Galactic Collision Scenario

[Thraxis]

-Snip-

Go reread your history. Britain and then Germany weren't exactly regional (despite Europe's imperialism affecting the region), although the US was probably the earliest source of modernization as we were the ones that forced Japan open (and we were closer, yet still an ocean away).

One thing you fail to consider, though, is that Japan advanced because they were being exploited. Japan, though isolationist, saw that China was reduced to a state of practical servitude for trying to resist the economic machinations of the Western powers. As such, when the US came knocking, they welcomed the Americans, and cooperated freely with the Western companies taking up residence on their shores. It was the fact that they didn't resist that was one of the keys to them ultimately retaining their freedom, and coming out technologically advanced as well.

I doubt that anyone in ST would surrender to the Empire, except maybe the Cardassians and the Ferengi. I mean, the Klingons and the Romulans both have way too much ego, and the Federation is too bent on maintaining their personal way of life to give in. As such, it isn't a matter of shipping trade so much as a matter of having technology brought to a place where the companies are setting up shop. As bz said, it takes a long time to be able to just operate machines, let alone learn how they work and how to build more, and that's WITH the aid of experts. Simply trading for advanced technology would be like giving a Japanese scholar of a century ago a Nintendo Wii in exchange for some silver, and expecting him to be able to make more within his lifetime. (And the argument of lacking electricity isn't valid, because who's to even say SW power systems are compatible with ST, let alone whether or not ST can even generate enough energy to run the systems for more than a few seconds?)

[Ritterin Sophia]

Britain and then Germany weren't exactly regional (despite Europe's imperialism affecting the region),

Germany was, as evidence by their complete inability to affect the US outside of hunting down merchant ships with U-Boats, a service that was more hazardous than even the infamy of the Eastern Front. This is made even worse by their futile attempts at conquering Britain which was just over the English Channel... Britain was capable of attacking us across the Atlantic. (not like it would've been effective) But then I never said anything about Britain or Germany being a regional power.

although the US was probably the earliest source of modernization as we were the ones that forced Japan open (and we were closer, yet still an ocean away). While it may not be a perfect analogy, it is a good example of rapid modernization.

Yeah, a couple decades at a time, not fucking millenia.

The Federation isn't isolationist (Nobody needs to park an ISD in orbit around Earth in order to force them to open up), and a number of civilized SW worlds would end up close enough to at least begin trading. Starfleet is naturally curious and every Federation scientist would be jumping at any opportunities to learn this stuff.

And that would give them what? I'm sure the Iranians could have an engineer design an Essex-esque Carrier, but they still wouldn't have the resources to build it.

Heck, if Earth ends up near, say, Naboo, they could learn a shit ton just by sending a delegation. They wouldn't even need that to get started - just barter for Holonet access and start downloading.

Holonet was restricted to the Imperial bureacrats and military.

Sure, they won't understand a lot of it off the bat, but they would learn where to ask questions, where to get some used textbooks, etc. What barriers exist to keep them from learning general information? Language? One of the things that ST Tech got right was their universal translator (Plothole filler or not, the darn thing works and usually works very, very well).

You mean except for the fact that the Queen of Naboo during the Galactic Civil War is an Imperial Puppet and they aren't going to like a bunch of hyocritic communists with technology thousands of years behind their own carving out a quarter of their damned Galaxy?

With a basic enough textbook on molecular metallurgy, your average Federation scientist would be able to pick up the general concepts pretty darn quick.

Let me explain something to you. You know the B-52 that the USAF has? We can't make them anymore. In fact because all the tooling to make them, the tools that made those, etc are gone if they develop cracks in the wing spars tomorrow we'd have to permanently ground the whole damn fleet. Point: You need the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools.

Plus, Starfleet has shown that in most cases, they can figure out at least basic usage of crazy alien technology in a really, really short amount of time (especially reading crazy bullshit alien displays in an unknown language).

What is the purpose of this Red Herring?

Again, the key isn't innovation, it is education - and the feddies have gotten pretty darn good at learning. Just saying it's stupid is a cheap cop-out.

No it isn't, your analogy was flawed because it ignores the technological disparity between the two different comparisons and you just evidence more reasons for me to call you an ignorant moronic twat.

[Simon_Jester]

Have you ever participated in a higher education activity either as university student or professor? Well because I have (both sides), so I tell you how it is in real life, with people of slightly above average intelligence (university students) .

Learning to operate a rare high tech machine (for the ST guy pretty everything qualifies as a rare high tech machine, since they have no previous knowledge with them) is around 1-2 month. And this is basic user level operation when you can work if everything functions properly, but you are unable to do troubleshooting or exchange any wearing parts. That's another 5-12 month and still: all you are capable of is to operate the machine, detect and correct the usual errors and replace what should be replaced regularly. And this is one machine. This is what people learn during their Master period, to work alone with 1-3 complex machines. After 1-3 years they learn how to maintain and/or improve it repair the not so usual malfunctions, explore the limits etc.

Learning some theory and the application of a certain theory is a similar process with identical timescales. Oh and this is the schedule with good support from the experts.

Yes. However, there are a few catches.

One is that the people of the SW Galaxy have to learn to operate their own equipment in their own lifetime. Unless we assume that every individual in the Star Wars galaxy is of transhuman intelligence, much of their everyday technology must be simple enough that Milky Way humans can learn to use it with basic competence in a reasonable time frame. And I'm not talking about the spaceships, here. I'm talking about the AK-47 equivalent blaster rifles, the computer interfaces designed to be operable by Gamorreans, the droids that can pass the Turing Test in dozens of languages and interpret instructions fed to them in colloquial speech. This stuff can't be that hard to operate, even if it's effectively impossible to reverse-engineer or to replicate. In some cases, you don't even need to know how to maintain it; ask it and it will tell you.
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Over timescales of days or weeks, this doesn't matter, of course: the advanced alien technology is advanced alien technology, and cannot be comprehended or used except by feats of heroic (read: utterly implausible) luck. Thus, the "reverse engineering" or "gear up our primitive society" phenomena have no effect on the Standard Invasion Scenario.

But over timescales of decades and extended social interaction it does matter. People from Star Trek societies will move heaven and earth to send some of their children to school in Star Wars societies, or hire tutors from those Star Wars societies. Assuming they're not simply exterminated en masse or kept in a perpetual technological quarantine by a powerful force willing to spend great resources to keep them primitive*, sooner or later they will start catching up. While it will almost certainly take multiple lifetimes (considerably longer than Japan needed) it will not take millenia. They do not have to independently reinvent everything, and they are not stupid enough to mistake advanced technology for unlearnable magic.

*Which, again, is a central assumption of the kind of scenario I'm talking about here...

[Transbot9]

Germany was, as evidence by their complete inability to affect the US outside of hunting down merchant ships with U-Boats, a service that was more hazardous than even the infamy of the Eastern Front. This is made even worse by their futile attempts at conquering Britain which was just over the English Channel... Britain was capable of attacking us across the Atlantic. (not like it would've been effective) But then I never said anything about Britain or Germany being a regional power.

Look, you said:

..more advanced nations in very close proximity...

Hence my reply. Being an ocean away isn't that close with 1800s transportation.

And that would give them what? I'm sure the Iranians could have an engineer design an Essex-esque Carrier, but they still wouldn't have the resources to build it.

