In various episodes (such as ) 'transporter sites' appear to be used for transporting people to and from planets.   Is there any particular explanation for this? From other series, and other episodes of the same series, it appears as if site-to-site transport had been perfected by that point and was no longer a formal requirement.    Based on the linked question/answers, seems that the most likely relevant explanation is one of time efficiency?  Within the context of the specific episode, the (large) away team was not in immediate danger. Emergency transporting each individual would have led to a slower total transport time (since locking on each signal and performing the transport would be slower), probably be more energy-expensive, and also riskier (since all calculations for the designated transport site would have had time to be optimized in advance).   [Still seems rather a convenient plot device for the episode, but maybe not as terrible as it seemed on first pass]
46556
I hope this isn't a silly question but I've been watching TNG and this bothers me.  The transporter 'pad' area is relatively small.  As a guess, maybe 12 people can fit on it.  But the vast majority of times it's being used by 2-3 people.  However, the transporter is able to beam people from anywhere on the ship to anywhere (within some distance I presume).  It's fairly common for them to perform a transport directly to the bridge.  So, why is there an actual room?    If a three man away team is to beam down to the surface of a planet - why do they have to walk all the way to the transporter room, then stand on the pad to get down there?  Why not simply beam them from where they are, to the surface.  The ship's computer is able to locate anyone on board.
95459
There are numerous places in various Star Trek episodes where references are made to the fact that "downloads" are a destructive operation: you download something from one place, and unless you explicitly made a copy beforehand, what you downloaded is gone from its original storage location and instead appears in some other location. Hence was born the term "copy and download".  There are of course out-of-universe, plot reasons for things happening that way which are exploited from time to time. There is also the out-of-universe explanation of how large media companies feel about people downloading copyrighted works, and a possible out-of-universe explanation that at the time, people in general may not have been intimitely familiar with the implications of the term "download", so they added "copy" to help describe what happens to at least portions of their viewership.  But is there a plausible in-universe explanation for why downloads would be destructive by default, and a specific copying operation would have to be made beforehand so as to not delete the data from its original location?  As for specific examples, these are two that I can think of right now (I'm quite sure there are more):   VOY "Twisted" (S2E06), right near the end, stated by Torres: "Our entire database has been copied and downloaded into somebody else's system." VOY "Message In A Bottle" (S4E14), a little more than five minutes into the episode, the EMH is "downloaded into the transceiver array" for transmission across an alien sensor network to the Prometheus when the latter is in the alpha quadrant, and some 20 minutes into the episode it's established that the EMH is not available in the sickbay and will return later.
55448
The  in the Babylon 5 saga are very secretive. As far as we know, only two humans ever visited their empire and lived.  Vorlon territory was restricted to other alien species and (almost) every known expedition into Vorlon space failed to return to their respective governments. Much like the Shadow homeworld, Vorlon is protected by an array of highly advanced and automated defense systems designed to keep out intruders and primitive spacefaring races. These defense systems remain in place and active even after the Vorlons abandoned their home and left known space; evidence suggests that the systems will not allow outsiders entry to Vorlon until 1,000,000 human years have elapsed.  They wear encounter suits and very rarely leave the suits because they don't want others to see how Vorlons appear.    Despite their secretiveness about their empire, their history, and especially their physiology, somebody poisoned the Vorlon ambassador to . How would anybody know how to poison a Vorlon?  In the pilot episode, , ...      a member of the Wind Swords, a militant section of the Minbari warrior caste, disguised himself as station Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, and attempted to assassinate  with poison.   A person could not pick a chemical at random and hope it works. If they tried sodium-cyanide, they might discover it just makes Vorlons hallucinate, but does not injure them. Or if somebody tried, potassium-chloride, they might discover that Vorlons use that the way we use table salt, sodium-chloride.  Later in the episode ...      Doctor Benjamin Kyle decided to risk treating Kosh, which meant opening the encounter suit. Determining that a cure would be impossible without knowing where the poison entered the Vorlon, Dr. Kyle convinced newly arrived Psi Corps telepath Lyta Alexander to scan the Vorlon. Despite the very strict Psi Corps rules in such cases, Lyta performed the scan.   So we have a separate, but related question of how could a doctor know how to treat a Vorlon for poison if he doesn't understand Vorlon physiology, which poison was used, or the effect of the poison on the body? While this second question is intriguing, it's not the focus of this post.  I prefer answers backed by canon sources; such as comments from the producers, novelizations, or screenplays.
