Early Phoenix Designs

[Timo]

Contracts from whom? It was post-apocalyptic WWIII, with no financial infrastructure to be seen. Granted, Cochrane's original reason for building the Phoenix was to make money and retire to some island surrounded by bimbos, but that was obviously his pre-war plan.

But where is our reason for believing it cannot remain his postwar plan? He was going to fly before the Borg came. And not for shits and giggles, because he personally hated the idea of doing the flight - he had some outside reason for doing it (or at least for agreeing to being goaded by Lily Sloan into doing it).

Riker says that all major cities have been destroyed, but from the rest of Star Trek it is clear that minor cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston and New Orleans have not. The infrastructure context of Zep Cochrane is those minor cities and the continent hosting them. Sure, the great space fleets of China, India, Mexico and Brazil may be gone with the cities, but we have no particular reason to think that the spacecraft of the US, France, Russia or other bit players would be all lost or incapable of being relaunched on short notice.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

TOS gives us the impression that a space-faring infrastructure was already in place by the early 21st C. I would say it shouldn't be overly difficult to access and retrieve stuff from space by the 2060's, in Trek's timeline. Even for Cochrane's equipment. As gravity manipulation is already a thing, I don't think that the recovery or landing of the Phoenix would be problematic at all.

--Alex

That's the thing, though. TNG and FC seemed to rewrite and undermine all of that and it rippled out from there. This thinking might have stemmed from seeing that real world history did not unfold in similar fashion as might have been assumed from the perspective of the mid 1960s. By the time of the making of FC it was quite clear our 1990s couldn't possibly build anything like a DY100 ship fitted with artificial gravity and the then contemporary writers wanted to maintain the illusion of a largely parallel history between our reality and Trek's.

As early as first season TNG we saw the discrepency. In TOS' "Space Seed" it's established that the Eugenics Wars and WW3 are the same thing and set during the early 1990s. Yet in early TNG WW3 is set during the early 21st century and thus something separate from the Eugenics Wars. Now a way might be found to rationilze that discrepency, but more diferences in late 20th/early 21st century history kept cropping up. One was Colonel Ritchie's mission being the third and yet first successful attempt to leave the solar system (or something like that). But the advanced design (for the era) of the DY100 argues we already had the means to leave the solar system.

The setup in FC is totally at odds with the history painted by TOS.

 

[Timo]

In TOS' "Space Seed" it's established that the Eugenics Wars and WW3 are the same thing and set during the early 1990s.

What the dialogue actually says is the exact opposite. But never mind...

Now a way might be found to rationilze that discrepency

Such as actually listening to what the characters in "Space Seed" say?

One was Colonel Ritchie's mission being the third and yet first successful attempt to leave the solar system (or something like that). But the advanced design (for the era) of the DY100 argues we already had the means to leave the solar system.

Where's the discrepancy? Well, inside "Space Seed" exclusively. DY-100 was introduced as never having left the system, despite her theoretical capabilities, which is why our heroes are so surprised when meeting the Botany Bay, initially misidentifying her and then only gradually sorting out their multiple mistakes and misconceptions during the teaser and the first act.

Richey's mission is not the only TNG era datapoint nicely matching the other evidence. The Ares family of spacecraft from VOY "One Little Step" is also capable of leaving the solar system, with a superior propulsion system that whisks a rescue vessel from Earth to Mars within a week at most. It's not for lack of performance that pre-WWIII spacecraft don't reach distant stars... And for all we know, several of them in fact do! (Warpships would simply get there first, waving an awkward hello to welcome the late arrivals.)

The setup in FC is totally at odds with the history painted by TOS.

Umm, nope. Nothing in TOS spoke against a global nuclear war called WWIII in the mid-21st century. The only thing even coming close is "Omega Glory" where it is said Earth avoided a US/Russian superwar specifically - and ST:FC does its valiant bit at obfuscating the identities of the combatants in WWIII.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

In TOS' "Space Seed" it's established that the Eugenics Wars and WW3 are the same thing and set during the early 1990s.

What the dialogue actually says is the exact opposite. But never mind...

Now a way might be found to rationilze that discrepency

Such as actually listening to what the characters in "Space Seed" say?

