How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 2067 ?

[at Quark's]

So, the "Friendship One" probe was launched in 2067.

According to Memory Alpha, Starfleet lost track of the probe around 2248, the probe eventually arriving at the planet Uxal supposedly somewhere around 2300, this planet being approx. 30.000 LY from earth.

Since the probe was tracked for 150+ years and found in the neighborhood of where it should be according to Starfleet estimates, I think it is reasonable to conclude that it did not encounter a wormhole or made any other unexpected huge "jumps"-- certainly not after 2248.

But if we do the math that means that that probe would have been cruising at more than 100c for 230+ years continuously -- presumably without refueling!

As this was a mission that probably would have been considered foolish and naive in the extreme by the Vulcans, I think it is also unlikely that the Vulcans would have given any technical aid in building this probe.

My question: How could 2067 earth have built such a probe, only 4 years after the very first warp flight ? For that matter, why did they need the "warp 5" program in the 22nd century if they could already build such probes in 2067?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

Space whales.

 

[Mytran]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

The very existence of the F1 probe strongly suggests that much of the technology and infrastructure utilised by Cochrane was already old hat by 2163 - he simply put it together in a new and interesting way to achieve FTL travel! That being the case, churning out an automated probe within 4 years wouldn't have been too hard.

The distance thing is harder to justify. Plot-wise, the probe needed to reach the Delta Quadrant to fit the needs of the story. In the real world, probes tends to drift along unpowered and eventually reach somewhere interesting. Trek-nology FTL travel operates differently, with contstant energy expenditure required. As such, it is extremely implausible that the probe was still running at FTL speeds centuries later.

My guess? An Ion Storm caught the probe and swept it halfway across the galaxy (those funky ion storms are always doing things like that). Sensors in 2248 were able to track it part of the way.

 

[hux]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

I bought it

Space and stuff. Shit happens

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

SPACE NAZIS!!

 

[at Quark's]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

SPACE NAZIS!!

Why space nazis but no space zombies ?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

We had Space Zombies in Enterprise's "Impulse"

As for the original question, Trek's speed/distance ratios never make any sense. Just look at the second pilot, where the Enterprise follows up on the SS Valiant, which left the galaxy 200 years prior to 2265. Plus, according to "That Which Survives" Kirk's ship could have made Voyager's entire journey in a month

 

[at Quark's]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

As for the original question, Trek's speed/distance ratios never make any sense. Just look at the second pilot, where the Enterprise follows up on the SS Valiant, which left the galaxy 200 years prior to 2265. Plus, according to "That Which Survives" Kirk's ship could have made Voyager's entire journey in a month

True, but at least they had the excuse there was no previous material to speak of. Was it even established back then that it was supposed to be the year 2265?

(I'd have to retract my "Warp five" complaint though, as that was only established by ENT, I suppose )

 

[Mytran]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

The SS Valiant never intended to leave the galaxy - it was swept there by an ion storm. There's no information on what the Valiant's original mission was, nor the ship's range and speed.

As for the high speed issue in TWS, that occurred immediately after the Enterprise had been propelled through a massive Transporter Beam. Such an operation would have had a significant effect on subspace in that region: Enterprise simply rode the wave.

 

[MacLeod]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

The probe had travelled at plot speed.

 

[Timo]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

It would make sense for a robot to achieve things a human-infested spacecraft could not. Say, higher speeds, by virtue of using a warp field design that would fry human beings.

We don't know whether warp-driven spacecraft really need to refuel. Kirk sometimes had fuel troubles when at impulse ("Doomsday Machine") but never at warp, suggesting the two systems use completely separate power sources - or then establishing that warp consumes virtually no power. And why should it? Several of our heroic skippers have boosted their warp performance by taking power off decidedly low-power systems such as life support or weapons, things that can run on battery power or during extreme power crises. It's only logical, then, that warp ought to be a low-power system as well.

What I wonder about F1 is how Earth was able to maintain contact with it until 2248. If that were possible back then, why can't Starfleet speak with Janeway in realtime across the galaxy in the 2370s? Or was Janeway's expression "we lost contact" inaccurate somehow, and there was no communication with the probe, either in realtime or with (at maximum) a century's worth of delay?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

We still maintain contact with Voyager 1, maintain contact and instaneous communication are two different things.

 

[Timo]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

...But this goes a bit deeper than that. Supposedly, by 2248, F1 had sailed out to a distance equal to that between Starfleet HQ and Janeway. Never mind comms delay - Janeway supposedly had no means of sending messages to HQ at all, either at two-second delay or two-century delay. So how come F1 did?

Another probe in Trek canon communicated from afar, too: Quadros 1 sent data from a distance of 70,000 lightyears, equal to Janeway's first-season distance from HQ and about twice that of the seventh-season distance. Although in that context (the DS9 pilot episode) we got no information about comms delay - Q1 might have sailed out millennia prior, and its findings might have taken those thousands of years to reach the Federation. Or Q1 might have been a long-base interferometry probe, never sailing to the Gamma Quadrant as such, but merely making possible telescopic observations of that distant location. F1 is a completely different issue... Especially as we know it's old Earth tech and not something built by more advanced cultures.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

I seem to recall some early TNG episode were Enterprise is flung somewhere distance. I might take centuries to make it home at high warp, but subspace radio would be their a few decades.

So if the F1 probe is sending a signal back, Earth will still get a signal until is stops transmitting, even if the delay gets longer and longe as the light years increase. The signal might have stopped being received in 2248 or it might have stopped transmitting in 2248 and they stopped receiving it later. The "lost contact" could be the time it stopped, or the time they stopped getting a signal.

As for the probe remaining in warp. Warp field sustainters like the photon torpedoes have. Also the class 9 probes that are used sometimes to send single people out to starships. Get the ship to warp, then sustain that speed in a massively extended cruise via a warp bubble. Every once in a while the warp drives fire off another burst to keep the ship at warp, but for most of the time the ship just cruises. This might be fatal to humans, but the probe wouldn't care.

What is more of a puzzle is that Earth left detailed plans for building antimatter power plants in the computers of the probe in an effort to make friendly contact with other species near Earth's level of advancement. I don't recall if there was anything in there about warp drives, but a lot of antimatter technology from 2060s Earth.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

space.tachyon.nebulas.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

Lets assume that there's a geometric requirement for power for how much mass you want to move at warp. Now lets assume that there's a geometric decrease in power for every human being you're moving at warp who you don't want to be irradiated, sterilized and turned into a amphibian.

Now lets remember that deuterium is a type of hydrogen, and that the Bussard collectors are the same as a Bussard ramscoop. A massive electromagnetic net that collects hydrogen from space.

If they can figure out the right level of equilibrium or if they can adjust their feul requirements with AI in real time, we're talking about the appearance of perpetual motion. Constantly travelling, while constantly refuelling.

Wait? This story was about using a shitty energy source that is ecologically unpleasant?

Oh, just about shitty aliens who couldn't use a perfectly safe energy source safely.

 

[Ithekro]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

Well people keep asking why people would want to leave Earth if it is such a utopia. Maybe that is the answer. They aren't exactly comfortable with the idea of all the antimatter power stations that could go off if unsafely managed.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

Like anyone who still thinks it is the 9th century should be trusted to run an oil refinery.

PS

The Malon.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

^SPACE GARBOS

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: How could they have built and launched the "Friendship one" in 206

"I want to be alone."