At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vessels ?

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

The rate of Warp development seems fine. It's true that Warp is achieved on Earth in 2063, and that in 2150, 2260s, etc they still use warp, but the ships are 100s to 1000s or even 1,000,000s of times faster. That's pretty exceptional improvement.

We don't know when the Federation starts using Borg style transwarp conduits, or some other transwarp technology, but by the 29th-31st centuries, they have ships that can travel in space and time, including ships that are bigger on the inside. That's not bad.

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

It's true that Warp is achieved on Earth in 2063, and that in 2150, 2260s, etc they still use warp, but the ships are 100s to 1000s or even 1,000,000s of times faster.

Hmm. Are they really? The only ships for which we ever get an objective speed estimate for (km/h or mph) are Archer's and Janeway's, with 30 Gm/s (warp 4.3) and 4 Gmi/s (warp 9.9), respectively. So we can argue that Janeway can only do a thousand times better.

Or then we can argue something else and say that these explicit figures are exceptions and outliers. Warp is odd like that. But there's no unambiguous evidence on the evolution of warp through the years, other than the highest warp factors quoted for the eras. And warp six seemed to be the interstellar standard for Vulcans in ENT, and still was the speed at which Kirk cruised in TOS.

Did the interstellar standard for warp really evolve at some point? Vulcans only admitted to warp six in ENT, but they are conservatives, while Kirk in TOS went to warp eight and beyond at explicit risk. When Picard in TNG went past warp six, that, too, was considered exceptional (they remarked twice that the ship spent more time at high warp than most, to an unhealthy degree).

Technology evolving is an acceptable interpretation of Trek. Technology having already reached a plateau that can't be improved upon until something drastic happens (unknown to us, after the 24th century but before the 29th) is another. I guess a mixture of both is the fun way to proceed, but arguing that there's something fundamentally wrong with one or the other is not.

That's not bad.

Agreed - that's all well beyond the interstellar standard of the 20th-24th centuries.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

It's true that Warp is achieved on Earth in 2063, and that in 2150, 2260s, etc they still use warp, but the ships are 100s to 1000s or even 1,000,000s of times faster.

Hmm. Are they really? The only ships for which we ever get an objective speed estimate for (km/h or mph) are Archer's and Janeway's, with 30 Gm/s (warp 4.3) and 4 Gmi/s (warp 9.9), respectively. So we can argue that Janeway can only do a thousand times better.

Or then we can argue something else and say that these explicit figures are exceptions and outliers. Warp is odd like that. But there's no unambiguous evidence on the evolution of warp through the years, other than the highest warp factors quoted for the eras. And warp six seemed to be the interstellar standard for Vulcans in ENT, and still was the speed at which Kirk cruised in TOS.

Did the interstellar standard for warp really evolve at some point? Vulcans only admitted to warp six in ENT, but they are conservatives, while Kirk in TOS went to warp eight and beyond at explicit risk. When Picard in TNG went past warp six, that, too, was considered exceptional (they remarked twice that the ship spent more time at high warp than most, to an unhealthy degree).

Technology evolving is an acceptable interpretation of Trek. Technology having already reached a plateau that can't be improved upon until something drastic happens (unknown to us, after the 24th century but before the 29th) is another. I guess a mixture of both is the fun way to proceed, but arguing that there's something fundamentally wrong with one or the other is not.

That's not bad.

Agreed - that's all well beyond the interstellar standard of the 20th-24th centuries.

Timo Saloniemi

Even a 1000x is a massive improvement. The average 737 jet isn't a thousand times faster than your walking speed of 1-3 mph. Yes, some aircraft are. But most aircraft are not.

There are occasions of Warp travel as you know that vary enormously, including a much greater than 1,000x increase. I remember Broken Bow, where they give a speed consistent with the W^3 scale, while also getting to Kronos in 96 hours. The latter is close to Warp 4.5 on a W^6 scale.

But even on the W^3 scale, Enterprise would probably be a 100x faster than the Phoenix only 88 years later. That's a massive improvement is speed.

