I think most species probably align themselves to either the galactic plane or prominent orbital plane of the local star system.
the "up" & "down" directions would be completely arbitrary, though. there's no reason to think everone would decide on a standard for those.
and species without that certain sense of appropriateness, or an overt dedication to logic, would likely not bother with a standard orientation. and especially when in orbit over a planet, I think everyone would orient their "down" towards the surface.
54In more realistic scenarios, "down" is just defined by the direction of thrust. So approaching a ship, they will be down assuming you are decelerating to match their velocity, but they will be up if you are still thrusting towards them.
But all of that has almost nothing to do with how people will think of orientation to other ships since generally speaking you won't be using eye sight to communicate ship to ship. At that point an agreed upon down will be needed. Probably aligned with galactic or star system to establish a plane, and probably right hand rule to establish up and down. In general given that space is big and ships are small they will just be points on each others radar until they need to dock with each other so it doesn't really matter how people are actually oriented, as long as when they communicate what they say makes sense to the other side.
edit: or maybe down is towards the currently orbitted gravity well, like towards a planet/moon/star.
14Space shuttles would typically orbit with their top side facing towards Earth. Probably because the bottom is completely covered with ceramic tiles.
9Yeah, they’d also have the cargo doors open. All this was to radiate heat into space. Heat buildup and dissipation is a big problem in space as unlike on Earth there is no atmosphere to transfer heat to.
3Or for the view.
1
Could they use "thumb rules" if said species have thumbs? One that us fleshy puny humans use is the right hand rule where a third axis convention (up) corresponds with counterclockwise movement by the hand curl. Of course you could easily use the other hand since they're arbitrary anyway.
-1You've stumbled across the answer in your own question. The hand choice is arbitrary, and the direction is a binary choice between the galactic plane looking clockwise or counterclockwise. So you'll get an even mix of upside-down and upside-up ships when you choose that normal direction arbitrarily.
3
Most realistic depictions are from the Klingons because tactically you should always face with your weapons oriented towards everyone at all times, including your allies.
44And if you're a Romulan, especially your allies.
14
This is why I appreciate the scene in Undiscovered Country where Kronos One glides into view, seeming to align itself to the Enterprise's orientation.
39For a ship that never needs aerodynamic control, any shape at all will do so why do they all look like airplanes?
The Borg are the only ones who seem to get this.
38Not a trekkie, do they ever land in atmosphere on these ships? You would want aerodynamics for that to reduce drag and thus heat, but I'm not familiar enough to know.
I guess they probably have good thermal protections with their future tech, though.
14Voyager does a few times. The Enterprise D did...once.
There are some alternate timeline shenanigans I will not speak of here.
27If you've got shields and antigravity, do you still need aerodynamics?
5The ships can land and take off at least some of them can but they don't fly around in the atmosphere they just go up and down they're either on the ground or they're in space but they can't really manoeuvre.
Except for that one episode of Voyager where they just kind of forgot about that, but I think that was hand-waved away by saying that they just made the shields into a bubble and so essentially from the air's perspective the ship was a sphere. That's apparently what the shuttlecraft do too, which is why they fall like a brick whenever they're shot down.
4
They don't even need to fly nose-forward. The Enterprise could exit warp at any damn orientation it wanted. Blasting across the alpha quadrant nacelles-first, like Powdered Toast Man.
13They actually do need to fly nose first, believe it or not! The warp bubble created by the nacelle has a front side and a back side. Essentially it bunches up space behind the ship and thins it out in front of the ship, turning space itself into a sort of wave that the ship surfs forward on.
This is what I remember from the TNG Tech Manual anyway
22
Isn’t this due to the warp field? They ummm, have less warp drag?
13
I'm not following. Ships would travel along the galactic plane, therefore they'd generally be in the same orientation.
33Depends on the distance being traveled by both ships. The Milky Way is 1000 light years deep, so there's a lot of vertical room to maneuver. Mentioned locations at real star systems, like Wolf 359, are definitely not all on the same plane in any way. Possibly more relevant, though, is that 'up' isn't really much of a thing. Star systems can (and do) have their axis tilted significantly off of the galactic axis, so even if you define 'up' within a star system and orient your ship that way, you may wind up tilted weird when you arrive at the next system due to it having a different 'up'. You could define 'up' by the galactic axis, but that would still only apply to the one organization; there's no reason for the UFP, Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, and Dominion to all agree that one side of the galaxy is the top and the other is the bottom, but they do anyway. Humans couldn't even agree on which way to orient maps of our own planet for centuries.
