I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.
BUT… why arent they using drones to explore planets? why are there not more drone-spaceships? why does enterprise need a crew to begin with? Why is there so little automation? Why so few uses of AI in general?
I am saying this as a star trek the next generation person. I’d also expect them to have full video and sensory streams of any surface mission teams.
The in-universe answer re: drones would be that people want to explore. Sure, it’s dangerous, but it’s also exciting, fascinating, and fulfilling. That said, I feel like a responsible captain would make much more extensive use of probes than any of the shows.
Re: data streams, I don’t have a good in-universe explanation. I have a similar question of why they don’t have security cameras in all the hallways and public areas.
Also, using the transporter to go down to a planet always runs the risk of some storm or an orbital threat stranding your party. Why not use the shuttle as SOP? It gives your away team more resources, both for their mission and for an emergency.
The cameras are more of a privacy issue that I imagine the Federation tries to uphold.
There was an episode of TNG where a “passenger” got onto ship’s comms and was contacting Picard on the bridge. When Picard told the guy that the comms were reserved for ship’s business, the guy asked why they weren’t restricted, if that was the case. Picard said that was unnecessary as people in Star Fleet generally just…behave themselves.
That did change overtime though. They mentioned in Lower Decks that they beefed up security after the Pakleds attacks, which leads to Boimler not even being able to open doors (or activate emergency systems lol)
That’s a totally insane explanation, though. Lots of people are on the ship at all times who aren’t members of the crew, and that’s before you even consider things like hostile boarding parties.
It’s a military / government ship. There is no real privacy.
Everyone can read your personal logs if there’s a good enough reason. Anyone can just ask the computer where anyone is at any time. People can just barge into your holodeck program. Anyone, from civilians to bartenders can just call up the bridge and talk to the captain whenever they want. People are just expected to control themselves.
I think of it like how people don’t need to carry defensive weapons now, while a knife was very common in the past. People are just expected to control themselves and not rob random strangers today.
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So then the lack of cameras seems like a huge security oversight.
I can’t remember who said this in the show in Universe; maybe Janeway? But I think a similar question was posed, and the answer was that nobody would have anything to do if exploration was entirely automated. It’s fun and exciting and gives people’s lives meaning.
My headcanon is that many mundane things are automated, and we don’t see them because they aren’t plot-relevant.
They are mundane and automated until something goes wrong, then we get a holodeck episode.
Like pooping
I’ve always said that Starfleet is, first and foremost, a jobs program.
It gives purpose to people who can’t find their own, in a time where your needs are provided-for by default, and seeking personal fulfillment is the purpose for most people’s lives.
Drones would cut out the human driving a shuttle over to inspect an anomaly or object themselves, robbing them of a sense of accomplishment and achievement. Starfleet is about that stuff, so that’s a no-go unless nobody wants to do it and it needs to be done anyway. We see that a lot, too. They do have probes and sensor stations and stuff, after all, usually in really boring and unfulfilling locations.
They have excessive, ridiculous redundancy. They have people doing jobs the ship computers could (and often, in times of need, DOES) perform very well on its own. There are several recorded instances of entire starships being successfully maintained for extended periods of time by a single individual (who does go insane due to isolation every time, because plot).
1 argument against the use of drones:
See also: any time an AI has been given command of a vessel (except Data, and even then he caused problems a couple times).
“That was the stun setting. This is not. I can reduce this pumping station to a pile of debris.”
—Data, the most sophisticated android in the federation, conducting diplomacy
Before that, M5 was one of the worst disasters in Starfleet history.
And although it was probably at least partially covered up control wasn’t exactly great.
Please explain, this is a starfleet drone attacking a starfleet ship? Was the drone highjacked or just went rogue on it’s own?
Option B
Rogue AI hidden in code.
Thats drone ships going bad from lower decks
And more importantly, the drone MISSED data that revealed the planet was inhabited!
Not Star Trek, but the Three Laws of Robotics is the textbook on why AI and any strict programmatic interpretation of Rules is a flawed goal.
No one’s going to watch a realistic exploration sci-fi show about small unmanned ships quietly going about their jobs with no drama.
You sure about that…
They tried to, but the exocomms became sentient and they couldn’t be used as slave labour anymore.
You forgot to add “Are they stupid?” at the end of the post title
😂
In a similar vein, I’ve been rewatching TNG and find myself thinking that they really should have put a cctv camera in engineering. Could have saved them a lot of trouble.
Probably because the butlerian jihad forbade them.
This may be in jest, but they actually fully made this an actual plot point in Picard.
butlerian jihad
dune is a trip! 😂
Why invest in tech when there are so many red shirts around?
😂
In the original series episode I just watched, they reference that they’ve sent out tons of unmanned drones/probes to map out systems and planets, but starships are enormous and better equipped, so they follow up on any readings from the probes that seem interesting. If there’s an in-universe answer that isn’t “it makes better television”, I’d say it’s a combination of:
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Space is really, really big, so probes are only covering small areas anyway.
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Their mission is to explore and contact new life, which is more likely to be successful with a human touch.
Their mission is to explore and contact new life, which is more likely to be successful with a human touch.
Have you met us? ;)
Space is really, really big, so probes are only covering small areas anyway.
That’s backwards. Probes can always cover a vastly larger area than manned ships, so needing to cover more area is always a reason to invest in more probes rather than dumping resources into a handful of very expensive ships.
Also, a lot of the niches served by drones are already covered by AI driven holograms. If you’re not worried about bulky hardware and can supply holo-emitters on the cheap via replicators why wouldn’t you?
which is more likely to be successful with a human touch.
Andorians and Tellarites: “Are we a fucking joke to you!?”
Vulcans: “We must expend great effort to suppress our feelings of amusement at all of you.”
*Federation civil war begins
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The Amazon drone wars of 2032 is still a touchy subject in the future
Drones can’t negotiate the if they trespass or make accidental contact in uncharted territory.
I mean, given the current trajectory of software and hardware, they probably could.
They aren’t?
Enterprise sends out probes (drones) just about every other episode, especially in TNG. Almost everything is automated on the ship, controlled through the computer interface.
I mean, the Borg are right there on the poster!
They live in a post-scarcity world with insane science fiction technology, but they keep the executive decisions in the hands of crew members.
