Who said they were?
So, was Cochrane's warp drive concept something special, or wasn't it ?
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The Vulcan's during ENT (iirc) had warp seven capacity. For all we know they've had that speed for thousands of years, having reach a engineering plateau the Vulcan science academy deciding that anything more was impossible and they stopped trying. Which sounds like something the Vulcans would do.
He obviously wasn't the first to invent conventional warp drive. That's why I suggested that it was his work that led to transwarp - for humans, he would have been "the discoverer of the space warp"as Kirk said, and by the time Geordi is the chief engineer of the -D and Cochrane's transwarp is so standardized as to just be referred to as "warp", Cochrane would be regarded as the inventor of that.
Perhaps Cochrane's design was a break thru. Other civilizations may have already had warp capability but his design was much better. It could have been much faster at achieving warp. Doing it in a matter of seconds while other ships took several minutes or possibly hours to speed up using their impulse systems. Which would lead to relativistic issues. And the most likely thing is that his design was scalable. The same basic design used to go warp one could be modified to go warp five or up to warp nine. And be used on larger and larger ships. Something the other designs couldn't ever do.
The latter might more or less automatically follow from the former. That is, once the local scientists stumble upon the natural phenomenon, it isn't all that hard to come up with the necessary hardware to turn it into a FTL drive. Might even be that the only way to discover the natural phenomenon is to build the FTL engine first, there being no separate, simpler means of building a "subspace gauge" - the classic warp coil is the thing that makes subspace phenomena tangible and subject to study.
This would also help explain why warp drive always comes before, or at least simultaneously with, subspace radio; this is a basic element of Star Trek that allows starships to be the relevant means of exploration and contact. Everybody can build a warp coil; it takes massive research effort to turn that into a practical subspace radio or an efficient soliton wave propulsion system or whatever.
As for the whole "warp two" thing, let's remember that as late as "Friday's Child", it was acknowledged that freighters only moved at warp two, when Kirk's ship could factually do warp 14 but was not considered to be suited for more than warp seven, or warp eight at best. Clearly there are inherent features/limitations to warp technology that dictate "speed limits" that are dissimilar even for the different ships and ship categories of a single civilization.
Technobabble writers do their bid to justify this weirdness. Warp is described as a stepwise affair, there being a sawtooth pattern to efficiency so that speed Y may be greatly advantageous both to the slightly higher speed Z and the slightly lower speed X. Quite possibly certain civilizations get stuck on the lower notches between the teeth, and certain approaches to warp (say, Cochrane's) make it inherently easier to see and exploit the sawtooth pattern.
Timo Saloniemi
I like this theory a lot. It's nice and simple, and it fits with all of the available facts.
Also some very nice conjecture.
Sure, this makes sense to me. Your line about "Everybody can build a warp coil" reminds me of a bit in the Zephram Cochrane-focused novel Federation, by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, where
Cochrane makes his designs free to all across the galaxy after he makes his historic first warp flight to Alpha Centauri.
This, more than anything else, opens up space travel and creates the environment that allows the UFP to come into existence. It's kind of like how when Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, he refused to patent it, instead making it free for all so that it could be safe, effective, and widespread. When asked why he did this when he could have turned a huge profit by patenting it, Salk replied, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Can you think of a more Star Trek style attitude than that?
This, more than anything else, opens up space travel and creates the environment that allows the UFP to come into existence. It's kind of like how when Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, he refused to patent it, instead making it free for all so that it could be safe, effective, and widespread. When asked why he did this when he could have turned a huge profit by patenting it, Salk replied, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Can you think of a more Star Trek style attitude than that?
It's simply a human-centric thing.
The same way humans still talk about Newton, Einstein and Hawking in the far future.
Go on a Romulan or Cardassian ship, and they'd talk about their own inventor of warp drive, discoverer of gravity, etc.
The same way humans still talk about Newton, Einstein and Hawking in the far future.
Go on a Romulan or Cardassian ship, and they'd talk about their own inventor of warp drive, discoverer of gravity, etc.
Legate Gene
Dude, it's Star Trek. You have to add a completely fictional person in at the end there. How else are we going to know it's the far future?
Possibly not, but take a comparative look at the starships chronologically. Maybe the specs will bear that out, or maybe it was just human warp. In ST TOS Enterprise was W5 and so by 24th century had reached W9.6+. That proves progressive warp max speeds at least for the Federation. The other races with few exceptions canonically seem to match the same Warps by class of warship.
I'm not an expert on Warp but have read articles about it. At one time W2 was a limiting number. I assumed it was for multiple races as the Vulcans took an immediate interest in Archer's engine capabilities in STE.
Additionally, the Cochrane Warp scale had been changed several times. AFAIK, Warp 9.2 is standard max safe warp for Federation starships in 24th century with absolute max at 9.8 with great risk. Right?
The Borg thought it was a big enough of a deal to interfere.
