What if the Vulcans didn't see the Pheonix?

[WraithDukat]

What would have happened to humanities space program if the Vulcans didn't see the first Warp flight?

Would there even have been one? I cant image any of the governments been interested in it been that they were still recovering from WW3, especially with no evidence of alien life.

 

[Tosk]

They would have spotted us eventually.

 

[Timo]

If Cochrane could make it to space with such feeble resources, probably a great many people and organizations on Earth could. It would probably follow that governments, corporations and crime gangs would have a great interest in joining that action, regulating it, exploiting it and perhaps shutting down some of it...

Clearly, going to space isn't a massively expensive endeavor any more. Whether there's anything worth doing in space right after WWIII is a somewhat different matter, but the very fact that cheap space travel seems to exist at all suggests that humans once thought there was.

Perhaps the first warp flight would take place a few decades later. Would the Vulcans be the ones to see it? Perhaps not - there are so many other species supposedly visiting the Sol system, and somebody much meaner might have been the first to realize Earth now had tech worth stealing, or was about to become a threat, or whatnot.

Then again, even though the Vulcans claimed to be "passing through" (or Deanna Troi claimed they did), nobody passes through a star system without meaning it - space is way too vast for that. And episodes like "Carbon Creek" show that Vulcans were actually keeping an eye on Earth. So a warp flight in, say, 2093 or 2151 would also catch their attention.

There's always the off chance that something horrible would happen to Earth if Vulcans didn't come here in 2063 already. TAS claims the Kzinti fought four wars with Earth about 200 years before the 2260s; those wars might have gone really badly for Earth if Cochrane engines weren't installed on Earthling warships! (Or perhaps it was Vulcan warships that defeated the Kzinti?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Yep, Earth would have pretty much been some backwater planet that nobody knew about. That's even alluded to in DS9's "Past Tense," during the change in the timeline. The Defiant is orbiting an alternate 24th century Earth where absolutely nothing is happening, and the nearest sign of life is a Romulan outpost.

 

[Timo]

One then starts to wonder whose "sphere of influence" this backwater Earth would be in. Romulans probably would claim exclusive rights to wherever they went; would Vulcans or Klingons be happy with them claiming Alpha Centauri (and soon probably also Earth, if not for any profitable reason, then for the sake of completeness)?

I'm sort of leaning towards the Vulcans actually being a major power that kept the Klingons away, at least from places the Klingons didn't consider worth any great conquest effort.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

But without Earth, Vulcan would probably have never created the Federation on their own, and their influence would end up being minimal. And not having an adversary (Earth) to go to war against, the Romulans would obviously emerge as the dominant Alpha Quadrant power, hence why there's a Romulan outpost so close to the alternate Earth.

 

[Melakon]

Yep, Earth would have pretty much been some backwater planet that nobody knew about.

That's the reaction Archer seems to get with the NX-01. More than once, a newly contacted race would say, "Earth? Never heard of it."

 

[MacLeod]

Yep, Earth would have pretty much been some backwater planet that nobody knew about.

That's the reaction Archer seems to get with the NX-01. More than once, a newly contacted race would say, "Earth? Never heard of it."

Yep, Earth was a backwater planet at least prior to the events leading upto and post creating of the UFP. Then it became a big giant bullseye being the defacto capitol world of the UFPP.

 

[Hando]

Yep, Earth would have pretty much been some backwater planet that nobody knew about.

That's the reaction Archer seems to get with the NX-01. More than once, a newly contacted race would say, "Earth? Never heard of it."

But the reverse is also true:
Andorians: The next neighboring interstellar nation - never heard of them.
Tellarites: Another neighboring interstellar nation - never heard of them.

It is possible that world becomes interesting only after achieving Warp 5.

Yep, Earth was a backwater planet at least prior to the events leading upto and post creating of the UFP. Then it became a big giant bullseye being the defacto capitol world of the UFPP.

United Federation of Proletariat Planets?


My take is that within 30 years Earth would have been contacted by somebody.
The human diaspora would still have happened (one we still feel the effects in the 24th century when we find human colonies in unexplored space). Perhaps without the Vulcan terraforming techniques the Earth would still have problems and the diaspora would have been bigger.

Once human colony ships start to appear on inhabited worlds you have first contact and anti-human sentiment though out the quadrant.

