Early Federation Era-The FSS Patton

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The first warp capable ship-the Phoenix

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The USS Enterprise

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Early Federation Era -The FSS Pollux

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Star Trek:

Post Eugenic War, the Followers of Khan Ascend to Power

In the aftermath of the Eugenics War, we rebuilt our cities and our society. The followers of Khan quickly rebuilt their city on the moon; and by late 2041, embarked upon a campaign of breeding genetically enhanced humans through artificial wombs. This resulted in a population explosion; and by the late 2050's, the lunar population, through Earth immigration and the lunar breeding plan, was close to the number before the war.

The Nooniens created a lot of controversy back on Earth with their artificial breeding techniques. There would've been an even greater uproar if Terrans knew of their cloning program, because about 1% of the bred children were from clones of Khan.

The Nooniens realized after the war that a simple change of tactics would; in the long run, attain all of their goals. They would no longer wage violence against their Terran brothers, but that would not stop them from enacting their agenda.

The followers of Khan came to grips with the flaws of their former leader's reasoning and realized a basic philosophy of "superior but respectful" should be the operating philosophy of society going forward.

There was simply an acknowledgement that all humans sought reasons to view themselves as superior to others around them for a multitude of reasons. Some of those reasons created tremendous fault lines throughout the society on Earth, such as race and gender. Others rationales for considering one superior could be based on weight, height, wealth, intelligence, or religion, these rationales; and a multitude of others, created fault lines as well, but were tolerated by Earth society.

A society that picks and chooses certain types of bigotry to focus on over other bigoted attitudes is a society based on a lie. It is a lie about the fundamental nature of humanity.

There was no question that the humans that lived off of Earth were superior in intellect and physical strength to their Terran brothers that did not alter themselves genetically, yet if their right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness was held inviolate; then it would be possible to live peacefully with them.

This was a philosophy that accepted innate human nature and did not judge one bigotry to be worse than any other, all bigotry comes from that innate nature and all humans have that within them. To deny this, is to deceive one's self and facilitate double standards individually and throughout society.

When a realization that bigotry is not evil, but simply a part of being human, society can begin to heal the fault lines that separate people that are different from one another. 

Many Nooniens wanted peace, but they also shared the high-minded goals of Khan of colonizing space and forging ahead with a new society. To do this would require them to be the primary colonists beyond Earth, so that their numbers would be greater than Terrans beyond Earth.

They also began a program of infiltration into the Federation; they would strive to eventually have greater numbers of their kind than Terrans in the Federation. This would lead, of course, to an eventual control of the Federation as well as any activity beyond Earth.

Their plan was more successful than they could have hoped for, because of the ineptness of the Federation's bureaucracy and the corruption of old Earth leadership. The Nooniens did indeed follow an agenda guided by their philosophy, a grand conspiracy in which the hyper intelligent Nooniens controlled a host of space-based businesses and assets. They would pool their money to be used as bribes of people in power, to gain access to the powerful and then to take the positions of the powerful.

The leaders of Earth knew what they were doing, it was easy to find the Noonien's literature that espoused their plans, but they knew how to use human's weakness against them.

By the mid 2050's, the Nooniens controlled more than half of all upper-leadership positions in the Federation, which gave them defacto control of it. The genetically-enhanced intelligence of the Nooniens, along with their rigorous philosophical education, actually gave them the ability to execute a general conspiracy better than an equivalent large group of humans.

They could've easily dominated the Terrans, if they chose to do so, however; they did not choose to do so, there was no need. Earth leadership became mired in its own corrupt politics to the exclusion of all else. A decade after the end of the Eugenics War, they were still rebuilding from the destruction of it and still arguing over who would pay which portion of it. The Federation became nothing more than a political debating society in the 2040's, a common characteristic of large, multi-national organizations.

Most off-Earth activity stagnated with only a few space-based Terran commercial activities. Terrans were; by their own weakened political will and infighting, voluntarily ceding all of space to Khan's descendants. As Earth's influence waned, the Nooniens rebuilt their off-world colonies on the moon, they started colonies on Mars and they built and expanded their financial and manufacturing empire throughout the inner solar system.

