In fairness, that would’ve been asking a lot of them.
Well, they had impulse drive and warp drive. So they were using a different kind of drive for FTL. That’s significant.
Okay, but I was disputing whether you were right to assume this, not whether it was actually true 
The “extended name” of the book doesn’t include that phrase at all. That’s just the subtitle of the 2001 edition published by Narrative Press, which of course came out 35 years after Star Trek, and is one the publisher evidently came up with. The subtitle wouldn’t have had any influence on Roddenberry, because he never read it. Of course, if he had read the Voyage of the Beagle he would have known it lasted five years.
My own copy is a reprint from the Minerva Library of Famous Books, published in 1889. The title on the cover is Darwin’s Journal During the Voyage of HMS “Beagle” Round the World. The title page gives the “official” title of Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of HMS “Beagle” Round the World Under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. (They knew how to title books in those days.) The book is most commonly known as simply The Voyage of the Beagle.
If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you offhand that the voyage lasted five years specifically (though I would have known it was in that ballpark). I wouldn’t say it’s particularly well known fact about the voyage. Roddenberry may well have selected five years in reference to the Beagle’s voyage, but it’s not a reference anyone else, even an evolutionary biologist, would be expected to get.
Now I have a question. How the heck do you get nine Quadrants? A quadrant is a division into four parts. (I believe that TNG did actually use four quadrants.)
It may not be a “household word” but it also isn’t something deeply obscure, like Darwin’s uncle’s butler’s shoe size.
12 1/2 EE
Whether or not the 5 years is a widely known specific thing about Darwin’s trip, it’s pretty cool to know that Roddenberry had it in mind.
Yeah, but two evolutionary biologists didn’t know it off hand, including at least one who has read the book.
The length of the voyage may well have influenced Roddenberry, but even your cite doesn’t say that’s the reason he made the Enterprise’s mission five years.
As a fanwank, start with 4. But as political/military boundaries, they become unwieldy as the Federation expands in space. So we start cutting them off and make new administrative areas around the edge–but those areas have been called “quadrants” since the birth of the Federation, and it’s easier to keep it that way, even if it’s no longer meeting a strict dictionary definition.
The Ninth Quadrant, then, would presumably be on the edge of Federation-claimed space, which would make sense for the Enterprise.
I always assumed five years was the time it would take for Earth to self-destruct. Hopefully, that is.
In Voyager, too. The Galaxy was divided into four quadrants: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, the first four letters of the Greek alphabet.
The word obviously had some other meaning in TOS. In “Mark of Gideon,” Kirk looks at the viewscreen and says “I’m not familiar with this quadrant.” So I’d assume it did indeed denote some smaller territorial division within the Galaxy.
Recall that in TNG’s “Conspiracy,” the map at SFHQ shows Federation space divided into cubes, so that may have something to with it (even though a cube has six sides, if you count the top and bottom).
I’ve long maintained that Starfleet is not composed of the best and the brightest, but instead the ADHD afflicted and uncontrollable wreckers that were transported off Earth and its civilized colonies and off into deep space where they could get into trouble without bothering the adults. To that end, conflicts are concocted by the ship’s computer (which is actually fully autonomous and capable of running operations all on its own without any ‘help’ from the crew) in order to occupy their attention. This includes creating simulated enemies, performing ‘analysis’ to ambiguous and often nonsensical commands, and
In astronomy, the four quadrants of the sky are also broken into north and south. So that gives you eight. I don’t know where the ninth one comes from. Maybe it is imaginary. 
Stranger
It was a five year deep space mission.
The crew would want to return home and reconnect with family. The ship gets repaired and resupplied. Perhaps, updated with newer technology.
It’s similar to long military postings today.
Surely you mean 1999? :dubious:
My favorite warp discrepancy came in “The Changeling”: NOMAD’s energy bolts take seconds to reach the *Enterprise *at Warp 15, but the ship’s photon torpedoes travel the same distance almost instantaneously. And in “Elaan of Troyius,” how can they fire the torpedoes while the ship is pivoting at Warp 2? Do the torps have their own warp drives, or do they stay inside the ship’s FTL bubble until they hit their target? 
It was for Kirk to spread his space seed in the waiting wombs of wanton alien women and cogenitors.
This is what I always thought. I figured it was kind of like a nuclear sub on a long duration voyage. I also assumed it would be 5 years subjective to the crew, since I always assumed that ‘warp speed’ entailed somehow going super luminal, so time would pass differently for the crew than for those not on the ship.
Or perhaps he means Space: 1889
Stranger
I was the Astronomy TA at Macalester for two years. Please elaborate.