It would make sense to me that the 2018 date might mean something along the lines of an early version of an impulse drive? Or the technology that would one-day form the basis of it.
So, was Cochrane's warp drive concept something special, or wasn't it ?
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It would make sense to me that the 2018 date might mean something along the lines of an early version of an impulse drive? Or the technology that would one-day form the basis of it.
The way I always saw it is that he is only the inventor of Warp Drive on earth, but - is known and revered across the Federation - not because he brought Warp Drive - but because the act of inventing it on Earth brought humanity into interstellar space - and that directly led to the establishment of the Federation.
On reflection, I rather like the notion that while other species had faster-than-light drives (and they must have), Cochrane found and exploited something called a space-warp which changed the whole game somehow. One may wonder whether it's plausible a human in the backwaters of Earth would discover something important missed by everyone else for centuries to that point, but, it isn't unthinkable.
It would also add to the Enterprise background setting of Earth resenting its colonial overlordship by Vulcans if the Vulcanians --- and others! --- had been able to incorporate some Cochrane-based breakthrough into their hardware for a century without Earth getting much obvious direct benefit.
It would also add to the Enterprise background setting of Earth resenting its colonial overlordship by Vulcans if the Vulcanians --- and others! --- had been able to incorporate some Cochrane-based breakthrough into their hardware for a century without Earth getting much obvious direct benefit.
How did Solkar's ship get to Earth by sublight speed or warp drive, how did T'Pol's grandmother's ship get to Earth by sublight or warp drive, how did the ship that rescue them get to Earth? Watching 'Carbon Creek' they did not wait years to be rescued so I guess Vulcans had warp drive when Cochrane's granny was not even born
TOS implied Earth met Vulcan on equal terms, it gave the impression Earth was pretty advanced already when it reached out to the galactic community. The 'First Contact' movie destroyed that notion.
If Vulcanis is 16 light years away from earth a sublight trip reaching about .5 would take about 32 earth years for an observer on Vulcanis. For the crew it would only take about 27 earth years. If my calculations are roughly correct.
Adjusting for lifespan, the Vulcanian sublight trip to earth would be comparable lifespan-wise to a similar human sublight trip to Alpha Centauri (8 years). Based on this, to me anyway, it seems reasonable that Vulcanians could have explored nearby systems at sublight speeds.
As for HOW they did it? I don't know. You'll have to ask the Vulcanians.
Even this is probably stretching both the original intent and later interpretations a bit too far. When Cochrane wants our heroes to define "out there in the galaxy", that is, the volume in which his name is famed, Kirk describes it in terms of human expansion exclusively. Humans are on a thousand planets and spreading out; they encounter nonhuman civilizations as they expand, but those are outsiders, not part of "us", and nothing suggests they would join in on the Cochrane appreciation. Yet in light of later data, what the humans encounter gets absorbed in the Federation...
Limiting any of the Star Trek players to sublight speeds is an endeavor that must be based purely on speculation. No culture of note is ever claimed to have lacked warp drive at any point of their interstellar history. The closest we get is that cryptic reference to one Romulan ship having "simple impulse power", but even that tells us nothing about the Romulans as a culture, only about this single ship.
Timo Saloniemi
And how much variation overall is there in galactic history? Humanoids have been around for four billion years. OTOH, any civilization dating back a few hundred million years is considered ancient, even mythical. Would there be any evolution remaining after the first billion years? Or would things instead be locked onto a cycle of emergence of individual civilizations, expansion via warp drive, galactic conquest (that is, absorption of all lesser players regardless of their specific level of development) via some faster drive, and eventual downfall and galaxy-wide descent to anarchy from which the cycle starts anew?
TAS would have us believe a massive reset happened with the Slavers about a billion years ago, with all intelligent life erased. Lesser things could accompany the downfall of most galactic empires. Is the UFP anything exceptional in the big scheme of things, and is it likely to be one of those big powers whose crashing and burning will reset and synchronize galactic affairs?
Even if we argue warp drive doesn't get born anew with each new civilization and doesn't die with them, either, but rather is some sort of a shared galactic resource, we have to assume that transwarp does die - else where is it? Certainly mere "mortal" civilizations would find things like slipstream (easily thousands of times better than warp) useful yet not likely to elevate them to divine status ASAP. Why doesn't slipstream get traded evenly across the galaxy, but remains the secret of select few mortal civilizations? This is interesting chiefly as a counterpoint to the ubiquity of "ordinary" warp.
Timo Saloniemi
TAS would have us believe a massive reset happened with the Slavers about a billion years ago, with all intelligent life erased. Lesser things could accompany the downfall of most galactic empires. Is the UFP anything exceptional in the big scheme of things, and is it likely to be one of those big powers whose crashing and burning will reset and synchronize galactic affairs?
Even if we argue warp drive doesn't get born anew with each new civilization and doesn't die with them, either, but rather is some sort of a shared galactic resource, we have to assume that transwarp does die - else where is it? Certainly mere "mortal" civilizations would find things like slipstream (easily thousands of times better than warp) useful yet not likely to elevate them to divine status ASAP. Why doesn't slipstream get traded evenly across the galaxy, but remains the secret of select few mortal civilizations? This is interesting chiefly as a counterpoint to the ubiquity of "ordinary" warp.
