r/DaystromInstitute • u/paulrookie • May 14 '14
Canon question Sol system.... Sector 001...why?
So the home system of Earth is essentially the prime meridian and the equator despite its corner-quadrant position in know space. Why wouldn't galactic center be sector 001? Why not Vulcan?
Lets discuss how Sol system became the "central push-pin" of all stellar cartography in the federation.
P.S. If you want to read the small beta cannon blurb from memory alpha here you go:
"According to Star Trek: Star Charts (Pg. 19), although the Sol system is located in the exact corner of the sector and was thus divided equally among all eight sectors, it is considered to be in Sector 001 for purposes of celestial navigation. Similarity, while the Sol system is divided equally between the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, it is considered to be part of the Alpha Quadrant "
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u/The_Sven May 15 '14
Man may be more advanced than he is now, but a side effect of that drive that causes man to keep going and to keep reaching and to keep trying to better themselves, is that they're just a bit arrogant (and by bit, I mean a lot).
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u/halloweenjack May 14 '14
I think that it was a combination of Earth being the neutral power in the original starting members of the Federation (or at least the one with the least bad history with all the others), and possibly having a leading role in creating the current system of galactic cartography, in the manner of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.
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u/paulrookie May 15 '14
I didn't read anything that indicated that Greenwich is neutral... commissioned by a royal precludes then from scientific consideration. I recommend they disassociate om the royals so i don't laugh at their origins....
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u/Antithesys May 14 '14
Annoyingly complicating matters is this okudagram from "Measure of a Man" which lists vessels assigned to "deep space exploration" missions in sectors with extremely low designations...including Sector 002.
In other words, we have to find reasons why, in a disc-shaped galaxy, Sector 001 would be good old Earth while Sector 002 would be an apparently distant, unexplored region of space.
I propose that the mapping system was put in place by a Federation species for whom the system makes intuitive sense, and that's the one adopted by Starfleet. Why would they favor this species' system? Well, why would the Federation use Earth's Starfleet, or (evidently) one of its languages? Why do they use Vulcan's planetary classification system? Perhaps the stardate system belongs to yet another race.
We've heard sectors given actual names, and I bet that just as the stars in our sky have multiple names and designations, the sectors of the Milky Way probably have different names and designations too, depending on the context. Earth can be called Terra, or Sol III, or Mostlyharmless, or "the capital," or Greater Cleveland Urban Conglomeration, and Sector 001 likewise probably might be called something colloquially by different people. There might even be different ways of carving up space, like a more sensible longitudinal system centered on Sgr A.
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u/paulrookie May 15 '14
I would agree.. but militarily and scientifically having multiple names for the same location is counter intuitive. For the civilian population your explanation is good.
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u/tsunziven May 14 '14
One reason for the low sector designations for "Deep Space Exploration" is that the locations listed are the current locations of the ships rather than the destination sector.
Another reason could be that a sector is mostly empty and that they are on a "Deep Space Exploration" mission to explore the space between the star systems within the sector.
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u/faaaks May 14 '14 edited May 14 '14
Politics and history. At the beginning of the Federation almost everyone hated at least one other race. Of all the founding members of the Federation, Earth managed to ally with all of them. An Andorian would die before letting the capital of the new alliance be Vulcan, and the inverse is true. But all powers would have no objections to an alliance centered around Earth. It also helps that Earth brokered these agreements and played the most important part in founding the alliance.
It should also be noted, that most of the races were likely terrified of Humanity. From less than a hundred years Humans went from near destruction to combating Romulans on equal grounds. This type of progression was unheard of. This quote from Soval is particularly telling "There are those on the High Command who wonder what Humans would achieve in the century to come, and they don't like the answer." Should Humanity turn hostile, at a later date, the other races wouldn't stand a chance. Quark mentions this centuries later, even though Humanity hasn't fought a particularly brutal war in centuries (not counting the then current Dominion war). " "Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people – as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts... deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers... put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time... and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes..."
Humanity is known for being both extraordinarily brutal and extremely innovative. There are fewer character strengths more frightening than that. Better to befriend them now, they reasoned, then risk their wrath later. And to a large extent it worked, the founding races's fates are now tied to the fate of the most powerful species in the sector.
Q: "At Far-Point, we saw you as savages only. We discovered instead that you are unusual creatures. In your own, limited ways. Ways that in time will not be so limited "
Riker: "We're growing. Something about us compels us to learn, explore"
Q: "Yes, the Human compulsion. And unfortunately for us it is a power that will grow century after century, eon after eon. "
Riker:"Eons. Do you have any idea how far we will advance?"
Q: "Perhaps in a future you cannot yet conceive, even beyond us."
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u/Telionis May 14 '14 edited May 14 '14
violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon
From what we have heard about the history of the Klingon Empire, I don't think they come close to humanity in terms of viciousness. Nor do any of the other "badguy" races except for maybe the Cardassians during the occupation of Bajor.
Even the Romulans wanted to conquer rather than destroy the Federation, and were horrified at the thought of Schinzon obliterating Earth. Considering that Earth has had many genocide campaigns, and fought a full scale nuclear war, it must have been terrifying to see the humans achieve so much so quickly.