97241
I have little recollection when I read this, but it started with people observing indications of some special engine use many lightyears away, and it led them to 'reverse-engineer' the traces to create their own drive.  Had the usual tropes of international crew-selection for first-voyage.  Somewhere in the travel, they encounter a sentient star or quasar.  When they get back hundreds/thousands of years later, they arrive to an uncaring Earth that no longer pursues space-travel.
57871
A fundamental law of physics is, in short, that two things cannot exist in the same space at the same time.  This is easily demonstrated by dropping a relatively large mass, such as pasta noodles, into a container of water, such as a pot.  The water level will rise as it "makes room" for the pasta, and will overflow if you've put in too much of either.  Conversely, if you were to scoop all of the noodles out (presuming you had a way to scoop just the noodles, without taking along any water at all) you would see the water sink down to its original level (or lower, if it had overflown earlier).  Taking this into consideration, I see a problem with transporter technology which I'm not sure I've ever seen addressed:  What happens to the air surrounding a transport subject's origin point, or occupying the destination?  The transporter must have some means of compensating for the displacement, otherwise each transport should in theory be accompanied by a loud pop at each end - at the origin when the air collapses to fill a vacuum left behind, and at the destination when a relatively large volume of air is forced away to make room for the subject.  This effect should be even more pronounced, and perhaps even hazardous, in closed environments such as spacecraft where the air has really no place to go.  One option would be to have the transporter exchange the air (or other matter, such as dust or raindrops) at the destination for the matter of the subject, as it is being transported.  However, this is not seen as we would often notice small portions of dust storms or downpours getting dropped onto the transporter pad when people are transported into adverse weather conditions.  Imagine having that cleanup as part of the Transporter Chief's job duties.  Another option would be to process the matter from the destination through the replicator, so that it is congruous with the same volume of air at the origin.  This would be a fairly complex operation though, and could result in a lag too long to be acceptable by the laws of physics.  Come to think of it, this same (or a similar) issue should affect replicator and holodeck technology as well.  Has any of this ever been addressed canonically, either in a Star Trek episode or in technical manuals?
16895
This question is related to "The Last Jedi":  The maneuvre that vice admiral Holdo (with the purple hair) uses towards the end of the film seems remarkably effective.   It seems that it would have worked pretty well much earlier. Especially as two other ships were just allowed to run out of fuel and be destroyed.  It seems doing it earlier with different assets would have incurred less losses. Yet nobody seemed to consider it. Any in universe reason why?
44741
How does Picard, or anyone for that matter, decide at what warp speed to travel?  Obviously there are times when they need to get somewhere in a hurry and he says, warp 9 or maximum warp, but the rest of the time he just seems to pick a number at random. He rolls a warp 6.5 Is there some guide as to recommended speeds that he's following? Is there a speed that is the most efficient?
84839
I remember reading a story about humans colonizing Mars.  It was from the point of view of a pilot and I think he and others were mining asteroids to use the materials on Mars.  I do remember they used water vapor for thrusters.  Someone on Earth was using the Mars colonists as scapegoats and behaving like the Late Senator McCarthy.  He kept referring to them as "Water wasters" and said they were demanding water from Earth and would use up all the water and humans would have to ration water and so on.  In truth, the amount of water they were using (I think from Martian polar caps) was quite small and they were no threat -- the politician was just using them as a focus so he could build his career.  Rather than take him on politically, they sent an expedition out to Saturn, grabbed a large chunk of ice from Saturn's rings, brought it back, and I think they crashed it on Mars, talking about how it would serve their needs for decades or more.  I can't remember if there was more, such as figuring that one effect of that much water on Mars (as it changed into liquid form) would help with terraforming or not.  But I remember the point was that they could not longer be used as a scapegoat by the politician.  The recent talk of asteroid mining has me thinking of this, but I can't remember the author's name or the title.
5139
SPOILERS FOR   Star Trek Discovery Season 1 Episode 3       The Shuttle that Michael Burnham is on is flying through a dangerous cloud that has energy-eating organisms inside it. When the discovery rescues the ship you see it just outside the cloud above the shuttle clearly is not in danger. So the question is: Why did the shuttle fly through the cloud when it clearly could have flown above the cloud?
