Impulse speed and physics

[Timo]

Yes, the "mere months" during which you have to survive on three weeks worth of supplies.

Where do you get these unrealistic numbers? We never met an Earth spacecraft that couldn't haul a few years' worth of supplies, or was suffering from a shortage of supplies, or anything like that. There's zero reason to think that an Earth design would have its crew starve before they could explore a dozen star systems - either technologically, or historically, since we have seen the required technologies and we have seen the missions.

But wouldn't suffice for combining that technology with the relatively untested and poorly-understood warp drive.

The tech would not require any "combining". It could simply be applied.

More importantly, the cryosleep system is not something that has ever been described as widely used; in "The Neutral Zone" it is described as a fad

Nope. Preservation of the corpses of dead people is described as a fad. Cryosleep was standard procedure in interplanetary flight until 2018, and apparently remained standard procedure in interstellar flight at least until 2210 which is the date mentioned in Harry Kim's anecdote about Unca Jack's colonizing flight in VOY "11:59".

and the way they talk about the DY-100 class it's probably that none of the sleeper ships they sent into space ever MADE IT anywhere with their crews intact.

Whaaaat? There isn't a hint that any of them ever suffered a mishap. The technology was described as "necessary" and taken for granted. Only the idea of using it for several centuries on a stretch was considered worrisomely unproven.

This is probably because cryonics in general is a really bad idea, so much so that the Earth Cargo Service refrains from using it even on years-long voyages and instead prefers to just pack up heavy and rough it along the way.

They aren't hauling people around. They are moving cargo, and in the meantime they are living their lives. No ECS ship was ever described as aiming to deliver people to a destination, the one plausible application for cryosleep tech there. (There'd be no point in freezing the crew; if they could be frozen, they could just as well be left home!)

Cryosleep is a splendid idea in the Trek universe, and sees continued use across the centuries described (see VOY "One").

While its DESIGN implies a vessel no larger than the Phoenix, which is exactly what it was meant to imply.

Oh, sure.

http://drexfiles.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/friendship01_launchpad_0.jpg

That's the Trek shape for "houses fifty people".

Those slight changes took a long time to perfect, and if the Terra Nova mission is any indication, jumping the gun on that process would have almost certainly doomed the expedition to a slow grim death in interstellar space.

Which is probably what happened to many such expeditions (indeed, the Valiant failed, and the assumed demise obviously was not "disappeared in a magnetic storm and was scuttled due to divine infestation"). But that's no reason to assume they would not have taken place. What would have gone wrong is something unexpected failing, not something inevitable proving incapable of its task.

That would be like Robert Goddard strapping a lawn chair to his proof-of-concept rocket and saying "Alright! We're ready to land on the moon!"

With fifty filthy foreigners (from other stars, even!) doing it already, what could possibly hold him back? National shame? (To coin an expression to indicate the opposite of what would typically be driving such actions in reality)

you're proceeding from the assumption that the Botany Bay would have been a highly ambitious and clever space mission that represented the forefront of human spaceflight technology

Again, whaaat?

No, the ship was a low-end, retiring piece of technology from an Earth that was so much more advanced than us in the field of spaceflight that the days of timid "Apollo thinking" would have been as alien to them as the days of the Wright experiments would be to engineers tasked with trimming a bit more from the weight of the giant airlifter or giving a bit of extra agility to a dogfighter. "Will it work?" would no longer be asked; "Is it safe?" would already be known. "How many dollars do we win by taking this additional risk?" would be the prudent question to ask.

humanity was still reeling from the Post Atomic Horror

Only the Chinese (?), apparently. Several other locations were doing just dandy as far as we could tell.

and no human being had ever visited the asteroid belt or the Moons of Jupiter yet.

If so, then only because they had seen no reason to stop there.

The idea of stopping to exploit the Sol system before going to the stars is no different from the idea of stopping to make Earth perfect before reaching for the Moon. It carries no financial, technological or psychological merit.

I'd describe the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust as many things, but "rich" aint one of them.

Why not? In order to have a nuclear holocaust, you need a lot of technology. Afterwards, quite a bit of it is lying around free for taking.

If by "Nil" you mean the Constitution's to speed is at least three warp factors higher, that its weapons are ten times as strong, that its hull can withstand the NX's weapons fire even with its shields down, and that a single Constitution class makes short work of aggressor vessels that totally outmatch the NX-class... then in that case, the difference is indeed nil.

Yup. Now give Valiant a speed three warp factors lower than NX-01, weapons one-tenth the strength, shields that crumble under the fearsome plasma peashooters of Archer's vessel, and the ability to be defeated by NX-01 even when accompanied by nine sister ships - and you have got yourself a galactic explorer capable of achieving all I ascribed to the design, and more.

You, knowing what you do about space exploration, are smoking something pretty odd if you think any serious space mission would be undertaken by someone who can use the words "space" and "uninteresting" in the same sentence.

See, again you demonstrate thinking that is at least half a century out of date today already. In the terms of the Trek timeline version of Earth history, that is.

Because 99% of the shit that real scientists find interesting DOESN'T involve M-class worlds.

Why do you think scientists would have a say in the mission profiles? Exploration isn't for lab-coated nerds, but for bold entrepreneurs who promise to bring back photos of exciting business opportunities.

More importantly, nobody on Earth knew where those worlds were; that was, in fact, the entire point of NX-01's mission.

Or the Valiant's.

They were in Deneva, so it's safe to assume they were in the Sol system too.

Oh, good point. OTOH, Deneva was inhabited, but from this it does not follow that Mars was. Perhaps the Denevan asteroids were simply more interesting?

More importantly, Jupiter Station had to be built by SOMEONE, so obviously there had to be something pretty interesting in the Jupiter system to warrant its exploration and eventual colonization.

"Eventual" being the keyword. Mankind went to stars before it made a permanent stand on Mars; clearly, "skipping" is a correct way to describe the process.

Impulse doesn't doom you.

...Except to a mission failure and a shameful crawl back home. See, we balance between two pretty silly extremes here: that the Valiant was doing her traveling between stars on an engine incapable of reaching even the nearest star, and that she was doing so relying on supplies that don't last beyond a fortnight. We know Earth had better engines and supplies when the ship was launched, and we don't have to make the Valiant extremely slow or extremely fast, extremely short- or long-endurance to achieve these things. Instead, we can give her a speed around warp two or three, an endurance comparable to the early 21st century level (that is, "years" as stated in "Space Seed"), and have her roam stars in a miniature prelude to the mission of NX-01 and the subsequent mission of NCC-1701.

FWIW, the novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint" describes that the Saucer Section dropped out of warp a handful of seconds after it separated from the battle section; even under impulse power, it arrives at Deneb IV only fifty two minutes behind the Star Drive, which is waylaid by Q for a grand total of ten minutes before he sends them on their way.

Why worry about the novelization? The episode itself makes it clear the saucer was capable of very high sustained FTL. And the VFX also seems to show the combination slowing down to sublight at separation (the stars no longer streak), establishing the ability to accelerate to high FTL from STL.