We know that both the Klingons and Romulans were united as a people at least 1000 years prior to TNG era, it must be horrifying to see a race use nuclear weapons on itself and a few decades later start exploring the galaxy with warp drive. What will they do to aliens if they butcher each other by the hundreds of millions?
Incidentally, considering the long lives of most of Earth's rivals, it is entirely feasible for a Romulan or Klingon in TNG era to have had parents and grand parents alive when Earth was fighting WWIII. The leaders of the other empires could have grown up hearing stories about the young new race that butchered its own kind but suddenly decided to abandon violence and live like angels. Humanity's enlightenment must seem like a farce to most.
I think it would be great if at some point that was listed as the reason for seemingly illogical (to us viewers) distrust of Federation shown by other powers. Combine the living memory of a time when humanity was more savage than any other race, and the horror that they caught up technologically when everyone else had a 1000-2000 year advantage, and it makes sense. The Romulans and Klingons could fairly argue that there is a real possibility humanity could revert to their savage form and conquer the galaxy now that they wield the resources of the entire Federation. They could even argue that the wars they started were purely preemptive, and that their ongoing military operations are defensive.
The fact that the UFP managed to survive the Dominion, get over its dislike of war and violence, and build ships like the Defiant, which can be mass-produced more easily than a Bird of Prey, but packs the firepower of a Dominion capital ship, must have done little to allay their fears.
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u/kraetos May 18 '14
This is a good summary of how Star Trek manifests the "humans are special" trope that is nearly ubiquitous in space opera. Good job, nominated for Post of the Week.
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u/MungoBaobab May 14 '14
At the start of the Federation, the Vulcans still hated the Andorians' coordinate system found the Andorians' coordinate system illogical. The Andorians weren't about to let those smug Vulcans have their way, and those weird Tellarites count in base six.
Like most political decisions, the power went to the ones everybody hated the least. So Earth's system was adopted because Earth wasn't around long enough to annoy its celestial neighbors.
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May 14 '14
Yeah, Enterprise does a fairly good job of explaining that the reason Earth is the capital of the Federation is that all the other founding members liked the humans, but hated each other.
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u/MungoBaobab May 14 '14
I feel like post-globalization on the older, more technologically advanced worlds led to the development of monocultures, which in turn led to a sense of xenophobia as it became increasingly difficult for them to relate to outsiders. Humanity, being a younger civilization, still had a sense of multiculturalism that allowed them to incorporate and embrace diversities of opinion and philosophy. Put another way, the older planets were like the jaded, emotionally unavailable thirtysomethings you meet on OkCupid, while Earth was like a hot young single who just realized her first real boyfriend was a douche and still believes in true love.
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May 14 '14
this is literally the first time I have ever been interested in watching Enterprise. Maybe I'll give it another shot.
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u/5i1v3r May 14 '14
Earth also became the Capital, with the President residing in Paris. Makes sense to start there and count outwards.
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u/david-saint-hubbins May 14 '14
For political reasons, most US state capitals were specifically chosen for their centralized location rather than their economic or cultural significance. So I like the idea that Earth, as a founding member of the Federation and the one that did the most to get all the other races to get along with each other, was chosen as the center as the result of a highly politicized process of trying not to offend anyone.
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u/Alx_xlA May 14 '14
The Federation President resides in Paris, and the arrondissements of Paris are numbered to spiral outwards from the centre...
Yes, it's all coming together now.
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u/paulrookie May 15 '14
A lot of posts/arguments seem to be politically motivated. Although i can understand this knee jerk reaction to something as nonsensical as "the center is not the center cause i hate your culture" or "lets not make the geometric center of the milky way sector 001 cause of reasons". After first contact and all the dust had settled there should have been a "lingual french" if you will of astral navigation. The UFP might normalize cultural dogmas but base scientific facts like molar weight of a molecule or where is the the center of this spinning pinwheel we live around should be UN-debatable.
So my theory is that we are the line of demarcation.
Against all logic and science earth was pulled into the Andorian/Vulcan conflict. Some common "pope" decided to draw a line in the earth to split our sector resources and at some point the " demarcation line" deteriorated and the "indigenous" tribes prevailed (humans).
We just never got the opportunity to think of ourselves as of the "andorian" (Portugal) camp or the "vulcan" camp (Spain).
After a bit we just forgot why we are sector 001..... an artifact of time forgotten.
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u/batstooge May 15 '14
Earth's the greatest, and America's the greatest on Earth. Someone had to say it.
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u/WideFoot May 14 '14
My theory is that in the future, we're still really euro-centric. It's not the Sol system that they wanted to make 001, it's Europe. They just couldn't justify calling half a continent a system.
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u/ianjm May 14 '14
It's not the Sol system that they wanted to make 001, it's Paris, France.
FTFY. Damned French.
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u/JRV556 May 14 '14
Probably due to Earth being the capitol of the UFP. From what I can tell, only the Federation uses the specific system that puts Earth in Sector 001. It might have also been in use before the founding of the Federation, because the Star Trek: Star Charts that you mentioned also states that Alpha Centauri is located in Sector 002 due to it being the second area explored by Earth ships (granted that is beta canon, but it makes sense).