A few quick remedies: - accelerate half the distance, decelerate the other: performance required for a two-year beeline trip to Pluto, 0.0482 m/ss - recognize that at that acceleration, it won't be a beeline at all: performance rounded up to 0.06 m/ss - apply for 270 years: get 230 ly from Earth! (You'll have to ignore Einstein there, which is a plus, because if you don't, you may indeed sleep for 200 years on a 270-year trip...) Key there (at low accelerations in general) really is the deceleration beyond halfway point. Even if you cut your engines after a few decades, you still get to a decent coasting speed and distance, but we can fiddle with that: if Khan can run at full throttle for one year, there's little reason he'd have to stop after N years other than the engines failing. Perhaps they failed two years before Kirk met him? Timo Saloniemi
That's fine, but you accidentally increased the overall performance by a factor of 10! Double 0.00241 IS NOT 0.0482! The rest is fine though - and being 23 light years from Earth might well be enough, as it is a volume of 50,965 cubic light years. Maybe...
What you need is an operational method for interplanetary travel that makes sense and takes years which is different than an interstellar attempt. Using transfer orbits to be more fuel efficient and to increase useful payload would be one idea. For example, a travel time for a transfer orbit from Earth to Jupiter is about two and half years. It involves two main burns, one at perihelion to put the spacecraft into the transfer orbit and one at aphelion to enter a parking orbit. Of course, the engines would have to have a high enough specific impulse to reach that far out in one go. And, if the same engines are used to go to Mars or the asteroids, then then they would need to be able to vary the specific impulse to match the destination. The interstellar mission would load up on fuel and do the long burn on the way out of the Solar System...
You're taking about the small town that was adjacent to the missile silo that Cochrane was using? A dozen well constructed buildings, people warmly dressed, everyone looked fed, functioning businesses. Courts? We did see one such court. Or, the Botany Bay was much less than one light year from Earth, only having made it as far as the outer solar system. This is where the Enterprise found it. It fell into what used to be called a "black hole."
But any propellant-based, Newtonian propulsion system is fundamentally unapplicable for interstellar travel - and doubly so if the intent of the designers was to provide mere interplanetary travel. If they're pennywise with fuel and doing Hohmann orbits, they sure won't build any extra performance margin that would allow for an interstellar launch with minimal modifications. On the other hand, Cochrane was off the grid, not being supervised by anybody openly associated with that USAF thing the launch hardware came from. And our heroes agreed on the particulars of the 2060s (and, in "Farpoint", also the 2070s at the very least) being post-apocalyptic. Which is no reason to assume technology would be down. If the countries devastated by global war for real in the 20th century had one thing in abundance, that was technology. Not enough to win the war, but that in turn was only because the other side had even more of it. Immediately after WWI, the world choked on automobiles and had a surge of aircraft to kickstart related enterprises. Immediately after WWII, it choked on aircraft and had a surge of spacecraft to kickstart related enterprises. It would only be fitting for WWIII to directly boost interstellar travel while making interplanetary travel a triviality. Which was supposed to be representative of something. But what? The judge, the troopers and the spectators are decidedly Western in appearance, the few court lackeys Asiatic; should we think that, say, Britain had courts of this sort (to match the external trappings), or that the West took over Asia (to go with the surprisingly subdued role of Asia in the later fictional centuries)? Were courts like this prevalent in places that retained their power and technologies, or in places that had been weakened by the war? Might be a place run by judges like that would get warp engine projects going, and then keep them going, even if it cost a few hundred thousand lives. MIght be such projects would go off the grid after a fashion, channeling the profits and benefits to the select few. The massive problem with that is the lack of effort by our heroes to take Khan to Earth. Their authority of choice is Starbase 12, and they fail to reach that within plot time. (Additionally, Khan's CQ would surely be overheard by others, too - but arguably it's a recent thing, triggered by Kirk's chance approach. Yet that in turn suggests no flights to the region in the recent past, which is rather unthinkable for the general vicinity of the most important UFP hubworld.) Khan reaching a distance of 100+ ly (and, consequently, a relativistic speed to account for the odd references to passage of time) would be the more palatable model to go with the SB 12 thing. An "eternal" engine, free of fuel or propellant consumption issues, would be the way to attain that - and we can give Khan that type of engine, as long as we keep the performance down inside Sol. As seen above, going for a single fixed acceleration is problematic. Could we boost