Was ST:III Transwarp as fast as TNG/VOY Transwarp?

[Tomalak]

I always took it to be a reference to time dilation. Somehow they had managed to fix it so earth ships were always in sync with time on earth, no matter where they were in the universe. This is how space travel works in the rest of Teek.

 

[Timo]

It is a somewhat abstract argument to speculate on what they "could" have meant, as this would strive to provide a plausible line of thought, while scriptwriters are not beholden to plausibility. But it's nevertheless a point easier to argue than what they "did" mean, barring direct interviews or uncovering of secret diaries or whatnot.

"Could" they have meant a sublight vessel? Vina was alive when the ship sailed; her arriving at another star system would need to mean that her ship was doing very high sublight and time dilation helped her out, and/or that there was stasis/cryosleep gear aboard. And it would have to be "and" rather than "or" lest Talos be right next door to Earth.

But we have strong precedent for that: the Botany Bay achieved as much, before a tech breakthrough of some sort made ships even faster. Did the Columbia perhaps also depart before this breakthrough? It's a bit difficult to see Joe Tyler all hot and bothered about something that happened back in 2018. But all that is outside the mandate of peeking inside the heads of "The Cage" writers specifically. Although it can be part of the analysis of what the writers of "The Menagerie" thought of their source material.

Time dilation would IMHO be difficult to interpret as a "barrier" of any sort - instead, it facilitates. And how would being free of time dilation make it quicker for the castaways to reach Earth?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[UssGlenn]

Indeed, even in TVH we can see the Enterprise-A engines light up when entering warp at the very end of the movie. I love the consistency of the effect during the movies, it makes sense for the warp coils to only be 'on' during warp speed after all. Some sort of recalibration must have taken place in the TNG era as by that point ships always had the warp nacelles on.

The tech manual talks about using a warp field to reduce the mass of the ship so the impulse engines are more effective, that could be why the nacelles glow all the time.

 

[Timo]

And certain ships in the late 23rd century could have used another glowing doodad for the task instead, the one involving a prominent dome close to the impulse assembly. Which is why they don't exhibit the nacelle glow.

By that logic, though, Archer's ship shouldn't have nacelle glow for impulse maneuvering. And Kirk's TOS ship, lacking the dome, should have.

But one can always argue Archer went for belt and suspenders, and Kirk went commando. After all, Archer was a pathfinder while Kirk was a seasoned space exploiter in at least the second generation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[uniderth]

Then again, it could well be that the the engine did work but was inferior to existing designs. That's what happened with the early jet engines, after all, and against theoretical predictions and prototype work.

Such things might only be revealed when scaling up. I rather like the idea that warp in the 23rd century is much like aerodynamics in the 20th, with lots of nifty theoretical ideas and very little chance of applying them for accurate numerical modeling. There'd be lots of prototypes and testbeds, and many a great idea shot down by the harsh reality of physical application.

Certainly possible. Maybe they could reach higher speeds but were so inefficient they were impractical. However, I'm willing to bet they had many previous test versions, before actually building the Excelsior. So the tech was probably pretty well proven before they dedicated to build an entire starship based on the technology.

Which is also how a rudimentary understanding of low warp factors would translate into a fundamental misunderstanding of high warp factors, until one built an engine actually capable of high warp and discovered there was no Warp 11 where the old tachometers had it marked.

Yeah, but I'm in the camp that "warp factors" are just arbitrary designations. So whatever speed you were at when your tachometer read warp 11 would be warp 11.

We never hear of any improvement in space travel within that timeframe from any other source, though. So I'm tempted to say that this is something highly specific to the issue of reaching Talos IV from Earth or vice versa. Perhaps a physical barrier between the two, a nebula or something, that was too dangerous for the older ships to brave?

That's certainly an option but considering this time frame has rarely, if ever, come up in any other source I don't think that can be a source of proof for or against.

Putting a twist to this would be tempting as well.

We hear Pike PA his crew: "This is the Captain. Our destination is the Talos star group, our time warp factor seven..."

