Please talk some more about Alicia's mouth.
70 years to the Alpha Quadrant?
- Thread starter Pawleygirl
- Start date
I don't remember the exact location of the GQ terminus ever being established. However, the location of Voyager as established in Year of Hell P1 places her out on the rim, near the GQ-DQ border (right where she would have to be, if she were to be 70k ly from Earth and still be in the galaxy.) From that position, virtually the entire GQ is closer than 70k ly. And one could argue that Janeway wasn't aware, but I'm fairly sure that the Prophets, Orbs and Celestial Temple were established as being millennia old before Voyager's fateful trip. Chances of collapse in the next few decades seems remote.The map I've seen, shows a Direct path from The Caretaker to the Gamma Quadrant entrance of the Wormhole, may be a tiny bit shorter, maybe a couple years. However, that would entail crossing the spiral arms, through areas sparsely populated with Stars, which would mean fewer opportunities for resupply, etc. Plus, who knows what may happen to that wormhole in the 68 years it took to get there (if you were indeed able to save 2 years). If the wormhole wasn't available when they got there, they'd be twice as far away from home as when they started.Actually, it is said that the Enterprise was 7000 ly from where it was previously, not the edge of Fed space. The edge of Fed space could be closer than the original position.In Q Who it was stated the Enterprise had been sent 7,000 light years away from the edge of Federation Space. They also said it would take them two years and seven months to get back.
So... Voyager was much slower than the old Enterprise? It should have only taken 30 years.
As for Janeway, she would have had a much shorter trip if she'd headed for the Bojaran wormhole.
As for others commenting about the Dominion, pretty sure it was established that Voyager knew virtually nothing about them so the threat assessment wasn't even available. Do think it was established where the Borg were though (could be wrong) and Janeway chose to go that way anyway...
(also, plenty of main sequence stars between the arms; the arms shine brighter because that is where the bulk of star formation occurs. Home of very bright, short-lived stars. Also the place most likely to find type II supernovae.)
The onscreen map from VOY helpfully gives that position, too.
Depends on how big you think the galaxy is. The general ballpark figure is 100,000 ly across for the disk, with Earth about halfway from the center, but modern data prefers 120,000 ly, with Earth two thirds out. Either way, it's perfectly possible to draw a circle with 70,000 ly radius around Earth and have a significant part of that remain inside the galaxy - symmetrically in Delta and Gamma!
But not the wormhole, because DS9 dialogue puts it at 70,000 ly from Bajor (and thus from Earth), too. The pilot mentions 90,000 ly, but that was apparently an erroneous estimate, later amended.
What she was aware of was that the portmaster of her last port of call had very recently DESTROYED the wormhole (even if only in his dreams) because there was an INVINCIBLE FOE on the other side. Odds are that the wormhole would have ceased to exist immediately after Janeway's departure, but even if not, the route would be impassable because, well, the foe was invincible.
Before Janeway's departure, nobody indicated knowledge of Borg whereabouts. However, some years later, in ST:FC, Beverly Crusher somehow knew the Borg resided in the Delta Quadrant. We don't know where she learned that from or how.
But the Delta Quadrant is big, and odds of missing the Borg altogether are immense. The Gamma wormhole mouth is a point target, and the odds of missing the invincible foe there are exactly zero.
Timo Saloniemi
a link to an image would be nice; not seeing that info in the trekcore screencaps
To be fair, the current estimate is 100,000-120,000 ly. The distance of Earth from the center though is currently understood to be in the range of 24,000-28,000 ly. Study of the SMBH at the center of the galaxy has allowed that latter figure to become reasonably accurate in recent years.
