Easy, there, Pygmalion.
I will note that I had assumed it was a larger vehicle. However, since we get to see that the starboard "Friendship 1" label is only about the length of a hand (15-20cm), we can compare that against the portside panel shots of the whole probe from the episode and derive a length for the whole thing of 15-20 meters, minus any tail antennae.
The 15-20m length would track given that the outer design would be most likely be based on the Phoenix - and similar hulls were used to break Warp 2 barrier.
However, a 15-20m length hull for an unmanned autonomous probe would be packed with internal HW.
First off, this precludes the notion it would carry subspace amplifiers because there would be no room to place a significant amount of them - and subspace comms of 2067 would likely be even slower with lower range than even what NX-01 had/enjoyed.
Which puts F-1 in the class of Voyager deep space probes - just FTL/subspace comms capable.
So the larger the distance, the probe would only need to relay its own position and deep space telemetry it picks up via subspace pings.
It wouldn't need to maintain real-time contact with SF (which also goes AGAINST the premise that it would go through various 'shortcuts' because as I said, they would mess with comms/navs and the probe wouldn't be able to compensate for that. And Earth would lose contact WELL before 2247. Earth had to be able to keep tabs on the probe for 180 years to know where it's last known coordinates were so VOY would know where to start the search.
I'm not talking about the wormhole thing or whatever. I obviously referred to the Epstein drive that is the basis of the show.
Ah, my bad.
Still, the Epstein drive analogy doesn't track. The F-1 probe had what distinctly looked like Warp nacelles.
It was essentially a rocket strapped with an engine - much like the Phoenix... just modified to support long range FTL usage (Warp and comms/sensors).
The Epstein drive from the Expanse tv series was still a sublight propulsion system and doesn't work in this scenario.
If their ships can catch up to it, then they can just as well pass it up. It simply doesn't make sense to continue expending time and energy on the old probe at that point. It's more likely they'd have brought it home and displayed it at UFP HQ or a museum.
No - my model keeps F-1 ahead. In the 84 years before NX-01, Earth has very few long-range ships. Post–First Contact, humanity spends decades rebuilding, and Vulcan oversight slows deep-space expansion; we don’t see sustained warp-5 exploration until NX-01 in 2151.
That means F-1 remains in front of human space for most of the 21st/early-22nd century. When Starfleet finally can, an NX-era intercept (2151–55 window) gives the probe an internal field-coil/EPS/firmware uplift, after which it can cruise around ~100c for roughly a decade.
After the Earth–Romulan War and the UFP’s 2161 formation, an early UFP yard touch or fast courier intercept provides a second uplift (better warp-field geometry, improved power handling). From there, F-1 runs an unsupported endurance leg at a few-hundreds-c, which—over the remaining decades—closes the distance to the ~30,000 ly we’re told about without anomalies or hauling hundreds of relays.
“Why not just bring it home?” Because the mission value is long-baseline telemetry and demonstration of reach. Agencies maintain legacy flagships precisely for continuity and optics. An occasional intercept to service the bus is cheaper and more informative than recovering it and losing the long-run dataset.
Your argument is that they enhanced the propulsion. That's the powerplant (presumably an antimatter-fueled warp core) and warp nacelles. Seems like bolting on a new drive section would've been the easiest thing out in the middle of space. The next easiest thing would be if it had a swappable core and bolt-on nacelle replacements.
Actually no. I wasn't talking about replacing nacelles themselves because the probe's overall design was implied to have remained the same.
INTERNAL structure (coils, power source, etc. - would be overhauled and enhanced).
Even in the episode with the Mars module (which predates the F-1 probe by decades) that was swallowed up by a Graviton elipse was mentioned that it had components that were not unlike those used on SF ships in the late 24th century and could/would be adapted (one such device was adapted for the Delta Flyer to be a power converted).
This implies that a LOT of the more advanced technology the F-1 probe used used was very similar and would also go into use later into SF ships - this directly implies modularity and internal upgradeability - and as we saw, SF was able to upgrade the Excelsior class in late 24th century to pretty much rival the USS Defiant (in 'Paradise Lost') without touching on the external design.
