The galactic scale of TOS
- Thread starter Boris Skrbic
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The Milky Way is big. Really big. Exploring other Galaxies within 300 hundred years of achieving warp travel yet the Federation barely exceeds the Local Bubble doesn't sit right with me. Especially when every other star seems to have a civilization on it....
Maybe it's just like how people say 'the world' when it's one region or country at risk. But I doubt the TOS verse ever got to the Gamma or Delta quadrants, or even much into the fringe of Alpha or Beta space. Yes the Core and Barrier were reached but that was a few missions, nothing substantial.
Maybe it's just like how people say 'the world' when it's one region or country at risk. But I doubt the TOS verse ever got to the Gamma or Delta quadrants, or even much into the fringe of Alpha or Beta space. Yes the Core and Barrier were reached but that was a few missions, nothing substantial.
What about the opening to “The Immunity Syndrome”?
Has there been any canonical data that gives the useful range of sublight sensors, versus subspace ones?
Elaan of Troyius established:
The Ultimate Computer shows:
In The Changeling:
SULU: Captain, the Klingon ship is closing on an intercept course. Five hundred thousand kilometres. Deflector shields up.
So, we know it is greater than five hundred thousand kilometers. Prior to this scene, the Enterprise was able to image the Klingon warship at "extreme magnification", so, I assume it was greater than that distance.The Ultimate Computer shows:
SPOCK: Captain, sensors report two contacts now. One on the port bow, one on the stern. Distance, two hundred thousand kilometres and closing.
I assume the ships were closing very fast and by the time Spock reported the sensor report, they moved well within the range limits.In The Changeling:
KIRK: Then we can't out run them. Good, Scotty. You're doing the right thing. (another hit) Source, Spock.
SPOCK: Unknown, Captain. Nothing within sensor range. (a third bolt approaching) Something now, Captain. Very small. Bearing one two three degrees, mark one eight. Range ninety thousand kilometres.
KIRK: That's our target, Mister Sulu. Prepare photon torpedo.
Nomad was detected at only ninety thousand kilometers, but it was very small and never imaged on the view screen.SPOCK: Unknown, Captain. Nothing within sensor range. (a third bolt approaching) Something now, Captain. Very small. Bearing one two three degrees, mark one eight. Range ninety thousand kilometres.
KIRK: That's our target, Mister Sulu. Prepare photon torpedo.
This is/are the limit(s) of sunlight sensors?
Yeah, that is an interesting one. The heroes are sufficiently far away that they go to warp five to reach Gamma 7A, yet Chekov tells with conviction that the system is "dead". Is that just Chekov being Chekov, the way Spock sometimes is Spock? Are we merely learning that the system has gone silent and is no longer emitting the usual high energies associated with an active civilization?
FWIW, the heroes were just about to arrive at SB6. So what they can see of Gamma 7A, SB6 ought to be able to see, too. Perhaps they can see better, with better gear, and Chekov is able to tap into that?
Or is it that Gamma 7A is right next door, which is why the ship can go to dash speed instead of choosing a more economic mode of motion? A scene perhaps five minutes long "in reality", with all the necessary transitions, takes place while the heroes are at warp five (or perhaps at some even higher speed, but at least higher than the warp three to which they next slow down to). That is in excess of most sensor range yardsticks we know of, surely...
Timo Saloniemi
Well it is explicitly said that the Intrepid and Gamma 7A are in a different sector (and Chekov makes his sensor sweep from that far way.):
STARBASE [OC]: You will divert immediately to sector three nine J.
KIRK: Sir, the Enterprise just completed an exhausting mission. We're on our way in for R and R. There must be another starship in that sector.
KIRK: Sir, the Enterprise just completed an exhausting mission. We're on our way in for R and R. There must be another starship in that sector.
True enough. Doesn't rule out "next door", though, if it's just across the border. 
No, really, I mean the Space Amoeba is heading directly for SB6 after its previous dastardly deed, suggesting proximity. That is, when our heroes meet it, it lies on the direct path between SB6 and Gamma VII A, as stated by Spock; were it headed elsewhere, it would not, and heading for a nearby target makes more sense than skipping targets, especially if they are as dissimilar as a starbase and a system of billions and thus offer no selection logic.
An interesting aspect here is Kirk's reaction to Chekov's scan: "Dead? It's a fourth-magnitude sun!"
