Some more data for the mappers

[spyone]

This is probably old news around here, but I just read Star Trek: Vanguard book one, Harbinger, and it had a couple of references to geography and such that I thought others would like.

Vanguard station is described as being far outside Federation territory, in the Taurus Reach. Travel time from Vanguard to Earth is roughly 8 weeks for a person taking best available transport, or 10 weeks for a Constitution Class ship.

But some of the most interesting geographical references can be found in 2 brief quotes pertaining to why the Federation would build such a station in the area:

"Even a cursory review of regional starmaps indicates that the region is bordered almost entirely on one side by the Klingon Empire, and on the other by the Tholian Assembly. .... The Tholians have consistantly pushed the borders of their territory in the opposite direction of the Taurus Reach, but the Klingons are extending their frontier in as many directions as possable. If they expand to the Tholian border, the Federation would be caught in the crossfire of a Klingon-Tholian conflict. Is this station part of an interstellar firewall -- a tactic to avert a Klinon-Tholian war and deny the Klingons any more territory on our border?"

And, a bit later,

"More than twenty colonies and half a dozen mining operations have come to the Taurus Reach in the last sixteen months, half of them since this station opened."
"I can't imagine the Klingons or the Tholians have been happy about our move into this region. And I'm sure a starbase on their shared doorstep pleases them even less."
"I'd be lying if I said we didn't ruffle a few feathers by building this station. But the alternative would have been much worse. .... Letting the Klingons expand their reach until they hit the Tholian border. We'd be front row to a war that could last decades; whichever side won, we'd be fenced in, stuck navigating hostile territory in order to explore the galactic rim. ... We need to keep our options open, for now and for the future."
"With all respect, Commodore, space is three-dimensional and it's big. Even if the Klingons make a push for the Tholian border, we'd hardly be 'landlocked' -- we'd still have options."
"you're talking about taking the long way around, away from the galactic plane. No thank you, Captain. I read the report on your mission to the energy barrier. I'll pass."
....
"The Tholians have never shown any interest in this region. They expanded from Tholia in every direction except this one"

Relevant points as I see them:

• At least part of the Tholian and Klingon borders form a rimward border on the Federation, though the Federation may have expanded through the Taurus Reach by TNG.
• There is support here for my notion that the trip to the "edge of the galaxy" in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was up or down, not out to the rim.
• The Klingons and Tholians either share a border, or are narrowly seperated by Federation space.
• Tholia should be off-center in Tholian space, and in fact should be VERY close to the Federation border in the Taurus Reach.

The floor is open for comments.

[JALU3]

Relevant points as I see them:

• There is support here for my notion that the trip to the "edge of the galaxy" in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was up or down, not out to the rim.
  

The floor is open for comments.

Well, although Canon . . . can someone explain to me how this fits into our percieved knowledge of space around us?
Wikipedia
'Cause from what I can tell, both the Great Barrier and the Galactic Barrier were plot devises created by writers to set limitations on space travel, or to introduce psionic powers to non psionicly inclined species. Because from what I can tell, we have yet to prove that either of these actually exist . . . and that there are theories that at the center of every spiral galaxy is a massive black hole.

[spyone]

Not sure if this is what you were asking, but ...

1) I have no explanation for why the "galactic barrier" exists. Nothing we of 21st century earth have yet detected hints that any such thing exists. The only reason I bother with it at all is that a lot of folks insist on using the fact that the Enterprise had traveled to the "edge of the galaxy" in the pilot to partially define the Speed of the ship, size of Federation space, or other such stuff.
NASA says our galaxy is roughly 100,000 lightyears in diameter, and that we are roughly 25-30,000 lightyears from the center (thus 20-25,000 lightyears from the rim). Even using a Galaxy Class ship, traveling to either would be a trip of decades. However, the Milky Way is mostly disk-shaped: at earth, 65% of the stars are within 163 lightyears of the middle, thicknesswise, and 95% are within 1000 lightyears. The stars beyond the 1000 lightyear point are thinly spread, and mostly old Population I stars that won't have any planets.
Thus, it seems reasonable to me that the "edge of the galaxy" reached by USS Enterprise in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was not the rim, but the zenith or nadir (top or bottom) in the rough area of Earth, and thus probably 1000 lightyears or less from Earth.

A comment about the Wikipedia entry: I don't actually recall the Barrier posing any threat to ships that weren't travelling at warp. Entering/crossing it at warp was a Bad Idea, but .... well, at sublight speeds it takes YEARS to get anywhere, so I don't think it was a real option.
But, that might explain why we haven't detected it yet: the Barrier is a subspace phenomenon, and thus we lack the technology to detect it.

[spyone]

Vanguard station is described as being far outside Federation territory, in the Taurus Reach. Travel time from Vanguard to Earth is roughly 8 weeks for a person taking best available transport, or 10 weeks for a Constitution Class ship.

Been thinking some about this, and this is WAY too close to be as remote as they describe it, IMO.
Since the warp scale was re-drawn for TNG, the speed of TOS warp factors on the TNG scale is really anybody's guess (though there are some pretty well-established fan choices), but we can make some basic guesses based on TNG speeds.
Warp Six (TNG) is listed as the "normal cruising speed of Federation starships" (Encyclopedia). At Warp Six, 10 weeks covers 75 lightyears.
Warp 9.2 (TNG) is called the "normal maximum speed of Federation starships" (Encyclopedia). At Warp 9.2, 10 weeks covers 317 lightyears.
The Galaxy Class could sustain Warp 9.6. At Warp 9.6, 10 weeks covers 367 lightyears.

Given that a star 155 lightyears from Earth is in the Romulan Neutral Zone (Gamma Hydrae, from "The Deadly Years"), and that by TOS that Zone has existed for 100 years, I think The Federation has likely grown enough that nothing just 75 lightyears from Earth would be outside Federation space, much less far from it. And I really doubt the TOS Enterprise could sustain a speed of (TNG) Warp 9+ for 10 weeks.

[TorItara]

Well, I noticed after reading this series (excellent series, by the way - I'd recommend it to anyone) that the position of Starbase 47 (and the Taurus Reach) seems to be based on Star Charts - there's a region of space south of the Federation core worlds, a relatively small passage of UFP space between Tholian and Klingon space. I assume that since they started writing this book after Star Charts was released, they based their cartography on that map, backdating to account for the era.

Just my two cents - Canadian, so about 1.9 cents US.