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[Publius]

The scandoc above was only intended as an example; if Mr Wong wanted to use that format, certainly more effort would be put into it to make it "feel" more like professional correspondence.

For example, Smith's obvious surprise at the Federation's procedural stupidity could very easily be turned into a suggestion to Danton, à la observations of the inherent weakness of the system, and how easily Danton's office -- which is responsible for destabilising enemy governments -- could take advantage of the Federation's engineering and administrative ineptitude; in the example scandoc, Smith points out how easily Infiltration could take advantage of the Federation's apparent lack of studious examination of people's credentials.

Smith might point out that the Federation does not seem to test technologies very carefully; Destabilisation may want to consider having Infiltration introduce new hardware to the Federation, designed to fail after a certain period. The hardware would pass the Federation's lax testing standards -- and then promptly fail catastrophically after a month in use by a general production starship.

After all, Smith's suggestions could serve two purposes: It would underline the inherent stupidity and lack of safety of the Federation's practices, and it would be a demonstration of how very easily the Federation's bad science and bad engineering can be turned into an Achilles's heel with a bit of effort. It would not only support Mr Wong's criticism of Federation engineering, but it would also fit in with the general theme of the page: How would the Empire combat the Federation?

Publius

P.S. -- In case any one noticed, Winston Smith is a direct homage to 1984.

[Oddity]

Random thought:

How about a series of news articles about the hearing, where half of it would be from Starfleet and the other half from some non-Federation controlled news agency?

The articles from Starfleet would decry the hearing as BS, while the 'Voice of Freedom' would bring some rather heavy-calibre arguments to bear on Leah Brahms.

What do you think?

[Sothis]

Random thought:

How about a series of news articles about the hearing, where half of it would be from Starfleet and the other half from some non-Federation controlled news agency?

The articles from Starfleet would decry the hearing as BS, while the 'Voice of Freedom' would bring some rather heavy-calibre arguments to bear on Leah Brahms.

What do you think?

I was writing a news article about the outbreak of the Dominion War, if I find the time, I could do one about this...

[RedImperator]

What about something in Brahm's defense, either from the trial or a news article quoting her denying the charges? I'm not sure how engineering hearings work, but if this is a well-publicized case, her lawyers would be making statements to the press.

[His Divine Shadow]

Yes, a distraction, like a faked porn-holo with her in it.

[Typhonis 1]

Or she goes on record stating that no one asked if she had engineering credentials when they asked her to work on the warp core design and that the computer simulations were used for the safety study and gfinally the reords were lost in the Breen attack

[RedImperator]

[quote]Blame Starfleet

Embattled physicist Leah Brahams claims Starfleet is to blame for the Yamato disaster. She may have a case.

By Gia Mechown, Federal Review columnist

"They didn't even bother asking for my engineering credentials," says Leah Brahams, explaining how a theoretical physicist like herself ended up in charge of designing the warp core for the Galaxy class starship. "It was always about making it faster. 'Not fast enough, not powerful enough', that's what we always heard from San Francisco."

Today, Leah Brahams, once a respected physicist and Starfleet darling, is battling for her professional life and possibly her freedom. The Federal government is considering filing criminal charges in the wake of a Starfleet Engineering hearing which found Brahams guilty of gross negligence and incompetence. She's named as a defendant in a massive class-action lawsuit filed by the families of the victims of the U.S.S. Yamato disaster. If she's found to be even partly responsible for the warp core breech which destroyed that ship with all hands, she may find herself also liable for the failure of every warp core based on the original GCS design.

"I want one thing to be clear to everyone right now," said Brahams. "The press is making me out to be the sole designer of the Galaxy. They're making it sound like I was the one who said it was safe for children, like I was the one who ordered it into combat zones. I didn't do anything of the kind."

She goes on to explain: "Starfleet came to me and a few others almost 20 years ago. At the time, the Excelsior cruisers and the Miranda destroyers were really starting to show their age, compared to what some of our neighbors were building. We'd just lost the Enterprise--1701-C, I mean--a few years ago at Khitomer, and that showed us what the Ambassadors' limits were against the Romulans. At the same time, we were really starting to open up the galaxy, and nothing we had was fast enough to really explore deep space out deep in the alpha quadrant. We were pushing out the frontiers as fast as we could and we left this huge volume of uncharted space basically in the middle of our territory. So they came to us and said they wanted a warp drive that could push a starship along fast, faster than even the Constellations, which were really built with the same technology we'd used in the Mirandas and even the Constitutions.

