Sisko's Bajoran ship

[Dick1979]

I was watching the season three episode explorers and could not figure out how the "ancient" Bajorans got there sailing ships out of the planets atmosphere and into space. I found myself waiting for it to have been explained during the episode, but it never came up.

I guess they could have propelled it with rockets as we do today. However, the technology in the craft seemed very low tech. If rocket power had been used it would have made sense to Incorporate some sort of thrusters for better maneuverability if not at least for emergencies if sails failed.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

They ascended upon the wispy breath of the prophets to go forth into the eternal darkness.

Or, less mumbo-jumbo-y, they flew them up like giant kites then cut the string.

The end of that ep, with the Cardassians shooting off fireworks, seemed a little silly and out of character for the Cardies. But still a good episode just the same.

 

[PorthosShadow]

Slightly off-topic but does anyone have any idea what happened to Sisko's light ship after he made his point. I'm fairly certain it ended up on display in a musuem somewhere on Bajor but I'm still curious.

 

[Kain]

The Bajoran lightship was propelled by Solar winds, but pre-warp, so we can assume that it was not much more advanced than today's Earth spacecrafts. The most probable means of getting it in space would be with rockets, like today's satellites.

What I really always wanted to know is what happened to the Bajoran explorers after they landed on Cardassia. They couldn't have merged with the Cardassian population like the Vulcan that crashed on Earth in Enterprise, since these two species are so different.

Also, an unknown alien spacecraft crashing in someone's backyard would not be a small matter, I imagine, in a militaristic world like Cardassia... As I see it, the Cardassian military would obtain the craft and reverse-engineer it to advance their own technology to respond to a possible new alien threat. And then, even the thought police of the Big Brother would not be able to hide that fact from the public...

 

[Arix]

What I really always wanted to know is what happened to the Bajoran explorers after they landed on Cardassia. They couldn't have merged with the Cardassian population like the Vulcan that crashed on Earth in Enterprise, since these two species are so different.

Also, an unknown alien spacecraft crashing in someone's backyard would not be a small matter, I imagine, in a militaristic world like Cardassia... As I see it, the Cardassian military would obtain the craft and reverse-engineer it to advance their own technology to respond to a possible new alien threat. And then, even the thought police of the Big Brother would not be able to hide that fact from the public...

But you're forgetting that the Bajorans were flying around in these ships as early as our 16th century.

According to Memory Alpha -

First contact between the Cardassians and Bajorans occurred as early as the 16th century.

Then you're also forgetting the established history of Cardassia. Again, quoting from Memory Alpha -

The ancient Hebitians were a spiritual and peaceful civilization which thrived on Cardassia Prime, centuries prior to the formation of the Cardassian Union. ... Due to the planet's scarcity in natural resources, the impoverished society suffered from famine and disease, leading to millions of deaths. The frail population then turned to a militaristic ideology, thus ending the Hebitian way of life.

It then goes on to establish that -

The Detapa Council, Cardassian Central Command and Obsidian Order were jointly established in the 19th century together forming what was eventually known as the Cardassian Union. (DS9: "Defiant")

So the Cardassian Union and society we known from TNG and DS9 didn't exist when those first Bajorans arrived. In fact, if the Cardassians were still the peaceful Hebitians, they might have welcomed their Bajoran neighbours with open arms!

I think its very interesting to speculate on what influence the Bajorans might have had on the Hebitians / early Cardassians. If you read the novels, the Cardassians have a religion known as the Oralian Way - I can't help but wonder if this was influenced or even established because of contact with the Bajorans.

As for the OP, I have no idea how it would have been propelled out of the atmosphere - and I remember wondering about that when I last watched the episode too

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I guess they could have propelled it with rockets as we do today. However, the technology in the craft seemed very low tech. If rocket power had been used it would have made sense to Incorporate some sort of thrusters for better maneuverability if not at least for emergencies if sails failed.

I imagined they were launched out of a rocket or shuttle, taken up there as the payload much like a satellite is.

The end of that ep, with the Cardassians shooting off fireworks, seemed a little silly and out of character for the Cardies. But still a good episode just the same.

I'm actually not so sure that was out of character. I think it was a PR stunt. Sometimes you see that with totalitarian regimes--China being a big example--where they'll "make nice" in some sort of superficial way to deflect attention away from their record of abuses. "Making nice" to a Bajoran-Federation scientific expedition would be the exact kind of symbolic gesture I think the Cardassians might go for, if they wanted to try and deflect scrutiny from something else they were doing.

