Federation territory

[Jedi Master Spock]

9 planets over 100 years is not "left and right". I am asking for hundreds of starsystems in order to prove that number of planets in the Federation could not fall from 1000 to 150 as stated by Picard and Sisko.

Those were 9 in the process of being added (as someone else pointed out, we actually had 11)... out of the very little time we've had observing the regular arm of Starfleet at work expanding the Federation.

In part, this is confirmed by the fact that the total number of known colonies, protectorates, members, etc in cumulative total somewhat exceeds 150. The number of species certain to be part of the Federation, at roughly the time indicated, is 38, with an additional 12 nearly certain (but not explicitly stated onscreen), at least one protectorate species, and the 9 from the above list. (See Memory Alpha.)

There are something like 60 identified human colonies seen onscreen, in addition to several Vulcan colonies; a diagram in ENT: "Kir'Shara" suggests at least 11 systems under Vulcan control, and at least 5 systems under control of the Andorian Empire; the Vulcans and the Andorians had some disagreements about their "border."

Even Bajor has at least 8 colonies... leave alone major powers like the Klingons and Xindi.

In order for us to conclude that the Federation genuinely exercises jurisdiction on only 150 planets, we must conclude the following:

• We have seen or heard mentioned every single such planet, and some of those mentioned have since become uninhabited.
• The vast majority of species which have joined the Federation have no colonies, only a homeworld.
• The Klingon Empire and the Federation were not, in fact, competing over territory.
• The "thousand worlds" that humans spread out on proved 95% unsuitable (see first item).

Every single one of these conclusions is, in and of themselves, unreasonable from the evidence provided. The following, I feel, are the clear reasonable conclusions from the evidence.

• The Federation consists of roughly 150 members as of DS9-era, each of which is an independent civilization [generally a separate species] which has achieved warp capability on its own.
• Fast-reproducing humans make up a very large fraction of Federation citizens and worlds, having populations on over one thousand planets. Many of these worlds are not single-species enclaves.
• Other members range in size from single world polities (including, presumably, several dozen of those which have simply not been named); the remainder probably have around 5-20 colonies that were settled prior to becoming Federation members.
• Some members (e.g., Vulcan, Benzar) operate their own fleets independently of the main Starfleet headquartered on Earth.
• Most, although not all, colonies have fairly small populations relative to member worlds; in total, there should be thousands of colonies.
• The total population under Federation control numbers in the trillions.

Even Cardassia Prime, which was ravaged most severely, only suffered 800 million casualties - and the Federation was supposed to suffer 900 billion casualties as a whole?

First of all both Picard and Sisko talk about planets which means that while there were only 4 member species in the beginning the total number of planets could still be bigger.

For a planet to be a member, it must play host to an independent civilization.

As for starbase number who says that just because we hear larger starbase numbers there are more than before rather than older being decommissioned?

If that was the case, we would stop hearing about low-numbered starbases. Instead, the span simply broadens, and the lower numbers usually seem to be more central to the Federation (occur more often).

Secondly even though it has less planets the population could still be larger as well as industrial capacity which would still allow a greater fleet even with less planets.
How many planets do Xindi and Klingons have? Not to mention that this is not the first time someone mention Klingons joining the Federation and it turned out false.

The Xindi? Unknown, but one of the greatest powers in a two thousand light year wide region.

The Klingons? We know of a handful of Klingon planets; we also know that in the Klingon civil war, three squadrons is enough to control seven sectors, and from the Dominion War, we know the [by then depleted] Klingon fleet was at least 2,000 ships strong. While we don't know how many inhabited planets and bases are within each sector controlled by the Klingon Empire, this suggests somewhere between 60 and 600 sectors controlled by the Klingon Empire.

And this, you suggest, did not increase the size of the Federation when the Klingons finally joined it?

We have several threads to the Federation expansion.

First, economic and population growth. The latter is so normal to populations faced with a large habitat that we would have to come up with compelling reasons as to why population isn't expanding; the former is firmly evidenced by the dramatic increase in Starfleet's size.

Second, the number of members. This is evidenced by the frequency of joining/attempted joining members (at least 11 out of fifteen sample years, counting in DS9, which is uncharacteristically concerned with a single prospective member species) as opposed to leaving members (none, period) along with the initially small number of members and the much larger number of known members later.

