Proof that TOS Enterprise could undergo saucer separation/reconnection too!

[Timo]

Unless the Ent-D was already cruising through the Deneb system at the point it met Q? We've seen on other occasions that starships like to cruise through solar systems at Impulse power, and the ship didn't seem to be at warp when the episode began...

We still have to account for the bit where the combined ship makes a 180 and engages superhypermaximum emergency panic warp for several minutes. The saucer would have to undo, that is, repeat this feat in order to get back to Deneb.

If impulse within the Deneb system is as fast as superhypermaximum emergency panic warp, one really wonders why Picard bothered in the first place!

Cant see how the saucer could have travelled at Warp if it didn't have warp drive unless it was some Q 'magic'.

But why wouldn't it have warp drive? The Federation knows how to build those. Why wouldn't it put one in the saucer of its flagship?

Warp drives are generally spotted by the presence of glowing blue bits. The saucer has glowing blue bits!

Of course, Kirk's old saucer had no glowing blue bits. But then again, his combined starship didn't have those, either...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shawnster]

If impulse within the Deneb system is as fast as superhypermaximum emergency panic warp, one really wonders why Picard bothered in the first place!

Picard's order in Farpoint was to protect the civilians.

 

[Timo]

...So why not flee from Q at the safe impulse speed, rather than the dangerous but uselessly slow panic warp?

It's a nifty idea that the ships sometimes get caught in "sublight shallows" where warp is distressingly slow. And it makes sense that the ship would be just about to arrive at Deneb, hence the impulse approach and the load of "I wonder what Deneb is like?" expository dialogue. But Picard's use of warp for the outward flight does suggest that warp is superior to other types of propulsion there, and the saucer thus should enjoy the same propulsion in order to countermand this.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Perhaps intra-system travel is only sluggish at warp when you're travelling towards the star (i.e. centre of gravitational mass)

 

[Timo]

I like that a lot. The only base it doesn't cover is the supposed inability of the ships moored at DS9 in "By Inferno's Light" to escape outward from the destruction of the Bajoran homestar...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Yeah, and does the TAS engine room count, too? You see the can of worms this opens up.

Just wait until someone brings up the abilities of Discovery's Enterprise 1701

ENT: IAMD depicted a lower aft phaser just above (or below?) the shuttlebay on the Defiant. Or was that a rear torpedo?

Rear phasers just above the shuttlebay in the same place as the TMP ship, and rear photons firing from the window just above the clamshell doors, which is a shuttlebay control room in TOS-R and some ancient blueprints.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm not usually that much interested in the science of Trek (sorry everyone) but if the saucer separated would it be basically stuck there with no warp drive or impulse drive - a sitting duck.
Don't the weapons need the engines? Where are the weapons anyway?

Although I just joked about using Discovery's version of the Enterprise, the Kelvinverse movie Star Trek Beyond shows and explains everything you're asking.

The Enterprise is attacked. The warp nacelles are torn right off the ship, so they start to escape using impulse engines at the rear of the saucer. Then the neck of the ship is severed, and they're crippled because they were using the warp core to power the impulse engines, and although the impulse engines have their own seperate power source in the saucer the severe damage they'd suffered meant it wasn't switching over. So Kirk and Uhura had to go to where the saucer connects to the neck (or what was left of it) and manually separate in order for the saucer impulse engines to draw power from the correct reactors and function again.

 

[Timo]

All of that, and everything we see of the ship's interiors in the Kelvinverse movies, could apply to the TOS ship as well, just at a somewhat smaller scale. I'm perfectly willing to believe in a spherical reactor chamber somewhere belowdecks (ejecting through that round yellow hatch at the bottom of the secondary hull if need be), supported and surrounded by a maze of pipes and tanks that looks a bit like a brewery, and topped by a control room that has a dilithium articulation frame dumbwaiter and big access hatches on the floor for reaching the dangerously radiating sphere. Oh, and there are translucent man-sized pipes going places and carrying water, just as seen in ST:ID and in TAS!

