posted
Recently I've been developing a history (non-cannon of course) of the DY ship series and there is something that I'm not entirely clear on; How did the Botany Bay get so far into deep space in only a few centuries? This problem sort of ties in with a few similar instances of supposedly sub-light Earth craft appearing much further away from home than they should be. (Charybdis, Nomad, Voyager IV, Pioneer 10, S.S. Birdseye) My current thinking is that there is an unstable wormhole drifting around the Sol System, or at the very least one end of a wormhole. This is kind of supported by the line that says that Voyager IV disappeared down a black hole, now since there are no black holes in the neighbourhood is it possible that 20th Century astronomers who were supposedly monitoring the probe observed an anomaly and mistook it for a black hole when in fact it was the opening to a wormhole?
Another clue to this lies with the S.S. Birdseye, a satellite with no apparent engines manages to find itself drifting light years away from Earth. If it were simply knocked out of orbit wouldn't such a satellite simply fall to Earth? I suppose if it was hit with enough force it could be thrown clear of Earth's gravity well but then how could the craft survive the impact or avoid being captured by another planet or moon's gravitational pull? It would seam to be a fluke of the highest order for an unpowered craft to be hit just enough to be thrown clear of Earth and into the series of slingshot orbits that could propel it out of the solar system and into interstellar space. Even if all that did occur then it still could never have made it to the RNZ by the 24th century without assistance.
Again a wormhole swallowing the Birdseye and depositing it near the Romulan border seams to be the most plausible explanation.
posted
IMHO, the Botany Bay could have gotten into deep space all on her own. Give her a couple of centuries (270 yrs objective time) and a sublight speed of at least ten percent lightspeed, and she gets far enough from Earth that she could be considered lost.
The Birdseye could also have had significant onboard propulsion, in some sort of a jettisonable stage. Who knows what philosophical reasons drove the project? Perhaps it was essential to get the dead bodies into deep space (and as we know, the vicinity of the Romulan border isn't all THAT deep). Applying pragmatic logic to the Birdseye project won't get us very far (literally!), since there's very little pragmatism in postmortem cryostasis anyway...
Of course, the solar panels on the satellite do suggest an intended mission profile close to some star or another, not a deep space mission.
The propulsion-less Voyager VI and Pioneer XI would be different matters, and should logically have encountered a wormhole, a "what used to be called a black hole" (as Decker puts it), or a "One Small Step" type anomaly. Or perhaps a bunch of alien abducteers. Perhaps these strange phenomena later disappeared because of Vulcan activity in the region: the Vulcans could have dredged the system clear of nav hazards, or scared away the abducting pranksters, while securing their survey operations.
posted
That brings up an interesting question about how old are the Borg? I kinda got the impression that they where a fairly recent... race. Given their method of reproducing, you would think that their growth is expodential, which would mean that they where really just getting started when Picard encounters them. Maybe Q wasn't showing Humanity what 'dangers' where out there, when he tossed the Enterpise into their space, maybe he was getting us ready to stop the borg, without making waves.
On the other hand, in the second season of TNG, Picard met the romulans over the swiped outposts, which would imply a possible Borg transwarp conduit near where the cry-sat was found. They didn't develope their technology, they stole it from whoever already made the transwarp conduits, which might have been around for a long time.
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posted
The Aries was 'abducted' by a naturally-ocurring subspace phenomena while in the orbit of Mars. I suppose a similar phenomena could have picked up the Botany Bay and deposited it far in space.
However, surely Spock and Kirk would have commented on thisMore likely is the 10%C theory - in 270 years, the vessel would be a good 27 ly out there (good math, huh?). So long as it wasn't in a well-tavelled space lane (ie: between two major star systems) or within a star system, it might be overlooked by vessels enroute to other destinations. "Space is big".
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posted
The real Alpha Ceti star is listed in astronomy texts as being 150 light years away, and the Enterprise probably wouldn't have gone too far off course to take Khan and crew to their exile, so if the Botany Bay was found close by the Alpha Ceti system, they would have to have been propelld faster than 10%, right?
quote: The real Alpha Ceti star is listed in astronomy texts as being 150 light years away, and the Enterprise probably wouldn't have gone too far off course to take Khan and crew to their exile, so if the Botany Bay was found close by the Alpha Ceti system, they would have to have been propelld faster than 10%, right?
Actually the Botany Bay was found near the Gamma 400 system (Starbase 12). *Checks Mandel's Starcharts* I'll be damned, it looks like Starbase 12 is just about 27 light years from Earth. As for how the Enterprise made it all the way out to the Ceti Alpha system...subspace highway anyone?
Now the question is, what kind of propultion system would have gotten the Botany Bay up 10% lightspeed? Bearing in mind that it was supposed to have been powered by a Nuclear Reactor, presumably fission but I wouldn't put it past Khan & co to invent cold fusion in '96 and not tell anyone.
quote:Originally posted by Treknophyle: The Aries was 'abducted' by a naturally-ocurring subspace phenomena while in the orbit of Mars. I suppose a similar phenomena could have picked up the Botany Bay and deposited it far in space.
If recall the episode correctly, the orange swirly thing was difficult to escape from especially for an unpowered ship so I think we can eliminate that as an explanation for anything that's turned up in deep space.
quote: IMHO, the Botany Bay could have gotten into deep space all on her own. Give her a couple of centuries (270 yrs objective time) and a sublight speed of at least ten percent lightspeed, and she gets far enough from Earth that she could be considered lost.
After looking at Mandel's star charts, I concur.
quote: The Birdseye could also have had significant onboard propulsion, in some sort of a jettisonable stage. Who knows what philosophical reasons drove the project? Perhaps it was essential to get the dead bodies into deep space (and as we know, the vicinity of the Romulan border isn't all THAT deep). Applying pragmatic logic to the Birdseye project won't get us very far (literally!), since there's very little pragmatism in postmortem cryostasis anyway...
Of course, the solar panels on the satellite do suggest an intended mission profile close to some star or another, not a deep space mission.
I'm pretty sure that it was clearly stated that the Birdseye was supposed to be in orbit.
quote: The propulsion-less Voyager VI and Pioneer XI would be different matters, and should logically have encountered a wormhole, a "what used to be called a black hole" (as Decker puts it), or a "One Small Step" type anomaly. Or perhaps a bunch of alien abducteers. Perhaps these strange phenomena later disappeared because of Vulcan activity in the region: the Vulcans could have dredged the system clear of nav hazards, or scared away the abducting pranksters, while securing their survey operations.
I'm not sure why alien abducteers would bother to pick up bits of space junk and them dump them light years away in deep space. I think a wormhole is the best explanation for these two, possibly the same wormhole that Kirk & opened with their warp inbalance in TMP?
As for the Charybdis, exactly what do we know about it's journey? We know that it left earth in 2037, that contact was lost on it's way out of the system and it later encountered and alien intellegence that caused the death of all but one of the crew. I don't have access to the TNG scripts so perhaps someone could shed some light on the timing of these events. How long was Col Richey living in that hotel? How long had he been dead when the E-D away team found him? That should tell us when the Charybdis arrived in the vacinity of Theta 116 (can someone find that on the star charts? I've looked but I might have missed it). I doubt that the encounter took place in or near the Sol System since if that were the case then wouldn't the aliens have simply returned the ship to earth instead of dragging it to another system.
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