"The hard part, though, was going to be that they wanted this ship to be big, bigger than anything we'd launched before, way bigger than what the Klingons had and what we thought the Romulans had. When they first told us the proposed dimensions, the first thing I think I said was, 'it can't be done', and the engineers were saying the same thing. It dwarfed an Ambassador and it was supposed to be much, much faster. Later on, when we all found out what the D'Deridex [largest and most powerful class of Romulan Warbird] looked like, it made more sense that they wanted it that big."

She pauses. "And yet, it doesn't really make sense, because that space isn't being taken up by ship's systems. The saucer is all crew quarters. The structural engineers working on the saucer complained all the time about how some lieutenant commander from fleet personnell was always coming down there complaining the crew quarters were too small, Starfleet wanted them bigger. That's how the whole project went. The engineers' decisions kept getting overridden by people in Starfleet who probably couldn't hammer a tool shed together. I don't think anybody in Starfleet command had any idea what they wanted out of this project."

Though Starfleet has done its best to keep criticisms like these quiet, Dr. Brahams is not the first to complain about the schizophrenic mission profile of the GCS. Captain Jean-Luc Picard himself is known to have complained to Starfleet about the presence of children on board the U.S.S. Enterprise-D.

"What kind of idiot puts children on a starship?" complains Dr. Brahams. "No, correction--what kind of idiot puts children on a starship and then sends it into dangerous missions? Yamato was patrolling the Neutral Zone. The Neutral Zone! That's a pure combat mission, which the Galaxy wasn't supposed to be designed for in the first place. And yet there they are, and then to make matters worse, they actually enter the Neutral Zone, on a pure lark I guess, and download the computer virus that destroyed the ship."

When asked about why the warp core was so unstable, Dr. Brahams gets defensive. "We had to do it that way. There's no way the ship could have gone as fast as it did with a conventional warp drive. None. We tried three nacelle designs, four nacelle, even six nacelle. Nothing. No configuration would work. Our only option was to either shrink the ship, which Starfleet wouldn't let us do, or create a contained overreaction inside the core and use the dilithium matrix to prevent the reaction from running out of control. Basically, every time the ship's drive was online, there'd need to be constant, 100% control over the reaction, or else it would blow. We never in a million years though Starfleet would accept the design, but they did."

The Starfleet engineering board, responsible for overseeing new ship designs, has vehemently denied they knew how unstable and dangerous the Brahams core design would turn out to be. Brahams laughs at this. "What the hell good is an engineering board that doesn't see flaws in the system before it blows up? I'll give you an example here. During my hearing, they confronted me with data that suggested if you tapped--I mean, had a low speed collision or took an asteroid hit or something--one of the nacelles just right, you'd cause a plasma backflash which could destroy the ship. I wonder why they didn't catch that when we were still in blueprints."

Brahams seems frustrated. "I'm a physicist. They asked me to design a warp core that could move a lot of mass very quickly. I worked out how it could be done, expecting the engineers to come in and refine my ideas, not make a few changes so it would fit into the hull and actually fly it. And now they're blaming me for all the people that died on the Yamato[/i}, Enterprise, and Odyssey.

[Cpt. Marko Ramius]

*applauds* Damn... you're good.

[Vympel]

You'll have to rework the history a bit though. Leah Brahms cannot possibly be over 35 years of age. In TNG she is quite young looking.

[Vympel]

Starfleet came to me and a few others almost 20 years ago

In reference to that, I mean. Great work

[RedImperator]

Starfleet came to me and a few others almost 20 years ago

In reference to that, I mean. Great work

Thanks for saying so. For a while there, I though I'd just killed the thread.

Does anyone know how long it took for the GCS to get from initial concept to production? I thought I read somewhere that there was 13 years between initial design and the launch of 1701-D, and then this hearing would have to take place at least 7 years after the Enterprise-D was commissioned (also assuming "Encounter at Farpoint" is the first mission of Picard's Enterprise). That's where I got the 20 year figure. If anyone knows better figures, I can revise the history a little.

