Nothing about Cochrane's first warp flight makes sense.

[MacLeod]

Was he a theoretical physicist? Was he an applied engineer or project manager?


Why would an unproven technology be tried with a manned vessel first?!

What does being a physicist/engineer etc.. have to do with it. Going back to the 18th century for example John Harrison was a carpenter by trade yet he ivented the marine chronometer which could accuratly keep track of time enough for a ships longitude to be plotted accuratly.

Whilst we might consider it foolhardly to try an unproven technology with a manned mission, some foolhardy people might skip ahead to that step. One has to consider the time period as well, required parts might not be that easy to come by.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

We might think that now. Give us another 40 years and check again.

Are you seriously saying that we might be significantly closer to traveling at the speed of light in 40 years than we are now?

I hate to burst your bubble but a majority of scientists who study this kind of thing don't believe that it will EVER be possibly for humans to travel at that speed and I seriously doubt that you could find even ONE qualified expert that would say it will happen in 40 years.

Here's a little perspective:

The fastest straight airplane ever built, the SR-71, could do about 2,200 MPH. It was first flew in 1964

The fastest a human has traveled in a strictly earth bound vehicle is 4,500 MPH in the X-15 rocket plane. That first flew in 1959.

The fastest speed a human has ever achieved is slightly under 25,000 MPH on one of the Apollo missions in 1969.

The fastest speed any man made object has ever achieved is the Helios space probe which hit about 157,000 MPH in 1976.

So the fastest plane record was achieved in a plane that first flew 51 years ago.

The fastest earth vehicle record was in a craft that flew 56 years ago.

The fastest total speed record for a human has stood for 46 years.

The fastest speed for any man made object has stood for 39 years.

It would take a breakthrough that would be immensely greater than anything man has ever achieved to come anywhere the speed of light. Given all the technological advances of the past 30 years, the fact these 4 speed records are still unbroken speaks volumes about how much of a wall we've hit in attempts to break new speed barriers.

Also the helios craft topped out at 157,000 mph. Light travels at 186,000 miles A SECOND. So in the time the Helios covered it's distance in an hour, a ray of light had traveled 669,600,000 miles.

So in 40 years we would have to come up with a way to create a craft that would be 42,639 times faster than anything we've done.

Given the fact we haven't created a faster plane in over 50 years than the SR-71.....the chances of making a craft that much faster than what currently exists are basically zero.

If the first person who built a floating boat was able to parlay that into building a modern nuclear powered aircraft carrier in a year.....that accomplishment would still pale by comparison to the challenge of man building a faster than light craft 40 years from now. And I say that with total seriousness.

I'm sure amazing things will be created in the next 40 years, but light speed travel or anything close won't be one of them. The odds are also greatly against it ever happening at all.

Given that, the Earth of Star Trek's universe was able to launch a ship like the Botany Bay, with fully functioning cryogenic facilities, into deep space in 1996 should illustrate the technological differences between the real world and this fictional world. The technological capabilities of Earth in Chochrane's time could therefore be adequate to explain warp drive being invented then.

TL;DR - you can't wholly apply real-world technical achievements to Star Trek's.

I wasn't referring to ST though. The way the post was written seemed to indicate that IRL in 40 years we may very well be a lot closer to light speed travel.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

What does being a physicist/engineer etc.. have to do with it. Going back to the 18th century for example John Harrison was a carpenter by trade yet he ivented the marine chronometer which could accuratly keep track of time enough for a ships longitude to be plotted accuratly.

Because understanding the intricacies of a modified theory of relativity, enough so to actually build a functioning FTL drive, requires way more knowledge than your average "carpenter."

The only way he isn't one of the above is if he was a freakishly intelligent, independently wealthy genius who did this for fun (a.k.a. an amateur theoretical physicist). Or, he was a cog in the greater machinery of this project before WWIII, and inherited the works by default after everyone else was vaporized. Dollar signs may have always been his motivation, and then became everything when he realized he was "in charge." But again, the question is: where do the dollars come from in a post-apocalyptic horror?

