Road Trip...Not

[2 of 10]

In the TOS ep "By any Other Name" the Kelvan's were from the Andromeda Galaxy which is about 1,000,000 LY's away. If it would take Voyager about 70 years to get about 75,000 LY's. That means that it would have taken the Kelvan's without wormholes or other shortcuts about 900 years to get to the Milky Way Galaxy. Not to forget they would be travelling through interstellar space with nothing out there to resupply food, energy, and other vital supplies. This may have been the biggest streach in the History of Trek, IMO there would be no way (without one hell of a wormhole) that any species could cover that kind of distance without the crew and ship dying in deep space...

 

[Timo]

The distance to Andromeda is actually more like 2,500,000 ly. And the Kelvans were explicitly stated to be quite a bit faster than the Voyager: they could modify Kirk's ship to do the trip in 300 years.

Yet they also said that this 300-year trip would be a generational one for them. And their own ship, the one that had brought them to the Milky Way, had also been generational and thus at least not markedly faster than the modified Enterprise, and possibly even much slower.

We don't know how long a Kelvan lives. Perhaps Rojan and his crew were born long before hitting Milky Way, and thus were convinced that they would die during the 300 years of the return journey even when Kelvan lifespan was something like 500 years? But it is equally possible that Kelvan lifespans are shorter than human ones.

Yet if one were to reproduce the Kelvan drive technology, it would probably be possible to travel to Andromeda within the lifespan of, say, a Vulcan. We've seen Sarek die at 250 or so when struck by a rare disease; average Vulcans might live longer. And certain Federation species may well have even longer lives, allowing them to survive even the two-thousand-year trip that Voyager-like speeds might imply... Perhaps the Horta?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I'll move this to TOS

 

[2 of 10]

The distance to Andromeda is actually more like 2,500,000 ly. And the Kelvans were explicitly stated to be quite a bit faster than the Voyager: they could modify Kirk's ship to do the trip in 300 years.

Yet they also said that this 300-year trip would be a generational one for them. And their own ship, the one that had brought them to the Milky Way, had also been generational and thus at least not markedly faster than the modified Enterprise, and possibly even much slower.

We don't know how long a Kelvan lives. Perhaps Rojan and his crew were born long before hitting Milky Way, and thus were convinced that they would die during the 300 years of the return journey even when Kelvan lifespan was something like 500 years? But it is equally possible that Kelvan lifespans are shorter than human ones.

Yet if one were to reproduce the Kelvan drive technology, it would probably be possible to travel to Andromeda within the lifespan of, say, a Vulcan. We've seen Sarek die at 250 or so when struck by a rare disease; average Vulcans might live longer. And certain Federation species may well have even longer lives, allowing them to survive even the two-thousand-year trip that Voyager-like speeds might imply... Perhaps the Horta?

Timo Saloniemi

Mabey they could survive, but could their ship make the trip. Interstellar Space is filled with nothing but dark matter and other elements that we at this time do not fully understand. Point being there would seem to be not much out there to resupply a ship, espically one on a 2,000 year journey. Any why would they want to make the trip to our Galaxy anyway. One would think there would be enought stuff in their own Galaxy to keep them occupied. Even the BORG would probably not be interested in such an undertaking...