The Day the Earth Stood Still

[Bob Blaylock]

Star Trek Warp Drive: in the Star Trek universe they at least understand the LAW that NOTHING exceeds the speed of light. There are reasons NOTHING can go faster.

So how did they get around it? By FOLDING THE UNIVERSE to bring other stars closer. That is the essence of "Warp Drive.". Sorry, but that ain't gonna happen. No amount of wishful thinking will make it happen

There is a concept, entirely theoretical at this point, that suggests a way that superluminal flight might be one day be achieved, and it is amazingly similar to what Star Trek predicted about its Warp Drive.

At this point, it's really not possible to say whether or not we will ever be able to make this theory work in real life.

Alcubierre drive - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Harry Dresden]

By the time The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was written, personal computers had come into being. Douglas Adams, in fact, was an enthusiastic early-adopter of such technology.

By contrast, Star Trek imagined that computers would remain much bigger and scarcer. The Enterprise had one main computer, incorporated into the spacecraft, with no concept of computers small enough or portable enough that individual crew members might have them.

Star Trek also assumed that by the end of the 20th Century, some of humanity might venture outside of our solar system in sleeper ships. Khan and his bunch are supposed to have fled that way in the 1990s.

2001: A Space Odyssey was a bit more conservative, predicting that by 2001, we'd have colonized the Moon, and be sending a manned ship out as far as Jupiter—Also, with just one computer for the entire ship, incorporated into the ship.

It seems that in the 1960s, science fiction writers believed that we would be making much more progress, much more quickly, toward sending men into space; and completely missed the advances that were going to take place in computer technology. I don't think they had anticipated, by that time, that we'd even have basic electronic calculators in a portable form, such as what very quickly became common in the 1970s, much less the personal microcomputers such as the TRS-80 or the Apple ][ that came out in the late 1970s.




How old are you, if I dare ask?

Microwave ovens didn't become common until some time in the 1970s (seems like that was a period of massive advancement in electronic technologies in general), but I thought I remembered hearing that they were invented in the 1940s, and on perusing the Wikipedia, I find that the concept of using radio waves to cook food was first publicly demonstrated in the 1930s. Looks like the first actual microwave oven as such, as invented in 1945, and the first commercially-available microwave ovens hit the market in 1947. The original Radarange stood almost six feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000 in 1947 Dollars (about $66,000 in 2022 Dollars).

in star trek all crew members had a computer terminal in their quarters...and all they had to do was take a tricorder with them for a portable computer...

 

[Bob Blaylock]

in star trek all crew members had a computer terminal in their quarters...and all they had to do was take a tricorder with them for a portable computer...

The terminal went to the main ship's computer.

The idea of a large, multiuser computer, with several terminals running off of it, was a very real concept, at least back as far the time in which Star Trek was made. A basic terminal was just a device with a screen and a keyboard, and some basic circuitry to transmit whatever you typed on the keyboard to the host computer and to display what the host computer sent to you on the screen. Sometimes, even teletypes were used as terminals. No computing ability at the user's end, just the ability to communicate with a computer that was on the other end of the connection.

I do not know if any modern computers exist, in any similar form. The point has been reached, now, where almost everyone has a device that he can carry in his pocket, that is a much more powerful and sophisticated computer than what, back in the 1960s, would fill an entire building, and be so costly that a large company might own one or two of them, shared via terminals by all the employees that were given access thereto.


And I think the Tricorder was primarily just a broad-function sensing and recoding device, possibly with some built-in analysis capabilities; nothing like what we think of today as a computer. Probably more accurate to think of it as being something akin to a tape recorder, but with a wide range of sensors measuring and recording many other things than mere sound.

 

[Zincwarrior]

And I think the Tricorder was primarily just a broad-function sensing and recoding device, possibly with some built-in analysis capabilities; nothing like what we think of today as a computer. Probably more accurate to think of it as being something akin to a tape recorder, but with a wide range of sensors measuring and recording many other things than mere sound.

