Talk:Sector (Star Trek)

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Hi,
It's clear than the information presented on this page is taken from the book "Star Trek: Star Charts" by Geoffrey Mandell. Perhaps there should be a reference to this book?
Apart from an otherwise very throrough handling of the subject, Geoffrey Mandell unfortunately made af couple of errors in his description of the partitions of the Milky Way.

• In section "Sub-quadrants": It is described that a subquadrant (also written sub-quad in this text) is 3600 ly high. This does not add up to the fact that it is as high as 4 sector quads which in turn is 800 ly high.
• In section "Sector Zones": It is said that a sector zone is 3600 ly. This should be 3200 ly. See above.
• In section "Sector Grids": Again it is said that a sector zone is 3600 ly. This should be 3200 ly. See above (subquadrants).

When I found the above discrepancy, I e-mailed Geoffrey Mandell to get the correct solution. He told me that the correct figure should be a 3200 ly for the height of the galaxy.
The second problem is in section "Sector Blocks". It is stated that there are 1000 sector blocks in a sector quad numbered 000-999. In the book there is also an illustration that shows that for each level of sector blocks (there are 10 levels in each sector quad) the numbering jumps to the next closest multiple of 100. This is actually quite useful as that gives one the possibility to derive the vertical location within the galaxy just by looking at the first digit of the block number.
Now, the illustration shows a typical sector quad near UFP with a width of 9 sector blocks. Unfortunately it is not specified how the numbering is to work closer to the galactic edge since a sector quad is designed such that each sector will approximate a width of 20 ly. I have calculated that at the galactic edge that would mean that the sector quads should be up to 17 sector blocks in width. How the numbering is to accomodate this in just 3 digits, I'm not sure.
The possible resolutions for this problem, that I have come up with, are:

• It could be that when the width of the sector quad exceeds 10 sector blocks, an extra digit is employed. Not pretty, but it does allows for reservation of the first digit for specification of sector block altitude.
• Perhaps the sector block number should simply always have an extra digit added. I'm not sure how that would conform to other Star Trek lore and resources.
• The second digit could be allowed to proceed beyond 9 and into A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Sorta like hexadecimal numbering except that it goes to G (16) and that it would only apply to the second digt (in order to conform to the existing examples given).

I'd very much like to hear about other possible solutions to this problem. I have not been able to get an answer from Geoffrey Mandell on this second issue.
Kind regards
--Cornelius 21:55, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Im the one who made this article and yeah I took my info from the Star Charts book. Since the system is fictional anyway, I wouldn't know what to change or correct since it;s all conjectural anyway. I'll make the correctons from 3600 to 3200.Cyberia23 23:26, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I just found this whole article fascinating as it reemphasizes the Federation's terracentrism. Always a theme that pisses me off (to the fault of the TrekMakers themselves, not anyone associated with the article):-P --cuiusquemodi 04:14, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You talking about how they make Earth the center of the universe? Yeah it is kind of annoying, but Earth is usually the capital world in many science fiction works. Just makes things simpler I guess, and keep the "human" point of view. I'm writing a sci-fi series myself, and in it; Earth has already been sacked by an alien enemy, so I don't have to worry about it anymore. So now I have a bunch of pissed off humans seeking revenge pretty much. :) Cyberia23 19:31, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Variable sector size

I think it's interesting that the sectors get larger and larger the farther out from the center you go. This seems like a poor stellar cartography system to me, because the inner sectors make up less volume than the outer sectors. An inner sector could reasonably be patrolled by a single starship, whereas an outer sector would be more than a whole fleet could handle.

A better system would be to use increasing number of "pie slices" (to avoid using the word "sector" here, but in geometry that is what it would be) as you go farther out. If done properly, the volume of each sector would be the same, no matter how far out you travel.

For example, at the center of the galaxy would be an inner "hub" with a radius of 5 ly. Its cross-sectional area would be pi * (5 ly)^2.

The next "ring" would be 5 ly wide and divided into three sectors of 120 degrees each. Its cross-sectional area would be pi * (10 ly)^2 - pi * (5 ly)^2, or pi * 75 ly^2. Each sector would be one third of that, or pi * 25 ly^2, or pi * (5 ly)^2, which is the same area as the hub.

The next ring would be 5 ly wide and divided into five sectors of 72 degrees each. Do the math and you'll find that each sector would have a cross-sectional area of pi * (5 ly)^2.

If you divided the next ring into seven equal sectors, the one after that into nine, the one thereafter into eleven, and so on, you would make sure that each sector is pi * (5 ly)^2. In this way, a Starfleet commander would immediately know how many starships to dispatch to a given sector, or how much time it would take to travel across a certain number of sectors, no matter how close or far from the center of the galaxy they are.