From: MLINDROOS@FINABO.ABO.FI (Marcus Lindroos INF)
Subject: Re: More warp/s'date babble...
Organization: Abo Akademi University, Finland
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 13:51:55 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.24

In <1992Dec16.030034.4902@u.washington.edu> mcclaine@hardy.u.washington.edu writes:

> In article <1992Dec14.133243.24967@abo.fi> MLINDROOS@FINABO.ABO.FI (Marcus Lindroos INF) writes:
> >> >
> >> 
> >> 	If all of you fans whip out your Starlog Technical Journal and do a
> >> 	little measuring, you will find that by proportion, since the galaxy
> >> 	is approximately 100,000 ly across, a straight shot to the Klingon
> >> 	border would be a trip of about 10,500 ly from Earth.  Will this 
> >> 	take three months?  No, if the Enterprise went at the new scale speed
> >> 	of Warp 9 or 1516 times c, it would take 6.9 YEARS to get there!
> >
> >10,500ly to the Klingon border? Hogwash! We know from Star Trek II:TWOK that the
> >neutral zone is in the vicinity of Gamma Hydrae, some 120ly from the Sun. In
> >"Heart of Glory," we are being told that a subspace message [moving at
> >50,000ly/year] needs one day to reach Earth from the neutral zone =150ly.
> >The "Federation Exploration Zone" may or may not be correct, but we haven't
> >seen it in any of the movies or the TV episodes.
> > 
> 
> 	It is refreshing to see these figures.  I would be more inclined to
> believe the distances you have brought forth...and indeed they would make
> the Tech Manual's values more believable.
> 
> 
> >> On the Myerson scale, however, a warp 9
> >> 	trip would take about 2 1/2 months.  I feel this is a little more 
> >> 	reasonable.   However, even on this scale, the Enterprise A would
> >> 	take about a year at it's max speed of warp 8!  
> 
> 
> >
> >Bzzztt! Where does it say that *MANNED* spacecraft have ventured some 10,000
> >ly. into space?! All we know is that the Technical Journal map [which is 
> >"canon" BTW as it was seen hanging on a wall in one episode] shows an area
> >covering most of the galaxy's spiral arms on our side of the Milky Way, some
> >19% of all stars fit inside. So far, so good. But the 
> >Klingon/Federation/Romulan border that have been drawn on the map afterwards 
> >are courtesy of the people who wrote the manual - we don't know this from
> >watching the TV series!
> 
> 	Good point.  And I will point out that you have used the shows quite
> well to support your arguments.  Perhaps the map I looked at is faulty or
> subject to misinterpretation.

Yeah, sorry if I sounded a bit agggressive when I wrote this (wasn't my
intention). The Star Trek universe does not always make sense, mainly because
the TV/movie series evolved over 25 years and Roddenberry & co. gradually 
make things up as they move along. However, I do think Sternbach & Okuda should
write an "official" Star Trek map to assist both the show's writers and fans
alike. The "true" location of the Klingon neutral zone might have been revealed
by accident (most likely, Nick Meyer had no idea where Gamma Hydrae was), but
it is "official" now and the writers of future episodes should learn to live
with it. One of the best aspects of the Next Generation is that they are a lot
more consistent than TOS/TMS. Still, they could do even better without
restricting their writers in the process.
 
> >---
> > We know that almost all
> >"real" stars (Sol, Gamma Hydrae, Capella, Altair etc.) are within 200ly of the
> >Solar system. If the Federation were much larger than that, one would expect to
> >hear few "local" systems being mentioned, even with our own sun in the middle. 
> >In addition, with the huge number of inhabited star systems within 50ly of our
> >Sun, there has to be MILLIONS of planets that are UFP members if Federation 
> >space indeed is, say, 10,000ly across. This is a common problem for most Star
> >Trek writers, they just don't realize how damn big the galaxy is! My own
> >estimate is that most Federation worlds are within 500ly. of the Solar system.
> >In addition, there are "arms" reaching out to Deneb (1800ly) and Rigel (900ly)
> >among others, with inhabited planets and colonies near this "railway" to the
> >outer limits. This is how the Mountain states in America were colonized,
> >California and Oregon were the main targets for most immigrants but there were
> >also small towns, forts and camps between the Pacific coast and St.Louis that
> >grew like mushrooms close to the railway that transported the golddiggers. I
> >believe that is why there is no shortage of Federation worlds for the 
> >Enterprise to visit while 1500ly from the Sun - they are on Highway One to
> >Deneb!
> >---
> >The remaining 99% of explored space has been surveyed by remote, unmanned
> >probes but no starships. We know that the alien"Tin Man" spacecraft 
> >originally was discovered by a
> >Vega IX automatic probe and sending out small, semi-intelligent probes on long
> >journeys that would take decades even for the Enterprise makes sense,
> >particularly from a financial point of view.  
> 
> >MARCU$
> 
> 	Thank you Marcu$, your input has been most valuable.  You present
> very believable points and have restored my faith in the Tech Manual to a
> greater degree.  All any of us want to do is get down to is what is the right
> interpretation of Treknology and what is 'hogwash'.
> 

Thanks! One more thing, in one of the TOS episodes ("Mudd's Women") Kirk
reportedly tells Harry Mudd that the Federation has over a thousand "planets"
(=members of the Federation?)
and is still growing. Based on that information, it can be shown than the
Federeation cannot extend far into space. First, we know there are at least
five UFP members within 50ly of the Sun (Alpha Centauri, Altair, Capella,
Vulcan/82 Eridani). This is the absolute minimum one would expect to
find as there could (and should) be other, unnamed systems within this limit. 
Now, if we
assume that the average separation between Federation systems stays the same
even as you move further away from the Solar system [which is unlikely] we
notice that the Federation "bubble" is about 600ly. across or:

Volume of space vithin 50ly. (in cubic light-years) , 300ly. of Sun
---------------------------                           -------------
~500,000                                              ~100,000,000 ly^3

...containing 5 and 1000 Federation worlds respectively. The average distance
between two Federation systems would be about 30 light-years, probably more
outside the densely-populated "core" close to the Sun. There are some 200,000
stars within 300ly., so Kirk & Picard won't run out of worlds to explore in the
foreseeable future. Of course, there have been longer missions than this - to
systems up to 2500ly away, the "edge of the galaxy" ("Where no man has gone
Before?"  and the galactic core (ST V:TFF).
 
 
> 	_/_/_/_/   _/_/_/_/   _/_/_/    NEW FOR 1993: 
> 	_/     _/  _/       _/     _/   The Ronald Reagan Commemorative 
> 	_/     _/  _/       _/                    Typewriter
> 	_/_/_/_/   _/_/_/   _/              
> 	_/   _/    _/       _/          This is the one you've been waiting 
> 	_/    _/   _/       _/     _/   for; the only one with no memory 
> 	_/     _/  _/_/_/_/   _/_/_/  	and no colon!
> 	Robert E. Casey  (mcclaine@hardy.u.washington.edu)
> 

MARCU4
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.tech