This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Korval: I'm cutting this example unless someone can explain how going "over" an intercepting fleet is possible. I mean, won't they just match your "upward" motion? They're trying to keep you from going forward; unless you can do that, they win by default. So long as they can keep pace with your ships, you're not getting past them.
- The most egregious example this troper has EVER seen is in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Dominion have taken the station. The Federation gets all its ducks in a row, and makes a last-ditch effort to reach the station before the minefield guarding the wormhole is taken down and the Dominion receive massive reinforcements. It's heaped on us endlessly this is the critical point, not beating the enemy, not retaining tactical positioning, simply get through. I say this because the "thing" they're trying to get through is a 2-3 ship thick blockade that LITERALLY extends about 10 miles vertically and the main characters are hopelessly unable to overcome it without going through it.
Silent Hunter: Minor note- you can get away with this for stars- while they move, they don't move that fast in relative terms.
Red Shoe: Which is an inaccuracy in its own right, of course, since they love to show stars streaking (or, at least, moving) by as a ship flies through space
That said, the Milky Way galaxy (and a bunch of other nearby ones) is pretty flattish, so it does seem likely that, in general, there'd be a tendency for ships to behave as if they were on a tabletop. What makes this unrealistic is more the impression that they can't behave otherwise, even in an emergency.
Idle Dandy: I think a related phenomenon is the fallacy of planetary alignment, i.e. "We're going to Saturn, so let's stop off at Jupiter on the way." I can't think of TV examples of it, though...
Silent Hunter: I was actually talking about the movement of stars relative to each other. That said, the stars streaking past is inaccurate.
Semiapies: The Milky Way is certainly flattened, but it's still a few thousand light-years thick. That wouldn't influence anyone to orient their ship to the galactic plane, I wouldn't think.
Kendra Kirai: I'd think it would, actually. if your solar system is more or less 'flat' and in the same line as the galaxy, why would you put your ship on it's edge to it if you have artificial gravity and thus, no need to spin to create the effect? Also, quite often, it could be handwaved by saying that they match orientations as a matter of courtesy and so that it doesn't weird everyone who's used to gravity out. I also recall a reference in at least one of the shows to a 'north of the elliptic'..indicating that Starfleet(?) at least has a view on which side of the galaxy is the 'top'. Also, according to the various technical manuals for Star Trek, the co-ordinate system for the galaxy does include all positions in three-dimensional space. As for the 'streaking stars', it has been suggested..though I can't remember where, so it may be apocryphal...that it's not stars, but random relatively sizable interstallar junk which has been shoved aside by the navigational deflector. (But not sizable enough that they'd have to go around.) Yes, I'm a trekkie. Be gentle.
Ununnilium: Well, except that the plane of the solar system is huger than huge, and there's no reason you'd line up with it. And matching orientations for courtesy is all well and good, but it's not a very effective battle tactic. I like the "interstellar junk" idea, though.
Red Shoe: There's a slight increase in probability that a ship will aligned with the galactic plane, only because the farther they've been travelling, the more shallow their angle would have to be for them to have started out inside the galaxy, but this would only really come into play for ships traveling a signifigant percentage of the galaxy's diameter. Also, it only affects which way the ship will be pointing (pitch), not which side is up (roll). As to the "interstellar junk" theory, this is a great idea, and has been proposed before. The problem is, it doesn't match up with what we see: when a ship drops out of warp, those streaks become stars. When a ship jumps to warp, those stars become streaks. It's 100% clear in the graphics that what we are seeing are *stars* streak by. A less problematic notion might be that the streaking is an optical illusion resulting from starlight hitting the warp field.
Gus: Sure. Photons are junk that comes from stars. It would makes sense for there to be some correlation to the source.
Kendra Kirai: Well, not every point of light in space is an actual *star*...could be reflective ice meteroites, in-system planets or moons....but that is, I admit, going a bit far to explain it as anything but 'something shiny that doesn't fit reality'.
RedBeardSean One of my biggest complaints is that even in shows that have some degree of three-dimensional space, all the ships are more-or-less "rightside-up" relative to each other. For istance, in the original Battlerstar Galactica series is that no one ever thought of diving towards the top or bottom of the Cylon raiders, which were essentially big round targets from those directions.
Kendra Kirai: That part is actually just because the flow of battle wouldn't allow for it. If you saw somebody jetting 'up', you'd naturally follow them to try to shoot them down..Plus, by flying perpendicular to the enemy, you're also exposing your own craft's largest cross-section. Basically, in a battle of fightercraft, the plane you're fighting on quickly becomes the plane of the battle through the simple fact that it's the one that will be least likely to make you die. This applies to both sides.
RedBeardSean Good point. You just blew away thirty-plus years of disgruntlement. :-) Of course, even presenting the smallest profile to each other, some ships should at least be upside-down to each other.
Gus: Hmm. Is the diameter of the exposed profile significant in a space battle, where the targeting systems must deal — at the very least — in tens of miles? A target a thousand yards in profile and another of only 100 yards do not seem very different, at those ranges.
