How far away is the Romulan Neutral Zone from Earth?

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Praeothmin
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Post by Praeothmin » Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:30 pm

Looks good, but the only problem I have is the scale.
It is too small.
About 10 times too small on a quick scaling of the map.
The scale tops out at 20 LY, but if you look at the map, and measure the federation using that scale (lower right corner of the map), then the Federation territory is definitly not 8000-10 000 LY across, as is mentioned in TNG (canon source).

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Mr. Oragahn
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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:39 pm

Mmh... so instead of 20 LY, we should read 20 KLY (20,000 LY)?

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sun Feb 10, 2008 9:43 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote: Right, but you miss the point of using BoBW here; it is a known time that it took to get from one of the fringe areas of Federation space back to Earth over a fairly known time period of up to 6 days (which also included a few stops along the way there, but for our conservative purposes it will be used as though the E-D and the Borg cube never stopped at all). So a known time to get back from the edge of Federation space. Is the Federation uniform enough to allow us to do this? Not really as shown in this canon map:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/photo312c.JPG
Looking at that map once again, I see there are numbers and what those numbers are. Having resolved that, I am now kicking myself for not realizing there's an obvious and specific scale on that chart.

Ok, see the markers running from 342 to 354? Which are radial line segments pointing towards the center of the galaxy? That's degrees in galactic coordinates. Why the radial zero line is outside Federation territory proper is curious, of course, but with our system being ~26,000 LY from the galactic core and the map showing boxes over 12 degrees of arc, that's a ~5400 LY arc on Sol's latitude.

Drawing a line from the furthest points within the boxes is going to give us very close to 8,000 light years, reconfirming the explicit FC figure as well as telling us that the map is definitely of territory containing Federation planets.

And from there, we can try to draw up some distances, but IIRC, the chart does have some known problems for known stars, and the perspective can be tricky.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Feb 10, 2008 11:50 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
I'm lost. Is there and Endor trip discussion going here as well??
No, that's another thread since WILGA had another purpose in mind when he created this thread.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Anyway, what do you think of that Trek map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Star_trek_map2.jpg
It's a scanning of one of the maps from Geoffrey Mandel's superb, but mostly non-canon "Star Trek Maps" book.
-Mike

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Mon Feb 11, 2008 12:08 am

If we went by the map, it would be at least a couple thousand light years to Romulan territory.

Is this a perfect map? As JMS has pointed out, there are problems with it, most notably the perspective. However it does give us a good idea of the Federation's "structure". Certainly we can guess that the UFP has a depth of up to 1,000 ly. The distance between Vulcan and Sol is off, though; ST:ENT's "Home" [S4] established clearly that Vulcan is some 16 light years from Earth. On the other hand, The UFP is at least 800 ly wide given that Rigel (assuming that Rigel is the star, not just the name of a planet') falls well within it's boundries. Just using that as a bench mark, the UFP is at least some 4,800 x 6,000 ly.
-Mike

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Post by Praeothmin » Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:22 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Mmh... so instead of 20 LY, we should read 20 KLY (20,000 LY)?
Well, revising my estimate, I'd say instead of 20LY, we should read 700 or 800 LY, for a total Federation Territory length of 8 to 10 KLY.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:36 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:If we went by the map, it would be at least a couple thousand light years to Romulan territory.

Is this a perfect map? As JMS has pointed out, there are problems with it, most notably the perspective. However it does give us a good idea of the Federation's "structure". Certainly we can guess that the UFP has a depth of up to 1,000 ly. The distance between Vulcan and Sol is off, though; ST:ENT's "Home" [S4] established clearly that Vulcan is some 16 light years from Earth. On the other hand, The UFP is at least 800 ly wide given that Rigel (assuming that Rigel is the star, not just the name of a planet') falls well within it's boundries. Just using that as a bench mark, the UFP is at least some 4,800 x 6,000 ly.
-Mike
Vulcan has traditionally been guessed as orbiting 40 Eridani A; there are shipyards located there, and that's about the only star fitting the descriptions given. In this case, ENT's geography seems to be accurate to the other data about Vulcan.