No, but I assume Iran still has fairly modern manufacturing processes. I never stated the Federation would be building ISDs in a number of weeks, and I expanded the time frame for modernization to between 50 to 150 years.

Holonet was restricted to the Imperial bureacrats and military

Never heard of that, but I'll just assume that you have superior EU knowledge - there's a lot of books I haven't read.

Let me explain something to you. You know the B-52 that the USAF has? We can't make them anymore. In fact because all the tooling to make them, the tools that made those, etc are gone if they develop cracks in the wing spars tomorrow we'd have to permanently ground the whole damn fleet. Point: You need the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools.

Yes, yes, I know all about that, and that being a major reason why the Aries Rocket system is being a pain in the butt for NASA, even though it is an updated version of what was used prior to the shuttles. It isn't that it is impossible for us to do it, it is just an egregious waste of resources to redevelop it (Cheaper to develop and deploy a replacement using modern manufacturing methods).

for me to call you an ignorant moronic twat.

See, now you're just being hateful. On to other stuff...

I doubt that anyone in ST would surrender to the Empire, except maybe the Cardassians and the Ferengi. I mean, the Klingons and the Romulans both have way too much ego, and the Federation is too bent on maintaining their personal way of life to give in. As such, it isn't a matter of shipping trade so much as a matter of having technology brought to a place where the companies are setting up shop. As bz said, it takes a long time to be able to just operate machines, let alone learn how they work and how to build more, and that's WITH the aid of experts. Simply trading for advanced technology would be like giving a Japanese scholar of a century ago a Nintendo Wii in exchange for some silver, and expecting him to be able to make more within his lifetime. (And the argument of lacking electricity isn't valid, because who's to even say SW power systems are compatible with ST, let alone whether or not ST can even generate enough energy to run the systems for more than a few seconds?)

I suppose that depends on just how the Empire governs. Beyond ESB, little is shown (in the movies) on how strong the totalitarian hand grasped. Granted, the Moffs were generally dicks, but average people could live their lives for years without much change (so long as certain droids don't go running around with Death Star plans). Unless someone plants a rebel base on Vulcan, though, few ST nations have much that the Empire would want. But, yeah - the Federation would probably be annexed pretty quick. If they put up too much of a resistance, the Tarkin Doctrine would have a few planets blown up as an example (one of which would probably be Earth). If the Federation was smart, they would allow Imperial Exploitation and keep their heads down, but that's doubtful.

[Batman]

In other news, transbot STILL doesn't understand the massive technology gap between Wars and Trek.

[Wyrm]

To put a finer point on Batman's post, even education isn't enough to produce a society on the same power level as the SW powers. You need tools and equipment to refine and manipulate the brand-spanking new materials you're learning how to make. You need to look for raw resources within your own territory with an eye on looking for the right stuff for your new tech base. You will also need better sensors to detect them, and deal with any natives or hazards.

At first, you will only be able to afford/produce the cheapest, crudest, most primitive implementations of the tools, equipment and materials of the target tech, because your own tools, equipment and materials are not adequate to the task to take you to the common SW tech level in one step (because they are, in turn, the latest products of the exact same development cycle). Only after a couple of hundred of these cycles, each establishing adequate tools, equipment and resources to achieve the next step, will you achieve the same general tech level as a SW power and stand on equal footing with them.

Meanwhile, the very tech that you are exploring and the different needs you need to satisfy will change your society into something much different. When a journey across a galaxy becomes routine and fast, that will change how you do business in your own civilization. Voyages of discovery will become sightseeing road-trips. Your new materials will allow you to do things that could never do before. Your native tech will become obsolete and be discarded as better ways are copied.

The Federation as you know it will cease to exist, and become a bog-standard, if culturally distinct, SW power — so that conflict is no longer STvsSW, but SWvsSW. Economic and technological contact with the SW powers will be as lethal to the current Federation as an all-out war.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Hence my reply. Being an ocean away isn't that close with 1800s transportation.

The US is only an ocean away and they're one of your sources of technology they literally bring it to you and so is Australia.

No, but I assume Iran still has fairly modern manufacturing processes. I never stated the Federation would be building ISDs in a number of weeks, and I expanded the time frame for modernization to between 50 to 150 years.

My analogy still applies, it will take hundreds of years of development by which time no such

Yes, yes, I know all about that, and that being a major reason why the Aries Rocket system is being a pain in the butt for NASA, even though it is an updated version of what was used prior to the shuttles. It isn't that it is impossible for us to do it, it is just an egregious waste of resources to redevelop it (Cheaper to develop and deploy a replacement using modern manufacturing methods).

We already have the tools to make such, the Feddies don't. They'd be incapable of powering a single HTL on the latest generation warp core, which means they need a hypermatter fusion reactor, which means they need the chemical science resources to refine and safely store the stuff, which means the metalurgy techniques to produce durasteel, which requires extremely more powerful energy production capabilities (given that durasteel is used to armor ships that hurl TT level shots at each other), which requires more of the previous. This is, again, akin to teaching an Old Kingdom Egyptian how to make an L55 120mm cannon and expecting the Old Kingdom to start producing them when the First World Empire is extremely opposed to the idea of such primatives suddenly appearing in their world and daring to declare themselves an independent entity.

See, now you're just being hateful. On to other stuff...

I'm allowed to be when you're acting stupid.

PS: You also fail to explain how the Feddies are going to interact with an expansionist fascist state that claims dominion over the entirety of the Galaxy without giving up everything that makes them the Federation and subjecting themselves to the rule of the Empire. In the latter case fully 40% of the Stormtrooper Corps were secretly GeNode Clones and literally incapable of thinking of betraying the Galactic Emperor, so any latent insurgency is already going to lose 2/5ths of their fighting force without foreknowledge of it. (Not to mention ISB, Imperial Intelligence, and COMPNOR agents running undercover ops full tilt)

[Simon_Jester]

I suppose that depends on just how the Empire governs. Beyond ESB, little is shown (in the movies) on how strong the totalitarian hand grasped. Granted, the Moffs were generally dicks, but average people could live their lives for years without much change (so long as certain droids don't go running around with Death Star plans). Unless someone plants a rebel base on Vulcan, though, few ST nations have much that the Empire would want. But, yeah - the Federation would probably be annexed pretty quick. If they put up too much of a resistance, the Tarkin Doctrine would have a few planets blown up as an example (one of which would probably be Earth). If the Federation was smart, they would allow Imperial Exploitation and keep their heads down, but that's doubtful.

In the Standard Imperial Invasion scenario, with its convenient annihilation of all distance barriers, this is totally true. In the long-range interaction scenario, where sending massive task forces to subjugate and police a horde of primitives isn't necessarily cost-effective... you're more likely to see Hutt Exploitation than Imperial Exploitation.

The flip side of "the Federation is incredibly primitive by Star Wars standards" is "the Empire has no particular reason to care what happens in Federation space, one way or the other, because nothing they can do poses a significant threat."
________

At first, you will only be able to afford/produce the cheapest, crudest, most primitive implementations of the tools, equipment and materials of the target tech, because your own tools, equipment and materials are not adequate to the task to take you to the common SW tech level in one step (because they are, in turn, the latest products of the exact same development cycle). Only after a couple of hundred of these cycles, each establishing adequate tools, equipment and resources to achieve the next step, will you achieve the same general tech level as a SW power and stand on equal footing with them.