And yep, from Earth, there is a nice bit of arc at 70K ly. However...
a 70k ly arc with Voyager at the center shows that the entirety of the Earth arc (within the galaxy) is closer than 70k. A quick experiment in Google Sketchup this afternoon yielded maximum distance approximations of 44k ly for a 100k ly Milky Way, 56k ly for a 110k ly MW and 67k for a 120k ly MW. These approximations are straight line distances from the location of Voyager shown here to the point where the Earth arc crosses those diameters in the GQ. Since the GQ terminus of the WH is along that Earth arc as well then I stand by my original statement; Janeway took the long way home.*
No doubt she was briefed on the situation around DS9, since she was operating in the area however, Star Fleet has a way of dealing with invincible foes. Even befriending former foes. I would think that ol' Kate "Starfleet" Janeway would expect an established Federation presence in the GQ by the time Voyager arrived.
*(FWIW, I do realize that the show needed, for dramatic purposes, to be about the voyage home, not to some distant wormhole.
)http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081210091902/memory-gamma/images/7/7e/VoyagerMap.jpg
This map was seen on some monitors in the final season, and reproduced as is in the Star Charts booklet. Supposedly, those squares on the grid are 10,000 ly on side.
The major discrepancy with the rest of canon here is that "False Profits" involves a planet that according to Data in TNG "The Price" was only some 200 ly from the Delta/Gamma border...
There are relatively few additional all-galaxy maps in VOY. The important ones would be from "Message in a Bottle", showing the Hirogen network (and perhaps not being aligned along the Quadrant borders, but tilted 45 degrees wrt that, considering), and from "Pathfinder", showing Barclay's guesstimates on the hero ship position (but with a generic, unrealistic background spiral galaxy image rather than the more frequently used graphic that also forms the background of the route map, and without any other helpful features):
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x14/messageinabottle_018.jpg
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x10/PDVD_062.jpg
Timo Saloniemi
That map is very much at odds with the one here on the starting point of Voyager:
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060325142326/memoryalpha/en/images/4/4b/Voyager_route.jpg
Carelessness or revisionism?
The one you posted does show a 100k ly galaxy though, with Earth at the 28k ly out position.
Carelessness or revisionism?
Considering that other one comes from "Year of Hell", I'd argue revisionism is sort of built in.
Basically, the later map gives 70k ly from Ocampa to Earth, and 130k ly from Ocampa to Earth via the Gamma wormhole. So by going for Gamma, the heroes could shave about ten years off a voyage they will never complete themselves (except perhaps for Tuvok) in the best case scenario. OTOH, if that one didn't pan out, the additional 60 years of travel time probably wouldn't mean much for our now deceased heroes, or to their children or grandchildren.
Timo Saloniemi
Might have meant a lot to the JemHadar who destroyed the ship as it tried to cut through Dominion space.
In one of the old tech manuals I read, warp 8 was about 1024c. The old tech manuals also seem to say that power usage is about proportional to speed, so even if they could make the trip, they'd need to stop to recharge at about the same distance intervals.
Now, why they couldn't just go warp 9.9999 instead of warp 10 to avoid the nasty devolution effects -- but that episode probably shouldn't be thought of as canonical.
Anyway, on Voyager you can lose 20 crew members and still only have 10 less people in your crew, so it's clear the show exists in a universe where the rules of mathematics function very differently.
Now, why they couldn't just go warp 9.9999 instead of warp 10 to avoid the nasty devolution effects -- but that episode probably shouldn't be thought of as canonical.
Anyway, on Voyager you can lose 20 crew members and still only have 10 less people in your crew, so it's clear the show exists in a universe where the rules of mathematics function very differently.
Exactly.
I like Voyager. I give it a solid B-, and I think it gets more hate than it deserves.
But they were reckless about doing things in one episode that would break the premise and about consistency in general, and it is obvious the writers were given a directive to just do whatever will make the most viewer-grabbing commercials, damn consistency. So why are we even arguing about this?
Battlestar Galactica kept a running count of living human beings, which they adhered to so dogmatically that in Razor they made sure to rescue two human beings from the cylons, just so they could kill two characters and not break the count. Voyager made no such effort, and this is something we should just accept.
I like Voyager. I give it a solid B-, and I think it gets more hate than it deserves.
But they were reckless about doing things in one episode that would break the premise and about consistency in general, and it is obvious the writers were given a directive to just do whatever will make the most viewer-grabbing commercials, damn consistency. So why are we even arguing about this?
