Is there anything about that system that is quantifable, besides it is near the Galactic barrier? Such as distance to Earth or another known system?
Delta Vega
- Thread starter Ronald Held
- Start date
No. It's a totally made-up system. And it's a mystery how a Federation installation could be that close to the galactic rim if no one had ever been that far out before.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Maybe Starfleet went through a Von Neumann phase? By the time they get out there, the stuff is all deployed built and ready to use.
Agreed, I think in the modern conceptions of the Trek universe, it was either North or South of the galactic plane (z axis), not the edge of the disc, that is traveled to. Unless there was a really nifty Vulcan spatial anomaly chart to get them that far out!
One could speculate they are thrown out of the barrier with some "english" resulting in a faster velocity. In the Lithium/Dilithium thread I mention other reasons for it being so distant (safety, i.e., like ST6).
Star Trek: Star Charts agrees with this assessment. The barrier is toroidal in shape an surrounds the rim of the galaxy. It is thickest toward the edge, and thinner above and below the galactic plane. Kirk and the Enterprise crossed a this area above the plane, not far from Delta Vega.
I'm not sure I can agree here.
In "These Are the Voyages...", Archer and Trip toasted "to Warp 7", "to the next generation". We know that in Archer's era, achieving Warp 5 was a major hurdle. It was never clearly stated that pre-Federation Earth ever achieved Warp 7, let alone would be able to sustain it. In fact, Trip seemed to regard the Warp 7 milestone with some awe. Even in "The Cage," Pike seemed to think diverting to Talos at Warp 7 was a big enough deal to include it in his address to the crew.
Perhaps it wasn't until sometime in the early to mid 23rd century that Federation starships could sustain Warp 7. And perhaps even in post-ENT early Federation days, Warp 6 was still a big deal. Warp speeds are, after all, a geometric progression.
Having said all this, just because there's a small installation on Delta Vega doesn't mean there's a Federation presence there, or any need to establish one there. Maybe Delta Vega is the last planet that an early Federation (or Earth) expedition found in the late 22nd or early 23rd century where special technology-linked minerals were found. (The expedition could have been a civilian project, or one contracted by Earth and/or the Federation to civvies to seek out and find these minerals.) No need to establish a colony on an apparently arid, barren world. Just send out a convoy of ore ships once every 20 years to extract what is needed, as it is needed.
The original expedition probably came out on a relatively low-warp ship, built the installation, and then left for home base. (There doesn't appear to be much of a food supply there.)
Well, Kirk did say that with warp drive the nearest Earth base would have only been days away.
They weren't that far from the beaten path.
I really think that in going through the galactic barrier they where thrown out of it, and thus traveled a lot further than we are made to believe.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
To a moon near Vulcan, some would have us now believe.
Did he say warp seven? Or time factor?
Warp seven wasn't a big deal to the Federation in ENT - it was a big deal to Earth. Our heroes were still too provincial for their own good in "These Are the Voyages": they should have been well aware that e.g. Vulcan ships of the era had been quoted with speeds in the warp 7 range.
Anyway, it probably wasn't a coincidence that Delta Vega was close to the location where Kirk lost his warp drive. Rather, if Kirk's mission was to probe beyond this barrier thing, then naturally Starfleet would send him to confront the barrier at a location where there already was a preexisting Starfleet or Federation support installation. Indeed, the installation might have been constructed with this very mission in mind...
It also appears that the barrier was a known phenomenon when Kirk reached it. Or at least we get no "What is that purple thing?" comments from our heroes: the gist of the scenes seems to be that the heroes knew to expect this barrier, even though they have no solid data on how it will treat them when they attempt to get through.
A logistic effort to robotically build automated refueling facilities makes sense, then. Kirk says that other ships will be following in their wake - and since he uses this as an argument in support of urgency, we might just as well assume that Starfleet has decided to open up a new exploration, colonization, conquest or trade route that will make use of Delta Vega and aim towards some extragalactic target of interest.
We should also mind that while Kirk says it is "impossible" that another Earth vessel could have loitered this far that long ago, he does specify Earth vessel, and makes no generic claims about nobody having been there before. For all we know, the location has been well researched by other UFP species, and is teeming with all sorts of "base camps" - much like the coasts of Antarctica were well studied by various other nations before the attempt at penetrating the mainland was made by a Norwegian team...
(I guess Antarctica is a better point of comparison than, say, Mount Everest: there is no mention of a native population at the edge of the unknown here.)
Timo Saloniemi
Anyway, it probably wasn't a coincidence that Delta Vega was close to the location where Kirk lost his warp drive. Rather, if Kirk's mission was to probe beyond this barrier thing, then naturally Starfleet would send him to confront the barrier at a location where there already was a preexisting Starfleet or Federation support installation. Indeed, the installation might have been constructed with this very mission in mind...
It also appears that the barrier was a known phenomenon when Kirk reached it. Or at least we get no "What is that purple thing?" comments from our heroes: the gist of the scenes seems to be that the heroes knew to expect this barrier, even though they have no solid data on how it will treat them when they attempt to get through.
A logistic effort to robotically build automated refueling facilities makes sense, then. Kirk says that other ships will be following in their wake - and since he uses this as an argument in support of urgency, we might just as well assume that Starfleet has decided to open up a new exploration, colonization, conquest or trade route that will make use of Delta Vega and aim towards some extragalactic target of interest.
