Is there in Truth no beauty - Introducing Betazoids?

[Captain Robert April]

What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven's sake mankind, it's only four light years away, you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that's your own lookout.

Apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all. Energize the demolition beams.

 

[Python Trek]

Well, you don't need a fast starship to get to Alpha Centauri.

Spoken like a true sf fan! The Centauri system is thousands of years away, at our current top speed.

 

[Warped9]

Well, you don't need a fast starship to get to Alpha Centauri.

Spoken like a true sf fan! The Centauri system is thousands of years away, at our current top speed.

That's only at our current top speed. If you can get to even just fifty percent of light than it's only eight years away, and that's not even taking time dilation into consideration which at .5c wouldn't be that much. But if you can do better than .5c then things start getting even better.

 

[Timo]

If Cochrane is remembered as "of Alpha Centauri", then the location must have played a really significant role in his life and/or in the history of mankind - otherwise, he'd be remembered solely by his not insignificant feat of inventing the warp drive (or discovering the space warp, or whatever).

We remember Lawrence of Arabia, but we don't speak of Einstein of Switzerland. And we only speak of Leonardo da Vinci because poor Len lacks a proper family name as per the shortcomings of the naming culture of his day, not because Vinci would have been an important location in the life of the genius.

It's hardly a case of people being at risk of confusing Zephram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri with Zephram Cochrane of Ottawa, either. The name is unusual enough that people will immediately connect it with the inventor of warp, leaving the hard-working lumberjack deep in the shadow.

Why would Alpha Centauri be a bigger deal than space warp in Cochrane's life? Perhaps it isn't - perhaps the two are the same thing. Cochrane would forever be remembered as the Alpha Centauri guy if it were his warp technology that allowed mankind to conquer Alpha Centauri. Especially if Cochrane himself was part of the early expeditions there, although he need not necessarily have been the very first.

The idea of Zeppy's parents going to AC on a slowboat first is IMHO much less satisfactory. True, it alleviates the small-universe syndrome: not everything great in mankind's history need have been invented on Earth by and Earthman. But it doesn't explain the "of Alpha Centauri" epiteth quite as elegantly as the version where his invention of warp makes him "of Alpha Centauri".

Doesn't mean mankind didn't go interstellar before warp, of course. We hear of many expeditions outside the Sol system before 2063, some manned, some unmanned. Technology of the time might well have been up to the task of whisking humans to nearby stars within just a decade or two. But it would be nicely in keeping with Cochrane's ST:FC character if he pulled a grandstand stunt of taking his second warp vessel to another star system; he'd be combining his riches-from-fame persona with his newly adopted humble-hero-of-mankind one there.

So, personally, I'm fully in favor of the idea that has been promoted after ST:FC: that Cochrane was born on Earth, opened up the universe for mankind, and possibly made further fame by personally going to Alpha Centauri, perhaps even living there for the rest of his (first) life. But I also like to think that things like the Charybdis or Terra Ten could have gone interstellar, coincidentally at a time when their achievements would be surpassed by Cochrane's and quickly forgotten.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Well, you don't need a fast starship to get to Alpha Centauri.

Spoken like a true sf fan! The Centauri system is thousands of years away, at our current top speed.

No, spoken like someone participating in an ongoing conversation whose topic is the fictional Star Trek universe in which warp drive exists. By the parameters of that universe, by the parameters established in T'Girl's post which I was responding to, a "fast starship" is one with warp capability beyond what humanity possessed between the Phoenix's inaugural flight in 2063 and the launch of Enterprise in 2151. I was saying that the "slow" warp technology possessed by humanity in its first nine decades as a warp-capable civilization was more than adequate to establish a colonial presence on Alpha Centauri without needing to rely on other civilizations' superior warp capability.

Our current technology in real life is an entirely separate conversation from the one underway in this thread. So I don't know why you'd think it was relevant here.

 

[Captain Robert April]

What warp speed mark was Archer and Keith Carradine's character trying to break?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Warp 2

 

[Captain Robert April]

That kind of puts a kink in things...

 

[Timo]

Not necessarily. It could have been the first time Henry Archer's engine went warp 2 - even though lesser engines had already been doing warp 3.5 for decades, and Rigelian rentals were quite capable of achieving warp 5.7.

