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the big difference between what your saying with earth colonies becoming federation worlds and the British-US analagy, is that the US didn't just "grow up" and become a seperate entity...we declared we were going to break all ties with Britain and seperated our selves from them. Then x years later the UN was established and both the US and Britain joined...

I don't see a colony being counted. You could use the analagy of the early US expansion, as new territories and states were founded, each state got a seat in the countries government, but not the international government. In the same what, each colony/substate planet may get more voice in the politics of the homeworld, but not the Federation. They would speak as one voice on the Federation council.

Bingo.

Phantom Renegade wrote:My reason for thinking this is that all the information on the supposed physical size of the federation seems too small for an incredible 150 different species. But it's just a theory.

Space, as Douglas Adams would say, is big. Really big. Given that the core worlds are only a few dozen light years apart (and the Klingon homeworld is apparantly just outside the Oort cloud ) there's plenty of space for thousands of star systems, each one of which could conceiveably develop life of its own.

The Monty Python team put it best:

Whenever life get you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough.
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite enu-hu-hu-huuuuff!
Just - re-member that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour,
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our Galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars,
it's 100,000 light-years side-to-side,
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light-years thick,
but out by us it's just 3000 light-years wide.
We're 30,000 light-years from galactic central point,
we go round every 200 million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
in this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
in all of the directions it can whizz,
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Captain Seafort wrote:

Phantom Renegade wrote:My reason for thinking this is that all the information on the supposed physical size of the federation seems too small for an incredible 150 different species. But it's just a theory.

Space, as Douglas Adams would say, is big. Really big. Given that the core worlds are only a few dozen light years apart (and the Klingon homeworld is apparantly just outside the Oort cloud ) there's plenty of space for thousands of star systems, each one of which could conceiveably develop life of its own.

I don't deny that but for 150 intelligent space-faring species capable of travelling faster then the speed of light all developing these abilities in a relativly short period of time withen a relativly small area is still a bit of a stretch by any standards.

"Relatively small area" relative to what? I'd call the bulk of a quarter of the galaxy a large area indeed.

Mikey wrote:"Relatively small area" relative to what? I'd call the bulk of a quarter of the galaxy a large area indeed.

Relative to everywhere else life could evolve?

Why's it so unfeasable there's 150 species who all developed FTL technology? Given that we know life was deliberately seeded throughout the quadrant by a race that came before it (dumb, but it's still canon) it's not so outlandish to suggest they may have undertaken terraforming to ensure life could survive there.
And also, they may not necessarily all have been of the same tech level. A planet much like our own could have been encountered in the early days of the UFP, and decided "we want in too" before the PD prevented contact with such groups.

Wait, how did we go from the short hand for the NX-01 to talking about the federation having 150 worlds means there are 150 different species in the Federation?

How? Pretty smoothly, I'd say. :p Anyway, the point remains that the UFP's section of space may be a small fraction of the entire galaxy, but is still WAY big enough in absolute terms for 150 species.

Phantom Renegade wrote:Wait, how did we go from the short hand for the NX-01 to talking about the federation having 150 worlds means there are 150 different species in the Federation?

Phantom Renegade wrote:Wait, how did we go from the short hand for the NX-01 to talking about the federation having 150 worlds means there are 150 different species in the Federation?

get used to it...it happens all the time around here...

but back to the point at hand, you say the space is relativly small, but we're talking an area 8,000LY long on one axis, 3,000 on another and a guestimated 6,000-8,000 on the last. this is a huge space. 150 life supporting worlds is easy to fit into that space.

And there's no cannon saying that this is an uncommon phenominon. Presumidly, the galaxy could go through civilizations like earth does, with several stages of rapid advancement and collapse, then starting all over again.

In fact, I think that kind of cycle would be almost inevitable.

thanks rochey.