The Days Before Subspace Radio

[uniderth]

According to the traditional timeline subspace (FTL) radio came into use in about the 2160's. Did you ever wonder how long distance communications would have been handled before that? In creating my personal canon Enterprise Replacement series I've been pondering this.

I think it would be interesting because things would almost be back to how they were before during the Pony Express. Ships would be able to travel faster than communications. You'd have to send your message to a ship. Then that ship would carry your message and rendezvous with the target ship. Or drop the message off on a planet that the target ship would visit.

Ships out on assignment would go for months without any communications. Until they stopped by earth friendly planet, or met up with a transport ship willing to carry a message.

I guess that's why I find the 2060-2160's era so fascinating to think about just because the limitations of technology turns so many Star Trek tropes in their head.

Any other thoughts about how communications would work before subspace radio; or the way technological limitations of the era(sans Enterprise) would impact story telling?

 

[T'Girl]

According to the traditional timeline subspace (FTL) radio came into use in about the 2160's.

Can't help but wonder where you came up with that date, Trek fiction has a wide variety of years for the subspace radio, and surely the Vulcans (and others) had it before 2160.

Yes a courier would be the alternate to a transmission of some sort.

You could drop any messages you had at a buoy in interstellar space, check the buoy for any incoming "mail," and go about your business. Or the messages could be left at a planet that's on your route.

 

[Ithekro]

Up until the 2150s it would seem that starships were not all that much faster than conventional radio, or early subspace radio. When the top speed of the fleet is Warp 2 (8 times the speed of light), your ships are only 8 times faster than the radio and thus not going out as far.

Enterprise was setting up subspace relays as she headed out on her Warp 4 plus missions (before she pushed it to Warp 5). By the Romulan War the only contact Starfleet had with the Romulans was via weapons or subspace radio (non-visual only).

The freighters are going back and forth at an average of Warp 1.5 (less than 4 times the speed of light) with the faster ones making Warp 1.8 (less than 6 times the speed of light). Only during the late 2140s would even a Warp 3 engine come out for Starfleet and trickle down to the freighters later. Starfleet's newest ships would have Warp 3 and maybe Warp 4 engines prior to Enterprise's Warp 5 engine. And even then, there would be few starships with the Warp 5 engine in the first half of the 2150s. That could change by 2160 when they are talking about a Warp 7 engine. Perhaps there are Warp 6 engine ships running about at the end of the Romulan War (or those are the Vulcan and Andorian ships that are running around at Warp 6).

So it would seem that a courier, while faster than conventional radio used on the Horizon (probably a starship in the 2160s rather than the freighter in the 2150s) in an emergency, such a ship would not be very fast. Warp 2 seems to be what Starfleet can manage unless they can adapt the Warp 5 engine prototype in the NX-Beta test ships into a courier that can go for weeks or months to get to the still slower starships.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Aside from the Horizon is there anything in canon, pre-Broken Bow, to say that subspace radio didn't exist at, or shortly after, warp drive?

 

[GNDN18]

No one seemed surprised that the SS Columbia was equipped with light-speed radio; that expedition left Earth around 2235.

 

[uniderth]

I don't think there has been a statement of when it was invented but rather statement as to a particular ship having or not having it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

They used the subspace telegraph.

 

[GNDN18]

They used the subspace telegraph.

Well, Pike did say, "They were keyed to cause interference and attract attention this way." Western UESPA, no doubt.

 

[T'Girl]

Western UESPA, no doubt.

Or their rivals, Western UESPN. But they only do sports.

 

[Nerys Myk]

"TELEGRAM! Telegram for Mister Spock!"

 

[J.T.B.]

Ships out on assignment would go for months without any communications. Until they stopped by earth friendly planet, or met up with a transport ship willing to carry a message.

I guess that's why I find the 2060-2160's era so fascinating to think about just because the limitations of technology turns so many Star Trek tropes in their head.

Any other thoughts about how communications would work before subspace radio; or the way technological limitations of the era(sans Enterprise) would impact story telling?

Fortunately, there are plenty of real-world examples, as ships were the fastest way of communicating over long distances for several hundred years. For places on regular trading routes, a system of mail-carrying "packet" vessels evolved. Originally, British packets were government-owned, but later merchant shipping companies were contracted (thus Titanic's designation of "Royal Mail Steamship").

Navies kept numerous small, fast vessels for communication purposes. In the Royal Navy these "dispatch vessels" were usually fore-and-aft rigged schooners or cutters, the most famous being HM schooner Pickle, which brought the news of the victory at Trafalgar back to Britain. Fleets sailed with a number of these vessels, which would detach and take a message to a port as needed, and rendezvous back with the fleet as soon they could. For long distances, a frigate could be detached; not as fast but better able to handle long duration voyages and to stand rougher weather.

The French navy's dispatch vessels were called avisos ("advice" boats), which eventually became the equivalent of the British sloop, and is still a designation for a type of small escort warship.

Out on the frontiers, ships might meet up and exchange letters if the other's destination was useful, as depicted in the "gams" in Moby Dick. Or letters might be left with some shore outpost to be given to the next homeward-bound vessel. Bigger ports had agents to handle mail traffic. This all sounds kind of haphazard but worked out surprisingly well.

Of course in the starship era you could have something like every ship having memory for encrypted "space e-mails," automatically exchanging them with whatever ship, station, outpost, colony etc. they came within radio range of.

 

[MantaBase]

Of course in the starship era you could have something like every ship having memory for encrypted "space e-mails," automatically exchanging them with whatever ship, station, outpost, colony etc. they came within radio range of.

No Doubt.

Onc can easily envision an automated system even. I think it likely each ship at some point before sub-space radio had a supply of warp capable pods or buoys they could send out in case of emergency.