There's a catch: if there is any commerce at all, the process can be heavily jump-started by way of that commerce. The Federation does not have to independently rediscover all these massive layers of advanced technology it does not possess, unless someone sees fit to impose a technological quarantine on them for reasons indeterminate. Like real primitive societies that were suddenly faced with a technological disconnect, the second step in development will always be to import specialists and machine tools, with the first step being the realization that the second step is necessary.

And the Federation at least has the background they need to realize that this is necessary, which was the major killer of many primitive cultures: by the time they figured out that they needed to import physical infrastructure and start reorganizing their society, their social model had already been overwritten by foreigners. Japan was lucky in this respect, because they started just such a program within a few decades of "first contact."

None of this stops the process from taking an extremely long time, even assuming it is not cut short by a sudden burst of militaristic expansionism on the part of a Star Wars power. All it does is cut the time scale from millenia to centuries.

The Federation as you know it will cease to exist, and become a bog-standard, if culturally distinct, SW power — so that conflict is no longer STvsSW, but SWvsSW. Economic and technological contact with the SW powers will be as lethal to the current Federation as an all-out war.

To be sure, although if replicators spread the other way, the cultural disruption might not be entirely one-sided. And no, I am not claiming that it would be anything but extremely asymmetric, so kindly don't jump down my throat for that.
________

PS: You also fail to explain how the Feddies are going to interact with an expansionist fascist state that claims dominion over the entirety of the Galaxy without giving up everything that makes them the Federation and subjecting themselves to the rule of the Empire.

At close range, they won't. At long range, they have a chance of managing it the same way that, say, the Chiss do: the Chiss are not too big to conquer, but they are too far away to be worth conquering. While the Galactic Empire officially claims to rule the entire galaxy, empirically it does not, and displays little interest in doing so, except possibly by a very slow, incremental campaign of conquest and integration. While the Empire is a militaristic state that rules its population by terror, it is not particularly expansionist, probably for want of any inviting and accessible place to expand into.

If ST-SW interaction occurs over long distances, that same equation applies in a different form. Unlike the Chiss, the Trekkers have effectively no firepower capable of opposing even small Imperial forces. But also unlike the Chiss, the Trekkers are so remote and (as far as technical infrastructure goes) poor that the cost of supporting an Imperial force large enough to control the locals without being assimilated by them is extreme, even if no one is shooting at them.

Again, this does not apply at close range with the Conveniently Placed Wormhole granting easy access to the Federation from some place usefully close to the Empire's core worlds. But since everyone knows perfectly well what happens in that case, I don't think that case should be dominating the discussion.

[Ritterin Sophia]

-snip-

You did of course read his scenario where the Chommell Sector would be within cruising distance of the Empire, right? Your scenario is a completely different bunch of apples.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, it is.

I happen to think it's an interesting alternative, and given the way that galactic collisions actually work, some variation on it would practically be required were this to "actually" happen. The galaxies would be within hyperdrive range of each other for many millenia before they actually collided, and interaction would probably begin sometime much earlier in Star Wars' hyperdrive age.

Of course, in that case they'd have first come upon the Star Trek races while they were still trying to figure out the bow and arrow...

[bz249]

Yes. However, there are a few catches.

One is that the people of the SW Galaxy have to learn to operate their own equipment in their own lifetime. Unless we assume that every individual in the Star Wars galaxy is of transhuman intelligence, much of their everyday technology must be simple enough that Milky Way humans can learn to use it with basic competence in a reasonable time frame. And I'm not talking about the spaceships, here. I'm talking about the AK-47 equivalent blaster rifles, the computer interfaces designed to be operable by Gamorreans, the droids that can pass the Turing Test in dozens of languages and interpret instructions fed to them in colloquial speech. This stuff can't be that hard to operate, even if it's effectively impossible to reverse-engineer or to replicate. In some cases, you don't even need to know how to maintain it; ask it and it will tell you.

Oh I am not saying that ST citizens can not be good grants or unskilled workers at an assembly plant. The user interface of such a machine should be rather simple, but to operate one as an engineer or doing a similar thing is one leap forward.

[Transbot9]

I understand the technological disconnect, I just disagree on the time frame of taking a thousand years plus. And yes, I understand that the ST civilizations would be completely altered from the interaction, and admitted that the Empire wasn't going to wait. 50 to 150 years is plenty of time to be integrated into the greater galactic economy - heck, there are more primitive worlds than the Federation that are part of the galactic economy (I'm also assuming that the Federation doesn't need to know every damn thing about SW tech in order to start building stuff). The closest thing to a "win" scenario for the Federation is if they manage to be ignored by the Empire long enough for the Rebellion to take down the top-heavy style of government the Empire employs - but sooner or later some other power will probably become interested in "free" planets. If they survive that (yeah, yeah, I know - doubtful), the Federation may be able to gain representation in the New Republic and later the Galactic Alliance.

Now if the Federation joins the Rebellion, they have 4 things to offer under this scenario: new, po-dunk backwater worlds that aren't in the Imperial database (except for maybe a numerical ID from survey crews) to serve as hidden bases, manpower, replicators (at least for foodstuffs), and small arms. Since teddy bears running around with sharpened sticks are effective against the 501st Stormtrooper division, I think it is fairly reasonable to assume that hand held phasers aren't completely ineffective (blasters are prolific enough that they wouldn't be needed, though) unless you have a specialty unit running around with personal shields (like the EVO trooper). Still, if the Empire puts it together that they're involved, say bye-bye to Earth.

The second closest thing to a ST "win" scenario is if Federation philosophy and way of starts to catch on. This would probably take even longer than the Federation getting a tech upgrade, and it is more likely that Federation lifestyles would be drowned out by SW diversity.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Since teddy bears running around with sharpened sticks are effective against the 501st Stormtrooper division, I think it is fairly reasonable to assume that hand held phasers aren't completely ineffective (blasters are prolific enough that they wouldn't be needed, though) unless you have a specialty unit running around with personal shields (like the EVO trooper).

You just keep piling on reasons for me to call you an idiot. Not once are they ever stated to be 501st, in fact, it's impossible for them to be such since there are height discrepencies. The Ewoks were not at all combat effective (this is a different criteria of performance than their effectiveness as decoys), if you had listened to the directors commentary or read the novel you would know that the Ewoks were losing, in fact it was described as little furred corpses littering the forest floor, the thing that turned it around was that Chewie was able to steel the equivelant of a Humvee with a M2HB and a Mk 19. Three, given the phasers dubious effectiveness when faced with fucking packing crates and exotic armors, I'm not exactly predisposed to give you that since Stormtrooper armor is both more effective than packing crates and of an exotic composition. This is without getting into fact that the reason the DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol was so favored by outlaws was because it was one of the few pistols with the stopping power of a blaster rifle and thus not subject to be deflected by ST Armor like lesser blaster pistols.

This is the main thing I take exception with, but the rest are as follows:

Bases: Viper Probe Droids are going to be vastly less expensive than a Star Destroyer and it only worked for so long in a planet that wasn't considered viable for human habitation.

Manpower: Let's see, you've got a power that controls a fraction of a quarter of a galaxy versus the population of a galaxy spanning civilization. Any recruits you get from the Feddies is going to be negligable to the number of recruits you got anyways, this is without mentioning that any sign of deceit like aiding the Rebellion will be casus belli for an Imperial taskforce to ram themselves right down the Federations throat. Given the incompetence of the Feddies this does not bode well for them when factoring in the performance of ISB, Imperial Intelligence, and COMPNOR agents.