Now, the first bit of information is actually informative - did Kirk ever bother to tell his crew where they were going? But what is the purpose of telling the crew the engine setting chosen?

It would make far more sense for Pike to give an ETA. And in that case, he would be saying "Our time - (at) warp factor seven - will be... Umm, fill me in here, Number One". The artistic cuts in the scene, including an artsy fade into a starfield, would result in us hearing many other bits of this exciting back-and-forth militarobabble, but miss the tail end of Pike's PA.

Possible, but Pike pauses between the words "warp" and "factor", not the words "time" and "warp." This indicates to me that the word "time" is being used as an adjective for the noun "warp."

Additionally, Spock issues a command issues to prepare for hyperdrive at "Time warp factor ..." but is cut off before he gives the number. That's enough evidence, for me anyway, to conclude that the word "time" is describing the type of "warp."

Or Pike's "elevator" is Kirk's "lift", and most skippers scoff at those who apply needlessly long forms of technobabble when colloquial abbreviations will do.

Which is probably why it was shortened from "time warp" in Pike's era to just "warp" in Kirk's era. The word "time" became extraneous, becasue everyone knows what you're talking about.

We really ought to take into account the warps of other Federation members, developed without Cochrane's input. If warp really comes in different styles, these should be manifest in the early Federation and its jargon.

I'm really wracking my brain trying to think of other Federation members prior to 2280's that were shown as having their own ships that didn't have nacelles. We don't even have explicit evidence that other (future) Federation members had warp drive before Cochrane.

Spoiler: Read First Before Telling Me About Enterprise

Note, that I disregard ENT, DIS, and JJTrek. I understand I'm not going to change anyone else's mind on this, and no one else is going to change my mind. So let's not derail the thread into yet another debate about what is canon. I agree to disagree.

This solves the whole "Thyme" issue so simply and tidily, I'm sorely tempted to add it to my head canon! But I do so enjoy the idea of an evolving Warp technology as well...

It just makes sense that warp technology would evolve over the course of 200 years.

I'd also really like to know what was in the mind of the writers back in 1964. Clearly they intended it as some of temporal limitation, but did they really mean to imply that the SS Columbia was a sub-lightspeed vessel?

That would be interesting to know. What does the whole breaking the time barrier have to do with the plot other than to alleviate the fears of the survivors?

Spoiler: SPOILER

which are an illusion anyway.

It is a somewhat abstract argument to speculate on what they "could" have meant, as this would strive to provide a plausible line of thought, while scriptwriters are not beholden to plausibility. But it's nevertheless a point easier to argue than what they "did" mean, barring direct interviews or uncovering of secret diaries or whatnot.

"Could" they have meant a sublight vessel? Vina was alive when the ship sailed; her arriving at another star system would need to mean that her ship was doing very high sublight and time dilation helped her out, and/or that there was stasis/cryosleep gear aboard. And it would have to be "and" rather than "or" lest Talos be right next door to Earth.

But we have strong precedent for that: the Botany Bay achieved as much, before a tech breakthrough of some sort made ships even faster. Did the Columbia perhaps also depart before this breakthrough? It's a bit difficult to see Joe Tyler all hot and bothered about something that happened back in 2018. But all that is outside the mandate of peeking inside the heads of "The Cage" writers specifically. Although it can be part of the analysis of what the writers of "The Menagerie" thought of their source material.

But interestingly the ship's database showed that the Columbia disappeared in the Talos region eighteen years ago. Yet the radio distress call seemingly took eighteen years to reach the Enterprise's position. So the Columbia must have been sending FTL telemetry back to where ever. That gives us an odd combination of a sublight ship with FTL communications. I'm willing to bet that the Columbia did have an FTL drive.

Which leaves us with the time barrier.

I always took it to be a reference to time dilation. Somehow they had managed to fix it so earth ships were always in sync with time on earth, no matter where they were in the universe. This is how space travel works in the rest of Teek.

Time dilation would IMHO be difficult to interpret as a "barrier" of any sort - instead, it facilitates. And how would being free of time dilation make it quicker for the castaways to reach Earth?

