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From: rjnoe@riccb.UUCP (Roger J. Noe)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: New discussion
Message-ID: <557@riccb.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Oct-85 09:31:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: riccb.557
Posted: Thu Oct 10 09:31:04 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 16:31:02 EDT
References: <353@uw-june>
Organization: Rockwell International - Downers Grove, IL
Lines: 39

> ... at some stage the Enterprize was dead as usual ( this was
> Elaan of Troyius by the way ) and a comment along the lines of
> "Klingon vessel approaching at better than warp 6" ( this isn't an
> exact quote ). About a minute later the Klingon actually arrived and
> proceed to pound poor old number 4 shield again. My friend commented
> that is must be pretty fancy sensors that can detect a ship, moving
> at that speed at that *distance*.

Let's see, if we were to reduce it to our familiar terms of "ordinary"
space, that would be 6^3*c or 216c, about 64.8 Gm/s.  Since it was "better"
than warp factor 6, let's just call it 65 Gm/s.  Say it really took about
30 seconds (TV is always going to distort time intervals - a countdown from
10 to 0 will sometimes take a minute) and the "distance" comes to 1950 Gm,
or almost 2 Terameters.  Since 1 AU is 150 Gm, that's about 13 AU's.  No
piddling distance, but well within the ballpark of a star system.

> ... Add to that some of the other neat things the
> ST-universe sensors can do...detect lifeforms, numbers and species
> of, detect minerals
> 
> What could these things be doing? The only thing we have available
> these days is radar....
>             Ewan

That's not entirely true.  For things traveling a substantial fraction of the
speed of light (>0.01?), we could measure speed from the Doppler shift of
reflected light.  Assuming you know what the thing looks like at some definite
speed.  As far as detecting lifeforms goes, we can do some things like that
now.  But that's for a very limited range of lifeforms and relies mainly on
infrared detection.  We're pretty good at detecting minerals when we look for
them, using the whole electromagnetic spectrum to pick up signatures of
different things.  It's easy to tell whether a farmer is growing wheat or rye
on a 1-acre patch of land, given the use of the right satellite.  The sensors
of the Star Trek era are mostly just extensions of current technology, with
some deus ex machina thrown in.
--
"It's only by NOT taking the human race seriously that I retain what
 fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess!"
	Roger Noe			ihnp4!riccb!rjnoe