Lower Decks Season 3

[Riedquat]

What I'm just saying is there's no reason not to use dilithium.

Some things carry on, others don't. Automatically saying "something has been around for a while so should be replaced" never makes much sense. The form of wheels has changed but as I said we still use wheels all the time, and they've been around for millenia. There's no reason for assuming any fictional tech should be a long-lasting idea that does the job or a temporary one in the grand scheme of things.

I also suspect we tend to make unrealstic assumptions about technological development; we live in a period where rapid changes have been happening for a couple of hundred years, but this isn't historically the norm and there are no grounds for assuming rapid change will continue either. It's one of those areas where you can pick and chose whatever suits your fictional setting, either's plausible.

[McAvoy]

What I'm just saying is there's no reason not to use dilithium.

Some things carry on, others don't. Automatically saying "something has been around for a while so should be replaced" never makes much sense. The form of wheels has changed but as I said we still use wheels all the time, and they've been around for millenia. There's no reason for assuming any fictional tech should be a long-lasting idea that does the job or a temporary one in the grand scheme of things.

I also suspect we tend to make unrealstic assumptions about technological development; we live in a period where rapid changes have been happening for a couple of hundred years, but this isn't historically the norm and there are no grounds for assuming rapid change will continue either. It's one of those areas where you can pick and chose whatever suits your fictional setting, either's plausible.

That's the thing. It's not a fuel. It's a focusing crystal for the antimatter/matter stream when the two collides.

The point is that it continues a problem that began with Enterprise. In that once you acquire or develop warp drive, shields, phasers and photon torpedoes you pretty much stagnate. Sure you make them bigger, more powerful, more efficient but at the core same technology as something developed in the 21-22nd centuries still being used in 32nd century.

Let's not confuse the slow progression of technology of the first 5500+ years of human recorded history. Technological progress was hampered by a lot of factors. Information sharing is a big one. Something right now we don't have an issue with.

And neither would Star Trek. One of the ideas of Star Trek is that by exploring the galaxy, meeting new cilivizations and even brining them into the Federation brings their uniqueness (yes like the Borg). Teaching something new, something not thought of, grouping sharing sort of thing.

So 1000 years of warp drive development since Discovery and no one figured out a new crystal? No one figured out a crystal-less version? Or drives that may or may not use it? Slipstream or Transwarp?

It's not a wheel. The wheel is one of the most basic shapes that you can use for your benefit. Warp drive and use of dilithium isn't basic. Both fictional too.

There is a possibility that Romulan singularity cores don't use them even if they were mining the crystals on Remus.

You know they could have easily used 'destroying subspace' since that plot element has been used before and it would have accomplished the same thing.

[CharlesPhipps]

You know they could have easily used 'destroying subspace' since that plot element has been used before and it would have accomplished the same thing.

I mean that would mean that space would forever be barred from being used again and it would be an eternal dark age versus the solution of:

1. Finding out what caused it
2. Finding more dilithium

[Riedquat]

It's not a wheel. The wheel is one of the most basic shapes that you can use for your benefit. Warp drive and use of dilithium isn't basic. Both fictional too.

And there's the crux. Because it's fictional your fiction can have it as the warp drive equivalent of the wheel - perhaps refined, improved, piled full of technology (e.g. compare the wheel of a Roman chariot to one on an F1 car), but still a wheel, or it just be one changeable component that becomes obsolete when something new comes up. Since warp drive is fictional we can't categorically state that warp drive and the use of dilithium isn't basic to FTL travel, or at least one of several basic approaches (in the same way as sometimes sleds or legs are instead of wheels).

[Frustration]

Yeah, even if all dilithium crystals everywhere blew up, there are FTL methods in Star Trek that aren't dependent on them - prominent among which are the singularity core drives used Romulan Birds of Prey, which the Romulans used because of lack of sufficient supplies of the substance.

Presumably there are major disadvantages to singularity cores, which is why most people use dilithium, but it's not impossible to do without them.

Some kind of subspace disruption that caused all subspace tech to fail would have made much more sense.

(edit because I can't spell Romulan)

[CharlesPhipps]

Yeah, even if all dilithium crystals everywhere blew up, there are FTL methods in Star Trek that aren't dependent on them - prominent among which are the singularity core drives used Romulan Birds of Prey, which the Romulans used because of lack of sufficient supplies of the substance.

Presumably there are major disadvantages to singularity cores, which is why most people use dilithium, but it's not impossible to do without them.

Some kind of subspace disruption that caused all subspace tech to fail would have made much more sense.

(edit because I can't spell Romulan)

Except there's no continuing disruption to space travel. There's still a Federation (vastly reduced), there's still large scale interstellar travel, and there's still a functioning galactic economy. The dilithium explosion didn't wipe out space travel -- it only caused the collapse of the Federation and galactic civilization.

They couldn't rebuild because the disruption caused people to stop trusting one another.

[hammerofglass]

Ni'Var supposedly had an alternative in the works (dilithium was in short supply even before the Burn) but panicked and shelved it thinking they were responsible for the disaster. It'll probably come up again in a later season.

[Madner Kami]

I think one problem is, that the means of propulsion are verbally conflated with the means of the energy production, despite both being two distinct things. A warp engine warps the space around the ship as a means of propulsion. A "warp reactor" or "warp core" is a matter-antimatter reactor which, generally, uses a form of dilithium as a moderator and creates energy via matter-antimatter annihilation.
The primary means of the Federation and, in fact, most species to create enough energy for the warp engine to do it's thing is said M/AM-reactor, so it will generally be put together as an entity and mental construct.
But just as this M/AM-reactor can provide energy for phasers and shields, it can also provide energy for different means of propulsion, say the impulse engines (which are canonically actually mostly energetically supplied by simple fusion reactors, because they don't consume enough energy to justify the use of an M/AM-reaction) or a slipstream drive.
Conversely, you can supply the energy for a warp drive through different means, like the Romulans are doing with their singularity cores.

I don't think most of the writers or, in fact, most of the fans are aware of this distinction between the warp engine and the "warp core" for the most part.

[Frustration]

They couldn't rebuild because the disruption caused people to stop trusting one another.

That's the idiotic message part of the idiotic writing. "All we need to solve our problems is trust..."

Con artists want people to be trusting. The people capable of defending themselves and others are skeptical; they trust, but verify.

[CharlesPhipps]

That's the idiotic message part of the idiotic writing. "All we need to solve our problems is trust..."

Con artists want people to be trusting. The people capable of defending themselves and others are skeptical; they trust, but verify.

No offense but that is the ethos of Star Trek and you either believe that people can all come together and make the world a better place or you don't. If you don't, then the federation itself is a lie.