 

[Timo]

It might also be that Vulcans took a proactive stance to their Prime Directive, and prevented anybody from approaching the primitive Earth. It would take special tricks like Quark's time travel to get through the Vulcan quarantine... Once the Earthlings themselves began to make noises that would necessarily be heard at a distance (sending out warpships of their own), the quarantine was lifted, and nobody saw it necessary to inform the Earthlings that such a thing had existed in the first place.

Klingons seemed quite active and expansionist and proximal in ENT. Everybody but Earth did seem to have heard of them... Perhaps exactly because they had the secret of warp five travel and could raise ruckus well outside their own turf. The same would apply to Andorians (the Vulcans sure knew about them, they just weren't telling Archer) and Tellarites. Which would bring us back to there being some force keeping these folks from visiting or conquering Earth. Either a quarantine (this would have to be by Vulcans and nobody else), or then a major aversion towards primitive worlds, especially ones that were teetering on the edge of a nuclear holocaust.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kevman7987]

United Federation of Proletariat Planets?


My take is that within 30 years Earth would have been contacted by somebody.
The human diaspora would still have happened (one we still feel the effects in the 24th century when we find human colonies in unexplored space). Perhaps without the Vulcan terraforming techniques the Earth would still have problems and the diaspora would have been bigger.

Once human colony ships start to appear on inhabited worlds you have first contact and anti-human sentiment though out the quadrant.

Contacted by the alien version of the Peace Corps. I'm now starting to imagine the alien commercials about our 3rd world planet; "For just 30 quatloos a day, you can keep a human fed, clothed, and un-mutated from nuclear fallout."

 

[Hando]

It might also be that Vulcans took a proactive stance to their Prime Directive, and prevented anybody from approaching the primitive Earth. It would take special tricks like Quark's time travel to get through the Vulcan quarantine... Once the Earthlings themselves began to make noises that would necessarily be heard at a distance (sending out warpships of their own), the quarantine was lifted, and nobody saw it necessary to inform the Earthlings that such a thing had existed in the first place.

Klingons seemed quite active and expansionist and proximal in ENT. Everybody but Earth did seem to have heard of them... Perhaps exactly because they had the secret of warp five travel and could raise ruckus well outside their own turf. The same would apply to Andorians (the Vulcans sure knew about them, they just weren't telling Archer) and Tellarites. Which would bring us back to there being some force keeping these folks from visiting or conquering Earth. Either a quarantine (this would have to be by Vulcans and nobody else), or then a major aversion towards primitive worlds, especially ones that were teetering on the edge of a nuclear holocaust.

Timo Saloniemi

I can not disagree.

The only other planet in a similar position was Coridan. Which however was more valuable (Dilithium mining and Warp 7 ships) and would have been therefore more interesting for the Andorians.


They did ask if a planet was free and if they can settle it, but nobody asked what other interstellar nations are in the neighborhood.

 

[Ronald Held]

My impression is that Vulcan had control of the space that Earth was in, based on their survey vessels.
Andorians and tellerites would not bother going there without a good reason. Klingons and Romulans were too far way in the 2060's. I would think the Vulcan would have contacted Earth within a few decades and maybe made little difference to the Warp 5 project.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In one of the Myriad Universes stories (The Tears of Eridanus), it explores what happened if it'd been the Andorians who made first contact. Very interesting read!

 

[Melakon]

Timo, instead of calling it a quarantine, perhaps the Vulcans were maintaining a blockade outside the boundaries of the Sol system. Perhaps there have been centuries of battles we're unable to detect. Maybe they're out there right now, waiting, just so they can be the first to intimidate us.

 

[Richard Baker]

Cochrane developed the Phoenix with absolutely no idea that its flight would attract the attention of an alien race. He was building it planning on making a profit from it so he must have had some idea how to use its expected success- probably selling the technology since it took so long scrapping together materials just for the prototype.

Somebody, be it a corporation or nation state, wanted to buy the warp engine technology for it's own purposes. If the Vulcans had not landed then that is what would have happened. How they utilized it would have been different than the path Earth took after First Contact, but it could probably be assumed a few warp signatures would have been detected in or around the Sol system a few years later. Whether or not those would have attracted attention or if the Humans would have just developed space travel much more slowly is unknown.
First Contact was not planned, Cochrane had something else in mind- who knows what his plan would have been...

