70 years to the Alpha Quadrant?

[BK613]

Timo wrote:

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http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__...VoyagerMap.jpg

This map was seen on some monitors in the final season, and reproduced as is in the Star Charts booklet. Supposedly, those squares on the grid are 10,000 ly on side.

The major discrepancy with the rest of canon here is that "False Profits" involves a planet that according to Data in TNG "The Price" was only some 200 ly from the Delta/Gamma border...

That map is very much at odds with the one here on the starting point of Voyager:

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__...ager_route.jpg

Carelessness or revisionism?
The one you posted does show a 100k ly galaxy though, with Earth at the 28k ly out position.

[Timo]

Carelessness or revisionism?

Considering that other one comes from "Year of Hell", I'd argue revisionism is sort of built in.

Basically, the later map gives 70k ly from Ocampa to Earth, and 130k ly from Ocampa to Earth via the Gamma wormhole. So by going for Gamma, the heroes could shave about ten years off a voyage they will never complete themselves (except perhaps for Tuvok) in the best case scenario. OTOH, if that one didn't pan out, the additional 60 years of travel time probably wouldn't mean much for our now deceased heroes, or to their children or grandchildren.

Timo Saloniemi

[T'Girl]

Timo wrote:

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wouldn't mean much

Might have meant a lot to the JemHadar who destroyed the ship as it tried to cut through Dominion space.

[JirinPanthosa]

In one of the old tech manuals I read, warp 8 was about 1024c. The old tech manuals also seem to say that power usage is about proportional to speed, so even if they could make the trip, they'd need to stop to recharge at about the same distance intervals.

Now, why they couldn't just go warp 9.9999 instead of warp 10 to avoid the nasty devolution effects -- but that episode probably shouldn't be thought of as canonical.

Anyway, on Voyager you can lose 20 crew members and still only have 10 less people in your crew, so it's clear the show exists in a universe where the rules of mathematics function very differently.

[MacLeod]

^Well given that they knew how to reverse the effects and as the EMH wouldn't be effected and could tell Starfleet the process the only reason they didn't do it is...


The show would be over.

[JirinPanthosa]

Exactly.

I like Voyager. I give it a solid B-, and I think it gets more hate than it deserves.

But they were reckless about doing things in one episode that would break the premise and about consistency in general, and it is obvious the writers were given a directive to just do whatever will make the most viewer-grabbing commercials, damn consistency. So why are we even arguing about this?

Battlestar Galactica kept a running count of living human beings, which they adhered to so dogmatically that in Razor they made sure to rescue two human beings from the cylons, just so they could kill two characters and not break the count. Voyager made no such effort, and this is something we should just accept.

[teacake]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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Battlestar Galactica kept a running count of living human beings, which they adhered to so dogmatically that in Razor they made sure to rescue two human beings from the cylons, just so they could kill two characters and not break the count. Voyager made no such effort, and this is something we should just accept.

Agreed.

It was never going to be Battlestar Galactica. It was always camp and has many moments of clearly not taking itself too seriously. Though the premise sounds like it could be a show full of desperate scenarios and refugees the only way you can wring that expectation out of Voyager is by never actually watching any of it. It's not like Caretaker was dark and gritty and then oh sadness, they dropped the ball.

[C.E. Evans]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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In one of the old tech manuals I read, warp 8 was about 1024c. The old tech manuals also seem to say that power usage is about proportional to speed, so even if they could make the trip, they'd need to stop to recharge at about the same distance intervals.

Now, why they couldn't just go warp 9.9999 instead of warp 10 to avoid the nasty devolution effects...

That old tech manual actually explained why. The closer a ship approached Warp 10, the less efficient its engine became and the more power it would need to keep accelerating. Transwarp would bypass this in the same way a warp engine would bypass the need to travel at Warp 0.9999, IMO.

[Guy Gardener]

It's an asymptote. Warp ten is not a real number. They're not even sure what the hypothetical warp llmit is, if there is one. The delta is constantly increasing, the delta between warp two and 3 is 20c, meanwhile the delta between warp 8 and 9 is 500c.

[C.E. Evans]

The real idea was for Warp 10 to be totally unreachable, no matter what new technologies would come about in the future, with Warp 9.9 being ludicrous speed. But the temptation to go even faster by writers and producers was impossible to resist, so we wound up with stuff like Warp 9.975 and "Threshold."

[teacake]

I once gave this kid I know the first couple seasons of Enterprise. He had seen TNG and VOY. He was very leery of Enterprise though because the ship only went warp 5 and he was afraid it would be too slow to watch.

[JirinPanthosa]

False Profit is one of the worst episodes any Star Trek series not named Enterprise, I prefer to disregard it.

It's true they probably should have had a thirty second interchange in the pilot:

"Hey, what about the Bajoran wormhole? It's slightly closer."
"It's a risk that we will be able to get here and it will still be there. Besides, the moment we enter Federation space our risk factor decreases to almost zero and we can contact our loved ones and resupply at will."
"True. Much better to go directly to Earth."

Expecting that kind of thing from Voyager is like expecting a Star Wars prequel to get a character right. Why is it so hard to accept the information given to us by the show as the actual speed limitations of the ship? We give that kind of leeway for every other Trek.

[MacLeod]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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Exactly.

I like Voyager. I give it a solid B-, and I think it gets more hate than it deserves.

But they were reckless about doing things in one episode that would break the premise and about consistency in general, and it is obvious the writers were given a directive to just do whatever will make the most viewer-grabbing commercials, damn consistency. So why are we even arguing about this?

Battlestar Galactica kept a running count of living human beings, which they adhered to so dogmatically that in Razor they made sure to rescue two human beings from the cylons, just so they could kill two characters and not break the count. Voyager made no such effort, and this is something we should just accept.

Because some would argue consistancy is one of the hallmarks of good story telling.

[BK613]

Timo wrote:

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Considering that other one comes from "Year of Hell", I'd argue revisionism is sort of built in.



Timo Saloniemi

So was that map ever used anywhere other than an alternate future/reality that never actually happens?

(sorry about the delay; was away doing the Turkey Day thing...)

[Deks]

Ryan8bit wrote:

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First, there is no definition of what 9.975 really is. Even if you went by the technical manuals (which is pointless), they would still say less than the 21,000 that you say.

Second, while a velocity might be sustainable, that does not make it efficient. With a scarcity of resources, they would be unlikely to sustain such speeds.

Third, they would definitely need to make stops to attain resources. It is unlikely that such a ship could ever be meant to make a voyage meant to last even a few years without refueling.

Actually, Paris stated in the episode the 37's:
Warp 9.9, which in your terms would be 4 billion miles per second.

Sustainable velocity implies that there is enough resources to maintain that speed for LONG periods of time without any danger of resource diminishing (otherwise, it wouldn't be called 'sustainable').

I agree that they would have to make stops to attain resources... but practically all Federation ships have enough technology to park in any Solar system, draw power from the star, use that for replication of other goods, and use asteroids and raw matter in general to convert into energy (or simply use transporters for the process).
And it was also mentioned in one of the episodes of Voyager in Season 1 (when Tuvok was with alien species kids who aged in reverse) by Janeway that Voyager's Warp core can go on for 3 years without re-filling.

Of course... the writers never even bothered to adhere to these notions because ALL of it would easily kill off any attempt at them making the ship look like its in despair - idiots - I would have preferred to see the crew implement their technology to the fullest and you know... problem solve.