Swapping over nacelles doesn't preclude you from having to upgrade the overall power core, and other systems - plus enhance the outer hull to withstand higher speeds.
The former. When Voyager needed to refurbish her nacelles they landed and dragged the warp coils out of the nacelle housing to work on them. If the Friendship 1 nacelles were five meters long, why not just carry a pair out there and swap them? Seems a lot easier than doing delicate component replacements in open space.
Voyager’s own big maintenance beat in Nightingale shows opening nacelles to service coils and internal hw, not forklift-swapping entire pods.
And again, while I won't exclude the possibility of swapping out what would be relatively small nacelles, again, swapping the nacelles alone isn't enough - it would likely be better for the NX-01 crew to upgrade/enhance internal HW.
Extrapolating that to an unmanned probe: two scheduled intercepts (NX-era; early-UFP yard/courier) doing internal upgrades is far more plausible than “bolt on a new drive section in deep space.” You get higher cruise from better coils, cleaner EPS, and updated warp-field geometry - without altering the exterior.
Nah. I already gave you a less implausible alternative. Friendship 1 gets dropped off at significant distance by a ship capable of reasonably high warp, and they give it a little extra oomph making it a little speedboat, by human standards.
Ferry theory = high-assumption. The only power with motive and proximity early on are the Vulcans, and they spent a century discouraging Earth’s deep-space adventurism. At most they’d refuel and log a human probe that already had warp capability, then observe. Escorting it thousands of light-years is inconsistent with their policy and gains them nothing.
Logistically, ferrying also breaks the mission: Friendship-class value is
continuous, long-baseline telemetry. If you load it on a courier you interrupt the dataset, complicate ephemeris, and turn a low-touch demo into a multi-species resupply relay. That’s not “simpler,” it’s more moving parts.
Operationally, the boring model wins: the probe stays ahead; the network grows behind it. Two scheduled intercepts (NX-era; early-UFP yard/courier) do internal coil/EPS/firmware uplifts, then an unsupported endurance leg at a few-hundreds-c. That closes ~30 kly in ~180 y without wormholes or a galactic Uber service.
At 100c, it would make another 1000 LY every ten years, which could put her at Planet Self-Destruct by 2347 or so. If we're going to insist on the 2247 date, then we need 160c from our benefactors.
2247 isn’t me “insisting”; it’s what the episode states as last contact (aka, 130 years before 2377).
We also don’t need a benefactor to “carry” the probe or gift it 160c (because that's highly unlikely). The average over the whole 2067→2247 span only needs ~166c, and you can reach that with two ordinary service windows:
• 2067–2151 (~84 y): ~1c ⇒ ~84 ly (noise).
• 2151–2163 (~12 y, NX intercept): ~100c ⇒ ~1,200 ly.
• 2163–2203 (~40 y, early-UFP uplift): ~250c ⇒ ~10,000 ly.
• 2203–2247 (~44 y, endurance): ~400+ c ⇒ ~18,000+ ly.
Sum totals to around ~29-30k ly's without ferries, wormholes, or magical payload bays.
“Ferrying” the probe is the higher-assumption model: it contradicts Vulcan policy, burns crew time for no gain, and breaks the long-baseline telemetry that makes a Friendship mission valuable in the first place. The boring ops path—probe stays ahead, network catches up, two internal upgrades- closes the distance with fewer moving parts.
This isn't too bad, especially when you pay attention to the actual warp velocities from the shows rather than the Okuda numbers. Warp five is consistently shown to be around 1500c in Enterprise. It's warp one through warp four that are all the slow speeds, the latter being around 100c.
Enterprise era speeds (what’s on screen): Archer’s ship is repeatedly said to sustain about warp 4.5, with warp 5 the
design goal rather than normal cruise. Bursts toward 5 come after later engine tweaks (e.g., Expanse prep), not at launch. We don’t need Okuda tables or 1500c claims to make the numbers work (such speeds for that era don't make sense).
For Friendship-1 I’m using a conservative ~100c for the NX-era uplift window. Whether you prefer 120c or 200c doesn’t change the conclusion, because the heavy lift comes from the early-UFP upgrade + final endurance leg at a few-hundreds-c. That combination gets you to ~30k ly over ~180 years without ferries, wormholes, or magic.
