Officially, the nav systems (which use warp speed) calculate bearing, velocity, and direction, based on the points of Earth and galactic center. That'll pretty much cover everything.
Star Trek TOS Ship Speeds
- Thread starter CuttingEdge100
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Officially, the nav systems (which use warp speed) calculate bearing, velocity, and direction, based on the points of Earth and galactic center. That'll pretty much cover everything.
Yet that is exactly what happens (or happened in past times) in nautical environments. The unit "knot" is a measurement of the ships speed relative to the medium it is travelling on.
To exactly calculate the travel time between two ports, one would need to take into account both speed and direction of the medium itself.
So, if the "concept WF" is useless because it only measures a relative speed, then so it the "concept Knot".
Actually, no it's not.
A knot is in no way a variable number, and sees common use since the 1 kn is just about equal to a degree of lattitude. It is, however, a fixed distance on a curve.
...because you say so?
Just have a look at the historical usage of that unit. To determine the speed of a sailing ship, sailors would use a so-called "chip log". That's a small board attached to a line with knots in it. This board would be thrown into the water and fall behind the sailing ship. After a fixed amount of time, the length of the line (=the number of knots in it) would then be a measurement of the ships speed.
Obviously, in this historical context, this speed is relative to the body of water below the ship - and not relative to some fixed point along the shore.
Even today, there's a difference between "Airspeed" and "Ground speed" - even if both may be measured in knots (or mm/year, if you like), that doesn't mean that they necessarily have to be the same, or that "knots" absolutely must refer to some "absolute" speed.
...because you say so?
I quoted the dictionary. But, sure, go ahead and make this personal. So let's just cut to the chase here...
I think it's insanely stupid and self-demeaning to invent, out of complete whole cloth, insane ideas for 'warp speed' that require layers of bullshit to have a discertation on bullshit to try to match up with numbers from television series where the writer's clearly didn't give a crap in the first place.
And then, more importantly, I think it's idiotic and juvenile to then try to FORCE other people to accept these discertations as 'real', trying to link them to outright wrong science, in order to claim you have a bigger ePenis than everyone else.
It doesn't matter that the entire basic premise of 'the medium of space changes, so warp speed changes' is idiotic on the surface, since the Enterprise is travelling through empty space 99.999999999999999999 percent of the time anyway and therefore wouldn't even HAVE such variances... oh no, we need to rationalize where the shows fucked up because they writers (very rightly) didn't think that anymore more than 'go really fucking fast' was important.
But, hey, it's worth it, so that 40 years later, you can be a complete and total ass to total strangers on the internet by throwing your pet fan-theory as Gospel told from Saint Roddenberry, isn't it?
Oh, it's me who made that personal? I gave a valid example of a real-world unit of speed that is not absolute but relative (terms used very loosely here, of course), and you come around and claim that this just is not the case, with all evidence against you... If you think me calling you on that constitutes me waving my ePenis in front of your face, then by my guest. 
Cutting through all the profanity (which is totally uncalled for - if you are that easily insulted by reading different theories about Trek science, then why participate on this forum?) - the Enterprise is obviously not just moving through empty (normal) space, but through subspace. It would break tons of laws of frakking nature, otherwise...
Cutting through all the profanity (which is totally uncalled for - if you are that easily insulted by reading different theories about Trek science, then why participate on this forum?) - the Enterprise is obviously not just moving through empty (normal) space, but through subspace. It would break tons of laws of frakking nature, otherwise...
But here's where you're factually wrong. The KNOT was always a fixed measurement, but the ability to measure it was crude, at best, and very prone to error. 20kt meant 20kt.. but the ship's ability to adequately measure 20kt was the error factor, not the distance itself.
Because it's the same theory, refuted constantly, never actually mentioned in the movies or shows, cited as fact, based on layers of bullshit, made completely useless as a measure, and then thrown in the face of other people who "just don't get it" - all for the sake of making sure that the made-up numbers within certain episodes of the TV show make sense, while IGNORING the very reasons the numbers were used.
Seriously, this same bullshit was around in 1989 when I first got on usenet. And it was soundly debunked then.
the Enterprise is obviously not just moving through empty (normal) space, but through subspace. It would break tons of laws of frakking nature, otherwise...