 

[enterprisecvn65]

The

It is totally implausible that a couple guys working in a small shop could realize and then personally test fly a totally new form of transportation.

Again.

Like they did on December 17 1903.

Hate to point out the slight gap in the amount of technology, materials and working conditions one would have to have access to in order to build a faster than light spacecraft vs a vehicle that flew a few hundred feet powered.

I could counter your Wright Brothers example that in order to create the first nuclear powered vessel, the USS Nautilus, it took the efforts of thousands of men to design and build it. It took several years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money and had to use the most advanced materials and facilities at the time in order for it to be done.

Creating a faster than light ship would make building the Nautilus look like Legos by comparison. Your Wright Brothers analogy is just a little off the mark given the magnitude of what they were doing in FC.

Wait, you mean that ship whose design, funding, and construction, and teams of contractors was all coordinated by Hyman Rickover "The Father of the Nuclear Navy"?

...same guy that was aboard the initial naval sea trial of every nuclear design for more than 20 years?

He's a terrible analogy for Cochrane organizing a team and creating a new form of transportation he personally tested.

Having never built a warp ship I don't know if it's a bit of innovation a team could pull off in 10 years or a million man years. My point is that great technical leaps are often focussed by one person who is rigorously involved in all elements - including the first launch.

Let's put a little perspective on Rickover. Yes he's called the "Father of the nuclear navy" so what? George Washington is called the "Father" of America. That doesn't mean Washington personally wrote the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and countless other documents instrumental in the country's founding. It doesn't mean he personally approved and fought in every battle and it doesn't made every diplomatic and political decision leading up to 1776. It means he was one of the most important and influential leaders and the first President. But saying George Washington "The most important and influential leader of America's founding and it's first President" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so the metaphor "father" is used. There were actually many people key to the nation's founding you may have heard of some they had last names like Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Hamiliton and Hancock amongst others.

The same applies to Rickover. When he is called "father" it refers to the fact that he was the most important and influential member of the nuclear navy creation. But he was hardly one of two individuals who alone created it like the term "father" literally means.

The U.S. Navy had seen the potential of nuclear propulsion and appointed Rickover to be the head of it. This division included at least hundreds of experts in nuclear power, hydrodynamics, metallurgy and other areas vital to the success of the program. Not to mention all the people at Electric Boat who built the actual reactor and ship. And all of this cost billions of dollars that was paid for by the U.S. Taxpayers.

It wasn't like Rickover sat in his office and designed the Nautilus by himself and then got a few buddies to enrich the uranium, build the reactor, install it in the Nautilus, paid for it with his personal funds and then barged in on a meeting of the joint chiefs and said "Look at what I've made" and they were all like "Holy shit that's awesome!!!! We gotta have that in our fleet!!!"

And as for his securing funding, this was the cold was and anything with the word "nuclear" attached to it usually received highest priority because it was considered vital to national security to stay ahead of the USSR in nuclear related fields. He didn't exactly have to beg.

And his habit of personally going on the sea trials of every new vessel and personally interviewing every nuclear power school applicant, including Jimmy Carter, that was dog and pony stuff because Rickover, by pretty much every account, was an overbearing, micromanaging, egomaniac who had a God complex that he, and he alone, was the only one fit enough to make important decisions for the Navy in this area.

In fact he spent the better part of his career after the Nautilus fending off several attempts to force him out of the Navy, which they finally did in the late 70's, because he was so intensely disliked by many in the navy and government and only his name and reputation kept him as long as he was.

Yes he was instrumental and the key figure, but he was hardly alone in the creation of the nuclear navy and the "father" title is a honorary one showing his prominence and is a lot more snappy than saying he was "Most importantand prominent figure out of the thousands that were invoked with the creation of the nuclear navy" He wasn't THE creator, any more that George Washington was the creator of the country or Wherner Von Braun was the sole creator of the U.S. space program despite often being called it's father.

