How far away is DS9 from Federation help?

[Starfleet Engineer]

My sister has recently started DS9 for the first time and finds herself wondering why DS9 doesn't call on the Federation to help them, at times, when the station is in trouble. How far away is the station from other Federation planets and Fed help in case of trouble?

 

[Timo]

After the first few seasons, we learn that our heroes can shuttle back and forth between DS9 and the Federation core worlds in less than a week.

And that isn't much of a reassurance. In episodes like "The Die is Cast" and "Way of the Warrior", we learn that Starfleet will send semi-decisive reinforcements (9 and 6 starships, respectively) in what seems to be a bit less than a day. But that's not nearly enough to repel unexpected attacks. In both those cases, Starfleet had at least some advance warning for keeping forces in the vicinity. But an enemy fleet might have overrun the station in a matter of minutes before the big "Way of the Warrior" upgrade of defenses, and could still have had its way in a matter of hours after that upgrade, as seen in "Call to Arms".

The later seasons make it look as if the nearest Starfleet asset would be Starbase 375, which various background maps place at a couple of lightyears away. That'd jibe with the couple-of-hours-but-not-quite-a-day reaction time rather nicely, assuming that SB 375 happened to have ships available at the key moment. Another starbase is mentioned earlier on as the location from which commands are issued to Sisko: SB 401 from "Whispers" seems to be the home base for Admiral Rollman, a "semi-regular" (two appearances - she's Nimoy's wife, after all) who might have been the predecessor of Admiral Ross as the sector commander.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lateralus]

This might help.

You can spot DS9 below the Badlands.

 

[Captain Leslie]

I beleive the distance is measured in 'Dramatically Appropriate' light years...

 

[Lateralus]

I beleive the distance is measured in 'Dramatically Appropriate' light years...

Hahaha!

Reminds me of something Joe Straczynski (B5 creator) said when asked how fast a whitestar could travel; "The speed of plot"

 

[Sisko4Life]

I read somewhere that the technical manual for DS9 lists the Sol sector as roughly 56 light years from Cardassia, and Cardassia is 5 light years from Bajor where DS9 is. That sounds accurate but again it is always the speed of the plot. In the later episodes of season 7, it takes a fleet an entire day to reach Cardassia, which suggests that reinforcements from Earth are pretty far, which was the dilemma in Favor the Bold. Starbase 375 is the next sector over and the closest starbase, which suggests its ~20 light years, and that fleet took 3 days to reach DS9.

 

[pimp]

Why didn't starfleet just garrison some ships there to protect DS9 instead of sending them from far away???

 

[Nerys Myk]

Why didn't starfleet just garrison some ships there to protect DS9 instead of sending them from far away???

Because Starfleet is run by writers.

 

[Lindley]

Why didn't starfleet just garrison some ships there to protect DS9 instead of sending them from far away???

They did (the Defiant), once a clear threat was identified.

Also, in the later seasons most of the establishing shots include two or three starships.

 

[Jono]

^ In the early season it might be that Bajor didn't allow the Federation to garrison large number of forces in their system. They just came out of an occupation and would be understandable wary of anyone stationing several thousand soldiers in their system, backed up by dozens of starships.

I read somewhere that the technical manual for DS9 lists the Sol sector as roughly 56 light years from Cardassia, and Cardassia is 5 light years from Bajor where DS9 is. That sounds accurate but again it is always the speed of the plot. In the later episodes of season 7, it takes a fleet an entire day to reach Cardassia, which suggests that reinforcements from Earth are pretty far, which was the dilemma in Favor the Bold. Starbase 375 is the next sector over and the closest starbase, which suggests its ~20 light years, and that fleet took 3 days to reach DS9.

Nothing really wrong this any of this. If those charts you see for warp speeds and distances are correct (I think they are from the Star Trek: Encyclopaedia) you can be at Earth in 4 day at around 9.95 (close to max speed of the Defiant), Cardassia in a day at 9.5 and if 375 was 20ly from DS9, 9.8 would get you there in 3 days. All these speeds are possible by Starfleet vessels.

 

[Timo]

Why didn't starfleet just garrison some ships there to protect DS9 instead of sending them from far away???

In addition to the "Bajor won't accept" thing early on, it's tactically a poor idea to base your ships on the front line. A base is something that needs to be behind the lines, immune from the first strikes of the enemy.

In an amphibious warfare analogy, DS9 would be a gunnery outpost at the beach, while SB375 would be the inland base of the tank division that waits farther back for its turn to push the invader back to the sea. DS9 would most probably be lost to the enemy during the initial assault, or at least kept extremely busy, so using it as the tank base would be a grave mistake.

