If we all watch Star Trek in Stardate order then we see Chekov on the ship before Khan anyway! 
JB
JB
when did TOS take place, 23rd century or 22nd century
- Thread starter Gabriel
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Get up, get, get, get down...Stardate 3141's a joke in your town!!
Khan seems quite stuck on the whole "200 years" period, doesn't he? Even though it's been 15 years since he was defrosted, which was the point at which Kirk told Khan he'd been "sleeping" for an estimated two centuries.
So, 215 years?
Well, if the Botany Bay was travelling 0.67 of lightspeed, 270 years would appear like 200 to the occupants.
Simple answer: Khan simply never bothered to check the date. What relevance would it have for him, anyway?
The Botany Bay was quite a distance out in space so I guess we'd have to assume that the odd space storm or two pushed them further out than where they would normally have been! 
JB
JB
The Botany Bay was quite a distance out in space so I guess we'd have to assume that the odd space storm or two pushed them further out than where they would normally have been!
JB
With a twentieth-century type rocket, they should have been somewhere between Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
I thought they'd be further out than that but still not where the Enterprise found them!
JB
JB
The cryonic suspension capsule containing Offenhouse, Raymond and Clemmonds didn't even have nuclear engines and somehow ended up in deep space 370 years after being placed in Earth orbit. The Botany Bay is already a stretch but at least she was already heading into interplanetary space to begin with and there are always magnetic storms and wormholes that can always help explain how Khan and his Augments got out that far.
How did the cryonic capsule? She was orbiting Earth and was essentially just a big refrigerator with solar panels to keep the life support containers supplied with power and operating. A fun mystery to debate.
How did the cryonic capsule? She was orbiting Earth and was essentially just a big refrigerator with solar panels to keep the life support containers supplied with power and operating. A fun mystery to debate.
Alpha Ceti (which was inexplicably inverted to "Ceti Alpha" in SS & TWOK) is 250 light-years away by current estimates (though it was believed to be about half that when "Space Seed" was written), which means the BB couldn't have gotten to its vicinity in only 200 years without warp drive. The official timeline putting TOS 260 years after its launch is viable if you assume the BB managed to accelerate to relativistic speed, and that it wasn't too close to Alpha Ceti when Kirk decided to divert there.
Not to mention the Pioneer 10 probe that the Klingons destroyed in TFF (but that movie was all a bad dream induced by incorrectly prepared beans and bourbon).
No doubt all these vessels and items "disappeared into what they used to call a black hole" and emerged in other parts of the galaxy, like V'Ger.
Kor
No doubt all these vessels and items "disappeared into what they used to call a black hole" and emerged in other parts of the galaxy, like V'Ger.
Kor
With so many black holes, wormholes, etc. surrounding the Sol System, you'd think Starfleet would mapped them out by now and use them to send starships out as short-cuts to deep space.
Good science fiction trumps bad real science every time.
Well, the BB has simple nuclear-powered engines: Maybe they used the green fuel to get to .35c, the yellow fuel to get to .70c, and the red fuel to get to .88c.Good science fiction trumps bad real science every time.
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That was a weird locution. I wonder why they did that. The actual star, Menkar, is actually fairly well known among astronomers, too.
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It is mathematically very improbable that a vessel from the 1990s could have been capable of reaching velocities with significant time dilation.
LONG REPLY: And here are the mathematics that show that the described abilities of space ships in the 1990s indicate they could not possibly achieve speeds with significant time dilation.
Imagine that the Botany Bay could accelerate at 1 g for days and weeks at a time, until it was halfway to its destination, and then flip over and decelerate for the second half of the voyage. I g is probably about as much gravity as humans can bear for long periods of time.
So one gravity of acceleration is about 9.81 meters per second per second.
After one second a ship accelerating at one gravity will have a speed of 9.81 meters per second.
After one minute a ship accelerating at one gravity will have a speed of 588.6 meters per second.
After one hour a ship accelerating at one gravity will have a speed of 35,316 meters or 35.316 kilometers per second.
After one day a ship accelerating at one gravity will have a speed of 847,584 meters or 847.584 kilometers per second.
After one Julian calendar year (365.25 days) a ship accelerating at one gravity will have a speed of 309,580,056 meters or 309,580.056 kilometers per second, according to Newtonian physics.
The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters or 299,792.458 kilometers per second. Thus the ship will reach relativistic velocities and find it's acceleration slowed down before a year of acceleration is completed.
Suppose instead that the Botany Bay accelerates for half a year and then flips over and decelerates for the rest of the voyage. At the halfway point the Botany Bay will reach its highest speed.of 154,790,028 meters, or 154,790.028 kilometers, per second. At the first quarter point, and again at the third quarter point, when the Botany Bay is halfway through accelerating and then halfway through decelerating, it will reach a speed of 77,395,014 meters, or 77,395.014 kilometers, per second. That will be the average speed of the Botany Bay during a voyage where it accelerates at 1 g for half a year and then decelerates at 1 g for another half of a year.
