Headscratchers / Star Trek: Voyager - Geography

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Voyager’s Location Throughout the Series:

Take Your Foot Off the Brake, Stupid!

70,000LY takes SEVENTY YEARS to get HOME?? Why it took a whole generation (whether writer error, or bad math on the part of the crew) always bothered me. 70 years to get home would mean that Voyager is strolling along at only 1000LY/year. Are they sight-seeing? Are they trying to "not wake the neighbors"? Are their engines irreparably damaged or something?

In the TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before", the Enterprise is propelled 2,700,000 LY from Earth (into the M33 galaxy), and La Forge states that "at maximum warp, it will take over...300 years, to get home"! With the Enterprise maximum warp velocity being Warp 9.6-9.8, that equates to 9,000LY/year.

Then, in "Q-Who", Data says that the Enterprise is thrown 7000LY from the nearest Starbase, and that it would take 2.5-2.6 years to get there at maximum warp. That gives the Enterprise a speed of 2700LY/year. Much slower, but still respectable.

Voyager is only 70,000LY from Earth, and is faster (Maximum Warp = 9.975) than the Enterprise. When you divide 9k LY/year (the first Ent-D speed) into 70k LY, you get 7.8. Voyager should take around 8 years to get home, not 70.

Even more frustrating, when you divide 2700 LY/year (the second Ent-D speed) into 70k LY, you get 26 years. Twenty-six years for Voyager to get home, not 70.

Even if they set "It's gonna take 'X' years to get home (whether 8 or 26), and not 70, that would make for some compelling drama and a healthy "Oh, shit..." moment. 70 years is simply ludicrous.

• You can't red-line an engine that long without completely breaking it. In TNG: "The Chase," Picard gives the following log entry: "Captain's log, stardate 46735.2. Our frequent use of high warp over the last few days has overextended the propulsion systems. We are finishing minor repairs before returning to Federation territory." That's just a few days of Enterprise traveling at near-maximum warp before they needed to stop for maintenance—and the Galaxy-class was actually built to handle long-range, multi-year missions. The people who designed Voyager's Intrepid-class never dreamed that one would have to cross 70,000 light years on its own without regular support, maintenance, and resupply. For a ship that's so far out of its element, the name of the game for Voyager is "efficiency:" operating in a way that gets the most out of their limited resources. That means flying home at Voyager's cruising speed, warp factor 6, instead their unsustainable maximum speed. To put it another way: Slow and steady wins the race, because the guy who had the pedal-to-the-metal ran out of gas and melted his warp core before he made it half way.
• Actually, if Voyager is averaging 1000 LY/year (which is what it would take to get them home in 70 years), that means that they're doing an average speed of warp 8, which is pretty fast. But remember: that's "average," meaning that in order to compensate for them stopping for fuel, supplies, and whatever else they might wanna do, they'd probably have to be sustaining warp 9 for significant periods. That's pretty damn good for a ship that maxes out at 9.975—which, as previously stated, will kill the engine if they go that fast for too long. Remember that to get home, Voyager is running a marathon, not a sprint.
• At the end of "Caretaker," Janeway's log says, "Even at maximum speeds, it would take seventy five years to reach the Federation..." Emphasis on the "even at maximum speeds." This figure was never meant to be a practical figure, but an optimal one.
  • I assumed that meant the maximum they could reasonably sustain. There's no reason to do the math on something that the ship isn't capable of. It's still idealized because they're not actually going to shoot straight through the galaxy without ever stopping, but they're calculating based on the ship being able to run the distance.
    • If that was the writer's intention, that's a very esoteric way of stating it. At the very least, most of the show treats the issue of getting home as a speed issue, and not an engine-durabilty issue. If ten extra minutes on max or near-max speed could mean another 10 or even 5 years off their journey, you'd think it would come up more often.
• Yeah, it's a Continuity Snarl/math failure like Seven of Nine's backstory and the shuttles/photon torpedoes, no way around it. Back in the late 90's, there was no Star Trek Wiki, so figuring out exactly how fast each warp is would require going through every single one of hundreds of episodes practically line-by-line, and then doing the calculations.
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual was published in 1991; the work was already done. All the writers had to do was care.
    • The Star Trek Encyclopedia—actually thoroughly researched and written by long-time production staff members who frequently worked on the Voyager set, and were therefore available to the writers—contained a convenient table that showed the time it would take to travel across various distances at different warp velocities. It was published in 1994.
  • Voyager is not the only series giving the 1000 light years equal one year at warp 9. Same had been said in dialogue in Deep Space Nine and Next Generation. This probably contradicts other usages when writers just didn't care/remember/knew better, but is the most common amount. The 300 years mentioned in "Where No One Has Gone Before" is by far the exception, not the rule. EDIT: I actually re-watched the episode "The Price" (s3e8) to be sure and indeed, is mentioned by Picard himself that traveling to the Delta Quadrant withouth a wormhole takes 80 years. So again, the speed was set in 1000 ly=1 year at warp 9 at some point of TNG.
  • With no disrespect but the fact that this is even ask shows an extreme way of Trek lore cherry picking. Not only, as mentioned before, DS9 also mentions constantly that the Bajoran wormhole saves some 80 years of travel to the Gamma Quadrant but even in the classic TOS era, episode "By Any Other Name" mentions how traveling to the Andromeda Galaxy would take thousands of years because is located at 3 million light years from us, but the Kelvan technology allows for only some 300 years. A technology that Starfleet and non other known race of the Milky Way possess. If the two cherry picked examples mentioned above from TNG were to be taken as the rule then intergalactic travel in the Star Trek universe would be piece of cake, traveling at least to Andromeda would only take a few centuries (and as Vulcans, Klingons and other races do live for hundreds of years it would not represent such a problem). Bottom line is, those two TNG examples are by far the exception and not the rule indeed.

