Star Trek Maps (1980)

[Mytran]

Except for rare, unreplicapable components of course!
This is why I see the USS Voyager as a vessel too sophisticated for its own good, only able to operate at its peak with regular visits to Starbases for tune-ups and ongoing replacement of its various experimental components. Robbed of all that, she performs well below par.

 

[Timo]

no source listed as to where they got the "500" figure

There is a real star named Tau Cygni, located just 70 ly from Earth. Apparently, the writer did quite deliberately intend for the colony to lie in the constellation Cygnus, because that's where Sheliak lies, too (well, in Lyra, but those are neighboring constellations). Ms Snodgrass just didn't do her homework, as she got the spelling wrong and chose a Cygnus star with a distance from Earth that is poorly compatible with the plot.

The distance chosen for Tau Cygna in the Star Charts is purely arbitrary and mainly meets the aesthetic needs of filling an empty spot on the chart. The direction is "sort-of-Cygnus'ish" at best; no real attempt was made there to equate the star with Tau Cygni, merely to make it a halfway point of dispute between the UFP and a species named after their homestar. But it seems this is where Memory Alpha gets its 500 ly figure exclusively.

(It could be speculated that Tau Cygna is in fact a Sheliak name for the star system; we never see it spelled out, so it may in fact be more like "the Thouzigno system". We also learn the Sheliak live in the Shelia system, thus potentially completely unrelated to the star humans call Sheliak - especially since that star had no hostile natives in TAS "The Slaver Weapon".)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Novak Senkovic]

There is a real star named Tau Cygni, located just 70 ly from Earth. Apparently, the writer did quite deliberately intend for the colony to lie in the constellation Cygnus, because that's where Sheliak lies, too (well, in Lyra, but those are neighboring constellations). Ms Snodgrass just didn't do her homework, as she got the spelling wrong and chose a Cygnus star with a distance from Earth that is poorly compatible with the plot.

The distance chosen for Tau Cygna in the Star Charts is purely arbitrary and mainly meets the aesthetic needs of filling an empty spot on the chart. The direction is "sort-of-Cygnus'ish" at best; no real attempt was made there to equate the star with Tau Cygni, merely to make it a halfway point of dispute between the UFP and a species named after their homestar. But it seems this is where Memory Alpha gets its 500 ly figure exclusively.

(It could be speculated that Tau Cygna is in fact a Sheliak name for the star system; we never see it spelled out, so it may in fact be more like "the Thouzigno system". We also learn the Sheliak live in the Shelia system, thus potentially completely unrelated to the star humans call Sheliak - especially since that star had no hostile natives in TAS "The Slaver Weapon".)

Timo Saloniemi

There is a real star named Tau Cygni, located just 70 ly from Earth. Apparently, the writer did quite deliberately intend for the colony to lie in the constellation Cygnus, because that's where Sheliak lies, too (well, in Lyra, but those are neighboring constellations). Ms Snodgrass just didn't do her homework, as she got the spelling wrong and chose a Cygnus star with a distance from Earth that is poorly compatible with the plot.

The distance chosen for Tau Cygna in the Star Charts is purely arbitrary and mainly meets the aesthetic needs of filling an empty spot on the chart. The direction is "sort-of-Cygnus'ish" at best; no real attempt was made there to equate the star with Tau Cygni, merely to make it a halfway point of dispute between the UFP and a species named after their homestar. But it seems this is where Memory Alpha gets its 500 ly figure exclusively.

(It could be speculated that Tau Cygna is in fact a Sheliak name for the star system; we never see it spelled out, so it may in fact be more like "the Thouzigno system". We also learn the Sheliak live in the Shelia system, thus potentially completely unrelated to the star humans call Sheliak - especially since that star had no hostile natives in TAS "The Slaver Weapon".)