Rear phasers just above the shuttlebay in the same place as the TMP ship, and rear photons firing from the window just above the clamshell doors, which is a shuttlebay control room in TOS-R and some ancient blueprints.

Not quite. We see the phaser turrets above the shuttlebay in close-up, but we never exactly see where the torps are coming from when the ship flies out of the asteroid base. Except we do see they are coming from somewhere much closer to the bow, perhaps even the very stem of the connecting neck, flying between the pylon stems on their way out; the bright dot travels the whole length of the upper secondary hull surface from the neck on.

Might be the fancy "NACA inlet" depressions on top of the secondary hull of the TMP ship, labeled as vents or thrusters in some fan works like Mr Scott's Guide, are in fact aft torpedo launchers that were there back in TOS already, and the "inlet ramps" are hinged and go flush with the surface when not in use - just like in submarines of yore. Or then there's a launcher inside the neck, at the very lowest part - again the TMP ship has a "vent" in the right spot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Uncertain Kelvin Enterprise design applies to the TOS Enterprise.

 

[Timo]

Hard to tell if starships can be built in more than one way. So far, most of the innards have been basically identical, save for the exact shape of the big mysterious powerplant thing. And all the NCC-1701s across all the spinoffs are the same basic shape. PineKirk and ShatnerKirk would both have the same spaces to fill with machinery, the same directions in which stuff can be ejected or from which it can be refueled or made to spit death rays or launch shuttlecraft. Only, PineKirk's machines could be bigger, or his shuttles more numerous. Or then his machines more numerous and his shuttles bigger. We sort of see both in the movies.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[trekkist]

I take the USS Enterprise Officer's Manual diagram as a landed saucer as accurate for two reasons. First, a Jefferies' sketch whose scrap view shows a primary and pylon at some distance from the secondary:

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/evolution-of-the-starship-enterprise/3/

I posit the TOS primary as routine-detachable, landable, and faster-than-light via its impulse drive...whose ftl capability is demonstrated by what might be termed "deep canon"...not "headcanon," despite arguments to the contrary.

Numerous episodes and films established impulse as a routinely ftl-capable propulsor. To cite just a few:

Where No Man: Kirk's log entry--" Ship's condition, heading back on impulse power only. Main engines burned out. The ship's space warp ability gone." Taken literally, the 2nd & 3rd sentences imply disfunction of TWO systems: the "main" (warp drive) engines AND the ship's "warp ability" black box(es). I am of course well aware the 3rd sentence was written/spoken to explain to the audience what lack of main engines meant...but "in universe," the implication is as above.

"Mudd's Women" -- in-progress ftl journey completed without lithium crystals. A more complicated case, but "Elann" establishes (di)lithium as essential for warp drive.

"Balance of Terror"--Romulan's "power" is "simple impulse"--but it is obviously ftl.

"Corbomite"--impulse thrust is added to warp's in escape effort; a sublight engine's "max" would be negligible.

"Doomsday Machine"--Constellation, its warp drive a "hopeless pile of junk," overtakes and outruns the robot (which if sublight only would have reached Rigel in...how many years?--prior which threat, it ate four solar systems in short order)

"Wrath of Khan"--E. sets out for Regula at warp five. Not long after, her eta (though not warp speed) is cited:

KIRK: How far?
SPOCK: Twelve hours and forty-three minutes, present speed.

As Reliant approaches,

[Reliant bridge]

KHAN: Slow to one-half impulse power. Let's be friends.
HELMSMAN: Slowing to one-half impulse power.

[Enterprise bridge]

SULU: Reliant in our section, this Quadrant, sir, and slowing.

(although no corresponding "drop to impulse" order is given, E. must have done so, else she would have hurtled past Khan at...whatever warp speed she was then making. After the battle, E. arrives at Regula prior the onset of rigor mortis...which takes ~ 12 hours. Without warp engines--

SPOCK (on intercom): Engine room reports auxiliary power restored. We can proceed at impulse power.