I haven't built a warp engine either but based on an educated guess of the technology needed I strongly suspect it would be a project of a massive scale like the nuclear program or NASA and not something like the Wright Brothers where it was literally a few guys in a shop tinkering around and making a groundbreaking invention.

 

[Ithekro]

Remember that the Wright Brothers were not building in a vaccum. There had been a lot of attempts and successes with flight over the decades previous to the Wright Flyer. What they did was prefect it to a point were it would be noticed and copied, then improved on it some more. They were also not the only ones working on heavier than air craft.

Who is to say Cochrane was the first, or the one that invented the thing. He's the one with his name on what would be called the warp drive. He's the one crazy enough to take it out for a spin (with the equivalent of a hangover) when he doesn't even like to fly. He's the one that got his name in the history books. There may have been a half dozen other warp drives being tested around the world, but Cochrane was the one that got noticed. Not only because it worked, but because the aliens arrived in responce to his flight. That is history making even if you are not first. (Think Tesla and Edison. Or any number of inventors that built something first, but the name is their compeditor who get their name out more and/or faster)

As for warp drive in 40 years. We'll be closer then than we are now, just by the passage of time. Be it 40 years or 10,000 years, it is still closer. The only way we cannot be closer is if it is actually impossible and no one will ever make a FTL drive. Not on any planet, in any galaxy, for all time. We are far to small to say such a thing like that. It be like closing the patent office in the 1890s because "no one will every invent anything ever again". What is the phrase? "Never say never"?

 

[Timo]

I could counter your Wright Brothers example that in order to create the first nuclear powered vessel, the USS Nautilus, it took the efforts of thousands of men to design and build it. It took several years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money and had to use the most advanced materials and facilities at the time in order for it to be done.

The first operational fission-powered combat submarine may have been a large scale military-industrial effort, but the first submarines and the first nuclear reactors were the work of raw amateurs (they were the first, after all) cobbling together their exciting gadgetry from off-the-shelf and household items, in what amounted to garages or parents' basements!

Not that this should have anything to do with Cochrane's work. For all we know, he had more people and resources than Rickover ever did - originally.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[HIjol]

Or, we could do this:

"You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an "airplane," you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking, is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on (believing) something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history... of history."

Professor Ellie Arroway,
Addressing Executives of the Board of Hadden Industries.


We could choose to believe that it could and might and probably will happen in some form. We could Dream and Hope and Believe that, some day...

Like those other Women and Men did...

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Remember that the Wright Brothers were not building in a vaccum. There had been a lot of attempts and successes with flight over the decades previous to the Wright Flyer. What they did was prefect it to a point were it would be noticed and copied, then improved on it some more. They were also not the only ones working on heavier than air craft.

Who is to say Cochrane was the first, or the one that invented the thing. He's the one with his name on what would be called the warp drive. He's the one crazy enough to take it out for a spin (with the equivalent of a hangover) when he doesn't even like to fly. He's the one that got his name in the history books. There may have been a half dozen other warp drives being tested around the world, but Cochrane was the one that got noticed. Not only because it worked, but because the aliens arrived in responce to his flight. That is history making even if you are not first. (Think Tesla and Edison. Or any number of inventors that built something first, but the name is their compeditor who get their name out more and/or faster)

As for warp drive in 40 years. We'll be closer then than we are now, just by the passage of time. Be it 40 years or 10,000 years, it is still closer. The only way we cannot be closer is if it is actually impossible and no one will ever make a FTL drive. Not on any planet, in any galaxy, for all time. We are far to small to say such a thing like that. It be like closing the patent office in the 1890s because "no one will every invent anything ever again". What is the phrase? "Never say never"?

There is absolutely no guarantee we'll be closer in 40 years. Like I said the speed records for an airplane, manned earth vehicle, absolute speed record for a human and absolute record for any man made object are all roughly between 40 and 55 years old.