But that simply means that the saucer had warp drive. And not even Scotty ever stated otherwise.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yes, the "mere months" during which you have to survive on three weeks worth of supplies.

Where do you get these unrealistic numbers? We never met an Earth spacecraft that couldn't haul a few years' worth of supplies

Implying here that only Star Trek numbers are realistic while... erm... real spacecraft aren't?

Why are you so determined to explode my irony meter?

But wouldn't suffice for combining that technology with the relatively untested and poorly-understood warp drive.

The tech would not require any "combining". It could simply be applied.

Right, because as soon as NASA got both the Atlas rocket and the Mercury capsule operational, the very next step was to try to land on the moon.

Nope. Preservation of the corpses of dead people is described as a fad. Cryosleep was standard procedure in interplanetary flight until 2018

WAS it standard procedure? Because there's no record any of those sleeper missions ever doing anything particularly important, and the only one that DID, isn't in the records.

Whaaaat? There isn't a hint that any of them ever suffered a mishap.

There isn't a hint that any of them ever suffered anything, ever, in their entire production run. For all we know the Botany Bay was the only one of the design that ever left Earth orbit.

They aren't hauling people around. They are moving cargo, and in the meantime they are living their lives. No ECS ship was ever described as aiming to deliver people to a destination, the one plausible application for cryosleep tech there.

Except "Living their lives" is a source of waste; your twelve-or-so crewmembers will have to survive on something for several years, and every day they are awake is one more day's worth of food and supplies that gets eaten by the crew instead of sold to the aliens at their destination.

But, again, the Cargo Service makes no use of this technology which would otherwise save them a fortune in operating costs. Which means cryosleep either isn't suitable for warp-driven starships (the freeze/thaw period is too long, let's say) or it's medically unsafe under the best of circumstances. Or both.

Oh, sure.

http://drexfiles.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/friendship01_launchpad_0.jpg

That's the Trek shape for "houses fifty people".

Again, if and only if the ship was built with 24th century technology. Even in this case, it still isn't a great deal larger than the Phoenix.

Which is probably what happened to many such expeditions (indeed, the Valiant failed, and the assumed demise obviously was not "disappeared in a magnetic storm and was scuttled due to divine infestation"). But that's no reason to assume they would not have taken place.

Other than the obvious reason that most of those missions would have been planned by people smart enough to see that coming. But as I've said before, this being Star Trek, that may not be as safe an assumption as it would be in reality.

With fifty filthy foreigners (from other stars, even!) doing it already, what could possibly hold him back?

His scientific knowledge that it wouldn't actually work, coupled with his desire to not die?

No, the ship was a low-end, retiring piece of technology from an Earth that was so much more advanced than us in the field of spaceflight that the days of timid "Apollo thinking" would have been as alien to them as the days of the Wright experiments would be to engineers tasked with trimming a bit more from the weight of the giant airlifter or giving a bit of extra agility to a dogfighter. "Will it work?" would no longer be asked; "Is it safe?" would already be known. "How many dollars do we win by taking this additional risk?" would be the prudent question to ask.

Are you writing your own novel or something or is any of this based on anything?

If so, then only because they had seen no reason to stop there.

The idea of stopping to exploit the Sol system before going to the stars is no different from the idea of stopping to make Earth perfect before reaching for the Moon.

"Perfection" != exploration. It's inconceivable that any organized exploration program would set its sights on some far off location unfathomable distances away when they have not even properly charted their own immediate frontier.

Why not? In order to have a nuclear holocaust, you need a lot of technology.

You don't need a lot of technology. You need a lot of NUKES. Theoretically you don't even ICBMs if you've got cruise missiles, UCAVs or some very angry smugglers working for you.

Yup. Now give Valiant a speed three warp factors lower than NX-01, weapons one-tenth the strength, shields that crumble under the fearsome plasma peashooters of Archer's vessel, and the ability to be defeated by NX-01 even when accompanied by nine sister ships - and you have got...

A boomer, basically.

See, again you demonstrate thinking that is at least half a century out of date today already. In the terms of the Trek timeline version of Earth history that is.

If space was that uninteresting to them, they wouldn't have bothered exploring it in the first place. The sheer effort of building and deploying spacecraft for even the simplest missions would have deterred them from attempting the far greater sophistication and expense of an interstellar voyage.

Of course, you're laboring under a definition of "realism" where Robert Goddard could fly to the moon by trapping a rocket to a lawn chair, so Im sure you won't see it that way.

Why do you think scientists would have a say in the mission profiles?

Because prior to the advent of the Boomers and the Warp Five program, scientists are the only people who can think of a reason to go there in the first place.

Oh, good point. OTOH, Deneva was inhabited, but from this it does not follow that Mars was.

Not from that, but it's canonically established that Mars was in the process of being colonized as early as the 22nd century (Demons/Terra Prime). There's probably a reason for that.

"Eventual" being the keyword. Mankind went to stars before it made a permanent stand on Mars

Again, "Demons/Terra Prime" suggests that it didn't. More importantly, it's just plain fatuous to assume that humans would build missions designed to explore alien solar systems without making any serious effort to explore their own. Just visiting all the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt would occupy a fleet of warp-driven starships for a decade or more, and that would DEFINITELY produce more tangible benefits for mankind that aimless wandering in the void (benefits which later manifest in the eradication of war, poverty, disease, etc).

Impulse doesn't doom you.

...Except to a mission failure and a shameful crawl back home.

Which doesn't doom YOU. If anything, it dooms your CAREER, but it's otherwise perfectly survivable.

We know Earth had better engines and supplies when the ship was launched

We know nothing of the kind, actually. In point of fact, we have not yet even established that Valiant was equipped with warp drive; the exact launch date is not known, and you should still consider the possibility that the ship was launched a decade or more BEFORE the flight of the Phoenix.

Why worry about the novelization?

Because the episode leaves open the possibility that the saucer "coasted" at high warp for a few minutes. The novelization is explicit that it did not.

And the VFX also seems to show the combination slowing down to sublight at separation

Again, they explicitly did not, and even the episode makes that pretty clear. Point being, the saucer is not capable of warp drive or even coasting at warp speed, but it CAN travel interstellar distances on impulse power.

 

[blssdwlf]

We know Earth had better engines and supplies when the ship was launched, and we don't have to make the Valiant extremely slow or extremely fast, extremely short- or long-endurance to achieve these things. Instead, we can give her a speed around warp two or three, an endurance comparable to the early 21st century level (that is, "years" as stated in "Space Seed"), and have her roam stars in a miniature prelude to the mission of NX-01 and the subsequent mission of NCC-1701.

Hmm, "roaming the stars" brings up an interesting problem if we use TNG-continuity data with TOS.