--E. arrives at Regula as fast, or faster, than her stated warp drive e.t.a. Reliant (likewise sans warp drive) beats her there.

TNG "Arsenal of Freedom"

LAFORGE: Speed warp five.
SOLIS: Warp five. Aye.
LAFORGE: Engage. Hold course and speed for twenty eight seconds, then come to a full stop.

Laforge then give Logan his marching orders:

LAFORGE: ...Mister Logan, you are going to take command of the Saucer Section. Backup crew, report to the main Bridge.
LOGAN: You're going to separate?
LAFORGE: Yes, and I want you to take the saucer section and proceed immediately to Starbase one zero three.

Unlike in TNG "Farpoint," saucer had to go ftl on its own (save Laforge brought the ship within sublight cruise of the Starbase...in which case, why not simply GO there, THEN separate?)

TNG "Conspiracy"

RIKER: What is our e.t.a. at Pacifica, Mister La Forge?
LAFORGE: Twenty two hours fourteen minutes, sir.
RIKER: Increase to warp six.
LAFORGE: Aye sir. Full impulse.

(I recall someone's once posting of this, "Geordi was joking." Yeah, right)

Lastly, the opening of "Undiscovered Country"

Stardate 9521.6, Captain's log, U.S.S. Excelsior. Hikaru Sulu commanding. After three years I've concluded my first assignment as master of this vessel, cataloguing gaseous planetary anomalies in the Beta Quadrant. We're heading home under full impulse power. I am pleased to report that ship and crew have functioned well.

Gonna be a damn long trip on sublight impulse, save we conclude Excelsior's gone relativistic, and will arrive centuries hence, Earth time.

Per the eldest canon:
KIRK: Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centuri, the discoverer of the space warp?

Per the first sequel series,

SCOTT: Captain, there's the old Bonaventure. She was the first ship to have warp drive installed.

Pre-"installation," Bonnie was (presumably) a hyperlight-impulse saucer. Cochrane's discovery of "the space warp [principle/device]" permitted impulse engines (perhaps the source of 2018's obsolescence of interplanetary sleeper ships, per "Space Seed") to provide ftl speeds. The warp drive (which may or may not have been used by Archer's NX-01) was a superior means of ftl propulsion (in terms of energy requirements, acceleration period(s), or maximum velocity...choose any or all), some of whose components were named in TMP intercom chatter:

[Enterprise engineering]

VOICES (OC): Check. Cleary on number six.
Space matrix restoration coils. Dilithium crystals.

Trek transcripts at

http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie1.html

omit anything else, but to my recollection, "magnatomic flux chillers" were named in intercom chatter during the bridge predeparture scene. These terms are Franz Joseph's, per whose TM the warp drive's "operation is based on unified field space energy/matter mattrix [sic] warp postulate" (as vs. impulse's "subatomic unified energy impulse postulate").

Refit's rectangular landing pads (as called out on Kimble's blueprints) cannot support an "emergency" (skidding) landing, as in "Generations." Refit's neck-top separation plane was necessitated by its torpedo bay placement. TOS E, by implication, had two gear doors...and retained its pylon, so not to set down planetside as what prop pilots called a "tail dragger." E-D's saucer crashed due a nearby Bird's explosion (whose "shock wave" we see hit her).

Canon is what's on the air and on screen. Per canon, TOS E was moving at one helluva clip during the "Bread and Circuses" teaser:

KIRK: Mister Spock, assuming that the wreckage drifted at the same speed and direction for the past six years?
SPOCK: It would have come from planet four, star system eight nine two, directly ahead.
CHEKOV: Only one sixteenth parsec away, Captain. We should be there in seconds.

