Short Question About Warp Drive.

[Tenacity]

In Beyond the Enterprise is attack by a massive attack force, I thought why not just go back to warp? Would seem to be a good idea.

A friend resently asked, can they immediately go back to warp, have we ever seen this happen?

Can anyone here remember a Starfleet vessel going to warp shortly after coming out of warp?

Just asking.

 

[Timo]

Well, in STB, the heroes had just braved a rubble field that forced them to move at a walking pace. Going to warp there would probably have hurt a lot.

Dropping out of warp and then going to warp again is seldom done, for obvious reasons: usually you want to stay where you arrived. But in TNG "Schitzoid Man", the ship slows down for just a few seconds to beam down an away team, and in DSC "The War Without", the heroes drop out of warp next to Starbase 1 and immediately realize they should get going again, there being zero dialogue about any difficulty relating to immediate re-warping.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Angry Fanboy]

I've never known it to be an issue - doesn't Voyager do it hundreds of times in one go during an episode where they had to navigate through an anomaly of some kind.

I might be mis-remembering but even so, I'm pretty certain Starfleet ships have never been depicted as needing time to 'recharge' in the way that say, Moya from Farscape can't starburst again for a few hours.

 

[Tenacity]

Thanks.

 

[Khan Jr]

There's no reason other than poor plotting. Enterprise could even warp backwards from a threat.

 

[RPOW0614]

I forget which episode it was but a ship did a "touch and go" beam out of away team members.
Warp in, beam them down and immediately went back to warp.

 

[Timo]

Yup, that was the TNG S2 ep "Schitzoid Man". What we never learned was why the heroes didn't just stop for a minute there to do an ordinary beam-down, and then accelerate back to warp and fly a little bit faster to their destination. I mean, they can always coax a bit more from the engines after Picard has already commanded maximum warp. Or then they can afford to get there a minute later.

It's almost as if coming to a complete stop would somehow make it difficult to go back to high warp again...

But this is the only time in all of Trek where such a thing might be implied. Elsewhere and elsewhen, warp works just fine no matter what: inside atmospheres and oceans and black holes, right after stopping, as soon as a previously stone cold ship has the proper lights blinking. Warp is not finicky, and it takes a very special anomaly to bring it crashing down. (Of course, Trek adventures just happen to be full of such special anomalies!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Angry Fanboy]

The 'touch and go downwarping' (horrendous name) in The Schizoid Man always seemed like a bit of a storm in a teacup to me. Risking having your crewmembers materialising inside walls and so on - better to just stop the ship for those extra few seconds and reach the Constantinople a few seconds later.

 

[Ethros]

I've never known it to be an issue - doesn't Voyager do it hundreds of times in one go during an episode where they had to navigate through an anomaly of some kind.

Yeah that's why I immediatly thought of. Because they can't make course corrections at warp they say. But I also can't remember the episode I wanna say Fury maybe? But I'm not sure, anyone else?

 

[Imaus]

There's no reason other than poor plotting. Enterprise could even warp backwards from a threat.

FTL capability is a pathway to many abilities which Science considers to be unnatural...

Casualty, time travel, relativity...all out the window.

Back to my old Video game memories, back in Star Quest Online they had to introduce a few limitations. A arbitrary 'Stellar Gravity Well' which was fine; then a cooldown because a increasing tactic was just to jump around that gravity well either in battle or for transport (and even with .99c engines it could take minutes to get from the Gravity Well, which was right outside of Mars in Solsys, to Earth, IIRC)

 

[Phoenix219]

Where did I at one point possibly have gotten the idea that it was bad to warp too close to a planet or star?

 

[Timo]

It is a classic scifi trope that FTL drives don't work properly or at all close to gravity wells; it keeps the unwanted side effects (people using FTL drives as weapons, say) at bay. But it's not a trope Trek would have embraced.

Admittedly, warp becomes weird close to planets or stars. We can literally see it slowing down, in those episodes where our heroes use slingshotting around a star for time travel. Heck, perhaps the perceived slowing down is a time travel effect of sorts? But the very fact that we can see this is remarkable. We have actually seen ships jump to warp right within a planet's atmosphere.

Except in one episode of VOY, which may be what gave you this idea... In "Dragon's Teeth", the ship has landed on a planet where the natives have betrayed them and are chasing them in smallish fightercraft, trying to stop them from going to space. The heroes absolutely need to clear the first 280 kilometers of the atmosphere before they can warp, and it's literally an uphill battle for them. However, it's specifically said that this is because the atmosphere is thick with "radiogenic particles" that jam many key plot-solving systems on the hero ship, including warp drive. It's not a general and generic limit on where and when one can go to warp.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Angry Fanboy]

I can see that there is a certain element of dramatic tension created if a starship can't simply jump in and out of warp as many times as it wishes and the warp engines need a certain amount of time to 'recharge' - but this has never been the way it's been depicted on Star Trek.