Sure, there should be a couple of ships deployed near the wormhole mouth, even when not actually based there. But starships are no good at defending against invasions pouring through a wormhole. They'd just get in the way of the real defenses such as minefields or DS9 guns. Starships, intended for combat in open space, would work best as a second layer of defense after the invasion has already come through and tries to spread out.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[pimp]

Strategically it would make more of a sense to garrison as many ships at DS9 because that is where the heart of the battle is (the wormhole). That way they can attack any dominion ships coming out of the wormhole and stop them from entering Cardassian space and building a massive force, which is more of a threat.

But anyways from a TV show point of view it wouldn't have been so great because then the Defiant would have been just another ship and nothing special also Captain Sisko would have loads of captains and admirals running around his station.

 

[nx1701g]

Well (I know it'll come up) Earth is around 50 lightyears away from DS9 according to the Technical Manual.

By contrast their biggest threat (the Cardassians) are around 5 lightyears away according to the same book.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, the DS9 TM only says Bajor is 50+ ly from "Federation core". It might be that there's still a couple of dozen ly to go from where the core begins to Earth.

A wall map seen in the later seasons of DS9 and reproduced in the Star Trek Star Charts book fails to show Earth specifically, but one can surmise Earth sits in the very middle of that chart, with Bajor and Cardassia to the left and Romulans to the right. Since the chart is just an extension of the DS9 TM chart, we get the scale from there, indeed placing Earth some 50 ly from Bajor. So the map's basically "visual canon" fer ya - but the scaling is conjecture from a noncanon book.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SoM]

...you can be at Earth in 4 day at around 9.95 (close to max speed of the Defiant)...

The Defiant was limited to Warp 9 in normal use though, remember, because it would shake itself to bits otherwise ("overpowered and overgunned"). Boosting the structural integrity field enough to compensate for that involved draining other systems, like the phaser banks.

 

[Sisko4Life]

My question is how did the Peragrine Tactical Fighters keep up with the rest of the fleet. As I mentioned, they went from Starbase 375 in the Kalandra Sector to DS9 in 3 days... and I doubt those little things can go Warp 9... (unless they put them all on larger ship shuttlebays for the trip lol). Oh well, maybe I'm thinking too much into it. Kind of like how the NX Enterprise went to Kronos in 1 day at Warp 5...

 

[Jono]

...you can be at Earth in 4 day at around 9.95 (close to max speed of the Defiant)...

The Defiant was limited to Warp 9 in normal use though, remember, because it would shake itself to bits otherwise ("overpowered and overgunned"). Boosting the structural integrity field enough to compensate for that involved draining other systems, like the phaser banks.

My mistake. I though she got up to 9.95 in The Sound of Her Voice, it was only 9.5. It would take her twice as long to get to 50ly at that speed, around 10 days.

My question is how did the Peragrine Tactical Fighters keep up with the rest of the fleet. As I mentioned, they went from Starbase 375 in the Kalandra Sector to DS9 in 3 days... and I doubt those little things can go Warp 9... (unless they put them all on larger ship shuttlebays for the trip lol). Oh well, maybe I'm thinking too much into it. Kind of like how the NX Enterprise went to Kronos in 1 day at Warp 5...

I've always thought it was odd that we never see the fleet at warp or go to warp on their way to DS9 or to Chin'toka...maybe even not at the end of season 5 when the Defiant joins the fleet for that last shot before the end, it always seems the fleet is travelling at impulse. All those ships going to warp would have looked fairly amazing.

Though when we do catch up with the fleet after it was left the 375 someone mentions a ship having to leave formation, so maybe they dropped out of warp to adjust their formation as that ship fell back and another came up to take its position.

 

[Timo]

It would be cool to think that the little fighters are deployed immediately when the fleet drops out of warp, and recovered only moments before the fleet jumps to warp again...

Then again, Starfleet apparently doesn't believe in the doctrine of giving its fleets maximum mobility. Today's strategists might wish to exploit a mobility advantage by grouping the ships according to their speed, but Starfleet instead opts to hobble its more modern vessels by having them slow down to the maximum speed of the old Miranda tubs. Which makes sense when one thinks in WWI terms where the side that brings the most weapon barrels to the battle is the one to triumph, things like speed and range be damned.

(Oh, and I respectfully disagree with the designation of those fighters as Peregrine. The Peregrine is a "courier", not an "attack fighter"...)

Timo Saloniemi