acceleration outside Sol somehow? Well, we already know that warp drive consistently becomes incredibly sluggish close to Sol (and perhaps other stars, too) - we see with our own eyes warp 10 equating sublight in ST4:TVH, say. Perhaps Khan's drive, too, was stuck in tar when operating close to Sol, but would start performing much better when passing the heliopause or duonetopause or whatnot? This unexpected change in performance would also nicely match the official reason for the loss of the Charybdis - a thrust anomaly! (Alas, that particular Okudagram never made it on screen AFAIK, and can only be seen in the backstage books...) Later generations of starfarers would be aware of DY-100 ships having reasonable interstellar performance even when their insystem performance remained abysmal. This would allow for automated ore transport use, and keep our heroes' expressions of surprise subdued in the "Space Seed" teaser, while still precluding conscious attempts of using DY-100 for crewed flights to the stars back when the ships were still a thing. Heck, Khan may have been propelled to the stars wholly accidentally, too! Colonizing an off-Sol planet was never part of his plans - he's as surprised by the idea as anybody when Kirk forces it down his throat. Going out to the Oort Cloud and chilling it out there in cryosleep while the trail goes cold would be a cool maneuver for our icy-hearted villain, if you catch my drift... The engine suddenly going to overdrive would ruin the perfectly good plan, is all. Timo Saloniemi
Troi put forward that in another fifty years the effects of the war ten years before would be behind Humanity. Seven percent of Humanity died, and ninety-three percent didn't. Sounds (to me) like large regions of Earth weren't directly impacted by the war. I think the court seen in Farpoint was supposed to be a future version of the post French revolution Reign of Terror. Q might have chosen this owing to Picard's nationality. Kirk had a destination, originally he was going to take Khan and the botany bay there, later he decided to drop Khan off at a point along the way. Why take Khan to Earth? A destination not on his itinerary.
Because it would only take a few seconds to go there ("Bread and Circuses" style), were Khan really closer to Sol than to any other star? Khan was Earth's problem, not Kirk's. Why not get rid of him right there and then, be this man a notorious criminal or a fascinating relic or both? The teaser nicely establishes that Khan has drifted into a region where outsiders won't interfere with the adventure (and haven't, for centuries). The front door of Earth really shouldn't be it. Timo Saloniemi
I would place the odds of someone being successful at 10,000 to 1 against Not pennywise on the fuel, it's poundwise of the payload. You still need powerful engines to throw something the mass of a DY-100 out to Jupiter. Irregardless, without magic tech, gravity and Kepler rule the day.
Putting the derelict within one lightyear of Earth wouldn't be about sea lanes, though - it would be about having a navigation hazard floating in the port of Rotterdam. Even if ships generally moved in just a select few directions from Earth (and why would they do that, artificially creating congestion when there is infinite space for them to choose from?), there'd be monitoring systems in place to ensure folks stuck to those channels, and Khan would then stand out as somebody to be herded back to the lanes. What we need plotwise is a region of space where Kirk can come and go as he pleases, dropping off Khan to a suitable planet and all. Thus hopefully at least a dozen lightyears across, so that there are unsuitable planets there, too, to satisfy statistics... Timo Saloniemi
The discussion is on, what distance from Earth is the Botany Bay. Dialog hints: So, they detect it first on sensors, then as they close on it, they hear morse code radio waves. Also, it might not be too far away based on the "no flights into this sector for years" comment. Timeline is 1990's and later established as about 2 centuries for time for travel distance. At most, we are within 200 lys of Earth even if you assume it was at or near light speed. Probably not that fast nor that far. and So, the ship is atomic powered sleeper ship with simple engines, and up to 2018, ships like this one took years to just get to the planets. This sounds like the ship has a terminal velocity (as with all rockets) and limited propellent. Based on this comment, the Botany Bay could only get a small fraction of the above max range of 200 lys. To give the largest distance from Earth, 'years' at a minimum could be three years to get to an outer planet like Neptune, which is about 30 AUs. In 200 years at that rate, the Botany Bay could get 30x200/3 or about 2000 AUs from Earth; tops. That's only 0.03 light years, or as @Timo says, floating in the harbor around Sol. and So, something else must be in play for Kirk to tow the ship to Starbase 12, which I assume is the closest starbase plus at least some number of light years from Earth. Anybody know where the Gamma 400 star system is? Since little curiosity was made on this great distance, I'm missing something not in evidence. If much faster speeds, then why use sleeper ships in the first place? I hate myself for this, but the only answer is that f*&#ing wormhole near our solar system theory, again. Excuse me while I go barf.
