Talk: Pathfinder Project

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Purpose[]

The Pathfinder Project's sole purpose was to establish communication with Voyager. When Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant, there is simply no reason to keep the project running. Therefore, we can safely assume the project was terminated then. Ottens 15:16, 25 Aug 2004 (CEST)

216.221.98.162 has a point in the sense that the technology and knowledge obtained by pathfinder didn't just vaporise, but it is more likely that that knowledge was stored and distributed throughout Starfleet and Pathfinder closed, since, like Ottens said, it had fulfilled it's purpose. -- Redge | Talk 11:56, 26 Aug 2004 (CEST)

The project may have been terminated after the successful return of Voyager to the Alpha Quadrant, or possibly extended to serve as a method to communicate with other ships at far ranging distances.

Speculation, no citation. --LauraCC (talk) 21:55, March 7, 2016 (UTC)

Assistance of DS9[]

Can someone tell me, when DS9 assisted Pathfinder?--herges 19:52, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

In "Pathfinder", they recieved the interstellar phenomena forecast from DS9.--31dot 19:58, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

The Logo[]

I was just looking up the Motion Picture and noticed that Epsilon IX station's logo bares a shocking resemblance to Pathfinder's Logo. --2.122.15.172 19:02, March 30, 2013 (UTC)

Probably split[]

Project Voyager was the first stage, then it became the Pathfinder Project, before coming Operation Watson. If the last stage is its own page, then we should separate the first stage as well. I believe the transition of the one to the other was even stated in dialogue. --Alan (talk) 13:37, January 28, 2019 (UTC)

Support. --Defiant (talk) 13:48, January 28, 2019 (UTC)

I should rephrase the above, Pathfinder Project would appear to be the whole kit 'n' caboodle, and Project Voyager was a component of it (making audio contact), and the Operation Watson portion was making visual contact. --Alan (talk) 14:38, January 28, 2019 (UTC)

I think that "Project Voyager" was just a term poetically thrown around by admiral Paris. It certainly doesn't come before the Pathfinder project. Early in "Pathfinder", Barclay is established as working on the Pathfinder project, and the only mention of Project Voyager is later in the episode, after the excitement of contacting Voyager, when admiral Paris says "I'd say that Project Voyager is just beginning". After that, the the term Project Pathfinder continues to be used all the way to Voyager hailing "pathfinder" in "Endgame" - i.e. even beyond the mention of Project Watson in "Author, Author".

The conclusion I draw is that the project was called the Pathfinder Project from beginning to end, there was never any formal Project Voyager, and Operation Watson was just the one-off technologically challenging operation of attempting to bounce a tachyon beam off of the quantum singularity, which is what made more direct communications possible for the Pathfinder project. The current situation where Pathfinder and Watson are pages, and Project Voyager is a redirect, seems correct to me. -- Capricorn (talk) 10:58, January 31, 2019 (UTC)

If a split is made, this might be worth a navbox template, too. --LauraCC (talk) 18:39, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that "Project Voyager" was nothing but Paris' informal name for this. - Archduk 3 14:10, October 18, 2019 (UTC)