Space and Direction: What is Up?

[Saelune]

So I just watched the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I have an idea for another topic specifically about it, but this is about something else that has bothered me for a long time.

I know Sci-Fi is never really super accurate, and alot of it is more fun for it. But I still wonder about alot of facets of space travel and galactic civilizations...

Why are all ships on the same axis!? Sure, on Earth there is a north and south, an up and down, but not space, yet Star Wars, Star Trek, and most every other space-faring series, every ship is on the same axis and orientation as all others. Sure the individual ships would want to have their own gravity in the ship for normalcy and convenience, but when say, The Enterprise comes across some Klingon Ships, they should most likely be oriented different. Seemingly at some other angle or upside down.

So I basically am just generally asking about this? Do we have any idea on how ships would likely interact relative to eachother in real life should we get that far as a species? Would we eventually design ships with that in mind? The Borg for example seem to not care for this as much with their geometric shaped ones instead of ships with a clear front and back.

I am not talking just Trek, but reality. I am very curious about people's thoughts on this.

Edit: It makes sense in movies and stuff, sure, but how will we deal with this in real life? We dont currently have ships flying everywhere, but hopefully one day it will be as normal as going out for dinner or taking the bus. So what then?

Anything already addressing this in actual science/space travel?

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

It's mostly a visual thing for the audience. If you portrayed how the concept of "up" is entirely based on our orientation with the pull of gravity, and each ship has its own gravitational axis, you would create a visual clutter that would annoy/confuse/piss off most members of the audience. By orienting all the ships the same way, you give us poor schmucks that live within a relatively two-dimensional understanding of our surroundings something to relate to and orient with.

Already in reality, the actual orientation as perceived by those in space (as in the I.S.S.) is understood to be relative to their own craft only. The famous 'blue marble' photo from the original space flights, for example, was actually flipped by NASA so the viewer would be able to deal with the image better.

 

[Saelune]

Because three dimensional encounters/exploration and ships that travel in any direction would be confusing for most viewers.

One of the most sensible ships in Star Trek, in terms of dimensions, is actually the Borg cube.

It's mostly a visual thing for the audience. If you portrayed how the concept of "up" is entirely based on our orientation with the pull of gravity, and each ship has its own gravitational axis, you would create a visual clutter that would annoy/confuse/piss off most members of the audience. By orienting all the ships the same way, you give us poor schmucks that live within a relatively two-dimensional understanding of our surroundings something to relate to and orient with.

Already in reality, the actual orientation as perceived by those in space (as in the I.S.S.) is understood to be relative to their own craft only. The famous 'blue marble' photo from the original space flights, for example, was actually flipped by NASA so the viewer would be able to deal with the image better.

space is nauseating and disorientating

we do not want to nauseate and disorientate our viewers

so we break reality to make it easier to look at

Im more curious about real life applications. I get it for movies, but if we do eventually colonize space effectively, it will be something to deal with.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Lets say that for the sake of argument, all of the ships are traveling from one place to another place. Space is very big, a lot of empty...space...and there are relatively few planets that are inhabited in comparison to the number of planets that are uninhabited chunks of rock/gas floating in space.

Now assuming all of this, most encounters in space would occur on specific routes from one planet to another planet, and these routes would most likely be straight lines as that would be the shortest distance between any two points.

As such, most ships that end up seeing each other would most likely come at each other face to face from opposing directions rather than from above or below (unless one ship was trying to ambush another).

So, while ships could go in absolutely any direction in space, those ships should still be going somewhere, not just flying around for funzies, and they would most likely travel along more or less set paths that would require the least amount of fuel consumption.

There's my justification. It's not perfect, it does not account for why there aren't any ships that are upside down, and it obviously doesn't account for things like space battles where ships should be flying at each other from every possible direction.

 

[Saelune]

Lets say that for the sake of argument, all of the ships are traveling from one place to another place. Space is very big, a lot of empty...space...and there are relatively few planets that are inhabited in comparison to the number of planets that are uninhabited chunks of rock/gas floating in space.

Now assuming all of this, most encounters in space would occur on specific routes from one planet to another planet, and these routes would most likely be straight lines as that would be the shortest distance between any two points.

As such, most ships that end up seeing each other would most likely come at each other face to face from opposing directions rather than from above or below (unless one ship was trying to ambush another).

There's my justification. It's not perfect, it does not account for why there aren't any ships that are upside down, and it obviously doesn't account for things like space battles where ships should be flying at each other from every possible direction.

I would think it very likely for standardizations to occur eventually, which might be good for the day to day, but not for dealing with say, other entities that are not beholding to human/earth standards.

Im sure perhaps Starfleet would have such settings, but, especially in most Star Trek series about meeting new races and stuff, youd think they'd come across a few ships with different orientations.

And I wonder if future ships will eventually opt for a more versatile style, where its top and bottom are not so apparent or relevant, atleast from outside the ship. I mean, probably more effective to one day just have all space ships be spheres. Particularly when we no longer rely mainly on human sight for navigation...

Im gonna look up how submarines work now that I think of it...

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, spaceship in movies are exactly the same as surface ships or airplanes, so there's an up and down. In reality, up would be away from direction of acceleration.

 

[Saelune]

Eh, spaceship in movies are exactly the same as surface ships or airplanes, so there's an up and down. In reality, up would be away from direction of acceleration.

But not relative to other ships and planets. When you fly a plane, there is the Earth below you and the atmosphere above you. You get out of that plane and GERONIMOOOooooo....

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, spaceship in movies are exactly the same as surface ships or airplanes, so there's an up and down. In reality, up would be away from direction of acceleration.

But not relative to other ships and planets.

