A few points:
-When was the S.S. Enterprise around?

-When was ISS supposed to be finished?

-How could it be that only 2 years after Cochrane there was a S.S. Valiant lost at the Galactic Barrier! How long would it take with such a primitive design!~

-Was the DY-500 warp-capable?

-Since Ares 4 was the 4th Mars mission, and once every time there's the perfect situation to fly to Mars, we can calculate the max. date on wich Ares 1 should be launched. Anyone care to try?

-Are there any good pictures of a DY-100? I'm thinking of making a picture of ISS with a DY-100 docked!

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- me

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-Instead of ISS, the space station that was apparently built in the Trek universe seems to have been "Space Station Freedom", an earlier variant that was originally supposed to have been brought to habitable condition in 1992 or thereabouts. At least this is the station portrayed in model form on Sisko's desk. This station would not have had any Soviet/Russian components, but the European module would in turn have been a bit bigger.

-The timing of S.S.Valiant's mission isn't all that exact - there's just the vague "200 years ago" reference in "Where No Man.." which could in fact mean "176 years and three days ago" and simply be rounded up for simplicity. And the ship could have reached the Galactic Barrier by falling into a wormhole or being abducted by aliens or something.

In any case, Okuda once commented that the design used for the Encyclopedia photos was supposed to depict a 2060s vintage sublight space vessel hastily refitted with nacelles. It would be nice to see more of these sublight vessels...

-DY-500 could have been warp-capable, since SS Mariposa was launched well after Cochrane's flight. No canon info on that, though.

-Ares 4 was supposed to have been followed by a rescue mission only some weeks after the accident. We could say that a scheduled flight was changed into a rescue flight in mid-flight, which is how it could reach Mars in mere weeks.

If Ares 5 was paired with Ares 4 that way, then Ares 3 could have been paired with Ares 2 during the preceding launch window. The windows occur every two years, so Ares 2/3 would have been two years before 4/5 and Ares 1 four years before 4/5. But Ares 1 would probably have been paired, too, for extra safety. Perhaps 1/2/3 all used the same launch window?

Or we could say that the engines of the Ares series vessels were so good that they would take a ship from Earth to Mars in a couple of weeks, in which case the launch windows would be meaningless. Ships could easily launch whenever they please.

-The only "authentic" pictures of DY-100 would be the ones from TOS "Space Seed" (the original model) or VOY "Future's End" and the Encyclopedia launch photo (the tabletop model). The rest, scattered around the net, would be fan art.

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"Oh, it's an anti-anti-WTO song. It's essentially a pro-Starbucks song. I saw this picture of a guy sticking his foot through a plate-glass window in a Starbucks in Seattle, and he was wearing a Nike. Man, couldn't you just change your shoes?"
--
M. Doughty

That is a good question. I looked at the numbers, and I though I would share them with you.

The Galaxy is 100,000 ly in diameter and the sun is ~20,000 ly from the outer edge of the galaxy. However, the galaxy is only 2000 ly thick and we are about 950 ly away from the nearest edge. He would have to be traveling near warp 7 to make it in under 2 years. At Warp 4 it would take him over 7 years to reach the neaest edge.

So I guess the answer is that it was impossible for him to travel that far. And even if he could, why would your first mission be to the edge of the galaxy? I would think you would want to travel to nearby stars first.

One scenario would have the Earth governments trying to find space that wasn't already explored by Vulcans, so that Earthlings wouldn't have to feel so inferior.

Warp seven as a sustained cruising speed sounds unlikely for the Valiant, since Kirk's Enterprise usually had trouble sustaining such speeds for more than a few days. An accidental meeting with a wormhole or a helpful alien seems a more likely explanation.

Or then the Trek galaxy is different from our own, with a thinner disk. Or the Galactic Barrier lies closer to Earth than the known outer limits of the galactic disk.

Back in the 2060s, there was no such thing as a shipborne subspace radio. So probably the Valiant could not have maintained realtime communications at all, and even c-lag messages would have become impractical after a couple of dozen light years. So for practical purposes, back in those days any ship could have been considered "disappeared and presumed lost" the moment she left port, and if she for some strange reason did manage to report back from her mission eventually, Space Central would throw a big "undisappearing" party for her.

Kirk could be meaning both the departure date and the date given in the history books for the disappearance when speaking of "over 200 years ago". The actual events that destroyed the ship could have taken place later (as late as 2264 for all we care - just assume that the Valiant had stasis tech, and the crew awoke, and died, the same year Kirk began heading for the Barrier...). Nobody could actually specify an exact moment of "disappearance" since the ship had never been tracked after her departure anyway.

True, the signal from the Archon (or was it the Horizon) didn't reach the Federation until a century later - would it be possible that the Valiant carried more advanced communications equipment than did these ships? Or maybe Kirk was simply using sloppy terminology with "disappeared" (or did he use that word in the episode? I don't recall).

Boris

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited May 02, 2000).]

Ares 4 sure sounds as if it were the fourth manned Ares mission, assuming Ares 1-3 weren't failures (who would send an UNMANNED mission to Mars and name it the same way as the manned missions?). But the fourth manned Ares mission need not have been the fourth manned mission to Mars. After all, the fourth Gemini mission wasn't the fourth American mission to orbit...

Before the Ares series of missions, there might have been several preceding Mars missions (Bradbury program? Burroughs missions?), some including manned landings. If I had a DY-100 type ship at my disposal in 1996, I sure would adapt it to perform a Mars mission as soon as possible, for the publicity value if not for anything else. Assuming that DY-100 in 1996 was only capable of missions in Earth's immediate vicinity (and only Khan would be brave or foolish enough to attempt interplanetary, let alone interstellar flight on one), a Mars-rated version could probably still have been created in less than a decade. The very fact that we could orbit something that big would mean that we could orbit sufficient hardware to build a Mars craft.

There is the Earth-Saturn space probe mission of "Tomorrow is Yesterday" that Okuda dates to 2009, using logic I generally agree with. This seems to have been a manned mission as well. And it can even said to have been a rather mundane mission for the time, since Spock at first didn't recognize the fact that its commander was a descendant of the captured fighter pilot. If humans were flying to Saturn back in 2009 (and apparently using cryogenics), surely somebody must have paid Mars a visit as well.

The initial missions may have failed to attract continued funding, though. Been there, done that, now let's get back to Earth and create some Sanctuary Districts and quell some riots and prepare for a world war. The schedule of Martian conquest may have been dictated mostly by politics, not by available technology. After WWIII, people would aim for the stars, and thus only in the 22nd century would an actual Martian colony be built in "Earth's back yard".