Is there a canon answer for why Star Trek ships always meet aligned? I always assumed either
- Ships generally align with the galactic axis (seems unlikely every species would accept the standard).
- Ships realign automatically when approaching another vessel based on their artificial gravity or something.
I imagine #2 could lead to some comical spinning as two ships keep trying to align to each other.
EDIT: Also, #2 gets exponentially more complicated as the number of ships increases–maybe the smaller ships align to the biggest one?
It also assumes that every species lives and accommodates their world view relative to how they see and live with gravity in their own species. Not all creatures will be bipedal beings that enjoy an up/ down like we do.
Maybe there will be beings out there that evolved in a liquid atmosphere… or a gaseous environment and they spend more time in different orientations. Maybe some don’t even care about orientation and they just meet one another in whatever orientation because that is their norm.
It’s another one of those things where we all want to believe that the entire universe will see things the way we do on earth.
I think it’s closer to #2, but by choice/convention. An episode I watched lately had a mention of a ship “matching our orientation”
From my understanding, though I can’t pinpoint why I think this, it’s “ship #1 orient based however they feel like, any follow up ships orient accordingly to ships already in-system”
Artificial gravity alignment? so that they can dock etc if needed?
Not aligning these could lead to some hilarious boarding situations.
Because it’s aesthetically unpleasing to the audience. I’ve never heard of a canon reason, though; no.
I don’t think it’s for possible docking, either. Although that was someone’s good guess, they’re not going to dock nose to nose, so they’d have to reposition anyway.
Tip-to-tip, not nose-to-nose, they’re not Eskimos.
Imagine if you transported over and it required alignment.
Damn it Jim, you’ve dropped me on my head again.
round and round you’re turning me
The enemy’s
gateship is “down”.It’s kind of sad. I grew up reading this book, before Card became an insufferable ass (or at least before I came aware of it). He had a book signing in Denver around the year 1998 or 1999? and I got a signed copy of Ender’s Game.
Yeah, it’s sad how often good works of art are made by complete turds of people.
