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Were Bezos and Musk killed by The Borg?

Wondering how all the timeline changes affects TNG's Cause and Effect.
 
but I bet antimatter is expensive
Is it canon that Cochrane's ship used an antimatter reactor? I don't ever recall that being mentioned. And speculation, even canon speculation, stipulates that fusion came first (Spock mentions the fusion era in ST:IV).
 
Well the Borg weren't there in the original timeline anyway. If you mean in the timeline where the Borg take over, maybe, but I just assumed Cochrane died in the attacks.

Unless you want to argue the Borg were in the original timeline, which is a whole other discussion...
 
The way I figure it, there are three main timelines:

A - which we never see, by the way, has no Borg in the past and Cochrane successfully does his warp stunt with a couple of mooks (probably not wealthy tourists, as they appear to have a job to do. Maybe Lily and a friend). It ultimately results in a timeline where the Borg decide to travel back in time and kill Cochrane for getting humanity on the intergalactic stage (note: it doesn't have to be Picard and Starfleet who stop them in the very first iteration).

B - and variations - where the Borg are successful in killing Cochrane, either in that initial attack or eventually during their conquest of Earth. Earth is assimilated and they likely slowly spread out into the Alpha Quadrant, poking and prodding the local races for their next big prey. However, in every iteration, this is witnessed by their adversary (probably on purpose...) via the temporal vortex, and that adversary follows them to "revert" the changes.

C - the ultimate timeline that we see in the movie (with a variant of Timeline B) - where Starfleet is a thing and Picard exists and its all thanks to the Borg attacking Cochrane and his two mooks are just some guys who never got their photo taken and are lost to history. It is a reoccuring predestination paradox with a couple of quirky steps due to the necessary use of a temporal vortex.

It probably took a few quadrillion iterations for everything to smooth out into the form we see onscreen.

This is probably true of all Star Trek predestination paradoxes or the ones like here that involve a couple of timeline resets within the paradox.
 
Yeah I hope so and I hope the final words they heard before they were assimilated were...

"If you assholes had paid your fair share of taxes perhaps humanity would've been able to use that money to develop to a level high enough to defend itself from us"

It's a bit wordy for a Borg Drone but I think you get the gist.....
 
With the news that Jeff Bezos is going to space, I started to wonder if Zefram Cochrane was just some rich asshole. Because at the moment, to get into space, you have to be some rich asshole like Bezos or Elon Musk. I can't imagine much will have changed by 2063. So was Cochrane himself some rich guy? I worried about this for a while, but concluded that he probably wasn't. He didn't act like one (I bet Bezos or Musk would look much creepier dancing to Roy Orbinson than he did) and there is that line about Lily struggling to get enough titanium together. But SOMEONE must have been financing him, right? I'm no scientist, but I bet antimatter is expensive! Surely someone paid for that. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and MIchael Collins didn't just build a rocket by themselves and fly off to the moon. Cochrane would have needed backing. There's no evidence in Trek canon that he got help from NASA or any similar organisation, so it must have been some rich asshole like Bezos or Musk.

Then I remembered Cochrane's diseased co-pilots.

In First Contact, Riker and Geordi are Cochrane's co-pilots, and it is delightful. But who were his original co-pilots going to be? I don't think Lily was going to be one; I don't remember her mentioning it to Picard (and even if she was that still leaves one empty seat.) I've always wondered who they were meant to be. Clearly they were both (okay, at least one of them) kill be the Borg. Then it hit me...

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were going to be Cochrane's co-pilots. OF COURSE they were! Can you imagine the first warp flight going ahead without some rich asshole buying a seat onboard? It's inconceivavble. Just look at Bezos going to the moon or whatever he's fucking doing. So yeah, at least one of them was meant to be Cochrane's co-pilot. They'll both still be alive in forty years, probably with replacement organs. There's no way they'd let the first warp flight happen without being part of it.

They just don't know that the Borg are going to kill them first and Riker and Geordi will take their place.

Antimatter expensive? Nah, what gave you that Idea? Antimatter is estimated at Sixty Trillion dollars for a gram!!

That means that if ONE BILLION people wanted to buy one gram of antimatter collectively, each would have to give Sixty thousand dollars!!!!
 
With the news that Jeff Bezos is going to space, I started to wonder if Zefram Cochrane was just some rich asshole. Because at the moment, to get into space, you have to be some rich asshole like Bezos or Elon Musk. I can't imagine much will have changed by 2063. So was Cochrane himself some rich guy? I worried about this for a while, but concluded that he probably wasn't. He didn't act like one (I bet Bezos or Musk would look much creepier dancing to Roy Orbinson than he did) and there is that line about Lily struggling to get enough titanium together. But SOMEONE must have been financing him, right? I'm no scientist, but I bet antimatter is expensive! Surely someone paid for that. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and MIchael Collins didn't just build a rocket by themselves and fly off to the moon. Cochrane would have needed backing. There's no evidence in Trek canon that he got help from NASA or any similar organisation, so it must have been some rich asshole like Bezos or Musk.

