Spock, Kang and Chang are aliens with human names. Is Garth really a stretch?
Could Cochrane of Alpha Centauri mean Alpha Centauri project/institute?
- Thread starter Yistaan
- Start date
That seems improbable.
What does "Space Seed" say about space travel using DY series ships?
Remember, if any (other) attempts at interstellar travel were made using DY series ships Spock would know how well they turned out. Spock also has psace travel history from many other planets to compare such an attempt to. For all that we know, Spock could literally know about 10,001 attempts at manned interstellar travel with equivalent ships and know that only one succeeded.
Spock says that the Botany Bay expedition in the 1990's faced ten thousand to one odds against reaching another star systtem. The ship's historian says that up until about 2018 ships used suspending animation because it took years just to travel from one planet to another.
The distance of Neptune, now considered the most distant planet in our solar system, from the Sun is between 29.81 AU (4,460,000,000 kilometers) and 30.33 AU ( 4,540,000,000 kilometers), while the distance to the former most distant planet and now dwarf Planet Pluto, is between 29.658 AU (4,436,820,000 kilometers) and 49.305 AU (7,375,930,000 kilometers).
Assume that the farthest distances from the Sun of Neptune and Pluto are on opposite sides of the Sun, and that sometimes Neptune and Pluto can be in those positions at the same time. In that case, if it took only one Earth year from a ship to travel from Neptune to Pluto when they were about 79.635 AU apart, the average speed during that trip would be 79.635 AU per year, or 0.21180 AU per day.
So how far is it to Proxima Centauri, the closest known star to the Sun, a star conveniently also known as Alpha Centauri C? 4.244 light years, which is about 268,395.13 AU. At an average speed of 79.635 AU per year, it would take about 3,370.3161 years to reach Alpha Centauri C.
Clearly the ships from the 1990s and the other shops built before about 2018 could never reach and colonize stars before warp drive was invented, or even before a few thousand years after the era of TOS. If space ships got many times faster after 2018 and before warp drive they might possibly have been able to explore and/or colonize Alpha Centauri before warp drive was invented.
But Cochran would probably have spent a very short time on Alpha Centauri before warp drive was invented.
The S.S. Valiant that reached the edge of the galaxy before the Enterprise in "Where no Man Has Gone before" probably had some form of faster than light space drive, and that was probably warp drive. Most fans would say that the Valiant certainly had warp drive.
So most fans would deduce from those statements that Earth invented the warp drive over 200 years before TOS.
in "Metamorphosis" Cochrane said that when he was lost in space he was dying from old age:
So apparently ships with warp drive that could be operated by one man were available when Cochrane disappeared.
McCoy said that was 150 years earlier, and allowing for rounding it should have been about 125 to 175 years before "metamorphosis", and if Cochrane was 87 years old then he would have been 212 to 262 years old in "metamorphosis". If Cochrane made his great scientific discovery when aged about 20 to 40, that would have been about 172 to 242 years before "Methamorphosis". If it took 0 to 10 years for the first warp drive ships to be launched after Cochrane made the discovery, the first warp drive ships should have been launched about 162 to 242 years before "Metamorphosis"
Together "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "Metamorphosis" indicate that the first warp drive ships were launched sometime between 200 and 242 years before th e era of TOS.
So consdierng the probable age range of TOS, it seems likely that the first warp drive ships were launched only a few decades after 2018, making it improbably that Zefram Cochrane grew up in an Earth colony on Alpha Centauri. .
Last edited:
^ Well, I didn't say DY-100 specifically. The DY-100 model was reused for a robot ship in "The Ultimate Computer," described as an "old-style ore freighter converted to automation." It could easily have been a ship with a similar design but superior engines designed for interstellar travel. So, sleeper ships could have been launched with engines intended for interstellar travel.
Cochrane would definitely be the type to keep on pressing for new achievements. Just because he's on Earth in 2119 does not mean he could not had gone to Alpha Centauri after 2063, and what with it seeming every Earth Ship available was given a warp engine and sent off to who-knows-where (which is definitely I can see something us doing after WW3 and have discovered FTL travel - just send off as many eggs out of this basket as possible), Cochrane could had whipped the US (someone was funding him) to lead a expedition to Alpha Centauri, say maybe he made a W2 engine around 2080, or even earlier in the 70s.