Dude, it's Star Trek. You have to add a completely fictional person in at the end there. How else are we going to know it's the far future?
That's who this thread is about. The fictional person on the genius list.
It goes Newton, Einstein, Hawking, and Cochrane.
See?
Now someone name the different alien counterparts!
Except it doesn't - it's Newton, Einstein, Surak. So you add somebody who's from the past, and has nothing to do with the line of work of the first two even in the broadest possible sense. 
Except it wasn't.
1) In ENT, freighters trundled along at less than W2. In TOS, W2 is "still" the limiting number - but only for freighters. It's a type-specific limitation, not an era-specific one.
2) In ENT, a test rig for a W5 engine struggled to reach W2 first. But it would - and then it would have to reach W3 and W4. Doesn't mean lesser, older, more established engines weren't doing W3.9 already when the drama about the W2 tests was unfolding.
Not really. Different ships have different limitations. And there's no sharp definition of "safe" warp, it seems: the E-D never does better than warp 9.5 after "Encounter at Farpoint", but in two episodes towards the end of the show, the plot point is made that the ship is doing much more high speed flying than is healthy for her engines, and therefore has to undergo extensive repairs. Slow is good, faster is worse, really fast kills you, but the limits are soft.
Timo Saloniemi
Except it wasn't.
1) In ENT, freighters trundled along at less than W2. In TOS, W2 is "still" the limiting number - but only for freighters. It's a type-specific limitation, not an era-specific one.
2) In ENT, a test rig for a W5 engine struggled to reach W2 first. But it would - and then it would have to reach W3 and W4. Doesn't mean lesser, older, more established engines weren't doing W3.9 already when the drama about the W2 tests was unfolding.
Not really. Different ships have different limitations. And there's no sharp definition of "safe" warp, it seems: the E-D never does better than warp 9.5 after "Encounter at Farpoint", but in two episodes towards the end of the show, the plot point is made that the ship is doing much more high speed flying than is healthy for her engines, and therefore has to undergo extensive repairs. Slow is good, faster is worse, really fast kills you, but the limits are soft.
Timo Saloniemi
Throughout ENT we see species encountering humans who already have >wf5 engines, the Suliban, the Vulcans, the Xindi to name a few. In "The Catwalk" the fact that the NX - 01 is incapable of warp 7 is a surprise to one alien. Yes he later turns out to be deceitful but in no way does it alter the legitimacy of that exchange
...In fact it's pretty odd that the heroes only get threatened by enemies whose warp drives are only slightly better than theirs. Why does Earth/the UFP fight with Klingons basically neck to neck? Why doesn't it get steamrollered by somebody who can do warp 9.9992 back in the 2150s already? We know that going faster doesn't make you nicer: the Klingons are a good case in point. So why are all the fast nasties skipping Earth?
Things might look more reasonable if the underlying concept of Trek really were that Cochrane was the first in the entire galaxy to discover FTL drive, and all the villains got it from him, through suitably criminal means. But then again, they might not. It's IMHO much easier to swallow the competing idea that everything in this galaxy has already been invented a thousand times over, there are cultures out there at every possible level of development (barring local lacunae from oppressive empires collapsing), and that the big hunters prefer to go after the big game, no longer finding merit in petty games such as galactic domination (again barring individual cases such as the Dominion).
Timo Saloniemi
Things might look more reasonable if the underlying concept of Trek really were that Cochrane was the first in the entire galaxy to discover FTL drive, and all the villains got it from him, through suitably criminal means. But then again, they might not. It's IMHO much easier to swallow the competing idea that everything in this galaxy has already been invented a thousand times over, there are cultures out there at every possible level of development (barring local lacunae from oppressive empires collapsing), and that the big hunters prefer to go after the big game, no longer finding merit in petty games such as galactic domination (again barring individual cases such as the Dominion).
Timo Saloniemi
I'm missing things probably, but I don 't get the talk about ZC inventing transwarp, when humans don't have transwarp at any point in any series. The Borg have it...
It doesn't make sense that ZC invented it for everybody, or just Earth. Some other planets did have it, but ZC is honored by a much larger area than just Earth. So I say it's inbetween. Cochrane was the first in a fairly large area of space around Earth. We know the Vulcans had it, and they're relatively close by, but I can easily see them keeping warp totally and completely to themselves.
I know "Enterprise" shows Earth as backward compared to all civilizations around it, with everyone having warp already, but I've never been comfortable with that.
It doesn't make sense that ZC invented it for everybody, or just Earth. Some other planets did have it, but ZC is honored by a much larger area than just Earth. So I say it's inbetween. Cochrane was the first in a fairly large area of space around Earth. We know the Vulcans had it, and they're relatively close by, but I can easily see them keeping warp totally and completely to themselves.
I know "Enterprise" shows Earth as backward compared to all civilizations around it, with everyone having warp already, but I've never been comfortable with that.
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