Romulans still had Singularity Drives just before the Burn or the Romulans went to another form of FTL drive due to running out of one of the materials used to create Singularity Drives or some other problem like Quantum Singularity lifeforms confusing Singularity Drives with natural black holes.

jonsills · December 2021

A singularity is a singularity - a point of spacetime with mass so compressed that escape velocity from its surface exceeds the speed of light, and mathematical modeling of its interior yields such impossible results as an infinite radius with a finite diameter. That's where the term "singularity" comes from. It doesn't matter if what you're looking at is a primordial singularity caused by compression during the Big Bang, or an "artificial" singularity created by the ill-advised use of artificial gravity, the result is the same, and will act the same either way. And as noted, once the mass is low enough to make it a practical starship drive (because you can't exactly haul around something that masses as much as a planet and still maneuver), the evaporation process rears its ugly and incredibly dangerous head.

To quote my great-grandfather on aircraft, "You'll never get me up in one of those things!"

legendarylycan · December 2021

Except even a black hole barely bigger than a person (which is probably about how big the black holes in Romulan ships are, if not a bit bigger which would just translate to taking even LONGER to evaporate) will take billions of years to evaporate if not being constantly fed new mass.

'Quickly' is an astronomical term when it comes to black hole evaporation.

jonsills · December 2021

Hawking's work showed that during the Bang, singularities with masses of only a few kilograms would have been formed - and would have dissipated almost instantly. If you want millennia of stability, you need something that masses as much as a small asteroid. Remember that the rate of evaporation increases steeply as the mass decreases. An uncontrolled singularity is an uncomfortable neighbor.

Even worse is that sometimes the math doesn't show anything about the singularity evaporating along with its hole. Imagine a point in spacetime where no laws of physics apply - where no potential laws of physics can apply - without an event horizon keeping it hidden away. Now imagine several dozen of these, the drive singularities that didn't swallow their ships, drifting through Romulan space...

Unknown · December 2021

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jonsills · December 2021

valoreah wrote: »

naabal421#0722 wrote: »

Before the Burn the Federation had transwarp. After the Burn the transwarp tunnels became so clogged with debris that trying to use them was considered suicide.

New tunnels could not be constructed that were free of debris? Space is pretty big. I doubt they ran out of room.

We have no idea how such tunnels are constructed. Perhaps, like the Alderson Drive in Pournelle's CoDominium tales, tunnels can only be constructed between certain points. (Alderson Drive requires you to go to one end of a line of thermonuclear flux between stars, colloquially called a "tramline". They don't exist between every pair of stars; some systems have many, some have only one. Sparta, capitol of the Empire of Man, has lots. The Mote, the only star in the Empire with sapient alien life, had one, whose other end was inside a red giant star. The novel "The Gripping Hand" was driven by a newborn star altering the flux lines in that region, giving the Mote a second tramline into a more hospitable location.)

Perhaps one needs to be able to travel FTL to the other end of the tunnel, something which became difficult and unreliable post-Burn. Perhaps stabilization of the tunnel needs dilithium as well for some reason. Perhaps the task can only be accomplished with the help of an xB. Key factor there is, we don't know why more such passages weren't constructed, only that they weren't, despite the fact that both Starfleet and the Emerald Chain would have had a strong interest in doing so if it were possible.

Unknown · December 2021

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starkaos · December 2021

valoreah wrote: »

naabal421#0722 wrote: »

Before the Burn the Federation had transwarp. After the Burn the transwarp tunnels became so clogged with debris that trying to use them was considered suicide.

New tunnels could not be constructed that were free of debris? Space is pretty big. I doubt they ran out of room.

Which is why I don't buy the transwarp hub being clogged issue. The Federation in the early 25th Century created a few transwarp conduits. So it makes no sense why the 29th Century couldn't create a bunch of transwarp conduits. If transwarp conduits exists, then it doesn't make sense to rely on dilithium and warp drives for heavy traffic areas. Just use impulse drive or the 29th Century equivalent to travel to the nearest transwarp conduit and go anywhere in the Federation without the need for Dilithium. Dilithium and warp drives would be only used for exploration and visiting less popular worlds.

Speaking of transwarp hubs, where are the Borg like One. The Borg have destroyed or assimilated countless world so even if they have gained a conscience, there is no way to go back to their homes. Exploring what happened to the various races of Star Trek that we know in the previous Star Trek series is one of the main reasons why I watch Discovery. We have encountered the Trill, Humans, and Ni'Var, but there are lots of alien races and empires that we haven't seen what has happened to them like the Dominion, Borg, and Voth.

naabal421 · December 2021

starkaos wrote: »

We have encountered the Trill, Humans, and Ni'Var, but there are lots of alien races and empires that we haven't seen what has happened to them like the Dominion, Borg, and Voth.

Dominion space was seen marked on a larger galaxy map seen in S3 of DSC. So they are apparently still around.

legendarylycan · December 2021

The Founders are on their fourth homeworld - that is the extent of our knowledge.

naabal421 · December 2021

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

The Founders are on their fourth homeworld - that is the extent of our knowledge.