Timo Saloniemi

I think an obvious choice would be some sort of time dialation effect would be the obvious choice. However, as you pointed out Timo time dilation would work in favor of the crew rather than against. That is unless the survivors were worried about time passage on earth rather than time passage for them. They did seem concerned about what was happening to earth.

That still leaves us with what the heck the time barrier is. Is it a "localized" physical object blocking the way? While I'm not willing to dismiss this option, it does seems like an odd choice for Tyler to get excited about. Additionally, in the opening scenes we're never introduced to this "time barrier." If it is some ominous physical barrier, I'd expect it to be handled more like that galactic barrier in WNMHGB. As in Number One reports, "Sir, we're passing the time barrier." or "Sir, "we'll have to pass through the time barrier to reach them." Plus it just seems like an odd name for a physical phenomenon.

So if it's not a physical object then it's probably something akin to the sound barrier, or light barrier. Perhaps the old style engines worked with subspace in a way that caused a reverse time dilation. So that the faster you go, that faster time passes for you. Thus in effect you're traveling slower. If you pump out more speed from the engines, your ship may get there faster from an outside perspective, but the crew inside died from old age, long ago.

It's completely made up, but a lot of Star Trek is.

 

[Deks]

Well... for all we know, Transwarp as installed on the Excelsior might have been a success.
As we saw in ST:V, the Enterprise was able to travel roughly 20 000 - 30 000 LY's (presumably to the center of the galaxy... or inside the galactic core) in roughly 2 to 3 days... meaning that (Trans)Warp could have equated to about 10 000 Ly's per day.

It's not impossible given the rate of exponential development (Which keeps much more in track with how Trek should have evolved)... in fact, it would be expected for such a collection of societies, because even from the NX-01, 100 years of exponential development (and automated one on top of that without monetary socio-economic system to interfere), you'd be looking at Warp velocities that would open up the whole galaxy in a short period of time... more so with a group of several alien races working together and sharing ideas.

Problem is, the 24th century completely ignores this and establishes Warp 9.9 at 4 billion miles per second (21 473 times LS)... and correct me if I'm wrong, but if the Warp scale is anything to go by, the closer to you get to 9.9, speeds start to increase rapidly... and past 9.9, each incremental increase results in exponential increase in velocity... meaning that Warp 9.91 = 42 946 times LS, 9.92 = 85 892 times LS, etc.

Voyager's 'top cruising speed' of Warp 9.975 = 3 435 680 times LS (or 9412.82 Ly’s per day - which would be close to speeds seen from ST:V).

Also, no 24th century SF ship was seen usually travelling at anywhere close to Warp 9.9 for protracted periods of time.
They might have achieved Warp 9.5 or 9.6 for short periods, but it wasn't until Voyager's 4th season 'message in a bottle' that we saw the USS Prometheus actively traveling at Warp 9.9, and the Nebula class chasing it should have been going faster to catch up... meaning that Voyager's top cruising speed was nowhere near Warp 9.975 as mentioned on-screen, or the hull was seriously compromised with the pull to the DQ, preventing the ship from achieving those speeds.

Also, Starfleet might have decided not to use TW engines since the Enterprise-B rescued El-Aurians (who no doubt told Starfleet about the Borg, etc.), and SF might have deemed themselves to be technologically unprepared for encounter with the Borg... so they might have suppressed TW engines and worked with other neighboring powers to do the same (though that would have required an unprecedented level of cooperation from the passive-aggressive Klingons and Romulans at the time).

Either that, or the events of ST:V took place in the alternate timeline.

To be frank, what we saw of the 24th century could have easily been placed in the late 23rd century, following natural progression of time from the real world... because a 100 years after Kirk, the Federation should have been far more advanced than what was seen (or it might have very well been, just never adequately shown due to budget constraints)

 

[Tomalak]

I thought warp 9.975 was never Voyager's "cruising speed", it was the ships rated top speed, not sustainable for long periods.