Per a Wiki citation,
In the episode Bloodlines from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Riker claims that the Enterprise would need around 20 minutes for a 300 billion kilometer flight at warp 9. Thus warp 9 corresponds to a speed of 900 billion kilometers per hour (= 250 million kilometers per second) or about 830 times the speed of light.

A 365-day year has 31,536,000 seconds. A parsec, being 3.3. light years, has 104,068,800 light seconds. One sixteenth of a parsec, 6,504,300 light seconds. Divided by 830 yields an E-D 1/16 parsec travel time of 7743 seconds--two hours, nine minutes.

Numerous other episodes establish similar speeds as common. A few imply what might be called "subspace sinks," where warp velocities drop to the "classical" (not, per aired data, "canonical") warp factor cubed times cee numbers. They assume a higher warp factor to cross the low average mass "star desert" off Gothos; they need ~300 years to reach Andromeda.

Kirk's "original" was faster than Picard's. At TOS' "Warp six," it could outpace Picard's ship while running rings around it.

Thus endeth the titular "proof."

 

[johnnybear]

Apparently Galactus came before The Doomsday Machine! Fantastic Four #48 which came out in 1966 and Norman Spinrad's titanical Trek script debut was in 1967! I had wondered if Stan Lee had been off on his plagiarising again?
JB

 

[trekkist]

Inspiration from Galactus seems slight, if any; Spinrad's 1st concept had the machine as a mining robot gone rough (Cushman, Vol. 2).

 

[ChallengerHK]

That depends on how much weight we assign to those door numbers - heck, even Kirk's chair sported such a sign in WNMHGB!
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03hd/wherenomanhasgonebeforehd873.jpg

Here's an idea. What if these signs represent computer network nodes instead of physical locations? Instead of Rand using them to ask for, say, security to come to 3C-46, she would use them to ask for tech support to 3C-46 to see why her screen is flickering.

 

[Henoch]

"Circuit" labels are more in line with 1960's tech vs. computer connections:

ENGINEERING CIRCUIT BAY G-121 could represent a main circuit junction for all G lines (like 1G, 2G, 3G, etc.), with 121 representing some sort of space frame or location. Ex: Kirk's Quarters are on circuit line 3F at space frame 121.

 

[MAGolding]

Apparently Galactus came before The Doomsday Machine! Fantastic Four #48 which came out in 1966 and Norman Spinrad's titanical Trek script debut was in 1967! I had wondered if Stan Lee had been off on his plagiarising again?
JB

Inspiration from Galactus seems slight, if any; Spinrad's 1st concept had the machine as a mining robot gone rough (Cushman, Vol. 2).

Apparently you have never haeard of Fred Saberhagan's Berserker series.

The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines strive to destroy all life.

These Berserkers, named after the human berserker warriors of Norse legend, are doomsday weapons left over from an interstellar war between two races of extraterrestrials. They all have machine intelligence, and their sizes range from that of an asteroid, in the case of an automated repair and construction base, down to human size (and shape) or smaller. The Berserkers' bases are capable of manufacturing more and deadlier Berserkers as the need arises.

The first Berserker stories were published a few years before Star Trek's first broadcast.

The first story, "Without a Thought" (originally published as "Fortress Ship")[1] (1963), was basically a puzzle story, whose protagonist must find a way to simulate intelligence to fool an enemy trying to determine whether there was any conscious being present in a spaceship.

Saberhagen came up with the Berserker as the rationale for the story on the spur of the moment, but the basic concept was so fruitful, with so many possible ramifications, that he used it as the basis of many stories. A common theme in the stories is of how the apparent weaknesses and inconsistencies of living beings are actually the strengths that bring about the killer machines' eventual defeat.

The second story, "Goodlife" (1963), introduces human traitors or collaborators who cooperate with the Berserker machines to stay alive for a little longer.

