What exactly does "Boomer" mean?

[Guy Gardener]

I looked through 60 article headings about Battlestar Galactica on wikipedia before I narrowed the search criteria to include the word "Enterprise" because you know, Grace Park plays a character called "Boomer" and it skewed the results a little since there was no aritcle about the Boomer Fleet on Wiki Pedia, just 2 brief mentions during two articles about Enterprise in general.

I assumed, that humanity got sick of the Vulcans just giving them dilitium, and struck out to find there own deposits to mine creating several boom towns surrounding these... but what was the point of needing Dilithium if man kind was not allowed to extend past it's solar system by Vulcan edict?

Why were the Boomers allowed out?

They sound a little like the Maquis in the regard that they will not be hemmed in or chained down by aliens telling earths government how to look after its own people.

Where was the Boom? How many of these ships were out there?

 

[Matt]

Space boomers.

boom (n.)
"long pole," 1543, from Scottish boun, borrowed from Du. boom "tree, pole, beam," from a M.Du. word analogous to O.E. beam. The business sense (1873) is sometimes said to be from this word, from the nautical meaning "a long spar run out to extend the foot of a sail;" a ship "booming" being one in full sail. But it could just as well be from boom (v.), on the notion of "suddenness."

The space boom from 2063 to 2151 could be compared to the exploration of the West of America, and the gold rush.

 

[Guy Gardener]

So how does a phrase like "Baby Boomers" fit into that?

With the bulk of humanity denied space and the technology available, it really doesn't seem comparable to the gold rush, in as so much as I have seen as much Deadwood as need be.

But thanks for the Sailing definition. That was very helpful.

 

[Nebusj]

Guy Gardener said:
So how does a phrase like "Baby Boomers" fit into that?

With the bulk of humanity denied space and the technology available, it really doesn't seem comparable to the gold rush, in as so much as I have seen as much Deadwood as need be.

But thanks for the Sailing definition. That was very helpful.

Well, most of civilization didn't join in the land rush into Oklahoma, but it was called the ``Boomer movement'' all the same. Boomer also has historically meant a transient worker.

As for ``baby boomer'' that comes about from the notion of a ``baby boom'', with boom I would expect meant in the sense of economic growth, as in, ``boom times''.

 

[pookha]

Guy Gardener said:

I assumed, that humanity got sick of the Vulcans just giving them dilitium, and struck out to find there own deposits to mine creating several boom towns surrounding these... but what was the point of needing Dilithium if man kind was not allowed to extend past it's solar system by Vulcan edict?

So how does a phrase like "Baby Boomers" fit into that?

With the bulk of humanity denied space and the technology available, it really doesn't seem comparable to the gold rush, in as so much as I have seen as much Deadwood as need be.

But thanks for the Sailing definition. That was very helpful.

[/QUOTE]

uh because no such edict existed and because by the time of enterprise there were several human colonies and outposts beyond the solar system.

the restraint was the ships of the time period where not very fast but there is no evidence that technology and space travel was kept from most people.

really think of it as near and deep space.

for about 20 - 30 light years out mankind was traveling, had established colonies and were involved in trade.

due to increased speed enterprise was able to explore in the 100 light year range.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Woah.

Tera Nova much? 20 light years out. Too far away for a human ship to trek out to and still they didn't want to bother the Vulcans despite 60 years with no word.

The j Class Freighters were moving at well under Warp 2. We never saw a single successful Human colony... Well maybe Cold Station 12? But that was a small military instalation a couple hours inbetween both Human space and Klingon space at Enterprises Speeds. Humans had never even been to Rigel X before Broken Bow despite Paxton getting Rigellian Gene Therapy.

Man had not met the Klingons or the andorians or the tellerites or the Orions... Well Soong had, but that's because he was running away from the boundaries of known space.

In First Flight and Shockwave II the Vulcans said that man had gone out too soon and they could have another try in 20 or thirty years. The Human government had been told to stay put but the Boomers were private sector and according to Trip, those ships had been built by Zephram Cochrane personally so must have been at least 40 years old.