Distances Home

• Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant, correct? If I remember correctly, the Gamma Quadrant - home to the Bajoran Wormhole - was right next to it. So, why in the hell couldn't they set a course for the wormhole? Again, if I recall correctly, Voyager was lost in the Badlands hunting down Maquis, after Deep Space 9 was given back to the Bajorans with Sisko in charge and the Wormhole was discovered. Honestly, they could set a course for the Alpha Quadrant and Earth, but they couldn't set a course for the Gamma Quadrant and its terminal for the wormhole?
  • Two reasons. First, by the time Voyager embarked, Starfleet knew that the Dominion controlled large parts of the Gamma Quadrant and didn't like them very much. Better to take the long way than to get blown up taking the short way. Second, without seeing a map, we don't know if it would actually have been faster that way. I don't think there's a canonical map of the Trek galaxy, but there are plenty of ways for a point in the Delta Quadrant to be closer to Earth than to a point in the Gamma Quadrant.
  • I can't imagine going through Borg space seemed like a better idea than Dominion space, especially since if I recall correctly, the war with the Dominion had not started yet.
    • Generally speaking, Borg space might have been better even in wartime. Borg (at least at one point) had a convenient tendency to ignore you if you mind your own business. Jem'Hadar adhere to no such policy.
    • Sci-fi writers may have no sense of scale, but their critics rarely fare any better.... space is big.
    • Because Voyager doesn't know where Borg Space is. No one does at that point. When they first encountered Borg Space, the only reason they knew they were anywhere near it in the first place was because they found a Borg corpse shortly before that. The Delta Quadrant is a huge place. The only reason they entered Borg Space is because the writers said so (and because the fans wanted it).
  • Imagine an isosceles triangle superimposed on a dinner plate. Point A is about halfway along a radius - that is where the Federation, Romulan Empire and Klingon Empire meet. The Alpha Quadrant terminal of the Bajoran Wormhole is roughly a finger-width closer to the centre, and the same distance to one side. Point B is about three quarters towards the rim along a radius on the other side of the plate - this is the Gamma quadrant terminal of the Bajoran Wormhole, 70,000 LY from point A. Point C is also 70,000 LY from point A, but it is only two-thirds towards the rim along a radius - this is where Voyager ended up in the Delta quadrant. Point B is, however, 90,000 LY away.
    • Math stuff is hard for me, so forgive me if I don't follow. I also realized that the question could also be turned to why they couldn't set a course for the Beta Quadrant, which was also right next to the Delta Quadrant. In fact, it seems like the course to "home" meant "Earth", and not any of the nearest Federation or allied space stations in any of the other quadrants. Yes, most of the crew was human, and getting to Earth would put them smack-dab at Starfleet Headquarters, but one would think the more logical choice would be to set a course for the nearest bit of friendly territory, first.
    • Okay, different metaphor: picture a clock face. Voyager is stuck at 2:00, and is trying to get home to 6:00. If the Wormhole is at, say, 9:45, then it's quicker to go straight home.
    • Basically, quadrants are HUGE. Each quadrant is a quarter of the galaxy. The entirety of the original series, Next Generation, and Enterprise are spent in the Alpha quadrant (and a sliver of Beta Quadrant), and they still haven't explored the entire Alpha Quadrant. Even if the Gamma quadrant is closer (and I'm not sure it is, all the quadrants are "right next to" each other seeing as there are only four of them), it wouldn't be a big enough difference to merit all the other problems trying to find the other side of the wormhole would cause.
    • Also note that the border between the Alpha and Beta quadrants is a line that passes through Earth. It would have been almost exactly as accurate to say their destination was the Beta quadrant, but that would have been less clear. Likewise, in Deep Space Nine, they were constantly obsessing over defending the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion, despite the entirety of Romulan and Klingon territory lying within the Beta Quadrant. Although, to be fair, the Dominion would have to conquer most of the Alpha Quadrant before they'd be able to get around to invading the Beta Quadrant.
    • The idea that the border between the Quadrants passes through Earth is one that appears on some of the semi-official map products, but really isn't supported by the show itself very well. It's as if the graphics department and the writing department failed to share notes.
    • I had to look into this, and it seems you're right, that idea seems to have originated in the non-canon Star Trek Encyclopedia. There was, however, a graphic on a PADD used in Star Trek: Insurrection that supports it. The image is impossible to make out on-screen—in fact, I have no idea where in the film it even appeared—but you could make the argument that it holds some canon weight. On the other hand, you could also write it off as one of the many inside jokes that we're not meant to see or take seriously.