Then I remembered Cochrane's diseased co-pilots.

In First Contact, Riker and Geordi are Cochrane's co-pilots, and it is delightful. But who were his original co-pilots going to be? I don't think Lily was going to be one; I don't remember her mentioning it to Picard (and even if she was that still leaves one empty seat.) I've always wondered who they were meant to be. Clearly they were both (okay, at least one of them) kill be the Borg. Then it hit me...

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were going to be Cochrane's co-pilots. OF COURSE they were! Can you imagine the first warp flight going ahead without some rich asshole buying a seat onboard? It's inconceivavble. Just look at Bezos going to the moon or whatever he's fucking doing. So yeah, at least one of them was meant to be Cochrane's co-pilot. They'll both still be alive in forty years, probably with replacement organs. There's no way they'd let the first warp flight happen without being part of it.

They just don't know that the Borg are going to kill them first and Riker and Geordi will take their place.

In the novel, Federation, he is funded by the benefactor Micah Brack.
 
Antimatter expensive? Nah, what gave you that Idea? Antimatter is estimated at Sixty Trillion dollars for a gram!!

That means that if ONE BILLION people wanted to buy one gram of antimatter collectively, each would have to give Sixty thousand dollars!!!!

But that's balanced by the fact that matter is FREE.
 
Yeah I hope so and I hope the final words they heard before they were assimilated were...

"If you assholes had paid your fair share of taxes perhaps humanity would've been able to use that money to develop to a level high enough to defend itself from us"

It's a bit wordy for a Borg Drone but I think you get the gist.....
"Why waste money in space when there are so many problems on earth?" - everyone who actually has the mindset you describe above. (Plus a healthy amount of "If we go to [Insert barren space location here], we'll just mess up its -lifeless waterless airless- ecosystem!")

Those aren't the droids you're looking for.
 
"Why waste money in space when there are so many problems on earth?" - everyone who actually has the mindset you describe above. (Plus a healthy amount of "If we go to [Insert barren space location here], we'll just mess up its -lifeless waterless airless- ecosystem!")

Those aren't the droids you're looking for.
I’m not thinking about that kind of thing I’m just tired of fellas like Bezos and Musk being held up as examples of some kind of highly intelligent pioneers a la the fictional Cochrane when they’re really just a couple of got-luckys who now cheat the system for their own benefit.
 
Yeah I hope so and I hope the final words they heard before they were assimilated were...

"If you assholes had paid your fair share of taxes perhaps humanity would've been able to use that money to develop to a level high enough to defend itself from us"

It's a bit wordy for a Borg Drone but I think you get the gist.....

Maybe the Vulcans only decided to make first contact because they knew the Borg had taken care of Musk and Bezos.
 
Jeff Bezos would be 99 years old in 2063, and Elon Musk would be 92. And I don't see 'replacement organs' being a thing in post-apocalyptic Earth. So, no, they would not have been Cochrane's copilots.

Biological immortality will be a thing by 2030 in the real world thanks to exponential advancements and returns, so Bezos and Musk could have technically survived with that (assuming they existed in Trek timeline to begin with as survived WW3 to begin with - but there's no evidence thus far they have even existed in Trek).

Its possible WWIII decimated some of the existing developments in biological immortality (perhaps by intent)... but even so, over 600 million dead with most governments and militaries gone... that's a fairly small number compared to even present amount of 7.9 billion... and despite the loss of life, technology and general scientific knowledge weren't really destroyed - I mean, even if you assume the population didn't progress to much further beyond 7.9 billion... the loss of life from WW3 would drop the population to 7.3 billion people (that's a drop in a bucket - a very bloody one mind you, but only about 6.3% reduction).

Anyway, Humanity managed to rebuild very quickly with no assistance from the Vulcans (at least nothing in regards to resource or technology sharing)... and all those people needed to be fed and clothed for the most part (you can attribute the ragged clothing to general poverty).

But since biological immortality was never mentioned in Trek to begin with (and seems stupidly elusive to UFP ridiculously advanced medical science), I would argue that Cochrane's original co-pilots were going to be some of his team as I doubt he'd want to fly with a couple of 90 year old men as his co-pilots who could easily have a whole bunch of medical issues due to lack of ability to access medical care during WW3).

There is also no evidence that original members of Cochrane's team were killed in the initial Borg attack (and let's be frank, the Borg could have levelled the surrounding area in a radius of at least 10km if they wanted to... and probably obliterate the Phoenix in the process as well - with just 1 torpedo - heck even a TNG photon torpedo would have done more damage than that).
 
Elon Musk was mentioned in DSC. But as far as him and Bezos being Cochrane’s copilots…I think the OP needs to lay off the wacky weed for awhile ;)
 
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