Replicators: Star Wars utilize industrial scale replicators in the manufacturing of large constructs, unless you can provide a replicator with the effectiveness of a Mon Calamari one, these are not anything the Rebels don't already have.

[Wyrm]

At first, you will only be able to afford/produce the cheapest, crudest, most primitive implementations of the tools, equipment and materials of the target tech, because your own tools, equipment and materials are not adequate to the task to take you to the common SW tech level in one step (because they are, in turn, the latest products of the exact same development cycle). Only after a couple of hundred of these cycles, each establishing adequate tools, equipment and resources to achieve the next step, will you achieve the same general tech level as a SW power and stand on equal footing with them.

There's a catch: if there is any commerce at all, the process can be heavily jump-started by way of that commerce. The Federation does not have to independently rediscover all these massive layers of advanced technology it does not possess, unless someone sees fit to impose a technological quarantine on them for reasons indeterminate. Like real primitive societies that were suddenly faced with a technological disconnect, the second step in development will always be to import specialists and machine tools, with the first step being the realization that the second step is necessary.

And what will they trade for these tools and speciallists? No one will simply give them away, unless they were entirely worthless because of wear or obscelesence — which begs the question why it was worth shipping them all the way to the Federation rather than being disposed of locally. It would take good tools and speciallists to create anything that a modern SW power would consider buying, so you're stuck in a Catch 22 situation.

And the Federation at least has the background they need to realize that this is necessary, which was the major killer of many primitive cultures: by the time they figured out that they needed to import physical infrastructure and start reorganizing their society, their social model had already been overwritten by foreigners. Japan was lucky in this respect, because they started just such a program within a few decades of "first contact."

None of this stops the process from taking an extremely long time, even assuming it is not cut short by a sudden burst of militaristic expansionism on the part of a Star Wars power. All it does is cut the time scale from millenia to centuries.

Unless the Federation is willing to host another nations mining/manufacturing base in exchange for rent, which will be just as toxic to their native culture, development will likely require crawling up from the muck over the course of a couple millenia. Remember, Japan wasn't that far behind us. Our modern world developed over the course of a few hundred years, and Japan was part of the last century or so of that.

The Federation as you know it will cease to exist, and become a bog-standard, if culturally distinct, SW power — so that conflict is no longer STvsSW, but SWvsSW. Economic and technological contact with the SW powers will be as lethal to the current Federation as an all-out war.

To be sure, although if replicators spread the other way, the cultural disruption might not be entirely one-sided. And no, I am not claiming that it would be anything but extremely asymmetric, so kindly don't jump down my throat for that.

I don't see how even replicators would be useful to a SW power. Replicators make sense when travel times are measured in weeks, months, years and large fractions of a century, and when the true costs of the technology are shielded from you — you'll note that replication was rationed on Voyager, so much that it was more sensible to go out and forage for food on planets they happened by, even though by any sensible standard it would be nearly impossible to find a source suitable for survival. Not so much when travel times are measured in at most days from one side of the galaxy to the other, and its cheap to get offworld goods. Under these situations, the economy of scale would be a killer advantage.

[Simon_Jester]

And what will they trade for these tools and speciallists? No one will simply give them away, unless they were entirely worthless because of wear or obscelesence — which begs the question why it was worth shipping them all the way to the Federation rather than being disposed of locally. It would take good tools and speciallists to create anything that a modern SW power would consider buying, so you're stuck in a Catch 22 situation.

I'd guess biologicals. Consider the thriving drug trade in Star Wars, the "spice mines of Kessel" and the like. I'd be very surprised to learn that there were no such materials in Federation space, at least on a scale large enough to support minor trade.

The Federation has very little foreign exchange in this scenario, but "very little" is not equal to "zero." Their economy is incredibly tiny compared to a whole galaxy, and extremely primitive, but they don't need to be a galactic-scale economic player to find someone willing to sell them textbooks, or professors of engineering willing to live out in the sticks if they get a princely standard of living and free retirement to a pleasure planet.
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Unless the Federation is willing to host another nations mining/manufacturing base in exchange for rent, which will be just as toxic to their native culture, development will likely require crawling up from the muck over the course of a couple millenia. Remember, Japan wasn't that far behind us. Our modern world developed over the course of a few hundred years, and Japan was part of the last century or so of that.

Yes, but Japan didn't have to pass through all the intermediate steps the way we did, either. They didn't just say "OK, let's reprise the growth of pre-industrial technology until we start needing better pumps to drain our mines, then build extremely crude and poorly designed steam engines, then ten years later think of mounting the engines on flatcars to build locomotives..." Their first step was to scrape together the currency they needed to hire instructors and foreign experts that could sit down and figure out how to build up their infrastructure ASAP, and to import machines capable of manufacturing reasonably modern machines.

It will take the Federation longer than it took Japan, but that doesn't mean that the amount of time required will scale linearly to the amount of time it took Japan, that we can just say "Japan had 300 to 400 years of time to make up and did it in 30 to 50; the Federation has 30000 to 40000 years to make up and will therefore need 3000 to 5000."
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I don't see how even replicators would be useful to a SW power. Replicators make sense when travel times are measured in weeks, months, years and large fractions of a century, and when the true costs of the technology are shielded from you — you'll note that replication was rationed on Voyager, so much that it was more sensible to go out and forage for food on planets they happened by, even though by any sensible standard it would be nearly impossible to find a source suitable for survival. Not so much when travel times are measured in at most days from one side of the galaxy to the other, and its cheap to get offworld goods. Under these situations, the economy of scale would be a killer advantage.

Hmm. A point. Although mass-scale replication of exotic organic chemicals, for instance, might be cheaper than other manufacturing methods. It depends on details, so I'm not going to insist that this is a big deal. However, since replicators and transporters are the only Star Trek technology where there is no obvious, ubiquitous, superior replacement in Star Wars, it strikes me as implausible that the Star Wars setting would simply ignore them or swallow them without a burp.

And yes, I didn't mention transporters before. I'm not talking about military applications, either; I'm talking about civilian use. Consider the works of Larry Niven for an example of how much easy teleportation can disrupt a society.

[CaptHawkeye]

I've always been more fascinated with a long term post assimilation scenario than the usual "wars smash silly trek rawr" short term outlook.

For instance, what would be the political ramifications of many old cultures like the Klingons or Romulans integrating into GFFA society? Would their be substantial 3rd party terrorism from old Loyalist diehards even after hundreds of years? Even with the Empire's power in sheer economic scale, I can't imagine the cultural and social assimilation of the AQ powers would happen overnight, or be paticularly easy. I can't help but believe their would probably be plenty of widespread terrorist groups operating out of obscure regions not too unlike the Islamic Terrorist groups and insurgencies that have been in operation in the Middle East for some time.

These groups would obviously be incapable of enacting any kind of real changes, but it would be interesting to picture them in the context of a long term post-GFFA Alpha Quadrant. Not to mention AQ life in general.

[Wyrm]

I'd guess biologicals. Consider the thriving drug trade in Star Wars, the "spice mines of Kessel" and the like. I'd be very surprised to learn that there were no such materials in Federation space, at least on a scale large enough to support minor trade.

