A gate to the stars? You mean, a... Stargate? Perhaps they could send out teams of four through the gate, and call them "SG-1", "SG-2", etc...
@Jay?: I should have quoted ws10, I was referring to his post. I did find it odd that they would go back to the "old style" warp speed categorization system for those future-of-the-future episodes... it seems, well, odd!