    • Everything I've seen, and that has been suggested about where Voyager landed implies that the ship landed on the EXTREME far end of the Delta Quadrant, to the point where they would have to cross the ENTIRE thing to get to the closest point of any other Quadrant, Alpha, Beta or Gamma. Furthermore, from what was said, it seems that the Bajoran Wormhole was located on the far end of the Gamma Quadrant from Earth. In other words, the Bajoran wormhole and Voyager were on opposite ends of the galaxy, to the point where Voyager would have to travel not just through the entire Delta quadrant, but the entire Gamma Quadrant as well, just to get to the wormhole. So, they'd be traveling twice the distance as they would to get to Earth. Setting course for the Alpha Quadrant is faster.
    • Here's a map for you◊. For reference, Voyager got planted in the Delta quadrant by the Caretaker somewhere in or pretty damn close to Kazon space (top right). The Gamma Quadrant end of the wormhole is likewise either in or pretty damn close to Dominion space (middle of top left square. The Alpha Quadrant end of the wormhole is next to Bajor, which for the purposes of this map is just on the edge of Cardassian space (as the Cardassians had just withdrawn at the start of Deep Space Nine) and thats on the right of the bottom left square. Voyager left from Deep Space Nine in the pilot episode (of Voyager) sometime after the wormhole had been discovered so they knew it existed and likely had some stellar cartography data in their computers about where it ends up. Whichever way you look at it, it would have been faster to go catch a wormhole home.
    • Besides, the wormhole was only opened up recently, and the possibility of cross-quadrant conflict can't have escaped anyone's notice. Sealing the wormhole again would be a valid tactic for whichever quadrant seemed to be losing such a conflict, so even if its Gamma end was nearer than Earth, who's to say it'd still be open when Voyager finally arrived? At least (barring certain movie-plots) they could be reasonably sure the Earth wasn't going anywhere in the meantime.
    • It was stated in episode 6 of Deep Space 9 that the wormhole opens 90,000 light years away; Voyager was transported 75,000 light years away - they would still have to travel 15,000 light years in the wrong direction to track down a single point in the largely unexplored Gamma Quadrant. Not only that but keep in mind that the Bajoran Wormhole is also invisible to both sensors and the MK-1 Eyeball unless you are standing directly in front of it and suddenly you start to realize why Janeway decided to take the direct route home. It must also be said that given how badly this show neutered the Borg that Voyager staying the hell away from the Dominion was one of the best real world choices in Star Trek history.
    • I once saw a map of where Voyager was pulled into the Delta Quadrant and where the wormhole is. The wormhole is much closer than home but it's still roughly a 30 year journey to get there. I guess the crew must have reasoned the risk of the Borg was better than the certainty of the Dominion. But as the crew didn't know that they'd get help to cut decades off here and there it does seem stupid to start a journey longer than your lifetime.
    • According to Memory Alpha both Voyagers Launch and first contact with the Dominion both occurred at the beginning of 2371. The Federation knew the Dominion were a threat given how they effortlessly destroyed a Galaxy Class starship but honestly there is nothing that says they were a bigger threat than the Borg in a traditional sense until the Cardassians allied with them. Until then, their threat came from how they infiltrated the upper chambers of the Alpha Quadrants great powers using their shapeshifting. Realistically, acting upon a 2371 understanding of how powerful the Dominion were and given how the Borg were still in their state of not yet suffering massive Villain Decay the Collective would (or rather should) have seemed like a ridiculous option. Its a tired meme but I think we can blame Janeway's notorious split personalities for this decision. I will however, also be very generous and say that former science officer Janeway, genius Tuvok, the supposed prodigy Harry Kim and the entire compliment of science staff aboard ship completely forgot about one of the greatest stellar discoveries of all time given how its the only known stable wormhole to exist.
    • Stable as of 2371. The wormhole had only been a reliable travel route for a few years, and the physics that kept it that way were pretty esoteric and bizarre, even by the standards of Federation science. It's possible that the Voyager crew didn't trust it to still be there after 30 years; at least, not enough to risk a detour that would've left them more like 150 years from home, give or take, if they'd arrived at its Gamma access point only to discover it'd collapsed years ago when the Prophets threw a hissy-fit or whatever.
  • I'm not convinced this needs any explanation other than the simplest: it was farther. As has been pointed out on this page, it's quite mathematically possible for Voyager's original position in the DQ to be farther from the Bajoran Wormhole than from the Federation, so that's that.
    • Right. Picture this analogy: there are four states in the USA that meet at a single point. Consider that point as the center of the galaxy, so the states match the quadrants: Alpha=Arizona, Beta=New Mexico, Delta=Colorado, Gamma=Utah. Earth is Duncan, Arizona, on the border between Arizona and New Mexico, toward the southern end, surrounded by a small area representing the Federation and explored space. DS9 is a bit northwest of there, maybe Clifton, Arizona. Voyager ended up in northern Colorado, maybe around Fort Collins. We don't know where the other end of the wormhole is, but if it's 90,000 light-years away, it has to be in the far northwest corner of Utah. Not only might that have been further away, but heading that direction would have meant traveling on the outer edge of the galaxy, where there would be large gaps between stars and inhabited planets where they could get supplies.
