What bothered me, because I've always been interested in astronomy, was that we don't get a firm sense of a solar system that Bajor and the station are in. A couplemoons were talked about. any other planets? There's a sun, but just one? I don't think they show or talk about the star Bajor orbits.
The people living in Star Trek probably wouldn't be all that interested in astronomy, though. It's not as if being interested in geography is a requirement for living on Earth, either.
DS9's position is confusing. It started out in close orbit around Bajor. A little risky to have that big station so close in, I'd think, but what do I know.
The station's supposed mission was the planet. Why be anywhere else?
We never learned the exact logistics of the setup, but being within transporter range of the surface would help, not just with commuting, but with getting all that ore up to the refinery.
So in Emissary they send the station a bit out from Bajor, so it can snag the wormhole for Bajor. It's far enough away so Bajor isn't visible as a disc, I guess, though they never show it from the station. But, still in Bajor's solar system presumably. As far as another planet would be?
The travel times tell such a beautifully consistent story that I'm tempted to think somebody put thought into it. If a runabout takes 2 hours between the station and Bajor at one time, and 6 hours at another, both being trips involving hurrying (and this particular star system is one of those rare no-warp zones, perhaps because of that bad weather we saw in a couple of eps, plus the Denorios belt), then it makes sense to assume that the ratio of orbital radii is 1:2, and the trip is either the difference between the radii (closest) or the difference plus the full inner diameter (farthest) or then something between those. And while the Bajoran year appears a bit shorter than the Earth one, we probably still are talking about five-ish light minutes from the star to the planet, and thus ten-ish to the station.
Objects in space don't hold fixed positions generally, they're usually orbiting something. The wormhole wouldn't be orbiting anything. Is it "fixed" in relation to Bajor, which is of special importance to the Prophets? Then it in effect orbits their sun too. And DS9.
We know the wormhole mouth tags along the Bajoran star system as that system moves across the galaxy and the galaxy moves across the universe, so yes, something fixes it there. And this isn't dependent on whether the mouth is open or closed, although an open mouth also exerts a gravitational pull, as in "Destiny" et al. So yes, classic orbiting is assumed.
Or the Wormhole (and DS9) stays put while Bajor orbits, and Bajor is sometimes near, sometimes very far.
In that case, DS9 would have to utilize engines to hover above the local star. While longterm hovering is an established Trek capacity and a likely starship mode of operations, we don't hear total power loss having the consequence of "disrupting the orbit" of DS9 or "Aaah, we're falling into the sun!". So a freefall orbit is the likelier scenario.
My point? If I have one, it's that I like to know where things are. I just don't know this solar system we're supposed to be spending so much time in.
The fun thing is, it appears the Bajorans don't know or care, either. They're an ancient civilization, in the sense of having been ancient back when the very rocks that ultimately were used for making the pyramids were but a glimmer in God's eye. But they don't go out much. There's an Earthlike moon orbiting their home planet, and nobody lives there. Nobody has ever admitted to living there. And once the Occupation kicks a bit of spatial interest into the Bajorans, what do they do? They scuttle this moon for power.
There's one additional inhabited world there, planet number eight, with colonies as per "Past Prologue". Did the Cardassians force the Bajorans to that place, too? Certainly space travel plays an important role in the home planet's recovery from the Occupation, but that's for traffic coming from other star systems or from that other quadrant altogether; there just doesn't appear to be anything interesting in the Bajoran system.
Timo Saloniemi
