How advanced is Star Trek Tech, really?

[at Quark's]

It is said that a lot of the technology we see on star trek shows is actually 'only' a few decades more advanced than the technology of the year in which it was made, and that's because we 'really' can't extrapolate /imagine more than a few decades ahead into the future. For example, the PADDS in TNG and Voyager look quaint already. TOS computers have some voice interaction but in a very mechanical, clumsy way and we seem beyond that point already in terms of naturalness; the way they interact with their TNG era computers certainly also seems in reach. Communicators in TOS don't seem that amazing today given that they probably are roughly equivalent to satellite phones perhaps with a somewhat more boosted range, etc.

On the other hand, we also see technologies we probably won't have for many centuries, if ever (warp engine, transporters, artificial gravity plating, inertia dampening). Most of these violate or at least circumvent fundamental laws of nature as we currently understand them. However, it seems this is often technology that was needed for the setting. (You don't get far in your star trekking without a warp engine. A transporter was 'invented' because they didn't have the budget for shuttles. A show in ships without gravity on board won't last for years either, even though that specific problem could have been solved with less fantastic tech).

So, how advanced is Star Trek tech really? Is it true that most of it is really not that more advanced, except for those 'magical' devices they needed for the story / going around them would have been too awkward?

 

[Muji]

Well, it's a balancing act. If you go too far down the rabbit-hole of technological advancement, it can quickly become about the technology. Star Trek has been story+setting. I do think it could be pushed further and the cool-factor could be notched up a little bit, especially now with Discovery being so far in the future. However, it needs to fit in with the story, the planet they're on, and the situation of the galaxy at that time.

 

[Timo]

It's not a major problem of plausibility, either: today's real technology is completely unrealistic, too. Whether one looks from thirty years ago or a hundred, we have amazing communications and computing, but our vehicles are primitive in comparison, and medicine drags far behind the 19th and 20th century promises.

Might be it's impossible to make better vehicles at our current "tech level". Might be it's simply a matter of market forces or ethics or other arbitrariness stumping vehicle development, and we could have better. And we really don't have an idea of what we're missing out: nobody ever predicted the internet in the form we have it, but once dreamed up, it was relatively simple to erect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[1001001]

We have an entire forum just for this!

Hold on...

 

[Deks]

It's not a major problem of plausibility, either: today's real technology is completely unrealistic, too. Whether one looks from thirty years ago or a hundred, we have amazing communications and computing, but our vehicles are primitive in comparison, and medicine drags far behind the 19th and 20th century promises.

Might be it's impossible to make better vehicles at our current "tech level". Might be it's simply a matter of market forces or ethics or other arbitrariness stumping vehicle development, and we could have better. And we really don't have an idea of what we're missing out: nobody ever predicted the internet in the form we have it, but once dreamed up, it was relatively simple to erect.

Timo Saloniemi

Vehicles and medicine (to name a few) drag behind due to profit motive and cost efficiency, not because we don't have the resources or make vast technological and scientific breakthroughs.

Vehicles and transportation in general could have been replaced with vacuum maglev trains since 1974 which would have achieved speeds of 2000 miles per hour back then (vacuum technology was well understood by that point, as was the principle of putting maglev trains inside vacuum tubes... it was just deemed 'cost prohibitive' - but we certainly had more than enough resources, technology and know how, not to mention automation to build it in a fraction of the time it would take manual labor).
If you wanted to modernize it with today's technology... ET3 (as designed by Darryl Oster - btw, Elon Musk based Hyperloop on ET3) would focus on making smaller capsules capable of transporting 6 people each with luggage at speeds of 4000 miles per hour (long distances obviously... for more local transportation, lower speeds would be used).

Medicine could have used AI (or more to the point, simple algorithms) for research and development of new medical treatments, drugs, etc, and we also developed regenerative medical technology which uses stem-cells to repair damage (this isn't anything new btw).

Because we live in Capitalism, funding was never allocated towards these (and many other) prospects... and more often than not, we end up lagging behind in numerous areas when it comes to implementing scientific and technical breakthroughs we have made in practice (but its never the question of resources either... its always down to 'who is going to pay for it?' which is a wrong question to ask).

