"Such men dare take what they want..."--Khan: Sexy or creepy?

[MAGolding]

It is quite a lottery win when you think about the fact that 200 years after Khan launched his ship into the void of space, it would be found by a starship roaming that void, who just happen to have the one historian who is a expert of earth history from 200 years ago, sort of like hitting a bullet with another bullet while blindfolded going down a cobbled hill on a unicycle. Lol

Every so often--two cars will back into each other in an otherwise vacant lot

The odds of a chance encounter in interstellar space are much, much lower than that. Astronomically lower

Fortunately there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

When shooting it is common to "lead the target", aim a little ahead of its present position so the target and the projectile will arrive at the same spot at the same time.

Interplanetary probes are launched on curved orbits which will intersect the orbits of their target planets at a spot where the planets will arrive at the same time as the probes arrive. They aren't aimed in a straight line directly at the present position of the planet, because we don't yet have rockets powerful enough to travel on such trajectories.

The stars in our galaxy all orbit around the center of mass of galaxy, with silightly diffrent directions and speeds. So over time the directions between stars change slowly. So a starship travelling between two stars will airm in a direction slighty ahead of of the target star so both the target star and the starship will arrive at the same point at the same time.

Because the Botany Bay traveled at only fraction of the speed of light, they had to aim it far ahead of the trajectory of the target star, so that the target star and the Botany Bay would arrive at the same spot in space at the same time.

But when warp drive was invented, interstellar ships could travel hundreds or thousands of time of fast as the Botany Bay, and thus had to aim only a small fraction as far ahead of their target stars as the Botany Bay had to. So every faster than light shp which headed for the destination star of the Botany Bay would use a different course and would pass too far from the Botany Bay to detect it.

And as the Sun and the target star of the Botany Bay orbited around the center of the galaxy, the line between the Sun and the destination star got closer and closer to the trajectory of the Botany Bay. Eventually the line got close enough to the trajectory of the Botany Bay, and shps sensors improved so much, that a starship headed from Earth to the target star passed close enough to the Botany Bay to detect it. And that starship happened to be the Enterprise.

Possiby the Enteprise returned to its own era at the end of "Tomorrow is Yesterday" int he Solar System and so was heading to another star to begin its voyage to its assigned area of space, the star which happened to be Khan's destination.

So the the Enterprise encountering the Botany Bay doesn't have to be a great coincedence.

Though of course the particular area of interest of the historian assigned to the Enterprise is a bit of a coincidence.

 

[Forbin]

The odds of a chance encounter in interstellar space are much, much lower than that. Astronomically lower

I get it!

 

[Guy Gardener]

Did the botany bay have sub light transponder that had been broad casting for 270 years?

That's a massive trail of bread crumbs.

 

[Warped9]

Did the botany bay have sub light transponder that had been broad casting for 270 years?

That's a massive trail of bread crumbs.

I don’t recall if the episode made it clear, but the impression was they just chanced upon the ship. But it would make more sense if the Enterprise had detected the Botany Bay’s signal and tracked it to the source. Then the surprise of what they find.

I’m thinking the Enterprise’s computers could be routinely “listening” for all kinds of signals—not only routine communications and indications of new interstellar phenomena, but particularly for distress signals or even indications of new civilizations. A beacon of a type not used in centuries and detected far beyond where it could reasonably be expected to be would definitely be indicative of something that warrants being investigated.

One wonders what might have happened if the Botany Bay had been found by a freighter or a civilian vessel or an alien ship.

 

[cgervasi]

Did the botany bay have sub light transponder that had been broad casting for 270 years?

That's a massive trail of bread crumbs.

I’m thinking the Enterprise’s computers could be routinely “listening” for all kinds of signals—not only routine communications and indications of new interstellar phenomena, but particularly for distress signals or even indications of new civilizations. A beacon of a type not used in centuries and detected far beyond where it could reasonably be expected to be would definitely be indicative of something that warrants being investigated.