29Sure but there are star systems that are above and below the exact ecliptic of the galactic plane. We're not on the ecliptic that's why you can't see the milky way as well in the southern hemisphere because we're kind of below it.
If a ship was travelling from Sol to Arcturus it would travel up (relative to the galactic plane) because we're slightly below it and it's considerably above it. The galaxy is very thin compared to its width, but it's still of thousands of light years high.
15I can travel the galactic plane with my spaceship oriented any of 360°. Straight is straight.
What I don't understand is why they were even close enough for the image. If subspace comms are a thing, a solar system length may be just fine.
8I don't think I've ever seen combat in Star Trek that takes place over a distance of more than a couple of hundred kilometres.
What's the range on a phaser or a torpedo, can it even go that far.
Long range weapons are so rare in Star Trek that when they do turn up they're basically what the whole episode is about.
3
Don't forget about orbital mechanics. For a rendez vous between two ships you need a lot of maneuvers in opposite directions, it's not like shown in movies where the fly like airplanes. If two ships are close to each other they will likely be in different orientations and it would be a waste of energy to face each other since communications still happen at thens of thousands of kilometers of distance
4Bingo, ships travel in a specific way so their paths are more or less predictable.
2
You beat me to it.
4“You guys are the worst”
We know
9
I knew this would be here
3
What’s weirder to me is how ships are oriented to a planet. Especially if they left atmosphere just a while ago. So they left the planet and then decided to orient the ship and align the vertical axis of the ship with the axis of the planet just for looks.
13It's to reduce the profile they expose to the planetary defenses.
- Star Trek Production Excuses Intern, probably
10KSP taught me what orbits are and Star Trek taught me that they are just not that important
4In fairness if you have basically unlimited thrust, maintaining a forced orbital position would be pretty cheap, you could hover as close as you want.
3If KSP had an antimatter based engine, you'd get the same conclusion there too.
1
Their pattern indicates two dimensional thinking...
12I think in this context no ship would ever approach nose-to-nose. That's just for the viewers to see. I'd wager no two ships would come into less than around 1-5 km of each other if they weren't lining up flight paths for shuttles or docking. It's not like they need to "stand up" next to each other and "talk".
They would probably have formations they would assume while in transit or stopped, so it would probably be normal to cross paths with a formation flying upside down or in a perpendicular axis.
In case of just meeting and talking, they'd probably do it from wherever they happen to be, very far from each other, flying towards different destinations.
11I don’t know, I think it would look fine to me.
6do it right and it could even look very good and immersive. But at least with the skills, technology and budget of a 1966 TV show, and especially with certain wack ship designs it's far easier to just have everything oriented the same way
4
Have you all forgotten that they directly addressed this in the show? https://youtu.be/Q9W7pvOLxmQ
3Right, so, let's talk naval ships from the age of sail. There's no need for two sailing ships to face each other also, but that's inevitably how ships will meet on the ocean. The HMS Enterprise spots the HMS Defiant. They plot a course towards the Defiant. Defiant will eventually spot the Enterprise, and will alter its course. Both ships will meet with their bows facing each other. Same logic applies with spaceships, with two issues:
- There's actually no need for two spaceships to meet in order to talk or transfer people. I'll hand wave that away saying that's standard procedure, as the cost in time and energy to go from the beaming range to visual range is negligible, and even in the 24th century it's a good idea for ships in the middle of the vastness of space be as close to one another as possible in case of emergency.
- While both ships will change their pitch and yaw to face each other, there's no need to change the roll. This can also be hand waved - while there's probably a standard, absolute "up" (say, using the spin axis of the galaxy) altering the roll will allow both ships to use the same subjective "up".
2Actually, space in general is mostly 2 dimensional, in that all the interesting stuff generally takes place on some sort of almost flat plane. A star system is generally on a plane, so is the galactic system, and for most planet+moons too. They just tend to be different planes so for ease of communication you will probably just align your idea of down with whatever the most convenient plane is. This of course is ignoring what gravity down is, as that changes as thrust does.
And as for ship alignment, yeah no one is going to worry about that till its time to dock, at which point the lighter vessel will likely change their orientation since its easier and takes less energy. Spaceships are not going to be within human sight range of each other most of the time, even being in relatively the same are. Space too big and getting ships close to each other is dangerous!
But in media that fucks with people's idea of meeting and seeing each other so for convenience of not confusing the audience you don't see that level of realism often.
1The galactic plane is 1000 light years deep.
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