posted
Terra Nova... IIRC, the episode claimed it was the first extrasolar colony, and also the closest uninhabited Class M world to Earth at about 20 ly.
Geoffrey Mandel's Star Charts places it in the Eta Cassiopeia system, some 19.7 lightyears away, and to the "south-west" of Sol (on a standard Trek 2D map). A very reasonable assumption.
The claims made by the episode create some problems (no surprise there).
- Vega Colony. First mentioned way back in "The Cage", but it seems to have been rediscovered by ENT writers. There are freight runs from Vega to Draylax (wherever that may be). Vega is a star about 25 lightyears away, and roughly to the 'west' of Sol. That means Vega is further away than Terra Nova, yet there have been regular contacts with Vega Colony at least since the 2120s. Why then were there no further contacts with the Terra Nova colony? Was there no need for freight runs to TN? - Alpha Centauri. Who exactly live on AC? The most likely assumption is that AC is an Earth colony. The obscure news article from Picard's family album in GEN seemed to support this too. But if TN was the closest planet available for colonizing, it means AC must have native inhabitants (or it's a colony of someone else).
posted
Unless they were thinking in terms of Terra Nova being the first M-Class colony. . . While whatever planets they have in the Centauri system would probably never approximate an Earthlike environment even by terraforming; Vega (do we know anything about what kind of place Vega colony is 'supposed' to be like?) could be the same, and only 'there' for industrial purposes hence the regular freight runs. TN could have been left alone as an experiment in self-sufficiency.
posted
I agree about Vega and Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri should have been uninhabitable at the time of Enterprise (but the writers may mess that up...). Vega may have been Class-M, but I think it's something like Class-K, inhabitable but not suited for independent settlements. Only the problem with Terra Nova remains in any case.
-------------------- Bernd Schneider
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posted
Alpha Centauri had SOMETHING before Enterprise.. Zefram Cochrane called the place home!
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posted
I doubt that they will mention something like Cochrane's move to Alpha Centauri. They would have had the chance in "Future Tense", but they just said that he disappeared without a trace, implying that he had been on Earth.
-------------------- Bernd Schneider
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I think what ever is in the Alpha Centauri system is under pressure domes and sub-terrain cities, not blue skies and white clouds. We know of the beginnings of a martin colony at Utopia Planitia and of the domed cities on the moon in the 22nd century from ENT's title sequence so earth is capable of building such settlements. As for Vega colony, it could well be a purely industrial site since if I recall the lines in the movie "Contact" correctly then Vega is a system in the earlier stages of development and has no planets. Just ice and debris, lots and lots of debris. If that is true then any settlement would have to be on one of the larger chunks, maybe a Class-D like Luna of a Class-C like Pluto.
On the other hand Vega colony may not be an earth settlement at all, perhaps it's something a little more cosmopolitan like we saw on Rigel and Earth just has a presence there to trade and to mine.
posted
"Future Tense" was, as I recall, implication free when it came to what Cochrane had been doing before setting course for the Big Sleep.
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posted
Can't remember much about Vega, except that in the novel and subsequent movie "Contact", Vega was described as too inhospitable a place to host life as we'd know it. Since uncle Carl tended to do his homework in his stories, I'm guessing he knew what he was talking about.
posted
Vega is a good candidate for a planetary system in the early stages of its development. It isn't that there is something about the star that makes the place unlikely to support life, it's that, assuming the fat dusty disk surrounding it means what we think it means, the system is too young to have life in it yet. Certainly intelligent life, anyway. That is, if our history is any guide.
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