117556
Why are planetary blockades confined to a single point of a planet instead of being sphere shell shaped around the planet? (I know, it would take an awful lot of spaceships.)  Also, when a rebel ship wants to escape from a planet and there is a single star destroyer hovering in the atmosphere (or some more of them further up, like in the Empire Strikes Back) how come it's not a viable maneuver to fly low altitude for a couple of hundred kilometers horizontally (they would be out of the single-point blockade), then make a vertical dash upwards?
75292
Simple question - What is the address they dial to connect with the Ancient ship Destiny in Stargate Universe from Icarus base.  I have found the address on  - however they have an unconfirmed order, and not sure of the validity of this.  Any help deciphering the above would be great!
100151
Hypothetically, if you were to travel say, 6 months into the past with no spatial displacement, you would end up floating in space because the Earth would be on the opposite side of the sun.  I know when it comes to sci-fi, they can't account for everything and I don't expect them to. So I'm not nit-picking or anything, I'm just wondering if this is something that has been addressed to any detail, as it seems like it would have to be a major component of any time travel.
115654
In the final episode of TNG () Captain Beverly Picard,and Admiral Riker both travel at Warp 13, but in Voyager the warp limit is warp 10.  In  Tom Paris breaks warp 10 and there are all sorts of unforeseen side affects that are not observed in All Good Things.  I understand that transwarp uses a different kind of technology, but it does not seem that they are using transwarp in TNG: All Good Things.  Is there any in-universe explanation for this or was it just overlooked by the writers?
112949
Is there an in-universe explanation for why the Borg always move like 1950s cheap-special-effects sci-fi tin can robots?   With the advanced technology they have, you'd think they would have BETTER (faster, more graceful) movement than humans, with more advanced power sources, better motors (or augmented muscles), and better controlled software/hardware.  Instead, they have these jerky, slow motion movements that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, except possibly that "the studio people wanted to make them look 'like robots'" (on top of all the visible Borg gear) and this was the only, not-too-brilliant, idea they came up with.  Is there an explanation for this? (ideally, in-universe, or an "official" franchise out-of-universe one)?   P.S. I'm interested in an existing explanation, NOT in someone's personal theory.
65394
In Interstellar, after young Murph places the watch on the bookshelf in her bedroom, her father - in the same bedroom but from another dimension - moved the second hand and recorded data in a Morse-signal message on it. Many years later, the second hand still signals the message, grown-up Murph finds the watch and takes it with her to NASA and there she translates the message back into the data needed.  If we assume the watch had a long lasting battery, then I still see some problems with this plot:   From what we know from the explanation in the movie itself is that the only thing capable to travel from them in the 4th or 5th dimension to present Earth is gravity. Gravity is a vertical force on Earth. It pulled dust from the air to the floor in a barcode-like pattern. So how can it adjust the horizontal position of the second hand of the watch? Like a magnet? And how is a multiple of those movements of the second hand recorded on the watch? How does it play the message for all these years, again and again. Not only in Murph's bedroom, but still at NASA too?   Normally I would answer this myself by saying that it is film, it is science fiction, everything is possible, and there is no need to question things we cannot explain. But this movie certainly has the intention of being truthful to science, to explain what is going on and this particular director has a reputation of telling stories that in one way or another always has plausible explanations for plot-hole-like aspects.
26333
When watching the part where they go down to Miller, I was bothered by the fact that the waves didn't break despite the fact that the water level is ostensibly only knee-deep (roughly, a wave starts to break when the depth of the water is less than the height of the wave). But then, a friend came up with the idea that the waves are not really waves. Given that the gravitational influence of Gargantua on Miller is, well, gargantuan (I'm not apologizing for that joke) the "waves" are actually mountains of water created by Gargantua's gravity. As such, the "waves" don't really move towards the crew; rather, they are stationary (relative to Gargantua), and it is the rotation of Miller that brings the crew towards the "waves". The reason the ocean is so shallow is because a substantial proportion of Miller's water is used up to make up the "waves".  Is this really a plausible idea? What bothers me about this is that, if it is really the planet that is rotating under the "waves", the crew should have experienced a night-day (or day-night) transition between one "wave" and the next.
34599
Seems like this is the most powerful weapon of all: transport your enemy into a bulkhead, planet, etc. Transport your enemy's ship inside a planet, etc.  Is there some technical reason that it can not be used this way?