Nothing about Cochrane's first warp flight makes sense.

[The Old Mixer]

"This is a court of the year 2079, by which time more 'rapid progress' had caused all United Earth nonsense to be abolished."
--Q, "Encounter at Farpoint"

This suggests two things relevant to this discussion: (1) There was a version of the United Earth that existed in the mid-21st century, which was historically considered to have been toothless and at least temporarily abandoned (which evokes the image of the League of Nations); (2) Earth was still going through serious post-atomic growing pains 15 years after first contact.

 

[Ithekro]

Perhaps there was some sort of post-First Contact problem by 2079, a year that has courts with drug controlled soldiers, and the year the flag from the American ship encountered in The Royale would have either changed or been abolished.

 

[Timo]

"This is a court of the year 2079, by which time more 'rapid progress' had caused all United Earth nonsense to be abolished."
--Q, "Encounter at Farpoint"

Significantly, Q is countering Picard's appeal to the rules of something called the New United Nations. So the suggestion might actually be that (1) there was development from League of Nations through United Nations and then New United Nations (and possible other steps) to an ultimate United Earth (2) but with significant hiccups and backpedaling. The actual UE might not have existed in any form prior to 2079 yet - the developments of 2079 are merely a major interruption in the arc that will eventually lead to the UE, and Q is referring to that interruption in terms of the eventual outcome.

This presupposes that the UE in UESPA as of 2067 was unrelated to the eventual political hegemony. That isn't a demanding supposition, as "united earth" is a catchy name for just about anything, from space probe agencies to global cupcake vendors...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[WarpFactorZ]

"United Earth" could mean that the entire Earth is united, in the same way that "United Nations" means all nations are united. That is: they aren't all united.

In that vein, the United Earth Space Probe Agency could be something along the lines of European Space Agency -- not all of Europe is part of that group. Similarly, the coalition in the United Nations peacekeeping force does not represent all countries in the world.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Perhaps there was some sort of post-First Contact problem by 2079, a year that has courts with drug controlled soldiers, and the year the flag from the American ship encountered in The Royale would have either changed or been abolished.

That 2079 scene might not have taken place in America. So the USA can still exist, yet scenes like that can also occur. (It was probably an ECON court, anyway.)

 

[enterprisecvn65]

The

Yes but a movie about Bob the guy who design bolt PX-373 is dull. Humans focus on the leader...mostly cause humans suck.

Rickover, Wrights, headed up a project and personally were part of the launch team. Cochrane's written in that ilk.

As to complexity - you can never tell. Most folks were assured that the airplane was a project that could not be done in a barn. Google search started out in a garage. Cochrane started in a missile tube. Meh - works for me.

Yeah obviously a film about the guy who bolts plates onto a hull is going to suck.

The guy saying Rickover could be a good analogy to Cochrane was nuts. Rickover was a military officer who literally had the resources of the richest nation on earth at the time at his disposal to accomplish his goal, and even then it was hit and miss at times.

Nothing suggest Cochrane had anywhere near that amount of resources available for what would be a far more complex development.

Also your Google Search comparison is way off. A very basic and primitive form of what would would eventually become google search started on a garage. It took countess people and money to transform it into anything resembling what we know to be google today.

It's not like Cochrane made some kind of step gradual towards what would become light speed travel in a missile tube and then was able to use that to make it a reality when he had more resources available. He literally designed and built such a craft in, more or less, one fell swoop. Launched it and hit his goal the first time. They weren't even wearing pressure suits for God sakes........

The idea he could pull off something like this in the conditions he did is about as plausible as if the Wright Brothers made their first flight, went back to their shop and did some tinkering, and the next week were blasting around the skies of Kitty Hawk in an SR-71 hitting Mach 3.

 

[Ithekro]

Consider that after Cochrane, it took the humans about 80 years to break past warp 2 to warp 3. After that they managed warp 5 in a decade. So for say two, nearly three generations, human spaceships with Cochrane based warp drives could go between light speed and maybe eight times the speed of light. Light speed, while really fast, is just barely practical for interstellar travel. Warp 2, for all its speed, is still many months to years between star systems. Early ships could maybe go twice the speed of light. So a little over two years to the nearest star system.