The Nooniens understood the importance of the engines of commerce and their leaders did not tend to throw obstacles into that machinery like Earth's politicians did, while they used the excuse of "social equality" to rob the population.  They set up a funding mechanism for government based on lotteries, a voluntary taxation system that was in line with their love of freedom. The government was strictly defined and limited, zero-based budgeting controlled the efficiency of its operations far better than the inefficient incremental-based budgeting typical of Earth governments. This provided a limited tax, pro-growth system that provided tremendous economic expansion. The rigorous philosophical education of Nooniens compelled them to conduct themselves with a stronger sense of ethics in business and politics as well.

 By the 2050's, the off-Earth economy exceeded the Terran economy by five percent. This was a watershed moment in that it stated, in real financial terms, that we were now a space fairing society.

The Nooniens were only a fraction of the population of Earth, yet created greater economic output than all of Earth, this created a very rich off-Earth society and that society could benefit from the best learning institutions. There were several institutions on the moon that were the finest science and engineering schools humans ever created.

The Nooniens did not restrict access to these schools, but Terrans generally did not have the wealth to make the trip to the institutions, so it was mostly Nooniens that benefited from them. 

The top schools on Luna were the Casimir Institute of Applied Engineering and the  Lunar Institute of Theoretical Physics.  These institutions continually turned out engineers and scientists that were making breakthroughs at a record pace. A significant breakthrough in 2049 from a team of students from the CIAE discovered a method to create large quantities of exotic particles on demand. They could create beams of dense protons, neutrons, neutrinos etc. or even their antimatter counterparts with the device.

These devices had an immediate impact in the medical field, microcircuit manufacturing, space construction and weapons development along with new, undreamt of applications.

As tremendous of a breakthrough that this was, an even greater breakthrough, with far greater implication, was to occur four years later.

Chapter 2:

In 2053 a brilliant scientist by the name of Zefram Cochrane; who had attained Doctorates from both the CIAE and the Lunar Institute of Theoretical Physics, engineered a device that could warp space-time through a special coil that contained nano-Casimir conduits in it that generated a negative or positive curvature of space-time depending on the current flow.

The company that he worked for had an intensive research effort that he headed. For three years his team developed the concept and made a practical device that could be produced economically.  They licensed units of the device to a number of spacecraft builders, but it took another five years before a ship with a working propulsion system based off of these "warp coils" was finally operational from the Elysium shipyards.

This was a sublight ship, but the drive system was a practical impulse drive that required no reaction mass for its thrust, which revolutionized space travel. Zefram Cochrane went to work for the company because he wanted to be part of the team that created the first faster-than-light spaceship.

The Elysium Shipyards had a top-secret skunk works on Mars that Cochrane was made the lead engineer of.  After eight years of intensive efforts, a spacecraft by the name of Phoenix made the first faster-than-light jump in 2061.

The First Warp Drive Craft - Phoenix

By that time, the Nooniens had a firm grip of control of the Federation and they were committed to exploring frontiers as well as pushing the envelope of science and technology. They transformed the Federation from a debating society, to an effective organization that could spur technical developments, as well as encourage economic development in an era of peace.

 The Federation announced a prize for the first practical spacecraft that could take a crew of ten to Alpha Centauri and back safely in less than two years. It also set up lesser prizes for second and third place so there would be a variety of approaches taken to achieve this goal. This would give them the ability to make a round trip to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in less than two years. This was about the amount of time it took Magellan to make his voyages of discovery in the 1500's; this seemed a reasonable threshold. The deadline for the prize was 2066, at that time all of the entrants with a spacecraft would launch from Mars orbit to begin the journey to Alpha Centauri.

Many companies were close to creating their own practical warp-capable spacecraft at the time the Phoenix made its flight; Cochrane's team achieved this milestone only a few months before several other companies achieved it as well.

 There was a real race on to create the first practical starship, with ten different companies participating in what came to be called "The Interstellar Prize".

When the deadline for the contest in October of 2066 arrived, there were four different entries into the race for the I-Prize.  Each one had a unique approach for accomplishing the goals of the prize. One group used a basic fusion-powered warp drive with a large torus shaped warp coil array.

Another used a fusion-powered drive with a large capacitor bank to augment the power input to the coils, this allowed for an initial burst of speed.

When the warp drive was engaged; the fusion reactor would input power into the system as the capacitor banks discharged. This gave the ship an ability to maintain a higher warp factor for a few hours.