Yes, it had a pretty full short range sensor suite that could scan for different types of life, chemicals, basically a lab in a box. Plus it was a recorder of that data. Quite cool actually.

Communicators are better versions of our satellite phones (with the Enterprise as the Satellite).

 

[Mushroom]

Microwave ovens didn't become common until some time in the 1970s (seems like that was a period of massive advancement in electronic technologies in general), but I thought I remembered hearing that they were invented in the 1940s, and on perusing the Wikipedia, I find that the concept of using radio waves to cook food was first publicly demonstrated in the 1930s. Looks like the first actual microwave oven as such, as invented in 1945, and the first commercially-available microwave ovens hit the market in 1947. The original Radarange stood almost six feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000 in 1947 Dollars (about $66,000 in 2022 Dollars).

Actually, it was a bit more than that.

In addition to the cost and size, one of the things that held back early microwaves is the power. Those all required 220 volt outlets, and most people in their kitchen only had one of those if they had one at all. So in addition to the cost of the large unit, you also had to have an electrician add in a new power line and outlet just for that one appliance.

My dad actually worked for Litton starting in the 1960s, and in around 1970 brought home one of the very first home microwaves that he got at a discount at work, I want to say around $200. And that is $200 in 1971, That would be over $1,500 today, the retail cost was around $400 (over $3,000 today). But it was a landmark as it was the first home unit available that would plug into a standard 110 volt outlet. And the thing was an absolute beast, even able to cook a whole turkey with ease. And in that era it was quite interesting learning to cook in one, as there were no "microwave dinners" at all.

At that time very few products were made with microwaves in mind. TV dinners all came in aluminum trays, and plasticware could not handle the temperatures. So most cooking had to have things transferred into glass containers. They started to take off in the 1970s, but really came into their own in the 1980s when frozen food makers dumped the aluminum trays all their food came in and switched over to high temperature plastics and laminated paper. And by then the plastic container makers learned how to make their products in containers that would not melt in the ovens.

 

[Mushroom]

in star trek all crew members had a computer terminal in their quarters...and all they had to do was take a tricorder with them for a portable computer...

I highlighted the main thing in what you said. I guess you do not really know what a "computer terminal" is.

First of all, it is not actually a computer. It is literally that, a terminal. It is a completely dumb device that sends all the commands to the actual computer itself, which then does all the work and sends the results back to the terminal for display. There is actually no "processor" at all in most of them, although later ones did start to incorporate CPUs like the Z80, 8080, and ultimately the 80186. But that was not for actually processing anything, but by that time you had multiple different languages in use to transmit instructions and responses between many different types of mainframes so there were multiple "languages" used. So the CPU started to become incorporated so that a terminal could be connected to many different kinds of mainframes and be able to talk to them through a basic translator that used the CPU. So a terminal made by Televideo could then work with an IBM mainframe, Data General, HP, DEC, UNIVAC, Honeywell, Speary, and many of the dozens of other companies that were making mainframe computers.

And companies that had multiple different mainframes started to install translation devices that would allow these different mainframes to talk to each other on the same way. So the Speary-UNIVAC mainframe could request data that had been stored on the IBM System/360 mainframe. But those were once again dumb devices with a CPU that only handled translation functions. But that terminal did no actual work, the CPU only existed so that it could translate the signals it wanted to use into the code needed for VT100, ASCII, ANSI, TTY, or any of the other "codecs" that the mainframes would get and receive instructions from the terminals.

And it was actually the same with the tricorder. That was actually only a collection and playback system, and the few times it was used and they were cut off from the ship that was all it could do, record data and play it back. And actual "computation abilities" required it to be able to communicate with the computer on the ship because that is where the computer was. It was never thought of as a computer itself, more akin to a sound and video recorder and playback system. And remember, in the original show there were multiple kinds of tricorders. Actually, TOS had 4 different tricorders, each of which had specific detection abilities. In keeping with the technology of the era, not the more universal devices seen in TNG and afterwards.

