Shoud Starfleet return to the Delta Quadrant?

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

What's the Destiny trilogy got to do with it? They're books, and therefore non-canon and irrelevant.

Some others have mentioned it, and without slipstream drive it's kinda hard to even get there without generational ships.

[Sionnach Glic]

All the OP mentions is that he's presuming Starfleet has slipstream drive. Nothing about the Destiny novels there.

[Capt. Jethro]

Should Starfleet return to the Delta Quadrant right away or finish exploring our neck of the woods first?

Sure why not. This is a spoiler question, but what ships did they send besides the Voyager? I would send a GCS (Venture upgrades), 2 Akiras, and 2 Intrepids. May be overkill but that's what I would send.

[Mikey]

To what end, though? Establishing territory? Keeping in contact with - much less administering and supplying - colonies or outposts would be just shy of impossible.

[Tyyr]

It's a shithole full of Borg. Fuck the delta quadrant.

[Tsukiyumi]

It's a shithole full of Borg. f**k the delta quadrant.

Don't forget those delightful Talaxians!

[Lt. Staplic]

Don't forget those delightful Talaxians!

can we just like cut that quarter of the galaxy out and send it off on it's own?

[Lighthawk]

It's a shithole full of Borg. f**k the delta quadrant.

Don't forget those delightful Talaxians!

And the Kazons...and the Ocampa...geez, anyone else get the feeling that the delta quadrant is the short bus of the galaxy?

[Mark]

I used the slipstream drive as a device to make said trip possible. We all know what Starfleet does in the books, (which seems crazy to me after suffering such losses) but in the original time line exploration is completely reasonable.

And the point of the trip would be Starfleets original charter "To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations......."


Wouln't the GCS be IDEAL for this mission?

[Mikey]

That would actually be the perfect type of mission for the GCS' purported primary role.

I'm still wondering what the point would be, at least until feasible transport to the area was commonplace.

[Sionnach Glic]

Aye, what's there that you could want? It's too far away for its politics and factions to be of any interest in you. And presumably there're no resources there that you couldn't get far cheaper somewhere closer.

[McAvoy]

The Galaxy class would be perfect for the mission. It is much more powerful than Voyager, much larger and practically designed for the role. I think though if we were to ignore slipstream, then it would be a generational ship with a ship full of volunteers and their familes.

On a side note, on a generational ship like above, how would the rank structure work out since this would be at least a 140 year trip. The original command crew would be dead by then and their replacements like very young ensigns or cadets would be also dead. So it would be up to the familes to produce offspring and then train them for the mission.

[Mikey]

The GCS already had an educational system in place for the crew's families; I imagine that it would just evolve to include a sort of erstwhile, accelerated academy or some sort of ROTC-type training for those young adults inclined to service.

[Lt. Staplic]

Though then you might run into another problem I've thought about with generational ships:

1. What if no one wants to serve?

This problem can be pretty easily covered up since they have two options, serve or let the ship fall apart and die. though it could become a problem if no one, or not enough, volunteer to get into training soon enough and the ship ends up with people not trained to do their jobs.

2. If the ship requires three generations, what happens if there isn't enough coupling in the second generation to give way to the third?

We see it here on earth, people who prefer and/or opt to remain single their whole lives, never getting married. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but what happens if the second generation, doesn't have enough married couples to produce enough children for the next generation to man the ship. You could just up the number of kids each family must have but that could get a little weird IMO. The likely hood of this problem occurring drastically increases with the number of generations that will posses the ship.

[Lighthawk]

You also have to take into account inbreeding. A galaxy class can carry around 1000 people if I remember right, which really isn't big enough for a viable breeding diversity. I believe you need around 5000 individuals to have a maintainable population without eventual inbreeding. Now of course, that is the number about you need for indefinate breeding purposes, if there is a planned number of generations involved, you could get it down, but every 20-30 years you add to the mission requires a bump in the number of people you need to take along. And that's assuming of course that everyone is human on board.