Subspace is just warped space. That's it. That's all. IT's the field of space that is warped by the drive system. The other 'ethereal nonsense' came later, usually due to some bad writing in TNG or VOY (the worst culprit) that wanted more and more magic technobabble. While you CAN argue that your relative density within subspace is actually multiplied up by the warping effect, it's STILL mostly going to be multiplying up from ZERO - and certainly not enough to cause measurement variations of the several orders of magnitude that the 'fan theory' requires.
You're confusing the measurement of speed with the question of "speed relative to what", though.
Of course, the "knot" is a fixed measurement - but not relative to a fixed point on land. For example, it can't necessarily be used to directly calculate the time of arrival at some point. Let me give you an example: There's a river behind my house, and my boat can make 5 knots. The river is flowing with a speed of 2 knots.
If I drive downstream for an hour, I will end up in a location 7 (=5+2) nautical miles away from my house. If I drive upstream, just 3 (=5-2) nautical miles.
This is because the speed of my boat doesn't tell me anything about "speed vs. ground", but just about "speed vs. medium". Only if I know the additional value of "speed of medium vs. ground", I can start doing the math.
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Distance alone, of course, doesn't define a vector relative to a point. But, however, that's not what we're defining here anyway. We're only saying what WF 3 (for instance) actually is. According to the official information, WF 3 = 27c.
The issue is the idea that the 'chi variable' changes the definition of WF, which is bad science, nonsensical, and attempts to solve a problem by adding new layers of problems. A lot of the idea is that the 'theory' requires the logic of 'what's not on screen must be X' while simultaneously requiring 'what's not on screen did not happen'. That's why the whole thing breaks down.
The medium we're talking about (space) is largely a constant, and NOT used in relation to other points of reference. Your analogy doesn't work.
You can define whatever you want... but anyone else around here has the same right, I guess. The official information of WF3=27c is, to quote you "never actually mentioned in the movies or shows, cited as fact".
So, stating that the unit WF actually doesn't describe "absolute speed" (=speed over ground, to continue using the analogy), but instead "relative speed" (=air speed) is neither better nor worse that what you state - it's just a different bullshit theory among all the existing bullshit theories that are constantly being applied to the bullshit science of a TV series.
So, stating that the unit WF actually doesn't describe "absolute speed" (=speed over ground, to continue using the analogy), but instead "relative speed" (=air speed) is neither better nor worse that what you state - it's just a different bullshit theory among all the existing bullshit theories that are constantly being applied to the bullshit science of a TV series.
IT's the only WF for the TOS era that's mentioned in the production bible, the 'making of' book, and signed off on by Roddenberry on multiple occaisions. That's as close as we're ever gonna get.
So, stating that the unit WF actually doesn't describe "absolute speed" (=speed over ground, to continue using the analogy), but instead "relative speed" (=air speed) is neither better nor worse that what you state - it's just a different bullshit theory among all the existing bullshit theories that are constantly being applied to the bullshit science of a TV series.
The problem is that saying 'WF 8' has no meaning if it CAN mean anything from less than 1C to a bagllion C, based on unknown variable quanties (IE, whim). It's not a realistic interpretation, since it makes the order worthless.
When a sea captain has to deal with some relative speeds (countering the effects of current, usually), you're NOT getting that with the Enterprise. Nor are you getting interpretations where the order for 20kt forward can translate 'I mean anything from going in reverse to Mach 6' based on the wind and sea at the moment.
(And, usually, when an order to 'go 20kt' is given, it means the END RESULT should be 20kt, and it's up to the navigator to allocate power to do that.)
Just because you repeat that doesn't make it some universal truth.
If the enemy ship has a speed of 7 knots (relative to the surrounding water), then you better give an order for some speed of more than 7 knots if your intention is to close up on that ship. Since both your and the enemy ship are located in the same medium, with the same inherent speed, its effect can be ignored for this purpose.
"One more knot than the (relative) speed of the enemy" is a sensible order.
Replace "knots" with "WF", and "water" with "local space", and the statement will still be as true as it was before.
Anyway, we're running in circles here - let's better stop before we annoy others even more. You have one interpretation of what's going on in the fictional world of warp drives, I have another one - none of which is an "absolute truth" in any shape or form. Even Roddenberry had the idea of having the ship go ".73 of one light year per hour" before inventing warp factors...
But you're just changing the point of reference of the vector. (In this case, the enemy ship rather than the 'quadrant zero') WF6 is still 216C, after all.. but your focus has shifted from the lone vector to twin vectors.
