Earth ship Valiant

[Timo]

There's an alternate approach that would match the existing dialog:

If you've got engines with the power to push a 190,000 metric ton ship to high percentages of light than those engines can easily push you out of orbit and out of the system.

But with damaged engines, it may turn out that you can only do one such "push" - namely, the one that will slow you down from your high relativistic speed to orbit around Delta Vega.

Getting back to the speed that will take you to civilization is a massive effort in real world terms, and quite possibly no walk in the park for damaged impulse engines, either. Quite realistically, the delta-vee you have available might be capable of taking you all the way to Earth, or to orbit around Delta Vega, but not both.

Timo Saloniemi

[CorporalCaptain]

Here are a couple of reasonably accessible treatments of relativity from two American universities, for everyone's reading pleasure!

"More Relativity: The Train and The Twins" (University of Virginia): http://galileoandeinstein.physics.vi...sreltwins.html
Table of contents (University of Virginia): http://galileoandeinstein.physics.vi...cturelist.html

"The Relativistic Rocket" (University of California, Riverside): http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...SR/rocket.html
Table of contents (University of California, Riverside): http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/index.html

[blssdwlf]

Warped9 wrote:

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Were talking about a starship's impulse engines, not some contemporary chemical fuel rocket. If you've got engines with the power to push a 190,000 metric ton ship to high percentages of light than those engines can easily push you out of orbit and out of the system. What's even more amazing is how powerful those engines are given their comparatively small size in relation to the rest of the ship.

However those impulse engines are dependent on how much power is available to do the pushing and where they happen to be.

We've seen in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" that if they are low on power and in a planet's atmosphere it takes a long time to just climb out of the atmosphere (or even build up power to start climbing).

We've also seen in times of aggressive acceleration like in "The Doomsday Machine", "Elaan of Troyius", "The Immunity Syndrome" and arguably, "WNMHGB" that impulse power can be used up very quickly.

But in times where they don't push the impulse engines hard, like in "The Paradise Syndrome", impulse power isn't a problem.

Pushing in a hurry a nearly million ton ship to high relativistic speeds or even low FTL speeds (depending on your interpretation) with impulse engines to Delta Vega could easily use up so much power to not be able to power back out of orbit.

Hypothetically, if they accelerated more leisurely to Delta Vega it might not be a problem to leave orbit, but by the time they arrive Mitchell would've been unstoppable.

[Timo]

Pushing in a hurry a nearly million ton ship to high relativistic speeds or even low FTL speeds with impulse engines to Delta Vega

I'd rather argue that it would be a question of pushing the ship from the relativistic speed she already possessed, to her virtual-standstill meeting with Delta Vega. The effort would then detract from the journey home, unless it resulted in the ship regaining her near-infinite sources of power; not making the effort would allow the ship to continue towards civilization, as opposed to being "stranded".

As for dialogue cues, the ship is first said to be heading home on impulse power, but then Mitchell warns Kelso not to "activate" the starboard impulse packs. This sort of suggests coasting after an initial boost...

Timo Saloniemi

[blssdwlf]

Timo wrote:

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I'd rather argue that it would be a question of pushing the ship from the relativistic speed she already possessed, to her virtual-standstill meeting with Delta Vega. The effort would then detract from the journey home, unless it resulted in the ship regaining her near-infinite sources of power; not making the effort would allow the ship to continue towards civilization, as opposed to being "stranded".

As for dialogue cues, the ship is first said to be heading home on impulse power, but then Mitchell warns Kelso not to "activate" the starboard impulse packs. This sort of suggests coasting after an initial boost...

That's a very good point. At the time before diverting to Delta Vega the Enterprise could have already committed (accelerated to a cruising speed) to heading back to the nearest Earth base and that could've used up almost half her impulse power. They had no reason to expect to do a diversion so any side trip to a planet other than their original destination (requiring full deceleration) could leave them without power to blast back out of orbit.

[yenny]

Y'll know that vega is only 25 lyrs from earth. It's in the Lyra constellation. Also Vega is a polar star, which put in the northing area of the galaxy. How far is it from the outer reached of the galaxy? I don't know. But it probably not that far.

[yenny]

Also, a spaceship or starship would not travel alone the galactic plain, but above it or below it.

[Warped9]

I wouldn't put too much stock in the planet's name since these sort of things were added to give the story a sense of credibility because the name is familiar. In this case I highly doubt the planet Delta Vega has anything to do with the actual star we know as Vega.