 

[Mytran]

It is mentioned by Stadi in Caretaker as a "sustainable cruise velocity of warp factor nine point nine seven five" and again by Janeway in Relativity as "top cruising speed warp nine point nine seven five." However, both those claims were before the ship got dragged across the galaxy. It's highly likely that critical systems were damaged and could not be repaired. Certainly, we rarely see Voyager cruising above Warp 6 in the series

 

[Tomalak]

I guess it still depends on how Starfleet defines "sustainable" and "cruising speed". Maybe it just means capable of reaching that speed for a couple of seconds?

 

[MacLeod]

...A case very much in point: the designers of automobiles are always inventing new names for what is essentially the same old thing, either incrementally improved, or then actually downgraded with the hope that nobody notices.

To add to your comment a V12 is still an internal combustion engine (ICE) but so is a V10 and a V8 and a V6 etc... Would engine makers from the early years of ICE recognise a modern ICE likely but what would they thing of the power it could deliver compared to what they had. Transwarp seems to be used as a short hand for an evolution of the current warp engines.

 

[Deks]

I guess it still depends on how Starfleet defines "sustainable" and "cruising speed". Maybe it just means capable of reaching that speed for a couple of seconds?

The more likely explanation is that Warp 9.975 was Voyager's intended cruise velocity which could be sustained indefinitely, but the ship got pulled to the DQ in a violent capacity, which (as we saw) damaged the hull and engines (not to mention produced a microfracture in the Warp core and killed crew members on top of that) on a level that radically dropped the ship's cruising speed and prevented it from achieving such high speeds (effectively stranding the starship and forcing it to limp back through thousands of lightyears... a journey that would have taken a week, increased to 7 decades).
Plus, Voyager could have been a 'special case' of being outfitted with Class 9 warp drive, variable geometry nacelles, bioneural circuitry, etc.... things that would have let it achieve these much higher speeds.

And, admiral Hayes did mention they redirected 2 deep space ships which would have met with voyager in 5 to 6 years... implying those 2 ships were travelling at a speed of roughly 2 billion miles per second (or 10 736 times LS).... so, lower than Warp 9.9 by half... but it implies that SF already had deep space ships capable of achieving close to 10 000 times LS sustain-ably for a while... but these engines weren't usually part of the general fleet (which wouldn't usually be expected to do deep space exploration and would rather explore just outside Federation space close to space-docks).

 

[Tomalak]

Surely "indefinitely" is a stretch? They'd run out of fuel before long, and presumably higher warp speeds require more deuterium/antimatter? We see them run out of the former in the end of the fourth season, though oddly they have an infinite supply of antimatter.

It may well simply be a design spec that has no practical value in regular operation of the ship. It's just a signal for "this ship is really fast", like when you buy a car which claims to have a top speed of 120 mph or whatever, which you can never actually test for reasons of local speed regulations, state of machinery, or safety.

 

[at Quark's]

Perhaps the Excelsior was both a success and a failure? Perhaps it held grandiose promises about transwarp and 'all speeds available' before it was built and tested, and expectations had to be toned down somewhat after actual performance tests while still being a significant breakthrough into higher tiers of warp that became standard by the TNG era? (By the way, I read the 'all speeds available' in the movie simply as 'all speeds available that we know this design can nominally accomplish', not some hyperfast quantum stripstream-like speed). When I'm driving someone else's new car, and its proud owner says: "all speeds are available to you", I still don't expect to be breaking the sound barrier in it anytime soon.

 

[Deks]

Surely "indefinitely" is a stretch? They'd run out of fuel before long, and presumably higher warp speeds require more deuterium/antimatter? We see them run out of the former in the end of the fourth season, though oddly they have an infinite supply of antimatter.

It may well simply be a design spec that has no practical value in regular operation of the ship. It's just a signal for "this ship is really fast", like when you buy a car which claims to have a top speed of 120 mph or whatever, which you can never actually test for reasons of local speed regulations, state of machinery, or safety.