And as I know you will ask, those were the "General Use Tricorder" like Spock would use (it never had a specific name, just "Tricorder"). Doctor McCoy used a Medical Tricorder, which was tied to the hand scanner which was stored inside the tricorder itself. One episode featured the "Psycho-Tricorder", which was used to detect abnormalities in the brain and required special training to use. Then there was the Heavy Duty Tricorder, which would be used mostly by engineers. But every single one of them was a dumb device, it only collected or showed information that was actually processed by the ship's computer.

That is why in every episode of the show, even when in their quarters they would use the terminal to talk to the ship's computer. They did not actually talk to the terminal itself, it was essentially the eyes and ears of the computer and not itself a computer.

I guess I see it different, because I started in computers in the era of mainframes. When even the early microcomputers or personal computers were still thought of more as "smart terminals" because that is closer to what they were than what we use today.

But no, the terminals in their quarters or work spaces, the TOS version of the PADD, the tricorder, none of those were "smart devices" in any way. They themselves were not computers. Simply ways to access the computer itself from remote locations.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Communicators are better versions of our satellite phones (with the Enterprise as the Satellite).

I don't know if that much is ever made clear, whether the communicators communicate directly with one another, like a common walkie-talkie would, or whether all communication is relayed through the spacecraft. I want to think the former, but I could be mistaken. It occurs to me to wonder if the communicators are ever shown working at some point where the Enterprise is nowhere nearby. Perhaps a team left on a plant, while the Enterprise flies off to somewhere else, intending to come back later and retrieve the team. Can the team use their communicators to talk to one another, while the Enterprise is away?

A long time ago, I came across, in a Star Trek book, a schematic that purported to be for the communicator. I was in my teens, at the time, so that was a long time ago. I had formed the weak intent to try to acquire the parts and build it, to see if I got anything that worked. I very much suspect that the schematic would have yielded a basic walkie talkie, of about the technological level of the time the book was written. I think it had two channels, represented by two crystals in the schematic and a switch to choose between them; and I think I remember the crystals were specified for two different frequencies that are in the 27MHz Citizen's Band. I imagine that if I had built one, and used a crystal for one channel that matched the frequency of a common walkie talkie, that perhaps this “communicator” would be able to work with that other walkie talkie.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I highlighted the main thing in what you said. I guess you do not really know what a "computer terminal" is.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

He let Biden live?

The Sizzling Quisling

Why wouldn't he? Biden loves even the ET aliens. He's no Sigourney Weaver.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

There is a concept, entirely theoretical at this point, that suggests a way that superluminal flight might be one day be achieved, and it is amazingly similar to what Star Trek predicted about its Warp Drive.

At this point, it's really not possible to say whether or not we will ever be able to make this theory work in real life.

Alcubierre drive - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Entanglement Is One Particle Going Back and Forth Through This Extra-Universe Medium

If you dare to understand E = mc^2 as a collision, then a light-year every 3 minutes has happened here before the first collision, and everywhere in the universe "outside" ours. So at least we could communicate with and photograph planets thousands of light-years away by going through the underlying 4th spatial dimension and back into 3D.

 

[Flopper]

By the time The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was written, personal computers had come into being. Douglas Adams, in fact, was an enthusiastic early-adopter of such technology.

By contrast, Star Trek imagined that computers would remain much bigger and scarcer. The Enterprise had one main computer, incorporated into the spacecraft, with no concept of computers small enough or portable enough that individual crew members might have them.

Star Trek also assumed that by the end of the 20th Century, some of humanity might venture outside of our solar system in sleeper ships. Khan and his bunch are supposed to have fled that way in the 1990s.

2001: A Space Odyssey was a bit more conservative, predicting that by 2001, we'd have colonized the Moon, and be sending a manned ship out as far as Jupiter—Also, with just one computer for the entire ship, incorporated into the ship.

