Bad mental image... 
lol
lol
Warp drive oxymoron
- Thread starter Ezri II
- Start date
*runs away screaming*
This isn't a grounded criticism. The bottom line is that warp speed equivalencies were never given on TOS, and one of the main purposes of using "warp factors" in dialogue is to be able to say something that sounded somewhat technical—like something a future astronaut might say—but would obscure any real calculations regarding distance, time, and locations of stars that were mentioned. Viewed this way, warp drive did exactly what it was supposed to do. The scale Ezri II describes in the opening post was not the one given in The Making of Star Trek and never described on screen, so I don't understand criticizing "the writing" for it because I don't know where this comes from.
The factors were revised because Roddenberry had a list of stuff he didn't want to do in the new show when making TNG, and one of them was artificial danger from going too fast with the warp drive and the resultant throwing around of high warp factor numbers. David Gerrold came up with the idea of changing the scale so it maxed out at 10, and the Technical Manual later gave some backstage info on factor comparisons so those fans who had believed in the "(warp factor cubed) c" thing would know the Enterprise-D was faster at what often sounded like the same set of factors.
Ezri II
Captain
What about warp 1, there have been a number of debates and even with cannon that warp 1 is the speed of light. If warp 1 is not the speed of light, it would be a hard sell if breaking the speed of light was warp 0.5 or warp 1.2. So if warp 1 is at the speed of light, well warp 2 should be twice the speed of light.
Well, if you are at your computer you should be going at warp 0.00 and that has been called sub light speed if I am right. So at your computer it is warp 0.00 and at speed of light is warp 1 logic would say warp 2 is twice the speed of light. Hold on, now if I want to go at twice the speed of light would it be less than warp 2? Weird is it not.
Well, if you are at your computer you should be going at warp 0.00 and that has been called sub light speed if I am right. So at your computer it is warp 0.00 and at speed of light is warp 1 logic would say warp 2 is twice the speed of light. Hold on, now if I want to go at twice the speed of light would it be less than warp 2? Weird is it not.
Well, if you are at your computer you should be going at warp 0.00 and that has been called sub light speed if I am right. So at your computer it is warp 0.00 and at speed of light is warp 1 logic would say warp 2 is twice the speed of light. Hold on, now if I want to go at twice the speed of light would it be less than warp 2? Weird is it not.
Not even the Vulcan emoticon (logicon?) can make logic out of that.
Warp 1 is the speed of light.
There is no reason why Warp 2 "should" be two times the speed of light. "Can", yes, but "should"? No. Besides, if the warp scale was that simple, the Warp number being the number of times the speed of light, the scale would go way over 1000. So the way the scale actually works is so much more efficient.
Well, no. If your speed is 0.00, you aren't even moving. Any speed under the speed of light though is indeed sublight.
Well, by your logic, the maximum cruise speed of a typical starship would be well over Warp 1500. Does that sound like a practical warp scale to you?
No, it's not weird if you understand how the scale works. And BTW, 2 times the speed of light is Warp 1.2311444133449164.
I wonder what is the Richter scale reading of an earthquake which is twice as powerful as one rated as 1.0. (I grant these both would require a word much weaker than `quake' to describe.)
Or what is the magnitude of a star twice as bright as one of magnitude 1.0.
Or what is the decibel reading of a sound (again, too strong a word for the phenomenon) twice as loud as something of 1.0 decibels.
You're proceeding from a faulty premise. Assignment of measurement standards in the way you are describing it is arbitrary. The principles of warp drive are fictional, so for you to claim it is somehow logical to assign numbers to any particular speed equivalency doesn't make any sense to me. It could just as easily work on an exponential scale (like the speed of light=warp factor cubed one), an irregular curve like in TNG, or any other. You are in fact missing the main point of warp drive, which was to obscure actual speed equivalencies; knowing this, you would have no reason to think that the creators expected you to have any particular c equivalent in mind when a warp factor was stated. If they had, don't you think they'd simply have given the speed of the ship in multiples of c?
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