 

[pookha]

terra nova is a mess in a lot of ways.

20 years out would still be a long trip just to go check on a dead colony.
and we dont know for sure when they transitioned to the near 2 warp ships even though we know it was before cochrane went missing.

so if terra nova was founded pre those ship and by the time the near two warp ships came on line why check on a colony that had been dead for some time.

as for the andorians all it takes is for them to be on the other side of vulcan space with a distance greater 30 light years out and it is understanable why they were unknown.


there are several colony worlds mentioned in twilight and a couple of other episodes.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Alpha Centauri was mentioned in Metamorphosis as the home of Zephram Cochrane. That colony was a given because of TOS. 4.37 light years, 1/5 the disrance of earth to Terra Nova. Vulcan was 16 light years or 4 days away at some Vulcan ships unknown cruising speed.

Archer flew in the first human warp 2 shuttle 7 years before enterprises launch and that technology was a military secret that wouldn't have trickled down to the private sector for quite some time. 70 years ago I doubt they could have gone much faster than Warp 1.00003, if Warp One equals Light Speed, which equates to the 20 light years = 20 years travel.

Yes there would have been several colony worlds founded after earth was destroyed, since all those people not on earth when it was destroyed by the Xindi probe would have needed to find new homes. The Vulcans could have been guilted into taking what remained of "man" any where they wanted at warp 7 to set down roots.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Vulcans didn't forbid humans from leaving Earth's solar system. They just didn't easily give out the technology that would have let them do that.

 

[pookha]

the colony worlds were all destroyed at the same time.
go back to azati prime it was the reason they had extra ships with them to go search out the colony worlds.

and we know from twlight there were no other surviving humans to establish other colonies.
the other convoy was reported destroyed.

we know that deneva from tos was already founded because it was part of the run that horizon was on.
vega was also mentioned in twilight.
and i just checked vega colony was also mentioned as place
that the horizon visited so that confirms it existed pre xindi conflict.


you are also forgeting that warp two is eight times the speed of light.

yeah it would take time to reach other planets and we know it to the cargo ships years to travel around but they did exist.

heck we know from the other series that ships were going out before enterprise launched with colonists.

many of them most contact with earth but they also existed.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Then what was that stuff about Enterprise being brought back to earth and their mission of exploration denied for the next 20 years or so in the redundant timeline of Shockwave? Archer lived out 6 months of shame on earth with that blunder on his record before Daniels took him back? They pulled the same crap in First flight. And T'Pol taking command in Broken Bow?

The Vulcans controlled Starfleet by extension a carrot rather than a stick.

 

[Gepard]

I thought "Boomer" meant you were a frakking Cylon...

 

[pookha]

Guy Gardener said:
Then what was that stuff about Enterprise being brought back to earth and their mission of exploration denied for the next 20 years or so in the redundant timeline of Shockwave? Archer lived out 6 months of shame on earth with that blunder on his record before Daniels took him back? They pulled the same crap in First flight. And T'Pol taking command in Broken Bow?

The Vulcans controlled Starfleet by extension a carrot rather than a stick.

once again it had to do with deep space exploration probably more then 30 or so light years out.

think of it as the age of exploration pre and post columbus.

there was exploration and colonies established pre columbus but going across the ocean causeed a great leap forward.

but from the time of broken bow on when travis was talking of the places he had visited we knew there were colonies and pre established trade routes.

and several of them had been mentioned in tos .

the age of the deneva was established as more then a 100 years in tos for instance.

 

[Odon]

Gep Malakai said:
I thought "Boomer" meant you were a frakking Cylon...

Yes, my thoughts exactly.

 

[Guy Gardener]

pookha said:

Guy Gardener said:
Then what was that stuff about Enterprise being brought back to earth and their mission of exploration denied for the next 20 years or so in the redundant timeline of Shockwave? Archer lived out 6 months of shame on earth with that blunder on his record before Daniels took him back? They pulled the same crap in First flight. And T'Pol taking command in Broken Bow?

