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From: richardt@orstcs.UUCP (richardt)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: "Where no man has gone before"
Message-ID: <7800019@orstcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Jul-85 02:56:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: orstcs.7800019
Posted: Wed Jul  3 02:56:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Jul-85 05:44:53 EDT
References: <2422@topaz.UUCP>
Organization: Oregon State University - Corvallis, OR
Lines: 28
Nf-ID: #R:topaz:-242200:orstcs:7800019:000:1489
Nf-From: orstcs!richardt    Jul  2 20:56:00 1985

>How likely is it that anyone would send so expensive a ship
>off into nowhere for 5 years?

Very.  As a general rule, exploration ships fall into two classes:
unarmed and armed.  Unarmed exploration ships are usually designed
so that they are so pathetic as to not be a threat to anyone.  Marco
Polo did this and it worked fairly well, albeit with a few backfires
along the way.  Armed explorers tend to be armed with the most 
powerful weapons that the society can hand to a non-military ship.
When you already know of several hostile races in your neck of the
galaxy, it is far better to assume that the natives will shoot first
and ask questions later than to lose crews in the nether regions
of the universe.  For one thing, the appearance of an alien ship is 
usually a dead give-away as to its origin.  Besides this, the
Enterprise was travelling in regions which were known to have Klingon
ships running around in them.  In a situation where a nation is
exploring out from a multinational border, esp. when one of the nations
is hostile, the explorers had better be armed.  Besides, human
ships are always armed.  Haven't you read any space opera?

As for naming, I believe most of the visible stars have been named.
I see no reason to assume that this trend will stop anytime in the
future.  Man, as a race, is arrogant.  As long as StarFleet sticks
to names of the form Starname-Planet_#, they're on well
established ground.

					orstcs/richardt
"If I'm human, what are *YOU*?"