    • This raises another problem. At some point they'd either have to cross the galactic core (basically a death sentence according to TNG) or go around it, gaining many light years.
    • I sort of assume such navigational challenges are factored into the original time home given. Wouldn't be much of an estimate otherwise.
• Okay, Voyager's journey home consisted largely of a series of large leaps. First leap: Projected across Borg space by Kes as she departed. Time savings: 10 years. Second leap: Quantum Slipstream drive. Time savings: 10 years. Third leap: Stolen transwarp coil. Time savings: 15 years. So, before making the final leap back to the Alpha Quadrant, they'd saved about 35 years' travel, or a little more than half. Given this, why do they still speak of being in the Delta Quadrant? Shouldn't they be in the Beta Quadrant by then?
  • There's a discussion of "The Beta Quadrant Taboo" here. It's obvious that the writers didn't want to confuse the audience with too much terminology, because Viewers Are Moron. It's funny that official artwork and ancillary materials like to place the Romulans and Klingons in the Beta Quadrant (to say nothing of a chunk of the Federation), and yet dialogue refers to them as "Alpha Quadrant powers" again and again, notably within DS9's war arc.
    • On the other hand, DS9 gave a quite clear indication that the opinion was that the "important" races/peoples - the Federation/Humans/Vulcans/Klingons etc felt that they were "here" therefore "here" is the alpha quadrant. Imagine the typical image you think of for the quadrants, the one that goes through earth on the boundary of alpha and beta, and turn that a few degrees. really the alpha Quadrant is the area of space these guys were, rather than the fact that they happened to live in the alpha quadrant.
  • It is probable that more than half of the distance before reaching the Alpha Quadrant was in the Delta Quadrant — Voyager would have moved roughly in the direction of the galactic core (they arrived somewhere in the 'northeast' and were going 'southwest'), and the closer you get to the intersection point (which is the galactic core), the shorter you have to cross between one Quadrant and the next.
  • Shortly before the final episode, it's mentioned that Voyager is getting closer to the Beta Quadrant. If not for that Transwarp Hub, they probably would have flown through a significant portion of it before reaching The Federation.
    • I can't seem to find such a quote: http://scriptsearch.dxdy.name/?page=results&query=(%7Bline%7C%22beta%20quadrant%22,%7D).
• Here's a related question: how about Cythereans? They reside near the galactic core and have already sent one Starfleet ship home 30 000 lightyears from there in relatively short order (in "The Nth Degree") — why not try them again?
  • Given just how similar they are both geographically and physically, it is a commonly accepted theory that God from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is of the same race. Not that such things have stopped Janeway in the past, but accidentally allowing one of these beings to merge with Voyager is pause for thought at least.
• Alright, so, Star Trek Online answers this, but it will take a bit so buckle in. The Delta Quadrant is not adjacent to the Gamma Quadrant, it's adjacent to the Alpha Quadrant. Most of the primary players of Star Trek are not in the Alpha Quadrant but the Beta Quadrant: Earth, Vulcan, Qo'Nos, Romulus, etc. While this would seem to shoot holes in several things from DS9 and Voyager, it works, because the Alpha Quadrant is where Bajor (and thus DS9 and the Wormhole) are. So, Gamma Quadrant people referring to those from the other side of the Wormhole as Alpha Quadrant natives works, as does Voyager's desire to get back to the Alpha Quadrant, because even if it's not Federation space, it is more of a known quantity than the Gamma Quadrant would be even if it were close by, and contains various species (Ferengi, Cardassians) that even if they're not allies could probably be counted on to not be innately hostile (as far as they knew at the time). The issue with the long travel time was that they were basically on the far ass-end of the Delta Quadrant, and would have to traverse most of the whole damn thing to get to the Alpha Quadrant, but it was still closer than going to the Gamma Quadrant. Now, this does likely shoot holes in some of the other maps and whatnot that have been put forth through the years and cited, but since STO is the only current entry in the franchise that actually has a travel-able map, I'd say go with it.
  • I mean that's quite clearly nonsense from STO and should be rightfully ignored. Ultimately, the reason that makes most sense in universe is that it was too far out of their way with too high a risk. Lets say you travel to the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran wormhole. Maybe you cut 10-15 years off the 70 year estimate to get back to the Federation, but you find it has either collapsed or so heavily hiarded by the Jem Hadar that you're never getting through, so you're screwed and then have to travel maybe another 40-50 years to get home, increasing your overal trip by decades. It's just no worth it. If it had been something like 18 months away it would have been worth a try but it wasnt.

