The Making Of Star Trek....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
I still have a copy of one sf fanzine issue from the 1970s -- The Barsoomian -- that must have been typeset on a mainframe computer, maybe via punched cards. All of the text is uppercase!
There is also the possibility that they could use it to be cheap when going to a preset destination and the crew doesn't need to do anything. With the crew in suspended animation you don't have to supply that much food (since they won't eat much) or fuel (they'll likely use less power).
They did it in Lost In Space (1965-1968) with the Jupiter 2 too.
Well, not exactly. In the original pilot, the Jupiter 2 was a slower-than-light ship expected to take years to reach its destination, and it drifted for years when thrown off-course. Whe they retooled it for the series and added Dr. Smith as a stowaway, he didn't have a cryochamber to preserve him for years, so they retconned in a hyperdrive so that the J2 could make the interstellar journey in hours.
They did it in Lost In Space (1965-1968) with the Jupiter 2 too.
Well, not exactly. In the original pilot, the Jupiter 2 was a slower-than-light ship expected to take years to reach its destination, and it drifted for years when thrown off-course. Whe they retooled it for the series and added Dr. Smith as a stowaway, he didn't have a cryochamber to preserve him for years, so they retconned in a hyperdrive so that the J2 could make the interstellar journey in hours.
That is why I stated the series (1965-1968), not the original pilot "No Place To Hide". In the series first episode [after retooling] "Reluctant Stowaway", it is stated that the Robinsons/West would be in suspended animation for the five and a half years with the Jupiter 2 hyperdrive engine taking them to Alpha Centauri system. After this first episode, they did as you stated for the next three seasons use hyperdrive space travel without the use of cryochambers. So they did state it in Lost In Space (1965-1968) too. The premise was established in the 1965 second pilot, albeit abandoned for the entire series.
For that matter, I'm unclear on whether Alien is a retcon in this regard. I had the impression in the first movie that they didn't have FTL at all, that it was only later movies that added it as a retcon (or as an advance invented while Ripley was away).
In the film "Alien" the Navigator, Lambert, said they were just short of Zeta II Reticuli. So they were about 39 light-years away from Earth. Later in the film she states it was going to take 10 months to reach Earth. So they would have to be traveling faster than light in order to travel 39 light-years in 10 months.
Navigator NCC-2120, USS Entente
/\
Last edited:
Or traveling at about 99.977% of the speed of light, so that the time-dilated shipboard time would be 10 months while 39 years passed outside. Although the difficulty of accelerating to that velocity, not to mention the radiation and debris hazards, make it almost as unlikely as FTL.
Obousy, seemed to think you might get 10 times c--still need for sleep chambers
Wild looking design here:
http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/sc15hack-team-what-is-a-starship/
Wild looking design here:
http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/sc15hack-team-what-is-a-starship/
Just cause you guys might find it interesting, here's the map that is found in one of the Dan O'Bannon (early) Alien shooting scripts, setting the scene in terms of colonies and the outer limits of human exploration.
The trailing three zeroes of "100,000" got cut off on the page scan in the script I have.
Last edited:
"EARTH VICINITY" is 10 parsecs, or 32.6(156) ly, and the "OUTER" is 108 ly, which would be 33.113 parsecs. Why? Dunno, but it seems to be parsec based.
You big silly, a "parsec" is a measurement of time, cuz, y'know, the Millennium Falcon did the Kessel Run in less than 12 of them.
On the other hand Aliens would lean it back towards FTL, otherwise everyone on the LV-426 would have been long since dead. Plus the deleted subplot about Ripley's daughter that requited the Nostromo to be traveling at FTL to work.
Similar threads