However, Ithekro got me thinking. Sending messages back from a ship would not be a big deal. Sending messages to ships out on a frontier via some system would not be a big deal. Sure - there is a time issue. But sending messages to ships on deep space missions without a relay network would be a problem. They are traveling out faster than the tech can transmit to them. And unless they (the relays) do wide area broadcasts (something maybe not wise) they wouldn't know where the ship was without a prompt. It certainly is an interesting problem.

The the real world timeline I suspect we will have FTL communications before we have the travel capability - or the two techs will coincide. Quantum entanglements could in theory be manipulated for limited communication - but the ship would have to have been "charged" with an allotment of entangled endmembers at the originating source, have a containment field that never losses power, and each is entanglement is single use - so you use it once and it is gone. I could see it being used to detect if a ship was "destroyed" or had some other catastrophic problem. That would be about it.

But I digress into another subject - my point is, it's hard for me to believe we would figure out how to move massive objects FTL before we figured out how to send signals FTL.

I mean, on the one hand, history suggests I am wrong because ships of the sea existed before radio and could explore further out than we could communicate.

But that is misleading - we have for centuries been capable of lightspeed communication - using light (and in the last century radio) or even soundspeed communications ("Jim, yell back at Joe to bring the hammer."). The only thing that stopped Columbus from telling Spain he was in America within a day was the lack of a network of buoys with folks that had torches they could light. Impractical of course, but the tech existed.

I just think that if you have the tech to move large masses FTL, then the only thing stopping you from moving messages is the network.

Lol....but now I try to apply RL conjecture to fiction conjecture.

 

[Go-Captain]

According to the traditional timeline subspace (FTL) radio came into use in about the 2160's. Did you ever wonder how long distance communications would have been handled before that? In creating my personal canon Enterprise Replacement series I've been pondering this.

I think it would be interesting because things would almost be back to how they were before during the Pony Express. Ships would be able to travel faster than communications. You'd have to send your message to a ship. Then that ship would carry your message and rendezvous with the target ship. Or drop the message off on a planet that the target ship would visit.

Ships out on assignment would go for months without any communications. Until they stopped by earth friendly planet, or met up with a transport ship willing to carry a message.

I guess that's why I find the 2060-2160's era so fascinating to think about just because the limitations of technology turns so many Star Trek tropes in their head.

Any other thoughts about how communications would work before subspace radio; or the way technological limitations of the era(sans Enterprise) would impact story telling?

My assumption has always been that if you have warp drive you almost immidiatly get subspace radio, or subspace radio precedes warp drive. I think that comes from the space mobster episode. But, I digress.

It's going to be couriers which are the main means of interstellar communication, and it doesn't matter if the ships are exactly the speed of light, or even a little lower. There are several reasons why it has to be ships which have to deliver messages. I cannot give the numbers, but I can describe why in broad terms.

The main reason why warp ships have to act as couriers is infrastructure. The scale of the infrastructure for interstellar communication is too big and too energy intensive to be practical for sending high complexity messages. Big as in stellar level power output and orbital construction.

Sure, SETI has sent some messages outward, but those are most likely to just spread out to too low an intensity to be detectable, and they assume there is infrastructure on the other side. A courier network requires only the most minimal infrastructure.

Relatively speaking, each warp ship is cheap, requires minimal infrastructure for construction and launch, requires next to no infrastructure on the receiving end, it has 100% signal integrity, can arrive faster than radio or laser. Whether the couriers are automated is a different matter. Friendship One, from Voyager, was sent from Earth in 2067, and carried subspace transceiver instructions, so we know they were rich enough to send automated warp vehicles containing complex information.

 

[Timo]

My assumption has always been that if you have warp drive you almost immidiatly get subspace radio, or subspace radio precedes warp drive.

We should probably argue that subspace radio is significantly more difficult to stumble upon than warp drive. Otherwise, first contact with alien cultures would generally involve subspace calls rather than heroic starship landing parties.

But, I digress.

Since we lack evidence that subspace radio would have been missing in the "early days" (read: the late days when Earthlings finally crawled to interstellar space), I think the digression is actually worth studying...

How would Earth starships communicate in a galaxy where FTL communications networks did exist? Those communications nets would be maintained and controlled by alien societies. Would Earth even get permission to hook up? What would they have to pay for it? Would Earth trust the aliens enough to send important messages, no matter how coded, through their commnets? How could the important messages be sent without tipping off the aliens that something important was not being sent through their nets? Etc.

The scale of the infrastructure for interstellar communication is too big and too energy intensive to be practical for sending high complexity messages. Big as in stellar level power output and orbital construction.

I don't think we can argue anything about the energy requirements, because a) we have zero information on how much energy it takes to send messages throguh subspace, and b) we have very little information on how much energy it takes to fly at warp.

But we do know that b) is never a problem for our heroes - sometimes they literally lose the ability to cook their meals before they lose warp drive! So we might well assume that organizations like Starfleet easily control energies that can make interstellar communications practical reality.

Also, ships are slow and can be lost en route. Messages are fast and can always be sent again and again, a loss being no loss. Repairing a ship may require field work. Repairing a transmitter takes place right next to the user.

In a fictional realm, then, the balance can go either way. And Trek doesn't have much in the way of physical couriers, except as transports for key personnel (where a different fictional realm might prefer to telecast expert programs instead).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Go-Captain]

The scale of the infrastructure for interstellar communication is too big and too energy intensive to be practical for sending high complexity messages. Big as in stellar level power output and orbital construction.

I don't think we can argue anything about the energy requirements, because a

Infrastructure for radio, laser, and slower than light probe based communication.

For subspace communication, we know the infrastructure is no more than some satellite left in deep space .