Mines & Borders

[pimp]

Just want to know when Sisko orders the minefield to be put up I just never really understood why when the minefield is up, it’s simply in a straight line surely in space you can go over under etc. etc. so for the wormhole to be truly mined you would need a minefield that is circular in shape which goes around the wormhole and not simply a wall,

This again links in with borders why are they simply a line in space, it should be a circular shape that encompasses entire federation and not a line drawn out on a 2d map makes no sense.

Also another sort of link would be when the feds (as I like to call em) try to break through dominion defensive lines well again there should not be a line you can attack from any direction and you can easily break that line but attacking from another direction therefore they would need to pursue you and thus their line is broken, what I am trying to say is you can not dig in and defend while in space.

 

[The_Baroness]

You've seen the wormhole right?

It's a bottleneck, it makes for very small area for ships to emerge into.

Plus, if I remember rightly, the mines weren't in a line, but they were in more of a 'grid' arrangement.

And of course you can break through in one point. Imagine yourself inside a bubble. You want to get out of the "Fed" bubble and into the "dominion" bubble, just push through the side.

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

I think he meant space is so big, all you have to do is march/warp sideways and then ahead. But weren't the Feds outnumbered? They couldn't simply spread out to the point of being able to get a ship through. The Dommies (we're using nicknames, right?) could block each ship and then some.

Perhaps its standard battle tactics of the time. On vacation in colonial Williamsburg, I learned that the British tactic of having soldiers stand in rows and columns (which makes easy targets) was useful in battles. Musketry back then wasn't very accurate. The best way to take out a similar opposing force was to line up in a tight clump and each row fires a shot all together. A volley was the British Army's best tactical option. They didn't have the capability to hide behind something, pop out, find a target, and actually hit it before ducking again. Perhaps that's the same in the Trek universe. Ships stood a better chance of clumping together even if there's open space all around them for perhaps a sneaky one to get by.

 

[toughlittleship]

I think there is a line in "Call to Arms" where O'Brien says he can program the mines to swarm detonate.

 

[Anwar]

The mines are probably mobile, meaning even if the Dominion tried to fly around them the mines would magnetically go after them.

 

[Timo]

The Bajoran wormhole is a fundamentally 2D phenomenon. It doesn't open whichever way, apparently, but only in a certain direction; you can't fly into it from the opposite direction, or at least nobody ever tries such a thing. Mining it shut from just one side makes perfect sense, then.

Although why the wormhole behaves that way, and how our heroes can be so certain about which way it's gonna open next, are left as mysteries, or exercises for the spectator.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

The Bajoran wormhole is a fundamentally 2D phenomenon. It doesn't open whichever way, apparently, but only in a certain direction; you can't fly into it from the opposite direction, or at least nobody ever tries such a thing. Mining it shut from just one side makes perfect sense, then.

Although why the wormhole behaves that way, and how our heroes can be so certain about which way it's gonna open next, are left as mysteries, or exercises for the spectator.

Timo Saloniemi

I thought it always opened in the same spot. If that's true mining the opening just outside of where it pulls you in (I believe in Emissary they were pulled into the wormhole.) you've blocked the passage.

 

[MikeS]

I don't understand this discussion. As Timo and The Baron have said, the wormhole is a 2D structure in a 3D environment.

Think of it as a railway tunnel. The railway tunnel exists in a 3D environment, but brick it up at one end and trains entering the opposite end will be unable to exit. Laying the self-replicating mines at the Alpha quadrant end of the wormhole had the effect of "plugging" the tunnel. In my analogy, you could send troops over the hill the tunnel goes through, but this would be more difficult and take more time. Just as it would be more difficult and take more time for The Dominion to send ships directly to the Alpha Quadrant.

 

[Timo]

Yup - there's nothing in the shows to establish that the hole wouldn't open in the exact same spot every time, and perhaps in the exact same (or otherwise predictable) orientation.

It does seem that the hole opens up to different sizes, depending on who's going in, though. Sometimes it's just runabout-sized, sometimes it accommodates multiple starships. I guess the minefield covered the widest yawn our heroes had experience of, and then some...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

Somehow, I would think that if the wormhole entrance could drift a bit to accommodate a sloppy pilot, wouldn't that mean it's unstable? I would expect a stable wormhole to always be at the exact same spot every single time...

 

[MikeS]

Somehow, I would think that if the wormhole entrance could drift a bit to accommodate a sloppy pilot, wouldn't that mean it's unstable?

I'd forgotten about the pilot saying this. If the aperature of the wormhole does indeed move around then the original post in this thread makes alot more sense.

But I'm inclined to not treat any pilot as gospel. They always change things that don't work, and the wormhole moving was never mentioned again. Just as Riker and Troi communicating telepathically or Spock expressing emotions were never mentioned again.

 

[Timo]

But how does one define a "spot" in space?

It appears that DS9 orbits the Bajoran star. Even if it doesn't, the star wanders across space, yet DS9 stays with it. And the entire galaxy in which Bajor's star resides is moving. Necessarily, DS9 and the wormhole are moving across space; that a little bit of drift would alter the nature of the wormhole is rather unlikely, then.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

Good question. I would daresay relative to the closest star [or star system].

 

[Timo]

Why would a star be a special fix point in the structure of the universe, though? It's just a ball of glowing gas. Unless the Prophets more or less arbitrarily decided to hold it as their fix point, of course.

The movement of the Alpha end is never really a plot point or even a plot inconsistency. But what about the Gamma end? In "Emissary", Dax claims the closest system is Idran, five ly away; yet in "Destiny", we see a comet that glows in obvious starlight, drawing a tail that must be the result of a radiation source just a few AU away. Did the Gamma end move? Or did Dax in "Emissary" mean that Idran was the closest system she could recognize, the closest apart from the nameless system they very obviously were in?

Timo Saloniemi