I don’t know if there are different types of tractor beams, stands to reason though. John Deere, Caterpillar… sorry, I’m from Iowa.
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    August 1st, 2012
I don’t know if there are different types of tractor beams, stands to reason though. John Deere, Caterpillar… sorry, I’m from Iowa.
Discussion (19)¬Comment¬ |
I would figure there would be different kinds, as different cultures invented them independently, they would inherently have some element of the source culture’s technology inherent in the beam. Also, the idea that the shields could block a tractor beam actually makes a bit of sense as the shields are a type of energy screen, and tractor beams are also a type of energy. Never mind that we have never figured out anything that can make energy do anything remotely similar to shields OR tractor beams, if we did, I imagine this interaction would make sense…
I would imagine the same holds true for most types of technology like warp drives and phasers. It’s always puzzled me that with the thousands of intelligent species in Trek and the hundreds of different space fleets, that so many would develop the exact same technology. Maybe the computers are programmed to identify certain technologies and lump it all into one blanket category, like “phaser”, “warp drive”, “tractor beam”, etc.? In other words, if the scanners detect certain components that look like a phaser emitter – even if the materials don’t match anything in the database – it gets tentatively tagged “phaser” on the readout until more evidence is gathered.
I know, I’m probably overthinking what is obviously just a case of lazy writers not wanting to come up with new sci-fi weapons everytime a new race is encountered, but still…
and then there are the episodes were they come across a new alien species and can lend them parts to fix their engine.
Why on earth would you imagine that? Just because they’re different races doesn’t mean that they’re not building devices to solve the same problems, using the same laws of science. Or, to put it another way, would you assume that a Chinese ship works on totally different principles to an American one, or rather that they’re basically the same with minor differences?
Most SF stories have two kinds of beams which attract or repel objects. Tractor beams we know already, the much lesser known variety are pressor or repulsor beams and they repel objects.
Of course, there is an article which reports that scientists have developed a tractor beam, what they really invented was a pressor beam, albeit an air-dependent one!
Are you referencing Red vs Blue?
Donut: “I’m from Iowa”
Griff & Simmons “NOBODY CARES!”
No. I am actually from Iowa. Born and raised there.
Just like Captain Kirk.
To be fair, despite all the potential types of Tractor beams, I’d almost be disappointed if LG didn’t go with a classic Horseshoe magnet…
Really, where in Iowa? Not born but raised around Marshalltown
Ames.
Cool, my mom’s family is from Dubuque.
…Kubota, Kioti, Farmall… I’m from Maine. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Well I can think of a few possibilities. Focused gravity, growing or shrinking force field (allowing for both tractor and repulsor beams), magnetism (though for any significant distances a ship would need a reactor about the size of the moon), spacial manipulation (like warp drives, but subluminal. Make space smaller in between the 2 ships, larger on the opposite side, so neither ship really moves relative to space, but each is in a bubble of moving space. Unnessasarily complex though). And of course they could just have a flying tractor.
They have holograms and see just about everything from lego at one point or another. So using the lantern corp hard light concept the actuall space tractor is not impossible.
Also gives the good doctor an excuse to build a lego tractor. . .
Ha! One little phrase, “some kind of tractor beam,” has sparked an eighteen post debate! I love my fellow geeks!
I mean sixteen. Er, seventeen, that is.
They should really have a sensor that tells you WHICH kind of tractor beam it is
con-, re-, pro-, dis- …..sry couldn’t help myself, the only thing i can’t resist is temptation : D