Timo Saloniemi

In other words you are saying that memory alpha and star charts are wrong

 

[Lakenheath 72]

The light years reference in Memory Alpha is information not derived from the episode. There is no statement in the dialog from the episode itself about how far Tau Cygni V is from Earth. The okudagrams present two alternatives - the Federation starship is either, at a minimum, 5000 lightyears from Earth or less than 1000 lights from a subspace relay booster station. I don't think it is possible to equate the Star Trek universe with our real universe. This has been the case, in my opinion, since the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which depicted starships traveling to and beyond the galaxy. In our universe, Earth is at minimum 25,000 light years from the galactic rim. In the Star Trek universe, at least one source - the map from "Conspiracy" has Earth located less than 100 light years from the galactic rim.

 

[Novak Senkovic]

Speaking of Distances if the Shelia system is 5000LY then the UFP which is only 700LY at it's longest according to star charts and even shorter a century earlier negotiated with the Sheliak and encountered them. Aslo, if that is true would the UFP be alot bigger and if not I find it hard to believe it's only 700LY at it's longest yet encounters and explores space thousands of light years away and no one within those thousands of light years wants to join the Federation? About the Conspiracy map, it's more of an artistic concept than an actual representation so it can correspond to the real universe. The Federation is also more like the United Nations than a country and according to Roddenberry starfleet is not a military..

 

[Timo]

In other words you are saying that memory alpha and star charts are wrong

How so? There's nothing "wrong" about Tau Cygna being 500 ly from Earth, as there are no independent facts on the matter that would contradict this claim.

In our universe, Earth is at minimum 25,000 light years from the galactic rim.

Yet in our universe, there is no rim. The Milky Way just fades out gradually. But in the Trek universe, there very explicitly is a rim, and it's purple. Again, there are no facts on the matter to tell us where exactly this purple rim would be. Could be 270.3 ly from Earth for all we know.

the UFP which is only 700LY at it's longest according to star charts

No, the booklet doesn't make that claim. It just shows that the continuous core of the UFP is about that long on one axis. The farther out one gets, the smaller and more isolated the UFP holdings there - and the ones that define the UFP as being "spread across 8000 lightyears" are probably just individual star systems.

As for the Sheliak, they would in all likelihood be the ones doing the encountering. Xenophobic or not, they are the more advanced party there, and probably travel farther in search of species to hate and despise...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

This has been the case, in my opinion, since the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which depicted starships traveling to and beyond the galaxy. In our universe, Earth is at minimum 25,000 light years from the galactic rim.

Unless you travel perpendicular to the plane of the arms, basically up or down. Then the edge or "rim" would be considerable closer.

If you're traveling from the area of Earth towards the Andromeda galaxy, you would travel "downward" at a fairly steep angle.

If you were to travel toward the ends of the galaxy's arms, you'd be going the wrong way.

.

 

[Novak Senkovic]

How so? There's nothing "wrong" about Tau Cygna being 500 ly from Earth, as there are no independent facts on the matter that would contradict this claim.



Yet in our universe, there is no rim. The Milky Way just fades out gradually. But in the Trek universe, there very explicitly is a rim, and it's purple. Again, there are no facts on the matter to tell us where exactly this purple rim would be. Could be 270.3 ly from Earth for all we know.



No, the booklet doesn't make that claim. It just shows that the continuous core of the UFP is about that long on one axis. The farther out one gets, the smaller and more isolated the UFP holdings there - and the ones that define the UFP as being "spread across 8000 lightyears" are probably just individual star systems.

As for the Sheliak, they would in all likelihood be the ones doing the encountering. Xenophobic or not, they are the more advanced party there, and probably travel farther in search of species to hate and despise...

Timo Saloniemi

How so? There's nothing "wrong" about Tau Cygna being 500 ly from Earth, as there are no independent facts on the matter that would contradict this claim.



Yet in our universe, there is no rim. The Milky Way just fades out gradually. But in the Trek universe, there very explicitly is a rim, and it's purple. Again, there are no facts on the matter to tell us where exactly this purple rim would be. Could be 270.3 ly from Earth for all we know.



No, the booklet doesn't make that claim. It just shows that the continuous core of the UFP is about that long on one axis. The farther out one gets, the smaller and more isolated the UFP holdings there - and the ones that define the UFP as being "spread across 8000 lightyears" are probably just individual star systems.