Third, the number of worlds. This is implicit in the membership, but also in the typical colony size compared with overall population, the relative rarity of colony failure, the retention of disputed colonies (Cestus III), etc.

Fourth, the geographic span and area of direct influence. This is evidenced by Q's statements about when the Federation "should" be encountering what, the progressive statements about the charting of the galaxy, and the progression of the span of the Federation (8,000 light years across), and the quadrant discussions.

Fifth, the assimilation of former regional powers, who previously were significant competitors to it, e.g., the Klingons, the Xindi, etc.

Show evidence that Klingon Empire is smaller than Federation by the late 24th century. What does having influence in the Delta Quadrant mean and where does it come from?

Q said so. To Janeway.

What trend are you speaking off? A nation can loose and gain and then again loose it's territory. Just because at certain point in time it gains planets does not in any way mean that it couldn't loose them at another point.

We have no evidence of any loss... only of gains.

Again you fail to provide any evidence that charting means actually visiting as used by Kosinski. Where is your evidence Federation has influence over a quarter or fifth of galaxy? Federation itself is stated to have it's two farthest members be 8000ly apart nothing more. Stanley and Aberdeen are 13,000km apart. That really doesn't tell us anything about UK's size.

"The Chase." Also, the Dominion War.

[Praeothmin]

Stanley and Aberdeen are 13,000km apart. That really doesn't tell us anything about UK's size.

Yes it does.
It tells us that at least on one dimension, the UK are at least 13000km long.

Even if it was only 4km wide, the Government would still need to be able to patrol 13000km in order to protect its borders.

So if the two most distant planets in the Federation are 8000LY apart, then we know for a fact that the Federation is 8000LY long...

[Roondar]

It's conceivable Picard was referring to 'human' planets when he answered Lily in FC, or that he was referring to 'core worlds'.

Anyway, he didn't say the Federation was 8,000 years long. He states that the 150 worlds where "spread over 8000 lightyears". That could mean any number of things, one of which is length.

[Kane Starkiller]

Those were 9 in the process of being added (as someone else pointed out, we actually had 11)... out of the very little time we've had observing the regular arm of Starfleet at work expanding the Federation.

We have no idea how long these planets were actually negotiating with Federation nor how long the negotiations will still last or if they will ever get in. Besides EU expanded it's membership from 12 to 27 in 3 years. That doesn't mean it doubles it's membership every few years.

In part, this is confirmed by the fact that the total number of known colonies, protectorates, members, etc in cumulative total somewhat exceeds 150. The number of species certain to be part of the Federation, at roughly the time indicated, is 38, with an additional 12 nearly certain (but not explicitly stated onscreen), at least one protectorate species, and the 9 from the above list. (See Memory Alpha.)

There are something like 60 identified human colonies seen onscreen, in addition to several Vulcan colonies; a diagram in ENT: "Kir'Shara" suggests at least 11 systems under Vulcan control, and at least 5 systems under control of the Andorian Empire; the Vulcans and the Andorians had some disagreements about their "border."

I saw 4 entries for Founding Members, 12 for council members, 22 known members, 1 protectorate, 2 Coalition of Planets, 18 Other colonies, 2 Vulcan colonies, 39 Other Federation colonies. That is total of 100 planets not over 150.

Even Bajor has at least 8 colonies... leave alone major powers like the Klingons and Xindi.

I don't remember 8 colonies only one in Gamma Quadrant. Besides Mongolia has an area of 1.5 million km2 while UK ha s surface area of 0.24 million km2. Yet UK is a far greater power. Just because Klingons are more powerful does not mean they have much more colonies.

In order for us to conclude that the Federation genuinely exercises jurisdiction on only 150 planets, we must conclude the following:

• We have seen or heard mentioned every single such planet, and some of those mentioned have since become uninhabited.
  The vast majority of species which have joined the Federation have no colonies, only a homeworld.
  The Klingon Empire and the Federation were not, in fact, competing over territory.
  The "thousand worlds" that humans spread out on proved 95% unsuitable (see first item).

Every single one of these conclusions is, in and of themselves, unreasonable from the evidence provided.