My guess is the Enterprise by chance, or as someone suggested by the most direct sub-light path growing closer to the more direct warp-speed path, came within a million km of the Botany Bay which was close enough to detect the automated CQ message and close enough for automated sensors to detect the ship.

I think the transmitter on the Botany Bay had limited power. If you have a omni-directional antenna at the transmit side and receive side and you're using a reasonable output power (100W) and reasonable receiver sensitivity for Morse code (-130dBm), you only have enough link budget to cover in the 20,000 km range. You can get more range with a directional transmit antenna and even more with a directional receive antenna, but then the sender and receiver must know each other's direction. Maybe Enterprise's receivers are more sensitive than modern receivers, it would need to be much much better b/c a light-year is 10^13 km, and that's not that far in interstellar space.

So you have to be right on top the the transmitter to hear it, unless have a high-gain receive antenna pointed in the exact direction of the sender. That's how the Botany Bay could have been transmitting for centuries without anyone hearing it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Warpships hug to star systems to harvest deuterium with their bussard collectors.

Sublight Sleeper ships move in a straight line between origin and destination, constantly accelerating, till the half way point and then they are constantly decelerating

Totally different animals.

 

[MAGolding]

Warpships hug to star systems to harvest deuterium with their bussard collectors.

Sublight Sleeper ships move in a straight line between origin and destination, constantly accelerating, till the half way point and then they are constantly decelerating

Totally different animals.

In "Space Seed":

SPOCK: A strange, violent period in your history. I find no record what so ever of an SS Botany Bay. Captain, the DY-100 class vessel was designed for interplanetary travel only. With simple nuclear-powered engines, star travel was considered impractical at that time. It was ten thousand to one against their making it to another star system. And why no record of the trip?

So clearly the DY-100 clas was not used for interstellar travel, but was limited to travel within Earth's Solar System. There were no DY-100 class ships making centuries long voyages to other stars in that era except for the hijacked one renamed the Botany Bay.

COTT: Definitely Earth-type mechanism, sir. Twentieth century vessel. Old type atomic power. Bulky, solid. I think they used to call them transistor units. I'd love to tear this baby apart.
MARLA: Captain, it's a sleeper ship.
KIRK: Suspended animation.
MARLA: I've seen old photographs of this. Necessary because of the time involved in space travel until about the year 2018. It took years just to travel from one planet to another.

It took years just to travel fom oene palnetto another. With the Solar Systems.

So suppose that that it took one year to travel between Neptune and Pluto when they were on opposite sides of the solar system.

Neptune's orbit has a semi-major axis of 30.07 Astronomical Units (AU), and Pluto's orbit has a semi-major axis of 39.482 AU, so they would be about 69.552 AU apart when they are on opposite sides of the colar system.

Suppose that DY-100 class ships accelerated until halfway, and then decelarated for the rest of the voyage, as you suggested. Suppose that McGivers exaggerated and it took only 1 Earth year to make a voyage of 69.552 AU, the longest possible interplanetary voyage in our soalr system.

Making the distance an even 70 AU, the average speed during the voyage would be 70 AU per year, The ship would be travelliing at 70 AU per year a quarter way thorugh the voyage, and again 3 quarters through the voyage when when decelerating, and would have a maximum speed halfway thurough the voyage of 140 AU per year.

By acceleratiing to 140 AU per year and then decearating down to zero during the voyage, a DY-100 class ship would use a total velocity change or delta V of 280 AU per year. And if the shp took along enough energy and propellant to mak e the return voyage without refueling it would have a total delta V capacity of 560 AU per year.

And suppose that the augements managed to modify the Botany Bay to give it twice that delta V capacity ir 1,120 AU per year. That would enable them to reach a velocity of 580 AU per year, and then coast for centuries, and then decelerate from 580 AU per year to zero at the destination star.

So for most of the voyage the Botany Bay would be travelling at 580 AU per year, or 1.5879534 AU per day, or 0.0661647 AU per hour, or 0.0000183 AU per second. A voyage of 70 AU would take only 44.081898 days, and suspeded animatin would not be needed for such a voyage.

