h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have "where no man..." on video. Hunter was replaced, because he was busy when they made the second pilot. Oh and there were other Orian women in TOS, I can't remember what episodes though. Also, in "Where No Man..." Garry Mitchell, Kirk's best friend, creates a grave for Kirk, but has R as Kirk's middle initial. The Commissioning plaque on the bridge of the enterprise D says that it is the fith starship to bear the name, guess Starfleet forgot about capt archer. Also, the Intrepid-class USS Voyager was based on concept sketches for the Nova-class ships.

a good vesal

ok trying to find more useless trek trivia......

the character of ewesley crusher was originally supposed to be a girl caled lesley.

in 5 episodes, kirk talks to the computer about death.

leonard nimoy wrote and sang a song about bilbo baggins.

Will Shatner does the best cover version of The Common People immaginable.

If the TNG people had a band with brent spinner doing vocals, does that mean it's really brent spinner singing on Nemisis?

They do indeed mess up the number of decks on first contact but I have also read a convaluted explaination where the last two decks in the engeniering hull aren't always counted.

The official story about the enterprise D is that internally it was 25% or so undeveloped. They left themselves a way out, there.

They have no excuse for The Final Frontier though where we see Kirk, Spock and McCoy fly past deck 20 to deck 84 to deck 62 . . . and so on and so forth and such-like.

Please remind me. What seen whas that?

It's the one where they're on the rocket boots and are shooting up through the empty lift-shaft.

oh right. it's the one with the mountain climbing at the beginning.

"if you don't shut up I'll become one with the ground" after spock's urging that he become one with the rock

and Scotty says about knowing the enterprise like the back of his hand, before walking into a supporting brace

oh, I forgot to put this. The original replacement/follow on for TOS was called Star Trek: Phase Two, but following verious 'issues' the concept of a new series was scrapped. STPT was to have Capt. Willard Decker, son of Commador Matt Decker, as captain of the Enterprise and a new Vulcan science officer. The first storyline was to concern a huge alien vessel which was heading for earth, destroying all the blocked it's path, on a quest to find it's creator. It was going to turn out that the heart of this vessel was an old C20 probe from earth, which had become intelligent

in other words the plot to the first movie

that is indeed what it became

Once, the origional Enterprise went to Warp 13.7 to get away from some Klingons. As Warp 10 is said to be infinite, the producers said that TOS and TNG ships' warp calculations were different and were on a different, owing to faster ships and better technology.

Dilithium crystals were origionally Lithium crystals. Roddenberry thought that Lithium was just a random element that he had picked out of thin air, but when he realised that there were lithium batteries available, he changed it to Dilithium.

Deuterium (as in the matter that reacts with the anti-matter) is just 2 hydrogen atoms fused to make "heavy water", and some particles of antimatter have been created in a lab in France. Warp drive is just aroud the corner!!!

that's another thing the official fact files mentiones. It references the enterprise getting to warp 15 or so and says they changed the measurement scale.

I've always thought it strange to have an actual measurement of infinity myself

yeah, why is that? thought infinate was enough of a measurement for what it's referring to.

"Deuterium (as in the matter that reacts with the anti-matter) is just 2 hydrogen atoms fused "

No. *Helium* is two hydrogen atoms fused.

Deuterium is hydrogen which has a neutron in its nucleus. Tritium is hydrogen which has *two* neutrons in the nucleus. Deuterium and tritium more readily undergo fusion reactions.

Warp 10 *was* supposed to be a *theoretical* infinite.

Warp 1 (new style) corresponds to the speed you go when you're *just* sustaining a single, asymmetric (i.e. propulsive) warp field of 1000 millicochranes.

Warp 2 (new style) corresponds to the speed you go when you're *just* sustaining TWO nested warp fields. It isn't any *specific* speed, it depends on local subspace conditions (translation - they don't want to pin down exactly how fast it could be in case they have to change it). Warp 2 is, however, *nominally* about 15 times lightspeed.

Warp 3 is three nested warp fields, and roughly 39 times lightspeed.

Fractional warp factors mean you apply additional stress to the fields to increase the velocity. Applying this stress takes extra energy, to the point that at high fractions, it actually takes LESS energy to simply generate an additional, non-stressed warp field. I.e. It takes less energy to travel at warp 3 than it does to travel at warp 2.9.

Because of the additional energy required to manipulate the additional warp fields further and further out from the ship, and because of a corresponding loss in efficiency, it turns out that you can only ever, in fact, successfully generate nine nested warp fields. Subspace simply cannot support more than nine without an infinite input of energy, in much the same way that in realspace you can never reach lightspeed without an infinite amount of energy.

Therefore to go faster and faster you need to carefully apply stress to nine, nested warp fields. Which is why it's hard. Also, the energy expended goes up exponentially, but the speed only goes up linearly, or something. So there's a point of diminishing returns... unless you can crack "transwarp". No technical detail on how that works is available, as far as I know.

"Warp 10" is a theoretical concept of infinite velocity, a bit like Infinite Improbability Drive. If you travelled at infinite velocity, you'd pass through every point in the universe at once. It's an idea, not a reachable reality.

Of course, the Voyager episode "Threshold" took this carefully constructed fantasy physics and f**ked it all up good and proper. But hey, nobody said Voyager was any good. Did they?

H.

Oh and Just in case anyone's interested, the stuff the smash particles into to make anti matter at CERN, or used to and I haven't heard that they've changed it, is... Lithium

sounds like someone's been buffing up on their technical manual anyway.

Depressingly, I'm at work and my tech manual is at home, where it has sat unread for at least five years. I just remember more of it than is strictly healthy... and proud!

H.