The original Berserkers were designed and built as an ultimate weapon, by a race now known only as the Builders, to wipe out their rivals, the Red Race, in a war which took place at a time corresponding to Earth's Paleolithic era. The Builders failed to ensure their own immunity from Berserker attack, or they lost those safeguards through an unknown malfunction that changed the Berserker programming, and they were exterminated by their own creation very shortly after the demise of the Red Race. The Berserkers then set out across the galaxy to fulfill their core programmed imperative, which is now, simply, to destroy all life wherever they can find it.

A similar premise, though on a much smaller scale, was previously introduced by Walter M. Miller, Jr., in the 1954 short story "I Made You,", described by reviewer N. Samuelson as "A pure 'sorcerer’s apprentice' sketch, about a war machine on the moon which kills anyone who comes within its range, including one of its programmers, because its control circuits are damaged.".[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(novel_series)

A few days ago I read, probably somewhere in these forums, the opinion that "The Doomsday Machine" influenced the creation of the Berserker stories. Actually Norman Spinrad and posisbly some of the Star Trek staff should have read a few of the Berserker stories before and while working on the script.

 

[Maurice]

Inspiration from Galactus seems slight, if any; Spinrad's 1st concept had the machine as a mining robot gone rough (Cushman, Vol. 2).

If that's what Cushman wrote it's not supported by the production paperwork. The March 6, 1967 Story Outline has Decker describe the "Eater" as "not a machine, but a living organism with a nuclear metabolism." Spinrad's later interviews about the script have don't always jibe with that he wrote in the day, so you have to take such claims with a grain of salt.

And take anything Cushman writes with a grain of salt. He treats anecdotes decades on as if they were as factual as production paperwork.

 

[Timo]

Numerous episodes and films established impulse as a routinely ftl-capable propulsor. To cite just a few:

And to nitpick:

"Mudd's Women" -- in-progress ftl journey completed without lithium crystals. A more complicated case, but "Elann" establishes (di)lithium as essential for warp drive.

Nope, no sign of the ship moving FTL without 'lithium. We hear there's a single surviving crystal, and the first time we hear for certain that there no longer is, the ship is already parked.

OTOH, when we hear of the final approach being made under battery power, we can assume this is because the crystal has already burned through. But there is no reason to assign any FTL quality to this final approach.

"Balance of Terror"--Romulan's "power" is "simple impulse"--but it is obviously ftl.

Or then not: the writing of the episode is all over the place, and while half of it won't work at STL, the other half is impossible at FTL (flying through comets, say).

"Corbomite"--impulse thrust is added to warp's in escape effort; a sublight engine's "max" would be negligible.

Zero mention of thrust there - it's just impulse power. Which we know is good for all sorts of applications. Except for FTL travel, interestingly enough.

"Doomsday Machine"--Constellation, its warp drive a "hopeless pile of junk," overtakes and outruns the robot (which if sublight only would have reached Rigel in...how many years?--prior which threat, it ate four solar systems in short order)

Yet assigning FTL quality to "one third impulse" solves absolutely nothing there, because the machine still has to be capable of respectable warp speed, and pretending that 1/3 impulse of a starship is better than regular warp of a starship gets us nowhere.

So let's not assign any FTL quality to "one third impulse". Because, you know, there is none in the adventure: the Constellation is never actually shown moving FTL between any two locations.

"Wrath of Khan"--E. sets out for Regula at warp five. Not long after, her eta (though not warp speed) is cited:

KIRK: How far?
SPOCK: Twelve hours and forty-three minutes, present speed.

(although no corresponding "drop to impulse" order is given, E. must have done so, else she would have hurtled past Khan at...whatever warp speed she was then making. After the battle, E. arrives at Regula prior the onset of rigor mortis...which takes ~ 12 hours. Without warp engines--

So where's the issue? If Kirk slowed down to impulse before first sighting Khan, the ETA would be for impulse, and we'd not be left wanting for an extra command to drop out of warp, so it's an obvious win-win.