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Vehicles and transportation in general could have been replaced with vacuum maglev trains since 1974 which would have achieved speeds of 2000 miles per hour back then (vacuum technology was well understood by that point, as was the principle of putting maglev trains inside vacuum tubes... it was just deemed 'cost prohibitive' - but we certainly had more than enough resources, technology and know how, not to mention automation to build it in a fraction of the time it would take manual labor).
If you wanted to modernize it with today's technology... ET3 (as designed by Darryl Oster - btw, Elon Musk based Hyperloop on ET3) would focus on making smaller capsules capable of transporting 6 people each with luggage at speeds of 4000 miles per hour (long distances obviously... for more local transportation, lower speeds would be used).

If Vacuum Tube Trains were so easy & safe to do on such a large scale, it would've been done long ago.
NASA has ginormous steel chambers and concrete backing to simulate vacuums.
HyperLoop and those folks want to do with cheap materials, explosive decompression will wreck everything incredibly easy.
And transitioning pods into a giant Vacuum Tube isn't "Fast" by any stretch of the means.

Also, just because you can build maglev trains, doesn't mean it's cost efficient. Especially with the maintenance costs.
There's plenty of good reasons as to why maglev trains hasn't replaced all the old traditional rail based trains.

Medicine could have used AI (or more to the point, simple algorithms) for research and development of new medical treatments, drugs, etc, and we also developed regenerative medical technology which uses stem-cells to repair damage (this isn't anything new btw).

We're only at the beginning early stages of AI, basic AI has only been a thing since the last 3-5 years in computing.
So asking it to be used for more medicine in the past is like putting the cart before the horse.
And they are using AI now to help with medical research and testing.

Because we live in Capitalism, funding was never allocated towards these (and many other) prospects... and more often than not, we end up lagging behind in numerous areas when it comes to implementing scientific and technical breakthroughs we have made in practice (but its never the question of resources either... its always down to 'who is going to pay for it?' which is a wrong question to ask).

Because we live in Capitalism, we've made it much further in terms of R&D, not inspite of.

But that's a whole other discussion that is outside the scope of this thread's topic.

 

[FederationHistorian]

It is said that a lot of the technology we see on star trek shows is actually 'only' a few decades more advanced than the technology of the year in which it was made, and that's because we 'really' can't extrapolate /imagine more than a few decades ahead into the future. For example, the PADDS in TNG and Voyager look quaint already. TOS computers have some voice interaction but in a very mechanical, clumsy way and we seem beyond that point already in terms of naturalness; the way they interact with their TNG era computers certainly also seems in reach. Communicators in TOS don't seem that amazing today given that they probably are roughly equivalent to satellite phones perhaps with a somewhat more boosted range, etc.

On the other hand, we also see technologies we probably won't have for many centuries, if ever (warp engine, transporters, artificial gravity plating, inertia dampening). Most of these violate or at least circumvent fundamental laws of nature as we currently understand them. However, it seems this is often technology that was needed for the setting. (You don't get far in your star trekking without a warp engine. A transporter was 'invented' because they didn't have the budget for shuttles. A show in ships without gravity on board won't last for years either, even though that specific problem could have been solved with less fantastic tech).

So, how advanced is Star Trek tech really? Is it true that most of it is really not that more advanced, except for those 'magical' devices they needed for the story / going around them would have been too awkward?

I think the simplest answer for PADDs, voice interacted computers, and communicators is that the humans of the 23rd and 24th century are not as preoccupied with stylish wow factors like those of the 21st century. Just if its functional, which they tend to be.

Also, this is a show that depicted a flip phone – clearly not of smartphone design that is currently in development in current day – being in use the mid-2020s. And disks/SSDs drives for music being used in the early 2060s, when iPhones, iPods and streaming are used in real life right now. Clearly, there is an affinity for dated tech in this universe.

A transporter isn’t impossible IRL, since experiments have been run in the past few years. it just might take a century to be realized.

 

[at Quark's]

A transporter isn’t impossible IRL, since experiments have been run in the past few years. it just might take a century to be realized.

I'm not a physicist, but it is my understanding that being able to transport a few photons (or any information on an atomic scale) is a very different proposition from being able to transport a human (as in that it becomes quite literally exponentially harder the larger the amount of information to be transported grows, and transporting a human would require _a lot_ of information), and those might not be just technical difficulties that have to be solved. I wouldn't hold my breath for transportation to be possible a century, or a thousand years, from now- though I can't absolutely rule it out, of course.