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Even a 1000x is a massive improvement.

When talking about warp and its nonlinear nature, this isn't saying much. A single starship supposedly can "massively improve" by refusing to pay heed to the redlining gauges: a ship designed to do V can do 1000xV on a good day if the skipper insists.

If average speeds improve thousandfold, then that's very nice indeed. If two randomly chosen starships display a top (?) speed difference of a thousand, we're hard pressed to determine which came first in the history of development.

But even on the W^3 scale, Enterprise would probably be a 100x faster than the Phoenix only 88 years later. That's a massive improvement is speed.

Ignoring that we don't really know how fast the Phoenix could go, this would only be showing that humans were slowly creeping up to the interstellar standard. And NX-01 with her warp five would not be an "improved" vessel in absolute terms, but a very poorly performing design dragging far behind the local interstellar standard.

That humans could claw their way up from the pit in which they had so far lived is no indication that the climb could continue past the edges of that pit. If going faster than warp six were that easy, Vulcans would probably already have done it. If not for an illogical fascination with speed, then for keeping apace with Andorians!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Even a 1000x is a massive improvement.

When talking about warp and its nonlinear nature, this isn't saying much. A single starship supposedly can "massively improve" by refusing to pay heed to the redlining gauges: a ship designed to do V can do 1000xV on a good day if the skipper insists.

I'd call a 1000x times increase in speed a staggering improvement! As I believe would any engineer. That's a colossal increase. Oh it's nothing compared to the massively faster speeds that some Starships achieved in some episodes and movies. We all agree on that! But an amazing increase, nevertheless.

If average speeds improve thousandfold, then that's very nice indeed.

If average speeds doubled, that would be a great achievement! Tripled, quadrupled? Very nice! A thousand?!? Holy toledo! That's gigantic! That's getting somewhere in ONE day that used to take nearly three YEARS (1000 days). Wowza!!

"Creeping" up? Compared to whom? How long did the Andorians take to go from Warp 1 to 5? Of the Trill? Or Vulcans? IDK. No reason to think the RATE of human progress here is slow at all. Only 88 years earlier they hadn't even gone Warp 1. Now 5? A 100x increase (or possibly a great deal more depending on scale used). That's incredible.

Even if we ignore or rationalize away every occasion of very high super duper warp speeds and short travel times, the rate of progress seems excellent.

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

I'd call a 1000x times increase in speed a staggering improvement! As I believe would any engineer.

Not necessarily. If cars or aircraft today started going a thousand times faster, it would just be more trouble than worth. Even ten times faster would just complicate things, because travel times on Earth today are already pretty insignificant, and in some cases would begin to task the reaction speed of humans.

At TOS warp speeds, "a thousand planets" are already within mankind's effortless grasp. At higher speeds, there might be more planets within not-gonna-need-inflight-peanuts range, but that wouldn't help because those planets would already be taken: there are others playing this game, and the speed of ships isn't the limiting factor. And you'd need far more than a thousand times more ships to make use of the increased reach, be it in wars of expansion or simple colonization.

With ships going a thousand times faster, expansion to other galaxies would be possible, and those could be "narrow" missions not requiring ship numbers proportional to the "radius" of operations. But Starfleet doesn't seem to be making use of any putative "improved performance" to visit nearby galaxies despite TOS already showing a trip to Andromeda that would take 300 years at speeds available to Kirk's poor old ship that was rattling apart at speeds past warp ten.

How long did the Andorians take to go from Warp 1 to 5?

Who cares? Who cares how long it took humans? It's not an achievement - everybody gets there eventually. If not through development, then simply by doing business with neighbors who already have the warp six tech. Or by getting conquered by those. Indeed, given the aggressiveness of the Andorians and the ancient Vulcans, one would think they got their act together faster than humans...

No reason to think the RATE of human progress here is slow at all.

