I may be mistaken. Initally it looked like TOS, but may be from somewhere else. Last image on this page: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Milky_Way_Galaxy
Why so little exploration of the Alpha Quadrant?
- Thread starter ConRefit79
- Start date
I may be mistaken. Initally it looked like TOS, but may be from somewhere else. Last image on this page: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Milky_Way_Galaxy
That's next Gen. You can tell from the L-cars "bars" on the edges. It's too dated to be DS9 or Voyager too.
There are dozens of other ships off screen that are exploying things we dont see because they are not made into stories. I'm sure that Starfleet has explored Alpha Quadrant more than we know, but of course the galaxy is huge so all four quadrants still have vast unexplored regions even near the end of the 24th century.
Also to add to that, but what were the NX-01 Enterprise crew exploring?
Probably space that's now a part of the Federation (posibly the very core of the Federation).
I always assumed that TOS and TNG did take place mostly in the alpha quadrant. The Romulans I thought lived in the beta quadrant.
That's from the VOY episode "Pathfinder". A funny little graphic that doesn't look too convincing, compared with previously seen galactic maps in TNG, DS9 or earlier VOY episodes. Perhaps this simplistic spiral was used because this graphic had to be tilted and zoomed in 3D in the scenes where Barclay used it for demonstrating his ideas on contacting the Voyager? Perhaps a more complex and "artistic" shape would have taken too much time to create?
One'd think TOS adventures and exploration would take place near Earth, regardless of where the quadrant boundaries went.
However, there is no such system to the locations we hear mentioned in TOS. At times, our heroes effortlessly travel to the edge or the center of the galaxy. At other times, they visit real stars that are several hundred lightyears from Earth. At times, the heroes even explicitly identify themselves as being several hundred lightyears away from Earth, or moving across such distances. Yet star systems close to Earth still remain unexplored at that time, most prominent of these being Pollux from "Who Mourns for Adonais?"...
Apparently, Earth's/UFP's exploration and expansion doesn't proceed in an orderly, spherical manner, then. So all bets might be off regarding where Earth/UFP enemies and allies are located, unless something is explicitly said about their astrographical whereabouts.
Timo Saloniemi
I can't find the citation, but I believe Janeway once lamented that the Alpha Quadrant was almost completely explored. (The context was a "look on the bright side" kind of thing: she was getting to do far more exploring than she would have if she hadn't gotten sent to the Delta Quadrant.)
On TNG, in season one (Where No One Has Gone Before) Kosinsky says "In three centuries of space flight, we've charted just eleven percent of our galaxy."
In season two (The Dauphin), Wesley says "We've only charted nineteen percent of our galaxy". Given that the Alpha Quadrant represents 25% of the galaxy, if the Federation has explored most of it, the vast majority of that 19% must lie within the Alpha, and it is the Beta Quadrant that is curiously unexplored.
* It is possible to reconcile these two figures without saying that the Federation explored 8% of the galaxy in one year, as Kosinsky seemed to be talking specificly about human exploration, while Wesley seemed to be talking about not even just the Federation, meaning that about 58% of the territory charted by the Federation was explored by the Federation, while 42% is territory of one of the Federation's neighbors who shared their maps, but no human has actually gone there yet.
Or the AQ is based around the major powers. A small, but important difference in the wording I thik, then the specifics of the quadrants dont matter as much, the most powerful guys decided the area of space they were in was the alpha one and just arbitarily carved up the rest of the galaxy.
Also using that way of thinking helps go nicely with the impression the tv show gives that nothing else in the galaxy is that important. The only two major powers shown that are considered important and arent in the AQ are the Dominion and Borg, and they are only considered important because they are inexorably linked to the AQ anyway (Dominion through the wormhole which effectively places them in the AQ and the Borg because they constantly attack the AQ powers).
Aside from those two, the rest of the galaxy is basically considered territory the main AQ powers havent got to yet.
The quadrants didn't even exist in early Season One. I remember one episode mentioning the Morgana Quadrant.
Starfleet's explorations might not be particularly methodical. Their area's of attention might change over time, sometimes they're searching for political allies or new Federation members, other times the emphasis is on stars that could possess class-M planets for colonization, still other times looking for new resources and new trading partners to enrich the Federation. Starfleet does have political masters. In between these times, Starfleet "back fills," by returning to areas that they earlier bypassed.