Sure, but I'm only going to worry about my plane of reference, people in other ships can work out what's up for them, doesn't have to be the same.

 

[Saelune]

Eh, spaceship in movies are exactly the same as surface ships or airplanes, so there's an up and down. In reality, up would be away from direction of acceleration.

But not relative to other ships and planets.

Sure, but I'm only going to worry about my plane of reference, people in other ships can work out what's up for them, doesn't have to be the same.

Its less of me asking about a problem, just wanting to have a better idea of what the future might look like.

 

[Erttheking]

In the Lost Fleet book series there were some ships that were oval shaped, relatively smooth. Maybe something like that will happen.

 

[Fox12]

Because the enemies gate is down!

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Lets say that for the sake of argument, all of the ships are traveling from one place to another place. Space is very big, a lot of empty...space...and there are relatively few planets that are inhabited in comparison to the number of planets that are uninhabited chunks of rock/gas floating in space.

Now assuming all of this, most encounters in space would occur on specific routes from one planet to another planet, and these routes would most likely be straight lines as that would be the shortest distance between any two points.

As such, most ships that end up seeing each other would most likely come at each other face to face from opposing directions rather than from above or below (unless one ship was trying to ambush another).

There's my justification. It's not perfect, it does not account for why there aren't any ships that are upside down, and it obviously doesn't account for things like space battles where ships should be flying at each other from every possible direction.

I would think it very likely for standardizations to occur eventually, which might be good for the day to day, but not for dealing with say, other entities that are not beholding to human/earth standards.

Im sure perhaps Starfleet would have such settings, but, especially in most Star Trek series about meeting new races and stuff, youd think they'd come across a few ships with different orientations.

And I wonder if future ships will eventually opt for a more versatile style, where its top and bottom are not so apparent or relevant, atleast from outside the ship. I mean, probably more effective to one day just have all space ships be spheres. Particularly when we no longer rely mainly on human sight for navigation...

Im gonna look up how submarines work now that I think of it...

I'm not taking into account aliens for 2 reasons.

1. I tend to really hate aliens in fiction. I've made a thread about this before and no one wanted to post in it.

2. In order to get out far enough in our universe to find aliens we'd most likely have to develop a way to travel faster than light, and when using such technology the possibility of "meeting" alien ships in space would be almost non-existent since we would be able to basically hop from planet to planet while spending the minimum amount of time in space. Because if you can almost instantaneously get wherever you want, why would you hang out in the nothingness of space?

 

[skywolfblue]

So I basically am just generally asking about this? Do we have any idea on how ships would likely interact relative to eachother in real life should we get that far as a species? Would we eventually design ships with that in mind? The Borg for example seem to not care for this as much with their geometric shaped ones instead of ships with a clear front and back.

Anything already addressing this in actual science/space travel?

It all really depends... We haven't reached the point where we can say "Oh hey, spaceships will work like this ____". We are still far from any certainty on spaceships and how they will be designed.

In real life, there are many different reasons to have craft oriented differently.

If your spaceship is routinely flying in atmospheres / landing on planets, a plane / sea ship design makes sense.

If you need to have your spaceship accelerate in any direction quickly, a sphere with thrusters all over the surface is ideal. This of course assumes that reaction engines power the drives. If warp type [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive] drives get invented then you don't need thrusters everywhere, you just change the "downhill" direction of the gravity or warp bubble.

If you're going to be accelerating for a long time, then a simple tall rocket (AKA, flying skyscraper) will do fine.

Also, if you don't have artificial gravity, a spaceship with a rotating ring section is golden. Since warp drive and artificial gravity are a long ways off, this is pretty much the only thing we are going to have in the meantime. Interstellar and The Martian (as well as several other movies I'm forgetting) have pretty good representations of what a rotating ring spacecraft would look like.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I wouldn't worry about it. We'll be dead long before humanity has to grapple with issues like regulating space traffic. But what the hey, I'll humor the idea...

Considering how self-driving cars are looming on the horizon, I'd wager spaceships of the future will be similarly automated. It would probably be relatively easy to synchronize them to precise schedules down designated "lanes" that minimize the prospect of collision with other ships.

 

[Satinavian]

"Up" will be opposed to the direction of whatever illusion of Gravity the ship uses. Star Trek Handwaves it via stupid force field stuff, but realistically that direction will come by design of the starship.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Ships in Star Trek have always been more like ocean-going vessels than actual spaceships. I guess this is to avoid confusing the audience.

If military spaceships ever become a thing, they will probably wind up looking more like the Borg ships than anything else (specifically, they would be spherical or close to it). This is because, unlike atmospheric aircraft which can use aerodynamic effects to turn quickly, spacecraft can only change direction by burning engines, so to turn quickly they would need to have engines capable of burning in all directions while still keeping the centre of mass aligned with the centre of thrust. The most obvious way to do this would be to make them spherical with engines pointing in all directions. They would also, almost certainly, be fully automated.

 

[Bobular]

When playing Space Engineers I generally orientate my ship relative to what I'm interacting with, just out of convenience. I find it helps me mentally if the 'ground'[footnote]Space Station, Larger Ship, Asteroid, Planet, whatever[/footnote] is below me, helps me as I think when piloting if I go down I will crash, It'll be weird to have to think if I go up I will crash. When I approach another ship, I will rotate around until we are on the same axis and the same way round, whether this is due to me being conditioned by growing up on Sci-fi where that is the way ships were though is a decent question.

I know Space Engineers is a game, but I do think it shows a kind of human mentality when it comes to these things, that we will try to orientate ourselves to some sort of perceived normality.

 

[pookie101]

the same reason they add sound effects to ships and weapons in space. its not in anyway realistic but most people expect it just the same and things look or sound weird if they arent added