The Vulcans controlled Starfleet by extension a carrot rather than a stick.

once again it had to do with deep space exploration probably more then 30 or so light years out.

think of it as the age of exploration pre and post columbus.

there was exploration and colonies established pre columbus but going across the ocean causeed a great leap forward.

but from the time of broken bow on when travis was talking of the places he had visited we knew there were colonies and pre established trade routes.

and several of them had been mentioned in tos .

the age of the deneva was established as more then a 100 years in tos for instance.

I grudgingly have to accept most of what you say. though Berman proudly never saw any TOS in recent years so him taking the more obscure notes into account is unleikely, even if it is continuity and the truth that he would paint a different story than what we should believe to be true from previous facts.

Though 30 lightyears is not the roaming distance I would equate for midrange colonies since that's 10 years out further than terra Nova.

I read though a Fortunate Son transcript. The top speed on then and for a few years back since Travis was born is Warp 1.8. Though we have no idea if the cube rule holds because berman is a *&^% who was probably using the TNG scale and would swear black and blue that Kirk was as well, in the same way that he thought 22md century Klingons should be bumpy... Although the impossibly scary distance which travis cited as being away from home was 12 light years, as in 3/4 the distance to Vulcan or three times the distance of earth to Alpha CXentauri...

He claimed that the ships were carrying perhaps "20 tons of Dilithium" in the same hypothetical and these Journeys undertaken by the boomer fleet could take as long as 5 years sometimes.

5 years to get from A to B? Or A to B to A? Regardless what did Man need all tat dilithium for? If not for Ground stationed power generation rather than for this star fleet, and boomer fleet and later still mothball fleet? Maybe the older ships needed a lot more dilyithium than the constitution class?

The Boomers had to be trading with aliens because there's no money used between human human transactions, if they were merchants and not civil servants. So if there were 3 or four colonies of note, rather than trading depots, there were a lot of other place to go than from one human colony to the next, especially since if there's no money and and no ownership, then it's impossible to "Buy" a cargo ship from the UE that using it as a resource to conduct other business is theft out side of perhaps allowed margins.

But the Vulcans still had the power to close down the Warp 5 program whenever they felt like it. So only really drapes eating mad (*&^'s set out on two year missions to see people at a way distant human colony. It just wasn't a usable technology.

 

[Zane Gray]

The term "boomer" could draw from U.S. Navy slang for ballistic missile submarines. Crews of those ships often spend many, many months underwater out of touch with the rest of the world - "in the bottle" so to speak - much as crews on the Enterprise-era merchant space fleet would. It seems to me that the Horizon and other ships - and their crews - were often called "space boomers" as they were born on their ships and spent their whole lives sometimes there. "Boomer" could also reflect the fact that the merchant fleet and its services have spring out of the economic "boom" time of the dawn of Earth's interstellar commerce.

 

[Timo]

Or it could refer to the reliability of those warp 1.8 engines, especially when overtasked by merchant captains intent on making profit.

Personally, I'd find it more fun if this futurespeak didn't derive from anything relevant to today's or yesterday's world, let alone today's or yesterday's United States.

As for how far humans could get... Alpha Centauri is a plausible and conflict-free location for a colony but need not be a habitable world. Terra Nova could have been the nearest habitable world, and thus a much better place for a colony than AC, but it was too darn far away to be viable when the first attempt didn't take. And, say, Deneva need not be a human world at all in the ENT timeframe, even if there will be a human colony there in the 23rd century.

I do like the pre-2151 model of a few colonies really close to Earth, at the end of semi-regular commercial connections; a few commercial connections reaching out beyond those colonies; one failed attempt at an "easy" colony on a habitable world out in the sticks; and all too few Starfleet ships to keep proper watch over any of that, let alone loiter farther out.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

Hmmm.

Booom.

The sound of an explosion.

Either maybe these ships were REALLY loud while traveling in an aptnosphere, or in the beginning they were so crap they had a habit of blowing up... BOOM!

If humans have no money how do they have a boom or generate profit, from these activities? How do the economics of the 22nd century work in this instance?