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Several hours, sit but like you said getting to the edge of Federation space is a lot further than that.
I assume all Odyssey class ships have it by then. There were a few in the fleet.
I didn’t see any Vestas. That’s like the last noticeable post Nemesis novel ship that hasn’t appeared yet.
According to some basic calculations, on the 2D planar Galactic Map that roughly corresponds to the Thin Disk area of the Milky Way where most of the major Star Systems resides.
The UFP has roughly these MAXIMUM Distance Values:
- 8103 ly distance from the (Galactic North-to-Galactic South)
- 5735 ly distance from the (Galactic East-to-Galactic West)
None of this is obviously factoring the 3rd Dimension and Territory in the Z-Axis.
Based on the Area of a 2D Square Plane for the Thin Disk's 100,000 ly section.
The UFP's 46,470,705 ly² ~= 0.46470705% of the Thin Disk 2D-Planar Area on the Galactic Map.
That's how insignificant the territory that the UFP holds in comparison to many of the larger powers.
If you're going from the furthest point of the UFP's Galactic North to the furthest point on the Galactic South in a straight line on the map, that would be roughly 8103 ly.
@ slightly faster than Wf 9.9, you'd be able to cover all of that Vertical Galactic North-South travel within the UFP territory in ~135.05 days.
So you're absolutely right, it is ridiculous as to how far they portray distances and how fast the USS Titan-A is w/o using any of the Faster FTL drives that are available.
Normal Warp Drives at their level of tech, isn't fast enough.
It's not like the 32nd Century USS Discovery-A's level of Warp Drive which comes out to Wf 54-58 on my scale. Assuming Discovery-A can sustain those Hi Wf's indefinitely as long as they have fuel, the Discovery-A could cross the Galactic North-South distances in ~4 days.
I find it funny how the UFP doesn't even have ½ a single % of 2D Planar Territory along the Thin-Disk area on the Galactic Map.
That's how insignifcant the UFP territory is within it's relatively short life-span, especially compared to the size of territory that the Dominion has or the Borg has on their side of the Quadrants.
There was an episode of Alias where Sydney was in Washington (I think?), and got a call from someone in central Europe who was literally facing death at any moment. Sydney hopped on the company jet and got there, apparently, mere moments after getting the call, because the person who called was still barricaded in the same spot exchanging shots with the bad guys.
And then there was the NCIS episode where one character worked the left side of the ascii keyboard while the other worked the right as they typed code to stop a hacker (or something)
And then Gibbs "fixed" the problem by unplugging the computer monitor. Then there was the episode where one guy jumped off a Navy vessel with weights wrapped around him and another one tried to assassinate the ship's captain because they thought the MMORPG they were playing was real.
I did a estimate based on Tom Paris stated scale after Warp 9 since the TNG Warp Factor formula has a hand-drawn curve to infinity (LITERALLY, it's complete BS).
WHAT?!? You mean the makers of TNG didn't even bother to figure out the secret to faster-than-light travel before they started production on the TV series?!? Why, I never...
WHAT?!? You mean the makers of TNG didn't even bother to figure out the secret to faster-than-light travel before they started production on the TV series?!? Why, I never...
According to an article in Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 6, p. 44 by André Bormanis, this scale change occurred in 2312. A term was added to the above equation that caused the speed to rise slightly at lower warp factor, but to become infinite at warp 10. The ratio v/c at a given warp factor is equal to the corresponding cochrane value that describes the subspace distortion.
Gene Roddenberry stated that he wanted to avoid the ever-increasing warp factors used in the original series to force added tension to the story, and so imposed the limit of warp 10 as infinite speed.
No, instead of using their "Existing Formula" from TNG for Warp Factors 1-9, and just let the #'s run indefinitely up to infinity.
They arbitrarily decided to add in a special exception for speeds "Post Warp 9" and have the hand-drawn curve to infinity.
It's completely assinine to design a perfectly good Warp Factor Formula, and then make a werid ass exception that requires you to add 9.9… and extra 9's after the Decimal place to represent the increase in spead. That's basically trying to trick the audience.
