Why is the delta quadrant so very far away??

[Captain_Nick]

I'm watching Voyager for the first time in years

(and now that I'm thirty I can see why so many guys are attracted to Janeway. God I used to think she was old. Now I'm old!!)

What I don't get - what I never got - is why it takes so very long to get home from the Delta quadrant, when it is so easy to get to places like the Gamma quadrant or the Beta quadrant (which I assume exists but I've never heard of)

How exactly is the galaxy split up into quadrants??

 

[You_Will_Fail]

The Delta Quadrant isn't THAT far away from the Alpha Quadrant. But the Delta Quadrant isn't just a single point in the galaxy, its a whole quadrant and Voyager just happens to be at the far reaches of it near the edge of the galaxy and that's pretty far away.

 

[Captain_Nick]

That is awesome

I assume the blueish line on the right hand side of the map is the DS9 wormhole?

 

[You_Will_Fail]

yup, it says it right there

 

[Captain_Nick]

They are fukn lucky that they weren't blown out of the galaxy altogether. I don't fancy trying to drive home through the middle of nothing, big starship or no.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Well it was the caretaker who drew them to a specific location, his array near Ocampa so he could find out if they were capable of mating with him.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

It really is a shame he wasn't compatible with Harry.

 

[Guy Gardener]

it's really unfortunate that the doctor cured harry of the Caretaker Space Herpies that was going to kill him and B'Elanna in the pilot...

He got the space clap twice!

Once, you're a stupid kid, twice and you're an idiot for still taking stupid chances or your idiot for trusting someone who doesn't deserve your faith.

Do we count that 8472 gave him the cosmic clap too?

Fricking gerbil is a magnet for space stds.

 

[Captain Rob]

Just think how much fun they could have had if they headed for the Bajoran wormhole instead. Especially after the Dominion War had ended.

 

[Guy Gardener]

There's no guarantee that the Bajoan wormhole wouldn't be broken when they got there.

Because lets face it, the bugger broke down quite well a few times over the years.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The TOS Enterprise routinely travelled beyond the galaxy's rim, to the centre of the galaxy (in TAS and STV), Next Gen hopped from the edge of expored space back to Earth in the blink of an eye once or twice.

Basically, Voyager retconned warp speed so that it was much slower, and pretended TOS episodes like "That Which Survives" (which explicitly says the Enterprise covered 1000 lightyears in 12 hours at warp 8.4 - they could have made Voyager's journey in a month!) didn't happen.

 

[Thorius]

The TOS Enterprise routinely travelled beyond the galaxy's rim, to the centre of the galaxy (in TAS and STV), Next Gen hopped from the edge of expored space back to Earth in the blink of an eye once or twice.

Basically, Voyager retconned warp speed so that it was much slower, and pretended TOS episodes like "That Which Survives" (which explicitly says the Enterprise covered 1000 lightyears in 12 hours at warp 8.4 - they could have made Voyager's journey in a month!) didn't happen.

In a way, I like this particular retconn. Slightly less of the "moving at the speed of plot" trope. The Milky Way is really about 90,000 light years across. A movement ratio of 1000 light-years per year is still moving at *one thousand times* faster than the speed of light!

I'd say, if anything, Voyager got it right.

 

[Yevetha]

The D Quadrant probably has a lot anomalies that make it difficult to navigate.

 

[The Dominion]

The D Quadrant probably has a lot anomalies that make it difficult to navigate.

I wouldn't expect it to have significantly more anomalies than the other quadrants on average. Otherwise, I'd be inclined to ask what makes it so special.

 

[Anwar]

Well it was the caretaker who drew them to a specific location, his array near Ocampa so he could find out if they were capable of mating with him.

It's kind of strange that no one seemed to mind that this guy was kidnapping people from all over the Galaxy for the purpose of raping them.

 

[Skellington]

I think that the warp speeds as retconned by TNG are way too slow. For a start, you have to conspicuously ignore them in TNG episodes where the Enterprise zips all over the place or returns to Earth. Always thought 10000c or 40000c would be a nice figure; roughly one light year per hour and one hundred per day, respectively. Voyager's trip would have conveniently taken about seven years using the former figure, even assuming a direct journey with no fuel or engine issues. Guess they should have gone with an old Constitution-class ship and borrowed Mr Scott; they'd have made it in days!

 

[The Dominion]

Well it was the caretaker who drew them to a specific location, his array near Ocampa so he could find out if they were capable of mating with him.

It's kind of strange that no one seemed to mind that this guy was kidnapping people from all over the Galaxy for the purpose of raping them.

What could anyone do about it? It's not like anyone in the alpha quadrant even knew what was going on until their ship got pulled there, and Banjoman didn't seem too concerned with sending everyone back home once he had his way with them. And the array seemed situated in some backwaters corner of the delta quadrant, where there was no major power like the Federation to investigate.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think that the warp speeds as retconned by TNG are at too slow. For a start, you have to conspicuously ignore them in TNG episodes where the Enterprise zips all over the place or returns to Earth. Always thought 10000c or 40000c would be a nice figure; roughly one light year per hour and one hundred per day, respectively. Voyager's trip would have conveniently taken about seven years using the former figure, even assuming a direct journey with no fuel or engine issues. Guess they should have gone with an old Constitution-class ship and borrowed Mr Scott; they'd have made it in days!

I like to think there are known "warp highways"--zones of high subspace density--that enables vessels to cover vast regions of the Galaxy very quickly. But if you're in a region of the Galaxy where there aren't any warp highways or you're lost in unfamiliar territory and don't know where they are, then you have to do it the long way.

 

[MacLeod]

The TOS Enterprise routinely travelled beyond the galaxy's rim, to the centre of the galaxy (in TAS and STV), Next Gen hopped from the edge of expored space back to Earth in the blink of an eye once or twice.

Basically, Voyager retconned warp speed so that it was much slower, and pretended TOS episodes like "That Which Survives" (which explicitly says the Enterprise covered 1000 lightyears in 12 hours at warp 8.4 - they could have made Voyager's journey in a month!) didn't happen.

In a way, I like this particular retconn. Slightly less of the "moving at the speed of plot" trope. The Milky Way is really about 90,000 light years across. A movement ratio of 1000 light-years per year is still moving at *one thousand times* faster than the speed of light!

I'd say, if anything, Voyager got it right.

Even allowing for that.

in TMP 40 Eridani (Vulcan's system) was 4 days away. Now 40 Eridani is ~16ly from Earth so that gives us a speed of 4ly/day.

4*365=1 480ly/year

Translanting that to Voyager

70 000/1 480 = 47.3 years.

I think a fair few people that crusing speed of Warp 6/7 in the VOY era, should be about the same as the top speed of the TMP era.

 

[Skellington]

Doesn't Janeway say at some point that she thinks about how it was 100 years ago, with ships that were half the speed of 24th-century vessels?