[neoolong]

The 1701-D was launched on stardate 40759.5. I don't know how that breaks down into something understandable really. You can try to compare that to the dates in the series to try to get an age, at least an age from launch.

Oh yeah this was kind of posted a while back, but I though it would be better to have a more complete list.

Starfleet Comand
Adm. Gene Roddenberry
Adm. Rick Berman
Adm. Michael Piller
Adm. David Livingston
Adm. Robert H. Justman
Adm. Peter Lauritson
Adm. Susan Sackett

Engineering Group
Capt. Andrew Probert
Capt. Herman Zimmerman
Capt. Richard James
Capt. John M. Dwyer
Capt. Jim Mees
Capt. Cari L. Thomas
Capt. Richard McKenzie

Warp Technologies Development Group
Capt. Robert Legato
Capt. Daniel Curry
Capt. Gary Hutzel
Capt. Ronald B. Moore
Capt. Wendy Neuss
Capt. Richard Arnold

Advanced Technological Unit
Dr. Rick Sternbach
Dr. Michael Okuda Note: He is responsible for the stupid Okudagram system and may be brought up on charges for implenting it.)

Yard Engineers
Capt. Gregory Jein
Capt. Dana White

This information is from The Art of Star Trek, specifically the picture of the plague that was on the Enterprise and the fact that the book said that Okuda came up with the Okudagram system.

[Enlightenment]

You'll have to rework the history a bit though. Leah Brahms cannot possibly be over 35 years of age. In TNG she is quite young looking.

Given that TNG humans live much longer than real-life people it's possible that they age at a slower rate. Brahms could be quite a bit older than she looked, particularly if she was vain enough to go for the Trek-equivalent of plastic surgery.

[omegaLancer]

wasnot lea brahm we saw just a holo image on file. It may not have been a current image, and if I was part of the group of half witts that design the exploding warp cores found on all present Star fleet vessels, I would have taken the money and got out of Federation Space shortily after....

[Hendrake]

wasnot lea brahm we saw just a holo image on file. It may not have been a current image, and if I was part of the group of half witts that design the exploding warp cores found on all present Star fleet vessels, I would have taken the money and got out of Federation Space shortily after....

I remember an episode (in season 5, I think) where she went in person aboard the E-D, the one where Geordie found out she was married, and she didn't look much older than in the Holodeck.

[NecronLord]

Humm, What exactly is an Okudagram anyway, is it that irritating, cluttered and inneficient Lcars system that makes windows defalut look fantastic?

[Stormbringer]

Humm, What exactly is an Okudagram anyway, is it that irritating, cluttered and inneficient Lcars system that makes windows defalut look fantastic?

They're the Feddies default disply, so yes.

[Uraniun235]

Okudagrams are a nickname for ALL the computer consoles/displays seen on TNG and beyond.

We'd just lost the Enterprise--1701-C, I mean--a few years ago at Khitomer, and that showed us what the Ambassadors' limits were against the Romulans.

IIRC, the E-C was lost at Norendra 3 defending a Klingon outpost.

[neoolong]

Okudagrams are a nickname for ALL the computer consoles/displays seen on TNG and beyond.

We'd just lost the Enterprise--1701-C, I mean--a few years ago at Khitomer, and that showed us what the Ambassadors' limits were against the Romulans.

IIRC, the E-C was lost at Norendra 3 defending a Klingon outpost.

Hmm. From the book I got it from Okudagrams were the system of controls that use the backlit gel looking things. So if, all the computer consoles/displays used them, I guess they are all the computer consoles/displays. Though it only started out as the backlit thing at first, I guess.

[Typhonis 1]

hmm a reporter discovers that Starfleet is covering up other little fiascos on the Big E a minor hit during a war game knocks the weapons out on the Enterprisse an Alien terorist disables all externalk sensors by destroying one junctyion box the ships computer is taken over by a virus and theres no backup...

[RedImperator]

hmm a reporter discovers that Starfleet is covering up other little fiascos on the Big E a minor hit during a war game knocks the weapons out on the Enterprisse an Alien terorist disables all externalk sensors by destroying one junctyion box the ships computer is taken over by a virus and theres no backup...