Every journey starts with the first step. Getting the Archer engine to work at all would be a major challenge, similar to getting the first jet engines to work; those initially did much worse than the propeller piston engines of the time, but they had to be test-flown nevertheless.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Python Trek]

Well, you don't need a fast starship to get to Alpha Centauri.

Spoken like a true sf fan! The Centauri system is thousands of years away, at our current top speed.

No, spoken like someone participating in an ongoing conversation whose topic is the fictional Star Trek universe in which warp drive exists. By the parameters of that universe, by the parameters established in T'Girl's post which I was responding to, a "fast starship" is one with warp capability beyond what humanity possessed between the Phoenix's inaugural flight in 2063 and the launch of Enterprise in 2151. I was saying that the "slow" warp technology possessed by humanity in its first nine decades as a warp-capable civilization was more than adequate to establish a colonial presence on Alpha Centauri without needing to rely on other civilizations' superior warp capability.

Our current technology in real life is an entirely separate conversation from the one underway in this thread. So I don't know why you'd think it was relevant here.

My post was not meant to be nasty, but it seems that you have taken it as such. Don't know why.

 

[Christopher]

^No, I was simply clarifying your misunderstanding.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Not necessarily. It could have been the first time Henry Archer's engine went warp 2 - even though lesser engines had already been doing warp 3.5 for decades, and Rigelian rentals were quite capable of achieving warp 5.7.

Every journey starts with the first step. Getting the Archer engine to work at all would be a major challenge, similar to getting the first jet engines to work; those initially did much worse than the propeller piston engines of the time, but they had to be test-flown nevertheless.

Timo Saloniemi

You may have swerved into something. After all, there is that ringship Enterprise, which has now been retconned into being based on Vulcan technology, so they could've used something like that to get to Alpha Centauri.

 

[Timo]

I'm still sort of favoring the idea that Cochrane himself pulled a publicity stunt and flew to Alpha Centauri in a vessel not unlike his initial Phoenix. In fact, his Charles Lindbergh stunt flier could well have looked like this:

http://www.smikesworld.dk/smworld/startrek/ships/mixed/early-warp-uncertain.jpg

Important enough to attain this sort of fame and longevity:

http://www.smikesworld.dk/smworld/startrek/ships/mixed/early-warp-uncertain-screen.jpg

Such craft might have been common in the 2070s, a bit like the skies were full of flimsy lookalike contraptions in the 1920s. Getting to AC on one could be considered a foolhardy, even suicidal stunt, but it might have taken place at a rather respectable speed of warp 2'ish, 3'ish. The following decades would see engines evolve towards greater reliability, not towards higher top or cruise speed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

In one of the older novels, Cochrane did travel to AC as a proof of concept flight, the round trip took seven or eight months.

So he might be Cochrane of AC, like we have Scott of the North Pole, or Sir Edmund Hillary of Mt. Everest.

It isn't where he's from, it's where he went to (briefly).

 

[Timo]

...Although Trek planetology suggests that he may have found a much more habitable place there than Scott or Hillary did, and set up a nice little log cottage.

(BTW, I don't think anybody named Scott ever did anything remarkable relating to the North Pole...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

In one of the older novels, Cochrane did travel to AC as a proof of concept flight, the round trip took seven or eight months.

So he might be Cochrane of AC, like we have Scott of the North Pole, or Sir Edmund Hillary of Mt. Everest.

It isn't where he's from, it's where he went to (briefly).

But the same novel, Federation by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, also established that Cochrane later returned to Alpha Centauri to found a colony there, where he lived for some time.

 

[T'Girl]

errr ... South Pole.

 

[Timo]

...Sorry to nitpick, but your use of the doubly late Scott in this context caught my eye - why pick an unfortunate loser?

Which brings up the possibility that Cochrane of Alpha Centauri, too, is remembered for a spectacular failure rather than for success.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

^ That would make things interesting...

 

[Mr_Homn]

in first contact didn't ZC say he wanted to retire on some beach with lots of naked women?

well maybe that's exactly what he found in alpha centauri. that's why he retired there and that's the last place he lived for a couple decades before he disappeared.