By 'indefinitely', I meant for as long as you can power the engines.... but if the ship and engines were initially designed for those speeds, maintenance would likely be minimal to the point where it can be handled via automation or non-existent (you do realize we have the ability to make technology using materials that have the ability to self-repair, or wouldn't need maintenance in the first place if properly designed?). Strain might be expected if you encounter subspace anomalies and find yourself in combat, but SF would likely account for majority of those when designing any starship.

Bussard collectors do serve a function by collecting stellar matter and convert it into usable energy source which powers the ship... hence why running out of deuterium never made any sense... the technology should be able to generate these 'basics' which keep the ship running on the fly given their ability to manipulate energy and matter on a subatomic level.
They can convert pure energy into matter and back again... they can also manipulate base elements of matter to generate what they need (a process which is probably less intense than just converting energy into matter) - this is usually called recycling... and we can do it (just not in the same sophisticated fashion - seeing how for us the process is a bit more time intensive, but its still more efficient than mining fresh materials).

We saw in 'The Cloud' that Voyager was searching for omicron particles for augmenting their anti-matter reserves.
I would imagine the process might entail using the said particles that induce something like cellular mitosis... a replicating effect that enhances anti-matter supplies... and its possible a synthetic substitute for generating said particles in an efficient manner was developed during their journey (in addition for trading with other species) which would also explain Voyger's continued use of Photon torpedoes and no mention of the core running out of anti-matter.
Torres also suggested making a crude dilithium processing refinery from one of auxiliary impulse reactors in the ship.

As for the design specs that have no practical purpose... you do realize that comparing a car to a starship is not exactly accurate?
But even if you do that, bear in mind that a 'cruising speed' for a car is one that the engine can usually sustain for as long as it has the fuel to do so, because it was designed to withstand those velocities.
As for other limitations... space (usually) doesn't put limits on your warp speed, unless you are in an area where Warp engines might have more trouble and you are forced using lower speeds.

Starfleet has its own guidelines on recommended cruising speeds, but those might vary from one ship to another... and it also depends on which function the ship serves.
We also noticed that they instituted a Warp 5 limit to limit the damage to subspace, but the problem was likely rectified by modifying the Warp engines to not produce these issues since TNG ended.
For deep space exploratory ships... by the time of Dominion War, we only saw the USS Prometheus could sustain Warp 9.9 (21 473 times LS) without trouble... with the Nebula class chasing it maybe getting to 9.91 so they could catch up.
Before the Dominion War (at least from what I recall on DS9), the Nebula class warp engines were modified so they can withstand Warp 9.5 for brief periods.
It stands to reason a large retrofit of the engines just prior or during the war would enhance it's velocity by quite a bit.

Janeway also mentioned at one point that the Warp core can go on for 3 years before refueling... implying that SF (and most other space faring cultures) probably developed advanced methods of storage which could pack a tremendous amount of anti-matter in a relatively small amount of space.

 

[MacLeod]

Surely "indefinitely" is a stretch? They'd run out of fuel before long, and presumably higher warp speeds require more deuterium/antimatter? We see them run out of the former in the end of the fourth season, though oddly they have an infinite supply of antimatter.

It may well simply be a design spec that has no practical value in regular operation of the ship. It's just a signal for "this ship is really fast", like when you buy a car which claims to have a top speed of 120 mph or whatever, which you can never actually test for reasons of local speed regulations, state of machinery, or safety.

There is a difference between top speed and sustainable cruise speed. For example a car could have a top speed of 200mph but only a sustainable cruise speed of 120mph. So in the case of VOY it's top speed could be Warp 9.995 but it could maintain a top cruising speed of Warp 9.975.

The more likely explanation is that Warp 9.975 was Voyager's intended cruise velocity which could be sustained indefinitely, but the ship got pulled to the DQ in a violent capacity, which (as we saw) damaged the hull and engines (not to mention produced a microfracture in the Warp core and killed crew members on top of that) on a level that radically dropped the ship's cruising speed and prevented it from achieving such high speeds (effectively stranding the starship and forcing it to limp back through thousands of lightyears... a journey that would have taken a week, increased to 7 decades).
Plus, Voyager could have been a 'special case' of being outfitted with Class 9 warp drive, variable geometry nacelles, bioneural circuitry, etc.... things that would have let it achieve these much higher speeds.