IMO, compressing the speed values past Wf 9 was a very silly decision by Gene Roddenberry.
They could've left things alone and just increased Wf naturally.
All he did was substitute one problem for another and created unnecessary confusion.
Gene wanted to avoid ever-increasing Warp Factors in TOS to add tension to the story. But changing the scale the way he did, by adding "9's" past the decimal place and compressing Speeds between
"1 516.381 107 004 84c <—> Infinity" into values of Wf 9.0-10 is silly sounding when you have two different rule sets.
It's the weirdest decision that I've ever seen.
My Warp Factor 3.0 scale literally is the TNG Wf scale, but it just throws away the "Hand Drawn Curve to Infinity" and just let the numbers run naturally up to infinity for Warp Factor.
It makes much more sense on a practical logic & usage basis.
So here's how it corresponds to my Wf Scale 3.0.
Tom Paris has stated on-screen that Warp Factor 9.9 ~= 21,473c
That roughly corresponds to Wf 19.93277742 ~= Wf 19.933
That's basically Wf 20 when you round up.
Warp Factor 9.99 ~= 56,085c on the TNG scale
That roughly corresponds to Wf 26.5859838 ~= Wf 26.586
That's basically Wf 26½ with some extra change past the decimal.
If you're wondering "how fast is 'The Millenium Falcon'?" on my Wf Scale.
The Millennium Falcon’s top speed is 25,000 light years per day, 1041.66 light years per hour.
That's Wf of 122.X on my scale. That makes the Millenium Falcon a Trans-Warp capable Freightor.
I don't think Roddenberry wanted warp 10 to be infinite speed. I think he originally wanted it to be a finite speed limit that starships couldn't go past as a rule -- hence the line in "Where No One Has Gone Before," "Captain, we're passing warp ten!" But it was later retconned to mean infinite speed, hence the nonsensical and confusing practice of referring to infinity as if it were a finite limit.
Well, sublight is that way as well. You can't go the speed of light, it an infinite 9.999999..~ So the warp scale corispondes with the speed of light scale, infinite curve after 0.9
Now in a semi reality, the more power you put in, the faster you go, there is no "Warp 5" barrier, warp is just a measurement, like Warp 1 is the speed of light, warp 5 is 3 light years per day ( as an example). Its like the sound barrier, once you get past the speed of sound, theres no other barrier, you go as fast as your engines can push you. Its just the measurement only goes to 10.
Now for warp, there may be a limit on how much you can distort space with the warp bubble without destroying local space time, so there may be a natural limit on certain technology, like Prop planes can only go so fast, no matter how much power you put in to it. where you need trans warp, or quantum slipstream to bypass space.
No, instead of using their "Existing Formula" from TNG for Warp Factors 1-9, and just let the #'s run indefinitely up to infinity.
They arbitrarily decided to add in a special exception for speeds "Post Warp 9" and have the hand-drawn curve to infinity.
It's completely assinine to design a perfectly good Warp Factor Formula, and then make a werid ass exception that requires you to add 9.9… and extra 9's after the Decimal place to represent the increase in spead. That's basically trying to trick the audience.
IMO, compressing the speed values past Wf 9 was a very silly decision by Gene Roddenberry.
They could've left things alone and just increased Wf naturally.
All he did was substitute one problem for another and created unnecessary confusion.
Gene wanted to avoid ever-increasing Warp Factors in TOS to add tension to the story. But changing the scale the way he did, by adding "9's" past the decimal place and compressing Speeds between
"1 516.381 107 004 84c <—> Infinity" into values of Wf 9.0-10 is silly sounding when you have two different rule sets.
It's the weirdest decision that I've ever seen.
My Warp Factor 3.0 scale literally is the TNG Wf scale, but it just throws away the "Hand Drawn Curve to Infinity" and just let the numbers run naturally up to infinity for Warp Factor.
