appatel@kcl-cs.UUCP (ZNAC343) (06/26/85)
In article <268@dcl-cs.UUCP> david@dcl-cs.UUCP (David Coffield) writes: >Someone recently noted that the replacement of Eagle landers on Space 1999 was >not possible due to the fact that the base had very finite resources. He also >noted that the Enterprise could easily pop in to a starbase for repairs. What >puzzles me is that the 5 year mission of the Enterprise was "to boldy go .." etc >and therefore there shouldn't be a starbase in sight if they were chartering >unknown territory. Also, how come they knew the name of every planet they >visited? Surely they wouldn't have had a name if no-one had been there before. The 5 year mission refered to above is the length of the tour of duty of the Enterprise.The Enterprise was assigned a quadrant to patrol and explore as not all planets and star systems had been explored in Federation space.So when the Enterprise was not on a StarFleet assigned mission (eg:"A Taste Of Armagedon", "The Enterprise Incident","The Trouble With Tribbles") then its prime task was to explore and chart star systems that had not been visted before.(Remember that the galaxy has about 100,000 million stars, and if say federation space only covers 10%, then thats about 10,000 million stars to be explored and charted). Therefore even when in federation space they would be boldly chartering unknown territory and still be near a starbase (I think there were about 20 of them). The reason that they knew the name of every planet that they came to was that either the planet was a member of the federation or that the planet's name was derived from the names of the star and the position of the planet from the star,(Earth is SOL 3).If you look at a good star catalouge you will find that there are a lot of stars in it with name that were mentioned in Star Trek. ("TO BE OR NOT TO BE..THAT IS ILLOGICAL CAPTAIN"...SPOCK).