Galaxy Class ships (not all their cut out to be)

The warp scale was redrawn. TNG warp 9 is faster than TOS warp 9.

 

Indeed. Everything from ENT to TOS is the "Cochrane Scale" and then at some vague point after the TMP era, it became a revised scale. That's why ships of the TOS era could go Warp 13, though anything over Warp 9 was generally wacky. But why in the 24th century, it was always warp 9 with a decimal point, as Warp 10 became transwarp speed.

In real world terms, that was purely Roddenberry deciding that there was no Warp 10+ when he started with TNG. In fictional terms, it is different scale systems.

 

Except All Good Things, done presumably just to emphasize how many things are not as they were.

 

Pretty sure he decided it after "Where No Man Has Gone Before", where Geordi says "We're passing warp 10!" and Picard looks unimpressed.

 

In the TNG era, with the new scale, Warp 10 apparently represented an infinite speed (like, here you would occupy all points in the universe simultaneously or something). Given the curve that exists in this scale, the decimal places after "Warp 9" are therefore significant. But yeah, it was done for dramatic purposes.

 

The Warp 10 limit was set in the March 1987 writers’ guide. Exceeding Warp 10 may cause one to “cease to exist.” (Nothing about turning into lizards, alas.)

 

What would've been the point of destroying Ent-D, especially if it was then replaced with an identical ship...
Good thing they didn't have the money to make it happen.

I think it was a good thing that Ent-D wasn't destroyed, other than in few episodes but in the end it was the same ship.

Enterprise-D was almost a character in TNG.

 

*Insert thread derailing Voyager critiques here*

 

...actually it's a little known design flaw. You get a LOT of engine failures if you give the engineer a cool emergency door to roll under dramatically.

 

[ - - ] derailing engaged [ - - ]
Those critiques have really deserved their place.
[ - - ] derailing disengaged [ - - ]

 

Still, I sometimes wonder how large the progression in the 80 years between TOS and TNG actually was.

At the beginning of TNG, warp 9.3 takes the ENT-D 'past the red line' (though other sources claim a 'sustainable cruise velocity of warp 9.6 for 12 hours' though ). Voyager, launched only 7 years later, has a sustainable cruise velocity of warp 9.975, a figure that sounds very high in comparison, almost fanboyish. And then Voyager's captain claims that TOS era ships were 'half as fast'...

I'm sure it can all be explained away using all kinds of interpretations (for example the 'half as fast' doesn't refer to cruise warp speeds), but still ...

 

Which is why I thought it strange on DS9 that they decided to destroy the Defiant and then replace her with (for all intents and purposes) the same ship.

 

Yes, the not rotating shield frequencies and firing all weapons thing in the movie is weird. But in all fairness, I don't think were any other times where the Enterprise-D had been hit that much with basically no shielding to protect them.

 

The only way I can think of to explain the rotating shield frequency is that they could still see what Geordi sees. Perhaps, in dialogue not seen, they did attempt it, only to find the Duras sisters still able to penetrate due to still seeing what Geordi sees.

 

Been some time since I read the TNG technical manual but iirc the Next Gen era, the warp factors were exponential - while warp 1 = 1c, warp 3 for example was something like 6 or 8 times the speed of light. It also talks about whole factors are more energy efficient so you'd use less power at warp 5 than at 4.5 but the logic on that escapes me.

As for Voyager having a high maximum speed etc, well apart from the obvious (Intrepid class being much smaller there for less power needed) there's probably 20 years worth of technical advances that make a difference (variable warp geometry etc). It was something like 20 years from project start to the launch of the Enterprise.

 

Then we would have to assume that whereas designing the Galaxy cost 20 years, the Intrepid class was designed in a much shorter timespan, to justify that 'gap' of 20 years even though the launch dates are only 7 years apart. I'm not sure I believe that, even though I'm willing to accept that the Galaxy class was a special project that took longer to finalize. Or it would mean that it was possible to 'upgrade' the Intrepid class with newer technologies while still in the process of designing her, but not the Galaxy class.

Another explanation of course could be that in fact, the Galaxy class wasn't designed for speed, and that its top speeds are comparatively low for the era. Much like I wouldn't expect huge cruise ships or aircraft carriers to be particularly fast (but I don't know for sure).

