Slipstream to Andromeda

[C.E. Evans]

Man, I never know what you're talking about.

[Sindatur]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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Man, I never know what you're talking about.

Tosses C.E. Evans A "Guy Gardener to English Dictionary"

[Hartzilla2007]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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It wasn't all that inconceivable back then, IMO. Vonda McIntyre did a lot of extrapolating from onscreen material rather than from reference books that implied much slower warp speeds than what was shown during TOS. I think she deduced that Starfleet had nearly fifteen years to study and substantially improve upon the Kelvans' engine modifications to the Enterprise in "By Any Other Name," making intergalactic travel now feasible in a relatively short length of time.

Plus the novels back then were kind of setting up a little bit of inter connection so she could have probably used Diane Duane's The Wounded Sky's ending where Scotty seemed confident that he could duplicate the drive system that allowed for inter galactic travel without damaging the space time continuum which is why the previous version had to be scraped.

[Timewalker]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Was she writing in the gap?

Thinking that star trek on TV was dead and gone?

Novels were the king of the castle.

Vonda was a god and the entire Star Trek universe was hers.

Picards arrival must have shattered her.

Gods, looking at the dates, the first movie might have blindsided Vonda when she was brainstorming for her novel.

Since we're talking about her novelization for the THIRD movie, I'm sure the FIRST movie didn't bother her all that much...

Sindatur wrote:

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Tosses C.E. Evans A "Guy Gardener to English Dictionary"

Can I have one too, please?

[Relayer1]

Timewalker wrote:

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Since we're talking about her novelization for the THIRD movie, I'm sure the FIRST movie didn't bother her all that much...

Can I have one too, please?

If I may assist :

Was she was writing after TOS but before the ST-TMP - if so, there was nothing to contradict novel continuity. She could do pretty much anything she liked.

ST-TMP and then TNG would have caught her by surprise and contradicted her novels...

[Guy Gardener]

Yup. On the money Relayer.

The Entropy effect was published in 1981, which means that given how long it takes to propose/pitch, write, edit, publish, market and ship a novel, there's more than a possibility that Vonda was still writing the bugger as the Motionless Picture came out in '79.

It's a margin call.

[Deks]

Even in canon, Slipstream works (well, for SF it works partially).
Remember that on TV we saw 2 different version of the Slipstream drive.

Version 1 of slipstream: Arturis' Dauntless ship had a speed of 300 Ly's per hour - which of course doesn't mesh with the faked SF message which stated that it would take 3 months at Slipstream for the crew to get back to the AQ (at 300 ly's per hour it would take the ship about 8 and a half days to reach the AQ).
Then again, the 300 ly's per hour might be what the 'maximum' speed of Arturis ship was capable of which couldn't be sustained in the long run - hence a slower speed might be required for a sustained 3 month trip (again, Voyager could have made periodic 300 ly's jumps - say once or twice per week - but of course we know this would speed up their return to the AQ greatly).

Version 2 of the Slipstream: Timeless
Roughly 10 000 ly's per minute. Why? 17 seconds into the flight the phase variance kicks in and the crew has a short window of opportunity to fix it.
Roughly under 1 minute is an equivalent of what Voyager spent inside the Slipstream before Kim sent his phase corrections that dispersed the Slipstream.

In the novels, the Slipstream drive is based on the Benemite crystals (or Version 2 from TV that the crew of Voyager made) - remember that the V1 didn't need those crystals.
Anyway... the novel version of Slipstream would require roughly 200 minutes to reach Andromeda (or 3 hours and 20 mins) if it was based on the V2 from TV - not 2 months.

Either way, Slipstream does work - SF needs to work on it though to compensate for the phase variance in the Benemite crystal version of the drive, or they need to work on maintaining structural integrity during the V1 which requires relatively 'simple' Warp Core modifications.

Heck... fixing structural integrity would seem to be the 'simplest' way of using Slipstream - or create a separate system that is meant to auto-repair/maintain hull integrity.
SF is supposed to have automated over 90% of the needed tasks anyway (at least per early TNG - some of the Voyager novels touch on this as well) so the crew would need to input minimal work for the repairs - alas, on TV we were shown the crew working around the clock on repairs - because the writers conveniently forgot about 'mechanization'.
Morons.

[Guy Gardener]

it only works if they know how to make it work and they don't.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

You could say that voyager could use transwarp coils if they could figure out how to use transwarp files without the ship ripping in two.

Maybe it was less than precise of me to say that Slipstream never worked, more so than that in Think Tank Janeway said that SHE could never get it to work.

Are you calling Kathryn a liar?

[Deks]

Actually no...
TW is a different 'beast' altogether because the 'Threshold' episode was conveniently 'forgotten' by the crew (which was shown in the episode when 7 tried to help in engineering by opening a TW conduit - when tachion particles leaked into the propulsion system - Torres clearly stated 'we don't know anything about TW technology, playing around with it could be dangerous').

To that end, Voyager effectively had 0 knowledge on how to do Transwarp and the only exposure to the technology in question they had was the Borg method of using coils (which apparently wear out if used single handed after 15000 ly's without assistance from more).
Actually they also had exposure to the technology/knowledge when they met the Voth - they knew that they used TW as a method of propulsion - but beyond that... nothing concrete.

Slipstream on the show DOES work for SF partly - meaning, there are some 'problems' but the technology gives ships that use it sustainable high speeds for a short amount of time.
If you can operate within those limitations, you will severely cut down on the travel time in case of emergencies for example (an equivalent to Enterprise-D Warp engines being unable to sustain warp 9.6 for long periods of time before having to slow down and repair - it can be done periodically though and most of the time, just use regular Warp speeds).

[Guy Gardener]

You just said that the only reason hat they couldn't get transwarp to work is that they didn't know how to get transwarp to work, which is exactly what I said. It doesn't matter that they were extremely ignorant about transwarp and only a little ignorant about slipstream.

Besides if in the middle Janeway didn't remember Barclay, then it's possible that a lot of seaon two didn't happen the way we saw it becuase we were following the wrong/a different timeline/timestream now.

[Dougelo7]

I remember reading that "transwarp" was a blanket term used to cover all speeds above warp 9.9999999999... until "quantum slipstream" was coined.

In "Theshold," Tom Paris was just traveling at infinite velocity. He wasn't using a transwarp conduit like the Borg, so it wasn't the same kind of travel. Confusing, yes, but clarifying.

Also, I think the novelized version of slipstream is faster than V1 but slower than V2 because V1, like you said, didn't use an optimized system. And V2 was so fast because it was unstable, like a vessel's maximum warp. SF's slipstream enhancements probably involved finding a balance between speed and sustainability, which ended up being 2,000 LYph.

So the only obstacles to a two-month intergalactic journey would be fried gel packs, compromised structural integrity, and the galactic barrier. I can see SF overcoming the first two, but I don't know about the third. Thoughts?

[Guy Gardener]

All they need is a Medusan navigator and they're sweet.

After that position is staffed, then all they need to do is somehow to stop Kim from falling in love with her.

[Mage]

Hell, the Beyer-novels did something the show itself never did, and that was to make Voyager interesting. So in my book, Beyer rules. And if she made QSD work, it works.

Bring on the rest of the universe people!!!

[Hartzilla2007]

Mage wrote:

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. And if she made QSD work, it works.

actually I believe David Mack made it work.

[Mage]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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actually I believe David Mack made it work.

Well yeah, but only for one short experimental jump. And Kirsten made if both fail (with the crystals going belly-up) and working again (with B'Elanna's solution).

IMO, TrekLit in general has been doing a really great job of making Star Trek as a whole interesting again.