How can you be absolutely sure these records won't still be standing in another 40 years? Seems to me if we're not making anything that can go faster and break decades old records....we're haven't gotten any closer to achieving anything like light speed travel.

There may have been theoretical designs of things that could break these records, but none of them have come to reality.

And I know things like "Never say never" and the EPCOT Center motto in the 1980's of "If you can dream it, you can do it" are inspirational and all, but IRL there are things that man will never be able to do.

You may have heard in the news the story of the 2 BASE jumpers who were killed in Yosomite National Park a few days ago when they were in glider suits and they crashed into a rock face.

The more famous of the two said he dreamed of a day when man could fly unaided......So he was saying a man could just stand on a cliff in shorts and a t-shirt, jump off and successfully fly and he was dead serious about trying to achieve it in his lifetime.

I'm sorry but, unless he was planning on rapidly evolving in some way, it is physically impossible for a human to fly unaided. Our bodies are too dense and not designed in a way that allows for the correct aerodynamic forces to work that allow for flight. I don't care how badly he or any else "believes" it may be possible someday, it ain't happening unless man evolves over the centuries to a creature that has flight abilities.

Light speed is in the same category IMHO. I know people "dream" and "believe" it may be possible, but if you look at the realities and physics behind it.....it is so mind boggling that it is almost impossible to accept ANY technology that would make it possible.

If cavemen suddenly developed and launched a rocket to the moon in a few months.....that would STILL be a less challenging feat than a human traveling at the speed of light. Most of the people who actually study this stuff for a living are of the opinion that it's impossible.

Some things will happen someday that we'd never dream of today. Reaching light speed isn't going to be one of them.

 

[Xerxes1979]

I just don't like the whole I am going to get rich because I am smart angle. How often are scientist both savy in business and their fields? Its usually one or the other. The days of the lone inventor in the mold of Edison or Marconi are long over.

The guy who pioneered the LED did it as pure research. His discovery took many decades to monetize and bring to market by other people and corporations.

It took groups of people working with venture capitalists to create silicon valley. Other examples are people who worked for Bell labs or probably now days pharmaceutical companies.

Cochrane's character comes off all wrong in the film. They need to play up the excentric genius angle. As portrayed he comes off as a run of the mill alcoholic.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

I just don't like the whole I am going to get rich because I am smart angle. How often are scientist both savy in business and their fields? Its usually one or the other. The days of the lone inventor in the mold of Edison or Marconi are long over.

The guy who pioneered the LED did it as pure research. His discovery took many decades to monetize and bring to market by other people and corporations.

It took groups of people working with venture capitalists to create silicon valley. Other examples were people who worked for Bell labs or probably now days pharmaceutical companies.

Cochrane's character comes off all wrong in the film. They need to play up the excentric genius angle. As portrayed he comes off as a run of the mill alcoholic.

Agreed.

Though I like it how someone pointed out the whole "He created something that had a huge impact on society and people hold up as an amazing creation that some people even consider sacred. When all he was doing was trying to make something that would make him a lot of money." Can be used to describe Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek.

 

[Mytran]

I just read the novelisation and it presents Cochrane as a manic depressive who uses alcohol to self medicate his condition (the correct drugs being in short supply after World War 3). Here, Cochrane is a physisist who worked on a team specialising in Warp Field Theory before WW-III. After the war he still had his notes and realised that he could use the power source in the ICBM missle to power the warp field (somehow). It took him 10 years (with Lily's help) to build the Phoenix, on the promise of payment from unspecified individuals in Indonesia.

It is a fairly reasonable extrapolation from the somewhat limited information presented in the film and not a bad read, either! Sadly, it does not mention how he go back to Earth after the warp flight.

 

[Ithekro]

We know the Phoenix is in a museum in the 24th century. Likely encased in plastic like the Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury capsules in the Smithsonian.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Was he a theoretical physicist? Was he an applied engineer or project manager?