Slightly off-topic but does anyone have any idea what happened to Sisko's light ship after he made his point. I'm fairly certain it ended up on display in a musuem somewhere on Bajor but I'm still curious.

Probably so.

What I really always wanted to know is what happened to the Bajoran explorers after they landed on Cardassia. They couldn't have merged with the Cardassian population like the Vulcan that crashed on Earth in Enterprise, since these two species are so different.

I wouldn't rule out their living out the rest of their lives with the Hebitians. If the Hebitians had the level of technology I suspect they did by the time (we know that by the 19th century, they definitely had colonies), then most likely they were aware of other species and it wasn't some kind of major upheaval for aliens to land.

This because...

... the Cardassian Union and society we known from TNG and DS9 didn't exist when those first Bajorans arrived. In fact, if the Cardassians were still the peaceful Hebitians, they might have welcomed their Bajoran neighbours with open arms!

That wouldn't surprise me at all, especially if they discovered their spiritual similarities pretty quickly. Even if they didn't have universal translators and it took awhile for Hebitian linguists to come up with a translation, I suspect that even just to see each other's species in prayer would be a gesture that would endear them to each other (given that we know that in their faith, the Hebitians were a pretty peaceful people).

The question is whether these explorers returned to Bajor or not...and I think that would depend on whether the Hebitians had enough technology at the time to return them during the span of their lives. (That warp eddy only goes one direction--to Hebitia--I believe.)

Interestingly, if the Bajoran explorers ever did get back to Bajor, it is my supposition that later historians would not necessarily make the connection between Hebitians, and Hebitia Prime, and the Cardassians and Cardassia Prime. Some sources in Treklit--and I think it makes perfect sense--speculate that what caused the rise of the Cardassian Union was a massive climate upheaval. So if the Bajoran explorers came home, and described a grey therapsid race on a fertile world, it's possible that later Bajorans might assume that this similar-appearing race that comes from a desolate world is only a cousin of the Hebitians...not the same people.

I think its very interesting to speculate on what influence the Bajorans might have had on the Hebitians / early Cardassians. If you read the novels, the Cardassians have a religion known as the Oralian Way - I can't help but wonder if this was influenced or even established because of contact with the Bajorans.

Maybe so. Although I personally would like the idea of some mysticism in the Trekiverse that is NOT explained by wholly naturalistic means.

 

[Timo]

The Bajoran lightship was propelled by Solar winds, but pre-warp, so we can assume that it was not much more advanced than today's Earth spacecrafts.

Just to nitpick, it wouldn't be solar wind (heavy nuclei and other such dirt coming from the stars at low speeds, and inconveniently sticking to your sails) but sunlight (photons coming from the stars at lightspeed, and nicely bouncing off your sails so that you can actually use the "wind" to tack) that a sailship like that would be using.

...Also, if one did crash on a Cardassian world, one would imagine the wreck would look rather Roswellian: some remaining spars and girders, and then lots of tinfoil-looking stuff around it! That is, assuming that the sailship had managed to stow its sails for the atmospheric plunge, and they didn't burn in the entry and only got exposed again at impact. I doubt anything could be reverse-engineered from that, but it would certainly make the locals scratch their heads real hard. (The true origin of the characteristic forehead "spoons"?)

If the Hebitians had the level of technology I suspect they did by the time (we know that by the 19th century, they definitely had colonies)

Another nitpick: while I like the tack you're taking, there's no good evidence that the society that gave rise to the triumvirate of Detapa, Central Command and Obsidian Order in the 19th century was still the peaceful Hebitian one. For all we know, the triumvirate was formed in order to stop the brutal Cardassian society of the era from tearing the entire civilization apart.

Indeed, the timing of the Hebitian civilization was never established - but the references to their old tombs being plundered sound like an allegory on the pillage of Egyptian treasures, that is, artifacts several millennia rather than mere centuries old. It's even possible that the Hebitians were a completely different species, and the Cardassians either evolved to compete with them (in a hiccup of the genetic programming that the Ancients of "The Chase" had established for that planet), or came from some other world in a conquest spree that ended up exterminating the Hebitians, or perhaps were transplanted by more advanced species but to the same sorry outcome. All these interpretations might suggest a truly ancient disappearance of the Hebitians, perhaps tens or even hundreds of millennia before the Bajoran visitations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Madred's comments, to my ear, make it sound like the society that existed before the Union--the immediate antecedent--was indeed that peaceful, very religious society, and that the military directly attacked that culture. The name we're given for them at the time is actually "First Hebitians"...which to me suggests those tombs that were plundered were indeed the early inhabitants...the FIRST of them. But those who came after them were still Hebitians. Just not the "First."

