Federation territory: Dense or Scattered?

[skep155]

I’m sure this topic surfaces from time to time, Its been mentioned in episodes that the Federation is spread across eight thousand light years. Obviously this raises some questions about how the Borg managed to just waltz through thousands of light years of Federation space without first meeting some stiff resistance, how Shinzon just planned on dashing across the border so he could destroy Earth, or how the Enterprise reached Q’onos in a matter of days. Obviously we don’t get to see a definitive map of the Federation so that the writers aren’t too restricted in what they can do. But for the sake of some light hearted speculation…

I’ve been toying with the idea that the Federation isn’t a densely packed region of symmetrical territory expanding out into space, whenever I see fans maps of the Trek universe this seems to be the most common way it is depicted. I think its more likely to be similar to the Empires of the colonial era, with the main worlds of the key races located in one core area, as Britain, France and Spain were in 19th century Europe. Like these Empires had territories scattered far and wide, the main Star Trek races have their territories spread diffusely over thousands of light years. So although you might have a member world seven thousand light years away from Earth, that new system itself might be a thousand light years away from the nearest Federation colony. So although sub space communication is regular, these various isolated colonies are charged with raising their own armies and fleets whilst recognising the authority of the Federation constitution. There’s also still a lot to explore within touching distance of Federation space because the Federation essentially consists of bubbles of territory spread throughout the cosmos.


Just my two cents, but I think its more consistent with what we’ve seen on TV than a symmetrical 8,000 light year wide lump of territory.

 

[Joshua Howard]

Assuming that Warp 9 is somewhere around 1,000x Light Speed, it would appear that it would take the Enterprise eight years, travelling at top speed, to cross the area.

In theory, to answer the first question at hand, it would seem that the Borg would have plenty of wiggle room in a region that large. Defense of a Federation Territory of that size seems - to me anyway - comparable to defending a planet at least twice the size of Earth using only wooden sailing ships.

No matter how you cut it, even in densely populated areas, habitation is probably much more scarce than we tend to imagine. In any case, it is said that an outpost or colony is "remote", that is probably an extreme understatement.

We know with reasonable certainty that the trip from Earth to Vulcan or the Klingon Home World is not an extremely long voyage. We don't know much about the exact distances, but I think that it is safe to assume that they are not 8K Light Years apart.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've kind of viewed it as both. I think it's fairly dense around the "core" Federation sectors, but as you get farther out it gets gets much more sparse--leading to "the only ship in the sector business" at times because there isn't much (if anything) out there in some regions.

I also don't view Earth as being the geographical center of the Federation, but merely its political one, so the borders of Federation space from Earth can vary from a few dozen light-years to perhaps a thousand light-years, depending on where you are, IMO.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Any interstellar state/empire/whatever will have an extremely scattered territory.
The inhabited star systems are infinitesimally small when compared to the vast interstellar distances.
Defense of such a territory will mean defense of the inhabited/valuable star systems and of used trvel routs.

Millions of ships will not be sufficient to defend the entire territory.

 

[Shawnster]

You may want to consider this website: http://www.stdimension.org/int/Cartography/federation.htm

This particular chapter of the above site (stdimensions.org) discusses this very topic. It looks at both the dense and scattered approach. One intriguing notion it suggests is the idea of several "core" regions to the Federation. Kinda the best of both worlds. Various cores scattered about within the area.

Make sure you look around. Be sure to check out the Map Archive containing both real maps of our galaxy and images from various Trek episodes.

Man, I sound like a salesman. LOL.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I always saw it a little of column A, little of column B sort of thing. Depends on where you are, really.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

Age of Sail analogy fits perfectly with the Federation. All the major worlds are like Europe, and the rest of the world is where the rest of the empires are. That would explain small fleets before DS9, they were all scattered before the war.

You also have to account for 3D space.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Assuming that Warp 9 is somewhere around 1,000x Light Speed, it would appear that it would take the Enterprise eight years, travelling at top speed, to cross the area.

The canon-validity of the following statements is, of course, debatable - but what isn't?

With the TOS Warp Scale, Warp 9 is 9x9x9c, or 729 times the speed of light. At that speed, it would take approximately 11 years to cross an 8,000 light year diameter area. It would take a little over 5 days and 6 hours to travel from Earth to Vulcan.

Using the TNG (post-Excelsior experiment?) Warp Scale, Warp 9 is 9x9x9x9x9c, or 59,049 times the speed of light. At that speed, it would take approximately 49 1/2 days to cross an 8,000 light year diameter Federation. It would take a little over an hour and a half to travel from Earth to Vulcan.

Now, the total BS I came up with :

Utilizing information gained by Section 31 from Crewman Daniels' quarters on Archer's Enterprise, the ships in the movie Star Trek (2009) are already using the 5th power warp scale from TNG. So Warp 8 (the nuConnie's max speed) would be 8x8x8x8x8c, or 32,768 times the speed of light. At this speed, it would take about 89 days to cross an 8,000 light year diameter area. It would take about 2 hours and 48 minutes to travel from Earth to Vulcan. HOWEVER - also utilizing tech from Daniels' quarters or from alien civilizations that the Federation has met that they otherwise wouldn't have if not for the temporal changes fostered by events aboard Archer's ship, and at the expense of a lot of power (probably harvested from the stars involved), a subspace corridor has been generated between Earth and Vulcan, allowing ships travelling through the corridor to arrive in less than 30 minutes.

