Mytran that was true,
To channel that much power the warp core must have been used.
To channel that much power the warp core must have been used.
Star Trek TOS Ship Speeds
- Thread starter CuttingEdge100
- Start date
Does anybody have any estimates as to how long the Enterprise could run at Warp Factor 9 for in the show?
That's the funny thing: The TOS Enterprise was supposed to have a cruising speed of Warp factor 6 and an emergency speed of Warp factor 8. And when pursuing the Gorn and the Tycho IV vampire cloud creature, Spock and Scott indicated that sustained speeds of Warp 7-8 were risky. But after the Enterprise's encounters with "Nomad"/"Tan Ru" and the Kelvans, it became clear that the ship was capable of far greater speeds. It was never made clear if these feats were the result of strictly alien technology, or a fluke, or if they could be easily replicated by unaided Federation technology.
In hunting down the asteroid that threatened Amerind, the Enterprise sustained Warp 9 for what was apparently a few hours. And Kirk ordered the Enterprise to outrun the Romulans at Warp 9, but it was never clear how long this speed was sustained. And thanks to Losira's sabotage, the Enterprise nearly destroyed herself achieving (but not sustaining) Warp 14.1.
So, what do we know from this? A Constitution-class starship, fitted with the TOS E's specs, could sustain Warp 8 but not indefinitely. Maybe for several hours. Warp 9 and above were also possible, but for progressively shorter periods of time, and at much greater risk to the ship in general and the warp capability of the drive system in particular.
In hunting down the asteroid that threatened Amerind, the Enterprise sustained Warp 9 for what was apparently a few hours. And Kirk ordered the Enterprise to outrun the Romulans at Warp 9, but it was never clear how long this speed was sustained. And thanks to Losira's sabotage, the Enterprise nearly destroyed herself achieving (but not sustaining) Warp 14.1.
So, what do we know from this? A Constitution-class starship, fitted with the TOS E's specs, could sustain Warp 8 but not indefinitely. Maybe for several hours. Warp 9 and above were also possible, but for progressively shorter periods of time, and at much greater risk to the ship in general and the warp capability of the drive system in particular.
Wingsley,
Wait...
The way other members further up in this thread stated, it did not seem like they were at Warp 9 for very long. A few hours sounds fairly long for a maximum burnout dash.
Also, why would it take so long to find and hunt down the asteroid?
CuttingEdge100
Wait...
The way other members further up in this thread stated, it did not seem like they were at Warp 9 for very long. A few hours sounds fairly long for a maximum burnout dash.
Also, why would it take so long to find and hunt down the asteroid?
CuttingEdge100
The timeline, astrography and kinematics of "Paradise Syndrome" are quite problematic...
When we first meet the ship on her way to the asteroid, Spock is dictating a log where he says they have been heading out for "several hours". It's theoretically possible that not all of this was at warp nine - but in the very next phrase, Spock emphasizes how it's imperative that maximum warp speed be maintaned for "a period that exceeds the recommended safety margin".
The asteroid is then met, and a "battle" against it commences. After what looks like an hour at the very most, Spock has lost, and the ship is a wreck, capable of impulse movement only.
After this, the ship is witnessed floating in front of the asteroid, sometimes facing this way, sometimes that. She is theoretically capable of impulse speed, but Spock never gives the command to use that speed. Instead, he argues that it is okay to precede the asteroid by four hours, all through the 60-day journey from the site of the "battle" to the final impact with the planet.
This seems to mean that "several hours" at warp nine equates just sixty days at whatever speed the asteroid is maintaining. Which gives us our major headache.
If the asteroid is limited to lightspeed, then a minimum of two W9-hours equates a maximum of 60 lightdays. That means that warp 9 equates at most 30 lightdays per hour, or 720 lightdays per day. And 720 c is shamefully slow for what's supposed to be an unusually high speed for the ship. At such a speed, the trip in "That Which Survives" should have taken a full year, not mere days! (If the rock really moves at 0.99 c or so, we can get some help from relativity: the distance could be more than 60 lightdays, but Spock would be saying that the ship will experience 60 relativistic days before the impact. But that's not much help; at best, warp nine improves by a factor of two or three.)