Since a light year is 63,241.077 AU, the Botany Bay would be travelling about 0.0091712 the speed of light. It would have to travel 10.9803698 tims that fast to travel at 0.1 the speed of light. Which would involve modifying the Botany Bay greatly to enable it to travel that fast. If it was possible and practical to modify the DY-100 class to achieve 0.1 times the speed of light one could travel 70 AU in 0.0011068 of a year, or 0.4042587 of a day. That would be much faster than necessary to avoid using suspended animatin for the voyagge.

And at 10 percent of the speed of light the Botany Bay would travel 10 light years in 1 century, 20 light years in 2 centuries,and 30 light years in 3 centuries.

Suppose it took DY 100 class ships 10 years to travel 7 AU, and thus travelling only 0.01 as fast as in the previous example. Thus they would accelerate to 1.4 AU per year over 5 years (0.28 AU per year), and would need a total delta v of 2.8 AU per year to decelerate. And if they crried nergy andpropellant for the return trip, they would need a total delta V capacity for 5.6 AU for the voyage, And DY-100 ships would probably not be built with much delta-Vcapacity.

But suppose that DY-100 shps had unlimited delta V capacity if they accelerated at a speed of 0.28 AU per year. After 10 years they would be travellig at 2.8 AU per year, after 20 years at 5.6 AU per years, after 30 year 8.4 AU per year, and after a mere 22,586.098 years they would be travelling at tenpercent of the speed of light.

Anyway a ship capable of continuously accelerating and then decelerating for centuries would have to accelerate very slowly to make interplentary voyges last years.

The Botany Bay probably acclerated to a specific speed, then coasted for most of the trip, planning to decelare at the destination during Khan's interstelalr voyage, even if it could accelerate & decelarate continously during short interplanetary voyages.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Speed was irrelevant.

What the super men needed to apply their intellect to was the hibernation technology, which was fine since we met some people from the 1990s at the back end of season one TNG.

The faster they went the stronger their shields had to be, if they had shields, which I suspect that they didn't. Less junk and particles in the voids between planetary systems.

If they had ice or a massive asteroid in front of them as an umbrella, the total discorporation of such a structure in front of the Botany Bay maybe why the ship was adrift since it would be a death sentence to pick up speed.

Khan either got the math wrong and missed the planet they were aiming for, the planet they were aiming for was still a hundreds of years away, or he didn't have a destination in mind when he fled Earth.

 

[1001001]

In "Space Seed":



So clearly the DY-100 clas was not used for interstellar travel, but was limited to travel within Earth's Solar System. There were no DY-100 class ships making centuries long voyages to other stars in that era except for the hijacked one renamed the Botany Bay.



It took years just to travel fom oene palnetto another. With the Solar Systems.

So suppose that that it took one year to travel between Neptune and Pluto when they were on opposite sides of the solar system.

Neptune's orbit has a semi-major axis of 30.07 Astronomical Units (AU), and Pluto's orbit has a semi-major axis of 39.482 AU, so they would be about 69.552 AU apart when they are on opposite sides of the colar system.

Suppose that DY-100 class ships accelerated until halfway, and then decelarated for the rest of the voyage, as you suggested. Suppose that McGivers exaggerated and it took only 1 Earth year to make a voyage of 69.552 AU, the longest possible interplanetary voyage in our soalr system.

Making the distance an even 70 AU, the average speed during the voyage would be 70 AU per year, The ship would be travelliing at 70 AU per year a quarter way thorugh the voyage, and again 3 quarters through the voyage when when decelerating, and would have a maximum speed halfway thurough the voyage of 140 AU per year.

By acceleratiing to 140 AU per year and then decearating down to zero during the voyage, a DY-100 class ship would use a total velocity change or delta V of 280 AU per year. And if the shp took along enough energy and propellant to mak e the return voyage without refueling it would have a total delta V capacity of 560 AU per year.

And suppose that the augements managed to modify the Botany Bay to give it twice that delta V capacity ir 1,120 AU per year. That would enable them to reach a velocity of 580 AU per year, and then coast for centuries, and then decelerate from 580 AU per year to zero at the destination star.