Does Kirk perhaps believe that scans of this type would only reveal the fate of entire stars, and that Chekov is telling him that the star itself has died? If Kirk believes Chekov instead can do a body count or even just a city count, what's the point of babbling about the star?
Blowing up Gamma VII A would be a nifty way for, say, NOMAD to kill billions - a task it would be hard pressed to achieve by other means. Would it be within the capabilities of the Space Amoeba, though? If the beast dies of antimatter indigestion, then eating a whole star doesn't sound plausible.
We don't know if the star really blew: Kirk next backpedals and only says they are "out of communication" with Gamma VII A. But that's what he says about the Intrepid, too, and he seems to agree with Spock's assessment that the whole crew is dead all of a sudden. Did the ship blow up, too? Probably not in an eyeblink, or the Vulcans could not have had the time for their bout of denial. But probably not as slowly as the Enterprise was dying, since again Spock's description would be different.
Timo Saloniemi
No, really, I mean the Space Amoeba is heading directly for SB6 after its previous dastardly deed, suggesting proximity. That is, when our heroes meet it, it lies on the direct path between SB6 and Gamma VII A, as stated by Spock; were it headed elsewhere, it would not, and heading for a nearby target makes more sense than skipping targets, especially if they are as dissimilar as a starbase and a system of billions and thus offer no selection logic.
An interesting aspect here is Kirk's reaction to Chekov's scan: "Dead? It's a fourth-magnitude sun!"
Does Kirk perhaps believe that scans of this type would only reveal the fate of entire stars, and that Chekov is telling him that the star itself has died? If Kirk believes Chekov instead can do a body count or even just a city count, what's the point of babbling about the star?
Blowing up Gamma VII A would be a nifty way for, say, NOMAD to kill billions - a task it would be hard pressed to achieve by other means. Would it be within the capabilities of the Space Amoeba, though? If the beast dies of antimatter indigestion, then eating a whole star doesn't sound plausible.
We don't know if the star really blew: Kirk next backpedals and only says they are "out of communication" with Gamma VII A. But that's what he says about the Intrepid, too, and he seems to agree with Spock's assessment that the whole crew is dead all of a sudden. Did the ship blow up, too? Probably not in an eyeblink, or the Vulcans could not have had the time for their bout of denial. But probably not as slowly as the Enterprise was dying, since again Spock's description would be different.
Timo Saloniemi
Anf FWIW here are the stardates from the episode. Looks like more time spent traveling than inside the Zone of Darkness. ( about 1.7 vs about 0.6)
4307.1 Before being sent on the mission
4308.8 Ten minutes inside the Zone of Darkness
4309.2 Kirk in his quarters pondering the shuttlecraft mission, i.e, who will go.
4309.4 After Spock discovered how to kill the Cell but before Kirk figured out what he meant.
4307.1 Before being sent on the mission
4308.8 Ten minutes inside the Zone of Darkness
4309.2 Kirk in his quarters pondering the shuttlecraft mission, i.e, who will go.
4309.4 After Spock discovered how to kill the Cell but before Kirk figured out what he meant.
The Immunity Syndrome is one of the few episodes where the Stardates don't conflict with anything. We just have to assume that at Warp 5, they travel from their starting position (near Starbase 6?) to the Space Ameba in 1.7 stardates (less ten minutes and some investigation time) or about 14 hours 44 minutes (less the investigation time). Then, the rest of the episode inside the Space Ameba only takes 0.6 stardates (plus 17 minutes and a little more) or a little over 5 hours 33 minutes. Things usually happen fast in TOS.
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That's an interesting take, and as others pointed out, counterintuitive to the idea that for TNG the improved technology would be faster speeds, when maybe instead there were other efficiencies/safer technology that ended up being more important than hauling ass everywhere. I suppose a modern equivalent would have been that in the late 60s/early 70s, everyone assumed that in 50 years we'd be flying everywhere in supersonic commercial planes, but that ended up not happening, and what supersonic transports we did have are long retired.
On the flip side, the feeling when watching TOS is that the scale is much larger, things seem much further apart (requiring faster ships), plus the galaxy also doesn't appear to be as densely populated either. (Long distances between settlements and sparse populations probably reflects what 1960s TV audiences were more used to from Westerns.) Then with TNG there was a reset to shorter distances between populated planets and a much more crowded galaxy.