"Present speed" being impulse is fine anyway: while warping directly to orbit or perhaps even into Spacedock is doable in Trek, Kirk wouldn't be attempting that with a cadet and trainee crew, and there's this Mutara nebula to consider, too. Kirk may be in moderate hurry, but he isn't in a great hurry, since even warp five is not the ship's known top speed. He's probably just expecting to sort out a malfunctioning subspace radio and a few bureaucratic fuck-ups, not to save the galaxy or even Carol from anything particularly serious.

TNG "Arsenal of Freedom": [..] Unlike in TNG "Farpoint," saucer had to go ftl on its own

Yup. No hint that the saucer would do that with impulse engines, though. Her warp engines did well enough back in "Farpoint"...

Stardate 9521.6, Captain's log, U.S.S. Excelsior. Hikaru Sulu commanding. After three years I've concluded my first assignment as master of this vessel, cataloguing gaseous planetary anomalies in the Beta Quadrant. We're heading home under full impulse power. I am pleased to report that ship and crew have functioned well.

Gonna be a damn long trip on sublight impulse, save we conclude Excelsior's gone relativistic, and will arrive centuries hence, Earth time.

Every journey starts with the first step. And make no mistake here, Sulu is very literally taking the first step: it's after we hear this log dictated that Valtane comes to him and shows him the PADD that is their de facto permission to start heading home.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Heck of a discussion for something that was declared "not a discussion topic" in the second post, four pages ago!

 

[trekkist]

Mudd's Women, prior the briefing room hearing Mudd:

SPOCK: The entire ship's power is feeding through one lithium crystal.
(bridge conversation continues)
KIRK: Location and distance.
SPOCK: Mister Farrell has the course. Less than two day's travel.
KIRK: Make for Rigel 12, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: Rigel 12, Mister Farrell. You have the course.

KIRK: This hearing is convened. Stardate 1329.2, on board starship U.S.S. Enterprise. Formal hearings against transport captain Leo Walsh. Start computer.

Hearing concludes with:
SCOTT: Our last crystal, sir. It's gone.
SULU: Captain Kirk, engineering section reports our entire life-support system is now on batteries.
...
Just after Mudd's conversation with the women, which directly follows the hearing:

Captain's log-- Stardate 1330.1. Position, fourteen hours out of Rigel 12. We're on auxiliary impulse engines. Fuel low, barely sufficient to achieve orbit over the planet. Lithium replacements are now imperative. The effect of Mudd's women on my crew continues to grow, still totally unexplained. Harry Mudd is confined to his quarters under guard.

Now, I'm not saying Stardates "mean" anything...but 1329.2 to 1330.1 is a VERY short interval. To presume lack of ftl upon failure of the last crystal is to posit:

A)"less than two days" at some warp speed was covered PRIOR the hearing with the exception of no more than a fourteen light hour distance. Ridiculous; the hearing cannot have been more than one day and "less than two days" after the bridge conversation.

Or:

Well...there is no "B," is there?

(my post) "Balance of Terror"--Romulan's "power" is "simple impulse"--but it is obviously ftl.

>Or then not: the writing of the episode is all over the place, and while half of it won't work at STL, the other half is impossible at FTL (flying through comets, say).

Yes, but: STL wars between star systems take TIME (see Niven's with the Kzinti, in print). Had the episode's Romulan been stl on "simple impulse," E's taking it down would have looked like the sublight/ftl fight of "Elaan of Troyius."

>Yet assigning FTL quality to "one third impulse" solves absolutely nothing there, because the machine still has to be capable of respectable warp speed, and pretending that 1/3 impulse of a starship is better than regular warp of a starship gets us nowhere.

Sure does solve something: it solves the question of how "one third impulse" permits Constellation to overtake and then escape an ftl robot.

>So where's the issue? If Kirk slowed down to impulse before first sighting Khan, the ETA would be for impulse, and we'd not be left wanting for an extra command to drop out of warp, so it's an obvious win-win.