So for most of the voyage the Botany Bay would be travelling at 580 AU per year, or 1.5879534 AU per day, or 0.0661647 AU per hour, or 0.0000183 AU per second. A voyage of 70 AU would take only 44.081898 days, and suspeded animatin would not be needed for such a voyage.

Since a light year is 63,241.077 AU, the Botany Bay would be travelling about 0.0091712 the speed of light. It would have to travel 10.9803698 tims that fast to travel at 0.1 the speed of light. Which would involve modifying the Botany Bay greatly to enable it to travel that fast. If it was possible and practical to modify the DY-100 class to achieve 0.1 times the speed of light one could travel 70 AU in 0.0011068 of a year, or 0.4042587 of a day. That would be much faster than necessary to avoid using suspended animatin for the voyagge.

And at 10 percent of the speed of light the Botany Bay would travel 10 light years in 1 century, 20 light years in 2 centuries,and 30 light years in 3 centuries.

Suppose it took DY 100 class ships 10 years to travel 7 AU, and thus travelling only 0.01 as fast as in the previous example. Thus they would accelerate to 1.4 AU per year over 5 years (0.28 AU per year), and would need a total delta v of 2.8 AU per year to decelerate. And if they crried nergy andpropellant for the return trip, they would need a total delta V capacity for 5.6 AU for the voyage, And DY-100 ships would probably not be built with much delta-Vcapacity.

But suppose that DY-100 shps had unlimited delta V capacity if they accelerated at a speed of 0.28 AU per year. After 10 years they would be travellig at 2.8 AU per year, after 20 years at 5.6 AU per years, after 30 year 8.4 AU per year, and after a mere 22,586.098 years they would be travelling at tenpercent of the speed of light.

Anyway a ship capable of continuously accelerating and then decelerating for centuries would have to accelerate very slowly to make interplentary voyges last years.

The Botany Bay probably acclerated to a specific speed, then coasted for most of the trip, planning to decelare at the destination during Khan's interstelalr voyage, even if it could accelerate & decelarate continously during short interplanetary voyages.

You are pushing it.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Khan either got the math wrong and missed the planet they were aiming for, the planet they were aiming for was still a hundreds of years away, or he didn't have a destination in mind when he fled Earth.

When cult leaders feel backed into a corner, like Jim Jones in Guyana or "David Koresh" in Waco, they sometimes commit extroverted suicide and take their followers with them. (At the very end, Hitler literally wanted every last German citizen to die fighting, but his generals decided on surrender.) Khan seems to have flung his crew into such a longshot bet on interstellar flight as to be, effectively, a suicide. He would have told his followers there was a plan, and they just had to have faith.

He might even have talked himself into the mystical idea that the Universe would think as highly of him as he did, and grant him an "impossible" safe passage to somewhere.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Botany Bay.

No one is going to spend 50 billion dollars inventing an interstellar sleeper ship and then naming it after a foreign Prison Barge that dumped Human garbage in the upside-down, except Australians.

They can be quite prideful about tracking their origins back that far to the beginning of Australasian civilization, but the US equivalence would be calling the next Moon Rocket "Amistad".

 

[ZapBrannigan]

but the US equivalence would be calling the next Moon Rocket "Amistad".

Don't give them any ideas.

But I think the Botany Bay as a ship must be named after the geographic feature, not the prison history.

 

[Neopeius]

It took years just to travel fom oene palnetto another. With the Solar Systems.

You are conflating the two quotes, made in different contexts, and reaching a flawed conclusion.

Not all DY-100s were sleeper ships. In fact, the Botany Bay may be the only one. But up through 2018, there were enough sleeper ships that McGivers was able to recognize the genre of ship, and it was them that "took years to go between planets" not the DY-100.

A nuclear spaceship like the DY-100 would not take years to go between planets in our solar system. Assuming a constant .01g of acceleration, which is what the Vasimir can ostensibly do, even a trip to Pluto would only take 8 months (yes, including turnover).