Battlestar Galactica kept a running count of living human beings, which they adhered to so dogmatically that in Razor they made sure to rescue two human beings from the cylons, just so they could kill two characters and not break the count. Voyager made no such effort, and this is something we should just accept.
Agreed.
It was never going to be Battlestar Galactica. It was always camp and has many moments of clearly not taking itself too seriously. Though the premise sounds like it could be a show full of desperate scenarios and refugees the only way you can wring that expectation out of Voyager is by never actually watching any of it. It's not like Caretaker was dark and gritty and then oh sadness, they dropped the ball.
That old tech manual actually explained why. The closer a ship approached Warp 10, the less efficient its engine became and the more power it would need to keep accelerating. Transwarp would bypass this in the same way a warp engine would bypass the need to travel at Warp 0.9999, IMO.
It's an asymptote. Warp ten is not a real number. They're not even sure what the hypothetical warp llmit is, if there is one. The delta is constantly increasing, the delta between warp two and 3 is 20c, meanwhile the delta between warp 8 and 9 is 500c.
The real idea was for Warp 10 to be totally unreachable, no matter what new technologies would come about in the future, with Warp 9.9 being ludicrous speed. But the temptation to go even faster by writers and producers was impossible to resist, so we wound up with stuff like Warp 9.975 and "Threshold."
I once gave this kid I know the first couple seasons of Enterprise. He had seen TNG and VOY. He was very leery of Enterprise though because the ship only went warp 5 and he was afraid it would be too slow to watch.
False Profit is one of the worst episodes any Star Trek series not named Enterprise, I prefer to disregard it. 
It's true they probably should have had a thirty second interchange in the pilot:
"Hey, what about the Bajoran wormhole? It's slightly closer."
"It's a risk that we will be able to get here and it will still be there. Besides, the moment we enter Federation space our risk factor decreases to almost zero and we can contact our loved ones and resupply at will."
"True. Much better to go directly to Earth."
Expecting that kind of thing from Voyager is like expecting a Star Wars prequel to get a character right. Why is it so hard to accept the information given to us by the show as the actual speed limitations of the ship? We give that kind of leeway for every other Trek.
It's true they probably should have had a thirty second interchange in the pilot:
"Hey, what about the Bajoran wormhole? It's slightly closer."
"It's a risk that we will be able to get here and it will still be there. Besides, the moment we enter Federation space our risk factor decreases to almost zero and we can contact our loved ones and resupply at will."
"True. Much better to go directly to Earth."
Expecting that kind of thing from Voyager is like expecting a Star Wars prequel to get a character right. Why is it so hard to accept the information given to us by the show as the actual speed limitations of the ship? We give that kind of leeway for every other Trek.
Because some would argue consistancy is one of the hallmarks of good story telling.
So was that map ever used anywhere other than an alternate future/reality that never actually happens?Considering that other one comes from "Year of Hell", I'd argue revisionism is sort of built in.Carelessness or revisionism?
Timo Saloniemi
(sorry about the delay; was away doing the Turkey Day thing...)
Actually, Paris stated in the episode the 37's:
Warp 9.9, which in your terms would be 4 billion miles per second.
Sustainable velocity implies that there is enough resources to maintain that speed for LONG periods of time without any danger of resource diminishing (otherwise, it wouldn't be called 'sustainable').
I agree that they would have to make stops to attain resources... but practically all Federation ships have enough technology to park in any Solar system, draw power from the star, use that for replication of other goods, and use asteroids and raw matter in general to convert into energy (or simply use transporters for the process).
And it was also mentioned in one of the episodes of Voyager in Season 1 (when Tuvok was with alien species kids who aged in reverse) by Janeway that Voyager's Warp core can go on for 3 years without re-filling.
Of course... the writers never even bothered to adhere to these notions because ALL of it would easily kill off any attempt at them making the ship look like its in despair - idiots - I would have preferred to see the crew implement their technology to the fullest and you know... problem solve.