There are 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.25 seconds, or 31,557,600 seconds, during a Julian calendar year that is 365.25 days long.
During a voyage where the Botany Bay accelerated for half that time and then decelerated for the second half of that time, it would travel a distance of 2,442,400,800,000 kilometers.
An astronomical unit (AU) is defined as 149,597,870,700 meters or 149,597,870.7 kilometers. Thus in a hypothetical voyage where the Botany Bay traveled a distance of 2,442,400,800,000 kilometers, it would travel 16,326.535 AU!
The former planet called Pluto orbits the Sun at distances between 29.658 to 49.305 AU, so the distance of that hypothetical voyage would be 311.133 to 550.493 times Pluto's distance from the Sun. But Pluto is no longer counted as a planet.
The most distant planet in our solar system now recognized is Neptune, which is 29.81 to 30.33 AU from the Sun. So by accelerating at 1 g for half a year and then decelerating half a year the Botany Bay could travel 538.299 times as far as the greatest distance between Neptune and the Sun.
So if the Botany Bay was built capable of accelerating and then decelerating at 1 g for a whole year, that would be a lot more power than would be needed for interplanetary voyages.
So if it would take the Botany Bay just one single year to travel about 30.33 AU from Earth to Neptune it would travel about 4,537,303,418 kilometers in 31,557,600 seconds, or at an average speed of 143.778 kilometers per second. So the Botany Bay would need to be able to accelerate to a speed of 287.556 kilometers per second and then decelerate for the second half of the voyage. And then do it again for the return voyage back to Earth. Thus it would need to have a total capacity of velocity change of only 575.113 kilometers per second.
So possibly DY-100 class ships were built with a capacity for about a total velocity change of 600 kilometers per second in each round trip voyage. And suppose that the supermen brought along a light sail to decelerate the Botany Bay when it approached the target star. Then they could have afforded to use all the velocity change ability of the Botany Bay to accelerate to a speed of 600 kilometers per second, and then coast to the target star.
At 600 kilometers per second for 31,577,600 seconds the Botany Bay would travel only 18,934,560,000 kilometers, or 126.569 AU, in one year. A light year is 63,241.077 AU, so at that speed it would take the Botany Bay 499.65692 years to travel one light year and 4,996.5692 years to travel ten light years. The Botany Bay would be traveling at about 0.0020013 of the speed of light, which would be far too slow for relativistic effects to introduce significant time dilation.
And remember that McGivers said space ships in the 1990s took years, not a single year, to make interplanetary voyages, so the Botany Bay could have been traveling slower and with even less time dilation.
Anyone familiar with the size of Earth's solar system would recognize that that the 1990 ships described in "Space Seed" would be incapable of achieving speeds with significant time dilation. They would be able to guesstimate that without the need for the precise calculations I have given here.
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The Botany Bay looked like it had been battered by storms of some kind or anything else that could have carried the thing further into space!
JB
JB
The S.S. Valiant circa 2065 also got pretty far considering it was one of Earth's very first warp ships and was launched just two years after the breaking of the warp barrier. TOS did say that the ship was swept ahead by a storm or other phenomenon and was sent in the direction of the Galactic Barrier. She could have encountered a powerful magnetic storm or a wormhole of some kind.
Maybe the Botany Bay's improbable appearance where the Enterprise found her (perhaps due to something natural that accelerated their journey) accounts for the crew's rather slow realization that it was Khan and Company.
Every time smart people around here analyze Space Seed, another flaw comes up. It has got to be the most flawed ENJOYABLE ep of Star Trek. Absolutely full of holes and still a blast.
Every time smart people around here analyze Space Seed, another flaw comes up. It has got to be the most flawed ENJOYABLE ep of Star Trek. Absolutely full of holes and still a blast.
That goes without saying, even talking about the TOS version of the 1990s where they had viable cryogenics and interplanetary spacecraft capable of holding nearly 100 people. But it also goes without saying that it's impossible for a sublight vessel to travel nearly 250 light-years in 200 years. It's at least physically allowable for a sublight vessel to travel nearly 250 light-years in 270 years; that makes it a massive problem of engineering rather than an absolute impossibility.
IIRC, Greg Cox's The Eugenics Wars novels posited that there was a secret government project to reverse-engineer future technology from incidents like those in "Little Green Men" and The Voyage Home, so the Botany Bay had anachronistically advanced drive capability.
@MAGolding No offense but you really need to read up on how transfer orbits work.
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edit to add: Why do people assume that the BB is so very far from Earth? Could it have not been found in an empty sector* of space closer to Earth? More in the 50-75 ly range?
*(By empty, I mean no useful planets or resources, no regular traffic patterns, etc.)
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edit to add: Why do people assume that the BB is so very far from Earth? Could it have not been found in an empty sector* of space closer to Earth? More in the 50-75 ly range?
*(By empty, I mean no useful planets or resources, no regular traffic patterns, etc.)
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Because the Botany Bay would have to have been found somewhat close to Ceti Alpha/Alpha Ceti V. The ship doesn't travel very far in the episode, and they're close to the uninhabited planet at the end.