 

[Timo]

Cochrane clearly had gone to the trouble of installing two passenger seats in his test rig. One of those was going to be used by Lily Sloane, but we never got any indication the user for the second one would have been any of the characters we saw. So Cochrane's original plan probably was to convince buyers by offering their observers a ride. No such observers were in evidence when the flight actually took place - yet it did appear that Cochrane had always intended to fly the very day he ultimately did fly (Lily says "tomorrow" is going to be Zep's big day, right before the Borg start bombarding).

So, had Cochrane already given up on taking observers along for this first (?) flight? Would there have been a second flight, considering the Phoenix appeared to be a multistage vehicle ill suited for reuse?

Or did Cochrane have buyers lined up, complete with flight-ready observers, but the Borg bombarded those to death or tactical withdrawal?

Mere elimination of observers would probably not dissuade a buyer from buying, especially if Cochrane had already sold the thing for the necessary cash. I'm sort of leaning toward the interpretation that Cochrane had originally worked for the government, with a big team and all; lost that team (and that government!) in the war; tried to sell to the highest bidder, or then to the ten highest bidders simultaneously; and had failed to secure any buyers in the end, and was now going to fly purely as a hobby project.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[alpha_leonis]

I think somebody on Earth would have put together enough resources to send at least an unmanned Warp 2 probe to explore Alpha Centauri. (It would take about six months to get there at "old scale" Warp 2, which makes it equivalent to a Mars mission from today.) Certainly a Vulcan or other neighboring race would see *that* kind of flight, if they happened to miss Cochrane's few-minute flight that kept him within sight of Earth.

 

[T'Girl]

I think somebody on Earth would have put together enough resources to send at least an unmanned Warp 2 probe to explore Alpha Centauri.

Certainly a Vulcan or other neighboring race would see *that* kind of flight

40 Eridani A (supposedly Vulcan), and Alpha Centuri are almost on opposite sides of Earth's star system. Would the Vulcans have seen us traveling to and fro?

In order to detect Cochrane's fight, it was necessary for the Vulcan ship to be inside our star system. Many billion of miles away, but not light years.

 

[Sci]

But without Earth, Vulcan would probably have never created the Federation on their own, and their influence would end up being minimal. And not having an adversary (Earth) to go to war against, the Romulans would obviously emerge as the dominant Alpha Quadrant power, hence why there's a Romulan outpost so close to the alternate Earth.

The novel Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History features an alternate timeline in which Earth never develops warp drive. In it, Vulcan remained subject to Romulan infiltration, but eventually turned on Romulus and defeated them before integrating them into a Vulcan-dominated polity called the Vulcan Protectorate. The Vulcan Protectorate is more militaristic than the Vulcan we are used to; it has conquered other worlds, and is embroiled in a war with an Andorian/Klingon alliance.

Yep, Earth would have pretty much been some backwater planet that nobody knew about.

That's the reaction Archer seems to get with the NX-01. More than once, a newly contacted race would say, "Earth? Never heard of it."

But the reverse is also true:
Andorians: The next neighboring interstellar nation - never heard of them.
Tellarites: Another neighboring interstellar nation - never heard of them.

To be fair, it's entirely possible that the Andorian government is aware of Earth in 2151, even if the crew of the Kumari isn't. Same thing with the Tellarite government as compared to a single Tellarite mercenary.

Yep, Earth was a backwater planet at least prior to the events leading upto and post creating of the UFP. Then it became a big giant bullseye being the defacto capitol world of the UFPP.

United Federation of Proletariat Planets?

"Workers of the galaxy, unite! You have nothing to lose but your particle chains!"

It might also be that Vulcans took a proactive stance to their Prime Directive, and prevented anybody from approaching the primitive Earth. It would take special tricks like Quark's time travel to get through the Vulcan quarantine... Once the Earthlings themselves began to make noises that would necessarily be heard at a distance (sending out warpships of their own), the quarantine was lifted, and nobody saw it necessary to inform the Earthlings that such a thing had existed in the first place.

I would tend to assume that the Vulcans were actively preventing other powers from entering the Sol system (or, more broadly, from coming near that region of space) pre-2063, yeah. I see no reason to assume they never told Humans about the quarantine later on, though.

* * *

I find myself wondering about the evolution of Earth itself if the Vulcans had not made First Contact. Would Earth have united so quickly? Would it have abandoned currency-based economics? Maybe Earth would have been a much more aggressive, expansionist world.