1. The number of planets actually stated or at least implied to be in the Federation is about 100 not over 150.
2. Why is it unreasonable for many species joining the Federation not to have any colonies? It is easily possible many species upon discovery of warp drive were contacted by the Federation before developing any plans for colonisation. Secondly it is easily possible there were no overpopulation or starvation problems in many of these members thus there was no incentive to colonize.
3. Why do you take small number of colonies to mean that Klingons and Federation did not compete for territory? They could be competing for strategic locations or uninhabitable planets which still have natural resources.
4. Easily possible seeing how many people an average colony has living on them. It usually amounts to no more than a village and usually completely unprotected. Like the one attacked by crystalline entity. The entity could be destroyed easily even by Enterprise's communications arrays yet it was allowed to kill all those colonists. Why would anyone risk their lives on a far away planet if "Earth is paradise"? People colonized New World because they were running away from prosecution, hunger etc. not because they just didn't have anything better to do.

The following, I feel, are the clear reasonable conclusions from the evidence.

• * The Federation consists of roughly 150 members as of DS9-era, each of which is an independent civilization [generally a separate species] which has achieved warp capability on its own.
  * Fast-reproducing humans make up a very large fraction of Federation citizens and worlds, having populations on over one thousand planets. Many of these worlds are not single-species enclaves.
  * Other members range in size from single world polities (including, presumably, several dozen of those which have simply not been named); the remainder probably have around 5-20 colonies that were settled prior to becoming Federation members.
  * Some members (e.g., Vulcan, Benzar) operate their own fleets independently of the main Starfleet headquartered on Earth.
  * Most, although not all, colonies have fairly small populations relative to member worlds; in total, there should be thousands of colonies.
  * The total population under Federation control numbers in the trillions.

1. Picard and Sisko both simply state planets without any qualification as to what status those planets have within the Federation. Similar statement comes from Janeway in "Innocence" where she states Federation consists of 150 "worlds". No mention of members or these being species homeworlds.
2. I will address human population below.
3. An assumption on your part. We have no idea whether other species had any colonies before contacting Federation.
4. This doesn't affect the number of planets in the Federation.
5. Why? The very fact that colonies have small population indicates there are not thousands of them. Obviously there is no great emigration pressure from Earth.
6. There is no evidence for that assertion.

Even Cardassia Prime, which was ravaged most severely, only suffered 800 million casualties - and the Federation was supposed to suffer 900 billion casualties as a whole?

The 900 billion casualties was projected by a group of mentally unstable and delusional individuals. They utterly failed in their projection since Federation actually won. Furthermore they were so sure of their abilities that they projected future over several thousand of years. For how many years did they project the war will last? Does "we" include Romulans and Klingons? In any case any claim made by them is utterly unreliable.

For a planet to be a member, it must play host to an independent civilization.

Where is this stated? In any case Sisko, Picard and Janeway never specified that they were talking about member planets merely planets or worlds.

If that was the case, we would stop hearing about low-numbered starbases. Instead, the span simply broadens, and the lower numbers usually seem to be more central to the Federation (occur more often).

Not necessarily. Older starbases may outlive newer ones (similar to B-52 which will outlive B-1B and B-2).

The Xindi? Unknown, but one of the greatest powers in a two thousand light year wide region.

Power does not depend solely on how many planets you have. Besides how many planets other rival powers in that region have?

The Klingons? We know of a handful of Klingon planets; we also know that in the Klingon civil war, three squadrons is enough to control seven sectors, and from the Dominion War, we know the [by then depleted] Klingon fleet was at least 2,000 ships strong. While we don't know how many inhabited planets and bases are within each sector controlled by the Klingon Empire, this suggests somewhere between 60 and 600 sectors controlled by the Klingon Empire.

And this, you suggest, did not increase the size of the Federation when the Klingons finally joined it?

Nothing here indicates how many planets Klingons have. Obviously when Klingons join Federation that act will result in increase of number of planets Federation has. But this still doesn't prove that over the centuries Federation increased the total number of inhabited planets.

First, economic and population growth. The latter is so normal to populations faced with a large habitat that we would have to come up with compelling reasons as to why population isn't expanding; the former is firmly evidenced by the dramatic increase in Starfleet's size.

