Distances and Speeds in TOS

[DSG2k]

Thanks It is great that it wasn't just TOS that had speeds faster than stated in a tech manual.

Oh, don't get me started. It seems to me the majority of stated speeds blow the doors off the TNG:TM.

(Off-topic, but even ST:Enterprise seems to suggest a cruising velocity of 3 ly/day or so, with high warp being around 4 ly/day (~1500c, or WF9 per Okuda).)

Hey, on some level everyone always knew you gotta have that effect of the stars streaking by.

Alas, with the possible exception of the original TOS effect, the 'warp stars' are just too fast, just like the moving 'impulse stars'. Download Celestia, use manual flight, turn up the speed to eleventy, and you'll get a fair sense of it. Celestia's good for planetary approach/departure, too.

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[DEWLine]

I am really hoping that Gaia Sky tops Celestia at some point for this stuff.

https://t.co/lK1E3atRMK
https://twitter.com/GaiaSky_Dev

 

[blssdwlf]

If you have a VR headset, Space Engine and Universe Sandbox are other ways to get the sensation of warp travel

 

[publiusr]

Try a flight to Gliese 710..a Star headed towards our solar system in real life. I’d like to see that one.

 

[CaptChris42]

One other thing: I did always feel like FASA made its maps based off of ST Maps, although I admit I never delved into the scale as much as Falconer has obviously done. The Franz Joseph technical manual only added to the confusion on that front, as well, but that is so old that for the most part, only complete Trek-nerds or grogs like me even know what it is, much less reference it without looking at it. Like I mentioned in a previous post, my friends and I just took the FASA stuff as it was presented and made our games fit the framework.

As much as a traditionalist as I have always been about the old cubed-power warp scale, there are some definite arguments to be made for tweaking it. Fifth-power is a good first step. It makes Warp 2 a full four times faster than cube-scale (32c versus 8c), meaning the difference between about 6 weeks and 6 months for travel between just Earth and Alpha Centauri. It makes all the initial Federation members a lot more 'neighborly' as well in terms of travel times.

One thing that never jibed for me about ANY of the maps was how the Romulan and Klingon empires were placed roughly next to each other, roughly the same distance from the central UFP. According to older canon (pre-TNG), official first contact with the Klingons wasn't until the first decade of the 23rd Century, a half-century or more after the war with the Romulans. So I think the Klingon Empire should have been placed 'farther back' on the map than the Romulan Empire, although it would be totally possible for them to share a partial border, or at least be in relative proximity enough for prior contact and their own conflicts.

From what I know, Franz Joseph's map was the first, with a massive scale involved. Starfleet Battles roughly adapted it, in the mid to late 1970s.
In 1980 Star Trek Maps adapted it again, but scaled it down considerably, and placed worlds like Ardana, Tiburon, Catulla and others (which are still where they are today)
FASA took this map and adjusted it further, scaling it down I believe, a little, but keeping some stars the same.
And Star Charts kept some details, but did largely their own thing - keeping Catulla, Ardana, Neural, Tiburon and others where the had been placed by Mandel, in 1980.
Adjusted parallax data has led to a bunch of inconsistency in some placements, plus I believe it may use an inverted Z-axis perspective, based on a different horizon correspondence? So may look 'inverted' at times.

That still does not explain some layout oddities, though. Like Adhara, Canopus and Catulla, relative to Spica and Regulus.

 

[Falconer]

Yeah, I detailed the maps and scales from Franz Joseph, Starfleet Battles, Star Trek Maps, and FASA in the first post, and continued to compare and combine and analyze them throughout the thread. I haven’t tackled Star Charts because it falls far afield from everything else I’m interested in (60s-70s-80s), and made too many fundamental changes to where it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to try to make it mesh.

 

[publiusr]

One thing to try perhaps…early writers tried to put habitable worlds around notable stars seen in the night sky..stars themselves unlikely to be friendly to life.

But if these star-names are simply names of regions…

 

[CaptChris42]

Yeah, I detailed the maps and scales from Franz Joseph, Starfleet Battles, Star Trek Maps, and FASA in the first post, and continued to compare and combine and analyze them throughout the thread. I haven’t tackled Star Charts because it falls far afield from everything else I’m interested in (60s-70s-80s), and made too many fundamental changes to where it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to try to make it mesh.

Well, all maps have their problems. ST Maps uses cardinal stars, but is very uneven on their placements (like Spica to Regulus, to Rigel and Cerberus) even with sizable changes to Hipparchus data since (like with Deneb) It also has the little known 60 degree tilt issue (of using Earth's horizontal plane instead of the galactic plane, as a cornerstone of it's coordinates) And has oddities like putting Deneva up 'high' maybe as a result.

So there is no fully perfect solution. And Gene Roddenberry likely threw out a lot of old TOS assumptions as TNG began, and developed. And the warp scale started to be solidified, too, with mention of 39 C figures and 1500, and 2300 plus and so on, implied in dialogue.

I feel Star Charts adapts fairly well, but was made largely due to DS9 presenting the 'core' Federation as quite small, and with only two hundred light years from DS9 and Station K-7 (from Ursa Major to about Eridanus somewhere, it seems, by implication) Early in TNG though, an 8,000 to 10,000 LY wide Federation did seem posited in behind the scenes references. Clearly ideas were evolving as the show developed - and franchise, too.

So - as I see it: the Federation is between 400 to 900 or so LY wide on AVERAGE, has about a thousand worlds in TOS (from minor outposts and mining colonies to full settlements) and got up to 7.3 times bigger by Nemesis.

Then occupies maybe 2250 sectors of 400 square and 8000 cubic light years (each with an average of 3.25 settled planets) and is set between major stars like Spica, Betelgeuse, Polaris, Canopus, and Alnitak. The 'core' of the Federation is 100 to 200 light years across, squeezed between multiple powers.

The Romulan border is 60 to 100 light years from Earth on average (which tracks with low warp era likely speeds and movements); the Klingon border is 90 to 120 light years away at the closest, beyond Regulus. Cardassians are between 100 to 200 light years from the Klingon border, which stretches itself at 200 to maybe even 500 light years tall (between Mu Leonis and Omega Fornacis) and the Tholians and Breen are respectively 'below' and 'above' the galactic plane in the further distance.

The Federation has been to Antares. It has been to Alnitak, Polaris, Mintaka, and nearly Sheliak. It has explored to Theta Pictoris (512 ly away) and maybe Avior. Few people live out there, though. Warp corridors do exist allowing substantially boosted speeds (like between Earth, Beta Rigel and Qo'nos, or from Ardana to Merak, or maybe down to Cestus and to Alpha Ceti) and these are well travelled, policed and guarded.

The Federation has also been to at least two 'Denebs' one of which may be Alpha Cygni. There is also two Rigels, and maybe two Antares, just possibly (Enterprise's pilot made the first of those a pretty much certainty) And some longer range trips can be feasible across 'grids' and quadrants (of one size or another) on occasion... with careful planning.

To me that fits 90 percent or so of the evidence. Newer shows may change that, but seem to be adopting the Mandel and Nemecek layouts going forward. After that, outliers may have to remain outliers.

As I'm not sure Roddenberry actually ever intended Federation ships, nor worlds, to routinely be thousands of light years apart. In the end though - each, as need be, to their own!

 

[Falconer]

Maybe start a new thread?