Rigel and Deneb are both canonically in Federation territory as of TOS, although Deneb seemed to be near the frontier. Rigel has numerous issues, of course, mostly related to "Broken Bow," whose internal inconsistencies have been discussed.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:57 am

Rigel is an interesting problem. However it can be solved if you take "Rigel 10" from "Broken Bow" as not even being in the original Rigel star system, but is a far-flung outpost or colony.
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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:12 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:Rigel is an interesting problem. However it can be solved if you take "Rigel 10" from "Broken Bow" as not even being in the original Rigel star system, but is a far-flung outpost or colony.
-Mike
Well, Rigel X has a very similar designation to all the other Rigel planets (Rigel II, Rigel XII, et cetera).

As far as the chart is concerned, that's not the least of the problems. There's a host of known stars on that chart - many referenced during the show - and they're arranged in a manner very unlike their real arrangement. As far as the labeling goes, I think we're back to the "semi-canonical" status of the Okudagram; all the labels belong somewhere on the chart, and the chart is supposed to look right as a perspective shot of the galaxy, but the labels themselves are not all accurately placed.

I think it does show how big the Federation is, and identifying systems within its region of influence; I don't think it's worth anything as an actual map of what goes where.

It's also worth noting that the Klingons are also placed within NX-range in ENT, and are competing with the Federation for worlds fairly close to Earth in TOS, but are distant on the map; it's further worth noting that the Excelsior detected the Praxis explosion while returning from a three year exploration mission of the Beta Quadrant. (This is one of the reasons, IMO, why many licensed sources place the Klingon Empire mainly in the Beta Quadrant.)

Geography is sometimes a problem. It's actually surprising how consistent most of Trek's writers have been; you'd expect worse ordinarily.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:50 am

Like I said, Rigel X can be in a completely different system from the actual Rigel system, especially given the NX-01's trip across 15 light years to reach it. We've even seen that "Rigellians" tend to look different from one another, again reinforcing the idea that they are all different species spread out among different star systems.

Again, as far as the map is concerned, I reiterate that the map is a useful guide to the shape of the Federation, if not the fine details of the interior.


The Klingons being so relatively close to Earth has actually indeed been a consistant staple of ST. As far back as ST:TMP, we saw that at warp 7, it was possible to reach Earth from Klingon space in just a couple days. That the NX-01 could reach it at warp 4.5 in about 4 days or so shouldn't come as a suprise.
-Mike

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Post by The Elder Dwoof » Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:56 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:I hope that you didn't actually pay SDN's stupid membership fee, did you? What a waste of money if you did.... :-/
-Mike
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Post by Mith » Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:21 pm

The Elder Dwoof wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:I hope that you didn't actually pay SDN's stupid membership fee, did you? What a waste of money if you did.... :-/
-Mike
As the lunatic said after solving the lug nut problem: "I'm crazy, not stupid."
They have a membership fee? 0o

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Jun 05, 2008 11:04 pm

Mith, the "membership fee", is in fact, a "hotmail registration fee", in which people who have any non-ISP account must pay out $5. Make of it what you will.
-Mike

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Post by Mith » Thu Jun 05, 2008 11:30 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:Mith, the "membership fee", is in fact, a "hotmail registration fee", in which people who have any non-ISP account must pay out $5. Make of it what you will.
-Mike
Ah.

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Post by Mith » Sat Jul 05, 2008 1:10 am

I found this awsome map of the Federation, taken from In the Hands of the Prophets if I recall, and a similar map was shown in The Conspiracy.

Image[/URL]

Looks like some blew it up a bit, but it looks to be legitament with the one from In the Hands of the Prophets.

Since this is the only canon example of a map and we've seen it twice, it should surely count for something. What do you guys think?

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