The Federation has very little foreign exchange in this scenario, but "very little" is not equal to "zero." Their economy is incredibly tiny compared to a whole galaxy, and extremely primitive, but they don't need to be a galactic-scale economic player to find someone willing to sell them textbooks, or professors of engineering willing to live out in the sticks if they get a princely standard of living and free retirement to a pleasure planet.

Modernizing the Federation to Imperial levels is a much, much harder task than modernizing Japan to Edwardian levels, even relatively speaking. There is exponentially more knowledge to come to terms with. The number of professors and textbooks you will need to import is orders of magnitude greater just to get a complete set to build and maintain even a bog-standard infrastructure. How many engineering professors can you net with your lousy economy? Very few, obviously, and any professor worth his salt is going to want to be in contact with the rest of the acedemic world. What kind of tools can you afford in bulk, which you will need for a full-sized infrastructure? Very poor ones that will depreciate very quickly, and even then you might not be able to afford enough of them to maintain a full-sized infrastructure.

Yes, but Japan didn't have to pass through all the intermediate steps the way we did, either. They didn't just say "OK, let's reprise the growth of pre-industrial technology until we start needing better pumps to drain our mines, then build extremely crude and poorly designed steam engines, then ten years later think of mounting the engines on flatcars to build locomotives..." Their first step was to scrape together the currency they needed to hire instructors and foreign experts that could sit down and figure out how to build up their infrastructure ASAP, and to import machines capable of manufacturing reasonably modern machines.

Who said anything about having to pass through intermediate steps like the SW powers did? The long cylce I proposed was due entirely to the fact that you can only buy the shoddiest of tools in your cycle to build your initial infrastructure, which will be similarly shoddy, and your first generation of exported goods will also be shoddy.

It will take the Federation longer than it took Japan, but that doesn't mean that the amount of time required will scale linearly to the amount of time it took Japan, that we can just say "Japan had 300 to 400 years of time to make up and did it in 30 to 50; the Federation has 30000 to 40000 years to make up and will therefore need 3000 to 5000."

Actually, a linear expansion of time would not be unreasonable. Remember that knowledge allows you to generate more knowledge at a greater rate. Most of the science generated in the past 400 years was generated in the last 50 years. The society the Federation is trying to attain parity with is itself advancing at an exponential rate in terms of engineering, if not basic science. The Federation has to advance at an even greater exponential rate to even have hope of reaching the same level as the greater SW society. Even if the Federation were only 400 years behind the Empire, the Federation has a lot more ground to cover than Japan did after the Meiji revolution.

Hmm. A point. Although mass-scale replication of exotic organic chemicals, for instance, might be cheaper than other manufacturing methods. It depends on details, so I'm not going to insist that this is a big deal. However, since replicators and transporters are the only Star Trek technology where there is no obvious, ubiquitous, superior replacement in Star Wars, it strikes me as implausible that the Star Wars setting would simply ignore them or swallow them without a burp.

And yes, I didn't mention transporters before. I'm not talking about military applications, either; I'm talking about civilian use. Consider the works of Larry Niven for an example of how much easy teleportation can disrupt a society.

Yes, teleportation can change a society, but even the Federation doesn't use it to transport places willy-nilly.

[Simon_Jester]

Modernizing the Federation to Imperial levels is a much, much harder task than modernizing Japan to Edwardian levels, even relatively speaking. There is exponentially more knowledge to come to terms with. The number of professors and textbooks you will need to import is orders of magnitude greater just to get a complete set to build and maintain even a bog-standard infrastructure. How many engineering professors can you net with your lousy economy? Very few, obviously, and any professor worth his salt is going to want to be in contact with the rest of the acedemic world. What kind of tools can you afford in bulk, which you will need for a full-sized infrastructure? Very poor ones that will depreciate very quickly, and even then you might not be able to afford enough of them to maintain a full-sized infrastructure.

This is true. I did not say it was going to be a quick process; you may recall my use of the words "multiple lifetimes;" since I am not a mayfly, this means a period of centuries.

But I do maintain that the time scale required is shorter than a millenium, simply because Star Wars technology is not magic. It does not require mystic initiation rites to use, and it does not defy analysis by logic. It can be taken apart by people with scientific instruments, and duplicated using tools that in Star Wars are widely available. Even highly advanced products of Star Wars manufacturing are not extraordinarily expensive, even when the cost is analyzed in terms of common items such as the sort of personal vehicle available on an impoverished backwater world with negligible resources and industry.

This is the flip side of the enormous construction capability that makes things like Death Stars and widespread use of droids as menial labor possible: the artifacts we would think of as "advanced technology" become vastly cheaper, including artifacts that can be used to make more artifacts.

In that context, one generation will not be enough to do all the analysis, adaptation, upgrading, and imports of better tools required, as it was in Japan. But ten or twenty generations really should be.

Who said anything about having to pass through intermediate steps like the SW powers did? The long cylce I proposed was due entirely to the fact that you can only buy the shoddiest of tools in your cycle to build your initial infrastructure, which will be similarly shoddy, and your first generation of exported goods will also be shoddy.

This is true, but there can only be a limited number of degrees of shoddiness at work here. With interplanetary travel so cheap in Star Wars, manufacturing techniques that are too shoddy will not be able to compete with imports from more sophisticated worlds. If the tools exist to be imported on even the most primitive and backwards of worlds, they have to meet some minimum standard of quality.
________

Actually, a linear expansion of time would not be unreasonable. Remember that knowledge allows you to generate more knowledge at a greater rate. Most of the science generated in the past 400 years was generated in the last 50 years. The society the Federation is trying to attain parity with is itself advancing at an exponential rate in terms of engineering, if not basic science.

I am uncertain of this. For one, we have well-established samples of what Star Wars technology looks like over a span of roughly 150 years, and it doesn't seem to change all that much, even on an engineering level: there are improvements, but they are mostly incremental, and not all that large. Ships that were fast during the Clone Wars are, if not fast, then at least not slow in the Legacy Era. If there's an exponential growth curve going on, then the time constant of the curve is on the order of millenia.

This is further supported by our limited information about periods in the distant past of the Republic, such as the Jedi Civil War (~4000 years before the events of the movies). While the technology in use then may have been less sophisticated, it was broadly comparable in most respects: the droids were intelligent, the ships could travel galactic distances in days or weeks (at most), the blasters were highly destructive at the upper end of the scale, and so on. We do not see evidence of a radically different level of scientific and technical infrastructure unless we go into the extremely deep past, with its hyperspace cannons, beam tubes, and "subspace" communication gear.

Thus, by the standards of a modernizing civilization, the Star Wars galaxy presents something that closely resembles a fixed target for practical purposes. Technology advances, but it takes millenia for those advances to become noticeable to someone with the perspective of a typical galactic citizen. And nearly any amount of economic change can be completed over such immense time scales, including the creation of thriving civilizations (such as that of the planet Naboo) from scratch.
________

And yes, I didn't mention transporters before. I'm not talking about military applications, either; I'm talking about civilian use. Consider the works of Larry Niven for an example of how much easy teleportation can disrupt a society.

Yes, teleportation can change a society, but even the Federation doesn't use it to transport places willy-nilly.