If we say for example that Valiant traveled 500ly towards the edge of the galaxy at TNG Warp 3 which is about 39c, it would take her ~13 years. If she was lost in 2064 she would have to be launched in 2051 which would pre-date Earth's first warp flight by 12 years. It would have been impossible for her to have warp drive. That would leave those "old impulse engines" pulling FTL duty...

Data:

• Kirk's end of 5 year mission is 2270 - VOY-Q2
• Prior to 2018 sleeper ships were necessary - TOS-Space Seed
• Valiant "missing for over two centuries" - TOS-WNHGB
  2265 - (>200) = min 2064, max 2018
• TNG-Cochrane's first warp flight is 2063 - TNGM-ST8 First Contact
• TNG Warp 3 = ~39c from "The Most Toys"
• Earth to edge of galaxy = ~500ly

 

[Timo]

Implying here that only Star Trek numbers are realistic while... erm... real spacecraft aren't?

Well, axiomatically so. After all, "real" isn't real for Star Trek - even the very laws of physics are different there.

However, the amount of food one can stock onboard a spacecraft is not a figure one would be in any position to divine regardless of one's knowledge of today's spacecraft.

Right, because as soon as NASA got both the Atlas rocket and the Mercury capsule operational, the very next step was to try to land on the moon.

You mean the NASA that gave us interplanetary propulsion and cryosleep in the 1980s?

You're speaking of the wrong organization in more ways than one. When computer chips became available and affordable, automobile manufacturers installed them in airbag systems significantly faster than NASA introduced spaceflight technologies. NASA was and remains a timid organization; spaceflight in the Trek 21st century isn't driven by timidity any more.

WAS it standard procedure? Because there's no record any of those sleeper missions ever doing anything particularly important, and the only one that DID, isn't in the records.

What is this fixation with spaceflight being heroic and exceptional? Our TOS characters treat cryosleep as a mundane technology enabling other mundane technologies to achieve the mundane goals of a routinely working space infrastructure. They are not obligated to point out any outstanding successes any more than one today would be obligated to prove the triumph of the internal combustion engine by referring to an exceptionally fast car race around the globe.

For all we know the Botany Bay was the only one of the design that ever left Earth orbit.

False. Dialogue established her as being a representative of a design of spacecraft that routinely operated on years-long interplanetary missions; as being at least the second class to do so; and as being far from the last class to do so; not to mention being inferior to what Earth had from 2018 onwards. Uniqueness would have been pointed out. Lack of it would not.

Except "Living their lives" is a source of waste

It always is. The rational alternative would be suicide, euthanasia or at the very least sterilization. But that only becomes necessary in extreme situations. Boomers lived in mundane ones.

But, again, the Cargo Service makes no use of this technology which would otherwise save them a fortune in operating costs.

Again you are pulling numbers out of your ass. What possible reason would there be for believing that the upkeep of a family in space be significantly costly?

Your argument borders on the concept of sawing off the arms and legs of John Glenn because they obviously were an unnecessary impediment to his Mercury mission.

Again, if and only if the ship was built with 24th century technology.

Which isn't any different from late 21st century technology, from what we see. Or even from late 20th. Life support in space was perfected by the 1990s, with artificial gravity, eternal air refreshment and infinitely reliable power supplies a standard fixture even on the "The Neutral Zone" cryosatellite that had no practical need for any of these.

His scientific knowledge that it wouldn't actually work

He wouldn't be much of a scientist if he didn't accept the evidence of it already working for everybody else. If he sees weaknesses in his design, he should consult those already operating working models. Whether the proper analogy for this would be having an engineer-to-engineer chat, mortgaging his house to buy the specs from a competitor, or sending spies to steal the secrets, we don't know exactly because we have limited idea of the interstellar contacts between Earth and non-Vulcans in the Cochrane-to-Archer timegap. But we know the contact did take place.

It's inconceivable that any organized exploration program would set its sights on some far off location unfathomable distances away when they have not even properly charted their own immediate frontier.

...You are apparently ignorant of the history of exploration basically in its entirety?

You don't need a lot of technology. You need a lot of NUKES. Theoretically you don't even ICBMs if you've got cruise missiles, UCAVs or some very angry smugglers working for you.

Perhaps today, in our world (although I'd like to see you aim for a 0.6 billion death toll that way). Not in the 2050s of a world that already has a systemwide space infrastructure, artificial gravity, cryosleep, interstellar probes and without a shred of doubt a comparable capacity for futuristic warfare.

What is it with you and the 1960s? Earth in Trek isn't stuck in that decade, except perhaps in terms of certain moralities and fashions. Earth has moved on.

A boomer, basically.

Yup. In the 2060s. Capable of cruising between stars at leisure, free to shun cryosleep, able to leave timidity on the pierside when finding out what apparently cannot be found out by telescopic studies or unmanned probes.

The sheer effort of building and deploying spacecraft for even the simplest missions would have deterred them

The sheer effort Cochrane underwent in his garage?

There's no effort. Earth in 2050 has a working interstellar infrastructure, and has decided not to waste it on colonizing Mars even though weekend trips to there are reality. Earth in 2063 apparently no longer works that infrastructure, being down for the count - but things could look very different in 2067 already. And from the Valiant case, we know they do.

it's canonically established that Mars was in the process of being colonized as early as the 22nd century (Demons/Terra Prime). There's probably a reason for that.

As "early"? The colonization milestone that went to history books was 2103. By that time, Earth had settled a planet twenty lightyears away! Clearly, there's some "reason" behind the odd timetable of colonizing Mars. And apparently, the reason is that colonizing of Mars had a very low priority in Earth's spaceflight ambitions.

Of course, you're laboring under a definition of "realism" where Robert Goddard could fly to the moon by trapping a rocket to a lawn chair

We watched that happen, remember?

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd1591.jpg

Again, "Demons/Terra Prime" suggests that it didn't.

You've got your centuries badly mixed.

it's just plain fatuous to assume that humans would build missions designed to explore alien solar systems without making any serious effort to explore their own.

Who's saying "without"? Naturally, some would find profit in pushing their noses into the dark corners of Sol. But others would be doing the same at distant star systems already. And to assume that Valiant would be part of the first category rather than the second is... Dunno. Silly? Blatantly counterproductive? Certainly unnecessary. The Valiant went to the stars and was lost there without ado - two hundred years later, her name doesn't stand out any more than that of the Botany Bay does.

Are you perhaps falling victim to the small universe syndrome? It seems you are assigning great significance to the Valiant in the history of spaceflight, when in fact obscurity is the fate of even vessels like NX-01.

In point of fact, we have not yet even established that Valiant was equipped with warp drive; the exact launch date is not known, and you should still consider the possibility that the ship was launched a decade or more BEFORE the flight of the Phoenix.

Yet your argument seems to be that it is implausible or even impossible for the Valiant to have featured this technology, which paints you into a weird corner regarding Earth's considerable interplanetary and interstellar achievements in those early days. Sure, a FTL impulse drive would also explain the circumstances of the Valiant disappearance - but it's about as useful an assumption as a broomstick-based propulsion system, when the obvious alternative offers itself like Excentrica Gallumbits. If pre-Cochrane propulsion technologies are FTL, why is Cochrane credited with anything?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

If we say for example that Valiant traveled 500ly towards the edge of the galaxy at TNG Warp 3 which is about 39c, it would take her ~13 years.

