Star Trek: The Next Generation Easter Egg - The Drake Equation

In Rain Robinson's SETI lab there are lots of historic NASA / Sci-fi posters and memorabilia on the wall. One of them is a very distorted version of Drakes Equation.
The story behind it is that the formula (created by Prof. Frank Drake to estimate the number of technologically sophisticated cultures in the universe) was used by creator Gene Roddenberry when he first pitched the idea of Star Trek to the studio bosses to show alien life was within scientific probablity.
As he did not have a copy of the actual formula with him when he went to make the pitch he made up what he thought looked plausibe, and it worked.
As a result the formula in Rain Robinsons lab has two lines - The first contains the true formula while the second is the 'Roddenberry' version. One amusing thing is that Roddenberry put a pair of elements to the power of 1, et any value raised to the value of one is simply the value!

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Contributed By: Renton on 12-13-1999
Reviewed By: Webmaster
Special Requirements: The episode 'Future's End pt.1'
Please correct this Egg if you see errors.

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Comments

corrector 1 writes:
This Epsode was from Voyger not TNG.
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nutbutter writes:
if anyone really cares (NOT!) the equation is N=R FP NE FL FI FC L n=number of radio civilisations r=rate of star formation fp=fraction of stars with planets ne=number of earthlike planets per system (Planets in the acceptable range for life) fl=fraction of planets where life develops fi=fraction of planets with INTELLIGENT life fc=fraction of planets with technology l=communication life (If the next civilisation is 83 b light years, no point in communications from them, right?) Drake said theres about 10000 ETs out there... in total
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Omega writes:
This is the Drake Equation that Gene Roddenberry made up: Ef^2(MgE)- C^1Ri^1xM = L/So* I have the official Star Trek Encyclopedia so if anyone has a Star Trek egg to verify, please email me. Here's a little comment in the Encyclopedia about the Equation: "Dr.Drake has gently pointed out that a value raised the first power is merely the value itself."
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I'm afraid corrector 1 is right Futures End Part 1 is a Star Trek: Voyager.
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Editor3000 writes:
All the Drake mathmatics set aside, I don't ever remeber Rain Robinson in a SETI lab being featured in a TNG Episode but This was featured in the Two-Part episode of Star Trek: Voyager's "Futures End" in which Voyager is thrown back to 1995 and Tom Paris and Lt. Tuvok go into the SETI lab to investigate the standard Alien Greeting message Rain Robinson sent to Voyager. Based on that, I'd say this egg is in the wrong archive.
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