Timo Saloniemi
Yes, it would seem that if a society evolved to highly advanced technological levels (magic) that their technology would trickle down to the rest of the spacefaring civilizations. There are really only three main pathways a society can take. Destruction, stagnation, or transcendence. In addition to that, any society is going to leave multiple branch offs each at different levels of technological change. So where are the cultures that are technologically between humans and Q?
Either technologically advanced civilizations give up empire building, colonization, and exploration; or they destroy themselves and every piece of their advanced technology.
I suppose we could look at examples like the Iconians. But where are those advanced type civilizations in "modern" times?
Perhaps the galaxy is likewise coming out of a technological dark ages just prior to earth's WWIII.
Either technologically advanced civilizations give up empire building, colonization, and exploration; or they destroy themselves and every piece of their advanced technology.
I suppose we could look at examples like the Iconians. But where are those advanced type civilizations in "modern" times?
Perhaps the galaxy is likewise coming out of a technological dark ages just prior to earth's WWIII.
They move on and leave us behind, IMO. They reach a point of advancement where we start looking more and more like unruly children squabbling over things that have become petty (if not worthless) to them, and they wash their hands of us.
I agree. But they had to get there somehow. So where are the social and technological "leftovers" of these transcendent species? Where are the intergalactic teleporter pins that existed before these species could jump to any point in the universe with a thought. We see ruins of species with such technological abilities with the Iconians. But these are all ruins. Where are those species "now"?
It seems that we either see already transcendent species Organians, Metrons, etc.; or species that are roughly on our same technological level. But I can't think of any example of a species in between.
Maybe US, if Wesley Crusher and Gary Mitchell are indicators? Maybe the holograms like the Doctor?
As I said earlier, they move on. But how they move on can differ on a case by case basis, IMO. Some can simply move to another distant part of the Galaxy, to another Galaxy altogether, or perhaps even a totally different Universe/plane of existence. Others can simply disperse as a civilization, spreading out until they no longer can be recognized as such like individual nomads. Others still can meet tragic ends or just simply die out--the latter of which has happened to cultures in our own history. In such cases, the things they leave behind are taken and adapted/adopted by others, leaving only meager ruins to be discovered by someone else much later (a good Trek example of that might have been the Enterprise's discovery of the ruins at Iconia).
I don't recall much in TOS about how and when Vulcans and Human met. The only line that sticks out is the one about Vulcan being conquored ( implicitly by Earth)
Or by somebody who'd use alcohol, at any rate. Funny how that line works so well in the private context, with Sarek of Vulcan being conquered by Amanda Grayson through the judicious use of booze...
We could weave all sorts of tales from the little snippets of plot thread in TOS, including the "Vulcanian expedition" (was Vulcan conquered by Starfleet within Kirk's career?) and the utter unfamiliarity of our heroes with basic Vulcan traits overall (was the Vulcanian expedition eight months ago?). In retrospect, I don't think any of those could really compare advantageously to what we eventually got, though.
Timo Saloniemi
We could weave all sorts of tales from the little snippets of plot thread in TOS, including the "Vulcanian expedition" (was Vulcan conquered by Starfleet within Kirk's career?) and the utter unfamiliarity of our heroes with basic Vulcan traits overall (was the Vulcanian expedition eight months ago?). In retrospect, I don't think any of those could really compare advantageously to what we eventually got, though.
Timo Saloniemi
I think he only discovered warp drive for humankind, but he's celebrated just because he's human.
Kind of reminds me how Columbus discovered America even though there were people there long before him. But everyone celebrates Columbus day still and there's groups, schools and even a country named after him.
As for other planets praising Cochrane, it may have been that before the Prime Directive was discovered that humans shared the knowledge of warp drive with other civilizations.
Kind of reminds me how Columbus discovered America even though there were people there long before him. But everyone celebrates Columbus day still and there's groups, schools and even a country named after him.
As for other planets praising Cochrane, it may have been that before the Prime Directive was discovered that humans shared the knowledge of warp drive with other civilizations.
We might even argue that just like the ancient programming from "The Chase" forces every process of evolution to eventually create a sapient humanoid, so the same programming forces every sapient humanoid species to eventually go the way of the Ocampa and the Zalkonians. That is, there is a sudden, even rude end to material civilization at a fairly primitive level because everybody turns into an energy being.
Such unavoidable sudden death of civilization might be great for creating the local vacuums that allow warp to be discovered anew again and again, and for preventing slipstream or the like from becoming commonplace.
Timo Saloniemi
The speed of light is the gold standard for first contact in the UFP. Any nation or member that achieves it would certainly heap acclaim on whoever accomplished it. It doesn't reduce that effort if others achieved it first, the universe is a big place, and so is the galaxy. All it means is that the paradigm of technology before light speed changes to another paradigm. On it goes.
And frankly, whoever heard of people here on Earth respecting foreigners for what they invented first?
Indeed, I rather doubt Emory Erickson really was the first human to operate or own a transporter. He was just the first to cobble together one of his own human making... Perhaps after having spied on Vulcans operaing their older and better gear first.
Timo Saloniemi
Indeed, I rather doubt Emory Erickson really was the first human to operate or own a transporter. He was just the first to cobble together one of his own human making... Perhaps after having spied on Vulcans operaing their older and better gear first.
Timo Saloniemi
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