It seems that in the 1960s, science fiction writers believed that we would be making much more progress, much more quickly, toward sending men into space; and completely missed the advances that were going to take place in computer technology. I don't think they had anticipated, by that time, that we'd even have basic electronic calculators in a portable form, such as what very quickly became common in the 1970s, much less the personal microcomputers such as the TRS-80 or the Apple ][ that came out in the late 1970s.




How old are you, if I dare ask?

Microwave ovens didn't become common until some time in the 1970s (seems like that was a period of massive advancement in electronic technologies in general), but I thought I remembered hearing that they were invented in the 1940s, and on perusing the Wikipedia, I find that the concept of using radio waves to cook food was first publicly demonstrated in the 1930s. Looks like the first actual microwave oven as such, as invented in 1945, and the first commercially-available microwave ovens hit the market in 1947. The original Radarange stood almost six feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000 in 1947 Dollars (about $66,000 in 2022 Dollars).

And a lot of technology that came in the 70's and 80's was do to advances in technology due to the Space programs.

 

[Mushroom]

A long time ago, I came across, in a Star Trek book, a schematic that purported to be for the communicator.

Ah yes, the Star Trek Technical Manual.

Yes, I remember that well, had the same book in the 1970s. And yes, it makes a simple CB radio. Had my electronics teacher look through it, and he laughed. It is a 6 channel CB radio, but only the first "OMNI" is a real channel. 27.125 MHz is channel 14 on the CB band. And the rest were nonsensical that you could not get crystals for anyways. But he said if we ignored those parts of the schematic there was no reason why that would not have worked like a toy walkie talkie.

 

[Mushroom]

View attachment 906294

The fact is, most of those younger than 40 likely do not know what a Computer Terminal actually was. It is a technology so far before their time that they likely think they are actual computers.

It is like trying to explain to a lot of young techs today that yes, we actually were still using coax for networking into the middle 1990s. Or that early switches and routers were not the little boxes they see today, it was actually a computer. So many who were born after the technologies fell out of use have absolutely no idea of how we did it before the off the shelf equipment they have now was even a thing.

 

[Mushroom]

And a lot of technology that came in the 70's and 80's was do to advances in technology due to the Space programs.

There was that, plus simply companies trying to find cheaper and easier ways to do things.

For example, the modern IC came after Apollo. That was all made with discrete TTL systems. And for those that do not know, all an IC mostly is is a series of transistors all fabricated in a single package. But Apollo used TTL (Transistor to Transistor Logic), where the "brain" was essentially thousands of individual transistors wired together.

Most likely have no idea that the earliest of the "video games" in the 1970s did not even have integrated circuits. Pong, Computer Space, Breakout, Sea Wolf, Gunfighter, even as late as Deathrace 2000 (1976) a great many still did not use "computer chips" as we think of them at all, it was just transistors wired together.

And most of the early ICs were made for the calculator industry. A big powerhouse through most of the 1970s was the Intel 4004. A whopping 2,300 transistors on a single chip, that actually operated as a CPU in the fashion we think of it today. That spawned the 8008, the 8080 (which powered many of the first generation of "microcomputers" and the Z80 was a clone of), which then became the much more advanced 8086 (which is the originator of most CPUs we still use to this day).

Now the "space program" was not using ICs, it was still very much grounded in the old school TTL systems for their robustness. Plus the simple fact that even the Apollo program was years before the first IC would be made. Heck, TTL calculators were actually a thing in the era of Apollo, but they all still used sliderules. Here, say hello to what was probably the most advanced "computer" in an Apollo capsule.

The Picket N600-ES. One just like that was issued to every Apollo astronaut for their mission.

Now there are technologies that came from NASA, especially in communications as they had to set up some elaborate arrays globally in order to communicate with the men and capsule. But a lot of the technology itself is actually still from the 1950s. And materials also took a leap, as many of the items used were made of things that simply did not exist before then.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Ah yes, the Star Trek Technical Manual.

