Star Trek Ruminations

To update an older discussion - I came across one more glimpse of Utopia Planitia that predates the Voyager episode "Relativity." In the seventh season TNG episode, "Parallels" there is an image of Utopia Planitia taken by the Argus Array (see the image in the lower right of the display). Admittedly this is the Utopia Planitia from a parallel universe, but "our" Worf didn't identify any major discrepancy between this Utopia Planitia and the "real" one. While the visual evidence is not entirely clear, it looks to me like this is not an orbital facility, but rather something on the surface of Mars. The display seems to make a distinction between orbital stations on the left and planetary locations on the right. It also appears that all of the structures are built between the craters. An orbital station would visually overlap at least some of the craters on the ground. On the other hand, even if it is an orbital facility it still looks marked...

If you visited the Google website earlier this week you may have seen their logo was modified as a tribute to Perceval Lowell and his studies of Mars, and the launch of Google Mars with its interactive map of the red planet. See the List of Planitia on Mars If you follow the above link, and search through the list of plains (or planitia) on the left, you can find Utopia toward the end of the list and find it on the map. Utopia Planitia is, of course, the site of Starfleet's Ship Yards and the birthplace of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D . More precisely this is the location over which the ship yards are in a geosynchronous orbit as explained in the ST:TNG Technical Manual and confirmed by visual evidence from the Voyager episode "Relativity". (This makes me wonder if Earth Station McKinley is in geosynchronous orbit above Mt. McKinley.) The idea of the Utopia Planitia Ship Yards was introduced during The Next Generation . It was mentioned (and barely shown through a wind...