No reason to think there is any human progress. We just reinvented the wheel and now roll it around apace with everybody else. None of the argued advances beyond the reaching of parity in the 2150s have been credited to humans anyway.

the rate of progress seems excellent

A child growing up makes good progress. It doesn't follow that adults would be superfast and supersmart giants - growing up is just a phase one has to go through.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Achieving warp is a tremendous achievement! For any civilization. Progressing to 100s, 1000s or 1,000,000s of times greater speeds over time represents a colossal increase in capability. That other civilizations have achieved similar or even greater things doesn't make it not an incredible achievement.

That shows immense human progress. Your stuck on this idea that if other civilizations have made similar, incredible progress, that it's not progress. That doesn't even make logical sense.

Going from getting to a destination in three years, to getting there in one day is progress. There is definitely human progress shown, and it's amazing progress! No basis exists for thinking their rate of progress is in any way slow. And certainly the subsequent Federation continues to advance.

Later ships are far faster, and may be able to maintain the same speeds for much longer.

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

The idea that they are nearly at parity with other local civilizations after less than 90 years of warp travel means that the rate of human progress, if anything, has been very, very fast. Yes they did get help from the Vulcans. They are said by people like Archer to have "held back just enough" information to prevent too rapid a pace of development. But if they shared anything at all with humans, even a little bit, then they may have accelerated the rate of human progress, even if only somewhat.

But things dont plateau in the 2150s and stay that way for two hundred years. The Vulcans, IIRC did have at least one ship class in the 2150s that had a Warp 7 engine. Thats still slower than the later warp 8 and 9 engines. And the later ships, even when they do Warp 5, might be able to hold that speed for longer than the NX-01 could. Maybe alot longer.

We have a collection of planets that have each shown progress, and done so exactly the way you would expect. Through their own indigenous research as well as learning from others. All progessing, and when they become the Federation, the progress continues forward.

 

[Kemaiku]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Warp 9.9 is ~7000 times the speed of light.

If anyone invented a safe way to travel 1 million times the speed of light, everyone else could just pack up and go home.

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Your stuck on this idea that if other civilizations have made similar, incredible progress, that it's not progress. That doesn't even make logical sense.

No, what I'm saying (and this is indisputable) is that everybody has made those "achievements" and then failed to get any farther. There is zero reason to think humans would do any better, as they are merely retracing old steps, demonstrating no superiority of any sort.

But things dont plateau in the 2150s and stay that way for two hundred years. The Vulcans, IIRC did have at least one ship class in the 2150s that had a Warp 7 engine. Thats still slower than the later warp 8 and 9 engines.

We never heard of a warp 8 engine. Kirk's could do warp 14, but was not supposed to. The Vulcans sound like people who wouldn't do things they aren't supposed to, so their warp seven ship is very probably the same thing Kirk is flying, a ship capable of safe warp seven and, as a trivial lemma, of infinite speed as well (if only for a split second before disaster - see "Threshold").

And the later ships, even when they do Warp 5, might be able to hold that speed for longer than the NX-01 could.

Again, this is valid speculation, but we just plain don't know what the Vulcan warp six or seven performance means. Nothing in the 23rd century might trump that yet, save for "transwarp". And maybe that worked, maybe it didn't.

We have a collection of planets that have each shown progress, and done so exactly the way you would expect. Through their own indigenous research as well as learning from others. All progessing, and when they become the Federation, the progress continues forward.

If it does, it does so at a greatly reduced pace, as observed. Humans get five warp factors in a century, but then barely add three in the next one, and perhaps one the following century. Apparently, synergy is a hindrance there: it's damned difficult to trump a million past geniuses by adding the resources of just one new member world.

Really, when Archer enters deep space, he finds one with all the features of the 24th century, save perhaps for minor differences of degree. The warpships, the transporters, the death rays, the tractor beams and the shields are already there. Indeed, human "achievement" only denotes the fact that they have attained the minimum level needed for survival. That done, the Darwinist pressure for further development might even be gone...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Your stuck on this idea that if other civilizations have made similar, incredible progress, that it's not progress. That doesn't even make logical sense.