Neelix's Departure

• I consider myself a fairly forgiving Trekkie; I slogged through the early seasons of both VOY and TNG, trusting that my patience would pay off. It certainly did with TNG and mostly did with VOY, but the one thing in later seasons that seriously grinds my gears (OTHER than Chakotay/Seven, that is) is the presence of the distant Talaxian settlement in "Homestead". At that point the Voyager crew was 30,000 light-years from Federation space, while Kazon Space — where, I assume, Talax is located — was 75,000 light-years from the Federation. At that point, they were closer to Earth than they were to the Talaxian homeworld, how did the titular Homestead get there? Were they fumbled with by the Caretaker? Generation ships? Then how come some of them remember Talax?
  • You think the main characters are the only ones that ever encounter negative space wedgies that fling them across space?
  • Bizarrely, the season six episode "The Voyager Conspiracy" brings up casually that they'd recently encountered a freighter that had supplies from a former Talaxian colony. That episode explicitly places Voyager a little past the halfway point of 70,000 light years from Federation space. So... It ends up being a consistent inconsistency, I guess?
  • We don't know for how long have Talaxians know space travel, they could have been a warp-capable civilization for hundreds of years and spread all over the Quadrant. The Federation is 8000 light years of size and only has 200 years.
  • Possible explanation based on the episode "Dragon's Teeth," we know that roughly a millennia prior, the Vaadwaur had traveled from their corner of the Delta Quadrant far enough to be known by the Talaxians. Theoretically, a group of Talaxians could have used the subspace corridors they used to get to Talaxian space to travel to the Vaadwaur's side of the quadrant.

