FaxModem1 wrote:I also forgot that Q gives them information about a wormhole that takes a couple years off their journey on his last appearance in 'Q2'. They don't say how many it took, but it shaved off a couple years. According to Endgame, Voyager took about 16 more years to arrive back at Earth before Future Janeway time traveled. So, for their 75 year journey, they had a remarkable 23 year journey.
It's also noteworthy that thanks to Voyager being stranded, Starfleet made the Pathfinder project, and constructed the MIDAS array to communicate with them. Galactic phone calls(thanks to Barclay) are now possible because of Voyager's journey. Beforehand, they relied on subspace relays.
This is noteworthy because before, relays were necessary to communicate from place to place.
Really, getting Voyager stranded was a gigantic net win for the Federation.
It'd be useless if they had blown up in the first year or two, but as-is, they bring Slipstream, some Borg tech, a new nifty smallcraft design, and a number of other gadgets.
Crazedwraith wrote:Incidentaly thought; if they'd got to about 4/7s of their journey home by that point. Should they still have been in the delta quadrant? Shouldn't they have crossed over into the far reaches of the alpha or beta quadrants?
People have assumed that they were planning on going around the galactic core, which might have added a few years to their route.
Not sure how that's relevant?
In fact if you're skirting the core you're even more likely to end up in a different quadrant earlier.
I think that it means that they're not going straight to the Galactic core, but choosing to take a curve around it, which affects how long they spend in the Delta Quadrant, as opposed to flying straight towards the core, and then making a hard turn around it so as to avoid dealing with all the black holes and such in the center of the galaxy.
As such, they spend more time in the Delta Quadrant curving around, and were about to start hitting the Beta or Gamma quadrants within a few years or so via their curve, but Future Janeway stopped that.
Q99 wrote:Really, getting Voyager stranded was a gigantic net win for the Federation.
It'd be useless if they had blown up in the first year or two, but as-is, they bring Slipstream, some Borg tech, a new nifty smallcraft design, and a number of other gadgets.
It also probably gave the Federation something to focus on after the horrors of the Dominion war while they rebuilt. We know that Federation children were already learning Delta Quadrant species that the Voyager crew had encountered, and that the Doctor was able to get a rough draft holonovel published because there was already a demand for all things Delta Quadrant and Voyager related. In my opinion, it probably gave a lot of war-weary people a return to the sense of exploration and adventure that they sorely needed after having to deal with huge wars that wrecked the quadrant.
FaxModem1 wrote:
I think that it means that they're not going straight to the Galactic core, but choosing to take a curve around it, which affects how long they spend in the Delta Quadrant, as opposed to flying straight towards the core, and then making a hard turn around it so as to avoid dealing with all the black holes and such in the center of the galaxy.
As such, they spend more time in the Delta Quadrant curving around, and were about to start hitting the Beta or Gamma quadrants within a few years or so via their curve, but Future Janeway stopped that.
I guess it does depend a lot of their starting position, the point they were aiming for and the course they decided on. If Earth is near the border of the alpha quadrant a greater percentage of the route could be in the other quadrants.
Q99 wrote:Really, getting Voyager stranded was a gigantic net win for the Federation.
It'd be useless if they had blown up in the first year or two, but as-is, they bring Slipstream, some Borg tech, a new nifty smallcraft design, and a number of other gadgets.
It also probably gave the Federation something to focus on after the horrors of the Dominion war while they rebuilt. We know that Federation children were already learning Delta Quadrant species that the Voyager crew had encountered, and that the Doctor was able to get a rough draft holonovel published because there was already a demand for all things Delta Quadrant and Voyager related. In my opinion, it probably gave a lot of war-weary people a return to the sense of exploration and adventure that they sorely needed after having to deal with huge wars that wrecked the quadrant.
Oh, yea! One 'home front' episode would've been really cool (though lacking in main cast, making it tricky)
Even if they didn't make it back, it's a noble effort that expands the horizons, Feddies gonna eat it up. And when they do come back? All the better!