As @Timo mentions there are the odd occasions where our heroes visit stars that are definitely too close to Earth not to have ever been visited before, even if Warp speeds were much slower. I suppose we could argue that shifting political sands may have recently opened up worlds to the Federation that were previously claimed by other powers.
Could the 23 century SF ships wore out the warp corridors? By the 24th century, the ships had faster warp drives, but could not use the worn out corridors?
My feeling is that their warp capability significantly exceeds the volume of space that has been thoroughly explored. I think that the Warp 5 program opened up a volume of space to them that is so large that it wasn't even fully explored by the time of TNG (even though they had developed ships about 10 times as fast in those two centuries.)
We see an indication for this in Power Play. In the neighbourhood of an unexplored moon, they detect a signal and then find the wreckage of a Daedalus class starship there that had been there for over 2 centuries. So that would mean that even 2 centuries after those ships flew, the volume of space those ships could reach in a reasonable amount of time still hadn't been fully mapped out.
We see an indication for this in Power Play. In the neighbourhood of an unexplored moon, they detect a signal and then find the wreckage of a Daedalus class starship there that had been there for over 2 centuries. So that would mean that even 2 centuries after those ships flew, the volume of space those ships could reach in a reasonable amount of time still hadn't been fully mapped out.
I gather the practical problem there is that if starship sensors have a range of about a dozen lightyears, as suggested by some of the above TOS examples and outright indicated in the following century, the innermost parts of the sphere the starships can reach and study would be studied even if not reached. That is, if it is possible to tell offhand that a system such a distance away is "dead" or "the source of debris for the Beagle" or "emitting an interesting signal", the sum total of starship paths and the thick sheaths of sensor-covered space around every path would amount to a thoroughly studied center for the sphere, out to the range of hundreds of lightyears at least. And "hundreds" is the distance at which Kirk is encountering true unknowns, while we get no indication that there would have been a shortage of missions in the preceding century or so of established Earth/UFP starflight.
If anything, we learn in "Space Seed" of inner regions of space left behind by the expansion of activity. Perhaps it would be possible to plead haphazard, hasty expansion in the early days, so that Earthlings would madly rush past uninteresting, apparently dead systems towards more distant Class M planets where staking a claim to riches only involves pitching a tent. Afterwards, the UFP would be in the false belief that the inner part of the bubble around Earth (and around the worlds of possible other upstarts in synch with Earth - say, Andorians) is known when it really isn't.
Any farther out, we can start pleading "space lanes" where ships cluster their passages through the void, so that an increasing amount of space is left outside the reach of their sideways-pointed sensors. Only a rare shortcut during an atypical emergency sortie would then bring Kirk in the vicinity of, say, the Murasaki phenomenon and allow for study; a dedicated sortie might never be sent to a location off the beaten path, because of the loss of time involved.
In compensation, the government might incentivize "auxiliary exploration" that we then see in action in "Charlie X" where not just one but two ships titled "transport" visit a planet of no known commercial or logistical value, at least one of them doing so in the name of UE Space Probe Agency...
Timo Saloniemi
If anything, we learn in "Space Seed" of inner regions of space left behind by the expansion of activity. Perhaps it would be possible to plead haphazard, hasty expansion in the early days, so that Earthlings would madly rush past uninteresting, apparently dead systems towards more distant Class M planets where staking a claim to riches only involves pitching a tent. Afterwards, the UFP would be in the false belief that the inner part of the bubble around Earth (and around the worlds of possible other upstarts in synch with Earth - say, Andorians) is known when it really isn't.
Any farther out, we can start pleading "space lanes" where ships cluster their passages through the void, so that an increasing amount of space is left outside the reach of their sideways-pointed sensors. Only a rare shortcut during an atypical emergency sortie would then bring Kirk in the vicinity of, say, the Murasaki phenomenon and allow for study; a dedicated sortie might never be sent to a location off the beaten path, because of the loss of time involved.
In compensation, the government might incentivize "auxiliary exploration" that we then see in action in "Charlie X" where not just one but two ships titled "transport" visit a planet of no known commercial or logistical value, at least one of them doing so in the name of UE Space Probe Agency...