Kendra Kirai: Well, for larger ships, like the Galactica, or Enterprise, it wouldn't, really, though showing a smaller profile still makes it less likely that many unguided attacks will hit. Also, because of the 'realities' of space combat, one would imagine that most battles would be fought in relative proximity..say, twenty miles or so. While the targeting systems would have no trouble locking on to a target, there's still the fact of which would you rather show the enemy..your widest point, or your narrowest? by showing your widest, or boadest point of profile, you're opening up far, far more of your hull to being damaged. While the damage may be more spread out, there's also a better chance the damage done would be critical. The front and back, of anything are almost always a lot stronger than the top or bottom, because of many reasons..not the least of which is physics. Put a brick on an empty toilet paper roll vertically..then horizontally. Vertically, the tube is far stronger. A starship of any sort would have to be reinforced against stresses along it's length both to deal with the minor interstellar dust and the stresses from inertia as the engines push the vehicle along. If it weren't, it would just accordion up as soon as the engines were started up (Unless you were going for the 'slow accelleration for a very, very long time' method of propulsion, which is...impractical at best for space combat).
Wow, that was long...
Gus: It is fun to model these things out. There is nothing about space battle that isn't impractical, though, at almost any speed. I always kinda wince when I see scenes where space fighters "swoop" and "dive" and make tight turns like an airplane. I'm not sure what kind of even imaginary physics are at work there. The Physics of Fun, perhaps.
RedBeardSean I think that's why the main weapon discharge on the SDF-1 (Macross/Robotech) was a couple miles wide and mind-bogglingly long-ranged.
Kendra Kirai: Logically, the SDF-1's main gun was designed to counter the Zentraedi battle tactic of 'Thousands upon thousands of ships/fighters/etc'. It's designed to take out huge swaths of enemy targets in a single firing. We never get to see the Supervision Army, which is who created the SDF-1 (As a cruiser), unfortuantely, so we don't know how common the main gun is on their ships, or it's usual rate of fire.
As for the 'swooping' and taking tight turns, one can do a lot with the proper use of small thrusters and vectored thrust for pitch/yaw/rotation. With some form of gravity or inertial control, which would be all but required for commonplace interstellar travel, one could do incredible things without having to worry about the laws of inertia.
Gus: Oh, definitely. Let's say the gods of the physical universe were all off chasing nymphs for the day, and we came up with a tractor beam and perfect inertial dampening while they were busy.
Our tractor beam can be deployed to multiple target, so we can yank ourselves toward heavy things like suns and planets and play two "pulls" against one another so we can vector at will. We can do anything we like. I'd like to see that — completely capricious movement — one time, rather than another analogue of aerial dogfights.
Kendra Kirai: The problem with that idea is that even relatively nearby objects, such as the moon, is still three hundred thousand kilometers away. That's a very long way to use a tractor beam like that. Get even a light-minute away from anything, and you're at around 11,160,000 kilometers. That's far enough away that one can barely see, even with a decent modern telescope, unless the object is enormous (Such as Jupiter, or the Sun).
Something you may want to check out is Mobile Suit Gundam, in it's various permutations (though I personally suggest V, or X). That has a pretty realistic take on physics, and some of the mobile suits act very similar to what you seem to want.
Gus: Sure. I know all about the inverse-square thing for gravity. My tractor beam doesn't need gravity, though. It only needs a mass to drag around, or to be dragged by. The Perfect Inertial Dampener has already negated the rules for gravity, so any mass will do. Mostly, I play one galactic mass against another galaxy's mass, which leaves me free to destroy any local masses (planets, suns ... you know, the small stuff) that are bugging me, without losing my ability to vector at will.
Red Shoe: Thought I'd point out two other common fan-theories re Trek: first, that ships orient themselves to each other as they approach purely by convention (which is why it doesn't always apply to derelicts). Second, it was floated quite a few times that the star-streams are purely artificial, projected on the windows to keep the humans inside from going mad from the lack of parallax. That doesn't float, of course, as we most often see the star-streaks on exterior shots, but I thought it was worth a mention.
LTR - That does bring up a good point, a lot of things in space that aren't "needed" because Earthbound physics don't apply (lack of up and one-way pull of gravity, lack of noise, lack of friction, etc) may have to be simluated anyway for the benefit of humans working in those environments simply because the human mind has evolved to use Earth physics as it's baseline, and without them, it would grow stressfully uncomfortable with the conditions.
Your Obedient Serpent thinks that Gus wants cavorite
. Imagine the space combat scenes you could film between cavorite-equipped vessels!
Silent Hunter: On the Serenity example, I'd have to double-check the film, but various supporting media (i.e. the RPG) makes the 'Verse out to be a multiple-star system.
Sci Vo: Wouldn't the stars themselves be orbiting the system's center of gravity in that case?
Ian Racey: Just a quick note that I removed the example attributing the failure of the Maginot Line to the Germans simply flying over it because it's not true. The Germans didn't go over the Maginot Line, they went around it, occupying the Low Countries so that they could launch their invasion of France over the unprotected Belgian border—the Maginot Line only covered France's border with Germany. No failure to think three dimensionally on the part of French military planners was involved. In fact, I'd have to doublecheck, but I'm pretty sure that the Maginot Line in fact did have perfectly adequate antiaircraft emplacements.
Nobodymuch: Incidentally more recent astronomical information indicates that the Solar System is unusual in it's phonograph-like flatness.
