Enterprise Places Risa

[C5]

Originally posted by spyone

The others seem acurate, but these 2 I believe are not.
For the first one, as I have stated elsewhere, the "edge" mentioned may well have been less than 500ly away. The galaxy has a top and bottom, as well as a rim.

And this was a very valid point of yours (and one more proof that thinking in 3D can be very difficult indeed ). The trouble is, most of every maps of the ST universe I know of are 2D. It might be interesting to see whether some 3D representations of the universe could correct some of these apparently contradictory travel times.

And of course, the fact that Kirk reached the core of the Galaxy in no time remains, although it's that infamous movie again (oh, and the fact that, in the TOS episode, the barrier on the edge of the galaxy looks like indeed like a rim edge, but that was TOS FX... )

Originally posted by spyone
For the secong, I believe you slipped a decimal, or something, as that figure matches Voyager's distance, which was much further. (Digs out encyclopedia) (Encyclopedia is no help).
Of course, even 7000ly in 2 years is too much.

This may be quite right, in fact, I haven't seen the episode in question, and was only told of this figure by a friend (although the fact that it matches VOY distance is not a proof - the wormhole's exit in the GQ was also 70 000 ly from its entrance in the AQ ).
If this was 7 000 ly, then 2 years is not extremely exaggerated : it means something like 10 ly per day, wich would be something like warp 9.9 if I remember the warp scale correctly.

[C5]

Originally posted by Imagus
In Generations, the Romulan Neutral Zone is three hours from Earth at maximum warp for the Ent-E. I'm not sure but I think that means the Romulans have conquered Alpha Centauri (sure sorts out our Centaurans debate doesn't it?)...

Errmm... was't that First Contact instead, where Picard manages to go to Earth from the RNZ in less time than it takes for a Borg Cube to destroy a fleet ?

Speaking of Generations... when the Ent-B rescues the El-Aurian ship, don't they say it's 3ly away... and are there in no time ?

The real trouble here is IMHO the two figures given in Broken Bow. 4 days away + 300 000 000 km per second... if you do the math, that means 100c (where c is the speed of light), so 4 days at that speed mean 400 light-days, so a bit more than a ly.
This was unfortunate, because it doesn't even let room for the subspace highway interpretation, unless we consider them as sort of subspace currents, and that Archer was only giving the relative speed of the Enterprise in the current, while the current was itself moving faster than the surrounding subspace (think : mobile walkways here)...

[qerlin]

Originally posted by Captain Leana Craig
B&B probably think the Romulans come from Cuba and the Klingon Empire in Canada somewhere.

They also Risa is run by that mouse guy in florida.

You..you mean the Cubans are actually Romulans!?! (Digging my tri-cobalt proof bomb shelter...)

[qerlin]

Originally posted by C5
Oh, brigthen up, people. It's not the first time Trek shows inconsistencies in term of distances.
In Dax, Odo seems to be able to reach another star system and be back in no more than a few hours.
In Where no man has gone before, Kirk was able to reach the rim of the galaxy in the course of his five-years mission.
In Q Who I think Data states they need 2 years to come back from the Delta Quadrant (70000 ly).
And of course my favourite of 1000 ly in 12h in That wich survives...

Of course, here we got the numbers of 30 000 000 km per second in Broken Bow, associated with the time of 4 days, wich is unfortunate because contradicting the known universe. But after all no one said our universe was the same as Star Trek's (there are at least many contradictions with Earth's history to begin with).

Precisely...Trek is soooooooooo not reliable for speeds and distances. Make it up as you go, folks.

[Imagus]

Originally posted by C5
Errmm... was't that First Contact instead, where Picard manages to go to Earth from the RNZ in less time than it takes for a Borg Cube to destroy a fleet ?

Good point! (Disappears back under rock )

Originally posted by C5
The real trouble here is IMHO the two figures given in Broken Bow. 4 days away + 300 000 000 km per second... if you do the math, that means 100c (where c is the speed of light), so 4 days at that speed mean 400 light-days, so a bit more than a ly.

Astrophysics graduate reporting for duty! I was doing the calculations on that one before the episode ended

Originally posted by C5
This was unfortunate, because it doesn't even let room for the subspace highway interpretation, unless we consider them as sort of subspace currents, and that Archer was only giving the relative speed of the Enterprise in the current, while the current was itself moving faster than the surrounding subspace (think : mobile walkways here)...

Which is certainly not how I think of it. It's possible that the Enterprise wasn't in one at the time, or that he was doing an on-the-fly calculation - and (shock horror!) got it wrong!

Either way the theory still works better than any other I've seen, so I'm sticking with it...

[spyone]

Originally posted by C5


Errmm... was't that First Contact instead, where Picard manages to go to Earth from the RNZ in less time than it takes for a Borg Cube to destroy a fleet ?

Yes and no. This has been discussed ad nauseam. In First Contact, the Ent-E travels from somewhere near the neutral zone in the amount of time it took a Borg cube to travel from where it was first engaged to Earth.
Which is a whole different kettle of fish.

[spyone]

Originally posted by Imagus
Did they actually use the name QonoS at all in Broken Bow? Do any dahar masters of Klingon know what it means?

(Digging out the Klingon-to-English dictionary)
Well, "QonoS" means "journal or log", but the homeworld is called "Qo'noS", which is different. And not listed in the dictionary.

I do not recall the name of the world being mentioned, but as the Encyclopedia says, it is "almost invariably referred to as the homeworld."

[DaddyDragon]

I may be committing heresy here. Point me to the cannon source if I am.

I don't recall where the warp factor calculations that you and I and everybody else has come to associate with travel velocity actually appeared on screen. I know that they've been published in a myriad of sources.