Yet a warp drive like that would, in theory, make interplanetary travel much easier...if you could manage to avoid killing yourself by running into grains of sand at light speed. Earth to Mars in minutes rather than days, weeks, or months. Pluto and back within two hours.

 

[Timo]

"United Earth" could mean that the entire Earth is united, in the same way that "United Nations" means all nations are united.

Or, in the context of UESPA at least, it could be an outright lie. Nothing wrong with those - say, Pan Am wasn't "pan-American" in any real sense, regardless of whether we talk about the Americas, just North America, or merely the United States of America.

Indeed, "United States of America" doesn't cover much of America, come to think of it. Perhaps "Earth" has more specific meanings than just "this big ball in the sky / beneath our feet" in these contexts, too?

That 2079 scene might not have taken place in America.

If anything, the regalia look a bit British. Beyond that, all we can say is that both the judge, the rabble and the various workers of the court appear generic Caucasian, save for those Asiatic gong-players ("trained monkeys"/downtrodden slaves?).

It was probably an ECON court, anyway.

Why?

Nothing suggest Cochrane had anywhere near that amount of resources available for what would be a far more complex development.

Except, of course, the fact that the development was a splendid success.

He literally designed and built such a craft in, more or less, one fell swoop. Launched it and hit his goal the first time.

Based on what?

Nothing in the movie says "Cochrane did it all alone" or "Cochrane did it in a day, between drinks". The exact opposite is explicitly stated: this is a decades-long project that has stalled because of the war. Nothing wrong with that.

Consider that after Cochrane, it took the humans about 80 years to break past warp 2 to warp 3.

Well, it took that long for Henry Archer's engine to break past warp 2 to warp 3. Doesn't mean that Earth didn't possess (or at least rent) plenty of Rigelian warp 4 spacecraft (but trying to reverse engineer the engine would have meant the Rigelians would have incinerated Earth), or that some other team didn't already operate indigenous warp 3 hardware (with no potential for ever reaching warp 5, the real goal of Archer's team).

Warp 2, for all its speed, is still many months to years between star systems.

All we know is that it is months to years between systems of interest to merchants. It might take a warp two spaceship just two days to get from here to Alpha Centauri, though. In TOS, warp two sounds like a fairly viable interstellar speed that Kirk himself often uses, at least for parts of his interstellar hops.

Yet a warp drive like that would, in theory, make interplanetary travel much easier...if you could manage to avoid killing yourself by running into grains of sand at light speed. Earth to Mars in minutes rather than days, weeks, or months. Pluto and back within two hours.

"Demons"/"Terra Prime" shows Earth operating insystem mining platforms that have just this type of warp drive. We probably shouldn't assume it was a secretly installed superpower, but rather a routine and vital system for such rigs in general.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Consider that after Cochrane, it took the humans about 80 years to break past warp 2 to warp 3.

Well, it took that long for Henry Archer's engine to break past warp 2 to warp 3. Doesn't mean that Earth didn't possess (or at least rent) plenty of Rigelian warp 4 spacecraft (but trying to reverse engineer the engine would have meant the Rigelians would have incinerated Earth), or that some other team didn't already operate indigenous warp 3 hardware (with no potential for ever reaching warp 5, the real goal of Archer's team).

Daddy Archer's team having a new kind of goal more or less matches my thoughts on Cochrane's initial FTL success being a more limited form of the technology. The "subspace assisted impulse" system which Cochrane likely used must have had its limits after all, otherwise no-one would have bothered with all that dangerous mucking about with antimatter. Cary L Brown put a theoretical limit of around 75(c) but whatever the actual limitations those FTL pioneers found, it is clear that the future lay in the harnessing of the energy from a M/AM reactor.

 

[T'Girl]

The exact opposite is explicitly stated: this is a decades-long project that has stalled because of the war. Nothing wrong with that.

Is this supposition on your part Timo, or a part of canon that I've forgotten? I don't recall any specific timeline as being mentioned on screen.