Who did he report to? Who paid his salary and those of his team?

Why would an unproven technology be tried with a manned vessel first?!


How did he expect to become wealthy if the federal government which was his most likely customer had more or less collapsed? That same government would be necessary to enforce patent royalties assuming he truly invented the warp field generator.

If the Phoenix project was a private endeavor where the representatives of the investors? Could wealthy corporations survive on the scale necessary in the aftermath of World War III to fund such a large gamble?

What return on investment did the warp project offer? Traveling to uncharted stars guaranteed nothing. The only sure money in the solar system is mining precious and rare metals from asteroids. If a mining corporation was in control why didn't they meet the Vulcans instead of Cochrane?

Makes as much sense as any superhero or supervillain origin where a character tries some unproven and highly unsafe something on themselves.

My take was that work began and was almost complete pre-WWIII, and that in the ruined aftermath, the surviving scientists decided to finish their work - because with the rest of the world probably an apocalyptic Mad Max wasteland, why the F not?

 

[Timo]

The jury is split on that issue. Riker says that "all major cities" have been destroyed, but whenever we see a city in the 24th century, it is intact - that is, the old buildings still stand, but there are new ones shamelessly in between, proving that the old ones are not venerated for their architectural value and therefore are highly unlikely to be postwar replicas.

It might simply be that we never see any major cities, though. In the 24th century, we see San Francisco, Paris, New Orleans, some Boston, and recently London, to name a few: none of those are major by today's terms. Except perhaps in terms of importance, but that can change in a heartbeat, and might not be what Riker meant.

We never see a Mad Max wasteland as such. We see one kangaroo court that might harken back to Max' continent, tho... If anything, it suggests that order remains as of 2079, even if those keeping it and the ways of keeping it have changed at some point.

I always saw ST:FC as telling us the story of a project that was this close to launching when the bombs started falling, and then took a decade to complete due to lack of funding and other resources. Cochrane's role there is less clear: eccentric genius, unscrupulous usurper (well, until the heroes come marching in and tell that history books will take him for the original genius, at which point he gets cold feet), middle manager getting a holocaust-boosted promotion, time traveler, alien, who knows.

Even with all the cities still intact, there might be enough confusion for the world to forget about this ICBM base, or disavow it, and allow Cochrane to use it in secret or with permission. Who knows, perhaps much of the war was ECON (East Coast Nations) and WCON (West Coast Nations) flinging missiles back and forth over Midwest, and ECON won and left WCON missile bases in disuse and decay.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Leviathan]

The

Hate to point out the slight gap in the amount of technology, materials and working conditions one would have to have access to in order to build a faster than light spacecraft vs a vehicle that flew a few hundred feet powered.

I could counter your Wright Brothers example that in order to create the first nuclear powered vessel, the USS Nautilus, it took the efforts of thousands of men to design and build it. It took several years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money and had to use the most advanced materials and facilities at the time in order for it to be done.

Creating a faster than light ship would make building the Nautilus look like Legos by comparison. Your Wright Brothers analogy is just a little off the mark given the magnitude of what they were doing in FC.

Wait, you mean that ship whose design, funding, and construction, and teams of contractors was all coordinated by Hyman Rickover "The Father of the Nuclear Navy"?

...same guy that was aboard the initial naval sea trial of every nuclear design for more than 20 years?

He's a terrible analogy for Cochrane organizing a team and creating a new form of transportation he personally tested.

Having never built a warp ship I don't know if it's a bit of innovation a team could pull off in 10 years or a million man years. My point is that great technical leaps are often focussed by one person who is rigorously involved in all elements - including the first launch.

Let's put a little perspective on Rickover. Yes he's called the "Father of the nuclear navy" so what? George Washington is called the "Father" of America. That doesn't mean Washington personally wrote the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and countless other documents instrumental in the country's founding. It doesn't mean he personally approved and fought in every battle and it doesn't made every diplomatic and political decision leading up to 1776. It means he was one of the most important and influential leaders and the first President. But saying George Washington "The most important and influential leader of America's founding and it's first President" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so the metaphor "father" is used. There were actually many people key to the nation's founding you may have heard of some they had last names like Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Hamiliton and Hancock amongst others.