As for the Sheliak, they would in all likelihood be the ones doing the encountering. Xenophobic or not, they are the more advanced party there, and probably travel farther in search of species to hate and despise...

Timo Saloniemi

Going by the Treaty of Armens ("The Ensigns of Command"),

"Third party assistance may be requested from a Federation Starfleet vessel or a Sheliak Corporate spacecraft if the distance from the vessel to the respective homeworld is greater than five thousand lightyears. UFP Standards Measurement Bureau Units. Assistance may be assisted if the vessel is less than 1000 lightyears from a standard UFP subspace relay booster station."

So, Tau Cygna V was located at a point in the galaxy more than 5000 lightyears from Earth, or less than 1000 lightyears from a subspace relay booster station.

So, Federation starships were in 2255 traveling more than 5000 lightyears from Earth on a regular occurrence.

 

[Novak Senkovic]

Also, according to Star Charts V'Ger went through the Klingon Empire, so this means it converted everything in its path to data patterns yet the Klingon Empire sent 3 Klingon ships to investigate much later accordsing to ST:TMP.

And speaking of TMP, Scotrty says "we could have you back on Vulcan in 4 days" to Spock. I doubt it takes 4 days to reach Vulcan from Earth as Spock made the trip in a long ranged shuttle in much less time. Either Scotty meant 4hrs or else it the Enterprise wouldn't be ready to head for Vulcan until 4 days.

 

[Mytran]

The way Scotty says the line is quite neutral; it could either be a prideful boast ("only four days!!!") or an apologetic offer ("the condition the warp engines are in after the V'ger incident, it will take us four days. You want me to call you a shuttle?")

So, Federation starships were in 2255 traveling more than 5000 lightyears from Earth on a regular occurrence.

Well, the Enterprise routinely travelled the 1,000ly from one system to another in Obsession, covered 22 parsecs (72ly) in the course of a "hot pursuit" in Arena, saw Starfleet evacuate space around their position within a range of 100 parsecs in Alternative Factor and many other examples besides.
The 23rd century was a much faster place!

And lest we forget, the original NX-01 made it from Earth to Qu'onos (which according to MAPS is over 100ly away) in around 80 hours

 

[Timo]

Also, Spock never went from Vulcan to Earth - he went from Vulcan to a point where the Enterprise was left after her adventure inside the wormhole. Where that point might lie, we don't know - wormholes are like that. In the Charts setup, though, the ship would be going towards Vulcan when going towards V'Ger, making Spock's task easier.

(Also, we don't really know when Spock launched. It happened after the Klingon fight, but before the clock started ticking for Starfleet; might have been days or even weeks before the main body of the movie! Although why Spock would have headed for Earth, rather than for V'Ger directly, we can't fathom. If he intended to get a ride from his old pal Kirk, why didn't he tell him that? So we get even farther from the idea that Spock would have been in the process of reaching Earth from Vulcan in unduly short time.)

As for the Klingons, we have no idea whether the hopeless fight of the trio was the first for the Empire, or the last in a series. Parties engaging V'Ger would be hard pressed to file a report (one wonders whether the one from Amar ever reached its intended recipients), and Klingons wouldn't be depending on the experiences of their peers and competitors anyway. But the Charts try to make that easy, too: the movie confirms that V'Ger came from Klingon space, but here the route at least goes through that narrow extension with which Klingons arm-wrestle with Romulans, rather than through the bulk of their Empire. (Okay, it was supposed not to go through the bulk, but Mandel decided otherwise.)

The "regular occurrence" thing I don't see at all. The anal-retentive Sheliak cover contingencies in their legal jargon, not regularities...

So Tau Cygna V was founded by the Artemis; that's closer to being proof that travel in the direction was rare than anything else, as we're again dealing with a group of isolationists. And when the Artemis set sail, long colonization sorties utilizing cryosleep in combination with warp were still being conducted, as per that story about Harry Kim's ancestor; covering of hundreds or thousands of lightyears, possibly much more than exploration ships, would appear likely.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Novak Senkovic]

The way Scotty says the line is quite neutral; it could either be a prideful boast ("only four days!!!") or an apologetic offer ("the condition the warp engines are in after the V'ger incident, it will take us four days. You want me to call you a shuttle?")