 

[Mytran]

I'm not a physicist, but it is my understanding that being able to transport a few photons (or any information on an atomic scale) is a very different proposition from being able to transport a human (as in that it becomes quite literally exponentially harder the larger the amount of information to be transported grows, and transporting a human would require _a lot_ of information), and those might not be just technical difficulties that have to be solved. I wouldn't hold my breath for transportation to be possible a century, or a thousand years, from now- though I can't absolutely rule it out, of course.

These difficulties are precisely why some have suggested that the Transporter doesn't really dismantle a person at all, merely "push" them (via a guantum subspace wormhole tunnel or whatever) to the required destination.

 

[at Quark's]

These difficulties are precisely why some have suggested that the Transporter doesn't really dismantle a person at all, merely "push" them (via a guantum subspace wormhole tunnel or whatever) to the required destination.

Yes, that's one of the reasons I don't rule it out absolutely. It's of course always a possibility (even if remote) we'd find a loophole or a very different process to achieve the same in practice. (However, I am of the opinion that some dialog in Star Trek makes believing that a person isn't dismantled a bit hard, as some characters explicitly say you are dismantled / taken apart atom by atom, if I'm not mistaken.)

 

[Mytran]

(However, I am of the opinion that some dialog in Star Trek makes believing that a person isn't dismantled a bit hard, as some characters explicitly say you are dismantled / taken apart atom by atom, if I'm not mistaken.)

You could be right but I can't recall anything as specific as that off the top of my head.

However, I do seem to recall someone saying they are converted into energy atom-by-atom (paraphrased) and if that's indeed the case then it's vague enough (by using a generic term like "energy") to fudge the interpretation into something else....like a phased energy wormhole!

 

[at Quark's]

From TNG Realm of Fear:

BARCLAY: I've always managed to avoid it somehow. You wouldn't believe how many hours that I've logged in shuttlecraft. I mean, The idea of being deconstructed, molecule by molecule. It's more than I can stand. Even when I was a child, I always had a dreadful fear that if ever I was dematerialised that I would never come back again whole. I know it sounds crazy, but
TROI: It's not crazy at all. You are being taken apart molecule by molecule. Reg, you're not the first person to have anxiety about transporting. We can desensitise you to this type of fear. It's a slow and gradual process, but it works.

So, OK, it doesn't say 'atom by atom' but 'molecule by molecule' instead, but it still stresses the 'taking apart'.

 

[Timo]

IMHO, we shouldn't worry unduly about whether something in Trek is possible or not. Science has never been particularly good at predicting what is possible: when it creeps forward to the next rock and checks out what's underneath, it fairly often discovers all-new phenomena that redefine the limits of possible.

At that point, there may be a flurry of activity, so that new understanding of atomic structure leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands within half a century. But whether something turns out to be possible or impossible isn't easily predictable, and thus not much of a concern. With enough effort, we might have flying cars and telepathy by now, or might have had them in the 1920s already. But perhaps that would have required directing our attention to other paths of research and invention in a way that would prevent us from having antibiotics and indoors toilets today?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

So, OK, it doesn't say 'atom by atom' but 'molecule by molecule' instead, but it still stresses the 'taking apart'.

Fair point, although I would be reluctant to accept technical information from Deanna "what's a warp core breach" Troi....

 

[dupersuper]

I mean, they have faster than light travel, matter replication, transporters that can turn living beings to energy and back and beam them to a planet from orbit, holodecks, sentient AI (Sung type androids, EMHs, Vic Fontaine, a colony of sentient nanites, exocomps...), ridiculously powerful sensors, artificial gravity, cold fusion, phased energy ray guns, quantum torpedoes that use zero point energy, time travel, interdimensional travel, force fields, tractor beams, they've discovered a realm called subspace, now they have programmable matter...how much do you need?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

how much do you need?

Q level abilities where you can warp reality or make anything happen at the snap of a finger =D

 

[dupersuper]

Q level abilities where you can warp reality or make anything happen at the snap of a finger =D

Q says we'll get there eventually, and I know a couple short stories back him up.

 

[fireproof78]

how much do you need?

To quote a businessman, "Just a little bit more."

 

[Relayer1]

Chances are, Trek's got it exactly wrong. Computers will dail through the Tiring test before very long, but we'll never travel faster than light or have transporters.

Most likely we'll just upload ourselves into a super detailed virtual universe and explore that. At whatever speed we like.