And, admiral Hayes did mention they redirected 2 deep space ships which would have met with voyager in 5 to 6 years... implying those 2 ships were travelling at a speed of roughly 2 billion miles per second (or 10 736 times LS).... so, lower than Warp 9.9 by half... but it implies that SF already had deep space ships capable of achieving close to 10 000 times LS sustain-ably for a while... but these engines weren't usually part of the general fleet (which wouldn't usually be expected to do deep space exploration and would rather explore just outside Federation space close to space-docks).

Must have been some damage as at TMP speeds, VOY journey would take ~50years

 

[at Quark's]

There is a difference between top speed and sustainable cruise speed. For example a car could have a top speed of 200mph but only a sustainable cruise speed of 120mph. So in the case of VOY it's top speed could be Warp 9.995 but it could maintain a top cruising speed of Warp 9.975.

Still sounds like an extremely high number to me (given that the Galaxy can 'only' do 9.6 or so). Also, I believe that even the term sustainable top cruising speed doesn't necessarily mean it can be sustained indefinitely. Could be that this number only refers to a 24hr period, for example.

 

[MacLeod]

Still sounds like an extremely high number to me (given that the Galaxy can 'only' do 9.6 or so). Also, I believe that even the term sustainable top cruising speed doesn't necessarily mean it can be sustained indefinitely. Could be that this number only refers to a 24hr period, for example.

If it can't be maintained then it's not sustainable.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sustainable

If they had said cruising speed instead of sustainable cruising speed, then you might have an argument for it only able to maintain that speed for X duration time.

 

[at Quark's]

^Going by that definition, I'd argue all Starfleet vessels have a sustainable speed of 0 (well, or perhaps relativistic speeds at best). Eventually they'll have to refuel, or dock for maintenance, don't they? The definition you provide here does not account for that either, so ... Or we would have to factor in those recuperation times into the definition of sustainable (but then it would rather become something like average top cruising speed).

Moreover, we don't know how warp works. It may very well be the case that there is no absolute boundary between 'safe' speeds and speeds at which the engines start to accrue significant damage, and that there is always slowly accumulating engine damage, just at a much lower rate at 'safe' speeds. In that case, it would make sense to tie the notion of 'sustainable' to specific time windows.

 

[Deks]

Sustainable cruise velocity in this instance probably means 'for as long as you have the energy/fuel to power the engines without causing damage to the ship or engines at large'.
Maximum warp velocity would likely be a speed that can only be sustained for very short periods of time (say, Warp 9.985) before structural collapse starts happening (something similar was seen in 'threshold' episode which was kicked out of canon - but the episode does show 'consistency' in the sense that Voyager couldn't get anywhere near Warp 9.975 because structural collapse was imminent it neared Warp 9.9, or as the computer called it 'nearing maximum Warp velocity').
To me, this implies that Voyager's hull and engines took a massive beating (which it did) as a result of being dragged across the galaxy in a few seconds to minutes by an external force that did virtually nothing to protect the ship from this transition... and makes me wonder how many ships prior to Voyager and Maqui raider were destroyed as a result of this method.

 

[at Quark's]

^I would tend to agree with you that would be a reasonable definition. I think I'm getting a bit confused by this Memory Alpha quote:

"The Enterprise had a maximum sustainable speed of warp 9.6 for twelve hours." (It references Encounter at farpoint for this tidbit, but in the on-line versions of the script for that episode, I can't find any line saying this, casting doubt on the accuracy of Memory Alpha regarding this).

Which wouldn't necessarily coincide, of course, with the "maximum sustainable cruising speed." (If I recall correctly, warp 9.3 is already 'past the red line' in Encounter at Farpoint), which would reinforce the idea that progressively higher speeds are 'sustainable' for progressively shorter time intervals.