Warp 13 from "All Good Things"

[matthunter]

The old "Warp 9.9 becomes Warp 10, 9.99 becomes Warp 11, etc" idea seems to work relatively well. I'm not sure if it kicks in as I stated or if it's forward one decimal i.e. 9.99 is Warp 10, as Voyager and the E-E would both be capable of nearly Warp 11 in the former case... but perhaps that makes sense given there were only 30 years of development for AGT, which would include the TNG films.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I did some very rough calculations based on trying to extend the Warp 1 to 9 curve beyond 9 and on that basis Warp 10 would be about Warp 9.6 on the TNG scale, Warp 11 would be about Warp 9.9, Warp 12 would be about Warp 9.96, and Warp 13 would be between Voyager's Warp 9.975 and Prometheus' Warp 9.99, Warp 14 would be in excess of Warp 9.99 but still slower than subspace radio or slipstream which is at least slightly faster.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Based on VOY "Threshold," I don't think there's any canonical support for the idea that warp ten is "really" somewhere else on the warp scale and corresponds to a finite velocity.

On the other hand, based on TNG "Where No Man Has Gone Before," there is canonical evidence that there are other ways of configuring warp fields that are more efficient at producing faster speeds than the standard configurations used by Federation starships in the 24th century.

My take is that warp 13 is/will likely be the label assigned to one of the other, or some other, new configuration of the warp field geometry.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Based on VOY "Threshold," I don't think there's any canonical support for the idea that warp ten is "really" somewhere else on the warp scale and corresponds to a finite velocity.

Under the standard system used during the TNG era this true (but not what we are diuscussing), however during the AGT future a speed of 'Warp 13' is referenced, which logically follows that during the same period, Warp 10 is a finite, lower velocity.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Under the standard system used during the TNG era this true (but not what we are diuscussing), however during the AGT future a speed of 'Warp 13' is referenced, which logically follows that during the same period, Warp 10 is a finite, lower velocity.

No, that doesn't follow at all.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Why? Last time I checked, 13 is more than 10.

And that's without taking into consideration that even in the TNG era, Warp Ten being "infinite velocity" was a retcon (from an episode that most of the fans and even a few of the staff involved wish would go away). WHOHGB merely suggested that it was a very fast speed, and Time Squared suggested that passing warp ten could result in time travel.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Why? Last time I checked, 13 is more than 10.

Think about the tangent of 100 degrees in comparison with the tangent of 90 degrees.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Sorry, it's been far too long since I did any serious maths, can you elaborate?

 

[Paul Weaver]

If you travel 500 foot at a 10 degree angle, you get 87 foot up
If you travel 500 foot at a 20 degree angle, you get 171 foot up
At 89 degrees, 499.9 foot
At 90 degrees, 500 foot

As degrees increase, the distance you travel upwards increases. At this stage you're confident that 100 degrees will be more than 500 foot.

At 100 degrees, 492 foot

Oh dear

 

[Timo]

It might help if we had some idea how fast this newfangled Warp 13 really is.

But the funny thing is, it's something both a meek hospital ship and the pimped-up E-D use - the former for getting from H'atoria to the Neutral Zone fairly fast (another Picard conducts a similar trip in the older E-D at Warp 9, which is very high for that ship), the latter for getting out of the (former) Neutral Zone as fast as they possibly can.

Why is the semi-comfortable long range cruising speed of a hospital ship the same as the super-serious emergency maximum overwarp of Admiral Riker's favorite warship?

Perhaps because these are indeed new power consumption minima, high up there, but fairly sparsely spaced in comparison with Warps 1 through 9? Thus, new ships can reach Warp 12, and most of the decent ones can do Warp 13 (and would not benefit from going a tad slower, because Warp 13 is a local power consumption minimum), but it really is impossible to reach Warp 14 with mere 25th century tech (and there's no point in doing Warp 13.1 because that's almost as impossibly costly)? This in contrast with the 24th century where it's possible to improve from Warp 6 to Warp 7 with relatively modest investment, and then further to Warp 8 and Warp 9, too, because those aren't so greatly separated.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Sorry, it's been far too long since I did any serious maths, can you elaborate?

Tangent of 80 degrees is finite. Tangent of 90 degrees is infinite. Tangent of 100 degrees is finite. Yet 80 < 90 < 100.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Why is the semi-comfortable long range cruising speed of a hospital ship the same as the super-serious emergency maximum overwarp of Admiral Riker's favorite warship?

The D is an old ship.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

The only time-distance figure we are given explicitedly, half a light-year during the time it takes to evac the Pasteur. I don't know how long it takes to complete a transporter cycle but between 5 and 30s seems reasonable? In which case the Klingon cruisers can make (an average of) ~3M x c and 5.35 M c or 1.5 to 2.675 times faster than subspace radio (maybe about Warp 12?)

 

[Ravenswood]

This may be a can of worms I'm opening, but where is it explicitly stated in an episode or film that there is an old warp scale and a new warp scale? The whole idea that ENT/TOS uses a different scale than the rest of Trek is fan conjecture/head canon based almost entirely on the worst episode of VOY, and possibly all Star Trek. It seems to me if that episode is so authoritative, then we must also be utterly committed to the idea that oneday human will have evolved into giant, salamander-like amphibians.

But I don't recall it ever being clearly stated that there is more than one warp scale.

 

[Mysterion]

FWIW, the "warp 13" reference occurs in the midst of a (likely) alternate and (probably) imaginary timeline created by Q. Shouldn't really overthink it, I suppose.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

No. But you want to overthink something, this May it will literally be 25 years since we first watched "All Good Things", which established that twenty-five years from THEN, we'd have a three-nacelled Enteprise-D with a BFG phaser cannon and Warp 13 top speed!

But put into perspective, back THEN our top speeds for everything were just about the same; but we've since figured out how to get to the ISS in six hours instead of two days (also, we now HAVE an ISS, but it applies to Mir as well), even though it still takes 6-7 months to get to Mars. It still takes 10 hours to fly from the west coast of North America to Japan, but now we do it with less fuel; fuel efficiency for consumer cars is generally better too...

Mark

 

[CorporalCaptain]

FWIW, the "warp 13" reference occurs in the midst of a (likely) alternate and (probably) imaginary timeline created by Q.

Isn't that already overthinking it?

Shouldn't really overthink it, I suppose.

 

[Ithekro]

When in theory means that the Picard series could take place at that point in the timeline....but without a three nacelled USS Enterprise-D. (Patrick Stewart bring nominally ten years younger than Picard could set the series to be ten years earlier than that....but that man doesn't really age).

 

[Mysterion]

Isn't that already overthinking it?

Nope. In Trek "Q did it." = "A wizard did it." from other stories.

 

[Darkwing]

This may be a can of worms I'm opening, but where is it explicitly stated in an episode or film that there is an old warp scale and a new warp scale? The whole idea that ENT/TOS uses a different scale than the rest of Trek is fan conjecture/head canon based almost entirely on the worst episode of VOY, and possibly all Star Trek. It seems to me if that episode is so authoritative, then we must also be utterly committed to the idea that oneday human will have evolved into giant, salamander-like amphibians.

But I don't recall it ever being clearly stated that there is more than one warp scale.

TNG Tech Manual.