Sounds good. That sort of spaceflight was what hardened Earth spacemen did for a living in the 1990s.

If she was lost in 2064 she would have to be launched in 2051 which would pre-date Earth's first warp flight by 12 years.

Why? She could have gone missing during her first mission year already. We know that her going missing did not mean her ceasing to exist; that happened later on. How much later, we don't know.

FWIW, the expressions used in the episode are "missing for over two centuries" and "ejected from SS Valiant two hundred years ago". The first would seem to be accurate only with launch dates of 2065 or earlier, assuming the episode was part of Kirk's five-year mission which ended in 2270. But that still allows the launch to be warp-powered.

It would have been impossible for her to have warp drive.

Clearly not.

Incidentally,

TNG Warp 3 = ~39c from "The Most Toys"

...Yet TOS warp 2 is a viable speed for freighters in "Friday's Child", an idea later reinforced in ENT. That speed allows for interstellar transit in months, and supposedly not between two neighboring stars, either. So we're speaking of dozens of ly/y with w2 already, suggesting w3 is at least somewhat higher than the above figure.

Wesley's math in the TNG episode is odd in any case. Warp three for 23 hours gives Fajo the ability to reach either the Nel Bato star system or the Giles belt - apparently, two separate interstellar locations - and has Picard alert several UFP outposts within the "perimeter" Wesley calculated. In fact, we learn he instead reached Lya Four, just 12 or so hours into his flight. How many outposts and star systems can one cram within "point 102 light years"?

I think we have to disregard the idea that "a perimeter of point 102 ly" equates with the maximum distance a ship can cover at warp three in a day. Perhaps Wesley's odd phrasing refers to some other concept altogether? Say, a search perimeter 0.1 lightyears thick "at" his possible distance (of untold lightyears), due to the variables involved - rather than "as"?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

There was a high Cochrane factor for the Valiant's trip or an unknown interaction that displaced it 100's of lys without manor damage?

 

[blssdwlf]

If she was lost in 2064 she would have to be launched in 2051 which would pre-date Earth's first warp flight by 12 years.

Why? She could have gone missing during her first mission year already. We know that her going missing did not mean her ceasing to exist; that happened later on. How much later, we don't know.

If she was launched in 2064 with a warp drive, going missing only 39 ly from Earth on her first year doesn't make too much sense. She's close enough home that any Vulcan ship could swing by and pick her up.

For her to get to the galactic edge using TNG-continuity speeds, she would need a head start of several years.

FWIW, the expressions used in the episode are "missing for over two centuries" and "ejected from SS Valiant two hundred years ago". The first would seem to be accurate only with launch dates of 2065 or earlier, assuming the episode was part of Kirk's five-year mission which ended in 2270. But that still allows the launch to be warp-powered.

Yes, assuming she got lost just around the block. Let's look at the those two quotes:

"..missing for over two centuries" - that tells us that they went missing more than 200 years ago (+25/-0 years). For our purposes, to satisfy the quote, a base of 201 years.

"..disaster recorder, apparently ejected from the SS Valiant 200 years ago." - this is after they bring the device on board. This tells us that the recorder was ejected after they went missing around 200 years (+/- 25 years) ago.

If we include TNG timeframes of Kirk's 5 year mission ending in 2270, then Valiant went missing potentially over this range according to TNG:

2265 - 226 = 2039 earliest gone missing date
2265 - 201 = 2064 latest gone missing date

If she went missing in 2064, she would be actually just around the block from Earth, not by the galactic edge.

It would have been impossible for her to have warp drive.

Clearly not.

I misspoke. It would have been unlikely for her to have warp drive given the timeframe involved. Since Kirk tells us that her impulse engines were not strong enough to fight the storm that is further evidence that warp drive was not available on the Valiant. Otherwise, he could've easily said, "the old warp engines were not strong enough back then."

Incidentally,

TNG Warp 3 = ~39c from "The Most Toys"

...Yet TOS warp 2 is a viable speed for freighters in "Friday's Child", an idea later reinforced in ENT. That speed allows for interstellar transit in months, and supposedly not between two neighboring stars, either. So we're speaking of dozens of ly/y with w2 already, suggesting w3 is at least somewhat higher than the above figure.

In general I don't mix TOS and TNG warp speeds However, TNG Warp 3 at 39c is inline with the other data in the TNG continuity for warp speeds. TOS interstellar Warp speeds can be much faster...But if we invoke TOS speeds, then we also have TOS FTL options, such as impulse, ion, total conversion drive, and hyperdrive in addition to warp drive.

Wesley's math in the TNG episode is odd in any case. Warp three for 23 hours gives Fajo the ability to reach either the Nel Bato star system or the Giles belt - apparently, two separate interstellar locations - and has Picard alert several UFP outposts within the "perimeter" Wesley calculated. In fact, we learn he instead reached Lya Four, just 12 or so hours into his flight. How many outposts and star systems can one cram within "point 102 light years"?I think we have to disregard the idea that "a perimeter of point 102 ly" equates with the maximum distance a ship can cover at warp three in a day. Perhaps Wesley's odd phrasing refers to some other concept altogether? Say, a search perimeter 0.1 lightyears thick "at" his possible distance (of untold lightyears), due to the variables involved - rather than "as"?

Since we know little about the volume of space in "The Most Toys", then the only thing we can assume is that it is a packed volume of space and many places are reachable after traveling 0.102 LY as indicated in the episode. Nothing wrong with that. Plus, the speed is inline with known TNG data points.

 

[Timo]

If she was launched in 2064 with a warp drive, going missing only 39 ly from Earth on her first year doesn't make too much sense.

But the thing is, in explicit plot terms, even a year at Boomer speeds gets you reasonably far, across several stars and supposedly beyond the range of instantaneous communications. Perhaps this is just 40 ly or so, perhaps as few as 20. And yes, Vulcans might search for the lost vessel. But they wouldn't find the Valiant, which would have "impossibly" ended up far away in the storm (wormhole, tachyon eddy?), but would still be quite capable of surviving on her own in the interstellar wilderness, meeting the galactic barrier (perhaps twice), and finally laying the recorder egg after years of trouble.

For a sublight or really low-warp vessel to go missing in Earth's immediate vicinity, the "Vulcans can search" argument becomes quite significant. Possibly some Earth vessels would still bother with such work, but they would be unlikely to go completely missing under any circumstances - or at least their disappearance would become legend like that of Ares IV.

Nevertheless, while "Where No Man" was written before the history of warp drive was established, IMHO the opportunity of interpreting her as having warp drive should be embraced, now that we have a clearer picture.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

If she was launched in 2064 with a warp drive, going missing only 39 ly from Earth on her first year doesn't make too much sense.