It makes much more sense on a practical logic & usage basis.
So here's how it corresponds to my Wf Scale 3.0.
Tom Paris has stated on-screen that Warp Factor 9.9 ~= 21,473c
That roughly corresponds to Wf 19.93277742 ~= Wf 19.933
That's basically Wf 20 when you round up.
Warp Factor 9.99 ~= 56,085c on the TNG scale
That roughly corresponds to Wf 26.5859838 ~= Wf 26.586
That's basically Wf 26½ with some extra change past the decimal.
If you're wondering "how fast is 'The Millenium Falcon'?" on my Wf Scale.
The Millennium Falcon’s top speed is 25,000 light years per day, 1041.66 light years per hour.
That's Wf of 122.X on my scale. That makes the Millenium Falcon a Trans-Warp capable Freightor.
I think Warp 10 was meant to be physically impossible, a velocity that nothing could ever achieve because it really didn't exist to begin with, so it was always off any speed chart. Not even the Q could move around the Universe that fast--and they could presumably appear anywhere almost instantly. So no new propulsion system (now or in the future) would ever reach Warp 10 and certainly not by a lost ship in the Delta Quadrant just finding a new kind of dilithium crystals in a random asteroid field...
Well, sublight is that way as well. You can't go the speed of light, it an infinite 9.999999..~ So the warp scale corispondes with the speed of light scale, infinite curve after 0.9
Now in a semi reality, the more power you put in, the faster you go, there is no "Warp 5" barrier, warp is just a measurement, like Warp 1 is the speed of light, warp 5 is 3 light years per day ( as an example). Its like the sound barrier, once you get past the speed of sound, theres no other barrier, you go as fast as your engines can push you. Its just the measurement only goes to 10.
Now for warp, there may be a limit on how much you can distort space with the warp bubble without destroying local space time, so there may be a natural limit on certain technology, like Prop planes can only go so fast, no matter how much power you put in to it. where you need trans warp, or quantum slipstream to bypass space.
The Warp 5 barrier seemed to be during an age where they were developing the basics of all the tech we know. The NX-01 seemed to be testing their new M/A-M Reactor. That Warp Core unit on the NX-class must've been primitive and output can only go so high on a M/A-M Reactor so ancient. So it seemed like the NX-class was Reactor Limited or Warp Coil limited at that point in time.
During the TNG-era, there is a limit, but it's not based on some sort of "Drag Limit" like with Air Planes or Boats on Earth in the Air/Water respectively.
It's the Power Consumption Requirement to cross each Warp Factor Thresh-hold in speed.
That Power Requirement is caused by a EP (Electro Plasma) conversion to Warp Field Energy output inefficiency issue.
from the 22nd Century -> the 25th century, StarFleet/UFP has had a EPS -> Warp Field Output conversion efficiency issue.
As you can see, with linear scaling of Wf #'s, the power consumption requirements starts getting pretty silly.
From what I can tell, EP (Electro Plasma) seems to be pretty efficient energy medium for most UFP/StarFleet based systems on a ship. There doesn't seem to be that many complaints on energy output for
Life Support, Ship Systems, Weapons, Shields, Computer Systems, however converting to a Warp Field seems to be a "inefficient process", but one that works and seems to scale at that point in time.
By ~Warp Factor 20 on my WF 3.0 scale (that's ~ Warp Factor 9.9 on TNG scale), the Power Thresholds are getting close to 10^20 MW during the TNG-era.
Remember what Geordi La Forge stated when they were testing the Soliton Wave Rider.
That it had a 98% Energy Conversion Efficiency from Soliton Energy to the Warp Field Generation portion of the Soliton Wave Rider. That was "Revolutionary" & "Amazing".
That converting Soliton Energy to Warp Field was 450% more efficient than converting EPS to Warp Field on the USS Enterprise-D for the Soliton Wave Rider.
And we both know that the reactor for the Galaxy-class in TNG can already generate a ridiculous amount of energy.