Yes, I remember that well, had the same book in the 1970s. And yes, it makes a simple CB radio. Had my electronics teacher look through it, and he laughed. It is a 6 channel CB radio, but only the first "OMNI" is a real channel. 27.125 MHz is channel 14 on the CB band. And the rest were nonsensical that you could not get crystals for anyways. But he said if we ignored those parts of the schematic there was no reason why that would not have worked like a toy walkie talkie.

Actually, I think the 49 MHz band was allocated for uses similar to those of the 27MHz band. The old Citizens band, I don't know if it was used for voice communications, but I know a lot of radio-controlled toys used that band.

 

[Mushroom]

Actually, I think the 49 MHz band was allocated for uses similar to those of the 27MHz band.

Yes, it was. But that was actually after I had my instructor look into the schematics.

 

[Divine Wind]

in star trek all crew members had a computer terminal in their quarters...and all they had to do was take a tricorder with them for a portable computer...

Tricorders crossed my mind too. They are portable computers with no link required to the main ship's computer.

 

[Flopper]

There was that, plus simply companies trying to find cheaper and easier ways to do things.

For example, the modern IC came after Apollo. That was all made with discrete TTL systems. And for those that do not know, all an IC mostly is is a series of transistors all fabricated in a single package. But Apollo used TTL (Transistor to Transistor Logic), where the "brain" was essentially thousands of individual transistors wired together.

Most likely have no idea that the earliest of the "video games" in the 1970s did not even have integrated circuits. Pong, Computer Space, Breakout, Sea Wolf, Gunfighter, even as late as Deathrace 2000 (1976) a great many still did not use "computer chips" as we think of them at all, it was just transistors wired together.

And most of the early ICs were made for the calculator industry. A big powerhouse through most of the 1970s was the Intel 4004. A whopping 2,300 transistors on a single chip, that actually operated as a CPU in the fashion we think of it today. That spawned the 8008, the 8080 (which powered many of the first generation of "microcomputers" and the Z80 was a clone of), which then became the much more advanced 8086 (which is the originator of most CPUs we still use to this day).

Now the "space program" was not using ICs, it was still very much grounded in the old school TTL systems for their robustness. Plus the simple fact that even the Apollo program was years before the first IC would be made. Heck, TTL calculators were actually a thing in the era of Apollo, but they all still used sliderules. Here, say hello to what was probably the most advanced "computer" in an Apollo capsule.

The Picket N600-ES. One just like that was issued to every Apollo astronaut for their mission.

Now there are technologies that came from NASA, especially in communications as they had to set up some elaborate arrays globally in order to communicate with the men and capsule. But a lot of the technology itself is actually still from the 1950s. And materials also took a leap, as many of the items used were made of things that simply did not exist before then.

The IC was developed at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959. They were in general use in the mid 60's. i was working in the Apollo program from 1964-1967. NASA required that manned mission must use only flight qualified components which had proven very high reliability. On the Saturn Booster we must have used 500 to 1,000 little DC Amplifiers and everyone of them used discrete components. I left work for a test equipment manufacture who sold to NASA and the military. I designed several pieces of test equipment in the late 60's and early 70's that used IC's in all of them. However, this equipment was not used in the air. Not sure when IC's became common on NASA and military vehicles.

Von Braun insisted that only proven high reliability components be used on Apollo maned vehicles. Everything was over designed, by NASA and the vendor. Everything was tested at the component level, the assembly level, and vehicle level. The result was much heavier vehicles, more delays, and a huge cost. However, there were were 12 Apollo flights, including nine that took astronauts to the moon. No astronauts died on any of them.

 

[Mushroom]

They are portable computers with no link required to the main ship's computer.

They are not computers, just scanners and recorders.

 

[progressive hunter]

The laser wasn't invented until 9 years after the movie was made

on earth it wasnt,,