 

[docrice]

Slightly off-topic, but did anyone ever come out with a revised version of the old Star Treks Maps booklet they released a long time ago? http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_Maps

 

[Myasishchev]

There's Geoffrey Mandel's beautiful Star Trek Star Charts. I highly recommend it.

It basically runs on the multiple cores model.

I more or less subscribe to that, although assume that Fed space is somehow contiguous, which is easier when you factor in a third dimension (the only area in which I think Star Charts is lacking, although for understandable reasons--oh, that, and I can't find Delta on the big map anywhere, and it puts the Mutara Nebula, which is almost conclusively quite near Earth, several hundred LY distant).

Then I assume that the backfield of Fed space is not easily accessible to the big AQ powers. The Antares Fleet Yards, some 500 LY away from Earth, are analogous to the Soviet transplant of manufacturing centers to Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk and elsewhere, quite distant (and hence quite safe) from the German invaders.

 

[nx1701g]

Slightly off-topic, but did anyone ever come out with a revised version of the old Star Treks Maps booklet they released a long time ago? http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_Maps

Star Trek Starcharts was released in 2002.

 

[Timo]

oh, that, and I can't find Delta on the big map anywhere

A couple of places from the list on the first foldout page never made it to the actual maps - and a couple of those places probably shouldn't be on the list to begin with, such as Klaestron IV, a well-established UFP enemy.

and it puts the Mutara Nebula, which is almost conclusively quite near Earth, several hundred LY distant.

Because Mandel wanted to think that Ceti Alpha was Alpha Ceti. Which I don't believe, because of the semantic differences and because I prefer a distance of about 150 ly. After all, this is the minimum distance that a sublight vessel would span in a time interval that its occupants would consider "200 years", that is, less than 250 years. Objectively, Khan traveled for 270 years - but if he were doing 0.45 times lightspeed, this would be shortened to less than 250, and would get him to about 150 ly away from Earth.

My vote goes for "scattered", BTW. One good argument for that is that even uncloaked enemies so often manage to penetrate all the way to the very core of the UFP unnoticed, even though a single starship supposedly can monitor enemy movements across half a sector. This suggests that there's way too much border surface to be patrolled even by thousands of starships (and Starfleet has given up in disgust the effort of building a sufficient number of ships, even though this would probably be technologically viable), and that there are nice "fjords" along which opponents can proceed to the vicinity of UFP's tender innards without yet intruding into UFP territory...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[STR]

I think it's easier to explain the size of the Federation, as well as numerous other inconsistencies, by speeding up warp speed. The TOS-consensus of C=WF^3 is way too slow, even for that series. There's another formula out there (made for the "TNG scale" that's basically C=WF^(3+M), where M is essentially magic. C=WF^5 is a little too fast, so C=WF^4 seems a happy medium. That puts W9.0 at 6561c, which means you can get to Alpha Centauri in a ENT era Warp 2 freighter in 3 months. You can span the Fed (quoted at 9000 ly across) in a year at W9.6.

You'd have to ignore Voyager, but I do that anyway.

 

[Arpy]

I think they tend to make it dense (2D Horatio Hornblower navy) whereas in reality it'd be very scattered. For myself I think of it as a mixture of both. Wherever they can set up vast gravitic sensor nets to better counter the possibility of cloaked invasion, they do, and they're more vast in the more populated systems and sectors.

One thing that's forgotten or glossed over though is how distant worlds are from one another and how much territory we're really talking about. It's not just a straight line from world A to B but countless light-years surrounding them...10 light years cubed alone is about...5,878,499,814,186.5 miles to a light year...(5,878,499,814,186.5 x 10) x (5,878,499,814,186.5 x 10) x (5,878,499,814,186.5 x 10)... 20.3 septendecillion square miles - 2.03141908 x 10 to the 41st, 20,314,190,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

...As I write this I wonder if the gravitic sensor nets around Federation worlds/stations/territory don't even touch each other but create vast halos around systems giving fleets therein more time to mobilize.

But my main point is that for every one naturally habitable, terraformed, bio-domed, or otherwise populated world Federation citizens live on (including worlds that though they host Federation citizens may not immediately host humans - i.e. a Benzite world where humans would need special breathing apparatus to survive) there are, I imagine, countless thousands of planets, planetoids, asteroids, etc that are completely devoid of anything. Countless empty solar systems with nothing but a Federation buoy. Not even the tiniest smattering of the most simple bacteria under a dry rock for mind-boggling light-years. That's just how far apart life naturally evolves in the probably overpopulated Trek universe. ...I say "probably" b/c some form of life may exist in anything from most to almost none of the solar systems of the galaxy for all I know.

So I don't think it's really necessary to set up a giant 8,000 lightyears cubed net. That'd be 10.4 vigintillion square miles - 1.04008657x10 to the 50th, 10,400,865,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Where I got 5,878,499,814,186.5:
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/search.aspx?q=how+many+miles+in+a+light+year
And the names of large numbers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

On the other hand, I'm reminded of this commercial with Jessica Simpson...
http://idealistpropaganda.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-totally-dont-know-what-that-means-but.html
...I totally don't know how big a 10.4 vigintillion square mile gravitic sensor net is, "but ah wone it'"