But the thing is, in explicit plot terms, even a year at Boomer speeds gets you reasonably far, across several stars and supposedly beyond the range of instantaneous communications. Perhaps this is just 40 ly or so, perhaps as few as 20.

Well, if we're on the TNG-ENT continuity, we know from "Terra Nova" that there was no real-time communications at 20 ly. What we also know from that episode, in 2067 their best speed is about 2c. So if Valiant launched from Earth in 2064 and lost in the same year, they would have been about 2 LY away from home...

Nevertheless, while "Where No Man" was written before the history of warp drive was established, IMHO the opportunity of interpreting her as having warp drive should be embraced, now that we have a clearer picture.

In the TNG-ENT continuity, it is possible, but still unlikely to have warp drive on the Valiant for the reasons of time, distance and lack of use against the magnetic storm. In the TOS continuity, there is even less reason to believe they used warp drive since there are other drives capable of FTL, including impulse, IMHO.

There is also another possibility - in the TNG-ENT continuity, Valiant was launched at a later date or never launched at all. And possibly that Kirk's 5 year mission never encountered a galactic barrier...

 

[Mars]

What if an impulse drive was simply a sub-light warp drive?
Then according to theory there would be no time dilation at all as the ship would not be actually moving. The space would be warped around the ship so as to change its position in space, but when the impulse drive was shut down, the ship would resume the velocity it had before it engaged its impulse drive.

An actual warp drive would be handled a little differently as it deals with speeds that are light speed and greater. I think what it would use is a series of collapsing warp bubbles around the ship, each one moving the ship forward in space some distance and then collapsing back to normal space, then creating another warp bubble moving it forward by another amount and doing it in rapid succession such that motion through space appears smooth and continuous each warp drive would have a frequency at which it operates with each warp bubble created so that is dissipates after a short period of time.

The problem with faster than light warp bubbles according to physics is the ship cannot communicate with the front of the warp bubble so as to shut it down, so you design each FTL warp bubble to automatically self-destruct when created. An impulse drive doesn't need to do this, but it still wouldn't represent classic physics in space with action and reaction propelling the ship. And accelerating to quarter impulse in a few seconds is really tough anyway if done through normal acceleration rather than warp bubbles and illusionary velocities.

 

[Timo]

What we also know from that episode, in 2067 their best speed is about 2c.

This is very unlikely, considering that their probes are doing more like 100c at the time (that is, to Delta Quadrant border in 190 years).

More probably, the Conestoga was moving at a very conservative speed, the Friendship 1 at a literal breakneck speed that would have jeopardized any human occupants, and the truth for the Valiant would lie somewhere in between.

Whether the speed of Friendship 1 still falls under the "we haven't broken the warp 2 barrier yet" limitation, meaning warp 2 is about 100c, or is excluded from it because the probe is not a starship, we don't know. But having warp 2 be in the 100c ballpark would make more sense overall than having it down to less than a dozen times lightspeed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

What we also know from that episode, in 2067 their best speed is about 2c.

This is very unlikely, considering that their probes are doing more like 100c at the time (that is, to Delta Quadrant border in 190 years).

Clarification, their manned ships' best speed was about 2c. Unmanned probes and weapons capable of 100c and that would make sense.

Whether the speed of Friendship 1 still falls under the "we haven't broken the warp 2 barrier yet" limitation, meaning warp 2 is about 100c, or is excluded from it because the probe is not a starship, we don't know. But having warp 2 be in the 100c ballpark would make more sense overall than having it down to less than a dozen times lightspeed.

I don't think you can equate Warp 2 to 100c using Friendship One. As you point out, it is an unmanned probe. For example, prior to breaking the sound barrier in Real Life, bullets and rockets were operating several times the speed of sound. The only data point we have for Warp 3 is about 39c ("The Most Toys") and Warp 4 is in the 80-100c range ("Broken Bow", "Resolutions").

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Implying here that only Star Trek numbers are realistic while... erm... real spacecraft aren't?

Well, axiomatically so. After all, "real" isn't real for Star Trek - even the very laws of physics are different there.

Says a whole school of thought that I and many people do not subscribe to. More importantly, Neil Armstrong's moon landing is canonical, as is the more conventional space physics exhibited by Ares-IV.

Right, because as soon as NASA got both the Atlas rocket and the Mercury capsule operational, the very next step was to try to land on the moon.

You mean the NASA that gave us interplanetary propulsion and cryosleep in the 1980s?

What makes you think NASA ever developed cryosleep? The only DY-100 class vessel we ever see was built and launched by a group of renegade augments. For all we know, ALL of them were, and the United States -- which remained otherwise free of augment control -- followed a perfectly normal developmental process. Ditto for the post-augment years; with end of the cold war between the United States and the genetic supermen, the execution/exile of those supermen would mean the loss of a lot of the technology they had developed for their own use.

What is this fixation with spaceflight being heroic and exceptional?

I don't know. Ask Archer/Kirk/Picard/Sisko/Janeway, they certainly seem to think so.

False. Dialogue established her as being (1) a representative of a design of spacecraft that (2) routinely operated on (3) years-long interplanetary missions; as being at least the (4)second class to do so; and as being far from the (5)last class to do so; not to mention being (6)inferior to what Earth had from 2018 onwards.

That's six things right there that AREN'T established in dialog. To begin with
1 - Spock describes the spacecraft series and says nothing about the details of that configuration. With 1990s technology, it's extremely unlikely that a single uniform design persists for the entire series (see the Salyut/Mir) space stations.
2 - "Routinely?" We only know when the last one was launched. We don't know how many or how often.
3 - The Botany Bay is not identified as a sleeper ship until AFTER they beam aboard and find the cryo pods, at which point McGivers recognizes them for what they are.
4 - This isn't established either, since the McGivers never sourced the information she'd seen describing suspended animation technology. It's possible that Botany Bay was the first to ever use the technology in practice, with it being picked up by mainstream space programs only years later.
5 - She only says it was "necessary until 2018". She again never indicates how often -- if at all -- the technology was even used for real space missions.
6 - This one is FAR from established, especially if you take the VFX at face value, in which case Botany Bay has artificial gravity twenty years before the zero-gee Ares-IV. It is again likely that the DY-100 series was most widely used by countries controlled by the Augments, whose superior intellect also resulted in a superior spacecraft design; THIS time, however, all the Augments who were involved in their space program fled the planet instead of defecting to the U.S., and they took their advanced technologies with them.

Uniqueness would have been pointed out.

Unless ALL of them were unique, such that no two ships of the DY-100 series had the same configuration.

Again you are pulling numbers out of your ass. What possible reason would there be for believing that the upkeep of a family in space be significantly costly?

Because upkeep of a family ANYWHERE is costly, especially when you have to do it for a period of at least a decade with no other source of income.

Your argument borders on the concept of sawing off the arms and legs of John Glenn because they obviously were an unnecessary impediment to his Mercury mission.