Voyager travel time

• Okay, basic voyager premise: Voyager has been stranded 70000 light years from home, meaning they'll have to travel 70 years to get back to Earth. However, doesn't that seem way too long? 70000 light years in 70 years means that the ship is only going 2.7 light years per day on average. That seems way slower than ships go over on the other shows, where Earth seems to be less than a week travel time removed from every single other major power.
  • In TNG's "Where No One Has Gone Before," they're initially stranded 2 700 000 light years away. Geordi calculates that at maximum warp, it would take over 300 years to get home. That works out to about 24.6 light years per day. Now, if you're inclined to be generous, you could say that Geordi's cursory estimate is a theoretical figure rather than a practical one (like if you could maintain maximum warp night and day, no need to stop for maintenance, supplies, etc. — although Janeway's figure of 75 years "even at maximum speeds" implies that so is her figure). But the discrepancy is notable.
    • One thing to remember is that Enterprise has a huge advantage over Voyager, in that Galaxy-class starships are actually designed for long-duration, multiyear deep space missions. Voyager is faster than Enterprise, but Enterprise's endurance puts Voyager to shame by comparison. Enterprise can probably cruise for much longer durations than Voyager, and wouldn't have to stop to scavenge for food and supplies nearly as often. A Galaxy-class' larger crew, stronger defenses, and industrial replicators likely also means that they wouldn't have to stop to make major repairs as frequently as Voyager. Taking that into account doesn't make up for the whole discrepancy, but everything else being equal, Enterprise could have shaved a few years off of Voyager's estimated total travel time if she'd found herself in the same position.
    • A few years, sure, but a tenfold difference? Just seems like inconsistent writing.
    • We know the TNG writers completely changed the TOS warp scale - but do we know when and how many edits it went through? Because this episode is very early season 1, I wonder if Early-Installment Weirdness can count for this discrepancy?
    • I think that "recalibration" was simple a matter of numbers, as in the writers now were instructed not to give Geordi lines like "Captain, we're passing warp ten!" It doesn't necessarily mean that ships can suddenly go faster or slower — just a standardization of the language for describing those speeds.
  • Subspace messages present a similar problem. The next scene of "Where No One Has Gone Before," Data says that a message has been sent to Starfleet and it should arrive in "fifty-one years, ten months nine weeks, sixteen days." By that figure, subspace messages should travel more than 50 000 light years in a year, so the Federation should have heard about Voyager's position in the DQ some time in season 2.
  • I dunno about subspace messages, but as for Voyager herself, read the above discussion under "Take you foot off the brake, stupid!" Just because they can get home in less time at maximum warp doesn't mean that they can actually maintain that speed for any significant length of time. If they try to get home too fast, they risk damaging their warp drive en route, and they can't exactly put in for repairs at the nearest friendly starbase.
    • Even taking all that into consideration, 70 years still honestly feels a bit too long. But ship speeds in Star Trek is a matter of maddening inconsistency, no matter how you look at it.
  • One thing to remember about Federation technology is that it is actually very inefficient, sometimes bordering on the ridiculous. How often does this ship malfunction and break down for little to no reason? How much deuterium must Voyager drink for them to run out of something so plentiful so often? How often are its sensors and communicators stopped by all manner of interference? How many infections has their organic computer system suffered? Honestly it really wouldn't surprise me if this warp 9.975 starship stopped being able to reach anywhere near that speed very early on. To my knowledge, I'm not even sure if we ever hear Janeway or Paris use that exact measurement when referring to maximum warp, only the female Betazoid helmsman in Caretaker whilst talking about the ship's capabilities has it ever actually been said on-screen.
    • Janeway also gives the 9.975 figure in "Relativity"—but due to a Timey-Wimey Ball, she was referring to a Voyager that was in pristine condition before she ever left dry dock. More to your point, however, a ship's stated maximum warp speed seems to be more theoretical than practical. Throughout the franchise, it's shown that when a starship approaches its "maximum sustainable" warp velocity, it starts to tear itself apart (which sort of calls into question what, exactly, Starfleet thinks the word "sustainable" means). In fact in "The Swarm," there's serious doubt thatVoyager can maintain warp factor 9.75—which, thanks to the TNG-era's weird warp scale, is significantly slower than it sounds relative to then ship's stated maximum speed of warp 9.975—for 12 hours.
    • Any technology where you plan on operating at 10% is something more than inefficient. Like imagine if you were driving across the country, you have two drivers and are prepared to drive night and day and think you could do it in about 48 hours... except because your vehicle is so prone to breaking down, a realistic estimate is actually 20 days. And this is apparently a state of the art vehicle you're driving...
    • This analysis is more like saying "My car has a maximum top speed of 120 mph, and Los Angeles is 2,400 miles from New York, therefore I can drive there in 20 hours." Except that you may have to stop to fill up with gas or change a tire, you can't always drive in a perfectly straight line (more of an issue on land than in space, but Voyager does have occasional detours), and you won't be going flat-out 120mph the entire way.
    • Who said otherwise, exactly? I think we are aware that a car and a starship alike cannot operate at its maximum potential constantly (and that anyone who estimates driving time by the geographical distance between places on a map is so stupid they ought to have their license revoked). However, I think we can also agree that, unless you are able to spend the vast majority of your time in transit at near the fastest permissible and safe velocity, then you're not trying very hard to get where you're going in a hurry. You're sightseeing. And it's hard to justify Voyager's estimates home unless they're outright planning on doing a whole lot of sightseeing.
    • I'm pretty sure that's a complaint that various Voyager crew members actually did make on a few occasions. Seska even said that a Cardassian ship would have made it home by that point in the series—though she's probably exaggerating. The Maquis crew members especially seemed frustrated by Voyager's leisurely pace. Torres lead a borderline mutiny the first time they came across a piece of technology that might have gotten them home faster.
    • Seska said that in reference that a Cardassian ship would have killed the Caretaker, give technology to the Kazons in exchange for be left alone and other ethically questionable actions, not the speed.
  • In an episode of TNG were what was thought to be a stable wormhole was found connecting to the Delta Quadrant is was said that it would save 60 years of travel at warp 9 because it connected with a part of space 60.000 light years away, similarly in DS9 is constantly said that the Bajoran wormhole saves 90 years of travel to the Gamma Quadrant. So, yes, at some point between TOS and the middle seasons of TNG the maximum speed of warp was established to be roughly 1 year per 1000 light years. Thus, yes, the Voyager is traveling at maximum speed, and yes, it would take 75 years were they are not counting stops, repairs, detours and similar.