Warp 2 means Alpha Centauri in around 6 months? (8 * c?) Let's say 8 or so. That's...pretty fast, and something that can be tolerated. Cochrane could literally go there and back within 2 years, which is already in the range of plausible Space Missions (Mars or HOPE). And he'll be milking it the whole way. He sets up a colony, lives there, sends off more missions, returns in time for 2110, hates lounging on a spaceship for months, makes the Warp 5 project.
Warp 2 means Alpha Centauri in around 6 months? (8 * c?) Let's say 8 or so. That's...pretty fast, and something that can be tolerated. Cochrane could literally go there and back within 2 years, which is already in the range of plausible Space Missions (Mars or HOPE). And he'll be milking it the whole way. He sets up a colony, lives there, sends off more missions, returns in time for 2110, hates lounging on a spaceship for months, makes the Warp 5 project.
Except Spock, Kang and Chang don’t look human, so it doesn’t matter what their names are.
Kang does. TOS Klingons aren’t beyond the human norm.
It is possible that Hengist is a alien, while still being human/humanoid.
The Prefect of Argelius Jaris has a Arabic name, but I would say that he is of the Argelius native species..
Unless Spock puts on a hat.
Last edited:
Didn't you hear? TOS has been invalidated.
I'm suggesting that Occam's razor still applies in the 23rd Century.
Last edited:
ENT bent over backwards to explain why lots of Klingons literally looked like humans, so that would be a "nope!"
ENT bent over backwards to explain why lots of Klingons literally looked like humans, so that would be a "nope!"
They certainly didn't look like humans the next time we saw them in DSC.
ENT explicitly established that not all Klingons were infected with the augment virus.
Besides, did you get a good look at Ash/Voq?
Well, unless any of those augmented Klingons were named Steve or Frank, it's not relevant to the discussion at hand.
Different circumstances, and again not relevant to the discussion.
Two points that show just how wrong you are are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Got it.
Er, wrong about what? The discussion is about whether certain people (Cochrane, Garth, etc.) are actually humans from Earth or aliens with coincidentally human names. What do Augmented Klingons and Ash Tyler have to do with that?
Maybe. All we can definitely be sure of is that he hadn't personally undergone cryosleep space travel. Maybe he'd specifically avoided it because he initially found the idea disturbing. But in the full context of the scene, Cochrane's rather excited by the prospect of coming back to a brand new world:Clearly, the guy doesn't come from a world where cryosleep travel to other stars is common.
And from the first season's "Space Seed", we know that there was some breakthrough in interstellar travel that made sleeper ships obsolete around the year 2018, anyway.
Maybe they were more used to trips of a decade or so in Cochrane's era. Or maybe Gene Coon was thinking that Cochrane made his warp speed breakthrough somewhere around the year 2018. Or maybe Coon had totally forgotten about the line he'd written in "Space Seed" by the time he wrote "Metamorphosis." Other than any notes he might've left behind, we don't have much way of knowing what might've been in Coon's head regarding this question.
In the 1970s, we didn't know what year TOS took place in.
If Cochrane's age in Kirk's day is 87+150, which equals 237, then ZC could have been born in the year 2000, launched on a sleeper ship in 2018 at the age of 18, and have been found by Kirk in the year 2237 in the 23rd century. That's all out the window now for myriad reasons, but back then it was a tenable idea.
Didn’t get the memo
Yes, I know. That why the only year that I quoted was the one that was mentioned on the show.
All this talk about "Metamorphosis" motivated me to pop the episode in last night. Interestingly, Shatner doesn't say "Zephram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri" as one phrase, like "Lawrence of Arabia." He says it as two questions: "Zephram Cochrane? Of Alpha Centauri?" I'm sure that everyone here can somehow use that to justify their own personal theories about Cochrane and where he was really from, but I thought it was interesting to note.
