Talk:Friendship 1

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How is it that this probe was able to travell all the way to the Delta Quadrant? Even with centuries to travel, it shouldn't even have been able to leave the Alpha Quadrant. Humans didn't devolop a Warp 2 engine until 2143, and it blew up only moments after achieving that speed. Thus, Friendship 1 would've been travelling at little (if at all) above Warp 1, which would mean it would take thousands of years to reach the Delta Quadrant. And that's if we disregard the fact that that it would eventually run out of fuel along the way. 71.203.209.0 13:51, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Contact was lost with the probe nearly two centuries after its launch, so it's possible that it ended up in a black hole or something, similar to what happened to the Voyager 6 probe. --From Andoria with Love 16:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Or even the Caretaker. I think enough time had passed for it to get to the badlands at Warp 1 when contact was lost, and the Caretaker has taken other unmanned devices, like the Dreadnought missile. --OuroborosCobra ^talk 17:30, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

User:71.203.209.0 is right. Starfleet gave Voyager its last known location and then Harry calculated its path and they found it very close to where it should have been. There was no black hole or caretaker or anything. In nearly the same scene Janeway mentions that the nearest starfleet ship is 30,000 light years away. Even at warp 2, which is the maximum speed that could be assumed for the time of its launch (considering the Warp 2 barrier), it would take 2,976 years to travel that distance. Furthermore, this is the distance to the Federation reach of 2377, not Earth, so add even more time. The story is absurd, but that is how Voyager works, you just have to accept it. I know, with things like "Threshold" and "The Voyager Conspiracy", it can be very hard. --Bp 18:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Let me clarify that Star Trek is absurd. I simply hate when they are not at least internally consistent. --Bp 18:07, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Heh, Voyager being inconsistent again. What a surprise. Thanks Bp. --OuroborosCobra ^talk 18:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

You know, the fact that it was still in contact with starfleet when it ultimately got lost does not rule out the possibility that it fell trough a wormhole; it might have, early on, and then just have automatically re-established contact. The caretaker theory is unlikely though, even besides the fact that it seemed like the caretaker had started kidnapping ships only recently, the probe would have traveled much the same way as voyager and should have been mentioned as a valuable source of cartographic data before (not to mention that it wouldn't have gotten trough Borg space). Anyway, the big inconsistency here imo is that a 21th century probe could communicate with earth from this distance while voyager couldn't (at least not without cutting edge technobable). -- Capricorn 14:59, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the difficulty with the NX-Alpha and Beta was creating a useful Warp 2 field, one that would enclose a manned spacecraft; whereas Friendship was relatively small and didn't require life-support, so they could send it off at Warp Whatever at a time when this would have been impossible for a bigger craft which couldn't put all its power into propulsion. It's pure after-the-fact rationaliation, but it makes some kind of sense; self-powered missiles were able to break the sound barrier five years before Chuck Yeagar. 195.93.21.101 16:34, 17 October 2008 (UTC)