Well, the Enterprise routinely travelled the 1,000ly from one system to another in Obsession, covered 22 parsecs (72ly) in the course of a "hot pursuit" in Arena, saw Starfleet evacuate space around their position within a range of 100 parsecs in Alternative Factor and many other examples besides.
The 23rd century was a much faster place!

And lest we forget, the original NX-01 made it from Earth to Qu'onos (which according to MAPS is over 100ly away) in around 80 hours

my point is that this means tau cyna V is 5000LY. Kirk's indication that the cloud creature could have come from a planet a thousand light years away could have been metaphoric

 

[Tim Thomason]

Space is very, very big. Having no access to Star Trek Maps, is it not possible that V'Ger (the smaller version, at 2 AUs) to roam through the bulk of Klingon space undetected? Especially if it isn't actively seeking solar systems, just making a beeline from wherever it was straight back to Earth.

 

[Mytran]

Possibly, but since mobile sensors on starships can easily scan for light years, the larger observatories and orbital telescopes in solar systems ought to be able to do the same - hence V'ger would eventually be noticed.

 

[Novak Senkovic]

Possibly, but since mobile sensors on starships can easily scan for light years, the larger observatories and orbital telescopes in solar systems ought to be able to do the same - hence V'ger would eventually be noticed.

besides which it was more than 82 AU in diamter the Kuiper belt is 50 au from the sun

 

[BK613]

,,, wouldn't they have used a Malkorian light-year in their introductory greeting?

Nah, that's what the universal translator is for

The UT does unit conversions? You say deux mille mètres and I hear 2187.226596675416 yards? That's assuming of course, that we are using the same number base. The mitten-handed Makorians could have been using base 8 for example (2000 base 8 would be 1024 base 10)

besides which it was more than 82 AU in diamter the Kuiper belt is 50 au from the sun

Yes, 82 AUs in diameter is 41 AUs in radius so centered at the sun's location, the cloud would easily encompass the major planets. Very large in terms of the solar system.
But it is approximately 268,000 AUs to the a Centauri system. So a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation and a scale model:

A golf ball is 1.68" in diameter. If we shrink the 82 AU cloud to the size of a golf ball, then an AU would be approximately 0.0205" (1.68 / 82) and the distance to the a Centauri system would be approximately 153 yards* (1.68 / 82 x 268000 / 12 / 3 ).

Back-of-the-endzone to back-back-of-the-endzone on an American football field is 120 yards. So if you place a golf ball on either end, each 16.5 yards beyond the goalposts out of bounds, then you can get a sense of the scale of things.

Wikipedia image of an American football field

For a 2 AU cloud the two golf balls would be 3.55 miles** apart.

So, given the nature of the cloud, I think you could see it coming if you were looking but might miss it if you weren't carefully looking.

*(139.9 meters for those across the pond)
**( 5.71 kilometers )

 

[Timo]

As regards unit conversions, I trust the UT takes the very same sort of liberties it must take with language in general, trying to convey the meaning despite being unable to express it through a literal translation.

If the alien says "fifty kellicams", it naturally becomes "a hundred lightyears" even if the exact figure would be 97.22 ly - because the expression "fifty kellicams" in base ten is not intended to convey perfection in the first place. If the alien says "64 strakka" but uses base eight, that, too, is translated in a rounded fashion. But if the alien using base ten says "You die horribly unless you surrender in 10 olids", then this necessarily has to become "three minutes and nine seconds", even when the alien chose a nice and round number of olids originally. But the point is, that's what the UT does in any case, with all expressions! It gives us Bajoran Colonels and Klingon warp drives, even though both expressions must be extremely crude approximations with etymologies completely different from the human (English) ones.

