# How could a Bajorian Light Ship get all the way to Cardiassia **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 14, 2008, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398 "2008-03-14T20:29:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2008, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/21 "2008-03-15T01:52:42Z")
[QUOTE=JThunder] So more like homogenized milk, then? [/QUOTE] As long as it’s not pasteurized. ---
**Author:** ![tarragon918](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d26b3c/32.png) [@tarragon918](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tarragon918)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2008, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/22 "2008-03-15T02:36:02Z")
It’s -Bajoran- btw. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2008, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/23 "2008-03-15T02:58:19Z")
[QUOTE=tarragon918] It’s -Bajoran- btw. 🙂 [/QUOTE] The OP is obviously using the “Old Style” Bajoran script in his translation matrix, resulting in spelling that would be considered archaic by a modern Bajoran. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2008, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/24 "2008-03-15T03:34:04Z")
[QUOTE=Smeghead] As long as it’s not pasteurized. [/QUOTE] Nothing gets past my eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Wheeljack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@Wheeljack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheeljack)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2008, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/25 "2008-03-15T06:29:53Z")
[QUOTE=Flander] Like air coming out of a balloon! [/QUOTE] Wow, a \*compound \*nerd joke. Nicely done. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2008, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/26 "2008-03-15T06:40:04Z")
[QUOTE=DrFidelius] Stars are not evenly distributed, and some can be very close indeed. [/QUOTE] Though I’m not really sure about the distances involved, I remember reading somewhere that Bajor and Cardassia were unusually close together, which is part of what lead to the Cards taking over Bajor (it was close enough to be done easily). The fact that the Federation began to operate a military outpost there as soon as the Cardassians withdrew is presumably an extension of the hostilities between the two organizations that goes back at least as far as partway through TNG ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2008, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/27 "2008-03-15T16:39:39Z")
[QUOTE=Finagle] Without some Star Trek techno-babble, you’re correct. A solar sail-powered craft accelerates rather slowly. However, you \* can \* get it up to a respectable fraction of light speed by aiming a monstrous laser at it. Of course, you have to pump a respectable fraction of a sun’s annual output into that laser to get enough energy to do so. So, assuming you have your spaceship traveling at some large fraction of C, you could cover interstellar distances in considerably less than a lifetime. But without an equivalently monstrous laser to decelerate you, you better not have much interest in playing tourist in any solar system you happen to pass through. [/QUOTE] A few of addenda to your astute post: [ul][li]Even using a massive laser with the output you describe, you’d have to have a vast but essentially massless sail in order to obtain enough thrust to accelerate a large payload. (Large, in this case, being something the mass of a small space capsule.) Dr. Forward’s “Starwisp” concept had a mass of only a few tens of grams as I recall. And while this frees you from having to carry the parasitic weight of propellant, the efficiency of a laser or maser, especially when you factor in the beam divergence angle at great distances, is pathetically low. [/li][li]Natural light sources, i.e. a star aren’t going to offer any perceivable acceleration at interstellar, or indeed, far interplanetary distances. Around Sol, for instance, light pressure from the Sun would be useful only out to about the asteroid belt; at Jupiter’s orbit solar intensity is less than 4% of what we see on Earth, and at Saturn and beyond it is less than 1%. By the time you get to the Kuiper Belt, the Sun is no more than an especially prominent star in the background.[/li][li]Deceleration for the above beam-propelled concept could be provided by a two stage sail, where the larger sail, detached from the craft, reflects and focuses incoming light into the decelerating craft. The scale of this would have to be gigantic, and the previous objections apply (and you’d lose a substantial portion of thrust to the forward thrust on the reflecting sail) but in concept it would work just as bouncing a cue ball off of another ball to tap a third into the corner pocket works.[/li][li]Deceleration could also be provided by drag from the interstellar medium, i.e. you accelerate the craft up to an acceptable speed and then deploy a large magnetic field to ionize interstellar hydrogen and transfer momentum; sort of a Bussard ramjet concept without the jet. Of course, not only would this take a long time to decelerate and require a lot of power (assuming that you don’t have a perfectly superconducting electromagnet field system) but it also points out the other major difficulty in high speed transit through interstellar space; the erosion and impact hazard of the interstellar medium on an object moving at an appreciable fraction of **c**. You would have to carry considerable ablative mass or a very tough and radiation resistant shield to protect your cargo against particulate and radiation damage.[/ul]In short, solar sails, while potentially useful for low-constant thrust applications in near a star, are not feasible for interstellar transit. However, if I recall the episode in question, there was some discussion as to how the Bajorans could have made a transit in such a ship given the restrictions, and Sisko intended only to make a very brief trip to establish the viability of a sail craft in making any distance at all, and the technobabble whatever-tunnel that deposits them lightyears away was a totally unexpected phenomena. Of course, I also recall him adjusting the sail with winches and tacking around, which while imparting an amusingly anachronistic nautical flair implies a level of sophistication that is not commensurate with launching orbital or transorbital spacecraft. But that’s probably the least of the technical ellipses in _Star Trek_: I’m still trying to figure out [post=8222235]how a transporter could possibly work[/post].[/li] Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2008, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398/28 "2008-03-16T05:29:36Z")
[QUOTE=Finagle] …you \* can \* get it up to a respectable fraction of light speed by aiming a monstrous laser at it… [/QUOTE] Ha! I _knew_ the Moties were probably behind it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-a-bajorian-light-ship-get-all-the-way-to-cardiassia/441398.md?page=1)