posted
If you move planets (an easy enough undertaking for some of the races we've seen), you might like to place a couple of them on the same orbit. Three or even six per orbit could be a stable arrangement over a short period of time - say, a few hundred million years...
Or pick a very hot star and place the planets far away from it, on a very broad habitable zone. Our Beta Orionis might in fact have just this kind of a zone.
posted
In any case, I'd like to keep these planets in the Beta Orionis system. I'd like to keep myself to the writers intentions (and the Ency says the intention is that they're all in the same system). As far as Orion goes, you're right. It could be anywhere.
posted
Is that their intention, though? Has there ever been a story featuring more than one planet in the Rigel system at a time, or a story where something on Rigel A effects something on Rigel B?
In fact, some episodes get a little hard to explain if all these planets are in the same system. Why is Kirk bothering to barter with some miners on Rigel XII when there are UFP colonies, with, one presumes, Starfleet installations, a relative handful of AUs away?
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
If I may twist the words of Okudachitalan, I think he's basically noted that the reason the number of planets orbiting Rigel kept ratcheting up was that it was an intentional pseduojoke on the writers' part, therefore making any attempt to rationalize how our heroes could keep encountering new mysterious planets orbiting Rigel hardly worthwhile. Instead, he thinks we should grin and accept this magical star. Because the merciful and almighty Okudachitalan has a sense of humour, although many of his scions do not.
[ June 18, 2002, 16:18: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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