I looked in the Federation Milky Way map and I noticed that if USS Voyager would have chosen a different route rather than going straight home they could have made back faster. They could have traveled from the Delta Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant and used the Bajoran wormhole to get home. I measured the Caretaker Array was around 40,000 light years to the Bajoran Wormhole. Instead they tried to travel 70,000 light years home. They would have come across the Dominion but they've beaten the Borg and Hyrogen so I think it would have been done.
But as we saw at least once in DSN the wormhole could be closed by the wormhole aliens. So if it happened once it could happen again. So there was no guarenee that it would still be there.
Actually, looking at the charts in Star trek Starcharts, Earth was actually a little closer than the Bajoran wormhole.
In fact it DID happen again in the ongoing post-DS9 novels. Janeway would be a fool to risk a 60+ year journey to a potential way home over a guaranteed one.
Then again when they were stranded Janeway had no idea of 1. The Dominion or 2. The fact that the Wormhole was unstable in any way. And given that they were willing to gamble with all sorts of other weird esoteric phenomenon, I'm not sure why they'd risk going through Borg space instead.
Not to let this turn into another one of those threads, but I've always wished that Voyager was actually lost for a while, and just had to fumble around and make do without any actual thought of where home was. Either way, heading toward the Gamma Quadrant was probably a bad idea. They could have headed through the galactic core, though, I guess. For that matter they could have gone through the Galactic Barrier, got god powers, and zapped themselves home. Bonus: shiny eyes.
This should be in the FAQ. Janeway would certainly have known that the wormhole wasn't in fact entirely stable, because in the very episode where it's discovered the Prophets briefly close it off. In any case, given all of the other phenomena Starfleet's encountered over the years, to simply assume that even an allegedly stable wormhole will still be there decades later is ridiculously foolhardy, especially given the consequences if it -isn't- there. If the Bajoran wormhole had been, say, only a decade or so away, I might understand that decision.
"Lt. Torres, please pull up the deflector field configuration data compiled by Lt. Barclay on Stardate 44704 on board the USS Enterprise. That should get us to the center of the galaxy in about 5 minutes. Then we'll do it one more time to get home. If that doesn't work, pull up the Warp Field configuration parameters from the USS Enterprise, Stardate 8454.1, that should get us to the center of the galaxy in a few hours, we'll just keep going." "And if THAT doesn't work, pull up all the data we have on Borg Transwarp conduits from Stardate 46982. There's definitely one in the Delta Quadrant we can take all the way to the Alpha quadrant just by using our deflector to activate it." Janeway had about 50 ways she could get Voyager home (including using the Caretaker array which, if you go by Tuvok, was as easy for them to activate as a food replicator). Going for the Bajoran Wormhole, though, I agree would have been a bad idea since Janeway would have known that it's existence can't be guaranteed by the time they get to the Gamma terminus.
That's actually not easy to do even with today's tech. No matter where you are in our galaxy you'd be able to spot other known galaxies, which tells you which way is which. If you can spot enough known pulsars in globular clusters in the galactic halo you can easily triangulate your position from those and plot a course for home. You'd have to destroy the computers so all the records of known phenomenon and any starcharts. Even then, it's really hard to hide the monstrous Andromeda galaxy, and if you can't spot it, then you know it's hidden behind the galactic center. One schoolbook night sky chart with Andromeda in it and anyone with basic math skills could figure out roughly where they are if they can also detect the direction of the galactic center.
Angry Fanboy I've always looked at it like this: you're stranded 10 miles from home in the middle of nowhere* - do you just walk the 10 miles straight home or walk 9 and a half miles in the wrong direction to a bus-stop? *for the purposes of the analogy there are no mobile phones, public phones, taxis, flying carpets and so on...
I always wondered if the folks aboard the Equinox decided to gamble on the wormhole being there and headed in that direction. They promptly ran into the Krowtownan Guard, lost half their crew, and decided instead to head in the more sensible direction. It was a throwaway line, but it seemed wierd that Equinox ran into some Really Bad People almost immediately after getting to the Delta Quadrant, and Voyager never heard of 'em. OTOH, it's just as weird that in heading along a similar course home within a few weeks or perhaps months of Voyager, that the Kazon, Vidiians or other major powers in the immediate vicinity of the Caretaker never heard of them either. Perhaps then the Caretaker could have tossed them back home (which may or may not have been done to other ships per "The Voyager Conspiracy") but something went wrong and they ended up somewhere else entirely. Digression over. :P Mark