Exactly how far away from Earth was Pioneer 10 when the BoP destroyed it?

How far would the Pioneer 10 spacecraft have gotten in 300 years? Obviously not even close to one light year. So this means that an uncloaked Klingon spacecraft was relatively close to Earth, randomly shooting stuff, and Starfleet did nothing?

 

Pioneer 10's velocity is listed as 12 km/s. There are 3.14 x 10^7 seconds in a year, so in 300 years (roughly 10^10 seconds) it would have travelled about 10^11 km. That's 0.01 parsecs, which is roughly 0.03 lightyear.

It obviously fell into the same wormhole as did Voyager 6....

 

They really need to erect a few warning signs in that neighborhood.

 

Well, the wormhole that Voyager 6 fell into led to the other side of the galaxy. But then again, according to what we saw in TFF, if Klaa's BoP could go from Nimbus III to the center of the galaxy in a matter of minutes, then shooting down Pioneer 10 in the Delta Quadrant shouldn't have been any trouble :|

Actually, I do like the idea of the probe being whisked away to some other point in space, since I would have thought that by this time the Federation would have sent a ship to retrieve it and put it in a museum.

 

Having hostile aliens right next to Earth isn't considered all that surprising, nor quite the end of the world yet, in recent DSC - but this also holds in random installments of virtually every spinoff. Single cloakships lacking one-shot-kills-planets ordnance just don't amount to much of a threat against a defended capital world, certainly not on par with V'Gers or Whale Probes or Borg Cubes. On the other hand, there really isn't a mechanism for stopping single cloakships from buzzing Sol; even uncloaked ships achieve that easily enough when there are heroes aboard, after all.

I have no problem personally with Klaa taking potshots at space debris right next to Sol, as a rite of passage of sorts. No doubt Starfleet would eventually respond, at which point Klaa would cloak, change location, and kill another piece of Earth spaceflight history - say, Musk's Tesla (the antique he launched in 2018 to commemorate the thirtieth year of permanent Mars settlement or whatever). This is the time when there "is no peace" between the UFP and the Klingon Empire, after all, and antics like Klaa's would be considered welcome "nuisance bombing" when no greater military campaigning really is practicable.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Yes, because we all know that a Russian warship taking potshots in the Gulf of Mexico would be completely ignored by the US military.

 

In the 19th century, yes. Reaction times and all.

We just don't dwell long enough on Klaa to witness "ignoring". And when taking potshots is the most horrid strategic weapon at your disposal, just as in the age of sail, you don't exactly risk wider repercussions, in a time of declared war no less.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Or, to put it another way, it was a stupid nonsensical scene in a stupid, nonsensical film.

 

Or, more succinctly, Star Trek.

Personally, I like diverse villains. "Klingon" isn't diverse without extra effort. Kruge was an attempt at memorable. Klaa is essentially another attempt, from a wholly different angle: the young punk who is seen painting a graffiti sickle-and-hammer on the Lincoln Memorial when overhearing there's a hostage crisis going on at Capitol Hill and deciding to go ambulance-chasing. Turns out he's not quite the red menace he thinks himself to be, but he's certainly a plot complication whenever the plot needs one. A plot, mind you, that could not afford an actual Soviet invasion in the dramatic sense, when it's instead all about this strange Baptist Fundamentalist trying to get everybody to kingdom come on the express train.

In terms of the "problem" that seems to worry you, did or did not Japanese submarines shell the US mainland in WWII? Did or did not this constitute a strategic threat? And did or did not the US Navy or the Coast Guard respond?

Timo Saloniemi

 

That’s still further away than starbase 1, and that was taken over by “Klingons”.

 

...Amusingly, less than 300 of them being found on a station that moments before housed 80,000 Feds. Talk about a Pyrrhic victory!

No wonder this "takeover" force was unable to respond to the arrival of the Discovery in any way.

Timo Saloniemi

 

What I don't quite understand is why they wouldn't retrieve such a piece, and put it in the Smithsonian, like they apparently did with the Phoenix. They may not like the 20th century very much, but the Pioneers and the Voyagers were still important milestones in early space flight history ... and even if they might consider space a fitting grave for such derelicts retrieval still would be better than letting it meet this ignominious end of serving as alien target practice shrapnel ...

 

I gather Pioneer 10 still flies free as of the 2280s (and Pioneer 11 as of the 2380s for all we know) exactly because Earth would be teeming with folks who think highly of her historical value. If one of those nutcases was allowed to pillage interstellar relics, what's to stop the other hundred thousand from then engaging in similar desecration? Starfleet may be heavily tasked with shooing away these grave robbers (most of whom don't fly cloaked commerce raiders, though)?

Timo Saloniem

 

It's simple- some civilian jackwad picked up the probe not far outside the system and carried it over to the Klingon border and released it as a big haw haw joke.

Probably teenagers with daddy's space corvette.

No biggie. Problem solved.

 

If that were the case, then the best thing Starfleet could do would be to collect all these old probes and put them in a museum for safekeeping rather than waste their resources patrolling space in case some guy comes along trying to steal them.

 

What year was the probe destroyed in?

 

Around the 2280s, is our best guess. A compromise between the conflicting dating cues of the previous three movies has often been put forth at 2284 or sometimes 2285, and this movie takes place one shakedown cruise after that date.

That's a clear-cut matter of policy, yes. Pillage sacred sites and hoard the contents in museums, or leave history be? The only real value in the early space probes would be the fact that they travel in space - it's their journey rather than their outdated components that is the great monument for posterity.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Yeah, from a historical perspective, the only reason to retrieve a probe is if it's about the be destroyed by crashing into something. Otherwise it's a Historical Artifact, made all the more interesting in that it's still out there traveling. It would be like digging up Methuselah, the oldest tree, and replanting it in the United States Botanic Garden in DC.

 

...or in danger of being destroyed by potshot-wielding idiots like Klaa. All the more reason to find these old probes and put them somewhere safe.

 

FWIW, the way spacecraft are placed in museums seems to range from the "I have never been able to touch it even though it's on display at the Smithsonian" for the compact Phoenix to the "We have one of these in the Fleet Museum" for the big Constitution. Is any of this stuff indoors? Or is all of it, only behind transparent aluminum? Or perhaps behind fifty inches of duranium, and only virtually visible?

Whether it's safe is another issue altogether, of course. Putting all the eggs in one basket and all that.

Timo Saloniemi