Yeah...but per dialogue, he didn't. And my point was, they're ftl-distant from Regula WITH warp drive, and arrive on impulse prior onset of rigor...which time period begins PRIOR the battle. Reread my post, please. And don't make up stuff not seen on screen or in dialogue as a "defense."

>"Present speed" being impulse is fine anyway: while warping directly to orbit or perhaps even into Spacedock is doable in Trek, Kirk wouldn't be attempting that with a cadet and trainee crew, and there's this Mutara nebula to consider, too. Kirk may be in moderate hurry, but he isn't in a great hurry, since even warp five is not the ship's known top speed. He's probably just expecting to sort out a malfunctioning subspace radio and a few bureaucratic fuck-ups, not to save the galaxy or even Carol from anything particularly serious.

True but irrelevant to being:

SPOCK: Twelve hours and forty-three minutes, present speed.

from Regula on warp drive (too long to arrive prior the advent of rigor), and subsequently arriving prior its advent on impulse (and being beaten there by Reliant, likewise sans warp drive)

>Yup. No hint that the saucer would do that with impulse engines, though. Her warp engines did well enough back in "Farpoint"...

WHAT warp engines? Saucer has none. In "Farpoint," saucer seps at a high warp speed, and might arguably have "coasted" ftl to Farpoint Station. In "Arsenal," she has to begin and maintain an ftl journey from a dead stop. Without warp engines.

"We're heading home under full impulse power" is pretty explicit; you don't "head home" at a speed of one light year per year; you just...crawl a short distance (and we've no idea what is on the PADD...except that it likely has nothing to do with a state of propulsion ("heading home") spoken of in the present tense.

And we KNOW what "full impulse power" is to a Galaxy class, at least (as I said earlier, and you ignored):

RIKER: What is our e.t.a. at Pacifica, Mister La Forge?
LAFORGE: Twenty two hours fourteen minutes, sir.
RIKER: Increase to warp six.
LAFORGE: Aye sir. Full impulse.

In addition, we have Geordi conducting an ftl interstellar journey in a (warp drive less) shuttlepod in "The Mind's Eye." Not to mention the curious journey of the S.S. Valiant:

Captain's log, Star date 1312.4. The impossible has happened. From directly ahead, we're picking up a recorded distress signal, the call letters of a vessel which has been missing for over two centuries. Did another Earth ship once probe out of the galaxy as we intend to do? What happened to it out there? Is this some warning they've left behind?
...
SPOCK: Decoding memory banks. I'll try to interpolate. The Valiant had encountered a magnetic space storm and was being swept in this direction.
KIRK: The old impulse engines weren't strong enough.
SPOCK: Swept past this point, about a half light year out of the galaxy, they were thrown clear, turned, and headed back into the galaxy here. I'm not getting it all. The tapes are pretty badly burned. Sounds like the ship had encountered some unknown force. Now, orders, counter orders, repeated urgent requests for information from the ship's computer records for anything concerning ESP in human beings.

and of course, the previously-cited situation of Enterprise herself, post-Barrier:

Captain's log, Star date 1312.9. Ship's condition, heading back on impulse power only. Main engines burned out. The ship's space warp ability gone. Earth bases which were only days away are now years in the distance.

"In-universe," log's 3rd line ("The ship's space warp ability gone") is redundant. That line, which exists for the audience's comprehensional benefit, would to a THERMIAN (which we all of us are, right?) imply existence of a second "system"--that which permits something OTHER than the "main engines" to supply ftl.

There are, IIRC, still more examples of ftl impulse in action. But thus far, I find your arguments "against" too weak to post them. One might "argue" I'm doing fanon, but I'm citing explicit "proofs." You, Timo, are arguing from...let's see, what's the logical fallacy? Well, several come to mind (though I do not claim what you've written to employ them explicitly):

Argumentum ad Populum (an appeal to popularity, public opinion or to the majority) is an argument, often emotively laden, for the acceptance of an unproved conclusion by adducing irrelevant evidence based on the feelings, prejudices, or beliefs of a large group of people.

