jT's E2 Series

[Alelou]

I'm not sure trees would be worth the space in a hydroponic garden, but this is 200 years from now, so maybe they've bred peaches that grow on viney type things that work out well indoors. You never know. If they really are marooned in space as in E2 they'd need to either expand their hydroponic capabilities or find new sources of supplies.

You could probably grow plants from the tea, unless it's been roasted -- and I believe it's usually just dried -- since the flowers have the seeds in them. You could grow your own cilantro from a spice jar of coriander (though since it came from a variety bred to go to seed, it will bolt quickly). We forget sometimes that many of the spices we use are actually seeds or ground-up seeds, and the whole ones are often still viable. You can sow a dried kidney bean from a bag and it will sprout. The longer I garden, the more likely I am to take something out of my kitchen and try planting it, especially things like sprouting garlic cloves or green onion stubs. Heck, if you don't want to buy basil at the garden center, you can probably root a cutting from some you bought in the store to cook with. (And as I've learned by virtue of dropping seedlings and breaking their stems, it's also quite easy to root tomatoes and peppers.)

[WarpGirl]

Jeeze you sound like my Grammy Alelou she can grow anything. But still space would be an issue at somepoint. They should have made Enterprise bigger. For the life of me I could never figure the schematics of that ship. And I've looked at all of the diagrams. It just never made sense they had such a small crew.

[honeybee]

Every E2 story I've read (and the one I wrote) does mention reconfiguring the ship for families and children and the long hall - including JT's story. And they would have known they needed replacement crew - and I remember pondering the ethics of Archer ordering people to reproduce. I think I got around it by saying that crew started reproducing on their own.

In JT's fic, Lorien and his sibling are most certainly not the first children born/created on the ship - and the crew has seemed to have been able to do well with small children. It's when they become teenagers that the ship starts to feel really small.

Domestic honeybees are the safest/least inclined to sting of all pollinators - and I would think that the garden would be pretty well sealed off - and so a person would be able to avoid the garden. I'm also hoping that by this time - allergies won't be so deadly. Having a hive, especially if the crew was stuck out in space long term, would be very helpful. They might have sugar cane in the garden but that seems doubtful - so honey would become the best sweeter, beeswax makes excellent candles and royal jelly has all sorts of medicinal purposes.

You could probably grow plants from the tea,

In Twilight, I had Trip switching from tea to coffee after they ran out of coffee because tea plants were being grown in the garden. A tough adjustment.


One of the fun parts of writing an E2 fic is imagining the changes that would have to occur on the ship given the situation.

[Aquarius]

I'm not sure trees would be worth the space in a hydroponic garden, but this is 200 years from now, so maybe they've bred peaches that grow on viney type things that work out well indoors. You never know. If they really are marooned in space as in E2 they'd need to either expand their hydroponic capabilities or find new sources of supplies.

You could probably grow plants from the tea, unless it's been roasted -- and I believe it's usually just dried -- since the flowers have the seeds in them. You could grow your own cilantro from a spice jar of coriander (though since it came from a variety bred to go to seed, it will bolt quickly). We forget sometimes that many of the spices we use are actually seeds or ground-up seeds, and the whole ones are often still viable. You can sow a dried kidney bean from a bag and it will sprout. The longer I garden, the more likely I am to take something out of my kitchen and try planting it, especially things like sprouting garlic cloves or green onion stubs. Heck, if you don't want to buy basil at the garden center, you can probably root a cutting from some you bought in the store to cook with. (And as I've learned by virtue of dropping seedlings and breaking their stems, it's also quite easy to root tomatoes and peppers.)

Sometimes dwarf varieties of plants are engineered. Regular trees would be ridiculous on a starship, but something smaller and more manageable would be doable. They do it all the time now. Even if they didn't already have it, someone good at genetic splicing would just need a peach pit and whatever else that grew small to merge it with. I'm sure that once exiled, they figured out a lot of stuff.

[WarpGirl]

Here's another logistical question, how would they be able to redesign the ship? They can't land on a planet, and what are the odds there were a lot of space stations around. I wish they had gotten some of the practical stuff explained.

[Alelou]

Well, we see right in the episode that they have traded with other species and used various alien parts to reinforce the exterior, so we can assume they could do the same internally. Plus Trip has mentioned having the ability to fabricate some stuff in Engineering.

In 100 years, we can assume they set up trading alliances, found suppliers, and maybe even found the odd planet at which to do stuff like mine and process some ore into metal if they had to (though I would think they'd prefer to trade for that sort of thing).

I do think it doesn't necessarily make sense that they never established a base camp anywhere planet-side. If nothing else they could have gone back to that planet with the Skagarans and stayed on the other side of it, or something. (No need to worry about polluting THAT culture, anyway.) And when you think about it, those people might have represented all that was left of mankind besides the crew.

[justTripn]

In Breaking the Ice Archer tells the students in that Q and A , "We have a hydroponic greenhouse onboard where we grow fruits and vegetables, and we can also replicate certain foods with our protein resequencer."

