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

[UssGlenn]

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.

Columbia is sending back FTL telemetry as usual, they get in an accident and crash. Everything is busted except the old fashioned radio, so they use that for the distress signal since it's better than nothing.

 

[Deks]

^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.

In Encounter at Farpoint, Data mentioned they could achieve Warp 9.6 'at an extreme risk'.
To me, this doesn't imply maximum sustainable cruise speed, but rather 'maximum unsafe speed you can get out of the engines' (which of course would result in the ship not being able to sustain those speeds for very long before structural damage and eventual collapse occur).

I seem to recall that 'sustainable cruise velocity (one that wouldn't damage the engines or hull) for the Enterprise-D would be 9.2 (which actually keeps track with how Warp speeds were used by the Galaxy class in early TNG).
9.3 being 'past the red line' seems consistent in that case, and at that point, they were pushing the engines past its safe limits (Warp 9.2).

Also, in 'Where no one has gone before' episode, Data mentions that at maximum warp, it would have taken the Enterprise-D just over 300 years to get back to the Federation (2.7 million lightyears away), which implies a velocity of about 15 000 times LS.
I don't know if Data meant 'sustainable cruise velocity' or 'absolute unsafe maximum you can extract from the engines to the point of collapse'.

During and by the end of TNG, we saw 'sustainable cruise speeds' being progressively improved from 9.2 (early TNG) to 9.5 and 9.6.
The Nebula class USS Prometheus in DS9 (season 2) as modified by O'brien was able to max out Warp 9.6 in a pinch... even though the theoretical maximum for those engines was 9.5... but, he recommended not pushing it past 9.6.

 

[at Quark's]

In Encounter at Farpoint, Data mentioned they could achieve Warp 9.6 'at an extreme risk'.
To me, this doesn't imply maximum sustainable cruise speed, but rather 'maximum unsafe speed you can get out of the engines' (which of course would result in the ship not being able to sustain those speeds for very long before structural damage and eventual collapse occur).
I seem to recall that 'sustainable cruise velocity (one that wouldn't damage the engines or hull) for the Enterprise-D would be 9.2 (which actually keeps track with how Warp speeds were used by the Galaxy class in early TNG).
9.3 being 'past the red line' seems consistent in that case, and at that point, they were pushing the engines past its safe limits (Warp 9.2).

Data's statement is "We may be able to match hostile's nine point eight, sir. But at extreme risk. " As for warp 9.6 I did not found a quote that validates the 12 hours statement made on Mem Alpha, but I found this quote from Best of Both worlds (season 3-4): "Commander, if the Borg stay at warp nine point six, we'll be forced to discontinue pursuit and power down in less than three hours." . Now this was after combat, so the number of hours in 'optimal' condition might be higher, but probably not by orders of magnitude. In Q Who (season 2), they reach at least warp 9.65 (and probably a bit, but not much, more than that, and I doubt that speed could have been sustained for a very long time). So it seems that 9.2 is safe (and probably can be maintained almost indefinitely), 9.6 can be maintained for some hours, slightly higher is still possible for short bursts and 9.8 is only doable in an all-or-nothing gamble. These statements are for different years so the somewhat coherent picture they seem to paint may be slightly misleading.

All in all, if Voyager's sustainable cruise velocity really is warp 9.975, it sounds like it is very much faster than that of the Enterprise-D. Yet it still would need 75 years to reach the Alpha Quadrant. So that would probably mean (to try to keep it a bit consistent) that Data's maximum warp from Where no one has gone before wouldn't be sustainable top cruising speed.

 

[Deks]

Data's statement is "We may be able to match hostile's nine point eight, sir. But at extreme risk. " As for warp 9.6 I did not found a quote that validates the 12 hours statement made on Mem Alpha, but I found this quote from Best of Both worlds (season 3-4): "Commander, if the Borg stay at warp nine point six, we'll be forced to discontinue pursuit and power down in less than three hours." . Now this was after combat, so the number of hours in 'optimal' condition might be higher, but probably not by orders of magnitude. In Q Who (season 2), they reach at least warp 9.65 (and probably a bit, but not much, more than that, and I doubt that speed could have been sustained for a very long time). So it seems that 9.2 is safe (and probably can be maintained almost indefinitely), 9.6 can be maintained for some hours, slightly higher is still possible for short bursts and 9.8 is only doable in an all-or-nothing gamble. These statements are for different years so the somewhat coherent picture they seem to paint may be slightly misleading.

All in all, if Voyager's sustainable cruise velocity really is warp 9.975, it sounds like it is very much faster than that of the Enterprise-D. Yet it still would need 75 years to reach the Alpha Quadrant. So that would probably mean (to try to keep it a bit consistent) that Data's maximum warp from Where no one has gone before wouldn't be sustainable top cruising speed.

I need to correct myself... 9000 times LS = 2.7 million LY's in 300 years.
Lt. Paris did establish on screen that Warp 9.9 = 21 473 times LS.
Using Paris statement as a baseline, Warp 9.2 would likely/have to be much slower than 9.9.
Also, Data's statement from 'Where no one has gone before' episode only mentions 'at maximum warp'... whichever factor that may be.
I wouldn't know which factor might equate to 9000 times LS in that case... except to possibly put it in the area of Warp 9.5 perhaps?

Warp 9.2 could therefore be in the area of say 2684 times LS, 9.5 = 5368 times LS, 9.7 or 9.8 = 10736 times LS and 9.9 being 21 473 times LS (sustainable on the USS Prometheus in 2374 which had 4 nacelles and multi-vector assault mode - some other ships might have received engine retrofits like Nebula and Galaxy class allowing them similar or close to those speeds, with ability to use 9.91 for example in a pinch).

