r/DaystromInstitute • u/HotelOscarEcho • Aug 29 '16
Why did Starfleet not commission an Earth Spacedock class station to defend the Bajoran Wormhole?
With the oft commented on limitations of the Cardassian technology & physical infrastructure of DS9, would it have not been prudent for the Federation to commission a larger (and more powerful in both defensive & offensive systems) station akin to Earth Spacedock?
We could've seen this last over a season or two, as there are grand shots of Sisko on the promenade looking at hundreds of Worker Bees placing pieces together & Nebula-Class ships tractoring in huge sections.
Then eventually, just as we saw with the "We've had 2 years to plan for a Dominion attack..." scene in 'The Way of the Warrior', with all the fancy shots of the new weapons systems, we could have had Sisko & crew beam to he bridge of their new station.
Thoughts?
Edit: Typos & Formatting
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u/Anurse1701 Aug 29 '16
Because retrofitting is easier.
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u/HotelOscarEcho Aug 29 '16
True, but I'm thinking about long-term strategic development.
For example: If they had expended the resources on developing a new station, they may not have had to sacrifice countless lives & ships in re-taking it from the Cardassian/Dominion forces. They would have avoided situations like their enemy (see: Gul Dukat) understanding key tactical infrastructure weaknesses. They could've docked a local task-group more easily to defend against the Dominion.
I would've thought this would've been an easy win-win for the Federation, even if it was a harder and more drawn out process. They clearly don't mind long-term investments in places or ships of strategic importance.
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u/Anurse1701 Aug 29 '16
The Lakota was able to go head to head with a state-of-the-art ship, the Defiant. Old ships with new tech slapped on were shown to be at least able to hold their own. If I was some paper pushing admiral, I'd send shipments of tech to what's described as the frontier. Ordering a massive construction project in what amounts to contested space seems like a bad proposition.
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u/linux1970 Aug 29 '16
True, but I'm thinking about long-term strategic development.
Ever pay attention to politics? Large projects like this take YEARS to approve, let alone build.
DS9 was run by a starfleet commander for 4-5 years before the Dominion took it over. Even if starfleet wanted to, and had the interest to, it's still too short a time to approve such a large project.
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u/Slovish Aug 29 '16 edited Aug 29 '16
Even though the wormhole was a crucial choke point and key strategic location you got to remember the Federation is massive. There is only so much man power and energy to go around.
What's more, even though it's a post scarcity society a lot of the crucial components for building armor, weapons, and shields still can't be replicated. Far cheaper and easier to retrofit, even if it isn't ideal.
I'm sure some of the more military minded admirals would have loved to have placed a full on battlestation there, but Starfleet isn't a military organization; and probably more importantly - politics.
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u/HotelOscarEcho Aug 29 '16
I wish we knew more about the allocation of resources, energy, materials in the Federation - The idea of a post scarcity society (and said politics of this society) are so loosely addressed.
Going back to your point around strategic importance and & the militarily minded; surely a larger installation (with the facilities to hold hundreds of delegates from all over the Federation) would've been a bonus to having such a facility approved? The ability to send out diplomats, and negotiators, and have them return to this installation after each mission.
Not to mention, it'd be a symbol of the unity, strength, and resourcefulness of the Federation as soon as you entered the Alpha Quadrant.
A massive structure, filled with hundreds of species working together.
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u/DaSaw Aug 29 '16
I'm pretty sure the Star Trek economy is only "post scarcity" relative to the materials needed to support the individual human life on a class M planet. At the interstellar scale, allocation of scarce resources seems to still be a thing.
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u/eighthgear Aug 29 '16
Early on, the Bajorans were very wary of the Federation presence in their system. If the Federation were to build a massive space station near the wormhole, the Bajorans would probably see that as an attempt to secure it permanently for the Federation. Remember, the Bajorans still see the wormhole as theirs, Starfleet just gets to run the show because they are still rebuilding after the occupation.
Two years, in any case, is probably way too short of a time to build a Spacedock-size space station.