At least in my own story as to how it happened, they were not perfect, though...they did some things that were pretty borderline, and a sluggish response to the 19th-century disaster on their world pretty much damned the government and triggered a violent uprising.

(BTW, the AU you're seeing depicted in my avatar is one that I've written where that revolution never occurred, and while the name changed to "Cardassian" for reasons it would take a little while to explain, the culture is still very Hebitian in nature.)

 

[Kai Winn]

the episode is an absurdity throughout. not only how the thing might have been lifted into space from bajor, but sisko sitting there tinkering a space ship with hammer and pincers on his own, inane. how was the thing manoeuvred, anyway? even if it can sail like a windjammer on our oceans at 45 degrees against the true wind what i doubt, there is no way to ever return to the bajoran system, nor to fly to any other system with a sun at its core straight against the solar wind. in the moment it got accelerated to faster than light speed, it and its crew should have been reduced to a dust cloud. i doubt inertial dampers were build in because it was unknown the thing would go faster than light. solar wind is entirely different from moving air anyway, it does not push.

 

[Arix]

Another nitpick: while I like the tack you're taking, there's no good evidence that the society that gave rise to the triumvirate of Detapa, Central Command and Obsidian Order in the 19th century was still the peaceful Hebitian one. For all we know, the triumvirate was formed in order to stop the brutal Cardassian society of the era from tearing the entire civilization apart.

Indeed, the timing of the Hebitian civilization was never established - but the references to their old tombs being plundered sound like an allegory on the pillage of Egyptian treasures, that is, artifacts several millennia rather than mere centuries old. It's even possible that the Hebitians were a completely different species, and the Cardassians either evolved to compete with them (in a hiccup of the genetic programming that the Ancients of "The Chase" had established for that planet), or came from some other world in a conquest spree that ended up exterminating the Hebitians, or perhaps were transplanted by more advanced species but to the same sorry outcome. All these interpretations might suggest a truly ancient disappearance of the Hebitians, perhaps tens or even hundreds of millennia before the Bajoran visitations.

Well of course you might be right (and we have no way of knowing one way or the other) - but the fact that the triumvirate of Detapa, Central Command and Obsidian Order was established in the 19th century suggests to me that this was the beginning of modern Cardassian society. Which also implies that before the 19th century, their society was quite different.

I'm inclined to believe that, as the Bajorans visited sometime during the 16th century, 300 years prior to the change, that its at least possible that the Cardassians were closer to the peaceful Hebitians than the military Cardassians - but its more likely that they were somewhere in between.

As for the question of the Bajorans returning... It really depends if the Hebitians/Cardassians had starships, or at the very least, had established contact with another race who used starships... Its hard to determine anything without any facts to go on.

 

[Timo]

not only how the thing might have been lifted into space from bajor

Why should space launches be "absurd" or "inane"? We've been doing them for half a century now.

but sisko sitting there tinkering a space ship with hammer and pincers on his own, inane.

Huh? People today build submarines and aircraft in their garages. Why wouldn't Sisko build spaceships? He's a spaceship builder by profession, after all.

how was the thing manoeuvred, anyway?

By tilting the sails and adjusting their impact area, of course.

even if it can sail like a windjammer on our oceans at 45 degrees against the true wind what i doubt, there is no way to ever return to the bajoran system, nor to fly to any other system with a sun at its core straight against the solar wind.

Sailing ships on the open seas tack thanks to having a keel. Sailing ships in space can easily tack thanks to having mass: if there's starlight to propel them, there's also star gravity to pull them.

It's very simple: you're on an orbit around the star. Tilt the sails "forward" and you gain speed and go outward. Tilt them "aft" and you lose speed and fall inward.

Of course, that only works with starlight (photons that bounce), not with solar wind (heavy particles that stick). But lightsails would be using the former, not the latter - Sisko's sails were convincingly reflective to do the bouncing trick.

in the moment it got accelerated to faster than light speed, it and its crew should have been reduced to a dust cloud.

Why? Why wouldn't they, too, be accelerated to faster than light speed? What would have made the crew different from the ship in that respect?

i doubt inertial dampers were build in because it was unknown the thing would go faster than light.

What inertia would there be to damp? Apparently, the very space around them began to flow at FTL speeds.

solar wind is entirely different from moving air anyway, it does not push.

Of course it does, and it's not in any way different from moving air, provided it's thin air. But again, lightsails don't use solar wind: they use starlight.

Timo saloniemi