Did the Vulcans (or other species) Help Earth starship development?

[valkyrie013]

So, First Contact, 2063, were going barely warp 1.
According to the episode First Flight, we don't break Warp 2 til 2143, 60 years. 20 months later, were at warp 3, and by 2151 were at Warp 5+

In Enterprise, the Vulcans, and possible other species, were limiting our progress, but I'm asking is, How did they Help us?
My thoughts is that, when great britian made the jet engine, they let us borrow one to see how it works.
Or, another thought of sometimes we export an aircraft, but its watered down in terms of performance, avionics, etc.
Could the Vulcans or another species, have leased/loaned out a few sub standard warp cores to the Earth fleet? Maybe capable of warp 3?
Also, could they have aided in other technology, gravity plating, navigational deflectors etc. for safety reasons?

Or do you think they just took a total hands off approach with them slow rolling any advancements??

I personally don't like that it took 60 years for Warp 2.. Even at warp 3, its still going to take a couple of Months to get from here to Alpha Centauri, at under warp 2, its going to take almost a year.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Forget what you know about warp factors. They all vary depending on the plot of a given episode, but it can be safely said that prior to the Warp 5 Engine, it did take Earth ships longer to reach various destinations, but perhaps not ungodly longer. NX-01 could probably travel in just a few hours what would take earlier ships days or weeks, IMO.

I think any help Humans got from the Vulcans it was stuff we saw them do and tried to replicate it ourselves. we may even have "borrowed" and reverse-engineered some things (like artificial gravity). The ringship-style Earth starship was likely inspired by a Vulcan design, but I doubt the Vulcans helped us build it. I think cries of Vulcans holding Humans back is slightly exaggerated--they let us to do things at our own pace rather than accelerate our progress. Still, that would make some feel resentment towards the Vulcans for doing just that...

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Vulcan idea of help is to tell us, that we should stop doing it that way, before every one dies.

Archer was 10ish when his daddy started working on the warp 5 engine.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, now ( Say 24th century) apparently, after first contact, your given the Golden Ticket! Come on in to the Federation, we have Tea and Cookies, and every other piece of technology available to us.

Basically, there not left to there own devices for lets say 90 years.. They join up, there a member of the club with the secret hand shake, and all. There probably guided in, say maybe the first decade, 20 years there slowly brought up to federation standard technology, making sure there not "Evil" or going to destroy themselves etc.

 

[Sumire]

I agree with Guy, I think the Vulcans were applying the brakes. Not in the Archer/Trip “The Vulcans are holding us back!” way although the corruption in the Vulcan High Command certainly raises the possibility that some Vulcans may well have been doing precisely that. Rather I think most Vulcans were concerned that humans, as Trip once put it, “rode rockets with millions of liters of hydrogen burning under their seats.” Humanity’s blithe willingness to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks is chaotic and worrying. It’s one thing to risk your own lives on such shenanigans (ill-advised but none of their business), it’s quite another to take your propensity to court death out amongst the stars and other inhabited planets.

That is to say, I have no doubt humans were noodling about on engines of various warp capabilities but after submitting them to some very daunting Vulcan QA protocols they weren’t moving beyond the prototype phase with any frequency.

 

[Sci]

Given the behavior of Ambassador Soval and his aides in "Broken Bow" -- blithely acting as though the Klingon crash on United Earth soil was a matter under their legal jurisdiction rather than United Earth's, trying to use political pressure to prevent United Earth from launching the NX-01, and generally disrespecting United Earth sovereignty -- and given Vulcans' role in the Cordianite civil war, I think it's pretty clear that Vulcan was doing more than just not sharing their toys and letting Earth develop at its own pace. They were treating Earth like a neocolonial possession.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well, now ( Say 24th century) apparently, after first contact, your given the Golden Ticket! Come on in to the Federation, we have Tea and Cookies, and every other piece of technology available to us.

Basically, there not left to there own devices for lets say 90 years.. They join up, there a member of the club with the secret hand shake, and all. There probably guided in, say maybe the first decade, 20 years there slowly brought up to federation standard technology, making sure there not "Evil" or going to destroy themselves etc.

"The Bajoran militia will be absorbed into Starfleet"

DS9 Rapture.

No training wheels, it's just mothball your shit, it's silly.

 

[Sumire]

Vulcan was doing more than just not sharing their toys and letting Earth develop at its own pace. They were treating Earth like a neocolonial possession.

I can see that. I genuinely do believe most Vulcans, Ambassador Soval included, did think they were looking out for United Earth — shepherding us towards a better tomorrow, but that does not preclude behaving in a morally questionable way. After all, a large number of people involved in colonizing our world believed they were doing it for the greater good. They saw themselves as “civilizing” a “barbaric” world. They believed they were, as the saying goes, on the side of the angels. A belief in the superiority of your own conduct is no guard against bad behavior, in fact one could argue that it encourages it.