No, what I'm saying (and this is indisputable) is that everybody has made those "achievements" and then failed to get any farther. There is zero reason to think humans would do any better, as they are merely retracing old steps, demonstrating no superiority of any sort.

Its not only disputable, its almost certainly wrong. We certainly have no evidence that ship speeds stopped in the 2150s. Could the Borg enhance the NX-01 to get past the Warp 5+ that they struggled to get past but that the NCC 1701 did not struggle to get past? Could they get the NX-01 up to Warp 8?

Maybe, but thats not the same as saying that the NX-01 is as fast as the 1701. Clearly they normally stuggled to attain speeds that later, more advanced ships easily attain. Thats progress. To say that its possible to attain speeds beyond design or safety limits, given sufficiently advanced knowledge does not mean that there is not progress in maximum safe or average cruise speeds or sustainable duration.

I think the most reasonable interpretation of Warp 5, 6 or 7 engines, is that that is the Warp speed that they are designed to be able to attain.

That doesnt mean the Borg, or Geordi for that matter, couldnt modify the NX-01 engines to maybe do better. But I think when its a "Warp 5 engine" that means something. And not "Oh well we could go Warp 9 with ease, but we just dont like to".

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Warp 9.9 is ~7000 times the speed of light.

If anyone invented a safe way to travel 1 million times the speed of light, everyone else could just pack up and go home.

Well, that depends on the episode or movie. We have some where the ships travel at speeds massively beyond what you would expect for Warps 7, 8 or 9 on the W^3 or TNG scales.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Maybe it's silly, but I like to think that's humanity's "thing": Klingons are warriors, Vulcans are excellent at logic and computation, etc. But humans are... imaginative and erratic. We just come along, look at your sandcastle that you've been working on all day, kick one of your turrets over just 'cause, stick our tongues out, then apologize, then build a better sandcastle than yours in 15 minutes, then smirk... but you can't help but still mostly like us.

The Klingons had advanced ships, but they stole them from the species that had previously been their conquerors, and I like to think they had a LOT of them and they were VERY durable - but the Klingons just weren't very good at keeping them up or innovating. Which is why we see mostly the same ship types all the way from TOS through DS9.

Vulcans had Warp 7 ships, but I like to think they had had Warp 6 ships for over a thousand years, and had just been stuck there, and the only reason they got to Warp 7 when they did was because of the effect interacting with humans was having on them.

That's one of the reasons the Vulcans were trying to "hold us back" in Enterprise. They had been slowly, slowly developing minor advances and slowly, cautiously, and calculatedly exploring space for a loooooong time, and then here comes humanity saying "Hi, we have warp" one day, and then the next thing they know (a mere hundred years or so later), "We're going OUT THERE to the fringes of what even you know about in this Warp 5 ship we sort of just threw together out of gelatin and chalk. By the way, the engines work better if you turn them backward - I mean, the math says that's dead wrong, but we just tried it as a practical joke on the chief engineer, and got about a 30% increase in performance, much to our surprise. Anyway, we're probably going to piss off all sorts of creatures neither of us have ever heard of, and we're not even going to send recon probes into their star systems or set up hidden monitoring outposts before we just go trudging everywhere. Probably even just let the dog out here and there to pee and poop all over the place. Hope that's cool. Yeee HAH!"

(That's also why I thought the Romulans were supposed to be a menace - they have the mental abilities of Vulcans, but never calmed their emotions and set aside the erratic, violent nature that would let them do what we do. So a couple of homeworlds and possibly a handful of colonies/vassal worlds for a species that didn't even have warp ships when we first entered their star system can suddenly become a serious threat to a Federation with 150+ worlds, just because we alarmed them.)

 

[BillJ]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

The problem isn't in universe. The problem is getting viewers to buy into yet another series that has the same exact toys as every other series. To general viewers, faster warp speed doesn't really mean anything. Nor does it somehow change the drama.

 

[at Quark's]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

...So between 2015 and 2063, mankind invents trinkets, but in 2063, it gains access to the interstellar standard of equipment, stuff that has been there for thousands of years and will continue to be there for thousands more. Between 2063 and 2150, mankind manages to secure rights to a threshold number of those standard inventions, after which all inventing is done for the next couple of millennia.

