the date 40759.5 is actually the commissioning date, not the launch date. Where does the stardate 41025.5 come from?
no the commissioning paque of the enterprise D only has the laucnh date which is 40759.5 and no other stardate. plaque
not if stardate 41000.0 is January 1st 2364 though I worked it out as December 25 2363 and stardate 40759.5 on 29/09/2363 with the commissioning date of 40290.85 to be on 17/02/2363 if the stardate of 44390.1 is on 17/05/2367 and 1550 days after the Enterprise D was commissioned. (Note: 1550 days is presumed to be Earth days where 1 ED=24hrs). Data's Day would have to be on that date because the stardate 49384 stated in the DS9 episode Paradise Lost falls on the 14th of a month which I worked out 14/05/2372. The episode The Neutral Zone which has a stardate of 41986 is said to be in the year 2364 and the Voyager episode is said to be in the years 2371.
Apparently, there were two different plaques used on the E-D set, the early-seasons one specifying the commissioning date and the later-seasons one (with more in-joke names of production staff) the launch date. Neither should be taken as "hard canon" in the sense that the stardates aren't actually readable on screen, but both would seem to represent the same level of canonicity anyway, whatever that level. Timo Saloniemi
Right about the spelling, wrong about the stardate. The first one used on set states "Commissioned Stardate 41025.5" http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Enterprise_dedication_plaque#USS_Enterprise_.28NCC-1701-D.29
Can't see the stardate on that dedication plaque and stardate 41025.5 is not 1550 days before stardate 44390.1.
Your question was where Stardate 41025.5 come from, wasn't it? I don't think anyone ever suggested that non-readable text should be taken as canon. However, that is the source of the number. Speaking which, here is an excellent recreation of the plaque from Dave-Daring (http://dave-daring.deviantart.com/gallery/50078952/USS-Enterprise)
I've also seen recreations and google images plaques of the Enterprise where the launch date is 40759.5. Here is a very legible plaque from google images. https://www.google.nl/search?hl=en&...4.9.2792...0.3aNtB7OfSnw#imgrc=206b1KNTZnuEsM:
...So, if we do take both these dates as "real", how can we weasel out of the fact that the separation between SDs 41025.5 and 44390.1, some 3365 stardate units, is not a good match for 1550 Earth days, but more like 1230 Earth days in the best of cases? It doesn't seem worth the effort to try and pretend that some other ratio besides 1000 SD = 1 Earth yr would explain the TNG stardates better overall. OTOH, if Data is in error by as much as twenty percent, that's pretty alarming. There's always the possibility that the heroes rack up more than 365 Earth days in an Earth calendar year, of course: they have lived quite a few days twice or thrice or more. Would Data be in the mood to find 20% "extra" days in the adventures of the ship? This calls for lots of time travel, as e.g. relativistic flight would just decrease the number of subjective days within an objective year. OTOH, perhaps FTL flight in turn works the opposite way and every year for a warp-propelled hero indeed is more than 365 Earth days long? It would help explain how certain characters age more per year than would perhaps be physiologically plausible! Timo Saloniemi
I think time dilation (and apparent increased aging on the younger characters) is par for the course with Star Trek. Our regular heroes just don't show the aging so much due to the excellence of 24th Century healthcare
Other way around. Dilation means slowing. If time dilation happened, it would mean that the characters on moving starships would age more slowly than people on planets or starbases. The problem is that modern Trek consistently assumed it was taking place in real time. If an event from an episode, say, four seasons earlier were referenced, every character would agree that it had occurred four years before, regardless of whether they were part of a starship crew or a planetary population. Also, there's the fact that warp travel would not entail time dilation; the Alcubierre equations prove that the relativistic time distortions cancel out and time flows at the same rate both inside and outside of the warp bubble. And ships at impulse rarely travel fast enough for any significant time dilation to kick in; if you need to go that fast, it's more convenient just to go to warp.