Also, I'm not certain about the size argument. Generally, starships are a lot faster than shuttles and runabouts, so I wonder if there are certain design limitations for making very small ships that still have a high warp speed (even though you probably don't need a warp 9 shuttle, if Starfleet desired to do so, could she build a warp 9 ship of that size ?). Extremely large ships usually aren't that fast either. Is there an optimal size in terms of speed?

 

In Earth history Kamikazes were only dangerous because they flew in air instead of water. Water is a more dense liquid, air is a much thinner mixture of gases. Thus the resistance of water is many times greater than that of air. It takes a much larger engine to drive a ship at a certain speed in water than it does to drive an airplane the same size at the same speed in air.

Thus a comparatively tiny airplane could fly many times as fast as as a giant ship could sail, even though the giant ship had engines many times as large as the entire airplane. In WWII giant aircraft carriers and battle ships were defended from bombers and dive bombers by being surrounded by heavy cruisers, cruisers, destroyers, destroyer escorts, etc. loaded with antiaircraft guns trying to put up enough flak to make it impossible for attacking planes to get through - battleships themselves were also loaded with antiaircraft guns.

Kamikazes also had to try to get through all the defenses. If a Kamikaze did get through the defenses it was many times faster than the target ship which could not evade it.

And that was because the lower part of ship's hulls had to push their way through a fluid that was many, many times denser and more resistant to movement than air. But there is no such difference of resistance in outer space. Outer space is a vacuum. It offers zero resistance to movement of vehicles.

In outer space, larger space ships should be able to accelerate and decelerate much faster than smaller space ships. A larger space ship should be able to hold a engine that is both absolutely and relatively larger and thus give it faster acceleration and deceleration than a smaller ship. And the larger ship will have a smaller proportion of its mass and volume left over for non engine purposes but that non engine area will still be absolutely larger than the non engine area in the smaller space ship.

The clip of the destruction of the Odyssey had the relative speeds reversed. The runabouts zoomed past the larger Jem Hadar ships like they were standing still. The Jem Hadar ships zoomed past the larger Odyssey like it was standing still. But the Jem Hadar ships should have zoomed past the runabouts like they were standing still. The Odyssey should have zoomed past the Jem Hadar ships like they were standing still. It should have been impossible for a Jem Hadar ship to ram the much faster Odyssey.

In TOS space battles with phasers and photon torpedoes were fought at distances of tens and hundreds of thousands of kilometers. In the clip the runabouts went to within a single kilometer of Jem Hadar ships to shoot at them, and Jem Hadar ships went within a single kilometer of the Odyssey to shoot at her. Which is certainly a vast change from TOS space battles.

Anyway, I hope I have demonstrated that a much larger and thus faster space ship should usually be able to avoid a kamikaze attack by a much smaller and thus slower space ship.

 

And even before that kamikaze run, Jem'Hadar ships were cutting through their shields like a hot knife over butter. So they were already pretty danaged before that hit.

Keep in mind that Starfleet had not encountered their kind of weaponry before, but were able to upgrade their shields and defenses better later on.

 

Great breakdown.


I haven't watched the episode in question in years but I remember it well enough. What you describe is a pervasive issue I had forgotten about, but is in other parts of DS9. Particularly with the Defiant and how it seemingly flies around much larger ships (which all seem to be motionless in space, during battles) getting in multiple hits with phasers. Granted, in the case of the Odyssey, one of the nacelles was damaged and it had to limp away.

 

Actually, carriers are among the fastest ships in the fleet.

 

Actually, large ocean ships are faster than smaller ships. I started to type up the reason why, but Google already explains why that is:

 

The Galaxy-class may have been a testbed for technologies that have since become standard aboard Federation starships. It might have taken 20 years to develop the Galaxy-class if it was a game changer. All of the lengthy R&D and testing for various now standard systems was done during the building of the Galaxy-class, allowing other starship designs to incorporate them in only a fraction of the time. Even the most newest and advanced design may owe a lot of its earlier lifting to the Galaxy-class.

The Galaxy-class is probably even still today among the fastest ships in the fleet (I would argue that anything capable of Warp 9.5 and above is pretty fast). Sure, there are a couple of subsequent designs that are faster, but I think the majority of the fleet kind of maxes out around Warp 9.2--which is still nothing to sneeze at, IMO.