Really, it would be amazing that there should be any progress between 2150 and 2350, when supposedly there has been none between -1000 and 2150. Or in other words, we never get mention of a time when Vulcans wouldn't have had warp drive, transporters, tractor beams and death rays.

Things really are as they should be: before interstellar contact, humans can live under the illusion that they invent a lot of stuff, but at that contact, they learn it has all been invented ages ago. It's difficult to keep on inventing with a deflated ego, even if one isn't competing with the brightest minds of hundreds of civilizations and is thousands of years late at the starting line.

Timo Saloniemi

Perhaps you're right about the stagnant character of interstellar society (though there still seems to be an appreciable difference between 22nd and 24th century Human/Federation technology, even if mostly in degree. But yeah, that could be the result of combining the very best technologies of each member species where the number of member species grows over time).

When I look at ENT though, it doesn't really look like humanity by that time has procured much ready-to-use, off-the-shelf technology from alien sources.

Vulcans seem generally reluctant to give technology away (especially as evidenced by the history of the warp 5 program, though perhaps they shared technology on other fields), Emerson still has to invent the transporter, even though he might have been helped by information from alien scientists, their weapons seem designed instead of just sticking to copied tried-and-true designs that have been used succesfully for hundreds of years by other species (they had quite some startup problems), Hoshi has to develop the linguacode matrix, and so on.

So to me, it seems that the 'help' from the interstellar community, if any, was more in the form of information and general scientific principles than in the form of finished products. (And I'm reasonably sure they did obtain some scientific information in that way, e.g. in the form of that interspecies exchange program in which dr. Phlox participated as well.)

(Of course there could have been many inventions that were just 'given' to humanity (like grav plating), but AFAIK, there isn't much direct onscreen evidence for that.)

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Well some of the tech is the same category, but we don't know that it hasn't improved. That doesn't follow. They have beam weapons in the 2150s and in the 2360s, but that doesn't mean they haven't advanced. The phasers on the ENT D might be far more powerful than anything mounted on any Vulcan, Andorian or Starfleet ship of the 2150s.

Saying they had projectile weapons in 1865 and in 2015 does not mean just because they are both "projectiles" that no innovation occurs in speed, range, material composition or capability of the weapons.

The Enterprise E might obliterate the most powerful 2150s Andorian warship in seconds. Timo just makes the poor argument that because the same categories of technology exist in the 22nd and 24th centuries, that therefore, no advancement within these categories has occured.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

(Of course there could have been many inventions that were just 'given' to humanity (like grav plating), but AFAIK, there isn't much direct onscreen evidence for that.)

Traded for, not given to us. Probably for our diverse cultural materials - we seem to be the only species in Trek that isn't a monoculture, and meeting us would be like exploring a thousand other worlds all at once for them. Just, like, a thumb drive with the songs from all of the Billboard charts from 1955 - 2155, PDFs of all of our religious and philosophical writings, and the complete run of Alf would fetch the secrets of grav plating from almost any interstellar species.

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

We certainly have no evidence that ship speeds stopped in the 2150s.

No - they stopped long before that. The Trek sandbox is old. And big. Vulcans were interstellar when Julius Caesar worried about getting his feet wet in the Rubicon. Andorians are in an even rat race with them. Klingons may have been interstellar back in the time of Kahless already, and certainly were before humans. But all of these other players stopped at warp sixish.

It would be audacious to claim that humans should be any sort of an exception to this iron rule of plateauing.

Of course, it may also be true and appropriate. It's just that humans really aren't credited with inventing anything after Archer's warp five engine. And the jury is still out on whether that was a human invention, or something Archer got from the Vulcans, right-wing propaganda notwithstanding.

But I think when its a "Warp 5 engine" that means something. And not "Oh well we could go Warp 9 with ease, but we just dont like to".

But TOS categorically disproves that: an engine emphatically not rated for speeds past warp eight attains warp fourteen.