Using warp drive within a solar system is an issue that comes and goes depending on the episode - some episodes will make a big deal out of it (off the top of my head Kira and Jadzia in By Inferno's Light and possibly most notably Best Of Both Worlds where even under the threat of the Borg assimilating Earth the Enterprise-D still doesn't risk popping out of warp in orbit and instead labours through the inner solar system at sublight speed), in other episodes (we're discussing near-warp transport in The Schizoid Man in another thread) the Enterprise drops out of warp literally in orbit of a planet then accelerates into warp again.

Who knows...

 

[Timo]

It's only recently that I have come to think that "Best of Both Worlds" doesn't actually involve the heroes or the villains insanely avoiding warp within the Sol system at a time of great hurry.

Sure, Riker commands slowing down to impulse initially. But there's nothing to say he wouldn't go to warp afterwards again. Also, the Borg appear to be dropping to sublight next to all the big sights, firing at them, and then continuing their penetration towards Earth - and each leg there could involve warping, from Saturn to Jupiter, from Jupiter to Mars, from Mars to Earth.

Yet clearly Riker isn't making the expected sort of headway even if warping all the way to Earth: the trip is said to be at just twice lightspeed or so. But that in turn is consistent with warp being slow close to Sol - not forbidden, but quite possibly often impractical because it's little better than impulse.

Where this issue would be a big deal is "By Inferno's Light", in the sense that Dax and Kira banter about it. Where it probably isn't is ST:TMP even though Kirk "risks" going to warp as far out as Jupiter, since the risks would be inherent in him flying a ship with untested engines anyway.

But where it may be a big deal silently is all those cases where a sublight shuttle is the chosen means of ferrying folks to and from the outskirts of a star system: perhaps the mothership avoids warping all the way to the destination because warp in that particular system (and during that particular moment of nasty subspace weather) would be infuriatingly slow.

Certainly Scotty in "Elaan of Troyius" makes it sound as if insystem travel at less than warp is practically unheard of. In contrast, our DS9 heroes always seem to putter between the station and Bajor at impulse - but that system is explicitly known for its foul subspace weather, perhaps almost uniquely so. Is that why Dax worries in "Inferno"?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

There was an Eco-friendly message episode of TNG that showed that warp near planets slowly destroyed the atmosphere but it was quickly forgotten.

It's also never really explained how 2 fleets meet in space. I mean why do the Borg need to stop at 359 to meet the fleet or why can't Dukat just warp the detapa council past the Klingons.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

On the surface of it The Best Of Both Worlds would seem to be pretty damning evidence that starships should never use warp drive within the solar system - lets face it if you're not going to risk it under those circumstances you're pretty much never going to risk it are you?

But running parallel to that you have The Schizoid Man where as I've said the same starship drops out of warp within transporter range (virtually touching the planet in interstellar terms) then jumps back into warp again.

So you'll take the risk to reach to a vessel in distress a few seconds sooner but won't take the risk when a Borg Cube is about to attack Earth?

Now you can argue that these are different systems so the circumstances are different, but presumably there isn't a system in the galaxy where you know where every planet, asteroid, spacedock etc is as well as you do with the Sol/Terran system and can plot your course accordingly.

There are some occasions where you can't square the circle, and I think this is one such occasion.

 

[somebuddyX]

I thought it would be cool if ships like the Stargazer with 4 nacelles could do multiple quick warp jumps (like that lightspeed skipping scene from Rise of Skywalker) by switching up between the two sets of two nacelles. Overuse would fry the engines but you could do a couple of quick hits on targets in a battle scenario or something.

 

[darrenjl]

The reality is never consistent. but I've always taken it to be that one can warp directly in and out of a star system, as in say, a trajectory directly from one planet to outside of the system into open space, but it is dangerous to do it within a system, say planet to planet, or across the same plane as the Kuiper belt, or coming in at a different angle relative to the planet you want to visit.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well.. now with Disco-inferno.. they just "Jump" in and out like starwars right in orbit or in formation.. ugh..
But it seemed the planet was surrounded by a very dense asteroid field.. going to warp may be ill advised, but there was nothing "Technical" wise that says they couldn't warp away .. Hell there have been a number of instances where they jump to warp for a few seconds to gain some distance.. like the Hathaway or Picard manouver..
But in the movie.. they did try to warp out ( way to late) and got the nacelles sliced off..

 

[Spot261]

Short question about warp drive

Make it quick.