If "sawing off your arms" is medically equivalent to suspended animation -- and it probably is -- then it's understandable why they stopped using it in 2018.

And why the Valiant CERTAINLY didn't.

He wouldn't be much of a scientist if he didn't accept the evidence of it already working for everybody else.

The Russians know it's possible to put a man on the moon. So why haven't they done it yet?

More importantly: this thing that Goddard just built in his backyard is NOT suitable for a flight to the moon. Why? Because there's a whole bunch of other shit he'd have to invent first before he could even attempt the trip. In fact, the amount of shit he'd have to invent is so huge that it took the combined efforts of the best scientists in America -- plus the added experience of a veteran Nazi rocket team -- to make the program work.

Which was my overall point that you COMPLETELY glossed over just to mine that particular quote: the kinds of people who actually conduct space missions are smart enough to know all the stuff that needs to get invented first and they pull together their resources and all their intellect to make that mission happen. They don't just throw some odds and ends together to see what happens.

...You are apparently ignorant of the history of exploration basically in its entirety?

Are you maybe under the misapprehension that Christopher Columbus ventured out on his first voyage with no coherent idea of where he was going or what he expected to find when he got there?

The history of human exploration follows a pretty uniform progression: we find out that a place exists, we send some people to go check it out, we send some more people to go live there, and then the people who live there see some new place that exists, rinse and repeat.

Columbus discovered America while he was looking for a faster route to Asia. What, prey tell, was Valiant looking for?

Perhaps today, in our world (although I'd like to see you aim for a 0.6 billion death toll that way). Not in the 2050s of a world that already has a systemwide space infrastructure, artificial gravity, cryosleep, interstellar probes and without a shred of doubt a comparable capacity for futuristic warfare.

None of which is REQUIRED for nuclear war. Actually, neither would most of that be expected to SURVIVE such a war.

The sheer effort Cochrane underwent in his garage?

Cochrane? All he did was develop the engine. OTOH, it took Lilly six months to scrounge up enough Titanium for a four-meter cockpit. How long would it have taken her to build a crew module large enough to support twelve people for at least 8 years?

There's no effort. Earth in 2050 has a working interstellar infrastructure...

This is where I stop talking to you.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't think you can equate Warp 2 to 100c using Friendship One. As you point out, it is an unmanned probe. For example, prior to breaking the sound barrier in Real Life, bullets and rockets were operating several times the speed of sound. The only data point we have for Warp 3 is about 39c ("The Most Toys") and Warp 4 is in the 80-100c range ("Broken Bow", "Resolutions").

Interesting line from Friendship 1

OTRIN: We didn't either at first, but we had decades to think about it and now it seems so obvious. You send us new technology, encourage us to use it, and then you wait for us to obliterate ourselves.

It hasn't been made totally clear WHEN Friendship 1 arrived on this planet, and I think we're making a false assumption that the probe was found anywhere near where Starfleet lost track of it. If nothing odd happened, it would have been safe to assume that the probe continued on course at its programmed speed and Voyager's search grid covers a range of locations where it might be based on its maximum speed and its last known location (the more likely scenario), in which case they found the probe's landing point thirty to fifty years after it crashed.

Which means the probe would have arrived at its final destination after at least 270 years of constant travel. That would put its top speed between about 30 and 60C. Pretty good for an early unmanned expedition into deep space.

Good enough, in fact, that it lends some doubt on the entire concept of Valiant being an interstellar mission in its own right. Unmanned probes are a logical first step in an exploration process, and probably wouldn't be preceded by a manned one. More importantly, if Earth had the engine technology to send a ship like Valiant into space in 2064, then their launch orders ought to be reversed; Friendship 1 would have launched in 2064, followed three years later by the Valiant, bound for a destination that had been identified by Friendship 1's sensors as a possible exploration candidate.

One way or the other, Valiant preceeded Friendship 1, which -- unlike the Valiant -- is described as being mankind's first meaningful attempt to probe outside the solar system. This makes it much more likely that Valiant's mission was to explore some of the more interesting sites in the Sol system when it got caught up by what its records (probably incorrectly) identify as a magnetic storm and thrown across the galaxy, and we can safely put the Valiant's launch date some time in the 2040s-50s, with a "last seen" date in the same general period.

I think at this point the idea that magnetic storms of some kind have a tendency to displace objects to impossible distances is so familiar to Starfleet that it doesn't even surprise them anymore. It's sort of like how nobody seems to even flinch when they discover an old Earth satellite floating around in deep space from the 20th century. And then there's Voyager 6... I'd bet that what the phenomenon known as a "magnetic storm" is actually "what they used to call a black hole"?

 

[Timo]

More importantly, Neil Armstrong's moon landing is canonical, as is the more conventional space physics exhibited by Ares-IV.

Nothing before the 1970s needs to be different as such - but Ares V gets to Mars in a week, which is not "conventional space physics" in the sense that the technology would be as primitive as ours. Of course, the bit about the physics themselves being different isn't explicit there; it's only present in the 1990s spaceflight (artificial gravity) and the 2060s spaceflight (warp fields). But the Ares runs are a good example of what else is different.

What makes you think NASA ever developed cryosleep? The only DY-100 class vessel we ever see was built and launched by a group of renegade augments. For all we know, ALL of them were, and the United States -- which remained otherwise free of augment control -- followed a perfectly normal developmental process.

So now it's you writing a novel?

Nothing in "Space Seed" connects the DY-100 with the Augments. It's a perfectly routine spacecraft type found in Earth registries easily enough, and the fact that there are supermen aboard is a surprising plot twist. Heck, even the fact that supermen are related to something that happened in the 1990s and the ship type is that, too, doesn't yet connect the dots for the heroes, speaking strongly against any sort of an Augment angle in DY-100 operations (although it doesn't rule out the idea that Augments developed the type or its key technologies, and then sold them to everybody).

I don't know. Ask Archer/Kirk/Picard/Sisko/Janeway, they certainly seem to think so.

Mmm? They are bluecollar workers of space exploitation (okay, well, only Archer and Robau are, literally speaking). They don't do anything comparable to an Apollo mission - they explore things that they happen to run into, if they have the time. Their heroism is not of the Neil Armstrong on the Moon kind; it's all of the Neil Armstrong in the Korean War sort.

1 - Spock describes the spacecraft series and says nothing about the details of that configuration. With 1990s technology, it's extremely unlikely that a single uniform design persists for the entire series (see the Salyut/Mir) space stations.

Wrong decade. It's the Star Trek 1990s here, not ours. And Spock specifically establishes that DY-100 was built in numbers, "the last" being completed in the 1990s.

2 - "Routinely?" We only know when the last one was launched. We don't know how many or how often.

How could the operations be anything but routine when these vessels clearly are reusable spacecraft? Excluded here are experimental vessels undergoing constant modification from unit to unit before something is finally achieved, and one-shot missions with a complete list of destinations in the records. It's as routine as STS at the very least.