Doesn't time dilation occur at different rates in different parts of the galaxy due to differing velocities of stars orbiting the galaxy and their gravitational effects? Seems to me that time would of necessity pass at different rates in different places as a matter of course. Which takes me to my personal Stardate theory: that stardates are a mechanism used throughout the Federation in order to keep coordinated scheduling possible without having to convert to everyone's local time. Instead, everyone converts their local time to stardates and that's the reference. When we hear non-Federation aliens speaking in stardate terms, that's just the UT converting whatever time unit they are actually using in their own language. I'm currently working on a timeline for TOS based on the premise that one stardate unit is just 8 hours. This makes for 1000 stardates equaling somewhat less than one Earth year. (When I get a little further along in that project I might start a thread about to let you all dissect it and tell me how wrong I am, or else how well thought-out and practical my assumptions are--but not here and now, I don't want to derail this thread) I don't plan on attempting to reconcile the idea with TNG+ era Trek, but for what it's worth, using my premise, 3365 stardate units would equal 1121 days (and 16 hours) on Earth, or a bit over 3 years. 1550 days (referencing Timo's post a couple comments up-thread) would amount to about four and one quarter years, so, at least with that data, it doesn't line up. On the other hand, 1550 days is 37,200 hours. if 37,200 hours is 3365 stardate units, then a stardate unit is about 11 hours. Which I guess it could be. Why not? I'll have to figure out how well an 11 hour stardate works with the TOS data. Though the 8 hour stardate does allow the entire range of the live action series to fall within a 5 year period. I'm not sure an 11 hour stardate would work for that parameter. --Alex
Yes, it does. It's called non-simultaneity -- there's no way to define an absolute, universal rate of time passage, because it depends on where you're measuring it from. There's even a slight discrepancy in time rate between people on Earth's surface and orbiting ships and satellites. GPS satellites actually rely on the relativistic discrepancy in their respective clock rates to fix their positions relative to each other and to receivers on the ground, so this is a phenomenon we use every day. That's similar to the explanation Roddenberry gave in The Making of Star Trek for why stardates in TOS were out of order -- that it was because of different relativistic time rates in different parts of the galaxy or ships moving at different speeds. However, that doesn't really work in the context of modern Trek, because -- as I mentioned -- all the shows and films have assumed that everyone measures time the same way, that if one character perceives an event as having happened four years before, so will every other character. There's also the fact that non-simultaneity breaks down if there's faster-than-light travel -- in that case, there pretty much has to be a universal time standard, or else FTL travel would inevitably result in time travel and paradoxes due to the discrepancies in time measurement in different places. I tried decades ago to come up with some coherent scheme for TOS stardates, but there was just no way to make them even remotely consistent -- even within a single work (for instance, comparing the stardates and time intervals given among the various log entries in ST:TMP gives several contradictory time-per-stardate ratios). I tried doing it as per Roddenberry's suggestion, taking only those episodes and films that took place in the same location and calculating a stardate ratio for each location, and that still didn't allow any consistent results.
Your assuming that 1550 Earth days pass between stardate 40759.5 and 44390.1. I suggest that the commissioning date would have to be earlier so the stardate is earlier than the 40759.5 which is actually the launch date and there was another Hindi festival of lights date or it was moved to make stardate 44390.1 in the middle of the year 2367. This is of course pure conjecture but it fits if stardate 49384, seen clearly on screen in the DS9 episode Paradise Lost, is to fall on the 14th of a month as mentioned by said DS9 episode, and have the stardate 48971.5 fall in the year 2371 as mentioned by the Voyager episode the 37's. At which point in the stardate history 1000 stardates equals 1 Earth year (a Julian year i.e. 365.25 Earth Days) is not known.
As far as TOS episodes and movies are concerned, a number of different star systems were used throughout their course to make time frames mentioned in the series and movies fit with the given information. I've had to use 24 different equations or systems for what a stardate equals over the course of the entire star trek history but not preceding the mid 22nd century and make everything fit within the information in the official star trek universe. Even with that, discrepancies still occur as it is impossible to come up with a perfect system.
I agree, time distortions are cancelled out when travelling at warp speed such as proven by the Alcubierre equations, and time distortions when traveling at impulse (relativistic speeds) are accounted for by the on board computer just as the GPS satellites account for today.
True, but I was referring to the fact that people like Alexander (who are mostly off the ship) appear to age much more quickly that the crew aboard. Alcubierre equations not withstanding, of course ;-)
Give me one example besides Alexander. None of the other planet- or station-based characters aged a decade or more between Alexander's appearances. And Naomi Wildman grew up quickly while living entirely aboard Voyager. The implication is that there's something about human-alien hybrids that causes them to mature quickly.