Yet the asteroid is likely to be slower still, meaning warp nine is also slower. After all, the natives can see the asteroid approaching, so the speed of the shadow must exceed the speed of the actual rock by quite a margin. Moreover, the shadow could only be seen while the asteroid is in the roughly 1AU or 10 lightminute gap between the star and the planet, yet the shadow seems to linger for quite a while - longer than ten minutes. And never mind the apparent tidal effects that kick up the telltale wind, suggesting the asteroid is in a parallel orbit and only slowly working its way to the final fiery descent...
We can perhaps argue that the shadow and the wind are created by the Preserver deflector tower and aren't direct effects of the approaching rock, but merely indirect ones intended as alerts and aids to the operator. But we still need to argue from another angle as well, an angle that could alone cover the whole mess: that warp is slower within star systems (or on short journeys) than in deep space (or long journeys of sustained engine "burn").
Now, that does make quite a bit of sense. After all, warp-capable ships often shy away from using that capacity within at least some star systems: the runabouts never warp from DS9 to Bajor or back, and most ships slow down to impulse in the Sol system, even during extreme, Armageddon-level emergencies. Perhaps the problem gets worse the closer one flies to the star, helping explain how warp 8 and warp 10 both looked snail-paced in ST4 when the BoP swooped around Sol. Spock would also have taken a route close to the star in "Paradise Syndrome" if racing to meet an asteroid approaching from a direction that would eventually cast a shadow on the planet...
So, perhaps some stars are especially nasty at making warp engines go slowly, compared with other stars. And perhaps Sol is an especially nasty piece of work, which is why she's so good for the slingshot maneuver that results in time travel? Or perhaps the nastiness is seasonal, and it's all a matter of "subspace weather" plaguing the ships at certain unpredictable or predictable times? The Bajoran system certainly is famous for its nasty space weather, as witnessed in many DS9 episodes.
Pleading "space weather" is probably our best bet; it helps us make "Paradise Syndrome" an outlier rather than a datapoint in the study of warp speeds. If we take the episode at face value, then we have to ignore a great many other TOS episodes that suggest or downright state that high warp is much faster than that.
Timo Saloniemi
When we first meet the ship on her way to the asteroid, Spock is dictating a log where he says they have been heading out for "several hours". It's theoretically possible that not all of this was at warp nine - but in the very next phrase, Spock emphasizes how it's imperative that maximum warp speed be maintaned for "a period that exceeds the recommended safety margin".
The asteroid is then met, and a "battle" against it commences. After what looks like an hour at the very most, Spock has lost, and the ship is a wreck, capable of impulse movement only.
After this, the ship is witnessed floating in front of the asteroid, sometimes facing this way, sometimes that. She is theoretically capable of impulse speed, but Spock never gives the command to use that speed. Instead, he argues that it is okay to precede the asteroid by four hours, all through the 60-day journey from the site of the "battle" to the final impact with the planet.
This seems to mean that "several hours" at warp nine equates just sixty days at whatever speed the asteroid is maintaining. Which gives us our major headache.
If the asteroid is limited to lightspeed, then a minimum of two W9-hours equates a maximum of 60 lightdays. That means that warp 9 equates at most 30 lightdays per hour, or 720 lightdays per day. And 720 c is shamefully slow for what's supposed to be an unusually high speed for the ship. At such a speed, the trip in "That Which Survives" should have taken a full year, not mere days! (If the rock really moves at 0.99 c or so, we can get some help from relativity: the distance could be more than 60 lightdays, but Spock would be saying that the ship will experience 60 relativistic days before the impact. But that's not much help; at best, warp nine improves by a factor of two or three.)
Yet the asteroid is likely to be slower still, meaning warp nine is also slower. After all, the natives can see the asteroid approaching, so the speed of the shadow must exceed the speed of the actual rock by quite a margin. Moreover, the shadow could only be seen while the asteroid is in the roughly 1AU or 10 lightminute gap between the star and the planet, yet the shadow seems to linger for quite a while - longer than ten minutes. And never mind the apparent tidal effects that kick up the telltale wind, suggesting the asteroid is in a parallel orbit and only slowly working its way to the final fiery descent...