3 - The Botany Bay is not identified as a sleeper ship until AFTER they beam aboard and find the cryo pods, at which point McGivers recognizes them for what they are.

Yes - routine elements of interplanetary missions. So?

4 - This isn't established either, since the McGivers never sourced the information she'd seen describing suspended animation technology. It's possible that Botany Bay was the first to ever use the technology in practice, with it being picked up by mainstream space programs only years later.

It would certainly be McGivers' duty to point out that sleepers aboard a DY-100 is a unique and exotic thing; this would already go a long way in answering the questions Kirk needs answered. Since she indicates nothing of the sort, they are a routine characteristic.

5 - She only says it was "necessary until 2018". She again never indicates how often -- if at all -- the technology was even used for real space missions.

Well, it was necessary, so it was always used.

6 - This one is FAR from established, especially if you take the VFX at face value, in which case Botany Bay has artificial gravity twenty years before the zero-gee Ares-IV. It is again likely that the DY-100 series was most widely used by countries controlled by the Augments, whose superior intellect also resulted in a superior spacecraft design; THIS time, however, all the Augments who were involved in their space program fled the planet instead of defecting to the U.S., and they took their advanced technologies with them.

This would make our heroes aware of an Augment connection, which is absent until they identify Khan - even though they know they are dealing with the era of the Eugenics Wars! Clearly, the theory is false.

Unless ALL of them were unique, such that no two ships of the DY-100 series had the same configuration.

Oh, I'm perfectly willing to believe in a variety of payload configurations, upper stages, landers, whatnot. But categorical uniqueness would again reveal the game early on; it would be flat out impossible that only one ship ever left Earth orbit, for example. (Heck, it wouldn't even be this one, as her specific departure went unnoticed, which already tells us something about space traffic in the 1990s.)

Because upkeep of a family ANYWHERE is costly, especially when you have to do it for a period of at least a decade with no other source of income.

Which negates your argument - people have families nevertheless.

If "sawing off your arms" is medically equivalent to suspended animation -- and it probably is --

What, it leaves you crippled? Naah, Khan was fit as a fiddle. And that's two centuries after the warranty ran out!

then it's understandable why they stopped using it in 2018.

We know why they stopped...

And why the Valiant CERTAINLY didn't.

Oh, definitely agreed on that - obviously there were cryochambers aboard the Valiant!

The Russians know it's possible to put a man on the moon. So why haven't they done it yet?

Because they know they have already lost. There's no point in going to the Moon, never was, besides that of being the first to do so.

Now, if there actually was something there worth getting... Why, that would get us to the situation the Star Trek Earth is in, with reasonably well established riches of the attractive sort beyond the horizon. Or, for that matter, the situation the explorers of Europe were in, back in the 1500s.

Are you maybe under the misapprehension that Christopher Columbus ventured out on his first voyage with no coherent idea of where he was going or what he expected to find when he got there?

What the Valiant crew would need to know would be even less. No need for favorable winds if you have warp drive (although those might exist in Trek, too - they'd just be discovered later on). You can see the distant lands as there's no horizon to hide them (you just don't get the resolution needed to establish if there's riches there). You know your speed and endurance down to the sixteenth decimal, and as far as you can tell, it doesn't depend on weather. Why, with such advantages to his side, Columbus needn't even have sailed - he could have sold the accurate map of the globe to less knowledgeable competitors for the price of being Admiral and General of the World, and left the gold-digging to them.

What, prey tell, was Valiant looking for?

What was the Enterprise? The question is meaningless, because there would be no good reason to limit the mission to a single goal.

None of which is REQUIRED for nuclear war. Actually, neither would most of that be expected to SURVIVE such a war.

They do set the border conditions on how the war could have taken place. Low tech is no longer an option, any more than one could fight WWI against a WWII opponent, or wage 1980s guerrilla war against an opponent with the sensor, anti-air and anti-projectile capabilities of, say, Israel of the 2010s. Even the most asymmetric warfare is affected by the technology of the overdog.

Cochrane? All he did was develop the engine. OTOH, it took Lilly six months to scrounge up enough Titanium for a four-meter cockpit. How long would it have taken her to build a crew module large enough to support twelve people for at least 8 years?

Lily scrounged for titanium; Cochrane scrrounged for SSTO-and-beyond spacecraft. Both were successful. Which tells us plenty about Earth of the 2050s.

This is where I stop talking to you.

Well, closed minds think alike.

It hasn't been made totally clear WHEN Friendship 1 arrived on this planet, and I think we're making a false assumption that the probe was found anywhere near where Starfleet lost track of it.

Good point. The cut phrase "its last known coordinates" must refer to where the loss of contact (or other direct location data) actually took place, but the subsequent "Starfleet has mapped out a search grid" may well refer to calculations done with the last known coordinates serving as a starting point only.

Unmanned probes are a logical first step in an exploration process

Not in the Moon race, they weren't. The barest mapping minimum and a landing gear test were performed before a headlong rush into crewed missions - and that was with a target that could be easily reached robotically.

In a race to the stars, Earth was already past its probe stage, with NOMAD and the like. Warp probes might reach farther - but warpships with crews would only be following in the wake of NOMAD, so the precious logic of a bygone world would remain intact there.

I think at this point the idea that magnetic storms of some kind have a tendency to displace objects to impossible distances is so familiar to Starfleet that it doesn't even surprise them anymore.

That much is clear - of the TNG era. But sudden jumps across great distances baffle our TOS heroes, and the concept of natural shortcuts never occurs to them. The disappearance of a space ferry from a Mars-to-Vesta run and subsequent reappearance at the edge of the galaxy would be "impossible", sure. But it wouldn't meet the specs of the rest of Kirk's introductory log, where he is already aware that the signal features the call letters of a known spacecraft. If he dares speculate that this known Earth vessel of known characteristics and capabilities "once probe[d] out of the galaxy", he cannot seriously be thinking that a space ferry from a Mars-to-Vesta run did it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Oops, skipped this bit:

Which was my overall point that you COMPLETELY glossed over just to mine that particular quote: the kinds of people who actually conduct space missions are smart enough to know all the stuff that needs to get invented first and they pull together their resources and all their intellect to make that mission happen. They don't just throw some odds and ends together to see what happens.

In an era of off-the-shelf space exploration, this is a moot point.

If Valiant is to be as experimental as you want it to be, we should really be seeing aircraft today flown solely by test pilots and monitored closely by engineers in white coats (or perhaps top hats) on each of their unique missions, carefully funded by nations after a thorough risk analysis. After all, it would only be about a century from those days when the renowned scientists of the Royal Academy first asked a skilled cavalry officer to climb aboard their test vehicle after three decades of experiments with its uncrewed versions.

Sure, that world (of an odd sort of steampunk) no doubt exists somewhere, just as much as the world of Star Trek does. But it's not the particular alternate universe we are dealing with here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Unmanned probes are a logical first step in an exploration process

Not in the Moon race, they weren't.