The same applies to Rickover. When he is called "father" it refers to the fact that he was the most important and influential member of the nuclear navy creation. But he was hardly one of two individuals who alone created it like the term "father" literally means.

The U.S. Navy had seen the potential of nuclear propulsion and appointed Rickover to be the head of it. This division included at least hundreds of experts in nuclear power, hydrodynamics, metallurgy and other areas vital to the success of the program. Not to mention all the people at Electric Boat who built the actual reactor and ship. And all of this cost billions of dollars that was paid for by the U.S. Taxpayers.

It wasn't like Rickover sat in his office and designed the Nautilus by himself and then got a few buddies to enrich the uranium, build the reactor, install it in the Nautilus, paid for it with his personal funds and then barged in on a meeting of the joint chiefs and said "Look at what I've made" and they were all like "Holy shit that's awesome!!!! We gotta have that in our fleet!!!"

And as for his securing funding, this was the cold was and anything with the word "nuclear" attached to it usually received highest priority because it was considered vital to national security to stay ahead of the USSR in nuclear related fields. He didn't exactly have to beg.

And his habit of personally going on the sea trials of every new vessel and personally interviewing every nuclear power school applicant, including Jimmy Carter, that was dog and pony stuff because Rickover, by pretty much every account, was an overbearing, micromanaging, egomaniac who had a God complex that he, and he alone, was the only one fit enough to make important decisions for the Navy in this area.

In fact he spent the better part of his career after the Nautilus fending off several attempts to force him out of the Navy, which they finally did in the late 70's, because he was so intensely disliked by many in the navy and government and only his name and reputation kept him as long as he was.

Yes he was instrumental and the key figure, but he was hardly alone in the creation of the nuclear navy and the "father" title is a honorary one showing his prominence and is a lot more snappy than saying he was "Most importantand prominent figure out of the thousands that were invoked with the creation of the nuclear navy" He wasn't THE creator, any more that George Washington was the creator of the country or Wherner Von Braun was the sole creator of the U.S. space program despite often being called it's father.

I haven't built a warp engine either but based on an educated guess of the technology needed I strongly suspect it would be a project of a massive scale like the nuclear program or NASA and not something like the Wright Brothers where it was literally a few guys in a shop tinkering around and making a groundbreaking invention.

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.

 

[MarsWeeps]

It would take a breakthrough that would be immensely greater than anything man has ever achieved to come anywhere the speed of light.

Exploring the universe won't be made possible by developing "faster" means of propulsion, it will be achieved by a totally different technology, such as being able to move outside of space/time and then re-appearing at any point in the universe almost instantaneously.

Sounds crazy but everything that mankind has been able to achieve to date, had, at one time, existed only as a thought.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The jury is split on that issue. Riker says that "all major cities" have been destroyed

Actually he said MOST major cities destroyed. And VERY FEW governments left. Neither of those terms mean "all."

 

[Nerys Myk]

Or, we could do this:

"You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an "airplane," you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking, is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on (believing) something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history... of history."

Professor Ellie Arroway,
Addressing Executives of the Board of Hadden Industries.


We could choose to believe that it could and might and probably will happen in some form. We could Dream and Hope and Believe that, some day...

Like those other Women and Men did...

"Don't Dream it. Be it". - Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

 

[T'Girl]

The jury is split on that issue. Riker says that "all major cities" have been destroyed

Actually he said MOST major cities destroyed. And VERY FEW governments left. Neither of those terms mean "all."

Just before Riker's statement Data mentioned the third world war, my thought is that the "most major cities/few governments" thing refers only to those countries directly involved in the war, and not the world in general.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Well, the term 'world war' would be rather telling, wouldn't it?