"Threshold" just goes one step further and shows that every warp engine, even that of a humble shuttlecraft, is capable of all the speeds in the universe by default. It's just a matter of getting sufficient X, which in that episode is a new power tap of some sort; the warp coils demonstrably can take it, and the structures (a bottleneck for Kirk, too) can take it after some reinforcing.

Warp engines are very malleable pieces of technology, with immense potential. Apparently, all the "current" applications are crude to the extreme, tapping a tiny fraction of that potential. But some elements are easy for even us cavemen to get right from the get-go, such as the infinite-speed warp coils.

When I look at ENT though, it doesn't really look like humanity by that time has procured much ready-to-use, off-the-shelf technology from alien sources.

Much of that would have an astronomical price tag, no doubt. But a lot of interstellar-standard stuff does pop up in a very short time when Starfleet starts exploring deep space in 2151: the warp five engine, the phase weapons, the man-rated transporter, the photon torpedo. Why this burst of "innovation", and then none afterwards? Or beforehand?

The synchronicity would be better explained by humans "gaining access" than by humans "making progress". Say, when Vulcans realize humans are finally breaking out of their quarantine and nothing short of war will stop them, it will appear logical for them to provide the humans with the necessary survival gear - stuff the Vulcans explicitly already had.

(especially as evidenced by the history of the warp 5 program, though perhaps they shared technology on other fields)

Did Vulcans really "hold back"? Young Nat Archer thinks so, but his father disagrees. So, which one should we trust - the impressionable kid who learns about Vulcans from his friends in the kindergarden, or the man who works with them?

Emerson still has to invent the transporter, even though he might have been helped by information from alien scientists

Did Vulcans get their transporter from Emory Erickson? They used it for non-personnel applications before "Broken Bow", a practice familiar to our heroes. Given the personality of Erickson in "Daedalus", and his stated life's work of modifying the transporter to do better (or failing to do so), his status as inventor might be rather self-exaggerated. Especially as the "invention" would come from the pre-2150s era where kids learn to think that Vulcans are hindering and humans are inventing.

their weapons seem designed instead of just sticking to copied tried-and-true designs that have been used succesfully for hundreds of years by other species (they had quite some startup problems)

And the nature of those problems is telling. Through serendipitous mishaps, our heroes learn that their guns in fact are much better than they thought! It's as if cavemen finally stumbled upon the automatic setting of the assault rifles they got from their betters, after firing single rounds for ages.

So to me, it seems that the 'help' from the interstellar community, if any, was more in the form of information and general scientific principles than in the form of finished products. (And I'm reasonably sure they did obtain some scientific information in that way, e.g. in the form of that interspecies exchange program in which dr. Phlox participated as well.)

Agreed. Actual hardware was no doubt purchased on occasion (the Boomers got their guns from somewhere, say), but truly "hot" technologies would have to be slipped in through all sorts of backdoors so as not to cause trouble to the selling party.

(Of course there could have been many inventions that were just 'given' to humanity (like grav plating), but AFAIK, there isn't much direct onscreen evidence for that.)

Now this is an interesting detail: Earth already had artificial gravity in 1996, before explicit alien contact, as the Botany Bay interior was designed with it.

It also seems that AG is almost ridiculously reliable and durable: thanks to the limitations of television, derelicts from ages past and ships shot to pieces still retain it.

And everybody seems to have it. So, is it also easy to invent? Or is it easy to discover? it might be a natural phenomenon whose discovery soon leads to the discovery of the warp phenomenon. Or it might be the most common alien artifact in the galaxy, the Folsom Point of Star Trek - TAS "Slaver Weapon" has the characters stating that AG was found in the form of an alien flying belt. Although they don't specify who found it and when. Humans just before the 1990s? Some alien species at the dawn of time, a subsequent UFP member and benefactor?

They have beam weapons in the 2150s and in the 2360s, but that doesn't mean they haven't advanced. The phasers on the ENT D might be far more powerful than anything mounted on any Vulcan, Andorian or Starfleet ship of the 2150s.