No, it does not. On the other hand, they also have greatly inferior computer and power generation capabilities; they might be more useful to a more advanced civilization. And no, I am not insisting that they must be, only that they might be.

[Wyrm]

But I do maintain that the time scale required is shorter than a millenium, simply because Star Wars technology is not magic. It does not require mystic initiation rites to use, and it does not defy analysis by logic. It can be taken apart by people with scientific instruments, and duplicated using tools that in Star Wars are widely available. Even highly advanced products of Star Wars manufacturing are not extraordinarily expensive, even when the cost is analyzed in terms of common items such as the sort of personal vehicle available on an impoverished backwater world with negligible resources and industry.

So you claim that the Federation can lift itself from being a podunk backwater by citing... a podunk backwater. A plethora of personal vehicles and devices is not a fully developed infrastructure, and indeed Tatooine has no real infrastructure to speak of either. Otherwise, Tatooine would have developed its industry enough to gain some modest wealth, and you've just admitted that it's the Star Wars equivalent to the Sudan.

This is the flip side of the enormous construction capability that makes things like Death Stars and widespread use of droids as menial labor possible: the artifacts we would think of as "advanced technology" become vastly cheaper, including artifacts that can be used to make more artifacts.

The kind of technology you cite are mostly finished products and shop tools for local mantainence and hacking. These are not any kind of products that could be considered capital that could be used to create real wealth, which is what you need for the Federation to get anywhere. Otherwise, it'll just be a clone of Tatooine: some neat hardware, but run down and totally dependent on a more prosperous civilization.

This is true, but there can only be a limited number of degrees of shoddiness at work here. With interplanetary travel so cheap in Star Wars, manufacturing techniques that are too shoddy will not be able to compete with imports from more sophisticated worlds. If the tools exist to be imported on even the most primitive and backwards of worlds, they have to meet some minimum standard of quality.

A floor on the minimum standard of quality would make them outrageously expensive to the Federation. Remember, they're a podunk backwater, so their buying power is quite small.

I am uncertain of this. For one, we have well-established samples of what Star Wars technology looks like over a span of roughly 150 years, and it doesn't seem to change all that much, even on an engineering level: there are improvements, but they are mostly incremental, and not all that large. Ships that were fast during the Clone Wars are, if not fast, then at least not slow in the Legacy Era. If there's an exponential growth curve going on, then the time constant of the curve is on the order of millenia.

This is further supported by our limited information about periods in the distant past of the Republic, such as the Jedi Civil War (~4000 years before the events of the movies). While the technology in use then may have been less sophisticated, it was broadly comparable in most respects: the droids were intelligent, the ships could travel galactic distances in days or weeks (at most), the blasters were highly destructive at the upper end of the scale, and so on. We do not see evidence of a radically different level of scientific and technical infrastructure unless we go into the extremely deep past, with its hyperspace cannons, beam tubes, and "subspace" communication gear.

Thus, by the standards of a modernizing civilization, the Star Wars galaxy presents something that closely resembles a fixed target for practical purposes. Technology advances, but it takes millenia for those advances to become noticeable to someone with the perspective of a typical galactic citizen. And nearly any amount of economic change can be completed over such immense time scales, including the creation of thriving civilizations (such as that of the planet Naboo) from scratch.

Point, but realize that it may only be relatively recently that SW science has stagnated. The Corellian hyperdrive was invented around 25 thousand years BBY, and it was a slow technology at first.

In truth, there has been a civilization in control of the entire galaxy for at least 35 thousand years BBY (Infinite Empire), and galaxy-conquering technology for 14 thousand years before that, and an unknown amount of time before that of development. We thus have an unknown span of time where science could have been making exponential advances. We have no way to judge how much knowledge this represents, because again the rate of expansion of knowledge is exponential.

On the other hand, a person only has limited time to aquire the knowledge to specialize in a field to become competent in that field. Thus, this expansive knowledge represents many more specialists to embody. And you can only afford to host so many of them.

I say right here we have slammed headlong into the limits of our knowledge. Sure, the industrialization of the Milky Way may take less than a millenium as you state, but it could easily be the case that it may take many more.

No, it does not. On the other hand, they also have greatly inferior computer and power generation capabilities; they might be more useful to a more advanced civilization. And no, I am not insisting that they must be, only that they might be.

The ST transporter suffers a significant number of simply wierd-ass malfunctions that occur with embarrassing regularity, so that more mundane malfunctions that simply kills the transportee should be even more prevalent. While Geordi said that transportation is "the safest form of travel", this is not saying much given that feddies ride what are essentially faster-than-light bombs. The ST transporter would have to become a lot safer to be considered a viable consumer product, if it is not abandoned entirely.

[Batman]

Now let's be fair here. While the transporters ARE prone to frequent and spectacular malfunctions, they usually do so in situations that are HIGHLY unlikely to crop up OUTSIDE 'to seek out new worlds, and new civilisations' scenarios. Ion storms or exotic minerals usually do NOT suddenly turn up just as you're about to beam to work. And while M/AM reactors ARE volatile by nature, the E-D's Warp Core's tendency to blow if you yelled at it at the wrong moment was NOT evident in later Starfleet vessels (DS9).

[Simon_Jester]

But I do maintain that the time scale required is shorter than a millenium, simply because Star Wars technology is not magic. It does not require mystic initiation rites to use, and it does not defy analysis by logic. It can be taken apart by people with scientific instruments, and duplicated using tools that in Star Wars are widely available. Even highly advanced products of Star Wars manufacturing are not extraordinarily expensive, even when the cost is analyzed in terms of common items such as the sort of personal vehicle available on an impoverished backwater world with negligible resources and industry.

So you claim that the Federation can lift itself from being a podunk backwater by citing... a podunk backwater. A plethora of personal vehicles and devices is not a fully developed infrastructure, and indeed Tatooine has no real infrastructure to speak of either. Otherwise, Tatooine would have developed its industry enough to gain some modest wealth, and you've just admitted that it's the Star Wars equivalent to the Sudan.

I think you missed my point. Tatooine's fundamental problem is that it has no government worth speaking of; the planet is ruled by crime lords and most of its surface is controlled by bandits, nomads, and scavengers. In this respect it is much like places like Somalia and Mali. Even if it were possible for such a place to systematically build up infrastructure and drag itself kicking and screaming into a semimodern standard of living, it won't happen, because the local rulers are too busy being corrupt jackasses to bother. Anyone who tries to build a factory is liable to get shaken down for so many bribes that they pack up in disgust and go move somewhere else. The anarchy of the place prevents economic development.

Say what you will about the Federation, but it is not a complete anarchy. There is enough central government to enforce a broadly sane legal system over its core territory, and to engage in systematic plans of economic development. In this respect it is more like, say, South Korea than it is like Somalia: a backwater hellhole with enough organization and governance enough to recognize that it is a backwater hellhole and take steps to avoid staying that way.

Tatooine is evidence that even planets on the ass end of nowhere with no exports worth mentioning can afford technology that could be used to build better technology... if the local government was worth a damn. Bad government is a major problem in Star Wars; the movie era shows us very little of what could honestly be called good government. We've got a choice of "planet of the criminals," corrupt republic, brutal empire, and bickering new republic.
______

The kind of technology you cite are mostly finished products and shop tools for local mantainence and hacking. These are not any kind of products that could be considered capital that could be used to create real wealth, which is what you need for the Federation to get anywhere. Otherwise, it'll just be a clone of Tatooine: some neat hardware, but run down and totally dependent on a more prosperous civilization.

