Virgin Galactic has unveiled their newest model of spaceship, SpaceShipTwo. Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, is trying to make affordable space tourism. Where by affordable, we mean affordable if you have $200,000 to burn. And all you get is a quick sub-orbital hop. We are at the dawn of private space travel, and one could easily spend much time discussing the long-term political, social and religious implications. I'm not going to do that.
Instead, I'm going to focus on the names of the ships. The first ship will be named the VSS Enterpise. VSS stands for "Virgin Space Ship." The second ship according to some reports will be the VSS Voyager. Yes. Enterprise and Voyager. As in from Star Trek.
Officially, the VSS Enterprise is named not just after the fictional ships but also the real ships that have been given that name, including the space shuttle Enterprise.
Now here's where things get complicated. The space shuttle Enterprise was named after the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), commanded by James Tiberius Kirk; the real shuttle Enterprise is named after the fictional ship. But it gets better. The writers of Star Trek retconned in the existence of the Enterprise space shuttle into their universe. That is, in the Star Trek universe, the Enterprise shuttle is now one of the long line of ships that existed before the Federation ships. But the Enterprise shuttle in the Star Trek universe is not named after the starship USS Enterprise because in the Star Trek universe, Star Trek never occurred as a 20th century television show. There has even been a Star Trek novel which had a plot focusing on the space shuttle Enterprise finally getting a chance to fly (in both the Star Trek universe and in our own universe the Enterprise was used a test shuttle but never flew into space). I've been unable to track down this novel although I did read it many years ago. If anyone can track down the novel I'd be very grateful.
I suspect that in a few years we will see the same thing for Branson's ship. That is, there will be official Star Trek material which includes Branson's ship as a ship that existed in the Star Trek universe.
I'm hoping that the ships three and four are named Serenity and the Millennium Falcon. Star Wars at least has the advantage of having occurred a long, long time ago, in a galaxy, far far away. So they won't have to deal with the oddity of incorporating into the universe real ships that were named after ships from their universe.
Showing posts with label star trek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label star trek. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Captain Kirk and Kashrut
New technologies frequently raise new questions for systems of law. In this regard, halachah, the system of Judaic law as used by Orthodox Judaism, is no exception. However, since halachah concerns itself with many ritualistic issues that would not be of concern to most other legal systems, questions related to new technologies arise more often in halachah than in most other systems.
The rapid growth of modern technology has left Orthodox Rabbis almost overwhelmed in dealing with new issues. It is therefore not surprising that they have had little time to address questions of predicted technologies and discoveries which do not yet exist. This has not stopped the laity from speculating about such issues, especially when prospective technologies are connected to popular culture such as Star Trek and Star Wars. This post will discuss two of the major halachic questions raised by Star Trek and outline their possible resolutions. First, is replicated food kosher? Second, can aliens or androids convert to Judaism?
The first thing that many people think about when they think about Orthodox restrictions is kashrut, the traditional dietary restrictions on religious Jews. Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows have a technology called “replicators” which allow users to materialize practically any food from pure energy. This technology raises a variety of issues. First, can an Orthodox Jew replicate non-kosher food such as pork and then consume it? The answer appears to be yes. Kashrut does not depend so much on the chemical composition of a food, but its history. For example, gelatin made from a ritually slaughtered animal is kosher while gelatin made from an improperly slaughtered kosher animal might be chemically identical and yet not be kosher.
However, there is an halachahic question whether food that looks non-kosher can be consumed. For example, many will not consume fake bacon made from beef or cheeseburgers which use soy meat. If one believes that such foods are unacceptable, then replicated pork would be likewise unacceptable.
There are however, other problems raised by replicators that only become obvious if one has spent far too much time with Star Trek. In particular, the Enterprise 1701-D has a hydroponics garden. Fans traditionally explain this garden by pointing out that in Star Trek canon certain molecules cannot be replicated and others are very difficult to replicate. Thus, when called to replicate food that contains those molecules, the replicators transport the molecules from stored material, in some cases, material harvested from the hydroponics garden. While for most purposes plant matter is always kosher, there are two circumstances where this is not the case: First, grape products have their own rules of kashrut for historical reasons. Second, during Passover, leavened products are not kosher. Thus, it is possible that material in the Enterprise’s garden could result in the replicators making unkosher food. This is a serious issue, since tools used to prepare non-kosher food can under many circumstances become not kosher themselves and transmit their kashrut status to any new food subsequently made with them. It is not clear from the description of how replicators function to decide whether or not replicators have this problem.
One general question that is raised by many science fiction shows is whether aliens can convert to Judaism. This question is difficult in that there’s no clear halachic definition of what constitutes a person. If one is a Young Earth Creationist, then this shouldn’t be a hard question to answer: people are those beings descended from Adam and Eve. However, Star Trek is explicitly not YEC, so that answer is out. Moreover, in the Star Trek universe it is possible for humans to interbreed with certain types of aliens (Spock of course is only half-Vulcan). Thus, an interfertility test as favored in the biological species definition may not work.