Why not use the Bajoran wormhole?

• By the beginning of Voyager, they already know that there's a stable wormhole in the Gamma Quadrant that would take them home; it's almost guaranteed to be closer to Voyager's location in the Delta Quadrant than a straight line drawn to Earth would be and at this point they've never heard of the Dominion. Yet the possibility of making a bee-line for this potential shortcut is never raised
  • It wouldn't be any closer and they'd still have to cross a large portion of the Delta Quadrant just to get to the equally unexplored Gamma Quadrant. And by that point they were vaguely aware of the Dominion so they knew there was a hostile force waiting for them in the Gamma Quadrant.
  • There is no way to know the exact locations between Voyager, Earth, and the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran Wormhole. It's possible that it could be even farther from Voyager than Earth. Granted they could have just thrown it away in a few lines ("Could we head for the Bajoran Wormhole instead?" "No, it's actually farther away from us than Earth, and there's no way to know if it'll still be stable by the time we get there." "Oh, okay.")
  • In point of fact - Voyager launched from DS9 after the incident with the Dominion mounting a suicide run against the Galaxy-class U.S.S. Odyssey as of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2 finale - they had to have known about the dangers of the Dominion in the area.
  • Plus, keep in mind that when Voyager left DS9 the Federation would have been exploring the Gamma Quadrant for just under two years, and there was clearly a lot more of it to explore if they hadn't directly encountered the Dominion until recently. At best, Voyager would have had a general knowledge of where the Gamma end of the wormhole was located, which wouldn't be easy for them to navigate to, and that's before they start worrying that something might happen to the wormhole before they get there; best to set course for a known target like Earth and take advantage of any opportunities along the way than spend potentially decades going in the wrong direction and then having to take another long trip back to Earth if they find that something's gone wrong by the time they get there.

General:

Starfleet education?

Poor dumb Harry. He meets a girl in Prime Factors and they transport to a new location, then he shows his stupidity.

• "Why's it so much cooler here?"
  • You're in a different climate…
• ''Why's the sun coming up? It was evening where we left."
  • You're in a different time zone…

Earth still has instantaneous planet-wide transport technology, right?

• Sure, but she hadn't indicated that this was going to be a long jump away. Even on Earth, with its planet transportation network, they usually still acknowledge the distance in those terms. They don't jaunt off across the globe just to get away from their worries for a little while, to say nothing of a casual jump across star systems. The girl he was with said that she came to this place frequently, which, considering his frame of reference, meant that he would have assumed that they'd traveled to like some out of the way overlook of the city they'd just been in, not another planet some forty thousand light years away.