One was Colonel Ritchie's mission being the third and yet first successful attempt to leave the solar system (or something like that). But the advanced design (for the era) of the DY100 argues we already had the means to leave the solar system.

Where's the discrepancy? Well, inside "Space Seed" exclusively. DY-100 was introduced as never having left the system, despite her theoretical capabilities, which is why our heroes are so surprised when meeting the Botany Bay, initially misidentifying her and then only gradually sorting out their multiple mistakes and misconceptions during the teaser and the first act.

Richey's mission is not the only TNG era datapoint nicely matching the other evidence. The Ares family of spacecraft from VOY "One Little Step" is also capable of leaving the solar system, with a superior propulsion system that whisks a rescue vessel from Earth to Mars within a week at most. It's not for lack of performance that pre-WWIII spacecraft don't reach distant stars... And for all we know, several of them in fact do! (Warpships would simply get there first, waving an awkward hello to welcome the late arrivals.)

The setup in FC is totally at odds with the history painted by TOS.

Umm, nope. Nothing in TOS spoke against a global nuclear war called WWIII in the mid-21st century. The only thing even coming close is "Omega Glory" where it is said Earth avoided a US/Russian superwar specifically - and ST:FC does its valiant bit at obfuscating the identities of the combatants in WWIII.

Timo Saloniemi

Believe what you want, but the dialogue in "Space Seed" is quite clear.

 

[Timo]

Indeed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Squiggy]

For the record...

SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid=1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.

 

[Warped9]

For the record...

SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid=1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.

And McCoy is nodding.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

For the record...

SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid=1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.

And McCoy is nodding.

Just from that dialogue alone, it could be inferred that the Eugenics Wars were WW4 or WW5. The "last" World War.

 

[T'Girl]

Spock: " The mid 1990s was the era of your last so-called World War."
McCoy: "The Eugenics Wars."
Spock: "Of course."

Translation

Spock confused the Eugenics War with WWIII,
McCoy gleefully correct him,
Spock conceded the point.

 

[Go-Captain]

Even after scoring the first warp flight and supposedly winning a contract or two thousand, Cochrane probably couldn't have afforded to build new models from the keel up, not immediately.

Contracts from whom? It was post-apocalyptic WWIII, with no financial infrastructure to be seen. Granted, Cochrane's original reason for building the Phoenix was to make money and retire to some island surrounded by bimbos, but that was obviously his pre-war plan. And based on what was stated in FC, money would no longer be an issue.

Earth wasn't so bad off as is commonly believed. Not long after Cochran makes warp drive a reality, just a year or so later the first warp colony ships leave Earth. Cochran speaks at a college just a few years later in Enterprise.

With that it's easy to see Cochran's project not as some weird post apocolyptic hobby, but as a way to skip the need for funding. Like he says in the movie, he wants to get rich and retire, but if civilization is near dead, who is he going to sell to? Selling out was his current plan in the movie, not a dead plan.

It's more likely that civilization is just in a very conservative state, unwilling to fund seemingly wild eyed experiments, and focused more on basic recovery. But, with the warp drive a proven success, and bringing Vulcans along, Cochran would have received all the funding he could ever want.

 

[BK613]

Spock: " The mid 1990s was the era of your last so-called World War."
McCoy: "The Eugenics Wars."
Spock: "Of course."

Translation

Spock confused the Eugenics War with WWIII,
McCoy gleefully correct him,
Spock conceded the point.

Well, if you do the aural equivalent of squinting, maybe.
I've watched the scene after hearing of this "correction theory" in some previous thread and I just don't see it. Nothing in the delivery or tone suggests Spock is saying "Korean War" and McCoy is correcting that to "Vietnam War." It continues to come across like this:

SPOCK: The mid-1910s was the era of your first so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Great War.
SPOCK: Of course. Your brutal attempt to dominate each other through the use of the machine gun and the poison gas.

