This is an interview of a U.S. Naval War College research professor about how sci-fi has influenced military design and what Trek, Battlestar Galactica & Babylon 5, get right and wrong about military operations in space. It's a really fascinating article and well worth reading.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... ?page=full

My 2 cents are the following:
1) All of these shows are primarily focused on the stories they want to tell and the action, not so much about the logistics of running a fleet. If the shows spent say, 50% of the time describing the logistics, people would get bored and go watch the Housewives or something.

2)At some point he mentions Kirk's 5 year mission as an example of a logistics problem, ie what happens with the supply lines etc? Well, Roddenberry solved that problem by inventing the relevant tech (food replicators, transporters etc). It's like complaining that a nuclear submarine doesn't go to port every 20 days to refuel with gasoline. It doesn't have to!

3) Well, if you have FTL communications, then you probably also have some sort of FTL radar (like the Long range scanners in Trek), so this problem becomes moot.

4) I couldn't agree more and I think he really hits the nail on the head with this one. This is exactly what some of the most famous sci-fi authors/creators have said about the reasons they mainly write or create sci-fi in the first place (Philip Dick, Jack McDevitt, Gene Roddenberry et al). I also liked his mention of the Peloponnesian War

cool - thanks