Regarding population growth everything happening to population in recent decades points away from your claim. It has been observed that total fertility rate is linked directly to the status of economic development and all developed countries have a fertility rate below replacement. Even Australia and Canada, which certainly don't have any problems with available space and a strong economy, have fertility rates of 1.57 and 1.76. Their population growth is the result of inertia and immigration.
Meanwhile Bangladesh with area of 144,000km2 and population of 153 million still has a fertility rate of 3.08 and population growth of 2%.
Clearly amount of available space has nothing to do with it.
Census.gov has an article on world population clearly stating that global population growth has peaked with 87 million people added in 1989-1990 but only 74 million people added in 2002-2003. Current projections have the total fertility rate for the world dropping below replacement level by 2050. I would be very surprised if in year 2370 we have 6 billion humans let alone much more.
Here is an article that projects population up to the year 2300. High scenario has the population at about 36.4 billion, medium at 9 billion, zero growth at 8.3 billion, and low at 2.3 billion.
As for Starfleet size several thousand ships manned by several hundred crewmembers means several million people. With strong economy that is not a problem even for a few billion people.

Second, the number of members. This is evidenced by the frequency of joining/attempted joining members (at least 11 out of fifteen sample years, counting in DS9, which is uncharacteristically concerned with a single prospective member species) as opposed to leaving members (none, period) along with the initially small number of members and the much larger number of known members later.

Tasha Jar's colony left the Federation thus indicating that not only homeworlds but individual colonies have that right even if they are falling into disarray. Most of the examples actually involve attempts to join. How long these negotiations take or whether they are even successful is not revealed. Again see EU for example of sudden enlargement that does not represent the long term state of affairs.

Third, the number of worlds. This is implicit in the membership, but also in the typical colony size compared with overall population, the relative rarity of colony failure, the retention of disputed colonies (Cestus III), etc.

Overall population is unknown other than certain assumptions about assumptions made by the mentally unstable individuals. The fact that a typical colony is so small and usually inhabited by people who simply like to live on the "frontier" rather than people simply moving for a better life means there will be no great demographic pressure like the one seen on Earth and thus there is unlikely to be a great number of colonies.

Fourth, the geographic span and area of direct influence. This is evidenced by Q's statements about when the Federation "should" be encountering what, the progressive statements about the charting of the galaxy, and the progression of the span of the Federation (8,000 light years across), and the quadrant discussions.

I have yet to see this influence since there is a number of species right on it's borders like Tzenkethi and Talarians which fought wars with Federation and have shown no sign of bowing to their interests. Q, as I remember, simply stated that "humans should not be in this quadrant for another hundred years" if you are referring to his statement from "Death Wish".
Being somewhere does not equal influence or actual territorial holdings.

Fifth, the assimilation of former regional powers, who previously were significant competitors to it, e.g., the Klingons, the Xindi, etc.

And which have an unknown number of planets, population etc.

We have no evidence of any loss... only of gains.

Tasha Jar's colony.

"The Chase." Also, the Dominion War.

The Chase evidence is a single map with the assumption that the highlighted part was not a zoomed in area superimposed on the original map. If any shuttle could visit locations tens of thousands of ly away in a matter of months then Federation would not be completely oblivious to major Gamma and Delta Quadrant powers like Dominion, Borg, Kazons, Devore etc.


In addition there are many pieces of evidence pointing to most of economy and population being concentrated in a single world:

• *Qo'nos ecological disaster leading to Spock calling Klingons a dying people
  *Depopulation of Earth being described as destruction of humanity in Nemesis
  *Romulan Admiral claiming that if Romulus and Remus were to be united on equal basis "not even the Federation" will be able to stand in their way, a bit of rhetoric to be sure but even so he is unlikely to be exaggerating too much when addressing the senate
  *Dominion which was confined to a single planet (Cardassia) was still expected to threaten the combined forces of Romulans, Klingons and Federation

Yes it does.
It tells us that at least on one dimension, the UK are at least 13000km long.

Even if it was only 4km wide, the Government would still need to be able to patrol 13000km in order to protect its borders.

So if the two most distant planets in the Federation are 8000LY apart, then we know for a fact that the Federation is 8000LY long...

UK is not 13,000km long. Atlantic is not a part of it's territory and it certainly doesn't need to patrol the entire ocean for 13,000km. It only has to patrol around Great Britain, Ireland and the Falklands.

It's conceivable Picard was referring to 'human' planets when he answered Lily in FC, or that he was referring to 'core worlds'.