We can perhaps argue that the shadow and the wind are created by the Preserver deflector tower and aren't direct effects of the approaching rock, but merely indirect ones intended as alerts and aids to the operator. But we still need to argue from another angle as well, an angle that could alone cover the whole mess: that warp is slower within star systems (or on short journeys) than in deep space (or long journeys of sustained engine "burn").
Now, that does make quite a bit of sense. After all, warp-capable ships often shy away from using that capacity within at least some star systems: the runabouts never warp from DS9 to Bajor or back, and most ships slow down to impulse in the Sol system, even during extreme, Armageddon-level emergencies. Perhaps the problem gets worse the closer one flies to the star, helping explain how warp 8 and warp 10 both looked snail-paced in ST4 when the BoP swooped around Sol. Spock would also have taken a route close to the star in "Paradise Syndrome" if racing to meet an asteroid approaching from a direction that would eventually cast a shadow on the planet...
So, perhaps some stars are especially nasty at making warp engines go slowly, compared with other stars. And perhaps Sol is an especially nasty piece of work, which is why she's so good for the slingshot maneuver that results in time travel? Or perhaps the nastiness is seasonal, and it's all a matter of "subspace weather" plaguing the ships at certain unpredictable or predictable times? The Bajoran system certainly is famous for its nasty space weather, as witnessed in many DS9 episodes.
Pleading "space weather" is probably our best bet; it helps us make "Paradise Syndrome" an outlier rather than a datapoint in the study of warp speeds. If we take the episode at face value, then we have to ignore a great many other TOS episodes that suggest or downright state that high warp is much faster than that.
Timo Saloniemi
^ actually, Timo, for this and other reasons I always assume that warp speed is invariably slower inside a solar system than outside, and slower still in systems with very large gravitating objects. If we assume Elaas and Troyus both lie inside a binary star system containing two very large stars, this also gives you an explanation as to why a Klingon warship is making strafing attacks at "better than warp seven" and yet not all that much faster than the speed of light.
Indeed. Other benefits:
-The "Neptune and back in six minutes" thing from "Broken Bow" doesn't make warp 4.5 implausibly slow. It only tells us that warp 4.5 (minus the accelerations, decelerations and turns involved) is slow within the Sol system.
-The perfectly warp-capable fleets in "By Inferno's Light" could still be englobed by the explosion of the star, since their emergency outwarping would not amount to much better than lightspeed. This would require them to "work up steam" for a quarter of an hour, though, because 2 AU is how far DS9 seems to be from the local star... So not such a big help after all.
-We could get an explanation for all those instances where our TNG (and sometimes TOS) heroes took a shuttlecraft for the final few AUs of a star system visit, and even operated said shuttle at impulse speeds, instead of letting the ship warp all the way into orbit and out again.
However, I'd still want to argue that the severity of the slowing effect is time-dependent - that is, the gravity wells have subspace "moods" or "weathers". After all, the slowing effect is not consistent from episode to episode.
Timo Saloniemi
-The "Neptune and back in six minutes" thing from "Broken Bow" doesn't make warp 4.5 implausibly slow. It only tells us that warp 4.5 (minus the accelerations, decelerations and turns involved) is slow within the Sol system.
-The perfectly warp-capable fleets in "By Inferno's Light" could still be englobed by the explosion of the star, since their emergency outwarping would not amount to much better than lightspeed. This would require them to "work up steam" for a quarter of an hour, though, because 2 AU is how far DS9 seems to be from the local star... So not such a big help after all.
-We could get an explanation for all those instances where our TNG (and sometimes TOS) heroes took a shuttlecraft for the final few AUs of a star system visit, and even operated said shuttle at impulse speeds, instead of letting the ship warp all the way into orbit and out again.
However, I'd still want to argue that the severity of the slowing effect is time-dependent - that is, the gravity wells have subspace "moods" or "weathers". After all, the slowing effect is not consistent from episode to episode.
