Hey everyone, I'm new here. So at the end of STID, they're leaving for their 5 year exploratory mission. What percentage of the galaxy do you think remains uncharted at this point in the timeline? And how long do you think it will take for them to travel to the end of charted space and begin exploring new worlds?
Hello. Do we know for sure if the near instantaneous travel times we've seen so far are just a result of editing out the actual time of ship travel? Does the Enterprise refit include some elements of the Vengeance apparent 'tranwarp' capability's? (not that it needed it )
Hey, in The Original Series, The Animated Series and the classic movies, the Enterprise went beyond the rim of the galaxy twice, visited the centre twice and made it back to Earth inbetween. These movies are just using them as the measuring stick, instead of that 75-years-to-cross-the-galaxy slowpoke USS Voyager. If the new Enterprise has transwarp, the old one must've had it too! Also: Hi and welcome, mymatty! I'm sure there is some old episode where Kirk or Spock have said "X% of our galaxy is still unexplored" or words to that effect, but I can't think of anything now. I'd guess it's pretty much the same amount in the alternate universe as the original.
Basically, we don't. Indeed, the only time when editing cannot plausibly be blamed for short travel time is unrelated to warp at all - it's the ridiculously short time in which as ship near the Moon falls down to Earth when her ability to hover is taken away from her. In terms of physics, that should be days, no matter what; in the movie, it's mere minutes... We could fudge that by pointing out that the definition of "rim" must be something else than the edge of the dish that is Milky Way, because "rim" stands between Earth and the Andromeda galaxy in "By Any Other Name" whereas the edge of the galactic dish definitely does not. The "rim" could basically be a fictional phenomenon very close to Earth, then. We could further fudge it by observing that in "Magics of Megas-Tu", our heroes only want to observe the center of the galaxy - actually going all the way there is not mentioned, nor would it be a good way to observe. In ST5 in turn, the journey is supposed to be impossible chiefly because the Great Barrier stands in the way; this fictional phenomenon could again be close to Earth, and the adventure of our heroes would end right after their encounter with the Barrier. However, the other thing about TOS is that it never mentions any part of the galaxy that would be unexplored or unreachable, except in terms of being forbidden somehow. Our heroes seem to be familiar with all parts of the galaxy already, even if their organization hasn't actually visited all the points of interest, and there are still some details to be sorted out on individual planets even fairly close to Earth. Me neither. In the original continuity, the figure still was just 11% explored in early TNG first season, and 19% explored in middle TNG second season - an explosive increase as such, but indicative that Kirk had plenty of galaxy left to study back in his day. Agreed. Even if they did come up with superfast drive technology between the split in 2233 and the 2260s, and fitted it in all of their ships (including the older ones seen hopping to Vulcan in what could be interpreted as being a very short time), this might not yet make all that big a difference... After all, even if travel time was cut, the actual survey of each given star system would still take the same time, and there would only be so many ships to go around. Timo Saloniemi
They're a result of the writers (a) not understanding physics, (b) not bothering to do some back-research into the travel times involved, and (c) most importantly not caring.
Star Trek has always moved at the speed of plot. Which is why DS9 goes from being on the frontier to being just a hop skip and a jump away from Earth over the course of the series. Physics is pretty irrelevant when talking about a fictional means of propulsion that has never been consistent.
I have some fan mags from around the beginning of TNG that mention the 11% figure, and I believe they also say in Kirk's time it was something like 4%. YMMV (literally, in this case). I'll have to dig them out one of these days and confirm.
Now you've got me wanting an Abramsverse version of Stellar Cartography. (So long as their font choices allow the text to remain legible. I'm not sure that the PCAPS interface font choices thus far in place are suited to the task.)
With stars in the number of billions I don't think there will ever be a shortage of explorable space no matter how fast they go.
They did make a space map - Hopefully they'll do an art book with an HD version of it so we can read where they've put everything.
I think the entire galaxy is within a few days travel now in STID so they will probably get through the Borg, Kazon & Dominion in a week
Why does news in the 23rd century look *exactly* like news in the 20/21st? Or perhaps it's some future version of Entertainment Tonight, since they seem to be reviewing scenes of ST09...