Unlikely since Sisko states that Federation has over 100 planets and Janeway states that Federation has over 150 worlds. Both were talking to aliens so there would be no reason to only name human worlds, the point was to describe the Federation as a friendly family of alien worlds.

[Roondar]

*Romulan Admiral claiming that if Romulus and Remus were to be united on equal basis "not even the Federation" will be able to stand in their way, a bit of rhetoric to be sure but even so he is unlikely to be exaggerating too much when addressing the senate

Ah, so when it suits your position to believe that people in ST are basically competent and mostly speaking the truth they are, but when it doesn't they don't?

(Hint: if a romulan admiral's grand rethoric is now 'unlikely to be exaggerating' then I guess the combined Romulan / Cardassian fleet really did have the ability to blow up a world in six hours and the Defiant can reduce worlds 'to a cinder' all by itself)

I find a romulan admiral trying to appease political figures by using grand overestimations of their power to be far more likely. Considering of course that Romulans pretty much feel and act like they are superior to all others.

Besides, his prediction was wrong anyway - it never happened and the all-powerfull scimitar was mostly defeated by a ship not even a tenth of it's strenght.

[Kane Starkiller]

No I judge people competence based on agreement between their statements and actual events just like in real life.
But more to the point no one ever stated the planet will be blown up merely "destroyed". We also got a demonstration of what a planetary bombardment from a major Alpha Quadrant looks like when Breen bombed San Francisco. Interestingly it didn't reduce Earth to cinders. Perhaps they should have hired Magneto to do the job of at least bringing down the Golden Gate.
Secondly I acknowledge the probability that he was most likely exaggerating in my very post so I really don't see what is the point of your rebuttal.
Your final point about his "prediction being wrong" is similarly nonsensical: the senate refused his request therefore his prediction never got a chance to be tested.

[Praeothmin]

UK is not 13,000km long.

Says who?
Just because the Earth only has a diameter of 12600km...
Oh!
13000km...
Mmmm ok, I'll start thinking before I post from now on... :P

Ok, thougths in order now:
The Federation has never been depicted as a fractured Empire, so it cannot be compared to the UK.
It should be compared to the US, or even Canada.
One whole territory, with many sectors, but still all enclosed within the same border.

Although I do agree that "being spread over 8000 LY" could mean a total volume comprising 8000 LY, except we have seen many episodes where maps are used to plot courses within the Federation, and they seemed to indicate a Federation length of at least 8000 LY.
Like the map used in TNG where Picard's old archeology professor was planning a trip.
The map clearly shows distances of more then 8000 LY accross the Galaxy.

[Roondar]

No I judge people competence based on agreement between their statements and actual events just like in real life.

And since the Romulan admiral was busy trying to impress the politicians with grand plans which, incidently, did not come true we can safely ignore his rethoric.

But more to the point no one ever stated the planet will be blown up merely "destroyed".

Ahem, they stated they'd remove the mantle in some six hours. That qualifies as the equivalent of 'blown up' to me. Anyway, I'm not trying to discuss TDiC. I'm pointing out that I've never ever seen you take anything said in ST on face value unless it managed to make the Federation/A-Q powers look weaker.

We also got a demonstration of what a planetary bombardment from a major Alpha Quadrant looks like when Breen bombed San Francisco. Interestingly it didn't reduce Earth to cinders. Perhaps they should have hired Magneto to do the job of at least bringing down the Golden Gate.

First of, the Breen are not a major power in the A-Q. They're indeed hardly mentioned until they happen to have that nasty energy-draining weapon.

Secondly, your result is tainted Kane - we don't know what the defenses of Earth where at the time (other than that they have a 'planetary defense grid'), we don't know how many ships managed to get a shot of and we don't know if the Federation used any form of shielding.

Blindly assuming that there where no defenses at all and the Breen used their top-end yields on an undefended target is amusing, but not valid.

Secondly I acknowledge the probability that he was most likely exaggerating in my very post so I really don't see what is the point of your rebuttal.
Your final point about his "prediction being wrong" is similarly nonsensical: the senate refused his request therefore his prediction never got a chance to be tested.

You acknowledge it by basically saying "he was probably exaggerating, but not too much". In other words, you're not really acknowledging it - you're holding to the idea that his words have enough weight to be taken somewhat seriously.

--

Secondly, I used the "prediction" bit to point out to remind you of your own stance on the idea of predictions and grand statements. Remember when you said: "The 900 billion casualties was projected by a group of mentally unstable and delusional individuals. They utterly failed in their projection since Federation actually won"?