There's a difference between "Chart" and "Explore." If you chart a section of the Earth from a airplane or a satellite, that's not the same thing as exploring the same area with boots on the ground.
Picard told Lily that that the Federation members were spread over eight thousand light years, assuming he meant something like a sphere and not a long drawn out string of stars, that would 'only" be two point five six percent of one quadrant. Even that would be a near ridiculous number of stars to explore.
I thought the whole thing started to be more solidly developed and redefined when the location of the Sol System was given in "The Best of Both Worlds"(?). Not much of the planning made it onto the screen, but "Sector 001 or Sol Sector is the central sector of space of the United Federation of Planets in which the Sol system is located. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds"; DS9: "Emissary"; VOY: "Endgame")" (Memory Alpha).
Putting Earth at these coordinates automatically threw half of claimed UFP space into the Alpha Quadrant and half into Beta, IIRC.
Not really, sector 001 could just as easily indicate that Earth was up in one corner of the Federation. If anything as the Federation expanded, changed shape, grew (by necessity) away from the two Empires, the physical center of the Federation would move away from Earth and Sol sector.
Sector 001 is most likely called that because that sector encompasses the founding members of the Federation. As new groups of members were added sectors 002, 003 and so forth came into being.
This is a little off-topic, but I'm wondering what the big deal of delineating the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta Quadrants is. After all, they're fairly arbitrary lines on a map: they don't even denote borders of any Power.
Isn't it kind of like considering lines of latitude/longitude on Earth as equally or more important than the actual borders of nations/states. (Even though in some cases, such as the border between Canada and the US near the Pacific were defined along such lines.)
(Edit: perhaps a better analogy would be talking about the "four" hemispheres of the Earth (yes, I know by definition there should be just two hemispheres, but we hear mention of the Western/Eastern hemispheres as well as the Northern/Southern hemispheres.)
I'd think the actual territory controlled/explored/unexplored would be more important than the Quadrants' boundaries, especially near the intersection of Quadrants (such as the Alpha-Beta locations being discussed.)
I *do* see where using Quadrants would be useful: namely, when talking about far-off locations (such as the Dominion being deep in the Gamma Q or Voyager ending up in the far edge of the Delta Q).
Isn't it kind of like considering lines of latitude/longitude on Earth as equally or more important than the actual borders of nations/states. (Even though in some cases, such as the border between Canada and the US near the Pacific were defined along such lines.)
(Edit: perhaps a better analogy would be talking about the "four" hemispheres of the Earth (yes, I know by definition there should be just two hemispheres, but we hear mention of the Western/Eastern hemispheres as well as the Northern/Southern hemispheres.)
I'd think the actual territory controlled/explored/unexplored would be more important than the Quadrants' boundaries, especially near the intersection of Quadrants (such as the Alpha-Beta locations being discussed.)
I *do* see where using Quadrants would be useful: namely, when talking about far-off locations (such as the Dominion being deep in the Gamma Q or Voyager ending up in the far edge of the Delta Q).
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^ That's part of the reason why I think the AQ/BQ border shouldn't lie on Earth. Really, what's the point then? Why would the Federation divide it's space in half just like that? If you say something is in the AQ it doesn't really tell you much except it's somewhere 'east' of Earth. It could be next to Earth or it could be waaaay over there somewhere. But if Earth sits, say, square in the middle of the AQ then it does have a purpose that ties into your last sentence. AQ is the Federation's backyard, predominantly explored space. BQ and GQ are mostly unexplored regions of space that are a bit farther away and the DQ is the unexplored farthest region on the other side of the Galaxy.
Earth was the key member to Unite the founding members of the Federation. I guess they decided to have SOL be the dividing line relative to the center of the galaxy in their star charts. This bisected the galaxy. You can have members on either side of this line. 90 degrees from this line at the center of the galaxy divides it into quadrants.
The 'Prime Meridian' does pass through Earth even in the system I described. But it's the Prime Meridian of the AQ (and by extension DQ). The coordinate system (which is the point of meridians/parallels) is the same, I just arranged the borders of the quadrants differently, for added benefit.
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