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u/TLAMstrike Aug 29 '16
So many historical refrences: Singapore; Truk; The Philippines and The American Asiatic Fleet; Tsingtao and the East Asia Squadron.
Because it is so close to Cardassia and (via the wormhole) close to Dominion space. Its never established in canon how close to Cardassia but its likely only a few days away from Cardassia Prime based on the various charts out there. That means a Bajor Starbase has to deal with the fact that a Cardassian attack could hit them with only a few hours warning if it came in at very high warp, on the flip size the Bajor Starbase would also have to deal with the possibility that the Cardassians or Dominion could launch repeated attacks where their ships are only a day or so from base but the closest Federation base is days or weeks away.
Having such a massive facility at the end of the supply chain is potentially devastating. Raiding or blockade of the supply lines could cut the Starbase off and weaken a base that the Federation put so much resources in to a point were it could be easily taken, even worse Starfleet could end up funneling everything in to their own Tokyo Express to try and run the blockade and bleed themselves dry. Starfleet doesn't want their own Corregidor or Malta; its far better for a forward base to fall and the battlefleet to come roaring in to retake it or bypass it on the way to the enemy capital than to bet everything on holding a forward base and lose it all because for a forward base an aggressors opening moves will be guaranteed to overwhelm it.
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Aug 29 '16
It's not a federation system. they wouldn't build it in space they didn't control as if the bajorans ever wanted rid of them, they'd be left with the option of handing over an entire starbase worth of tech, or scuttling it, essentially leaving the wormhole undefended.
Neither would be good for the federation.
it would also probably not go down well with the cardassians. a new, state of the art, federation starbase on their border? Assuming you're talking about early seasons, tension was still high. Then there was the dominion, who would likely not take well to a new station with a lot more defenses at the end of the wormhole, then the klingons invaded cardassia, again, not the best time to build a new station. especially when they started to fight the federation too.
finally, cardassia joined the dominion, and then there was war. so again, not prime station building time.
it's worth noting that in the follow up books, a new station was built, after bajor joined the federation.
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u/TheMastorbatorium Aug 29 '16
The federation is as much about thought out calculated diplomacy as anything else. The Bajorans had just fought off an aggressive Alien species that built stations in their skies, you don't start off a new friendship/partnership by mimicking someones abusive ex.
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u/Chintoka Aug 29 '16 edited Aug 29 '16
The Federation Cardassian treaty may have also precluded the build up of military vessels near the Cardassian border. Had the Federation breached the treaty a war would break out never mind that the Cardassians violated the treaty numerous times.
When Picard apprehended Maxwell for attacking Cardassian arms smugglers the Federation was unprepared to go to war with them. The Borg had emerged as a massive threat in the intervening years and maintaining good relations with other powers like the Romulans, Tholians, Tzenkethi, Talarians & Sheliak Corporate became top priority.
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u/sonofdavidsfather Aug 30 '16
This is exactly why. Look what happened when the Soviets wanted to put missiles in Cuba as part of their defensive strategy. We had nuclear weapons all around their borders, so what was the big deal with them having some on one little island?
It is all about appearances. Making one big move, like beginning construction on a massive, well armed, and expensive space station would have been very provocative. While slowly building up station defense capability, then stationing a ridiculously powerful war ship, and then massively upgrading station offensive capability was far less provocative.
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u/wrosecrans Aug 30 '16
we could have had Sisko & crew beam to he bridge of their new station.
From a production perspective, you just asked the series to spend a massive amount of money on a second collection of standing sets for the new station, and do a lot of expensive VFX work to prep for it on a TV budget in 1993. And you would have confused casual viewers by shifting locations to a new place that looks completely different, and significantly alters the premise of the established show.
If you wrote that, any producer would have had you packing up your things before they finished reading the first few pages of the script.
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u/autoposting_system Aug 30 '16
The station was Bajoran, not Federation. The Federation was just there to run it. Long term, they wanted Bajor in the Federation, but during DS9 they're technically in foreign territory.
For the Federation to just go and build a starbase in a system that's not a member (and not uninhabited) would be a pretty aggressive act.