If anything, this exchange foreshadows the romanticism demonstrated later in the briefing room (and Spock's objection to it) .
---
On the subject of TOS and nuclear war, IIRC, it was never specified that there wasn't such a war but this exchange between Kirk and Sargon heavily implies that there wasn't:

SARGON: It was so long ago, and the records of our travels were lost in the cataclysm which we loosened upon ourselves.
KIRK: A war?
SARGON: A struggle for such goals and the unleashing of such power that you could not comprehend.
KIRK: Then perhaps your intelligence wasn't so great, Sargon. We faced a similar crisis in our early nuclear age. We found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves.
SARGON: And we survived our primitive nuclear era, my son. But there comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face.
KIRK: I don't understand.
SARGON: One day our minds became so powerful, we dared think of ourselves as gods.

Kirk initially thinks that Sargon is talking about the cataclysm of a nuclear war and that humans had not let that happen.
YMMV.

 

[Ithekro]

Limited exchange rather than a full out nuclear war like the 1960s envisioned that would devastate the Earth. Going by the Q impression of the Post Atomic Horror, some 15 years or so after Cochrane's flight, it would seem the worst of it was in Asia. Though why the troops were controlled with drugs is unclear.

This along with Riker's estimates of the dead would suggest the area most effected was India and China. Compared to Spock's lower death toll, which was either from a different war, or was based on the then (1960s) still Western centric ideas of what is important. That would be the dead in the fewer Western cities hit by the weapons exchanges rather then the ongoing war.

 

[T'Girl]

Though why the troops were controlled with drugs is unclear.

Think Jem'Hadar, it's control. If the leadership inherently doesn't trust their troops, or the military in general, then you look to a method of overt control.

... Riker's estimates of the dead would suggest the area most effected was India and China.

 

[Dukhat]

But where is our reason for believing it cannot remain his postwar plan? He was going to fly before the Borg came. And not for shits and giggles, because he personally hated the idea of doing the flight - he had some outside reason for doing it (or at least for agreeing to being goaded by Lily Sloan into doing it).

Riker says that all major cities have been destroyed, but from the rest of Star Trek it is clear that minor cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston and New Orleans have not. The infrastructure context of Zep Cochrane is those minor cities and the continent hosting them. Sure, the great space fleets of China, India, Mexico and Brazil may be gone with the cities, but we have no particular reason to think that the spacecraft of the US, France, Russia or other bit players would be all lost or incapable of being relaunched on short notice.

I'll be honest: From what we see in FC, I really have no idea why Cochrane was still making his flight.

It's post-WWIII. Cochrane, Lily, and a few other Road Warrior rejects are hanging around Montana because that's where the silo is. Cochrane doesn't seem to have an official staff or overseers from any government or nation, nor does he seem to have any funding, either from the US or some other nation (and if he did have funding from, say, China or Russia, one would think that they'd have the means of providing him with a newer and better launch vehicle than an antiquated Titan missile.) When he actually makes the flight, no one seems to be monitoring it. The design of the Phoenix implies that after the flight, the crew module returns to Earth while leaving the main body plus warp engines floating in orbit without any apparent means of retrieving it. The whole endeavor screams of nothing more than a Virgin Galactic-style thrill ride conceived by one old drunk guy in his garage.

While Cochrane made it clear his original reasoning for building the Phoenix, surely he doesn't expect that to come to pass now. The way he makes the statement implies that that idea (getting rich and retiring to an island full of naked babes) isn't going to be happening. At least that's my interpretation. Plus, who's going to pay him? And what is this unknown party actually going to get for their money? The Phoenix's engines? If that were the case, then why didn't Cochrane just sell the Phoenix to them instead of flying it himself? The plans for building the engines? If they just need the plans, why does Cochrane need to launch the Phoenix at all?

Again, it seems like Cochrane is just making the flight to make the flight, for no real reason (especially when, as was pointed out earlier, he doesn't even like to fly?) So why is he making this flight at all? It seems that the only reason it's happening...is so that the Vulcans will see it.

Earth wasn't so bad off as is commonly believed. Not long after Cochran makes warp drive a reality, just a year or so later the first warp colony ships leave Earth. Cochran speaks at a college just a few years later in Enterprise.

I'm pretty sure the reason why Earth bounced back so fast after FC was because of the Vulcans' help, not because the rest of the planet was in better shape than what we saw.