Also I can imagine kids in Federation schools learning about the voyage complaining "Kazon are boring! Skip ahead to the cool stuff with the Hiirogens and Borg!" ^^
Q99 wrote:Oh, yea! One 'home front' episode would've been really cool (though lacking in main cast, making it tricky)
Even if they didn't make it back, it's a noble effort that expands the horizons, Feddies gonna eat it up. And when they do come back? All the better!
Also I can imagine kids in Federation schools learning about the voyage complaining "Kazon are boring! Skip ahead to the cool stuff with the Hiirogens and Borg!" ^^
They showed a hint of that in the Barclay episodes, wherein we saw that kids were learning about the Delta Quadrant while getting a tour of the Pathfinder Project.
HARKINS: And this is the research lab where most of Pathfinder's homework
gets done. All the data streams are compressed here and then transmitted
all the way to the Delta quadrant. Your teacher tells me you've been
studying some of the Delta quadrant races that Voyager's described to us.
Who can name one for me?
GIRL 1: The Talaxians.
HARKINS: Very good.
GIRL 2: The Ocampa.
HARKINS: That's right. Who else?
I'm not sure whether or not they got to the Hirogen yet in their studies. They might wait a couple grades before talking about how the Hirogen make trophies of people's organs.
I seem to recall that civilian starships tend to be slower than Starfleet or other military grade ships. No hard numbers from TOS or TNG era come to mind, but in ENT "Fortunate Son" Ensign Mayweather and T'Pol state Warp 1.8 for J-CLass and Y-Class ships. Which would make for really long wait times for extended trips. Mayweather even jokes about that during the same scene:
T'POL:"The Earth Cargo Ship Fortunate. Y-class freighter. Maximum Speed: Warp 1.8. Crew complement: 23."
MAYWEATHER: "Not counting newborn babies."
T'POL:"Ensign?"
MAYWEATHER: "I grew up on a J-class. A little smaller, but the same basic design. And one thing I can tell you is that at warp 1.8, you've got a lot of time on your hands between ports... That's how my parents wound up with me."
Civilian travel wouldn't be as snazzy as a Federation starship, but I guess that depends on the individual ship owner and whether they decide to have things like dedicated amenities. Viewscreens and computer databases are pretty commonplace so you can have the media experience, maybe start a garden in a cargo bay or something. You would definitely have time for binge-watching 21st century media or pokeing through your own intergalactic greenhouse. Oh, and of course throwing footballs in a zero-G cargo bay.
Darth Lucifer wrote:I seem to recall that civilian starships tend to be slower than Starfleet or other military grade ships. No hard numbers from TOS or TNG era come to mind, but in ENT "Fortunate Son" Ensign Mayweather and T'Pol state Warp 1.8 for J-CLass and Y-Class ships. Which would make for really long wait times for extended trips. Mayweather even jokes about that during the same scene:
T'POL:"The Earth Cargo Ship Fortunate. Y-class freighter. Maximum Speed: Warp 1.8. Crew complement: 23."
MAYWEATHER: "Not counting newborn babies."
T'POL:"Ensign?"
MAYWEATHER: "I grew up on a J-class. A little smaller, but the same basic design. And one thing I can tell you is that at warp 1.8, you've got a lot of time on your hands between ports... That's how my parents wound up with me."
Civilian travel wouldn't be as snazzy as a Federation starship, but I guess that depends on the individual ship owner and whether they decide to have things like dedicated amenities. Viewscreens and computer databases are pretty commonplace so you can have the media experience, maybe start a garden in a cargo bay or something. You would definitely have time for binge-watching 21st century media or pokeing through your own intergalactic greenhouse. Oh, and of course throwing footballs in a zero-G cargo bay.
I want to say the 'slower civilian starships' bit comes from DS9, in particular Kasidy Yates saying that taking her ship to Earth would take x amount of time, when we know that a Starfleet craft can make the trip in a much shorter amount of time. Something like that.