So, yes, I would agree that 15 000 times LS might not be a sustainable cruise velocity for Enterprise-D at the time of 'Where no one has gone before'... as that velocity would probably be higher than 9.2 (if 9.9 = 21 473 times LS).

And Voyager, well, the easiest explanation is (as I said before) that the damage from being pulled to the DQ radically reduced its cruising and maximum warp velocities and ended up needing decades to get back as a result.
But, it's conceivable that 9.975 is its regular sustainable cruise velocity (in an undamaged state) which would result in about 9 412 Ly's per day (or 3 435 680 times LS).
Plus, Voyager was launched in 2371 (8 years after the Enterprise-D) and was said to be state of the art (it would at the very least be more advanced at the time than a Galaxy class), so its not exactly without precedent.

 

[at Quark's]

Sure, I don't have any problems with Voyager being faster than the Enterprise -D, as you say it is more advanced. But if the specs (and the numbers you convert it to) are correct it suggests it is a hell of a lot faster, and in a different ballpark altogether.

Using the numbers you cite above , (undamaged) Voyager's top cruising velocity would be > 1000 times that of the Ent-D? In undamaged condition, Voyager could have been home in just 8 days (using that 9000 LY/day figure)? I don't really buy that because in that case all they'd have to do was find a sufficiently advanced ship docks of a friendly species. Also, why wouldn't Starfleet just have told Voyager to hang around in the general vicinity of that Message in a bottle alien relay station for a few days until an undamaged Intrepid-class vessel arrived to bring them home in another couple of days?

We know the Ent-D was a testbed for new technologies, and it is possible that the real fruits were only plucked in the next generation (Intreped and other classes), when all those new technologies could be finetuned, so that might explain it. The other explanation could be that the 9.975 figure is simply just too high. Had they said, 'top cruising speed warp 9.75' it still would have been quite a substantial (and probably more credible) improvement over the Ent-D performance, that after all 'only' would have that 9.2 number (9.6 only being sustainable for very limited periods of time).

 

[blssdwlf]

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.

There is at least one exception to this in TMP when Spock and Scotty are balancing the warp engines after Spock comes aboard and the inner grilles are lit blue but not at warp speed. That makes sense though that they are fiddling with the engine settings and they would need to be engaged to test.

They never really specify what Transwarp is in ST:III, you know it's obviously faster than regular warp, but how much faster? I know there is a TOS warp scale and a TNG warp scale, did what they call Transwarp in ST:III basically just become drives that could achieve TNG level warp speeds? Or was it meant to be something on the level of what the Borg were seen using in Voyager?

I don't think the TOS and TNG warp scale is comparable because TOS actual speeds were typically faster than TNG actual speeds in open space.

Instead, we could conjecture from an in-universe pov that TNG's past ships were at least twice as slow as said by Janeway in "Flashback". This assumes that we treat TOS as it's own separate timeline/universe and Voyager is part of the TNG timeline/universe with ST3's tech aligning to TNG.

ST3's "Transwarp drive" probably worked like regular warp drive but faster since Styles calls out, "Prepare for warp speed! Standby transwarp drive!" This suggests that the Transwarp drive would have at least felt or acted like warp speed instead of a Borg conduit, IMHO.

 

[Deks]

TOS and 23rd century movies being in a separate timeline works better in that instance, because Ent-A was able to traverse about 30 000 Ly's in about 3 days (and reaching galactic center/core in that time frame).

To me, it indicates that development of TW indeed resulted in much higher attainable velocities than what TNG timeline accomplished (which could be a result of temporal tampering where technological development was artificially stunted since NX-01 era), and we wouldn't see velocities in the range of 10 000 Ly's per day until Voyager's Warp 9.975 (considering that 9.9 = 21 473 times LS, and that past this point every increment results in exponential increases). But as we've seen, with Voyager say being the only ship at the time capable of achieving this speed, and its subsequent pull to the DQ... it might be that SF decided to return to a slower progression until it made the USS Prometheus (experimental one with 4 nacelles) which was able to sustain 9.9 (most of the fleet using regular engines, and only deep-space exploratory ships would be normally using say Warp 9.5 which might equal about 10 000 times LS).

And Voyager suffered catastrophic damage from being pulled to the DQ preventing it from accessing these fast speeds, ergo, being trapped, and unable to affect repairs due to say complexities of this Warp engine that normally requires resources of a Starbase... and SF suddenly lost the ship and might have speculated the ships engines could have malfunctioned.

As for ST 3 line: "Prepare for warp speed! Standby transwarp drive!" ... yes, I would imagine it would behave more like regular Warp rather than a Borg TW conduit... only the velocities in question for SF TW version would be 10 000 Ly's per day (so, probably not as fast as Borg TW conduits in the 24th century... but given the rate of development, I wouldn't be surprised if SF by the 24th century actively perfected this technology to such a degree where it would result in Quantum Slipstream V2 velocity of 10 000 Ly's per minute).
But that line to me also indicates that you first need to attain Warp speed before being able to access TW.
Something similar was shown on Voyager in the episode 'Day of Honor'. Voyager had to go past Warp 2 before being able to form proper subspace field that would allow creation of a TW conduit.

Come to think of it... that SF technology (from the 23rd century) would likely attract the Borg of that timeline closer in the 24th century (assuming SF avoided exploring certain portions of the DQ after they rescued the El-Aurians who would most likely inform them of the Borg).
So... by the 24th century in that timeline where SF attained much higher Warp speeds... perhaps they were much more advanced than the Federation we saw in the 'regular timeline' and managed to take on the Borg with greater ease.