I'm almost to the point now where I am considering using the "warp propelled plot device engine"tm, since it might be a better way of thinking it through. In the TOS pilot, they called it a time warp (or was it space warp?)...but that is the basis for how I think I'm going to have to handle it from this point forward.

The gist of it is merely this, the warp engines create a warp field. Within that field, starships are moved in a real space bubble, and it is that bubble that travels through subspace. Now the question then becomes, how fast is it moving? And the cheat answer I'm going to use is that it just depends. If the ship is travelling at warp 4 (which is 64 times the speed of light by the old scale if my math hasn't failed me), then within the warp field, time moves 1 second forward for every 64 light seconds that the ship traverses. But in subspace, that 64 light seconds of distance can vary dramatically. The only way I can think of visualizing it is with this analogy:

"A fly (your starship) is trapped inside the passenger area of your car (your warp field). Let's say that the fly can zoom at speeds of 10 miles an hour (for this example, we aren't going to concern oursleves with the fact that the passenger area is finite, so extend me a bit of that suspension of disbelief that you would willingly give to your favorite episode). So, while the fly is zooming about inside the car, you are cruising about in traffic (your travel via subspace) to your workplace 45 miles away. Some of travel occurs on the highway, some of it in the metro area. Thus, for portions of the trip, while this fly is travelling at 10mph, you may be travelling at various speeds, from say 65mph on the highway to only 10 or 20mph in town. I'll posit that this is a drive you take on a fairly regular basis. Now, this imaginary trip takes about 60 minutes. Sometimes it takes less time (catching all the green lights, light traffic), and other times it takes considerably longer (catching the red lights, etc.). As far as the fly is concerned, he's flown 10 miles, but he has travelled 45 miles. On some days, he covers the distance in 50 minutes, and on other it could take an extra 20 or so."

While it may seem that it smacks the "Warp Commandments" flat in the kisser, to me it lends a bit more utility to the role of the starship crewmembers. The navigators plot the course through the tides and eddies of subspace, while the helmsmen actually pilot the vessels along. Better helm/nav teams can make better time. The science officers and even the engineers can contribute to the overall success (which is can better involve your players from a roleplaying point of view) by successfully detecting swifter subspace currents and/or tweaking the subspace field to position the warp bubble in a strata of subspace where they travel possibly even greater distances over less time.

This still leaves relatively intact those core tenets of the how warp works, and how fast your actually travelling. And perhaps the warp factors as we know them a merely averages.

Just some food for thought. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

YMMV,
Larry

[SIR SIG]

First Contact: The 3hrs... remark was for the E-E to intercept the fleet currently engaging the cube in the Typhon Sector. Then there is some sought of running battle all the way to Earth and in the space of a commercial break, the E-E is there. Like Spyone said its a whole different kettle of fish

RNZ: Depending on your Astronomical beliefs, the closest point of the RNZ is anywhere from 50ly to 150ly or so from Earth. Personally I map it out at around 65ly in sector 30 something.

Qo'nos: Ever thought that the reason the planet looks 'nasty' in TNG is because of the Praxis explosion?

Earth to anywhere: Sure they screwed it up many times but with the twist of warp highways (which coincidently was created by Geoff Mandel with the Chi factor) many distances quoted are a little more easy to swallow.

[NobAkimoto]

Dunno, not much wrong with a 90ly distance, and the concept of the Enterprise being about 90ly away from Earth makes sense if they've been underway for a year.

That said, the abdundance of planets is getting a little weak.

If the show's supposed to show the vastness of space, why can't they do more shows spending more time with a single planet or two, and maybe more deepspace encounters.

There's a lot of space to explore, and the majority of it's gonna be empty.

PS

Broken Bow actually shot itself in the foot when it came to Qo'nos's distance from Earth. They quoted actually kilometer/second figures for their cruising speed of Warp 4.5, which kind of made Qo'nos as something less than a lightyear and a touch away.

There's not much of a way to excuse that, except for dramatic purposes the original distance was supposed to be about 4 weeks.(Original draft of the script.)

[qerlin]

It's not like in the next series...or season for that matter...that Risa will move to another location. There's never been any consistency in the Trek series.

[Imagus]

Originally posted by SIR SIG
Qo'nos: Ever thought that the reason the planet looks 'nasty' in TNG is because of the Praxis explosion?

The key point for me is that it took longer for TNG period vessels to get there than in ST-VI and Enterprise. The idea on ST Dimension is that the Praxis explosion forced a move to a new homeworld, further inside Klingon space. They then built new council halls, which is why the architecture is different.

My question about the use of the name Qo'noS (however it's spelt) in Enterprise, is because that first homeworld may have had a different name. I'm planning on using ideas like this in my movie era game, hence my interest... I shall probably designate the original as Klinzhai (per FASA).

Incidentally, from STD's screen shots the second world looks a lot nicer than the first...

[Dan Stack]

Though the closeness of Earth and Qo'noS does seem problematic for later series, two major interstellar powers doesn't seem like that big a deal. England and France, which battled for control of North America during the 18th century, are just 21 miles apart. However, most of their battles took place thousands of miles away.

[SIR SIG]

That analogy holds better with the Rommies and there RNZ.

Still a colonial/high seas aspect seems appropriate in most places.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by NobAkimoto
There's not much of a way to excuse that, except for dramatic purposes the original distance was supposed to be about 4 weeks.(Original draft of the script.)

Even 4 weeks wouldn't have helped much: With a speed of Warp 4.5 (about 91x c) 4 weeks flight time would have placed Qo'noS at about 7.5 LY from earth.
While this sounds a little more convincing it still contradicts "Terra Nova" where they say Terra Nova was the only habitable planet within 20 light-years of Earth.