It's actually consistent that a DY-100 in deep space doesn't result in Kirk or Spock having a stroke, since ships like that are still in use as (supposedly interstellar) ore transports in the era! So instead of postulating a wormhole mishap or alien intervention, I'd credit the ship type with performance that is better in deep space than within the Sol system. Now, what kind of a drive would behave like that...? Well, no warp drive aboard the Botany Bay. But if impulse has a subspace component to it, subpar performance close to Sol may be the result. And if we introduce subspace there, it's probably for inertia reduction, meaning the ship might make do with significantly less fuel than a Newtonian rocket, and could plausibly run for decades when the crew fails to turn it off after mere months or years. Timo Saloniemi
In 1996? What you describe might be the improvement in 2018 to make sleeper ships obsolete. Spock said the DY-100 class vessel was designed for interplanetary travel only. With simple nuclear-powered engines, star travel was considered impractical at that time. A more plausible scenario is still a Newtonian rocket: The Botany Bay didn't have to worry about accelerating and de-accelerating to chase up to a planet, make and break orbit, then repeat to get back to Earth. Instead, the BB might have used all its fuel in one, big burn for maximum acceleration to hit a relatively high speed, say some % of light speed, then coast for the next 200 years. If for example 0.25 c was attained, then after 200 years the BB could coast 50 light years. The faster speed you pick, the farther out. Of course, there is no slowing down for them; they took a long shot that "something or someone" would find them and help them. (Spock said it was ten thousand to one against their making it to another star system.) When the Enterprise encounters it, she matched speeds to come along side of it, and shortly later, engaged it in a tractor beam to tow it to Starbase 12 most probably at warp speed.
I don't see a pressing reason for Earth to stay strictly Newtonian after it has discovered gravity manipulation. And that was a technology installed on the Botany Bay in the mid-1990s already. Gravitic trickery might enable the Ares IV era ships to reach Mars in weeks instead of months, as specified for the rescue sortie in "One Small Step". But a lesser form of it could already have been involved in allowing pre-2018 ships to reach Saturn in years rather than decades, allowing John Christopher's son to catch his flight while already an adult. Some sort of a drive system allows Nomad to go interstellar in what looks like 2002 already, too. Or at least an insystem probe could not plausibly be tasked with finding alien intellect. We also see super-performance in the launch of the Phoenix, with what looks like a Titan II lower stage lifting what looks like a payload the size but more than the mass of the Titan II upper stage, a lump of dead weight with an unlit "rocket nozzle", to a greater altitude than the real Titan II ever attained, on a trajectory that seems to continue to deep space without known "rocket" burns. So the breakthrough of 2018 must be seen in the context of Earth already having superb spaceflight technology overall. Conversely, sleeper ships never became completely obsolete; they continued in interstellar applications at least until shortly before "Space Seed" / ST:ID where McCoy is not really up to speed with the tech any longer. So while McGivers wasn't necessarily speaking out of her ass in "Space Seed" (although we can't really rule that out, either, it appearing that Kirk isn't in a position to contradict her and even Spock occasionally fumbles Earth History 101), a sharp transition in 2018 isn't the only, or best, scenario to consider. Timo Saloniemi
True. To expand on Spock's statement: Simple nuclear-powered gravity engines. Maybe very low acceleration affairs with high top speeds. Within system, they would be slow due to always accelerating then de-accelerating between planets, hence sleeper ships are needed. The BB just kept accelerating until something failed or ran out of nuclear fuel. Knowing the distance from Earth would narrow down on the top speed the BB attained before it powered down thrust.
The 2018 technical advance could allow thrust ratios giving much higher accelerations (g-forces). I think it involved the structural integrity field and an inertial dampening system to maintain a near constant one g for the ship’s personnel to counter high-g forces inside the ship. The sleeper ships like the BB may have had a simple gravity field and no structural integrity field which severely limited its g-forces, so, slow and easy was the performance of the day.