2.15 Food Service & Spaceflight and the Galaxy

Food Service Technology

In brief: Most food service aboard the Enterprise is provided by handy transporter terminals, usually called FOOD SLOTS, which can instantly materialize virtually any dish in the computer's memory at a moment's notice.

More: As with all transporter-based replication technology, food service transporter terminals recreate matter at the “molecular resolution level”, which means it is sufficient to duplicate nutritional properties and taste, but is inadequate to recreate a living being. Despite all this advanced technology, there are still those crew members whose hobbies include “old fashioned” food preparation — cooking.

Spaceflight and the Galaxy

Orbit: For a Class M (Earth-like) planet, this is often a synchronous orbit at about 35,000 kilometers altitude.

Warp drive: The distances between the stars are so vast that the ship is normally under warp drive except when it is in orbit, or when it is at a standstill.

Courses and directions: Most times when the Captain specifies a course for the ship or a direction in space, it should be in the form: “Unidentified spacecraft at Bearing 104, Mark 12”, where both numbers are measurements in degrees (which means both numbers should be less than 360). Other forms used when setting courses include a sector (“Set course for the Orion Sector”) or just a direction of flight (“Set course 312, mark 5”).

For the truly curious: The term “bearing” (as in Bearing 270, Mark 47) refers to two angles measured relative to the ENTERPRISE. (Bearing 000, Mark 0 is straight ahead.) The term “heading” (as in Heading 270, Mark 47) refers to angles measured relative to the GALAXY itself. Imagine you're driving a car and think of “bearing 090” as turning right (relative to the car), but “heading 090” would be turn west (relative to the Earth). If this is confusing, don't worry, we usually just use “bearings”.

Sectors: A sector is a region of space about twenty light-years across and typically contains perhaps a half-dozen solar systems. A starship travelling at Warp Six takes about 19 days to cross a sector. At maximum warp (9.6) it takes about 4 days.

Sector numbers and names: Sectors are properly known by a three-to-six digit number (i.e. Sector 18834), but many sectors have common names for their major star systems or planets. For example, the Earth is located in Sector 001, also known as the Sol Sector, and Starbase 515 was located in the Scylla Sector.

Quadrants: The galaxy is divided into four QUADRANTS. Each quadrant is incredibly huge (about eight billion cubic light-years, hundreds of thousands of sectors). The four quadrants are labeled with Greek letters, Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma. The Federation is located at the boundary between Alpha and Beta quadrants. Even within these two “home” quadrants are vast volumes of unexplored space. It is very unusual for a Federation starship to venture to the other side of the galaxy into the Delta or Gamma quadrants. (We have no doubt that Starfleet will eventually get around to exploring those areas, but there is still so much to explore nearer home.) Quadrants are so big that we rarely refer to them in day-to-day operations, much as you would rarely talk about continents while driving interstate.

Galactic coordinates: When specifying travel destinations for the Enterprise, it is occasionally appropriate to give GALACTIC COORDINATES. These are generally given in a set of three numbers, such as “Set course for galactic coordinates 394345 by 885354 by 032234.” (Note that the galaxy is such a huge place that these numbers are fairly imprecise, sort of like specifying a ZIP code but not the street address.) In most cases it will be easier and more dramatic to simply name a planet — a star within a sector (“Set course for the Orion Sector”) or even just a sector or just the name of the destination.

Starbases: Starfleet Command maintains a network of a little over five hundred support and operations facilities throughout Federation space. These are called STARBASES, some of which are on the surfaces of planets, while others are space stations. A starbase is generally the next-higher authority in the Starfleet chain-of-command over a Starship Captain. The Enterprise often operates past the frontier of Federation space, and it is not uncommon for it to be weeks out of touch with any starbase, even by subspace radio.

Note: For estimated travel times at various warp factors, see the Warp Speed chart on Page 9.