quote:I'm not saying you're wrong, necessarily, but don't forget to take into account that the extent of the Romulans' Empire may have been much greater in 2152---before the War---than later times.
Yes, but considering that the ships of the time usually only flew at Warp 4 for any good-sized distance. Therefore, the distance from Earth to the RNZ would seem a lot smaller when you switch from the "Cochrane" warp scale to the TNG scale, and jump up to Warp 9...
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No real info on how much of their territory we (Earth & Allies) seized ("liberated," whatever) during the War, but I personally would expect that the newly-formed UFP would have wanted to contain the RSE and render it the least threat they could. Like with Germany after WWI, WWII. I would think they would have laid out ample buffer space between the core systems (Earth, Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, etc) and Romulus.
But OTOH, "Homefront" (DS9) implied that the War actually reached Earth at one point. Which of course would require that we aren't that far away.
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You're assuming that the Romulans were completely defeated in the war, and the Earth alliance (Federation, whatever) unilaterally imposed the NZ on the Romulans. The only thing you've got to base that on is the apparent proximity of Romulus to the border -- but those kinds of maps are woefully unreliable (not to mention two-dimensional!).
Consider: the treaty was negotiated without any face-to-face contact. It did not end in any kind of occupation. The most it might have included was a concession of territory from one side to the other. None of this is remotely similar to the total surrender of Germany in WWI or WWII, where it was a complete capitulation by one side.
Most likely, I think that the Romulans were losing fleet strength and could no longer maintain any offensive, and the Earth alliance didn't have the logistics, manpower, or will (or any combination thereof) to launch a full-scale invasion of the Romulan home territories. Therefore, a cease-fire was declared, a Neutral Zone to keep the two sides apart, and both sides went to lick their wounds. The Romulans, being either alone or with only a few other less advanced races in their territory, took nearly a century to recover, while the Earth alliance had mutual interdependence to help everyone recover faster and then found the Federation.
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"first, we know that its farther out that UFP realtime communications capacity in both the 2260s (Balance of Terror) and in the 2360s (The Neutral Zone; The Defector).."
Bear in mind that the neutral zone isn't a location. It's an expansive area. The United States is quite far from Canada, if by "United States" you mean Key West. But it's quite close if you mean Maine. Same thing w/ the neutral zone's proximity to Earth. It all depends upon what part you're in.
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quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike: The Neutral Zone
First, we know that its farther out that UFP realtime communications capacity in both the 2260s (Balance of Terror) and in the 2360s (The Neutral Zone; The Defector)..
A Quick Analysis of Just How Far....*
Scenario #1) "Balance of Terror"
Based on the dialog, the nearest command base to the 1701s' position patrolling the border of the RNZ, had delay time of 3hrs in receiving a communique in responce from the time their first message was sent.
Assuming the somewhat standard wf 9.9999 for subspace transmissions (established after the fact, of course), and that, in reality, less than 1� hrs are involved in message travel time one-way(time for message to get there, time to review data, time for response to get back), this might suggest that their position on the RNZ was about ~30ly's from the nearest command base.
Scenario #2) "The Neutral Zone"
Based on the time to travel (roughly) from the Earth cyrosatellite (c. Kazis Binary Sys) to the border of the RNZ, noted a time of 19hrs-28mins @ wf8 (and this seems wrong) but this indicates that there was merely 2.275ly's between the two positions. Now how far that space debris could have travelled in 360+ years is another story, but this suggests that they were close to Earth, yet based also on dialog, they were a long way from Earth.
Scenario #3) "The Defector"
The time that was given for the communique delay from SFC on Lya III (where ever that is) to the Enterprise-Ds' position on the border of the RNZ was 2hrs 22mins (one-way). This seems to indicate that they were no less than 54 light years from that SF post. (However it isnt signified why this base was the one giving the orders; whether it was the closest one or the one where the Romulan Affairs Dept. is located, but this places this portion of the RNZ quite a ways from Earth.)
Scenario #4) "Unification, Part II"
For the relationship between the RNZ location near Galorndon Core (where I believe the E-D was located when it encountered the Vulcan "peace" convoy) and the distance to Vulcan, it would seem reasonable to assume that these ships travelling at a lowly wf1 would not have a very far trip to travel to go there, as obviously wf1=1ly traveled in 1 year. So I think this is something that can be written off as, "yes, Vulcan is close, but not THAT close"...as wf 1 would get you there, just not in any sort of reasonable time.
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A few assumptions...
In (#1), it might be assumed that these border outposts may be the closest point, linerally, between Earth and Romulus. This give a fair point of reference of ~30ish ly's from space command (Earth?) to their position and therefore Romulus is still (somewhat) "in the neighborhood".
Next in (#2), we see that this space debris travelled a HELL of a long way in 300 years, that or this whole ep started on Earth's back porch. In determining just how far that cryosatellite may have travelled, based on Pioneer X's average velocity of 12km/sec and its current distance travelled in roughly 31 years (.131 ly's), we find that the cryosatellite (traveling at a similar velocity) might travel 1.5 ly's in 360+ years. So either the Enterprise-D is 4 ly's from the Neutral Zone (which I am unaware of any binary stars that close to Earth), OR that cryosatellite took the same shortcut from out system at we saw in "Broken Bow", therefore this reference establishs nothing numerically valuable.
Finally in (#3), it may be likely that the Enterprise-D is on the far side of the Neutral Zone, that or we could start getting into its possible z-axis distance along the zone.
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So what did we learn here? Jack shit, except for wasting a lot of time, this establishs very little solid proof about anything except, that I have a lot of time to waste and that there is quite a distance between Earth and the neutral zone. This of course leaves us with the gaping distance between the two 'powers' and the agony of awaiting the B&B plan of "fixing this" as 25+ly's is really too far a distance for a practicle war to be fought for that time period.
*(NOTE - This, by no means, is intended to be presented as either accurate or scientific and is probably totally wrong, but it math involved seems to make sense until I am told otherwise! )
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To happily ruin whatever predictive power the above calculations have, I must further suggest that subspace comms near the RNZ could be exceptionally slow
1) due to heavy Romulan jamming, either out of pure malice or to prevent sensor sweeps of the NZ, 2) because booster relays in the region are forbidden by the treaty, or 3) due to weird natural causes that actually played a role in the war, too.
posted
Don't forget that, however far the cryosatellite travelled, it can easily be proportional to the distance the Botany Bay travelled, which was in even less time.
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Maybe even the same (unstable) wormhole that swallowed Voyager 6...
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Or that damn ship Friendship One.... What could that ship do?? Likely wf1-ish...and yet it had to travel at an average speed of like wf4-ish to get to where it was some 30000-ish ly's in 300 years without managing to exhaust any of its fuel or being destoyed by your random trek event.
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: Maybe even the same (unstable) wormhole that swallowed Voyager 6...
I knew something about that episode swallowed....
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Come to think about it, what about the SS Valiant too?
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What could that ship do?? Likely wf1-ish...and yet it had to travel at an average speed of like wf4-ish to get to where it was some 30000-ish ly's in 300 years without managing to exhaust any of its fuel or being destoyed by your random trek event.
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