posted
If we are talking about Earth becoming an interstellar power, then we should probably look at the parallel of the US gaining power starting from the Spanish-American war and continuing onward.
So are the Romulans going to be the Spanish in this situation, thus Earth is going to gain colonies that would have been previously held by the Romulans?
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posted
If there were system patrol and other craft out in the Solar system prior to WWIII (and i agree with MinutiaeMan that there were) then I wonder what happened to the crews after the war? Did the crews somehow manage to get back to Earth, or did they die in space? I wouldn't have thought it'd be easy to reenter the atmosphere just after a nuclear war, even with ground control (and i doubt there'd be very much of that!).
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posted
I really don't see all that many parallels between Earth c2150s and the US c1890s. The US wasn't exploring new territory, the US didn't help form an international federation ten years later. On the other hand that was a period where, in several fields, the US rapidly caught up with and then overtook older nations, which is something we're seeing the start of in the Enterprise timeframe.
Romulans as the Spanish? Nah, if that was a good analogy then the Spanish would still be a major power now, 'cos we know that the Romulan Star Empire is still big news two hundered years later. In the 1890s Spain was a spent force already well in decline. The US could hardly have picked an easier opponent (look at the other European powers of the time - the British, Germans and even French would have been much more of a challenge). I can't see the Enterprise producers choosing to display the Romulans in the same light.
And Earth taking over Romulan territories would stretch even further the implausability on no one knowing what a Romulan looked like until the 2260s.
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posted
Though the US did come into its own as a global power only after the Spanish-American War, that was actually by choice -- the Monroe Doctrine originally established in 1820 was basically to keep the European powers out of the Western Hemisphere long enough for the States to build up their own industrial base and establish their own power without interference from Europe. The US deliberately stayed out of international affairs for the most part before then. Other than following that wonderful policy of Manifest Destiny and starting the Mexican "War."
But interstellar politics isn't what this forum is for.
To use an analogy for Starfleet, I think it would be better to compare the Earth Starfleet to the continental naval forces established during the War of Independence. At that point, the colonies got most of their ships from merchants (and crewed by merchants), with only a small handful of larger cruisers mainly loaned by the French.
Although now that I think of it, an even better analogy would be the Japanese, between 1854 and 1900. They had practically no technology for seafaring or many other technological advancements that had permeated around the world by that point; Commodore Perry's steamship sailing into Tokyo Bay was a "first contact" of sorts. After that, the Japanese managed to establish a powerful nation for themselves in barely 40 years. In that time they went from a Middle Ages-equivalent kingdom to an early industrial nation. And though I don't condone the wars that developed after 1900, the Japanese certainly became one of the strongest nations in the world.
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posted
Kahn stole a cargo ship, in 1999 (star trek time), which means that by WW-3 (40 years later) there MUST be stations, moon bases, mars bases... you know... stuff. That brings back the question of how the Phoeniz landed. Maybe it didn't. Maybe he docked at the space station and cought a lift down.
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capped
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posted
yes, because the U.S. gained the ability to go to the moon in the 1960s.. it must necessarily follow that thirty years later, we'd have gone back to the moon a million billion times, and built houses there, and have robot dogs as pets!
well, we do have robot dogs now. but the rest of your logic sucks.
-> The Botany Bay had the ability to carry cargo, but was it solely a cargo ship? I watched the episode and they discussed it was for interplanetary colonization.
Just because we have a ship that can do that, doesnt mean colonies were ever made.
-> Khan relegated his subordinate Kahn to stay behind on Earth and make hot dogs. and the Phoeniz crashed years before they launched the Phoenix. The Botany Bay was launched in 1996, not 1999. WW3 was in the 2050s, thats 50-60 years after 1996, not 40.
[ December 17, 2002, 17:37: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
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But also don't forget that space travel also got put back a few decades somehow (thanks to Voyager's retconning), because ships like Ares IV and Charbydis were really primitive and not much better than what we've got today. On the other hand, we also had the DY-100's with artificial gravity, the Earth-Saturn Probe which almost certainly returned its pilot alive to Earth, and the SS Birdseye which also had artificial gravity and cryogenic suspension chambers.
On the topic of extraterrestrial colonies and space stations, I have a feeling that if they were established, they probably either tried to return to Earth and abandoned any off-planet presences, or else perished where they were. Though it didn't explicitly rule the idea out, I don't think that there were any Humans living in space at the time of "First Contact." When nuclear war approached, some of the more scientific outposts might have been abandoned in preparation. Most (especially in Earth orbit) were probably destroyed outright during the fighting. And after the fighting was over, the survivors in space would either have returned to Earth using whatever escape craft they had available -- and returning to a devastated planet -- or else remained at their outposts, but without resupply, where they probably died.
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posted
Of course the US didn't create an internation org after the Spanish-American war, but after WWI there was a big push by President Wilson to create one, thus the League of Nations. But the US never joined that group... it wasn't until WWII that we did join one.
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