The First One
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed
Member # 35
posted
In forty or fifty years' travel time? Simple. Use impulse to accelerate to near-c, then coast at relativistic speeds. In 40-50 years you could get at least 35 LY away. . . and at a travel time of no more than a year, I'd guess. But it begs the question of how a human colony remained undiscovered so close to Earth. If the colony WAS close to Earth, and given these travel conmditions it'd have to be.
------------------ "The next time the workplace seems especially hectic, remind yourself it could be worse: you could have two-dozen sharp-toothed creatures chewing on your nipples." - James Lileks
posted
IIRC, at near-c speeds, those onboard the ship would experience a slower passage of time than everywhere else. So, if they travelled for 100 years, they would only age something like a decade or two.
------------------ Frank's Home Page "Yes, I routinely run any car with Canadian plates off the road. It makes it easier to yank them out, blind them, and put them to work in my underground salt mine." - Simon Sizer
posted
Quite true. At near light speed time dilation would make centuries-long journey appear to take only a few years. But that isn't the point here. The Mariposa left in 2123 and arrived before 2170. They must somehow have made the trip in fifty-odd years Earth time. Unless you want to assume that the colony was only about 30 light-years away and somehow it had been overlooked by Starfleet in all that time then the ship must have had some form of FTL drive.
I havn't seen 'Up The Long Ladder' for some time and can't remember what the Okudagram actually said but going by the information given it didn't say the ship had pulse fusion engines but that it was powered by a pulse fusion reactor. There's a very importent difference. Why can't a fusion reactor power a warp engine? Does anyone really believe that the 'Phoenix' had a matter-anti matter reactor, that Cochrane almost single-handedly managed to not only build a working warp drive but also manufacture significant quantities of antimatter and solve the problems of storing it?
I think its more likely that he used a fission reactor made from the warheads of the missile (not the easiest thing to do I'll grant but a bit more believable) to power the drive. Listen to the dialog in 'First Contact'. Cochran refers to "the nacelles are fully charged" (or saturated, I havn't seen it for a little while either). What I think happens is that his reactor did not provide enough power to sustain the warp bubble so he had a system where the nacelles 'charge up' slowly, then provide a burst of warp speed until they run down then they need charging up again.
Suppose the Mariposa had a similar system. Except its power source was a more efficient pulse fusion reactor. You could imagine that they might sustain an 'average' speed of warp 2 or 3 over the course of 40 years or so, enough to get them a reasonable distance away.
It was only later when reliable matter/antimatter reactors became available that enough power was available for ships to sustain their warp bubble indefinately.
[This message has been edited by JEM (edited September 23, 1999).]
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