Spock: " The mid 1990s was the era of your last so-called World War."
McCoy: "The Eugenics Wars."
Spock: "Of course."

Translation

Spock confused the Eugenics War with WWIII,
McCoy gleefully correct him,
Spock conceded the point.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the intent was this:

Spock refers to the last World War (obviously WWIII, because if it was meant to be WWIX, they would have made that clear.)
McCoy agrees with Spock, but states the exact name of WWIII.
Spock agrees that WWIII was called the Eugenics Wars.

 

[Ithekro]

The best way to get rich and famous is to take the flight himself. Not only build the thing no one else has, but prove it works by flying it. Sell it to someone? They can cover up his name and make all the money, or give him money, but he doesn't become famous (no babes). He has someone else fly it? Again, they get to be famous (no babes for Zephram).

Proof of concept flight for the Phoenix. While one trip would be something to prove humans can travel at the speed of light, most proofs require a second run don't they? That would mean the entire assembly should come down. But then how do you prep for a second flight? Is there another silo with a Titan is it to fit the Phoenix into? Does the warp drive actually have the power to get the ship into and out of orbit without a Titan rocket?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Spock: " The mid 1990s was the era of your last so-called World War."
McCoy: "The Eugenics Wars."
Spock: "Of course."

Translation

Spock confused the Eugenics War with WWIII,
McCoy gleefully correct him,
Spock conceded the point.

No.

You've cut Spock's second line short, which indicates that Spock knows full well what he's talking about.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the intent was this:

Spock refers to the last World War (obviously WWIII, because if it was meant to be WWIX, they would have made that clear.)
McCoy agrees with Spock, but states the exact name of WWIII.
Spock agrees that WWIII was called the Eugenics Wars.

Yep.

 

[Dukhat]

The best way to get rich and famous is to take the flight himself.

If there's no one left to make him famous or give him money, what's the point of taking the flight?

 

[Ithekro]

The planet is not dead. And it seems clear that the world was not totally gone give the quick recovery post First Contact where they have warp probes and ships within a decade. That cannot have all been the Vulcans.

Cochrane was going to make the flight before the Borg shot the place up, therefore there was some goal that suited his purposes. There must be people with money and the ability to use a warp drive should one be made practical. It has been ten years since the end of the war after all.

 

[fireproof78]

The best way to get rich and famous is to take the flight himself.

If there's no one left to make him famous or give him money, what's the point of taking the flight?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

All of this just supports my theory that the warp ship was actually LILY'S idea and Cochrane was just a test pilot who got conned into flying it with her. When he refers to "dollar signs... MONEY!" he is literally referring to the ridiculous amount of money he was going to get paid for participating in this stunt; he didn't actually give a shit whether the warp drive worked or not, he was planning to take his paycheck and run off to the Cayman Islands as soon as the capsule landed.

Lily, on the other hand, carries herself in a way that screams "ex-military" which means she's either working under (what in 2063 passes for) a lucrative defense contract, or she's doing it independently (SpaceX style) and hoping to sell the technology to the Air Force once she proves that it works. Either way, the goal isn't to get rich, the goal is to prove the technology that will later become the foundation of a whole new line of engine systems that Lily's company knows (or knew) how to manufacture.

Those engineers would go on to develop the engines for Friendship One, SS Valiant, and a whole host of other spacecraft in and around the solar system. Their immediate successors laid the groundwork for the engines used by Earth Starfleet half a century later and eventually Henry Archer's Warp Five Program.

All of which was LILY'S idea. Cochrane didn't even know or care whether the warp drive would even work until fifty spooky looking time travelers showed up and told him that history thought he was a hero and a visionary, that they had given him ALL of the credit for the warp project, that they had for some reason taken Lily aboard their ship and didn't seem to have any idea who she was. Most importantly, they weren't really giving him a choice: they were going to fly the ship with or without him, but they really wanted to do it WITH him because history.

So he played along.

"Eh... Why not?"

Later on he has second thoughts, tries to run for it; they shoot him in the back and shove him into the cockpit anyway.
He even tries to tell Riker the truth just before the launch:

"You DO realize I'm a complete phony, right?"

"LOL who cares? HISTORY!"