(I had two aerospace professors for roommates, I got this stuff fed to me for YEARS)
If a captain says "Ahead, 20kt", like I said, he's looking at the end result. It's up to the navigator to come up with that vector based on his surroundings.. but, the end result, is that the 'ahead 20k't is a vector that's 20kt/hr at 0,0 from the current position (determined by the globe), facing forward.
For Trek, we have "Ahead, warp factor 4", which is where the navigator translates that to a 64C vector along 0,0 from the ship's forward, based on the relative position to galactic core. (The latter part of this is actually established in Trek many times.)
True, but that's also when Spock was a Martian and the Enterprise was a patrol cruiser that went from asteroid to asteroid. :P
Care to take a stab at why Kirk in TMP couldn't go to warp until he was away from the Earth and the sun?
And yet three films later they go to warp in Earth's atmosphere.
In TMP they didn't go to warp not for 'safely away from Earth' reasons, but because the computers hadn't calibrated the warp engines yet. ("They're iffy on the simulations!")
Some of the novels had 'bad magic things (TM)' happen when you warp near a gravity well, but since the Enterprise routinely went to warp 1 near one... err...
They had gone to warp one, though, regularly in TOS. I expect that it may be considered 'regulations' for navigation within a star system - but there's never really been anything to indicate a real risk on its own.
Like I said, with TMP, the problem with the warp engines was that they weren't calibrated yet, and borderline on the simulators. (Which is why we got the wormhole scene)
Space is a vacuum; it doesn't have "points." It is full of THINGS, though--planets, moons, stars--which are in motion relative to each other but, for the most part, can be used as a measurement of distance and speed, but in deep space, this just isn't possible.
This is why I asked the question. In aircraft, you can determine your speed one of two ways: measuring the speed of the air that's rushing past you, or measuring your speed relative to fixed points along the GROUND. Since space has no air, and since there is no ground on which to determine fixed points, an "Absolute speed" is therefore meaningless: there are no fixed points IN space for you to measure against.
T'Girl,
I'd agree some kind of consistency figure is needed
That's why I wanted a huge list of numerous times warp-factors were listed versus how much distance were covered in a given amount of time. You could extrapolate actual velocities out of this and then come up with more accurate numbers.
Newtype Alpha,
Well, if two star systems were covered in a day, I'd have to know how many hours it took precisely unless it took exactly 24 hrs.
Assuming 2 systems were covered within 24 hrs, and each system was 4.3 to 10 LY away from each other (Alpha Century is 4.3 light years away, and I'm not sure on average how far most systems are from each other), the ship would be moving between 3141.15c to 7,305c ( 365.25(4.3*2) or 365.25(10*2) )
This would amount to a warp factor (which is w^3) around W = 14.645 at the lower end a little over W= 19.4 at the upper end.
This assumes the ship was at the same speed from when it entered warp and exited. Considering it probably would have accelerated, then decelerated it probably would be travelling a touch faster.
1000 LY in one day is equivalent to 365,250c which would be somewhere between Warp 71.4 or Warp 71.5. If done in a couple of hours, the velocity would be a few times faster.
CuttingEdge100
I'd agree some kind of consistency figure is needed
That's why I wanted a huge list of numerous times warp-factors were listed versus how much distance were covered in a given amount of time. You could extrapolate actual velocities out of this and then come up with more accurate numbers.
Newtype Alpha,
Well, if two star systems were covered in a day, I'd have to know how many hours it took precisely unless it took exactly 24 hrs.
Assuming 2 systems were covered within 24 hrs, and each system was 4.3 to 10 LY away from each other (Alpha Century is 4.3 light years away, and I'm not sure on average how far most systems are from each other), the ship would be moving between 3141.15c to 7,305c ( 365.25(4.3*2) or 365.25(10*2) )
This would amount to a warp factor (which is w^3) around W = 14.645 at the lower end a little over W= 19.4 at the upper end.
This assumes the ship was at the same speed from when it entered warp and exited. Considering it probably would have accelerated, then decelerated it probably would be travelling a touch faster.
1000 LY in one day is equivalent to 365,250c which would be somewhere between Warp 71.4 or Warp 71.5. If done in a couple of hours, the velocity would be a few times faster.
CuttingEdge100
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