From my understanding, though I can’t pinpoint why I think this, it’s “ship #1 orient based however they feel like, any follow up ships orient accordingly to ships already in-system”
It also assumes that every species lives and accommodates their world view relative to how they see and live with gravity in their own species. Not all creatures will be bipedal beings that enjoy an up/ down like we do.
Maybe there will be beings out there that evolved in a liquid atmosphere… or a gaseous environment and they spend more time in different orientations. Maybe some don’t even care about orientation and they just meet one another in whatever orientation because that is their norm.
It’s another one of those things where we all want to believe that the entire universe will see things the way we do on earth.
Is there a canon answer for why Star Trek ships always meet aligned? I always assumed either
I imagine #2 could lead to some comical spinning as two ships keep trying to align to each other.
EDIT: Also, #2 gets exponentially more complicated as the number of ships increases–maybe the smaller ships align to the biggest one?
Artificial gravity alignment? so that they can dock etc if needed?
Not aligning these could lead to some hilarious boarding situations.
I think it’s closer to #2, but by choice/convention. An episode I watched lately had a mention of a ship “matching our orientation”
From my understanding, though I can’t pinpoint why I think this, it’s “ship #1 orient based however they feel like, any follow up ships orient accordingly to ships already in-system”
It also assumes that every species lives and accommodates their world view relative to how they see and live with gravity in their own species. Not all creatures will be bipedal beings that enjoy an up/ down like we do.
Maybe there will be beings out there that evolved in a liquid atmosphere… or a gaseous environment and they spend more time in different orientations. Maybe some don’t even care about orientation and they just meet one another in whatever orientation because that is their norm.
It’s another one of those things where we all want to believe that the entire universe will see things the way we do on earth.