Timo Saloniemi
Wingsley, Timo
Okay so they were doing Warp 9 for what would amount for several hours. What figure would you guys use to constitute "several hours"? Four, Six, Eight, etc?
Okay so they were doing Warp 9 for what would amount for several hours. What figure would you guys use to constitute "several hours"? Four, Six, Eight, etc?
Considering Warp 6 is only 42.2% of the the vessel's normal maximum velocity of Warp 8, and only 29.63% of the ship's maximum emergency speed of Warp 9; it makes little sense for the ship's maximum speed to be so far away from it's cruising speed, especially when you take into account that there is not an issue like the sound-barrier is to aircraft, where it takes a considerable amount of power to get through the sound barrier, but not much more to more than double one's speed. Personally I think the cruising velocity of the enterprise should be closer to it's maximum normal speed.
It seems far more logical for the cruise speed to be about 66.67% to 75% of the vessel's maximum speed, with the maximum-emergency speed to be only about 5% more than the normal maximum speed.
Considering early mentions of Star Trek, written by Gene Roddenberry essentially stated the ship's maximum velocity was 0.73 LY per hour.
Assuming 0.73 LY per hour (6,399.18c) to be the vessel's normal maximum speed: The vessel's maximum emergency speed would be 0.7665 LY per hour (6,719.139c), with a cruise velocity between 0.4867 (4,266.4122c) and 0.5475 LY per hour (4,799.385c).
Assuming 0.73 LY per hour (6,399.18c) to be the vessel's maximum emergency speed: The vessel's normal maximum speed would be a little over 0.6592 LY per hour (5,778.5472c), with a cruise velocity of a little bit over 0.4635 LY per hour (4,063.041c), to a little bit over 0.5214 LY per hour (4570.5924c).
Sound good?
It seems far more logical for the cruise speed to be about 66.67% to 75% of the vessel's maximum speed, with the maximum-emergency speed to be only about 5% more than the normal maximum speed.
Considering early mentions of Star Trek, written by Gene Roddenberry essentially stated the ship's maximum velocity was 0.73 LY per hour.
Assuming 0.73 LY per hour (6,399.18c) to be the vessel's normal maximum speed: The vessel's maximum emergency speed would be 0.7665 LY per hour (6,719.139c), with a cruise velocity between 0.4867 (4,266.4122c) and 0.5475 LY per hour (4,799.385c).
Assuming 0.73 LY per hour (6,399.18c) to be the vessel's maximum emergency speed: The vessel's normal maximum speed would be a little over 0.6592 LY per hour (5,778.5472c), with a cruise velocity of a little bit over 0.4635 LY per hour (4,063.041c), to a little bit over 0.5214 LY per hour (4570.5924c).
Sound good?
In practice, people may say "several" when they mean "more than one" - so anything from two up should work, and one might even make a case for an hour and a half.
However, Spock is generally precise in his choice of words, and standard English treats "several" as referring to more than two. Two and a half would be fine, tho.
The more hours one includes in that statement, the slower warp 9 gets. So using two hours of warp to match 60 days of asteroidspeed is the best case scenario that allows for the fastest warp nine.
How could we know that? Perhaps adding each integer warp factor gives a lot more resistance, so that warp 6.1 is hugely more difficult than warp 5.9, even though the difference between warp 5.9 and 5.7 is minor. Or perhaps, like Sternbach and Okuda say, the big obstacles lie between the integer warp factors. Either way, we have no practical reason to believe that the power requirement figures from the TNG Tech Manual are correct, except perhaps in the most approximate qualitative sense.
Clearly, there's something more going on with these warp factors than mere tachometer readings. Some sort of complex magic in the warp theory makes our heroes and villains favor integer warps, and some sort of technological limitation prevents warp higher than six for prolonged periods. Perhaps the subspace stress eats through the warp coils?
This is untrue of many current vehicles, though. The "one-step, two-mode" setup of operating a boat capable of planing is a good example of an extreme difference between cruise and dash, and then there's the "two-step, three-mode" setup if one adds hydrofoils. Subspace seems at least as complex a medium as the surface of water in this respect, not a simple one like thin air.
