Have you ever thought about time? At least, the version of time that must exist in every space-based science fiction show ever? Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, or any other subsidiary of space; they all share some fundamental issues with how they address time. Star Trek decided to just have Captain Picard confidently state the “Star Date” at the beginning of each episode and call it even, but seriously, time is way more complicated than that.
Ok, let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. Obviously, we have to either actively ignore Einstein’s theory of relativity OR assume that Warp Drives/FTL Drives/Wormholes not only travel through space at light speed variations but also travel through time so that the centuries of time that tick away in minutes can be undone by simultaneously traveling to the “past”. If we do not do one of these 2 things then every time a ship jumps into hyper drive it would take them centuries to travel to different quadrants of the galaxy/universe even though time still passes by in hours for the crew. There would be no going back to planets to visit relatives, as far as they are concerned, you signed up for a one way trip.
Sappy human emotions aside, that also means that every ship is pretty much a one-way, one-time trip ship because as soon as you decelerate to normal time, technology would have had 200 years to advance while you were out being silly in the stars. That top of the line Enterprise that you captain is 200 years old and you just drove it off the lot yesterday!
I’m not even going to go into the obvious technological disparity issues between alien civilizations because, come on, this is fiction obviously, but without some way to account for the time difference in travel every ship will be full of old-school ancestor lunatics trying to barter their decrepit androids for a slice of ham.
More importantly, if we do assume that every ship is actively running algorithms to only travel to times that are arbitrarily related to the passengers on board, we still haven’t fixed the fact that time passes in a completely subjective manner. I can’t even drive across Texas without changing time zones, how the hell am I supposed to know what time it is when I’m drifting half-a-billion light years from the closest class M planet?
I guess at that point, time perspective would have to change from the amount of time it takes a planet to spin on its axis/go around a star to how quickly the cells in your body degenerate or some crap.
So I guess my point is, don’t wear a watch on your future space cruises… it’s depressing.
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