We should also mind that while Kirk says it is "impossible" that another Earth vessel could have loitered this far that long ago, he does specify Earth vessel, and makes no generic claims about nobody having been there before. For all we know, the location has been well researched by other UFP species, and is teeming with all sorts of "base camps" - much like the coasts of Antarctica were well studied by various other nations before the attempt at penetrating the mainland was made by a Norwegian team...
(I guess Antarctica is a better point of comparison than, say, Mount Everest: there is no mention of a native population at the edge of the unknown here.)
Timo Saloniemi
Or perhaps he was querying his navigator: "Time? Warp... factor seven? Oh, to hell with it, let's just get going."
Or he had the Blue Ribbon in mind. "Lieutenant: time this for me. Warp.. factor seven. Let's see who gets the last laugh back at Quantum Café..."
Or then Number One's first name was "Tyme".
Timo Saloniemi
Or he had the Blue Ribbon in mind. "Lieutenant: time this for me. Warp.. factor seven. Let's see who gets the last laugh back at Quantum Café..."
Or then Number One's first name was "Tyme".
Timo Saloniemi
To try an summarize Delta Vega is in a system perhaps 1500 ly out of the Galactic plane. The industrial base was probably constructed by humans The Enterprise may have been "thrown" out the barrier relatively close to that system.
Now for the alternate(ST XI) timeline. Delta Vega is a system close to that containing Vulcan???
Now for the alternate(ST XI) timeline. Delta Vega is a system close to that containing Vulcan???
Well, it was an automated station. People had been there, but not often, and not any further. Maybe the E's warp drive didn't fail in the barrier but after heading home for a day or so? (It's reaching, but we're Star Trek fans, it's what we do!) At any rate DV is "a few light days away". So not right on the barrier.
"Force field of some kind."
"Whatever it is, contact in 12 seconds."
It was "impossible" because the Valiant had been missing for over two centuries. Also it was very clear back in TOS that Earth ships were at the leading edge of Federation exploration.
"Other vessels will be heading out here someday and they'll have to know what they'll be facing."
You are, Number Six.
This could just barely work, agreed on that. We could perhaps also say that "a few days away" means by hero clock, not by Delta Vega clock. The planet could be several lightyears away, but the speed provided by impulse engines would result in a travel time of subjective days. It's a damned shame that the explicit expression "light days" is used in the episode, ruining this solution...
Or because she was at an impossible location, whichever better suits our current rationalization attempts.
That would still seem to fit the idea that the barrier's existence was known, but not its nature.
What was clear in TOS was that starships led rather lonely lives. Kirk's discoveries were made in isolation; there's no telling that other ships from other cultures couldn't have been doing the same and still served Federation interests.
That Kirk was the first slated to probe past the barrier is not in doubt: that others from other cultures had paved the way for him is still a possibility, and nothing in the dialogue precludes expeditions that would have founded the Delta Vega station and other supply assets.
Delta Vega still isn't merely a "Camp D" for this single expedition, though, that much is made clear by the references to the ore ships coming and going every 20 years. Curiously enough, though, we don't learn whether the ore ships are bringing in ore or taking it out...
Timo Saloniemi
That's my guess, too. Just because the Warp Seven Project has been announced, doesn't mean Earth will be achieving it anytime soon - perhaps far longer than anyone at the time (2161) even guessed. Considering their prior competition with/against the Vulcans, it will no doubt be something of a point of pride that this is one thing Earth achieves on its own, regardless of what Vulcan ships can do. (For all we know, Vulcan ships might have had engines rated at warp seven but not the actual ability to reach warp seven...)
Doug Drexler recently suggested that the symmetrical warpfield governor doohickey on the NX-01 had to do with the fact that creating a stable high-level warp field was problematic because of the use of asymmetric warp coils. Perhaps symmetric warp coils were what finally did it?
Alternatively, perhaps it was the uber-fast Vulcans that established the Detla Vega outpost before Earth ships got there, in the interest of mutual cooperation?
I wonder if the Enterprise might have turned off whatever relativity-limiters they had on the impulse engines (or simply accelerated to the impulse speed where relativity starts affecting them) in order to reach Delta Vega faster to them than the rest of the universe... it would certainly explain where the first two years of the five year mission went, and why the Enterprise underwent a subsequent refit immediately after and uniform fashion suddenly changed.
That's my take on it too.
I think that's a little disengenuous. They don't say "Oh my, what IS it?" but they don't say "Ah, the energy barrier we've been expecting, let's scan it" either. I think it was the intention of the director etc. to show the crew steely-eyed in the face of the unknown. (Even so, Kelso is obviously pretty edgy about this weird pink thing.)
Kirk also seems unaware of Delta Vega until Spock suggests it. It's presented as more of "Hey, look what I found" rather than "Sir, we should go to that fallback planet."
I had kicked that idea around as well at one time. It was a neat idea that would have put a fun spin on the Enterprise's history. Unforturnately Delta Vega isn't far enough. I'm sure they travelled as quickly as possible and I'm sure there were some relatavistic effects while doing so. But even at .99x C where they'd age hardly at all they'd only be a couple of days out of synch with "real time". (It might be that they took a few weeks getting to DV, but then you're close to time as experienced by the rest of the universe.) Then there's the fact that going by the actor's ages they're only a year older between WNMHGB and Corbomite Manuver (going by production rather than aired order). So it's not unreasonable to assume a gap between WNMHGB and the regular series.
BTW, my take on the series refit is that the damage to the Enterprise by the barrier was fairly extensive. Also exploring out of the galaxy was not part of the "Five Year Mission" as such. So to solve both problems the ship was docked and upgraded. Not really backed up on screen, but it's a fun notion.
