This week have been trying to overlay Star Trek maps over my real map of the Milky Way. There are many Star Trek maps out there but it looks like the ones that try hardest to tie the Star Trek story lines to real stars reveal that the scale is about 150 parsecs.

So fairly small. The Federation, Romulan Empire, Klingon Empire, Ferengi Alliance, Tholian Assembly, Breen Confederacy and so on all fit into the Local Bubble and environs.

I find that a little surprising. I had thought that Kirk and Picard were zipping all over the galaxy, but no, not usually. They rarely left the immediate neighbourhood. Even the Pleiades are at the edge of the main Star Trek story lines.

Achernar, the closest luminous star, is in the midst of the Romulan Empire. Not even the Federation.

This creates a bit of context for Captain Janeway and Voyager. Imagine if the Federation had been gradually exploring the west coast of North America in small sailboats and some God-like figure teleported one of these to Hawaii and they had to get home. Terrifying.

I guess my point is that in the history of galactic exploration, Star Trek is really set at the beginning. They finally had the tools to travel around, and had made a few local alliances and enemies. But really had barely got started.