Thank you! for this. It would be impossible to all this straight without an Enterprise fan community. In the first chapter of Heresy, there is a big basketball tournament. Sometime after I had written that, I was shocked by a scene in one of the episodes with the crew playing some version of basketball. (I was watching my DVDs). But is was some futuristic version of basket ball with all kinds of lights flashing on the floor and at the hoop. I had had no recollection of this scene and worried it might contradict something I had written, so I hurried right along. I wouldn't mind taking a look at it now. Does anyone remember this scene. What episode was it from? It might be a good source of avatars.

Oh, as for where they would put the children: I imagined the kids living with the parents until they are teenagers. I mentioned curtains over the beds (like on Battlestar Galactica) and sliding room dividers (which I imagined to be rather flimsy). In the big cities of China, families lived like that in one room. In Japan today, because of the small houses, many married people take off to "love hotels" to do what they need to do. So my backstory is that the parents manage in some way like that. I did imply that privacy was a problem with Lorian deciding to appropriate an access tube for himself that had been public space. The 17 year old teenagers, I had rooming together like 4 to a room.

Hopeful Romantic had all the E2 kids sleeping in a big communal bedroom, like a giant daycare.

[justTripn]

Maybe this is where you developed your general level of bravery...

Look who's talking, author of "The Locum" Which was a really great story, BTW. I think HBO might be interested in that one.

[WarpGirl]

Hmm, that could work. I bet you also had lots of people praying for no accidents.

[Alelou]

Maybe this is where you developed your general level of bravery...

Look who's talking, author of "The Locum" Which was a really great story, BTW. I think HBO might be interested in that one.

Oh, please. Writing was invented because wusses like me like to play at being brave without actually having to do anything particularly risky. Standing up and asking Connor Trinneer questions at cons is brave. So is looking a hockey stick in the eye!

[Alelou]

In Breaking the Ice Archer tells the students in that Q and A , "We have a hydroponic greenhouse onboard where we grow fruits and vegetables, and we can also replicate certain foods with our protein resequencer."

Thank you! for this. It would be impossible to all this straight without an Enterprise fan community. In the first chapter of Heresy, there is a big basketball tournament. Sometime after I had written that, I was shocked by a scene in one of the episodes with the crew playing some version of basketball. (I was watching my DVDs). But is was some futuristic version of basket ball with all kinds of lights flashing on the floor and at the hoop. I had had no recollection of this scene and worried it might contradict something I had written, so I hurried right along. I wouldn't mind taking a look at it now. Does anyone remember this scene. What episode was it from? It might be a good source of avatars.

It was "The Forge."

[WarpGirl]

I always thought of Trip and Hoshi as sort of big brother/little sister. Trip missed his sister(s) Hoshi doesn't seem close with her family, and they're both so endearing. Besides they probably met when Archer was Hoshi's academy instructor. Archer and her were close and Trip and him were best friends. So they probably knew each other for a while. Hoshi's face says "Ewwwwww Trip get your cooties off me!"

[crystalswolf]

I'm surprised they would use hydroponics and not aeroponics. The aeroponic technique seems more flexible and lighter.

If they didn't have honeybees, couldn't you just see them assigning their small children the task of pollinating the plants with little dusting brushes. Also they might focus primarily on inbreeding plants.

As for sleeping arrangements, I vaguely remember a documentary where the sleeping arrangements during Colonial American era were described. They described how the entire family would sleep in the same room and it was not uncommon for them to sleep in the same bed.

Mom and Dad would have "grown-up time" with everyone else sleeping in the bed. They would also wrap their daughters' boyfriends and he would sleep with her or them (think Heath Ledger's character in The Patriot)

From what I understand of it, not everyone had the resources to have more than one bedroom. I can see this happening in the E2U after most if not all of the Earth-born have died out.

Edit: Sorry for going off-topic. Mind started wandering.

[Silverbullet]

CW, in Colonial times on the frontier that would be called Bundling, the boyfriend and Daughter sleeping inthe same bed with a Blanket roll between them. If he couldn't climb that roll he was useless If a chhild came out of it they would wait for the circuit preacher to come by and perform a marriage. until then they had a ceremony called Jumping the broomstick. which allowed the couple to live together until a formal wedding took place.

In many parts of the world today whole families sleep in the same room.

[Alelou]

That's why adolescence didn't really exist in the old days. Childhood ended around 8 or so when kids could figure out what the heck was going on in the bed, the hovel, etc., though it wasn't really 'officially' adulthood until sexual maturity at 12 or 13 or so (thus you get your confirmation and your bar mitzvah falling then).

Then along came separate rooms and also reading, which younger kids couldn't do, and we developed a sense of childhood as a time of innocence to be protected, which stretched into the teenage years.

We're going back in the opposite direction today, thanks to television and computers.

Slaves used to use jumping the broomstick, since they were not allowed to legally marry each other. It's still a tradition in some African American marriage ceremonies.

I've seen 'bed boards' in colonial houses that they'd also use between courting couples. It wasn't that easy to just visit and go home, sometimes, given distances and travel and weather, so it was understood that a pair might share a bed before marriage, but they weren't supposed to indulge beyond that.