(on a sidenote, 900 billion casualties does define the Federation as containing at least 900 billion people - regardless of other cosiderations)

This is exactly the same thing - the Admiral is delusional about his empire's abilities. Adding one planet to an empire which could already more-or-less stand up to the Federation (which definitely has more than one or two highly populated worlds) won't suddenly make you many times stronger.

Especially since the 'finest' of those Remans where no match for GI-Picard and his bending phaser of doom.

[Roondar]

UK is not 13,000km long.

Says who?
Just because the Earth only has a diameter of 12600km...
Oh!
13000km...
Mmmm ok, I'll start thinking before I post from now on... :P

The Earth does have a circumference of roughly 40000 km at the equator though ;)

[SailorSaturn13]

The 900 billion casualties was projected by a group of mentally unstable and delusional individuals. They utterly failed in their projection since Federation actually won. Furthermore they were so sure of their abilities that they projected future over several thousand of years. For how many years did they project the war will last? Does "we" include Romulans and Klingons? In any case any claim made by them is utterly unreliable.

Mental instability changes nothing. They were nuts in real-life matters, but their intellect roughly equals that of Bashir. Remember they uncovered the whole Damar's story just from watching his speech. Bashir also believed them which means such outcome was POSSIBLE and CREDIBLE. Also they are working with secret data, which means their previous predictions were deemed valuable.
And the point about projection was made in same episode - no one can really include everything, like Romulans allying UFP and Founders getting terminally sick.

We also got a demonstration of what a planetary bombardment from a major Alpha Quadrant looks like when Breen bombed San Francisco. Interestingly it didn't reduce Earth to cinders. Perhaps they should have hired Magneto to do the job of at least bringing down the Golden Gate.

As I wrote earlier - bleedthrough damage. Happens with ships all the time (and on similar scale).

[Mike DiCenso]

Bleedthrough damage does occur with Trek planetary-based shields as well, as shown in ST:ENT's "Divergence", where a colony was bombarded for several minutes, and took increasing amounts of damage through it's shields.
-Mike

[SailorSaturn13]

We have 9 Worlds added for 2 leaving. By default that is a typical ratio 1/4 of colonies leaves again, the rest remains.

[Flectarn]

Images and script from the Chase Federation, or at least easily accesable areas spread out over much of this half of the galaxy. as Galen points to the various destinations, they seem to be quite far from each other, and expects to arrange transport fairly easily. The enterprise is then able to zip around visting these systems and be only a few days late for the italia conference

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... ase067.jpg




http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... ase068.jpg



http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... ase072.jpg




Picard joins him at the console, staring at the star
chart.

GALEN
(re: screen)
The Vulcan ship can take us as far
as DS-Four. An Al-Leyan transport
is scheduled to arrive at the
station three weeks later.
They'll take us as far as Caere
and we can use the shuttle to get
to Indri Eight. Our first stop
http://tng.trekcore.com/episodes/scripts/246.txt

If anyone has access to the video, it would be nice to see exactly where he points

[Mike DiCenso]

Where Prof. Galen starts tracing the path that must be followed is almost 90 degrees perpendicular to where it ends up in the TrekCore image you posted above. You can see the path drawn out here. The image can be found mid-page under the TNG entry. At absolute minium, the course traced out would be at least 30,000 ly long, and possibly much more than that; 40,000 ly!

Further, there is this line of dialog during an exchange between Picard and Galen over how long the venture will take with shuttle, freighter, or starship:

GALEN: I'm cannot, Mister Picard. That information comes with a price. Your agreement to join me on the final leg of this expedition.
PICARD: For how long?
GALEN: Three months, perhaps a year. If I had complete diplomatic access and a starship, it'd be a matter of weeks. But as it is, we'll have only my shuttle and whatever arrangement we can make with transports, combined with our talents.

"Weeks" with starship. That would put Trek speeds well into the hundreds of thousands of c range, and possible well over a million c, depending on how you chose to interpret that. We can get even higher speeds because it winds up taking the E-D maybe a week at tops given Picard's statement about "inconveniencing a few squabbling delegates for a few days".
-Mike

[Flectarn]

all of which unfortunately flies in the face of voyager because of speed of plot...