We actually see an area of space, and a number of worlds, marked in Dominion purple in the same general shape as Dominion territory seen in some reference maps. I know people who worked on DSC confirmed they were copying those maps when they made the map seen in the show. So the Dominion does seem to retain a good amount of its territory post Burn if the Federation's current maps still list those planets as Dominion territory.

jonsills · December 2021

valoreah wrote: »

jonsills wrote: »

We have no idea how such tunnels are constructed. Perhaps, like the Alderson Drive in Pournelle's CoDominium tales, tunnels can only be constructed between certain points. (Alderson Drive requires you to go to one end of a line of thermonuclear flux between stars, colloquially called a "tramline". They don't exist between every pair of stars; some systems have many, some have only one. Sparta, capitol of the Empire of Man, has lots. The Mote, the only star in the Empire with sapient alien life, had one, whose other end was inside a red giant star. The novel "The Gripping Hand" was driven by a newborn star altering the flux lines in that region, giving the Mote a second tramline into a more hospitable location.)

Perhaps one needs to be able to travel FTL to the other end of the tunnel, something which became difficult and unreliable post-Burn. Perhaps stabilization of the tunnel needs dilithium as well for some reason. Perhaps the task can only be accomplished with the help of an xB. Key factor there is, we don't know why more such passages weren't constructed, only that they weren't, despite the fact that both Starfleet and the Emerald Chain would have had a strong interest in doing so if it were possible.

Or perhaps they could construct new tunnels free of debris.

Apparently not. It's a plot point. Do try and keep up.

starkaos · December 2021

jonsills wrote: »

valoreah wrote: »

jonsills wrote: »

We have no idea how such tunnels are constructed. Perhaps, like the Alderson Drive in Pournelle's CoDominium tales, tunnels can only be constructed between certain points. (Alderson Drive requires you to go to one end of a line of thermonuclear flux between stars, colloquially called a "tramline". They don't exist between every pair of stars; some systems have many, some have only one. Sparta, capitol of the Empire of Man, has lots. The Mote, the only star in the Empire with sapient alien life, had one, whose other end was inside a red giant star. The novel "The Gripping Hand" was driven by a newborn star altering the flux lines in that region, giving the Mote a second tramline into a more hospitable location.)

Perhaps one needs to be able to travel FTL to the other end of the tunnel, something which became difficult and unreliable post-Burn. Perhaps stabilization of the tunnel needs dilithium as well for some reason. Perhaps the task can only be accomplished with the help of an xB. Key factor there is, we don't know why more such passages weren't constructed, only that they weren't, despite the fact that both Starfleet and the Emerald Chain would have had a strong interest in doing so if it were possible.

Or perhaps they could construct new tunnels free of debris.

Apparently not. It's a plot point. Do try and keep up.

And a very lousy and invalid plot point. It only explains why pre-Burn transwarp conduits are not used, but it doesn't explain why post-Burn transwarp conduits aren't created. Limiting post-Burn transwarp conduits to certain personnel would make sense why they aren't used.

jonsills · December 2021

As I said, try to keep up. Since no new transwarp conduits are built, it's safe to say that no new transwarp conduits can be built, else the Emerald Chain would have had a field day. Why can't they be built? Dunno. It's entirely possible that the Federation never built the ones they were using in the first place, as Ni'var's SB-19 project sounds an awful lot like an attempt to recreate transwarp technology - and they abandoned that after the Burn, as the Burn happened at approximately the same time as the activation of the first SB-19 point. Work wasn't resumed until after it could be conclusively proved that Ni'var technicians hadn't just killed every operational starship of the day.

The exact source of the old conduits, and the reason for no new ones, isn't explained in the show because most of us are willing to accept certain plot points. The refined dilithium was rendered inactive, non-refined supplies were running very low, benamite for quantum slipstream is vanishingly rare, and nobody's making new transwarp corridors. Why? Nobody cares. Well, I mean, except for you.

starkaos · December 2021

jonsills wrote: »

As I said, try to keep up. Since no new transwarp conduits are built, it's safe to say that no new transwarp conduits can be built, else the Emerald Chain would have had a field day. Why can't they be built? Dunno. It's entirely possible that the Federation never built the ones they were using in the first place, as Ni'var's SB-19 project sounds an awful lot like an attempt to recreate transwarp technology - and they abandoned that after the Burn, as the Burn happened at approximately the same time as the activation of the first SB-19 point. Work wasn't resumed until after it could be conclusively proved that Ni'var technicians hadn't just killed every operational starship of the day.

The exact source of the old conduits, and the reason for no new ones, isn't explained in the show because most of us are willing to accept certain plot points. The refined dilithium was rendered inactive, non-refined supplies were running very low, benamite for quantum slipstream is vanishingly rare, and nobody's making new transwarp corridors. Why? Nobody cares. Well, I mean, except for you.

A lack of transwarp corridors is the least of the problems with the Burn. It is the 32nd Century and they previously had technology capable of travelling hundreds of years in the past and yet they still haven't found anything better than the warp drive that is heavily reliant on dilithium? It is just like travelling to the 22nd Century and finding out that humanity is still using internal combustion engines. It is all about keeping the future stupid so that the crew from the 23rd Century is the hero. It was Discovery that found the origin of the Burn, lots of dilithium, and saved the Federation because the future can't save itself.

jonsills · December 2021

Just because you want a better tech to do a thing doesn't mean it exists. Wheels aren't necessarily the best way to move a thing from here to there, but they're the *only* way. Or do you think c is flouted merely by the desire to do so, and warp drive is like an old car engine?

Season four spoiler question

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