The Cochrane-led Elysium Skunk Work's ship, named Discovery, used a totally unique design. They had built a small antimatter production facility to fuel their experimental design and simply made a containment nacelle for the antimatter that would power the warp drive, this gave them a notable advantage in power and reduced the complexity of the system over the other designs.

As the ships left Mars orbit, all of the off-world colonies as well as many on Earth were watching. They were sent off with great fanfare as they attained high Mars orbit, then each ship went into warp. The ships seemed to visually stretch and then plunge into a bright white flash of light ahead of them and disappear.

The first starships were now enroute to Alpha Centauri, the Elysium Skunk Works ship arrived first; and per the prize rules, did a rudimentary telescopic survey of the system. They surprised many when they found a habitable world close to Alpha Centauri B, an orange K1 dwarf star.

It was larger than Mars, but smaller than Earth at 9400 km in diameter. It had a dry climate but a considerable amount of plant life was evident from pictures taken from orbit. It had a breathable atmosphere and no obvious signs of intelligent life, but that would have to be determined in later surveys, because the Discovery was only to make a cursory survey from orbit and then return to Earth. They had no shuttles to reach the surface of a planet on board the Discovery.

The Discovery returned to Earth in less than a year, given that duration of time the Discovery had been traveling in warp; about 10 ½ months, its speed had been determined to be close to ten times light speed, or 10c. The engineers determined beforehand that the best way to refer to these speeds was to state any speed past light speed as a warp factor. In subsequent years, if velocities exceeded 1000c, it would simply be referred to as warp factor (x) k, where a ship capable of going 2000 times c would be said to travel at a warp factor of 2k. This was a straightforward way of stating the capabilities of a faster than light ship.

With the advent of the first generation of warp-capable ships being produced, a colony ship was produced using a fusion powered warp drive. Within ten years of Discovery’s initial voyage, the first colonists arrived at Alpha Centauri B. Among them was Zefrem Cochrane, who volunteered to be one of the first colonists to another star system.

The Amity approaches the Vulcan

System in 36 Opiuchi A

Chapter 3:

The Federation purchased a fleet of starships from several spacecraft builders. The Federation then sent its ships out to explore many interstellar destinations close to our solar system. Many star systems, such as Epsilon Eridani, were devoid of habitable planets because of giant Jovian-class planets that had elliptical orbits that swept any potential life-bearing planets out of their habitable zone.

Other star systems were believed to be too young to support any kind of advanced lifeforms, so it was quite a surprise when the Federation vessel Intrepid ventured into the 36 Opiuchi 3 system, only 19.5 light years away from Sol, and encountered alien ships from one of the planets of the 36 Opiuchi 3 A system, or Vulcanis as many Terrans called it. Even more remarkable was that they understood our language. They called themselves Vulcans and closely resembled humans. They had monitored our radio communications from Earth for decades; this allowed them to decipher our language and initiate contact.

Apparently the Vulcans were a pacifist society and did not endeavor to venture beyond their system. They also took care to watch what frequencies they used for interplanetary communications so that they would not be easily detectable.

It was quite extraordinary to find anything resembling a human from another star system and the commander pointedly questioned the Vulcan captain about this.

 The Vulcan captain replied with a remarkable tale of how they were sent to their world to colonize it thousands of years ago by an ancient alien race. These aliens had seeded several planets in this sector of the galaxy and Earth was one of those planets! The Vulcans had somehow managed to find ancient records from ages past that described this account, but there was nothing in these ancient tomes that described who they were or where they came from.

They then gave us information on several nearby systems, which had intelligent species on them. They revealed the location of a splinter colony that they called Romulans, which lived in the nearby triple star system of HR6426, only 4.5 light years from their system.

The Romulans had left Vulcan centuries ago for the nearby star system of Eisn, as the Romulans called it.

The Vulcans had warp capable ships for centuries, yet they rarely ventured beyond their system out of fear of drawing interest from hostile races.  They possessed a cultural trait of eschewing emotions, which could give rise to aggressive tendencies that almost destroyed their civilization centuries ago.

 This created a society that was technically sophisticated; yet accomplished very little.

Most Vulcans were content to meditate on philosophical or intellectual issues, but not do anything with their impressive intellects. Their society had not advanced substantially for centuries, technically sophisticated, but stagnant.

The Vulcans complacently meditated while others drew plans against them and prepared to wage an interstellar campaign of conquest to take back what they considered theirs.

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