(Of course, as questionable as the writing of "Friendship One" was insofar as launching a warp driven vehicle with hundreds of years of MTBF rating on its propulsion system, let's be sure not to let Enterprise off the hook. They showed Earth ships hauling 20,000 tonnes of cargo at warp 1.8 on a ship that had been in space for three generations, but suggested that warp two (8c) wasn't surpassed until 2143, with a warp five ship launched a mere eight years later. That is a nutty progression compared to the previously assumed rate of increase, and seems difficult to square with the existence of other Earth Starfleet classes shown.)
The odd pacing in Enterprise actually illustrates how non-linear warp development is. Crossing specific regimes (e.g.,
reliable Warp 2, then stable high-warp) isn’t a smooth curve; it’s step-function breakthroughs separated by long plateaus.
Early post–First Contact Earth spends decades rebuilding under Vulcan oversight; long-range human traffic is sparse until NX-01 (2151). That doesn’t contradict Friendship-1 at all. F-1 only needs Warp 1 and extreme MTBF - an automated deep-space bus that trickles telemetry and stays healthy. That’s a very different engineering problem from fielding a crewed ship sustaining Warp 2+ with safety margins.
Launching F-1 a few years after FC is ambitious, not impossible: reuse lessons learned from Phoenix flight, remove life-support/hab constraints, over-engineer the coils for longevity, and let allies (likely Vulcans) refuel and log it while refusing to taxi it across the map. Later, once Starfleet and then the UFP (2161) exist, occasional internal service windows (coils/EPS/firmware) plausibly raise cruise from ~1c to the few-hundreds-c needed to close ~30 kly by ~2247, without any other assumptions.
The only other good alternative is a wormhole or similar phenomenon within a few hundred light-years of Earth, or preferably a few dozen to account for the fuel running out earlier. The probe encounters this circa 2247 and it stays open long enough for partial telemetry to be sent back, leading to Starfleet having some idea where the vehicle was going to be. Warp drive was obviously offline at the time, preferably from fuel exhaustion in a reasonable timeframe but possibly due to the phenomenon, hence the search radius being a small grid rather than a quadrant.
Even if the
final loss of contact was near an anomaly, F-1 still had to cover ~29,000 ly in the ~180 years
before that. A wormhole near Earth doesn’t do the heavy lift and it wrecks comms.
VOY Friendship One episode implies Starfleet could project a track and then VOY “skip ahead a little” (per Kim's suggestion) allowing for local anomalies. That presumes continuous century-scale telemetry. A chain of major shortcuts would break ephemerides and comms, which we are never told happened.
As I mentioned before, asking some Alpha Quadrant power to haul a human probe thousands of ly is the
higher-assumption model. It contradicts Vulcan policy, burns starship time for no gain, and destroys the value of a long-baseline, continuous dataset.
Mine is the low assumption model. Probe stays ahead; the network grows behind it. Two internal service windows (NX-era; early-UFP) and one final drone pack in 2203 raise cruise into several hundreds-c. A final endurance leg gets you to the ~30k ly stated on screen.
That's the option I personally prefer as it allows for more reasonable warp speeds and vehicle longevity given the later retcons. The Conestoga, for instance, was launched a couple of years later and capable of about 2c for nine years of sustained flight. This small probe being capable of maybe 4c for maybe 40 years would put it well beyond the reach of Earth at 160 light-years away by 2107, an old harmless relic by the time they could've caught up to it 45 years later.
Conestoga’s speed in “Terra Nova” is ~2.22c (20 ly / 9 years). That’s not Warp 2; on the classic cubic rule it’s roughly Warp 1.3 - solidly
low warp. A crewed colonial ark managing ~2.2c in 2069 makes a 2067 unmanned probe sustaining ~1c segments entirely plausible.
That only strengthens my boring ops model: early decades = slow store-and-forward telemetry with occasional Vulcan refuel/inspection, later NX-era internal upgrades (coils/EPS/firmware), then an early-UFP uplift. No ferries, no wormholes - just ordinary warp and routine servicing over time.