Timo Saloniemi
That was the implication from the episode, I think. Using the deflectors to push the asteroid burned out the "star drive" and reduced the ship to sublight speed for the rest of the episode.
Timo, I agree that the non-use of the impulse engines made no sense. Unless Spock delibrately did it to increase the time he had to decode the Preservers language?
Again "repeatedly hitting the dead equine", the matter density decreases the magnitude of the Cochrane factor. Warp factor X would be slower inside a planetary system than in deep interstellar space.
Unless it was designed to be a weapon, that asteroid could not be traveling at anywhere near lightspeed.
Again "repeatedly hitting the dead equine", the matter density decreases the magnitude of the Cochrane factor. Warp factor X would be slower inside a planetary system than in deep interstellar space.
Unless it was designed to be a weapon, that asteroid could not be traveling at anywhere near lightspeed.
Timo,
Definitely over two. However, from my personal experience, the word "several" comes out when numbers in excess of 3 or 4 surface.
Well, I'm assuming that more and more energy would be required to travel faster and faster. As a result, at the upper end of the speed range you would require increasingly large amounts of power for less and less speed.
As for the warp figures from TNG, I'm not using the TNG figures. Also over the years the pseudoscience behind warp-drive has changed so much that for the most part I prefer to just think of it as compressing space in the front and stretching it out in the back. Rather than "submerging the ship into the magical world of subspace".
With that stated, more compression up front/stretching astern would require more energy. And for the most part you'd reach a point of diminishing returns where more and more energy would be needed to distort space increasingly smaller amounts.
However the warp-factor system in Star Trek is not accurate to begin with. Gene Roddenberry when he was creating Star Trek listed the ship's maximum speed as 0.73 LY per hour.
He also stated the warp-factor system was WF^3. Yet the ship's speed is much closer to his 0.73 LY/hr figure.
You're pre-supposing a lot of variables that don't necessarily exist.
As I said the best way to think of the FTL drive in Star Trek is space being compressed in front of the vessel, and stretch out behind. The velocity is the result of the degree of the distortion. Eventually you'd reach a point of diminshing returns where increasing amounts of energy yield less and less distortion.
This all points to the fact that the cruise speed would not be 1/3 of the maximum speed and would be probably in excess of half the maximum speed.
CuttingEdge100
Definitely over two. However, from my personal experience, the word "several" comes out when numbers in excess of 3 or 4 surface.
Well, I'm assuming that more and more energy would be required to travel faster and faster. As a result, at the upper end of the speed range you would require increasingly large amounts of power for less and less speed.
As for the warp figures from TNG, I'm not using the TNG figures. Also over the years the pseudoscience behind warp-drive has changed so much that for the most part I prefer to just think of it as compressing space in the front and stretching it out in the back. Rather than "submerging the ship into the magical world of subspace".
With that stated, more compression up front/stretching astern would require more energy. And for the most part you'd reach a point of diminishing returns where more and more energy would be needed to distort space increasingly smaller amounts.
However the warp-factor system in Star Trek is not accurate to begin with. Gene Roddenberry when he was creating Star Trek listed the ship's maximum speed as 0.73 LY per hour.
He also stated the warp-factor system was WF^3. Yet the ship's speed is much closer to his 0.73 LY/hr figure.
You're pre-supposing a lot of variables that don't necessarily exist.
As I said the best way to think of the FTL drive in Star Trek is space being compressed in front of the vessel, and stretch out behind. The velocity is the result of the degree of the distortion. Eventually you'd reach a point of diminshing returns where increasing amounts of energy yield less and less distortion.
This all points to the fact that the cruise speed would not be 1/3 of the maximum speed and would be probably in excess of half the maximum speed.
CuttingEdge100
Isn't it you doing assumptions, and ones based on the real world rather than on the fictional reality of the show? The "this all" that points to a certain ratio of cruise and max speeds is based on assumptions about how warp operates, yet the only thing that should matter is whether it stands the test of evidence from the show itself.