Whether V'Ger would be spotted depends on how brightly its 12th power forcefield glows, rather independently of how big this forcefield is; Trek sensors have never been good at tracking dim objects or phenomena in real time across great distances. We also have to wonder about the speed at which V'Ger approaches its Creator. A true cosmopolite starting out in 1977 or thereabouts would have to move at warp zillion to really get a good look at the universe before the (late?) 2270s, so the crawling pace we witness near Earth must be the result of a deceleration. When did that deceleration take place? That is, did Klingons before the Amar get to enjoy the sight of a target at a manageable intercept speed?

We should not overlook the fact that Earth does receive its share of super-aliens despite being surrounded by alien powers that are her peers. No doubt every capital world of a major star empire does. Does this mean that super-aliens don't brake for non-targets? Or does it mean that only a certain percentage of super-aliens reach their intended targets, and others get tangled in local politics en route?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

A golf ball is 1.68" in diameter. If we shrink the 82 AU cloud to the size of a golf ball, then an AU would be approximately 0.0205" (1.68 / 82) and the distance to the a Centauri system would be approximately 153 yards* (1.68 / 82 x 268000 / 12 / 3 ).

Back-of-the-endzone to back-back-of-the-endzone on an American football field is 120 yards. So if you place a golf ball on either end, each 16.5 yards beyond the goalposts out of bounds, then you can get a sense of the scale of things.

For a 2 AU cloud the two golf balls would be 3.55 miles** apart.

That's a great comparison, thanks!
It really reinforces the fact that space is big; really big. I mean, you may think it's a long way down to the shops, but that's just peanuts to space.....

 

[Novak Senkovic]

Also, Spock never went from Vulcan to Earth - he went from Vulcan to a point where the Enterprise was left after her adventure inside the wormhole. Where that point might lie, we don't know - wormholes are like that. In the Charts setup, though, the ship would be going towards Vulcan when going towards V'Ger, making Spock's task easier.

(Also, we don't really know when Spock launched. It happened after the Klingon fight, but before the clock started ticking for Starfleet; might have been days or even weeks before the main body of the movie! Although why Spock would have headed for Earth, rather than for V'Ger directly, we can't fathom. If he intended to get a ride from his old pal Kirk, why didn't he tell him that? So we get even farther from the idea that Spock would have been in the process of reaching Earth from Vulcan in unduly short time.)

As for the Klingons, we have no idea whether the hopeless fight of the trio was the first for the Empire, or the last in a series. Parties engaging V'Ger would be hard pressed to file a report (one wonders whether the one from Amar ever reached its intended recipients), and Klingons wouldn't be depending on the experiences of their peers and competitors anyway. But the Charts try to make that easy, too: the movie confirms that V'Ger came from Klingon space, but here the route at least goes through that narrow extension with which Klingons arm-wrestle with Romulans, rather than through the bulk of their Empire. (Okay, it was supposed not to go through the bulk, but Mandel decided otherwise.)

The "regular occurrence" thing I don't see at all. The anal-retentive Sheliak cover contingencies in their legal jargon, not regularities...

So Tau Cygna V was founded by the Artemis; that's closer to being proof that travel in the direction was rare than anything else, as we're again dealing with a group of isolationists. And when the Artemis set sail, long colonization sorties utilizing cryosleep in combination with warp were still being conducted, as per that story about Harry Kim's ancestor; covering of hundreds or thousands of lightyears, possibly much more than exploration ships, would appear likely.

Timo Saloniemi

The stardates indicate approximately 3 days pass from stardate 7410.2 so Spock wouldn't have had much time to get from Vulvan to the Enterprise. If the Enterprise was closer to Vulcan via thew wormhole then she would have to have changed course to get to V'GEr as Vulcan is in a different diraction. Also, it's difficult to believe that it would take the Enterprise 4 days to reach Vulcan (16LY distant) at Warp 7 yet Archer was able to reach the much greater difference of Kronos (100LY) in only 3.3 Days at a speed of only warp 4.5.

 

[Mytran]

Archer's ship never suffered from major engine design difficulties mere hours after launching, unlike the Enterprise refit design, which then faced a ferocious energy cloud 82AUs in diameter. After all that, no wonder Scotty is going to be treating his engines gently for a few days!