Computer said:
Nebusj said:
Do you know what the odds are the Veridians would ever locate the wreckage, or the ditch, or particularly Kirk's body? Planets are really, really, really, really big. Really.
If Mars were like earth we would be there in a heartbeat. It's only a matter of time before the Veridians develop the technology to travel one planet over. If it had crashed in the ocean (which would have been kinda cool) and sunk then I can see where it may never be found but any 21st century human satellite would be able to detect something like that.
"Hey whats that gigantic shiny object in the middle of the forest down there?"
Of course, the Veridians are explicitly pre-industrial. Before they could possibly investigate, they'll need to industrialize, and they'll need to develop a society rich enough that it can send a spaceship to another planet in the system. That will be at least several centuries by any reasonable reckoning. We're told the population of Veridian is about 230 million people; for comparison, that was roughly the Earth's population about a thousand years ago. Assuming Earth is not particularly outstanding in this regard, then, that's a
thousand years before the Veridians are likely to have any kind of probe going to the sister planet.
Some of that shine is going to wear down in those 365,250 days before the first landing.
In fact, there's going to be a good bit of dirt that piles up on the saucer, assuming that the wind, rain, falling trees, every natural disaster which can happen doesn't smash what's there. Given that this starship allegedly needs a structural integrity field to hold itself together under most every circumstance, and that this field is gone, I'm betting on ``barely recognizable ruins'' pretty quick.
That it's in a forest makes it rather likely that it's going to disappear under plant growth. Consider the whole cities of cultures such as the Mayans and Incas and Angkor and on and on which simply disappeared under the onrush of ordinary plant life.
Oh, and, how big is the saucer? Let's say it's about the size of a baseball stadium. It's one spot on the entire planet. The chance that they will land anywhere near that spot is roughly ... well ... let's say ``near that spot'' is ten acres. Assuming Veridian is like Earth, there are about 36,800,000,000 acres of land. So the chance of any given landing coming ``near that spot'' is approximately one in
four billion. Or put another way, you could drop something around two billion probes before you'd have a fifty-fifty chance of being within ten acres of the crash site.
Yes, yes, of course, the Veridians will quickly overrun the planet and till every spot of arable land. Of course, on Earth, with ten thousand years of development along these lines, we've got to only about a third of the arable land under development. So again assuming Earth isn't outrageously different from all other societies ever, that means we've got only something like eleven thousand years before the Veridians will have a fifty-fifty shot of having whatever plot of land the saucer is on under cultivation.
Incidentally, if they do find something, what will they make of it? Probably what they'll find is some polymer or alloy that can't be made through known geologic or chemical processes because it was synthesized instead. Almost certainly any markings will have been worn off by the ten or more centuries passing, after all; and any smoothness to the surface will be chopped up by roots, rocks, and mudslides.
It will require quite some determination to conclude that a chunk of transparent aluminum or whatever you want it to be was made by alien manufacture rather than what most scientists would bet on, a natural process we haven't identified yet but can with study. There are any number of examples of weird materials found on Earth which took ages to explain through natural processes; it's conceivable some of them were alien technology, but no one seriously advances it even for materials we don't have good explanations of yet.
I'm willing to bet that in all likelihood, before they find anything which could be identified as alien, they will have knowledge of alien cultures already and by their own efforts.
Any estimate of the cost of removing what's left of the hull versus the benefits has to be made with that in mind: there's a tiny chance the Veridians will ever find it, and not much of a chance that even if the find it it will be recognizable, and a good chance that if they do find and recognize it as alien that they'll already know there's aliens all over the place.
Unless the Nexus ribbon hits them on the next go-round, of course. Or hangers-on set up camp around Veridian waiting for the next pass and mess up their lifestyle. 'Course, they'll be around whatever is taken from the saucer.