Granted, of course, that the show is not attempting to be particularly consistent with itself. But it's still better reference material than pure speculation, or speculation that hinges on the assumption that the magic of Star Trek has to obey the same rules as the technology of reciprocating steam engines or gas turbines, or perhaps represent a case a of maximum simplicity, or something.
We already know something about max speed: it (or warp 8.4) hurls the ship a thousand lightyears in what looks like a day or at most two in "That Which Survives" (but should be two months if 0.73 ly/d held true), and 1/16 parsecs in what is said to be seconds in "Bread and Circuses" (or what should be quarter of an hour if 0.73 ly/d held true) - and a little refitting allows for Earth to Vulcan in four days, or what TPTB would have already considered 16 ly and thus 4 ly/d.
These are rather extreme feats of space travel. Yet all those are also fairly short-duration hops, and are treated as extreme feats even by our heroes.
What we lack is good references on how fast non-extreme or cruise speed is in TOS. But we have plenty of that from the spinoff shows - shows that, delightfully enough, do not contradict the TOS definitions of maximum speed or extreme feat. The spinoffs would have us believe that a thousand lightyears can usually be covered in a year, not in a couple of days. That's more extreme than the ratio between the dash and cruise speeds of a modern warship, sure. But that's also a completely different physical realm, which should excuse a lot. (And speaking of modern warships and physics, the ratio of maximum to cruise speed on fission-powered starships of today tends to be closer to 1:1, because the only good reason to cruise below maximum speed today is fuel economy, which isn't an issue for nukes.)
Sure, it can be argued that 3:2 would make sense. But why bother, when onscreen evidence so nicely (and surprisingly consistently) supports the perhaps less sensible but dramatically more intriguing 100:1 or so? That's not real world sensible, that's Star Trek sensible - and we are not in the real world in Star Trek...
We already accept arbitrary rules such as "no transporting through shields" as part of the Trek magic. Accepting that "max:cruise is 100:1" is another such technological conceit that hinges on the idea that we cannot fathom fictional future physics. Trying to deny that is like saying that transporting through shields should be possible because shouting through armor is possible today. We could argue the physics of transporting and the physics of armor till the cows get bored with us and go to graze again, but we'd be ignoring the fact that the choice of "no transport" is arbitrary and divine (indeed, at one point while planning for Phase II, Roddenberry apparently decided transport is possible through weak shields but not strong ones!). All pseudo-physics are subservient to that decision, and while they are subject to argument, their consequence of "no transport" is not.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo,
Well, wouldn't it by in large be smart to be realistic?
Which is kind of a problem wouldn't you say ;-)
Star Trek isn't supposed to be magic. It's supposed to be science-fiction, which by in large implies the show should operate to the best of it's ability on actual principles of science, reasonably speaking.
Which is why I made the point.
Well, I suppose one could argue that. However, I have tried coming up with more scientific explanations than that if you read some of my other threads.
CuttingEdge100
Well, wouldn't it by in large be smart to be realistic?
Which is kind of a problem wouldn't you say ;-)
Star Trek isn't supposed to be magic. It's supposed to be science-fiction, which by in large implies the show should operate to the best of it's ability on actual principles of science, reasonably speaking.
Which is why I made the point.
Well, I suppose one could argue that. However, I have tried coming up with more scientific explanations than that if you read some of my other threads.
CuttingEdge100
I believe in the TNG-VOY era the average speed would be about 1000 LY/year, ship's time for lengthy flights.
Ronald Held,
Well yes in Voyager the ship's got slower, but with all due respect, I'm talking predominantly about TOS ship speeds.
Well yes in Voyager the ship's got slower, but with all due respect, I'm talking predominantly about TOS ship speeds.
I do not recall the TOS Enterprise going on long durations cruises(years at a time) to be able to realistically predict the long term warp speed rate.
Ronald Held,
That is actually a good point, but in all Star Trek series the ships have sometimes traveled far beyond their listed cruise and maximum speeds.
That is actually a good point, but in all Star Trek series the ships have sometimes traveled far beyond their listed cruise and maximum speeds.
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