So, the ships that took years to go between planets were sleeper ships, and those planets were around different stars. The DY-100, which was only once used as a sleeper ship and is not part of the class of ships McGivers was referring to, likely made the trip to Mars in a month. If John Christopher rode a similar ship to Saturn, it took him four months to get there.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Don't give them any ideas.

But I think the Botany Bay as a ship must be named after the geographic feature, not the prison history.

I mispoke probably.

It was never a ship.

It was a dumping ground.

And a song.

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I imagine drunk people sung it while getting drunker for two hundred years, before my grade-school teacher made me sing it with the class to kill 10 minutes before the bell, once a week.

Also

"You can't keep a horse in a light house" and "On top of Spaghetti".

 

[Guy Gardener]

You are conflating the two quotes, made in different contexts, and reaching a flawed conclusion.

Not all DY-100s were sleeper ships. In fact, the Botany Bay may be the only one. But up through 2018, there were enough sleeper ships that McGivers was able to recognize the genre of ship, and it was them that "took years to go between planets" not the DY-100.

A nuclear spaceship like the DY-100 would not take years to go between planets in our solar system. Assuming a constant .01g of acceleration, which is what the Vasimir can ostensibly do, even a trip to Pluto would only take 8 months (yes, including turnover).

So, the ships that took years to go between planets were sleeper ships, and those planets were around different stars. The DY-100, which was only once used as a sleeper ship and is not part of the class of ships McGivers was referring to, likely made the trip to Mars in a month. If John Christopher rode a similar ship to Saturn, it took him four months to get there.

No replicators.

Food, air, water.

Put someone to sleep for a month, or store 40 tons of food, air and water, per head, for them to consume on the ship.

Any trip longer than 6 hours, and you get put to sleep.



I was scrutinizing at the ships design.

I think its modular like Thunderbird 2.

The ship itself is a sleek tube.

And that hemorrhoid pillow cupping the ships kidney's not only detaches, but that's probably not the only way you can allocate the modules. It should go all the way around the ships hull like a ring, and maybe you could have many rings from stem to stern.

80 functional sleeper tubes is a weird cargo.

Unless there's a moonbase in 1996?

 

[Ragitsu]

Do you think Marla shouted "KHAAAAAN!" in bed?

 

[Neopeius]

Any trip longer than 6 hours, and you get put to sleep.

That worked so well for the Discovery...

Anyway, I'll stake money Marla meant interstellar journeys, not interplanetary ones.

Besides, look how many of Khan's crew died in transit. Sorry, not taking that risk. Sure, it might have been the length of time they were under... but then again, it might not have been.

And .01g acceleration constant is just a guess. Raise it to .1g and there's no need for cold sleep ever.

 

[Guy Gardener]

That worked so well for the Discovery...

Anyway, I'll stake money Marla meant interstellar journeys, not interplanetary ones.

Besides, look how many of Khan's crew died in transit. Sorry, not taking that risk. Sure, it might have been the length of time they were under... but then again, it might not have been.

And .01g acceleration constant is just a guess. Raise it to .1g and there's no need for cold sleep ever.

Marla identified Khan instantly.

That means she knew when the ship launched.

Were there interstellar journeys in 1996?

Zephram was identified as "Cochrane of Alpha Centauri" which has several explanations, including extra solar settlements in the 21st century. Although by 2022, we hadn't even sent a woman as far as Jupiter yet.

The Space Seed was three episodes after Return to Tomorrow, and Two Episodes after thew Court-martial, so the ship was fairly close to Earth at this point in their story.

 

[T'Bonz]

You are pushing it.

Indeed you are, @MAGolding.

If you don't stop printing tedious tomes, I'm going to start warning you. I doubt anyone on the board reads through your entire post and you've been doing it all over the board forever and the complaints I get have been numerous.

Cut your posting length down. The goal is to engage others in conversation, not show off supposed intellectual prowess. Not for a show that was only made to sell you laundry soap or some other product.

So the lengthy unnecessary garbage stops now, both here and in the other forum. Got it?

 

[DonIago]

...does anyone else now want laundry soap called Enterprise? Or better yet...Defiant?