Giving Scotty a Type-6 shuttle was considered a pretty good gift in TNG, though 'a bit slow'.
A class 2 aka Type-9 shuttle was noted to be fast and maneuverable, and hit Warp 4. They seem the high-performance shuttlecraft, with a lot less room than a type 6 or 7. Runabouts hit Warp 5, and in 'Heart of Stone' a modified courier (well, not really, it was Dominion made, but it was believed to be a normal ship hotrodded by the marquis) is noted as being 'fast,' startlingly so, but still slower than a Runabout.
The Delta Flyer, onscreen it's unsaid, but there's a book that says it cruises at warp 3, can max out at warp 6 (!)... of course, with Borg technology from Seven built in.
So that says something about small-craft speeds at civilian and Federation levels. Nothing on bigger transports/freighters, but warp 5 is a pretty solid limit for a high-end small craft with Fed tech, civilian stuff and lower end Fed stuff is generally going to be hitting warp 3-4 by the TNG/DS9/Voy era I figure.
Throw on a few more warp for bigger ships. Nothing's going to be going sub-warp 2 anymore, and warp 4-5 is probably enough for trade.
Given the limitations of warp drive, I was beginning to ask myself if cryonics or stasis technology of some sort was still in use by any of the major Trek powers.
In TNG "The Emissary" it was said that the crew of the IKS T'Ong, a 75 year old Klingon battlecruiser, was in suspended animation for some long range mission.
In VOY "11:59" Harry Kim tells a story of his "uncle" Jack, who piloted a six-month journey to Beta Capricus in 2210 while the rest of the crew was in stasis.
Of course these examples are from the 23rd century, but I wouldn't put it past modern Trek to still use stasis for long-term travel, though I can't think of any canon examples of its use right now.
Hm, yea, good question. I wouldn't bet on it since the distances that'd require stasis now is generally going to be 'well beyond boarders' distances, but it may be an option in rare occasions.
Darth Lucifer wrote:Given the limitations of warp drive, I was beginning to ask myself if cryonics or stasis technology of some sort was still in use by any of the major Trek powers.
In TNG "The Emissary" it was said that the crew of the IKS T'Ong, a 75 year old Klingon battlecruiser, was in suspended animation for some long range mission.
In VOY "11:59" Harry Kim tells a story of his "uncle" Jack, who piloted a six-month journey to Beta Capricus in 2210 while the rest of the crew was in stasis.
Of course these examples are from the 23rd century, but I wouldn't put it past modern Trek to still use stasis for long-term travel, though I can't think of any canon examples of its use right now.
In One, the entire crew of Voyager is put into stasis for a month while Seven runs the ship as they go through a hazardous nebula. Do you consider a month long-term?
If you can do a month, you can do longer, and that's on a ship not meant to have everyone in stasis*, so it's a pretty good example.
And it's not the only example of stasis pods, other times we've seen 'em used for a few sick individuals, that's just the only whole-crew example I can think of in the modern era.
*Meaning good reliable stasis pods don't really need any special setup, you just need to replicate however many you need.
Civilian ships seem to stay at warp weeks at a time (at least for slower warp travel) but I guess this is the closest TNG era example of warp travel in stasis on record. And yes, it's well within Federation's capability to do it long term, they've been doing it for at least two generations of Star Trek. I'd have to agree with you both.
An in-universe answer (23rd century) to what's considered long term would be at least six months. Of course, part of the consideraton of using stasis or cryonics in the first place is that having a Starfleet-style ship with huge quarters and a cocktail lounge may not be feasible or even desirable depending on your resources and mission parameters. The Galaxy Class was a deep space and long term ship designed with families in mind, other ships seen in Trek are a lot more spartan. Most of the civilian ships in Trek are portrayed as the latter.
I imagine even if a trip all across the long way Federation was 6 months on a particular civilian craft (in which case, why are people going all the way from the far end of the Federation?), instead of doing stasis they'd probably extend the time more and do stops along the way, because how often do you need everyone to be there that soon?
