What happened to Transwarp drive as shown in ST:III?

[Maurice]

I find the idea that the experiment utterly failed silly on several levels. First, you don't build and entire starship to test engineering principles. They'd have tested the propulsion on other testbeds long before loading it onto a ship full of perishable crewmembers. There's nothing in the movies after TSFS that implies the Excelsior isn't faster than the Enterprise. Heck it makes it from beta Quadrant to Khitomer in the nick of time.

 

[Timo]

It could be, though, that transwarp didn't scale up well. A series of test rigs might have verified the principles, and encouraged Starfleet to build a ship that not only had a crew aboard, but also was lavishly equipped with weapons (and no doubt with other mission gear as well)! The results might have been disappointing nevertheless, with the Excelsior either not performing quite as much better than the test rigs as her bigger size and power would have indicated, or actually performing worse than the rigs.

Such things are familiar from the aircraft industry, where a subscale testbed may perform well, but an actual prototype may run into serious aerodynamic problems by virtue of being 10% bigger or having a weapons hardpoint marring the wing profile. It's just that the aircraft industry can shrug off such annoyances and simply build a second prototype; ships are more expensive...

Clearly, the Excelsior wasn't a complete failure. We could speculate that her original drive system was, though, and that the system was ripped out and a new, more conventional one installed instead. But in that case, it is a bit odd that the design would go to series production without major alterations to her shape - even the original engine shapes would be retained in subsequent Excelsior class vessels.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[C.E. Evans]

Clearly, the Excelsior wasn't a complete failure. We could speculate that her original drive system was, though, and that the system was ripped out and a new, more conventional one installed instead. But in that case, it is a bit odd that the design would go to series production without major alterations to her shape - even the original engine shapes would be retained in subsequent Excelsior class vessels.

One possibility could be that the Excelsior Class Development Project came first and then the initial Transwarp Drive Project came shortly afterward. As the newest design at the time, the Excelsior may have been chosen as the testbed for the new drive, which was incorporated into the vessel during construction. The Excelsior was always meant to look the way it did, without or without transwarp engines.

In such a case, had the Transwarp Drive Project come several years earlier, it might have been installed aboard a refitted Constitution-class vessel or whatever was the newest frontline design at the time, IMO...

 

[Timo]

That makes worlds of sense... I wonder if other operational or near-operational starships were equipped with the experimental drive? As you all might already know, SJ in Mr Scott's Guide postulated that the E-A was a competing transwarp experiment...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Bear]

Would just like to say thank you to everyone who's posted here. I'm kind of glad there's no set canonical explanation for the disappearance of Transwarp, and that everyone has made valid but still hypothetical views.

I was so sure there would be a canon answer and that someone would just post a link to Memory Alpha and say "read this". I don't feel so bereft of Trek knowledge now.

 

[Mr Silver]

Would just like to say thank you to everyone who's posted here. I'm kind of glad there's no set canonical explanation for the disappearance of Transwarp, and that everyone has made valid but still hypothetical views.

I was so sure there would be a canon answer and that someone would just post a link to Memory Alpha and say "read this". I don't feel so bereft of Trek knowledge now.

Its really no trouble

Having a community like the BBS, allows people to share ideas, background information, real world physics, designs and translated treknology in order to generate decent discussion and help out with the various queries that we all have

The "Transwarp Debate" seems to be a popular topic for discussion in the world of "Trek", however more times than not its usually pretty controversial, however in this thread it appears that we've all been able to agree on the different points and have a constructive discussion, lets just hope that we it will remain constructive

 

[Timo]

On the subject of "obvious answer humiliatingly readily accessible via the net", where does the Admiral Bear avatar come from? Is Mr Bear here a TV celebrity of some sort?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gorn Captain]

The car companies killed it because of pressure from the oil industry. Oh wait.

Dammit, people, this was funny!

 

[Admiral Bear]

On the subject of "obvious answer humiliatingly readily accessible via the net", where does the Admiral Bear avatar come from? Is Mr Bear here a TV celebrity of some sort?

Timo Saloniemi

Me? A TV celebrity? Only in some JJ reboot/reimagining of my life!

Seriously, though. Shatner was very rude on stage during a convention appearance, and when I got to him at the signing table, I gave him one my very hard stares (those familiar with Paddington Bear will understand). I pointed my furry paw at the fat bastard, uttered the Magical Forest spell that only bears know, and turned him in to a fellow forest dweller. The spell was/is retrospective, hence Shatner now looks like a bear in my TOS avatar.

Mind you, Shatner had forest animals living on his head from about 1970 to 1991, so I could've saved myself some magic dust.

 

[Admiral Bear]

Just for you, Timo.

http://yfrog.com/2dkirkincommandjhttp://img85.imageshack.us/img85/

 

[yotsuya]

I feel the need to dredge this topic out of the past.

The Transwarp project was based on the TOS Enterprise speed records. I forget how many times the ship was modified to go faster than designed and had those modifications removed. The Kelvins pushed the Enterprise well past warp 10 on the old scale (on that scale it wasn't infinite - that idea came with the new warp scale in TNG). That was not the only time the TOS Enterprise exceeded Warp 10 (which on the old scale was only 1000 times the speed of light). Warp 14.1 was only 2803 times the speed of light (roughly 9.65 on the new scale). They made a big deal that by the 24th century they had revised the scale. So for the 23rd century, calling something Transwarp Drive meant faster than standard warp drive. By the 24th century, the term would still mean faster than standard warp drive but the scale has changed.

So when you watch the various times the TOS Enterprise achieved great speeds, there are at least three theories that could be tested to give the Federation Transwarp Drive. They would very much want Scotty to be on the team because Scotty had been on the Enterprise when each had been achieved. So the Excelsior beating the Enterprise speed records would be something. We never learn the answer. In Star Trek VI we never hear how fast the Excelsior is going, but it appears to be very very fast. I personally think the new scale came after analysis of multiple successful attempts to duplicate the Enterprise speed records. First we have Excelsior which we know had transwarp drive. Then we have Enterprise A, which from the screens on the bridge also had transwarp drive. Then there is Constellation with its four nacelles. And we have a new warp scale which no one in TNG every talks about. Why some have forgotten the old scale is beyond me, but the TOS era is all in the old scale while TNG and beyond is in the new scale and it seems to go back as far as any story cared to go. The new scale is newer than Enterprise B and older than Enterprise C. Sometime in that 50 year period the scale changed. To me that indicates that one of the 23rd century transwarp projects was a success. Maybe all of them. Maybe the different ways that the Enterprise had set records were each tried, but it is doubtful that the Federation would be unable to replicate even one of those.

Plus, I have traced the source of the story of transwarp's failure to the USS Ingram plans from 1986. It is just a fan theory that caught on and has never been confirmed in canon. While there is every reason to believe that the canon sources indicate it did succeed and the Excelsior set records and started a long history of a very successful class of ships.

 

[Paradise City]

Transwarp didn't work and they shelved it. It's not that implausible. It might have had unresolvable medium term side effects on either the ship or its personnel. Perhaps it "polluted" subspace or something. Much like 24th century warp engines were found to have done 80 or 90 years later.

 

[Maurice]

I feel the need to dredge this topic out of the past.

And I feel mebbe you might try reading the board rules about resurrecting dead threads before doing things like this.

This thread is old enough to be in 3rd grade.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Again, no thread necromancy! Locking!