Improving These Pages

In 1994, I realized I could make a fair simulation of the ST:tNG-style displays with simple HTML, so I created WWW home pages for the United Federation of Planets, Star Fleet, and the NCC-1701D. Since then I also outlined its plasma distribution system.

This is not a repository of information about ST:tNG (there are several good sites for that listed below). Instead it is intended to be what a UFP homepage would be if UFP actually existed.

I hope all of you will help me improve these pages. Here are some of the things which could be improved:

• The plasma distribution system graphics are crude: all I had was a pixel editor and no talent. Can you do 3D or texture-mapped renderings to make it look nice?
• What are all the engineering terms used? (phase converter, intermix relays, etc.)
• What is the organization of the UFP and Star Fleet?

I welcome your suggestions and corrections.

Starships traveling faster than the speed of light encounter terrific time dilation problems. "Stardates" are a standard way of keeping time across the Federation, like Greenwich Mean Time, the SI replacement Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), or the most accurate International Atomic Time (TAI) here on Earth.

In Star Trek: the Next Generation, the format was 4YDDD.ff. The "4" suggests the 24^th century, which is when Star Trek is set. The "Y" is the season or year. The DDD increases more or less uniformly throughout the season, like the Julian day of the year. The ff is the fraction of a day. Andrew Main wrote a much more detailed treatment of stardates.

I wrote EMACS code to put the current time in the line after the <EM>Updated. The format is like a stardate: YYMMDD.ff. YY is the year minus 1990, MM is the month, DD is the day of the month, and ff is the fraction of a day after midnight, local time. Since 6 AM is one-quarter (.25) of a day after midnight, October 18, 2002 6 AM is 121018.25.

I chose two decimal places for fractions of a day to correspond with the show. One may use as many decimal places as necessary. For increased precision, one could show the fractional day down to hundred-thousandths (.00001 or five decimal places) since a second is a little more than a hundred-thousandth of a day.

Credits and Sources

Here are the sources of information and pictures for the United Federation of Planets/Star Fleet pages.

In August 1996 Henrik Gjerulff (henrikgj@cybernet.dk) supplied the date Star Fleet was founded.

Dian (dds2@ukc.ac.uk) corrected crew information, April 1996.

Glen Nuttall (nuttall@upf.org) added information about the organization of the United Federation of Planets, December 1995.

Many thanks to Sean Worle (worles@zapotec.math.byu.edu) who added a lot of text, pictures, and pages.

Jim Selinger (jselinge@ebtech.net) added information to the member planets from Star Trek The Worlds of the Federation.

The United Planetary Federation - trying to establish a world league today to promote "... the rights of all people to self-determination, the right to choose and follow their own self-determined destiny, ..."

J Crafton's Information Interface with lists of characters, images, races, chemicals, codes, essays, etc.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes, cast, trivia, etc. - searchable.

The Klingon Language Institute

Star Trek Archive at the University of Manitoba

LOTS of jpg pics

diplomas from Star Fleet Academy, Vulcan Science Academy, Borg Institute of Technology, etc.

Starbase Cube3's pictures of NCC-1701E

Copyright Notices

The Star Trek Encyclopedia, Pocket Books, New York, 1994. ISBN: 0-671-86905-1

Star Fleet Technical Manual, Ballantine Books, New York, 1986. ISBN: 0-345-34074-4

Star Trek The Worlds of the Federation, Shane Johnson, Pocket Books, 1989. ISBN: 0-671-70813-9