[B.J.]

yenny wrote:

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Y'll know that vega is only 25 lyrs from earth. It's in the Lyra constellation. Also Vega is a polar star, which put in the northing area of the galaxy. How far is it from the outer reached of the galaxy? I don't know. But it probably not that far.

The north ecliptic pole is not the same as galactic north, so even though Vega is relatively close to Polaris, it's pretty close to the galactic equator from our POV. Not only that, but even if it was in the direction of galactic north, 25ly is a small percentage of the thickness of the galaxy, and would still be a long way from the edge.

[Timo]

It should indeed be noted that Vega is not a constellation, but an individual star; currently, there is no constellation named Vega, so there cannot be an individual star named Delta Vega, either. (Or a planet named after its mother star, as the situation with these Greek-letter Trek planets probably usually is.)

But many of the stars in our galaxy are hidden from our view by dust clouds and the like. Warp drive would change that overnight, as even a very short "side step" would allow us to peek past the obstacles and see new stars. Possibly, then, a cluster of stars in the exact direction of Vega would be added into a constellation named Vega, with Alpha Vega just 25 ly from Earth but Delta Vega more like 1,800 ly away.

On the other hand, the reboot movie offers an interesting alternative. There, a planet named Delta Vega is located in a completely different part of the galaxy. No, we don't know exactly where, but it's close to Vulcan, which lies neither in the direction of the star Vega nor close to the "edge" of the galaxy, by any definition of edge.

If Delta Vega was named after Nero messed up the timeline, there's one way two places in different directions would have equal chances for the name. Rather than the fourth-brightest star in the constellation Vega, the planet could be the fourth owned by the VEGA corporation, just like Dytallix B sounds like it would be the second one added to the Dytallix business empire... Perhaps VEGA was bolder in a timeline where giant Romulan starships didn't materialize out of nowhere and blow up Federation hardware, and established Delta VEGA farther out?

Timo Saloniemi

[yenny]

Timo wrote:

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It should indeed be noted that Vega is not a constellation, but an individual star; currently, there is no constellation named Vega, so there cannot be an individual star named Delta Vega, either. (Or a planet named after its mother star, as the situation with these Greek-letter Trek planets probably usually is.)

But many of the stars in our galaxy are hidden from our view by dust clouds and the like. Warp drive would change that overnight, as even a very short "side step" would allow us to peek past the obstacles and see new stars. Possibly, then, a cluster of stars in the exact direction of Vega would be added into a constellation named Vega, with Alpha Vega just 25 ly from Earth but Delta Vega more like 1,800 ly away.

On the other hand, the reboot movie offers an interesting alternative. There, a planet named Delta Vega is located in a completely different part of the galaxy. No, we don't know exactly where, but it's close to Vulcan, which lies neither in the direction of the star Vega nor close to the "edge" of the galaxy, by any definition of edge.

If Delta Vega was named after Nero messed up the timeline, there's one way two places in different directions would have equal chances for the name. Rather than the fourth-brightest star in the constellation Vega, the planet could be the fourth owned by the VEGA corporation, just like Dytallix B sounds like it would be the second one added to the Dytallix business empire... Perhaps VEGA was bolder in a timeline where giant Romulan starships didn't materialize out of nowhere and blow up Federation hardware, and established Delta VEGA farther out?

Timo Saloniemi

I didn't say that Vega was a constellation. I've said that it was in the Lyra constellation.

[blssdwlf]

If Vega isn't by the galactic rim then it probably isn't the Delta Vega we're looking for

[Warped9]

blssdwlf wrote:

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If Vega isn't by the galactic rim then it probably isn't the Delta Vega we're looking for

There you go.

[CorporalCaptain]

I think Timo brought up Vega not being a constellation, because historically in the real world, the bright stars in the sky were designated by Greek letter plus constellation. Syntactically, Delta Vega would fit that nomenclature, if only Vega were a constellation. "Delta Vega" sounds like a legitimate astronomical otherwise, and that's just a trope, by the way.

[publiusr]

Now in ST TMP we saw an accidental wormhole. Here was a thought. Maybe at the time of Valiant's loss no one really knew what kind of FTL to expect. There is space being warped--but how exactly. A warp ship surfs a true wormhole near instantly connects and a jump drive displaces similarly.

Now perhaps, as we saw from the Varduaar from Voyager, you can get the answer maybe a little too soon. Valiant might have been what the first Star Wars hyperspace ship looked like, and a possiblity missed.

Then we get bogged down in warp factors and all the technological spin-offs that result from more straightforward field manip'