| Review of Star Trek(Originated by Gene Roddenberry, which aired from September 8, 1966)
This is the first and possibly the only introduction to the entire 40 year scope of Star Trek. The introduction to the site says: "Legacy covers all 40 years of Trek, the first game ever to do this: The Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. Storyline by renowned Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana with her partner Derek Chester. Voiceover provided by all five captains."
The author of this review, is Gavin Embry [GE], Chairman and CEO of RDL. RDL is creating a Plan designed to actually build a world for many millions of people to live on Earth in harmony and enjoy life for, at least several, thousands of years. He also followed the Star Trek entertainment series for over forty years, since 1966, and was struck by two things: First thought: What was the motivation of Gene Roddenberry to write and produce StarTrek: And,
GE's first thought, following the custom of almost all science fiction writers: Roddenberry must have enjoyed thinking and writing about the future without the boring restrictions of dealing with already well-known possibilities and limitations. Roddenberry and his talented co-writers must have relished thinking about and exploring the construction of stories with truly novel possibilities, as I [GE] do.
Now: With respect to GE's second thought: Gene Roddenberry's stories came out in 1966. Whereas some five years earlier, GE had already studied: Eztremely rare, hard to create and almost as hard to store, antimatter could give access to an almost infinite supply of energy, requiring an almost zero amount of fuel. However, according to one of Einstein's Rules, reaching the velocity of light required not just almost infinite energy but truly infinite energy and the difference between almost and truly is actually an infinite supply of energy. Therefore, anything (material or light waves or any other kind of waves) travelling faster than light is truly, actually and infinitely impossible. Some of the Star Trek stories used the idea of finding "Worm Holes" where Einstein's Rule might be avoided, a highly speculative idea. Apparently Roddenberry, and his co-writers, decided to limit the complication, in most cases, of finding Worm Holes but chose to ignore Einstein's Rules, using antimatter engines to provide (putative, but impossible) "Warp Drives". That would allow Star Trek to have starships which looked, traveled and carried navy-type officers and crews, more the size of a naval cruiser or nuclear submarine (funny, they never designed a starship aircraft carrier with more than a 1,000 in the crew, nor even flocks of space craft, as Star War writers did). They chose this idea, whereas the lack of a Warp Drive or ready access to Worm Holes, would require space ships each carrying crews of many lifetimes of generations (large enough to avoid extinction) living aboard for over thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of years to get through a enough light-years of the empty space from "A" to another planet of star system "B" of interest, from the point of view of a story. In view of all of this, GE decided, in the 1950s, not to embark on either the actual development of anti-matter, star-drive engines (which, I thought, might take 40 to 60 years to develop): And, even if sucessful, would still not make Warp Drives possible, or attempt (creditable) stories like that. That is, I still enjoy them but do not actually believe them to be accurate depictions of the future, with respect to the: sense of traveling faster than the limited velocity of light (ie 300,000 kilometers/sec) amall size of the crew interaction between members of the crews (who rarely reproduce en voyage), or crews frequently interacting (or even inter-communicatimg) with the colonies on, or natives of, other planets and starships.
Starships won't be the same size or look the same either.
Star Trek stories are still extremely entertaining and important. Especially, the last 25 of the 40-year series are extremely thorough presentations (simulations) of space travel. Spaceships are important because they must be self sufficient and self contained with all the necessary life support, and, perhaps, have weapon technology for defense from enemies. Protection against accidents are also paramount. If a few critical errors and false assumptions were changed, and similar plots were simulated again, it would result in the best possible presentation about lives of many generations of people living in peace and harmony and enjoying life during voyages up to, at least, thousands of years. A presentation could show a practical, self contained, several-generation bearing, space ship, carrying, say, 50,000 people each on a several-hundred-year voyage. For example, in order to colonize a newly discovered, previously uninhabited, earth-sized planet, say, 20 light-years from the Earth. (Using antimatter as fuel, a reasonable, average speed might be a quarter of light speed. Thus it would take 80 years, roughly 2 to 3 generations, to travel 20 light-years.) BTW: Antimatter (when touching matter) does not create CO2: But, gamma rays, tricky to focus (sometimes, at least, into a laser-like beam): And, likely to destroy anything in its path (as each gamma photon carries ~100,000 times as much energy as an x-ray or ordinary light ray photon). This spaceship "city" would, in many other respects, be similar to one of the 900+ RDL Utopia, in Project 1, is designing (and planning to build) to support the same number of people and, hopefully, over the same period of time (on Earth), which is, in some ways, the same as so-called "outer" space travel. Almost equally important is the need to: protect the air from contamination (pollution, if you prefer) protect people and machinery from risks of accidents from unintended (or vicious, ie warmonger, criminal or terrorist) interaction provide care for children (including their own and their parent's educations ... and entertainment) need to reduce the need to travel outside the "city" provide sophisticated communications for inside and, especially, outside, and protect from meteors, water, wind or radiation entering the city (or escaping from internal sources) and penetration of residential or work areas.
All of these may be dealt with in very similar ways.
Gene Roddenberry and his collaborators produced a uniquely entertaining and brilliant series of presentations of living in (outer) space. Let's us do it, this time, again, with four or five space ships, representatives of fleets of hundreds of huge, four-square mile space ships, on several-hundred-year voyages, just like the 900+ USS Utopia on "Space Ship Earth". Not like the USS Enterprise: But, quite a bit bigger than today's nuclear submarines, and with more than few-month-long voyages, like most nuclear submarines normally do.
A little later on, I will try to come up with entertaining and instructive stories which could be incorporated about life on a representative multi-generational interstellar space ship:
I will work on this some more. Click here to let me know if you have good story. Addendum: RDL now plans Utopian Digital Simulation Games [UDSG], which could also incorporate the presentations discussed above. UDSG games are programmed to react to the strategies and choices of Ideal Customers to play out the outcomes of the stories. | |