12.75 EW = 12.75x10^12 MW !!!!
So the bigger issue is how to efficiently convert of EPS to Warp Field Generation is the bigger problem, not the generating of energy part, not even if the Warp Coils can handle that level of energy (Just see USS Prodigy go "ProtoWarp" from regular Warp, that's not too far into the future, and they Warp around at Ludicrous Speeds when using the ProtoStar Drive for that short Burst of "The Flash" like speeds applied to a StarShip).
That leaves TNG era EPS -> Warp Field at ~21.7…% efficient. That's highly inefficient. Similar to what a 2000's 4-cylinder ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) with it's ~ 20-25% Thermal Efficiency.
When the Carnot Theory allows for a Theoretical maximum of 83%. And Toyota's current engines are at ~40% Thermal Efficiency. Next Gen Engine developments will sky-rocket those #'s.
But that's a different thing all together. Back to Star Trek.
Anyways, by the time of the 32nd century, it seems that the USS Discovery-A, a retro-fitted 23rd century ship seems to have solved that issue because of how fast they can go at regular Warp was stated when they needed to Warp to the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy and cross the Great Barrier.
At the end of DISCO S4, the Retro-Fitted USS Discovery-A was traveling at about Wf 57-58 on my Warp Factor Scale 3.0. That's on a Retro-Fitted ancient StarFleet StarShip.
At those speeds, the power consumption requirements would be crazy if you were only using ~21.7…% conversion efficiency. So they must've solved the conversion efficiency issues.
Because if Discovery is able to cruise at Wf 57-58, they would be able to reach Earth by crossing the entire Galaxy following Voyagers path in ~1 Gregorian Year if they were taking the same trip.
A far cry from what Voyager would've had to endure for a 75 year journey with average speeds of Warp 8.
So eventually, StarFleet does seemingly solve the Power Requirements to travel at Warp at faster speeds through a combination of lowering the power requirements to get to those Warp Speeds and
more efficiently converting the energy needed to power the Warp Nacelles. Probably involving converting EPS to Soliton Energy some-how or using Soliton Energy in some way.
We never even get to see how fast a 32nd Century ship can travel at Warp Speeds, we mostly see what Discovery-A can do, and that's retro-fitted. So there are bound to be inefficiencies there that can be solved.
Eventually, StarFleet ships will to reguarly go past Wf 100, with the ProtoStar Drive, it gives a nice temporary boost in power to allow Warp Engines to reach > Wf 100 for a short period of time.
With a ProtoStar Drive, a ship can cross over four thousand light years in a matter of minutes using regular Warp Drive.
That's Graviton Catapult like speeds (~Wf 380) for several minutes ~5.3 minutes
I think Warp 10 was meant to be physically impossible, a velocity that nothing could ever achieve because it really didn't exist to begin with, so it was always off any speed chart. Not even the Q could move around the Universe that fast--and they could presumably appear anywhere almost instantly. So no new propulsion system (now or in the future) would ever reach Warp 10 and certainly not by a lost ship in the Delta Quadrant just finding a new kind of dilithium crystals in a random asteroid field...
You mean Warp "Infinity", yeah the concept of "Infinity" is just that, a concept.
You weren't meant to reach "Infinity".
Whatever Tom Paris achieved, it's something else that allowed him to travel MUCH faster than anything else. It wasn't controllable, and it has serious health related issues that StarFleet attempted once more after Voyager returned. In Lower Decks, we see another person turned into a slug.
I like math fine. I just find it spectacularly pointless to use it to figure out why the pretend faster than light speed is treated inconsistently on a fictional TV show.
I like math fine. I just find it spectacularly pointless to use it to figure out why the pretend faster than light speed is treated inconsistently on a fictional TV show.
It's treated inconsistently because the writing staff doesn't value accurate Time Portrayals in a TV show like "24" was famous for. Where each episode / hour was "Real Time".
There's a certain nice quality to a show like that where you know how much time has occured and that it was stated clearly as to how long things take.
WHAT?!? 
