Who would have been in charge when the other two ships showed up?

[Guy Gardener]

From Life Line.
ADMIRAL HAYES [on monitor]: Hello, Captain. I hope this message finds you well. From what I understand, it has not been easy, but I want you to know that a lot of people here are very proud of what you've accomplished. I also want to assure you that we have not given up finding a way to get you home. We've redirected two deep space vessels toward your position. If all goes well, they could rendezvous with you in the next five to six years.

What is a deep space vessel?

Are we talking about a city in space on a generational mission with thousands of crew and an admiral at the top of the totem or are we talking about a sleeper ship half the size of Voyager which was launched a hundred and twenty years earlier? Something inbetween? Abything is possible?

Command falls to the tactically superior vessel.

There's a one in three chance that Janeway way is going to be a junior officer and that the crews of all these vessels are goingto flood inwards together until they no longer distinguish regional loyalty to any one ship over their broader oath to Starfleet.

A one in three chance.

That's three card monty?

Unless Janeway was promoted to admiral in season 12 or 13 via the midas array so she could kick her heels in even if the other ships were tactically superior?

 

[danellis]

One would assume that part of the mission orders would set out which individual took command of the taskgroup once it met up (similarly one would expect an hierarchy between the two outbound ships to be defined).

dJE

 

[Guy Gardener]

Unless they were both contacted at two different points in space, hundreds, if not thousands of light years apart, on two different deep space missions and all three ships were alone before Starfleet thought a great big convoy would look aces and there was no guarantee which two would meet up first, and how long after that, possibly years, they would then encounter the third vessel.

 

[F. King Daniel]

What is a deep space vessel?

We've heard of ships on long-term missions beyond Federation space, like the USS Olympus in DS9's "The Sound of Her Voice", which crashed on it's way back from the Beta quadrant. Judging from the wreckage seen briefly, it was a Constitution-class ship or kitbash variation (the wreckage was the old STIII self-destructed Enterprise half-saucer and nacelles).

I vaguelly recall reading (in the TNG tech manual?) that the Galaxy-class was designed to go on 20-year missions.

 

[The_Baroness]

What is a deep space vessel?

We've heard of ships on long-term missions beyond Federation space, like the USS Olympus in DS9's "The Sound of Her Voice", which crashed on it's way back from the Beta quadrant. Judging from the wreckage seen briefly, it was a Constitution-class ship or kitbash variation (the wreckage was the old STIII self-destructed Enterprise half-saucer and nacelles).

I vaguelly recall reading (in the TNG tech manual?) that the Galaxy-class was designed to go on 20-year missions.

Maybe it was, but 'long' missions don't mean 'deep' missions, it could simply be that it was meant to be in action a long time, in (relatively) local space.

I never got the deep space vessels things...either they're really fast, which considering Voyager is meant to be one of the fastest ships in the fleet means it should be able to get home much faster than 75 years, or they're really old, really slow ships (possibly generational ones) that have been heading for the Delta quadrant for ages already, and will only serve to slow voyager down, or they're normal ships.....which means why can they do the journey so much faster than voy?

Also - did anyone tell them Voyager got home? I'd be pissed if I got to the Delta Quadrant, only to bump into Neelix who tells me I've just missed them...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Don't forget life expectancy.

If most of the crew can live well for 3 hundred to a thousand years, then maybe they don't really think of the "deep space mission" as anythign but a short excursion?

Trills? No, the Symbiosis Commission had lies in place about how compatible Trills were with symbiont, unless they just cloned and recloned the host for the Symbiont when it wore out or just got a little grey and pudgy?

Humanoid Clones becoming cows, well horses really.

 

[Verteron]

Don't forget life expectancy.

If most of the crew can live well for 3 hundred to a thousand years, then maybe they don't really think of the "deep space mission" as anythign but a short excursion?

Trills? No, the Symbiosis Commission had lies in place about how compatible Trills were with symbiont, unless they just cloned and recloned the host for the Symbiont when it wore out or just got a little grey and pudgy?

Humanoid Clones becoming cows, well horses really.

Possibly, although a much more 'humane' possibility is that these ships just carry the majority of the crew in stasis, with rotating command/scientific crews to do the exploration and charting, each of which is awake for a year every 20 years (with another 19 crews asleep in stasis).

This technology seems fairly routine by the 24thC, given the Khan and his crew spent time in stasis on the Botany Bay, and the Enterprise-D was able to wake those sleepers in 21stC cryonic suspension in "The Neutral Zone".

These ships may just be for exploration, or may indeed contain basic facilities for laying the foundations of a long range colony off in far flung space, or may be on a mission of first contact finding interesting species and/or species that could be brought in to the Federation at some point in the future.

 

[The_Baroness]

Maybe they just left a brick on the accelerator and went to sleep

 

[Jefferies]

What is a deep space vessel?

We've heard of ships on long-term missions beyond Federation space, like the USS Olympus in DS9's "The Sound of Her Voice", which crashed on it's way back from the Beta quadrant. Judging from the wreckage seen briefly, it was a Constitution-class ship or kitbash variation (the wreckage was the old STIII self-destructed Enterprise half-saucer and nacelles).

I vaguelly recall reading (in the TNG tech manual?) that the Galaxy-class was designed to go on 20-year missions.

Maybe it was, but 'long' missions don't mean 'deep' missions, it could simply be that it was meant to be in action a long time, in (relatively) local space.

I never got the deep space vessels things...either they're really fast, which considering Voyager is meant to be one of the fastest ships in the fleet means it should be able to get home much faster than 75 years, or they're really old, really slow ships (possibly generational ones) that have been heading for the Delta quadrant for ages already, and will only serve to slow voyager down, or they're normal ships.....which means why can they do the journey so much faster than voy?

Also - did anyone tell them Voyager got home? I'd be pissed if I got to the Delta Quadrant, only to bump into Neelix who tells me I've just missed them...

From what I remember (and I believe I read this in the TNG manual as well) was that 20-year missions meant deep space assignments. To boldly go where no one had gone before so to speak. It makes a lot of sense from a scientific stand point, but also from a practical one, if you think how large and self-sufficient the Galaxy-class was. Also 20 years in deep space only means about 10.0000 light years away from Federation space max and would probably be much less as I doubt that such a mission would follow on a straight line. At that distance you can still communicate via subspace with just a few weeks or months delay.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Not without boosters which means you need treaties at the alien relay stations between you and home... Gotta wonder why Janeway didn't try sending a message that way? Relaying on the kindness of strangers not that she wouldn't be warning assholes that she was coming or telling some new Borg level enemy about the eistence of Earth or running the effect of contaminating some prewar culture accidentally even thoguh you'd only get the "sos message" from Janeway if you had the subspace technology on hand to receive it...

That would have been a marvelous episode.

Aliens passing on or not passing on or arguing about passing on Voyagers SOS to the Federation... Even it arrives on Earth's door step 30 years after Janeway already got home