What is the purpose of the Intrepid Class Starship?

[C.E. Evans]

"Sustainable cruising velocity" is one of those often-debated terms because it's open to different interpretation. The original Enterprise sometimes went "over the red line" and traveled at velocities that were considered dangerous to remain at for any real length of time. In that regard, the term "sustainable cruising velocity" could refer to the top velocity a ship could maintain the longest period of time before critical engine damage occurs (various non-canon sources have often cited this period as being 12 hours).

But like the original Enterprise, the Voyager likely could go faster than what would be considered a safe velocity, but not for any real length of time. Such a "I'm givin' her all I got, Captain" velocity would be reserved only for the most dire of emergencies, more to quickly escape something than to actually travel to a faraway destination, IMO.

[Timo]

To be accurate, the Voyager was quoted with "stable cruise velocity" of that numerical value by Lt. Stadi in "Caretaker", and "top cruising speed" of that numerical value by Capt. Janeway in "Relativity".

While both expressions emphasize cruising rather than dashing, thus suggesting the speed can be maintained for a not insignificant period of time, the word "sustainable" was apparently fumbled out of existence by Ms. Coppola when delivering the "Caretaker" line...

We never learn how long the ship could have cruised at this speed. In the show itself, she is repeatedly shot to hell and no doubt unable to meet the design specs, as demonstrated e.g. in "Threshold" where we learn that trying to match warp 9.9 prompts the computer to warn about "imminent structural collapse" and, soon thereafter, "structural failure in 45 seconds". We never learn what maximum speed the ship reaches during that very brief chase, but Chakotay feels the chase can safely continue if they throttle back to warp 9.5. This would appear to be the "top cruising speed" or "stable cruise velocity" of the vessel during that episode, then.

Not bad at all, considering that warp 9.3 was a "redline" for the Galaxy class originally...

Timo Saloniemi

[King Daniel]

Voyager was just a smaller version of a Galaxy-class ship. All the comforts, all the abilities, but without the families and all that other stuff Next Gen usually ignored anyway.

[The Mirrorball Man]

King Daniel wrote:

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Voyager was just a smaller version of a Galaxy-class ship. All the comforts, all the abilities, but without the families and all that other stuff Next Gen usually ignored anyway.

You mean Troi?

[King Daniel]

There's a reason Voyager only had two centre seats!