Timo Saloniemi
I can see many systems, near Earth, could be only scanned at a high level. By the late 24th century, UPF total volume might be much larger than the small fraction of systems completely explored.
300 years is a stupidly long amount of time... especially for science and technology which evolve exponentially for just 1 species using high scale automation (never-mind 150 of them working/collaborating together freely).
Its not unrealistic that 200 years after first inventing Warp drive, Humanity with other species (by mid 23rd century) would have had the ability to travel 1000 ly's per day (in fact, that might be a conservative estimate), and that by the mid 24th century, they'd be exploring other galaxies.
The writers just didn't portray this very well on-screen due to lack of understanding of how fast science and technology evolve.
Also, TOS contradicts the rest of Trek canon... especially if you take the notion that Voyager would need 75 years to get back to the Federation (aka 1000 Ly's per YEAR), when the 1701 (over 80 years prior) traversed 1000 Ly's per day and a few decades after that reached the center of the galaxy (which is 25,800 lightyears away from Earth) in a few days (which is actually consistent with tremendous advancements in Warp drive that would occur with Federation inventing say its own TransWarp that would accelerate speeds from 1000 Ly's per day to say 10 000 Ly's per day).
So, this cannot possibly exist in the same canon as TNG/DS9/VOY, which means it probably didn't occur in the regular universe we were watching, but was an alternate event (in an alternate universe) in which the UFP is more convincingly advanced in the 23rd century and Spock has Sybock as a brother, as opposed to Burnham as a sister).
Mind you, 10 000 Ly's per day would allow UFP to start reaching and exploring nearby smaller galaxies from late 23rd century and more fully explore the Milky Way... while Andromeda would be about 270 days away at that speed. One could argue that the trip would be possible, but ships would require 'rest stops' while in between galaxies to allow the engines to regenerate after say 7 days of use.... whereas 24th century ships would be faster (by say another 10 times over that) and would still need to stop after 7 days for a bit to allow the engines to 'cool down' (though I'd surmise they'd find a way to maintain the engines indefinitely at those speeds in 70 years).
A space faring civilization capable of FTL would be advancing ridiculously fast if real life technological and scientific exponential advancements and returns are any indication (and, we have a workable theory for real life Warp drive without necessarily even having to use exotic matter as an energy source).
It has been said the 21st century would experience over 20 000 years worth of advancement compared to the 20th century.
Just imagine the influx of 3 other space faring FTL capable species into the mix.
Linear progression simply speaking doesn't apply. It would have to be exponential and therefore much more advanced compared to what we saw.
Showing rapid evolution would not have been consistent with the premise, though, because in such an environment the galaxy would be heterogeneous and the niche for humans would be too narrow a one, there between apes and angels. We couldn't "fight" Klingons, say: we could only exterminate them, or be exterminated by them.
That technology would evolve rapidly is something of a wild guess, based on a sample of one at a timepoint narrowly chosen. Bring together a couple of civilizations at different levels, and you might bring all evolution to a grinding halt: the lower-downs could never hope to catch up, and the higher-ups would find undue satisfaction in uplifting the lower-downs.
There's little problem in assuming it's a difference between dash and cruise. Especially if dash is like the dash of early jet engines, and a few thrilling minutes at the speed of sound are followed by months at standstill.
Kirk says it could not be done. So perhaps it wasn't. After all, only a madman claimed it would be.
If such inventing were possible, why hasn't it happened already? Why would the galaxy have waited for humans to arrive first? Are they in want of spectators or what?
Why would they be? Exploration today plays zero role in innovation. Reintroduce exploration and you might just as well be applyig a handbrake.
Also, speed has not evolved as of late. There has been zero progress in it as regards speed on water, speed on ground or speed in air during the latest spurt in technological evolution, and earlier excesses have in fact fallen in disuse. Basically the only speed that has gone ever-so-slightly up is rail, by a laughable increment that can't be exploited without rebuilding that is not going to happen. If anything, we are abandoning speed as a technology, since there is so little use for it.
I certainly can. After spending two hundred years sorting out the terminology, we find out we can offer nothing at all to these others. Laboratories shut down and universities concentrate on poetry when the truth is revealed... After all, that's how it has always happened in the history of mankind, which we're using as our basis for these projections here. Oh, perhaps we can introduce tobacco to them or something. Or then they'll kill us all for offering a smoke.
Timo Saloniemi