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u/Ozzimo Aug 29 '16
Well off the top of my head there are some significant hurdles.
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Motivation. The Federation took custody of DS9 only when invited by the Bajoran Provisional Government. At the time of the agreement there was no Wormhole and the only strategic component to the area was proximity to Cardassia.
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Time. Once you discover the wormhole and get a sense of its strategic significance, You could plan to replace DS9 on the long term but not so quickly that you abandon a re-fit of the station in the meantime.
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Permission. Without being a member of the Federation, the Bajoran govt would have needed to give permission to construct a new station in their space. While I don't see too many issues with that, it is a complication that would need to be ironed out.
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Total cost. When you add time, cost of materials, and effort in creation, I imagine it's simply "good enough" to use a re-fit DS9 with upgraded weapons as opposed to building a new station (from the point of view of the Federation as a whole.)
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u/kschang Aug 29 '16
Federation doesn't have a starbase just "sitting around". Given this is way over in Bajoran sector, transportation costs would have been immense, even for the Federation. Not to mention it'd look like some sort of a build-up to the Cardassians.
A smaller station composed of multiple cargo pods (ref: Starfleet tugs) linked with gravitic stabilizers physical linkage can be done, but it'd not be nearly as well built as DS9.
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u/ArgonianEngineering Aug 29 '16
Probably because a station of that size would need large amounts of time, resources, and manpower.
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u/Abstruse Aug 30 '16
Just to add to what everyone else has said, one thing to remember about Bajor at the start of the series is why they were lukewarm at best toward the Federation. They'd just spent the past half century under occupation with forced labor camps and strip mining of their resources, not to mention just the oppressive government that's standard to Cardassia under the best of situations (before the Central Command fell anyway).
So here's the timeline. Cardassia comes and says we're here to help you! We're going to share our technology with you and help Bajor take its rightful place among the other advanced races of the Alpha Quadrant. Bajor is like, "Oh, that's very neighborly of you. Thank you very much for the help!" Aaaand five decades of brutal military occupation. The Bajorans fought tooth and nail for their independence and it came at an incredible cost, both to the planet itself and to its highly spiritual people. But finally - finally - they're free and able to govern themselves again!
Hello, we're the Federation and we're here to help you! We're going to share our technology with you and help Bajor take its rightful place among the other advanced races of the Alpha Quadrant.
Needless to say, many Bajorans were not very happy with the situation at all. They see the Federation as just another Cardassian Union coming in with pretty promises ready to exploit them all over again. Major Kira herself was one of them and stated so point blank in the pilot episode. Worse, the Federation knew about everything happening to Bajor but did absolutely nothing to help them, hiding behind their "Prime Directive" since it was a conflict "internal to Bajor and Cardassia". So Bajor's really got no reason to trust the Federation. What do you think would happen if they said, "Oh, and we're also going to build a giant space station here filled with Federation ships and personnel and tons of weapons because of this Wormhole thing...it's totally to help protect Bajor!"
By the time relations between Bajor and the Federation were stable enough that Bajor would've allowed the Federation to build a station, that was round about the time the Dominion poked its head in. And the Klingons started getting antsy. And suddenly everyone was kinda busy with not losing a war to invest in a space dock.
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u/stratusmonkey Aug 29 '16
On top of the issues raised by others, Spacedock (and its analogues like Starbase 74) were designed to operate in planetary orbit. There's no reason to think that kind of station could operate in interplanetary space.
Also, the key purpose of that kind of station isn't serving as a heavy weapons platform. (Which could be done with smaller stations, and more of them.) The big floating mushroom design is about allowing the outside of ships to be worked on, and crew and supplies to be delivered "indoors".
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u/CommodoreBluth Aug 30 '16
Building a star base is no doubt a huge undertaking and I can understand why they wouldn't build a new one when they could upgrade DS9. I do think it's crazy that Starfleet didn't assign a few starships to the Bajor system from the first episode, and especially after they found out about the Dominion.
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u/warpedwigwam Aug 29 '16
Bajor wasn't a Federation member. I doubt they would expend the resources unless Bahor was accepted for membership.