If I were Leah Braham's defense team, I'd be gunning for whoever designed the GCS computer system. In every warp core disaster and near-disaster except for the Odyssey, which probably had the reaction chamber or antimatter storage pod physically breeched by the impact with the bugship, the main computer has played an implicit part, either through failed safety systems or a command and control failure thanks to excessive centralization. As a member of the propulsion design team, Brahams would not have been responsible for overseeing the design of the computer system. If I'm her attorney, I want to prove three things: Starfleet pressured my client to trade off safety for power and speed, poor computer design turned my client's warp core into a ticking time bomb, not some inherent flaw in the core itself, and Starfleet exacerbated these problems by placing civilians on a military starship and allowing GCS captains to take the ship into dangerous situations without detaching the saucer. It won't be enough to get out of practicing engineering without a liscense, but it should be enough to create reasonable doubt in a negligent homicide case, which is what I assume she'd be facing, and probably get her out with mininmal damage in a wrongful death suit. If, in the process, Starfleet becomes embroiled in one giant scandal after another, so be it. Any outfit that makes Janeway an admiral instead of court-martialing her needs some heads to roll anyway.

[Uraniun235]

They couldn't very well drum her out... the public, not knowing the full extent of her incompetence, would probably be screaming at Starfleet for some time. Hell, maybe even Starfleet didn't even know the full extent of what happened... maybe Janeway doctored some of those logs and reports a bit.

Wouldn't surprise me at least.

[Oddity]

Miscarriage of justice

Leah Brahms, one of the Federation's best physicists, was unjustly accused for violating Federation Engineering Act today. Mrs. Brahms directed the team that designed the warp core used onboard Galaxy-class starships. She also had major contributions to the development of the Galaxy-class itself. She is a graduate of the Daystrom Institute of Technology, have made major contributions to the Theoretical Propulsion Group as well as having been warmly recommended by professor Robert Scott Anderson. Yet, certain subversive elements in the Federation attempt to keep her responsible for several tragic accidents.

Most notable these individuals try to use the tragic Yamato-accident in their shameless attempt to undermine the Federation. I have no doubt that the relatives of the more than one thousand Starfleet personnel who died in the accident are quite furious over this. The truth is that the Yamato was destroyed by an Iconian computer virus, not by the warp core. This, however, is conveniently ignored.

Other special circumstances were also used, as when damage to the control systems to the Enterprise-D caused the warp drive to run out of control. I expect that most open-minded people recognize this for what it is; pure propaganda geared to make the people of the Federation loose faith in Starfleet. We have never put the lives of men and women serving in Starfleet at unnecessary risk.

Mrs. Brahms was also attacked for not having an engineering degree; witch just shows the weaknesses in the offensive of these rebellious people. If a theoretical physicist with knowledge of quantum mechanics and warp theory cannot properly design a warp core, then no amount of self-righteous engineers can.

I can list numerous of attacks upon Mrs. Brahms, but the bottom line is that they are mere lies created by an underground supported by our enemies. One only needs to look towards the Romulans or the Cardassians to understand why.

Okay, this is a very rough draft of what I had in mind. Leah Brahms simply can't be the only one responsible of the bad warp core design. It would take a lot of people making a lot of stupid decisions, and many of these people would have to be quite powerful. Needless to say, if Leah Brahms goes down, they go down. The only way out would be to ridicule the attacks upon her.

[neoolong]

Leah Brahms may have not been the only one responsible, but if she was in charge of the project, the responsibilty ultimately falls on her. She is charge of making sure that the project is up to specs before it is turned into her superiors, then it is beyond her control. If you can prove that what she turned in was to spec, then she might have a case.

[RedImperator]

Therein lies the rub. Nobody has any idea what Star Trek specs are. Mike is assuming the warp core couldn't possibly be up to spec because no competent engineer would design a system that can blow up the whole ship if you so much as look at it funny. I'm wondering if Starfleet changed or disregarded the regulations, because in the entire TNG, DS9, and VOY series runs, nobody remarked on how dangerous and unstable the Brahams warp core seemed to be.

Anyway, if the new page is going to be a collection of documents instead of just the transcript of Brahams' actual trial, I could write up some stuff from her side. From the skewering the good doctor has gotten in this thread already, I say she'll need it.