Yes they were. Prior to the 1967 Apollo 1 fire both the Soviets and the U.S. used unmanned probes as a prelude to a manned mission; between the two of them they launched about three dozen probes, eight of which reached the moon and six of which completed their actual missions.

While the Americans retooled for manned exploration, the Soviets proceeded with even more ambitious probe missions, with Luna 9 and Luna 13 in 1966. They continued unmanned exploration even during the Apollo program; in 1970, Luna 16 returned samples from the surface and Luna 17 landed a large remote-controlled rover. Followup by Luna 20 and Luna 21 in 1972.

So, yes, unmanned probes were a logical first step towards a lunar exploration program, as were -- if you remember -- significantly shorter range space flights intended to test concepts and systems that would be used in the REAL mission. It also must be considered that if unmanned exploration is likely to continue at a time when manned expeditions are not impractical or overly expensive, which is exactly what's happening now.

In a race to the stars, Earth was already past its probe stage

There's no such thing as "past the probe stage," and the Federation proves this numerous times. The infamous "class-8 probe" is capable of cruising at high warp speeds for long periods of time, and could very well be the same type of probe that detected Tin Man way the hell out beyond Federation space. There's also the probes in the Gamma Quadrant that discovered Idran long before Ben Sisko stumbled onto the Bajoran wormhole.

It's a safe bet that Starfleet regularly precedes its manned incursions into new regions with unmanned probes whose job it is to search for interesting places for starships to visit. Friendship 1 is probably the archetypical example. The much earlier and clearly not warp-driven Nomad is a more of a flying time capsule than an actual probe; it isn't designed to collect data, but to spend a geologic age seeking out new life and new civilizations. It was enabled to do this only by a fluke of trek physics, which is exactly what happened to Voyager and probably happened to the Pioneer probe too.

I think at this point the idea that magnetic storms of some kind have a tendency to displace objects to impossible distances is so familiar to Starfleet that it doesn't even surprise them anymore.

That much is clear - of the TNG era. But sudden jumps across great distances baffle our TOS heroes

Doesn't seem that way to me. They don't seem bothered by the fact that Nomad somehow ended up in deep space without being equipped with a warp drive or anything resembling an FTL propulsion system. That Nomad's mission was expected to last several millennia would explain the need for advanced artificial intelligence; the probe would be making contact with aliens at a time when humans were long extinct.

the concept of natural shortcuts never occurs to them.

It's never MENTIONED, but that doesn't mean it never occurs to them. Same thing, again, happens in TNG in "The Neutral Zone."

The disappearance of a space ferry from a Mars-to-Vesta run and subsequent reappearance at the edge of the galaxy would be "impossible", sure. But it wouldn't meet the specs of the rest of Kirk's introductory log, where he is already aware that the signal features the call letters of a known spacecraft. If he dares speculate that this known Earth vessel of known characteristics and capabilities "once probe[d] out of the galaxy", he cannot seriously be thinking that a space ferry from a Mars-to-Vesta run did it.

He's making this log entry before he knows exactly WHICH ship has been identified. In that sense, it's "impossible" in the same sense as Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, looking out the window and seeing a big pile of debris fifty feet away. He asks himself "Did somebody else land here before us?" Then on closer inspection he sees that the debris is actually the Agena upper stage from his Gemini 8 flight; on closer inspection, it turns out the stage was caught in a plasmoid blown off the Earth's magnetic field and carried all the way to the surface of the moon where it just happened to end up on the Sea of Tranquility.

Does this call for speculation that the Agena rocket stage was capable of reaching the moon or in any way intended to do so? No it does not, especially considering the timeframe of its disappearance. It does call for speculation of how it ended up there in the first place, though.

 

[Timo]

the Soviets proceeded with even more ambitious probe missions, with Luna 9 and Luna 13 in 1966. They continued unmanned exploration even during the Apollo program

Which proves my point - the US utterly skipped this logical step because stepwise progress bore no true advantages in the winning of the actual game.

There's no such thing as "past the probe stage,"

There is, for any given radius for the sphere of interest. We know uncrewed probes preceded Earth's first interstellar missions (even though we never specifically learn that NOMAD would have first visited a world later visited by a crewed counterpart, say); we thus have no real reason to think the mission of the Valiant could not have been adequately "beta-tested" by probes.

OTOH, we know that probes never tell our heroes anything important about the locations they subsequently visit. One would naturally assume the more primitive probes of the earlier days would be even worse at it.

He's making this log entry before he knows exactly WHICH ship has been identified.

Clearly not. He knows the ship's call letters; he knows it is a ship that has been missing for 200 years. He knows it's the Valiant. And nowhere is it suggested that people from the 2260s would be unable to look up the specs of the Valiant. So the only variable left is whether Kirk has looked up the specs already or not.

And we're talking about a man who can argue the specs of ancient DY class ships with his first officer at the very sudden and unexpected drop of a hat, even if he does embarrass himself in the game. So really, even the need to look up the specs after the ID has been confirmed would be an unnecessary step here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

the Soviets proceeded with even more ambitious probe missions, with Luna 9 and Luna 13 in 1966. They continued unmanned exploration even during the Apollo program

Which proves my point - the US utterly skipped this logical step

No they didn't. They ALSO started by sending probes first, which paved the way for manned missions. The Soviet probe rush was also meant as a prelude to a manned mission, which ended up never materializing.

There is,

No there is not. For having already completed six different manned missions to the moon, we are AGAIN sending unmanned probes as a prelude to another round of exploration. If and when we get around to colonizing the moon, there will still be unmanned drones, probes, rovers and reconnaissance devices designed to help the colonists explore and chart the moon and identify valuable resources on the surface.

Probes are an inexpensive way of gathering information about the thing you're exploring; they always precede a manned mission and usually continue afterwards, chasing down lower priority leads.

OTOH, we know that probes never tell our heroes anything important about the locations they subsequently visit.

We know nothing of the kind. It's just as likely that most of the locations intentionally visited by the Enterprise were first DISCOVERED by unmanned probes which found enough interesting data for a starship to be dispatched for a closer look.

Clearly not. He knows the ship's call letters; he knows it is a ship that has been missing for 200 years. He knows it's the Valiant. And nowhere is it suggested that people from the 2260s would be unable to look up the specs of the Valiant.

I'm not suggesting he couldn't look up the specs. I'm suggesting he DIDN'T, because he wasn't on the bridge when those call letters came through and hadn't needed or asked for a full report when he dictated the first log entry. IOW, he didn't know it was the Valiant because he didn't ask. He assumed -- correctly -- that details would come later upon closer investigation.

And we're talking about a man who can argue the specs of ancient DY class ships with his first officer at the very sudden and unexpected drop of a hat

If by "argue" you mean "not know what he's talking about" you have a point.

 

[yenny]

Y'all should know that that name of the Valiant is on the emergency recording pod. Also that the Valiant may had been being built before the war. But not finish until after the war was over.
Also, the Valiant may or may not had warp engines, but the conjectural drawing does show that Valiant having Warp Nacelles.