Well, it took that long for Henry Archer's engine to break past warp 2 to warp 3. Doesn't mean that Earth didn't possess (or at least rent) plenty of Rigelian warp 4 spacecraft

There could have been others on Earth also attempting to make a warp drive engine concurrent with Cochrane's effort. That "ring ship" Enterprise came from someone.

That 2079 scene might not have taken place in America. So the USA can still exist, yet scenes like that can also occur. (It was probably an ECON court, anyway.)

The "post-atomic horror" might have been a local phenomenon in a limited number of locations on Earth, and not a planet wide occurance.

As for it being ECON court, there the on going difficulty that we really don't know what was meant by "ECON."

"United Earth" could mean that the entire Earth is united, in the same way that "United Nations" means all nations are united. That is: they aren't all united.

In order to be a Federation Member you have to have some form of "world government," nothing says that government actually has to work.

 

[Timo]

There is no "specific timeline", but there is an explicit reference to it taking Lily and Zeppy X time to get the titanium for the crew pod. Seems I misheard/-remembered, though - it's just six months, not a decade.

all that dangerous mucking about with antimatter

FWIW, Cochrane's engine had something they called "intermix". Might have been anything, even chemical fuels, but it's quite possible the Phoenix already ran on antimatter. For all we know, it was ubiquitous in the early 21st century already.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Well, the knowledge of antimatter was certainly well developed enough to be included on the "Friendship One" probe just 4 years after the flight of The Phoenix

The little bits of information we have about intrastellar travel in Star Trek's early 21st century do suggest significantly advanced engines compared to what we have today. There's the advances in 2018 which make stasis pods obsolete and this tech is confirmed in VOY'S One Small Step where the astronauts stranded on Mars only had to wait a few weeks for rescue. There also the engines which Cochrane much have fitted to the Titan missile in order to (a) achieve orbit and (b) not incinerate the villagers which were standing nearby.

These earlier forms of propulsion may or may not have used antimatter, but I suspect not - an enormous amount of effort is required to produce (not to mention contain) the stuff and with the advent of reliable fusion engines that require far safer normal matter, why not stick to that?

 

[Timo]

There also the engines which Cochrane much have fitted to the Titan missile in order to (a) achieve orbit and (b) not incinerate the villagers which were standing nearby.

Or then that was a modern missile, with the up-to-date engines courtesy of USAF. Why would the military keep antiquated weapons in those silos, which in themselves appeared maintained rather than completely abandoned?

If Earth spaceflight was advanced enough at the time to involve crewed missions to the outer planets, weekend trips to Mars, and at least two cases of spacecraft going interstellar as an afterthought, against original design intent (Botany Bay of "Space Seed" and Terra 10 of "The Terratin Incident"), then USAF would want to have weapons to match - missiles that can spurt from Montana to beyond the Moon in no time flat to shoot down enemy space cruisers or whatnot.

an enormous amount of effort is required to produce (not to mention contain) the stuff...

...Today. In Star Trek, they may have found a trick for it, making it much more convenient than fusion.

Certain staple Trek technologies such as shields would make the containment issue rather trivial. And once these starships have this antimatter, they make no effort at conserving it, from ENT on at least - suggesting it's not all that expensive or crucial after all. We can then speculate on the placement of the watershed, on whether cheap antimatter was introduced in 2018 or 2067 or perhaps 2131.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

If it was a modern missile, why would it have been left unguarded and available to any passing drunk who wished to tinker with it? There's also Picard's statement that "this used to be a nuclear missile" which (while it can be reinterpreted to please) adds weight to the notion that this was an original, unaltered Titan missile.

Your point about antimatter being ubiquitous from 2151 onwards is well made however, indeed, it is the one thing that starships NEVER run short of, making it more common than (absurdly) deuterium!!! The natural conclusion is that starships do generate their own antimatter, perhaps very inefficiently (as per the Voyager technical manual, PDF page 17) or perhaps more routinely, as postulated in CLB's setup.