This is where the governmental sanity check comes in. Places like Tatooine fail the check, and the local government winds up too busy trying to import the products of wealth to spend any money encouraging people to import its sources. The equipment for cheap-shit-level production (comparable to the textile mills that were among South Korea's first exporters) is expensive, but not so expensive that it can't be bought. It's a long road from there to being the equivalent of one of the few countries that have the real world's microchip factories, but it's not a completely impassable road.

I don't seriously maintain that the Federation will inevitably manage to bootstrap its economy up given a prolonged period of semi-peaceable contact with more advanced technology. But I do maintain that it can do so, that the task is not completely impossible on the grounds that dirt-poor nations are doomed to remain dirt-poor nations. They aren't.

The thing that keeps most dirt-poor nations dirt-poor is government stupidity: rulers who are too busy enriching themselves with bribes to know or care how much damage they do to the local economy, or who mistake the symptoms of modernity (skyscrapers, gigantic paved highways, large heavily equipped armies) for the causes (an educated middle class, factories capable of actually building things other people want). The Federation isn't all that great a government, but it isn't an outright kleptocracy or classical military dictatorship, so it at least has the potential to engage in the sort of crash modernization program that works (as done in the Far East during the late 19th and 20th centuries), rather than the kind that doesn't (as in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in those same centuries).
_______

Point, but realize that it may only be relatively recently that SW science has stagnated. The Corellian hyperdrive was invented around 25 thousand years BBY, and it was a slow technology at first.

Yes, but what this does indicate is that technology is not currently undergoing extremely rapid growth during the movie era, when the Trekker powers would be trying to play catch-up. The levelling off (I hesitate to say 'stagnation') of Star Wars technology may be historically recent on the time scale of Star Wars history, but on the time scale of human interactions, and even the rise of ordinary nations,* the technological status quo has been largely unchanged for a very long period of time. If it takes the Trek Milky Way powers until 500 ABY to figure out how to build what the Star Wars galaxy was building in the movie era, they will have closed the overwhelming majority of the gap.

Whereas a civilization that had just managed to catch up with where we were 500 years ago would still be hopelessly primitive compared to us, because for us the technological growth curve is exponential on a scale of decades, not millenia.

*as opposed to incomprehensibly ancient Galactic Republics that remain in power with the aid of supernatural warrior-monks.

_____

On the other hand, a person only has limited time to aquire the knowledge to specialize in a field to become competent in that field. Thus, this expansive knowledge represents many more specialists to embody. And you can only afford to host so many of them.

I say right here we have slammed headlong into the limits of our knowledge. Sure, the industrialization of the Milky Way may take less than a millenium as you state, but it could easily be the case that it may take many more.

I'm a little skeptical of the proposition that it would take more than a thousand years to catch up, but I have no fundamentally new arguments to present on the subject, so I think I must agree that we're at the limits of our knowledge.
_____

No, it does not. On the other hand, they also have greatly inferior computer and power generation capabilities; they might be more useful to a more advanced civilization. And no, I am not insisting that they must be, only that they might be.

The ST transporter suffers a significant number of simply wierd-ass malfunctions that occur with embarrassing regularity, so that more mundane malfunctions that simply kills the transportee should be even more prevalent.

Yes. Again, I suspect that this is because the transporter is being built using relatively near-future technology; the level of AI support and precision nanoscale manufacturing that a more advanced civilization might bring to bear simply aren't there. I can't prove it, but I find it very hard to believe that the Star Wars galaxy (which, we're apparently agreeing, is several tens of millenia more advanced) could not greatly improve on the reliability of a technology hammered together only a few centuries in our future. Likewise the replicator.

[Wyrm]

Of course the Federation can eventually catch up. The Imperial standard of science and economy is a stationary target, comparatively, and even when it is moving, you can catch up. After all, you're not even creating any genuinely new knowledge, which obviously goes slower than simply acquiring it, if you're catching up.

What I take umbrage to is your claim that it will take a mere ~500 years to accomplish. You have no evidence for this figure at all, as we do not know how far the Star Wars galaxy is ahead of the Star Trek galaxy, both in terms of scientific knowledge and scale of economy. The actual wealth-producing capital can be exhorbitantly expensive when compared to the products produced and still be profitable, if the number of units produced during the captial's lifetime is very large, and any galaxy-scale company worth its salt is going to be looking at a very large number of sold units.

There is also the point that at the end of the journey, the Federation will most likely be warped beyond recognition. Hell, even if there were no interference, it would probably be unrecognizable anyway even after 500 years.

Yes, but what this does indicate is that technology is not currently undergoing extremely rapid growth during the movie era, when the Trekker powers would be trying to play catch-up. The levelling off (I hesitate to say 'stagnation') of Star Wars technology may be historically recent on the time scale of Star Wars history, but on the time scale of human interactions, and even the rise of ordinary nations,* the technological status quo has been largely unchanged for a very long period of time. If it takes the Trek Milky Way powers until 500 ABY to figure out how to build what the Star Wars galaxy was building in the movie era, they will have closed the overwhelming majority of the gap.

I must stress again that this 500 year figure of yours is completely unfounded. I also stress again that the number of years of exponential catching up in knowledge is proportional to the number of years of exponential knowledge growth.

Let t be the amount of time that the Federation spends learning to achieve parity with (say) the Empire, and let α be the learning rate parameter given a teaching Empire. Let T be the amount of time that the Star Wars galaxy has spent in exponential growth of knowledge, and β be its expansion parameter. Then, parity is achieved when

exp(αt) = exp(βT)

but this happens when αt = βT, or t/T = β/α. In other words, the amount of time spent learning knowledge and the amount of time spent acquiring knowledge is a ratio fixed by β/α, so the relation between t and T is linear.

The above model ignores a lot of relevant detail, but its essense should be clear.

Yes. Again, I suspect that this is because the transporter is being built using relatively near-future technology; the level of AI support and precision nanoscale manufacturing that a more advanced civilization might bring to bear simply aren't there. I can't prove it, but I find it very hard to believe that the Star Wars galaxy (which, we're apparently agreeing, is several tens of millenia more advanced) could not greatly improve on the reliability of a technology hammered together only a few centuries in our future. Likewise the replicator.

And it might not. Both may be dead-end technologies, practical only because of the fact that a comparitively primitive society can put it together.

There's also the not insignificant fact that the SW galaxy has known of similar techniques for a long time. Ref: Magwit's mystifying hoop. It also has the avantage that it more closely matches the society-changing technology featured in the Known Space novels. The SW galaxians didn't seem interested.

[Simon_Jester]

What I take umbrage to is your claim that it will take a mere ~500 years to accomplish.

I pulled 500 ABY out of a hat, as a number "more than a generation, more even than a lifetime, but less than the five thousand years or so it takes for technology to change noticeably in Star Wars."

There is also the point that at the end of the journey, the Federation will most likely be warped beyond recognition. Hell, even if there were no interference, it would probably be unrecognizable anyway even after 500 years.

Wouldn't expect anything less. That's much of what makes the "long term colonial" scenario more interesting than the "short sharp conquest" scenario; it doesn't just involve the Federation becoming a new Moffship, so there's actually some question about how it will evolve in response to changes in communication technology, more advanced AI, faster transportation, and so forth. Same goes for everyone else, too.

