What influence has the Spaceflight Chronology had?
- Thread starter rfmcdpei
- Start date
That explanation won't work. Here's the dialogue:
It's not just what Trelane thinks -- Kirk and Jaeger are referring to Alexander Hamilton's death and Napoleon's reign as being 900 years in their past, which would mean that Paul Schneider intended the episode to take place no sooner than 2704 CE. (So I misspoke; that's the early 28th century.)
Speaking of which, I'm a little confused regarding the status of Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri IV and VII have both been described as planets populated by the "Centauran/Centaurian" culture, which came before the current, main novel continuity. In the current continuity, which seems to have ignored the native Centaurans, Alpha Centauri III is also said to be settled by humans, with New Samarkand as its capital. So is Alpha Centauri III the only inhabited world of that system in the current continuity?
There are two class-M planets in the Alpha Centauri system, Centauri III orbiting A and Centauri VII orbiting B. (There are at least seven planets orbiting A and B combined, I think--Centauri VII is the second planet of B, A having five planets.)
Yup, that's how I defined it in The Buried Age. I based it on recent computer simulations (by Elisa Quintana et al.) of possible planet formation in the Alpha Centauri system. The proximity of the two stars rules out more than about five planets maximum around A, so the pre-established "Centauri VII" (from "Requiem for Methuselah") had to be reinterpreted. And I went with Alpha Centauri III instead of IV as the primary inhabited planet because most of the simulations put the second and/or third planet in the habitable zone but not the fourth.
), so I didn't know the system had recently been described in more detail. Thanks!
The most recent novel to mention native humans found in the Alpha Centauri system was Rosetta.
The old novel Crisis on Centarus takes place on Alpha Centauri IV, a human-founded (but multispecies) colony patterned after 20th century Earth. It's implied by the complete lack of aid sent from neighbouring planets, or any mention of them after the terrorist attack, that Centaurus is the only inhabited planet in the system.
I don't see why the arrangement of the real-life Alpha Centauri solar system has to have anything to do with the version in the ficticious Star Trek universe.
The old novel Crisis on Centarus takes place on Alpha Centauri IV, a human-founded (but multispecies) colony patterned after 20th century Earth. It's implied by the complete lack of aid sent from neighbouring planets, or any mention of them after the terrorist attack, that Centaurus is the only inhabited planet in the system.
I don't see why the arrangement of the real-life Alpha Centauri solar system has to have anything to do with the version in the ficticious Star Trek universe.
When Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, he consulted extensively with scientists, engineers, and think tanks, seeking to make his creation as plausible and grounded in reality as he could, within the bounds of necessary poetic license. He did the same when he produced ST:TMP (consulting with an actual JPL rocket scientist whose production notes about warp drive accurately foreshadowed the detailed theoretical work done by Miguel Alcubierre 16 years later) and TNG. Other producers may have been more careless about the science, and Roddenberry himself often took considerable poetic license with it, but the original intent behind the creation of Star Trek was that even while it was allowed to expand in more fanciful directions, it would maintain an anchor in reality.
In my Trek writing, I always try to honor that intent. To me, it's fundamental to what Star Trek is, and it's part of what makes ST special and distinct from more carelessly conceived space fantasies like Star Wars and the original Galactica. That commitment to realism, to creating a future that was believable, was part of what made the universe feel so real to its fans, what inspired so many people to become scientists and engineers and astronauts in real life. Star Trek showed us a future that we could believe might really be possible, and thus it inspired us to work toward building a better future in reality. As a contributor, however minor, to the Trek universe, I feel an obligation to stay true to that principle, and to use my Trek fiction to create a believable, informative vision of the future.
Of course I have the same commitment to scientific credibility in my original writing, so in that sense I'm just being true to my own style as a writer -- something which Trek Lit has a tradition of allowing and encouraging in its contributors, at least before and after the Richard Arnold era. But it was my childhood Trek fandom that got me interested in science in the first place and provided me with my first example of science fiction that aspired to credibility.