 

[Timo]

If it was a modern missile, why would it have been left unguarded and available to any passing drunk who wished to tinker with it?

Because of WWIII, presumably. Either there no longer was a USAF to care about it, or the owners had sold or lent Cochrane the access in order to benefit from it directly or indirectly. Both alternatives allow for the logical overall scenario where Cochrane was working for the US government in an Air Force project originally.

It's actually less plausible that Cochrane could take over former military hardware without permission, be it 1970s state of the art or 2050s. And if he does get permission, he should also get access to something he can use as is - otherwise he'd build the warp engine on top of a commercial 2050s spacecraft abandoned in some Kentucky garage or Oregon runway.

making it more common than (absurdly) deuterium!!!

Well, the tech manual backstory indeed is that they make antimatter out of deuterium. The TNG manual already postulates a highly energy-efficient process (for every ten watts pumped into the process, you get one watt's worth of antimatter) of flipping matter into equivalent antimatter, with the energy in starship applications coming from whatever source is available - say, deuterium fusion.

Ramscoops are never actually seen or heard replenishing a ship's fuel, so we might postulate that they can't do that in deep space. Too little hydrogen there, so the scoops only work in a path-clearing mode. But the starship can dip into a gas giant every now and then to replenish from a rich source. And if the ship is already running on fumes and then has bad luck with three or four potential refueling points in a row, something like "Demon" can actually happen.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

I can see post WWW that missle being available due to the lack of USAF support in that area. I suppose he could have bought it from elsewhere and had it shipped to his location(where there was a used silo)
As for antimatter I thought his ship used fusion for energy, but with enough money and time he could have bought some antimatter and had it sent to his location.

 

[Cicero]

Perhaps there was some sort of post-First Contact problem by 2079, a year that has courts with drug controlled soldiers, and the year the flag from the American ship encountered in The Royale would have either changed or been abolished.

That 2079 scene might not have taken place in America. So the USA can still exist, yet scenes like that can also occur. (It was probably an ECON court, anyway.)

The U.S. was around in some form. In "Desert Crossing," Hoshi described human-vulcan first contact as "An alien species makes contact with the United States," and notes, "it could have made a lot of other countries nervous."

 

[Grendelsbayne]

The

Yeah obviously a film about the guy who bolts plates onto a hull is going to suck.

The guy saying Rickover could be a good analogy to Cochrane was nuts. Rickover was a military officer who literally had the resources of the richest nation on earth at the time at his disposal to accomplish his goal, and even then it was hit and miss at times.

Nothing suggest Cochrane had anywhere near that amount of resources available for what would be a far more complex development.

Also your Google Search comparison is way off. A very basic and primitive form of what would would eventually become google search started on a garage. It took countess people and money to transform it into anything resembling what we know to be google today.

It's not like Cochrane made some kind of step gradual towards what would become light speed travel in a missile tube and then was able to use that to make it a reality when he had more resources available. He literally designed and built such a craft in, more or less, one fell swoop. Launched it and hit his goal the first time. They weren't even wearing pressure suits for God sakes........

The idea he could pull off something like this in the conditions he did is about as plausible as if the Wright Brothers made their first flight, went back to their shop and did some tinkering, and the next week were blasting around the skies of Kitty Hawk in an SR-71 hitting Mach 3.

A lot of people here seem to be implying that the Phoenix was some sort of fully functional super advanced spaceship. All I remember it doing was warping a few seconds from really close to earth to a bit farther away from earth. Seems to me like a very clear analogy to the Wright Brothers flying a few hundred feet as a proof of concept rather than a fully successful and totally dependable end product.

 

[Timo]

Exactly. It's just that people get easily confused by the fact that there is rocket science involved.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

A lot of people here seem to be implying that the Phoenix was some sort of fully functional super advanced spaceship. All I remember it doing was warping a few seconds from really close to earth to a bit farther away from earth. Seems to me like a very clear analogy to the Wright Brothers flying a few hundred feet as a proof of concept rather than a fully successful and totally dependable end product.

I Always thought the Phoenix was a proof of concept vessel.