Yes, there's that ambiguity, too. There just isn't any telling, especially as the invisible defenses of starships would probably evolve apace and negate any observed improvement. (In a welcome revelation, "In a Mirror, Darkly" shows TOS shipboard weapons to outperform supposedly ENT-level ones, but there are further ambiguities in that.)

But Archer's sidearms already can make people disappear, and his shipboard guns level mountains - those are rather absolute yardsticks, and difficult to improve upon. How to make the victim disappear more?

Traded for, not given to us.

And this is interesting as well, because we see a lot of interstellar trading take place by the means of teeny weeny merchant ships that can only carry high-value-for-mass-or-bulk goods. And then we see Quark think that purchasing "tulaberry wine" from farmers at an extremely difficult-to-reach location, rather than just clandestinely scanning a few berries and then founding a replicator-based industry without paying a penny to the tulaberry farmers, is a smart business move.

So there's every precedent (postcedent) for primitives being able to pay for their purchases, even potentially expensive ones.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Much of that would have an astronomical price tag, no doubt. But a lot of interstellar-standard stuff does pop up in a very short time when Starfleet starts exploring deep space in 2151: the warp five engine, the phase weapons, the man-rated transporter, the photon torpedo. Why this burst of "innovation", and then none afterwards? Or beforehand?

The synchronicity would be better explained by humans "gaining access" than by humans "making progress". Say, when Vulcans realize humans are finally breaking out of their quarantine and nothing short of war will stop them, it will appear logical for them to provide the humans with the necessary survival gear - stuff the Vulcans explicitly already had.

I certainly agree it would be more plausible that way. It's just that I don't see any direct on-screen evidence for that. It looks like humanity is inventing most stuff for itself and I would have to come up with all kinds of rationalizations to fit the appearance of the onscreen material into your scenario that would in itself be more plausible. Emory (I see I got his name garbled up) was self-exaggerated and made himself way more than he actually was, and many explanations like that.

Did Vulcans really "hold back"? Young Nat Archer thinks so, but his father disagrees. So, which one should we trust - the impressionable kid who learns about Vulcans from his friends in the kindergarden, or the man who works with them?

From Broken bow

JONATHAN: Bigger than Ambassador Pointy's ship?
FATHER: His name is Soval, and he's been very helpful. And I've told you not to call him that, Jonathan.
JONATHAN: Well, Billy Cook said we'd be flying at warp five by now if the Vulcans hadn't kept things from us.
FATHER: Well they have their reasons. God knows what they are.

The way I read that scene, Archer sr. actually agrees that "they 've "kept things from us", even though the ambassador has 'been very helpful' (but how, exactly?), and wishes to migitate the obvious dislike his son has for Vulcans. Either that, or he just thought it too much trouble to get into that old argument, again. Is there any other material from which we can infer something about Henry Archer's attitude ?

Did Vulcans get their transporter from Emory Erickson? They used it for non-personnel applications before "Broken Bow", a practice familiar to our heroes. Given the personality of Erickson in "Daedalus", and his stated life's work of modifying the transporter to do better (or failing to do so), his status as inventor might be rather self-exaggerated. Especially as the "invention" would come from the pre-2150s era where kids learn to think that Vulcans are hindering and humans are inventing.

Perhaps so; still, the question remains, why did the Vulcans not use the transporter for personnel before Erickson? (In order to make my reaction not too long, I'm interpreting your statement to mean just that). Either Erickson did substantially improve on the design, making the transporter fit for personnel, too, or the Vulcans knew something they just didn't share, even after becoming Federation members (for example, transporter pychosis was only diagnosed in 2209).

And the nature of those problems is telling. Through serendipitous mishaps, our heroes learn that their guns in fact are much better than they thought! It's as if cavemen finally stumbled upon the automatic setting of the assault rifles they got from their betters, after firing single rounds for ages.