Moreover, it isn’t clear that a nonhuman being could not still be subject to halachah if that being was sufficiently sentient. This is connected to the more realistic question of whether an African Grey Parrot can convert. I have been told but not seen in any source that the test for whether someone is too mentally challenged to be able to understand enough to convert is whether they can recite and explain the Shemai. It isn’t clear to me that a Grey Parrot would not be able to do so (although whether you could convince an African Grey that this vaguely defined, amorphous, unobservable “God” entity existed is not at all obvious to me).
A question related to that of aliens converting is that of robots. In this case, there is a more direct precedent, in that this question has been asked previously about golems. A golem in Jewish folklore is a large creature made of clay which is animated by mystical rituals. (Under no circumstances should one confuse a golem with a small creature with a magical ring that it calls its Precious. That would be confusing fact with fiction) Golems cannot convert and cannot take part in any mitzvah since they have no souls. Presumably, the same result would apply to robots and androids. So if anyone of you wanted to see Data as a cantor, you are out of luck.
So the food on the Enterprise is kosher, but you can’t form a minyan with Data.
The rapid growth of modern technology has left Orthodox Rabbis almost overwhelmed in dealing with new issues. It is therefore not surprising that they have had little time to address questions of predicted technologies and discoveries which do not yet exist. This has not stopped the laity from speculating about such issues, especially when prospective technologies are connected to popular culture such as Star Trek and Star Wars. This post will discuss two of the major halachic questions raised by Star Trek and outline their possible resolutions. First, is replicated food kosher? Second, can aliens or androids convert to Judaism?
The first thing that many people think about when they think about Orthodox restrictions is kashrut, the traditional dietary restrictions on religious Jews. Star Trek: The Next Generation and later shows have a technology called “replicators” which allow users to materialize practically any food from pure energy. This technology raises a variety of issues. First, can an Orthodox Jew replicate non-kosher food such as pork and then consume it? The answer appears to be yes. Kashrut does not depend so much on the chemical composition of a food, but its history. For example, gelatin made from a ritually slaughtered animal is kosher while gelatin made from an improperly slaughtered kosher animal might be chemically identical and yet not be kosher.
However, there is an halachahic question whether food that looks non-kosher can be consumed. For example, many will not consume fake bacon made from beef or cheeseburgers which use soy meat. If one believes that such foods are unacceptable, then replicated pork would be likewise unacceptable.
There are however, other problems raised by replicators that only become obvious if one has spent far too much time with Star Trek. In particular, the Enterprise 1701-D has a hydroponics garden. Fans traditionally explain this garden by pointing out that in Star Trek canon certain molecules cannot be replicated and others are very difficult to replicate. Thus, when called to replicate food that contains those molecules, the replicators transport the molecules from stored material, in some cases, material harvested from the hydroponics garden. While for most purposes plant matter is always kosher, there are two circumstances where this is not the case: First, grape products have their own rules of kashrut for historical reasons. Second, during Passover, leavened products are not kosher. Thus, it is possible that material in the Enterprise’s garden could result in the replicators making unkosher food. This is a serious issue, since tools used to prepare non-kosher food can under many circumstances become not kosher themselves and transmit their kashrut status to any new food subsequently made with them. It is not clear from the description of how replicators function to decide whether or not replicators have this problem.
One general question that is raised by many science fiction shows is whether aliens can convert to Judaism. This question is difficult in that there’s no clear halachic definition of what constitutes a person. If one is a Young Earth Creationist, then this shouldn’t be a hard question to answer: people are those beings descended from Adam and Eve. However, Star Trek is explicitly not YEC, so that answer is out. Moreover, in the Star Trek universe it is possible for humans to interbreed with certain types of aliens (Spock of course is only half-Vulcan). Thus, an interfertility test as favored in the biological species definition may not work.
Moreover, it isn’t clear that a nonhuman being could not still be subject to halachah if that being was sufficiently sentient. This is connected to the more realistic question of whether an African Grey Parrot can convert. I have been told but not seen in any source that the test for whether someone is too mentally challenged to be able to understand enough to convert is whether they can recite and explain the Shemai. It isn’t clear to me that a Grey Parrot would not be able to do so (although whether you could convince an African Grey that this vaguely defined, amorphous, unobservable “God” entity existed is not at all obvious to me).
A question related to that of aliens converting is that of robots. In this case, there is a more direct precedent, in that this question has been asked previously about golems. A golem in Jewish folklore is a large creature made of clay which is animated by mystical rituals. (Under no circumstances should one confuse a golem with a small creature with a magical ring that it calls its Precious. That would be confusing fact with fiction) Golems cannot convert and cannot take part in any mitzvah since they have no souls. Presumably, the same result would apply to robots and androids. So if anyone of you wanted to see Data as a cantor, you are out of luck.
So the food on the Enterprise is kosher, but you can’t form a minyan with Data.
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