Why was the starship Enterprise always in danger of engine overheating when approaching higher warp speeds? In space there is no atmospheric friction or speakable amount of gravity to overcome, so once the Enterprise was up to speed, it would just need a small amount of side engine thrust to steer and reverse thrust to slow down.

Also, if you're moving faster than light speed, there is no way to avoid hitting something because at, say warp 6, you would also be traveling 6 times faster than "sight" speed. Object sensors would also have to defy the laws of physics and see objects at a faster speed (operating at warp 12: warp 6 to the object and warp 6 back to the sensors), but the electronics used to help Sulu steer could not operate fast enough to process the alert. And even if the electronics could operate at that speed, Sulu could not see the screens and alerts at a speed greater than the speed of light. And audio warnings only travel at mach 1, much slower than warp speed, so those would not help.

Suffice it to say, their insurance premiums must have been wicked.

Then again, maybe constant thrust was required beyond warp 1 because the Enterprise was essentially defying the laws of physics. Maybe warp 1 was the Enterprise's physics-based friction.

Ask Sheldon

"Also, if you're moving faster than light speed, there is no way to avoid hitting something"

They must have counted on the fact that most of space is empty. I don't recall if it ever happened to the Enterprise, but I think I recall the Millennium Falcon coming out of hyperspace into a bunch of big rocks.

Space is being warped - the ship isn't really moving through space. At least in the ST universe.

But it is fiction so they can pretty much do what they want.

Cut it out! Don't screw up this series for me. Star Wars is awful, so Star Trek is all I have.

Not trying to screw it up for you, Norman. I am sure there are explanations somewhere, I am just not a power-Trekkie so I am not aware of them.

Live long and prosper...

Hyperspace (called darkspace by the Yuuzhan Vong) was the alternate state of existence used by starships to achieve faster-than-light travel. It was a phenomenon not completely understood by scientists; it was alternately described as a parallel universe, an extra dimension of space, an alternate mode of physical existence, or simply the universe as viewed traveling faster than the speed of light."

"While generally determined by the distance between two planets, hyperspace travel times between two locations seemingly close to one another could be drastically extended by the need to navigate around stellar hazards, such as asteroid fields and nebulae.

An example of this is the journey from Coruscant to Alderaan. In terms of distance, Alderaan was situated close to Coruscant—the former at approximately 5,000 light years from the Core, the latter at approximately 10,000. However, during the Imperial era, such a journey required roughly sixteen hours of travel due to a section of the route passing through a part of the largely-uncharted Deep Core, where navigation was difficult as a result of the gravity wells produced by the congregation of stars. Ironically, then, it was actually faster to get from Tatooine to Alderaan on the other side of the galaxy. In some cases, intragalactic travels could take days (note: The galaxy is about 120,000 light years across), depending on the distance between two planets and the obstacles between."

So it would seem that travelling around 10,000 light years (my estimation of the distance between Coruscant and Alderaan based on a cursory glance at the Star Wars Map Official Map of Star Wars Galaxy) in 16 hours (or 625 light years/per hour) would be considered slow. A light year in Star Wars equals about 9.5 quadrillion meters, so a ship in hyperspace could travel at least about 6 quintillion meters per hour.

https://www.quora.com/How-fast-does-a-sh...perspace-anyway

I am very excited that there is going to be a fourth Star Wars Trilogy.

bollocks

What a complex person:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/feat...ng-love-w511747

"What a complex person:"

He's brilliant, both a visionary and great engineer, but he needs to find a top quality production manager to get the Tesla 3 off the ground, or he'll go broke before he gets into his other projects. I never believed he'd make a success out of SpaceX. Seriously? Your going to land a rocket standing up? But he did. I think his real money will come from battery storage of electricity. It will be interesting to see how his Puerto Rico projects work out. If we can generate solar and store it for a reasonable amount of time before we use it, we'll all be unplugging from the utilities.

I bought some Tesla stock a while back, knowing it had about as a good a chance of going to zero as going up. I've doubled my money, but I'm glad I don't have my entire retirement savings in it.

MBH, have you seen where Fisker has supposedly made some significant breakthroughs in the area of batteries? Supposedly very inexpensive batteries that charge very quickly, which may hurt Tesla significantly.

http://www.businessinsider.com/henrik-fi...ric-car-2016-10

I hadn't heard of Fisker. It seems he may be more talk that substance.

Fisker is the company that made the Karma, which was a killer-looking electric car, but that went bankrupt. It was bought by a consortium, which included Bob Lutz, who is a wily veteran of the auto industry, who wanted to resurrect it. I don't know what tech they've discovered, but Bob Lutz is no fool I can say that for sure. Will be interesting to see where this goes.

Bob Lutz is 85 years old, unless he has harnessed the power of extended life (like Pale) he may never see it go into production as it can take decades to get a car into production.

Headline: "Owning a dog linked to lower risk of death"

um ... you can not reduce the risk of death. No one makes it out alive ....

Why is there a bobby pin in the men's room?

Man bun?

Prepper Jeff carries one with him in case he ever gets put in handcuffs...

is someone an aspiring MacGuyver?

In addition to the usual turkey & trimmings that we had yesterday, my nephew smoked a duck. Wow, was that good! Never had smoked duck before, but I am now a fan.

KEEP IT UP APPLE! Keep slowing down my iPhone 5s around Christmas in a c r a p p y attempt to get me to buy a new model. KEEP IT UP! I'll launch this piece out of a skeet house and unload, then go buy myself a nice flip phone!

Never had that issue with any Android phone, just sayin'