Hmmmm... the only 'serendipity' on that point I could think of right now is that explosion in silent enemy. They got ten times the yield they expect because the 'phase modulators' were overloaded. To me that sounds like a thoroughly underbalanced design (the weapon easily could be 10 times more powerful, if only they had understood enough to balance all components of the system), which would not be the case had they integrated a complete weapon system that had seen centuries of experience by other species. That, or the blown out modules were actually part of the ship, not the weapons system, and the flaw was in interfacing those different systems correctly.

Are there any more examples where their weapons proved more powerful than they thought ?

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

It looks like humanity is inventing most stuff for itself and I would have to come up with all kinds of rationalizations to fit the appearance of the onscreen material into your scenario that would in itself be more plausible.

Indeed. But we don't get explicit claims that humans would have invented things like the phase guns or the photon torpedoes, either. And indeed photon torpedoes take our heroes by surprise when they find such things in Klingon hands in "Sleeping Dogs" - but they are being installed into Starfleet ships less than a year later!

Was there secret Starfleet R&D going on that was close to completion, and the research team merely swapped the name of the end product as the result of Archer sending back intel on the Klingon weapons? Or did Earth add a new item to their shopping list after learning of its existence, and their (Vulcan? Rigelian?) allies-at-a-price complied?

The way I read that scene, Archer sr. actually agrees that "they 've "kept things from us", even though the ambassador has 'been very helpful' (but how, exactly?), and wishes to migitate the obvious dislike his son has for Vulcans. Either that, or he just thought it too much trouble to get into that old argument, again. Is there any other material from which we can infer something about Henry Archer's attitude ?

Alas, not on screen. In "Daedalus", Erickson says (and T'Pol confirms) that the Vulcans are keeping their research on sub-quantum transporting out of his reach, but he doesn't draw any comparisons to his old sparring partner Henry Archer.

In "Cold Station 12", there are details about the death of Henry Archer, and Memory Alpha claims the episode as one of the sources for Jonathan Archer being bitter towards the Vulcans because they prevented the warp five project from being completed before Henry died. But that's just speculation, as nothing of the sort is stated in "Cold Station 12"; the feelings of embitterment are an interpretation of "Broken Bow" dialogue only.

...the question remains, why did the Vulcans not use the transporter for personnel before Erickson? (In order to make my reaction not too long, I'm interpreting your statement to mean just that).

Sorry about the ambiguity - no, I don't think there's reason to think the Vulcans suddenly started using the transporter for people. AFAIK, we didn't see Vulcans trust their lives on this device, native or Earth-improved, during the run of the show, T'Pol obviously excepted.

...or the Vulcans knew something they just didn't share, even after becoming Federation members (for example, transporter psychosis was only diagnosed in 2209).

Erickson in "Daedalus" quotes plenty of early transporter health concerns, but dismisses them as imaginary or metaphysical. We don't know if there was actual basis for the beliefs that Erickson dismissed. In theory, we could claim that sensible Vulcans refused to step into transporters in 2209 still, but there's no evidence either way.

Hmmmm... the only 'serendipity' on that point I could think of right now is that explosion in silent enemy. They got ten times the yield they expect because the 'phase modulators' were overloaded. To me that sounds like a thoroughly underbalanced design (the weapon easily could be 10 times more powerful, if only they had understood enough to balance all components of the system), which would not be the case had they integrated a complete weapon system that had seen centuries of experience by other species. That, or the blown out modules were actually part of the ship, not the weapons system, and the flaw was in interfacing those different systems correctly.

OTOH, building a weapon to alien specs but not getting the whole story from them would easily result in scaling problems as above. Were the gun developed by humans step by step, one would expect them to have tested it thoroughly before proceeding to starship-scale applications.

Are there any more examples where their weapons proved more powerful than they thought ?

Well, they didn't have that many weapons...

The photon torpedoes perform well at first in "The Expanse", but this doesn't surprise our heroes. And in the next engagement, they correctly predict the Klingons won't be as surprised as in the first one.

The only time photon torpedoes seem to provide a surprise is in "Yesterday's Enterprise" where a great many of them (Romulan ones, supposedly) open a rift in spacetime.

Timo Saloniemi