 

[Ragitsu]

I think ENT rendered the Vulcans as antagonistic strawmen for the sake of drama.

 

[Finn]

Nah. It was consistent with the attitudes we've seen from Vulcans in TOS.

 

[Ragitsu]

Nope: this was a blatant exaggeration. Proto-Federation = U.S.A. Vulcans = England. "Get off my back, old man."

 

[Sumire]

Conflict is, by most accounts, necessary for narrative and if casting Vulcans in a somewhat antagonistic role in Enterprise netted us markedly more Vulcan history, Vulcan culture and Vulcan characters? (Of varying quality, to be sure, but it’s all grist for the mill.) I, for one, will not complain.

 

[somebuddyX]

I think all the Vulcans did was remove all the fallout from the planet and kind of give advice to humans but since they were intent on humanity not getting out into space until we were ready, we did most of the design and development ourselves. I think Vulcan probably had it's own Prime Directive about not giving us too much tech.
On the other hand there's this quote from the First Contact draft (for what it's worth):"Humanity turns the corner. First Contact with an alien civilization brings the planet together as never before. Humans and Vulcans working together, beginning to solve long-standing problems with new technology. We see an early replicator producing food for the starving millions. A new World Government is formed." That could still be done with a hands off approach.
This part is just some head canon I thought up recently but I figure there was some warp development going on before WW3 by some of the different powers and after First Contact those projects were able to be reactivated or redeveloped so that's how come Connestoga and Valiant were able to be launched so soon.
In the 90s I would have said warp development was like 10 years until we got Warp 9 but I actually quite like the idea slow development of warp as in the show, together with the slow development of their other tech. Earth as the most minor power and so insignificant was a cool story idea.
The slowness of warp in that 100 years doesn't have to be hindrance for stories, just an element that you have to work around. The Alien franchise has slow travel and they just start the story with the travel already done or everybody gets in the freezer and then the onscreen titles says it's X amount of time later. You probably couldn't do stories where you have humans doing the same kind of Star Trek stories exploring strange new worlds as easily, but you just tell a different story for that time period, perhaps more self contained and focusing on one issue, more straightforward, perhaps more harder sci-fi. In stories about sailing ships the travel at sea is just part of the story and that's what someone could do here.

 

[Sci]

Nope: this was a blatant exaggeration. Proto-Federation = U.S.A. Vulcans = England. "Get off my back, old man."

Considering how brutally imperialist/colonialist both the United States and Britain have been and sometimes continue to be, I'm not sure how that helps your argument that the Vulcans weren't in a colonial relationship with Earth.

 

[fireproof78]

Nah. It was consistent with the attitudes we've seen from Vulcans in TOS.

Unfortunately, Vulcans were often presented as extremely arrogant, tight lipped and unwilling to compromise at times. I don't see a terrible difference in ENT, other than we have a more antagonistic relationship from a captain who is clearly biased against Vulcans.

 

[somebuddyX]

It's interesting to me to compare the FTL development of Enterprise and SG-1. I wonder if Earth ever just tried to buy warp drives from other species. Like Vulcans wouldn't sell but what about other randos. Denobulans? What about the ships that Klaang and the Suliban used to get to Earth? On SG-1 that Suliban cell ship they stole in "Broken Bow" would have been taken to Area 51 and reverse engineered for some cloaking tech.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Vulcans surely helped Earth clean up and rebuild after World War III (otherwise Earth could never have recovered so quickly), but no, I don’t think they assisted in starship decelopment. Quite the opposite, really.

I mean, ships like the Conestoga and Valiant? The NX class and its ilk? That’s all Earth. Those ships were built in spite of the Vulcans, not because of them.

 

[Dukhat]

The Vulcans surely helped Earth clean up and rebuild after World War III (otherwise Earth could never have recovered so quickly), but no, I don’t think they assisted in starship decelopment. Quite the opposite, really.

I mean, ships like the Conestoga and Valiant? The NX class and its ilk? That’s all Earth. Those ships were built in spite of the Vulcans, not because of them.

It's been a while since I watched the show, but that's how I remember it. The Vulcans were basically following their own version of the Prime Directive. It's a shame this idea wasn't followed up on more, rather than just having the Vulcans appear to be giant dicks. Because their actions were 100% correct. If there was actually an episode or story arc where the humans did something to fuck up another pre-warp alien race's culture by providing them with advanced Earth tech before they were ready, that would have been a fascinating plot to introduce the PD. But the showrunners decided that having the crew running around in their underwear was more important.

 

[JunkTARDIS]

Certainly feels like humans adapted and appropriated other technologies. We grew fast! That is part of the reason some Vulcans were oppositional to human advancements!