Appeal to tradition (also known as argumentum ad antiquitatem, appeal to antiquity, or appeal to common practice) is an argument in which a thesis is deemed correct on the basis that it is correlated with some past or present tradition. The appeal takes the form of "this is right because we've always done it this way."

Argumentum ad Verecundiam
In Logic, Appeal to Authority is an informal fallacy of weak induction. This fallacy occurs when someone uses the testimony of an authority in order to warrant their conclusion, but the authority appealed to is not an expert in the field in question.

"MOST ST fans 'know' impulse is stl-only." (Yeah, and I recall when most believed shuttlecraft were sublight, too).

"ST has always PRESENTED impulse as stl-only." (Yeah, but it hasn't)

"ST creators and their reference works ALL say [etc]." (So? Once upon a time, such "authorities" redated the Eugenics Wars [some DS9 or other]. Making TOS-R, "authorities" changed the size ratio of shuttle to hangar, making TOS bay resemble that of ST V's "garage." McKinley Rocket Base [not the same installation as Cape Kennedy, cited as site of "the first manned moon shot"] gets an homage in the E-D's "McKinley Station," but no other reference, ever...despite implying USAF use of SATURN Vs! [and BTW, "first manned moon shot," by implication and in keeping with the usage of the time, means Apollo 8--the literal "first...shot"--NOT Apollo 11, as said "authorities" claim it to be]. DY-100 is ancestral to DY-500 Mariposa [TNG "Up the Long Ladder," if memory serves], but latter's "paniers" [Jefferies' term] are ill-shaped, and five in number...despite fact up to 16 could be carried...and only even numbers would serve a thrust-balanced, i.e. realistic design. DY-100 launch photo and model [DS9's "Let's go to 1996!" episode] are utterly ridiculous, what with a nonsymmetric, unstreamlined payload being put atop shuttle-style SRBs--yet such are "canon.")

Appeals to "authorities" who for various reasons ("We must at all costs maintain the conceit that ST is OUR ACTUAL future, even if such requires retcons") eschew a Thermian adherence to established ("deep") canon are specious...even re: so fundamental an issue as the TOS E's size:

"We KNOW it's 947 ft long! We SAW the scale bar on the monitor screen in 'The Enterprise Incident' !"

(you mean a scale bar in feet, not meters, readable in The Making of ST? The scale bar whose "canonical" reading make the TOS E too small to contain the hangar/[big enough for interior as seen] shuttle size ratio, the TMP E too small to contain the Rec Deck, the WoK E too small to contain the two adjacent torp bays?

Sure. And as for "original intent," Jefferies (to its then-female owner, IIRC) called the shuttle stage prop a 3/4 scale "model." Which math yields a 4/3 size, interior-fittable "real" shuttle...and (to maintain proportions) a 4/3 size hangar...yielding TMP/WoK Es big enough to contain said sets.

But let's not believe our lying eyes. Let's focus on Production Designer Harold Michelson's override of Probert's tiered Rec room sketch (which would fit in the saucer at the location M. wanted), of which literal contradiction M. said "No one goes to a movie with a yardstick." Let's IMAGINE the torp bay...site of VERY important scenes in WoK...was NOT a redressed TMP set, whose dimensions we know. Let's MAKE UP different sets, for to maintain adherence to a then-unreadable scalebar (which per Starfleet usage would have been calibrated in meters).

Yeah...let's do those things.

MAN: So they say, also. (he winces in pain) Many years ago I climbed the mountains, even though it is forbidden. (another wince)
KIRK: Why is it forbidden?
MAN: I am not sure. (wince) But things are not as they teach us. For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky.
(Now he clutches his head as he collapses in agony.)

You trying out for Oracle, Timo? Or is it merely that:

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