Let t be the amount of time that the Federation spends learning to achieve parity with (say) the Empire, and let α be the learning rate parameter given a teaching Empire. Let T be the amount of time that the Star Wars galaxy has spent in exponential growth of knowledge, and β be its expansion parameter. Then, parity is achieved when
exp(αt) = exp(βT)

but this happens when αt = βT, or t/T = β/α. In other words, the amount of time spent learning knowledge and the amount of time spent acquiring knowledge is a ratio fixed by β/α, so the relation between t and T is linear.

My contention is that α is on the order of a few decades (the Trekkers will have increased their technology by a factor of e, an amount amazing to them though not in a Star Wars frame of reference), while β is on the order of millenia (it takes Star Wars a LONG time to go through an increase of a factor of e in technological capability, if the difference between ships and droids in the movies and in 4000 BBY is any indication).

Now, T is extremely large, on the order of tens of millenia, possibly as much as a few hundred millenia. But the ratio β/α is so large that t still winds up being in the high century range.

Again, for me the critical parameter is α, and it's the value of α, NOT the value of t, that I'm trying to gauge by reference to historical cases of societies that tried to rapidly gear up their tech base to match that of far more advanced foreign nations.

Yes. Again, I suspect that this is because the transporter is being built using relatively near-future technology; the level of AI support and precision nanoscale manufacturing that a more advanced civilization might bring to bear simply aren't there. I can't prove it, but I find it very hard to believe that the Star Wars galaxy (which, we're apparently agreeing, is several tens of millenia more advanced) could not greatly improve on the reliability of a technology hammered together only a few centuries in our future. Likewise the replicator.

And it might not. Both may be dead-end technologies, practical only because of the fact that a comparitively primitive society can put it together.

Possible, though there are relatively few examples of this in real life that I can think of. In most cases where a technological route proved to be a dead end, it was because something else did the same thing more efficiently... and mainstream Star Wars society doesn't have anything that does precisely what transporters can do. I'd expect there to be some applications for which it would make sense to use a transporter-like device in Star Wars, if it were possible to build them at all.

So I'm fairly confident that the Trek invention of transporters was a case of "primitives got lucky," unlikely as that may be a priori. If they were simply a known but obsolete technology in Star Wars, they should have been replaced by something that fills a transporter's role more efficiently, and they haven't. Physical shuttles may be more efficient for bulk transport, or for safe passenger transport in the face of active opposition in the form of shields and sensor jamming, yes. But what about cases where high-speed, low-volume transportation over surface to orbit distances would be handy?

I'd imagine that smugglers would love to be able to beam their cargo to and from a drop-off point without having to land. First responders to a disaster scene might well be willing to take the risk of teleportation if it got them to an accident in seconds rather than minutes. I can't think of other applications off the top of my head, but I strongly suspect there are some.

There's also the not insignificant fact that the SW galaxy has known of similar techniques for a long time. Ref: Magwit's mystifying hoop. It also has the avantage that it more closely matches the society-changing technology featured in the Known Space novels. The SW galaxians didn't seem interested.

Yes, but why not? I find it hard to believe that point to point teleportation over planetary distances is something with zero demand, even in a repulsorlift civilization. Even given how manifestly unlikely it is that the people building teleporters have discovered some wrinkle of physics not known to mainstream SW civilization, it seems less insanely improbable to me than the idea that everyone knows teleportation is possible and just happens not to ever use it or consider it as a serious possibility unless presented with a freakish one-off alien artifact.

[Wyrm]

What I take umbrage to is your claim that it will take a mere ~500 years to accomplish.

I pulled 500 ABY out of a hat, as a number "more than a generation, more even than a lifetime, but less than the five thousand years or so it takes for technology to change noticeably in Star Wars."

That's the flawed premise, isn't it? That the Star Wars science and technology only advanced at a slow pace throughout all its history, rather than the recent lul being some sort of transient (or permanent!) "End of Physics" problem.

My contention is that α is on the order of a few decades (the Trekkers will have increased their technology by a factor of e, an amount amazing to them though not in a Star Wars frame of reference), while β is on the order of millenia (it takes Star Wars a LONG time to go through an increase of a factor of e in technological capability, if the difference between ships and droids in the movies and in 4000 BBY is any indication).

Now, T is extremely large, on the order of tens of millenia, possibly as much as a few hundred millenia. But the ratio β/α is so large that t still winds up being in the high century range.

Bull. First off, α and β have dimension of inverse time, so neither have values of decades, millenia or even seconds — in order for you to learn faster by copying than discovery, it must be the case that α > β. Secondly, the model is only valid while knowledge growth is exponential. The problem is, that a knowledge growth that is tapering off (as it seems to have done during the last 4000 years) is not exponential knowledge growth, and your calculation of β/α does not apply.

Do you expect me to believe that the Star Wars sentients (and particularly SW humans) are intrinsically stupid or uncurious? No. Their technological development has periods of growth and leveling off. If the galaxy has spent 10,000 years in explosive knolwedge growth (or that much by equivalent measure) and β/α = .1, it will take the Federation 1000 years to catch up in knowledge; if it's 25,000 years, the Federation will catch up in 2500 years — a linear relationship.

Again, for me the critical parameter is α, and it's the value of α, NOT the value of t, that I'm trying to gauge by reference to historical cases of societies that tried to rapidly gear up their tech base to match that of far more advanced foreign nations.

Your own historical references places that ratio β/α closer to .1 (decades over centuries).

So I'm fairly confident that the Trek invention of transporters was a case of "primitives got lucky," unlikely as that may be a priori.

You never see a primitive society with an advanced device, unless they didn't build it themselves. This argument is pure bullshit.

I'd imagine that smugglers would love to be able to beam their cargo to and from a drop-off point without having to land.

Contingent on there being enough transporters for them to be easily availible. If transporters don't have legitimate use, no smuggler is going to have one. Period.

First responders to a disaster scene might well be willing to take the risk of teleportation if it got them to an accident in seconds rather than minutes.

Contingent on the emergency equipment to be transported can be transported and still function when it arrives. It's also contingent on most races can physically survive the way ST transports things, or have no religious objection to it. Another possibility, since we know that transporters are known to cause mental disturbances in some humans (transporter psychosis), it may be a safety issue with some prevalent aliens. (This last possiblity may lead to a religeous objection — transporters swallow your soul!)

[Thraxis]

A quick rebuttal to add in for anyone who thinks SW tech hasn't changed much in the last 4000 years:
KotOR versus BDZ

In the game Knights of the Old Republic (which is C Canon), Darth Malak bombards the planet of Taris. Based on the directed energy nature, and superior construction materials of SW, it could be guessed that these blasts are likely in the kiloton or low megaton range. Each shot of the broadside weapon emplacements tears apart the huge hundred-meter wide, kilometer+ tall buildings it hits. The scene is quite impressive, but consider this.

As of the Galactic Civil War, the Empire has an operation called a Base Delta Zero. Three ISD's (same capital ship scale as the KotOR one) pound a planet with orbital bombardment, and reduce the entire surface to molten slag within less than an hour.

Yes, the burning of Taris was impressive, but it wouldn't seem to indicate a firepower capable of actually slagging the planets surface, unlike a uncommon, yet practiced, terror technique used by the Empire.