Warp 9.9

[All Seeing Eye]

I just watched a Voyager episode called the 37's.

In it Tom Paris tells Amelia Earheart (sp?) that the ships max speed is warp 9.9 which is equivalent to 4 billion miles per second. If you don't believe me go check it out, the dialogue is clear. LINK

1 Lightyear = 5,869,588,236,000 Miles.

Does this mean that Voyager at warp 9.9 can traverse 1 lightyear in only 24 minutes?

That's impossible! they'd have been home in no time at all, they'd have been home in 1167 days.

 

[Lior .B.]

it was an error in the script. plain and simple.

 

[Kaziarl]

While you do happen to be right, he was probably exaggerating. That, and trek has never really been overly accurate with numbers.

 

[Timo]

They couldn't maintain warp 9.7 for more than a few minutes in "Threshold". They sure as hell couldn't maintain warp 9.9 for a thousand days.

Apart from that, I see no reason why warp 9.9 couldn't equate to 20,000 times lightspeed. Our heroes don't often travel at such speed (in fact, they never do, AFAIK - if they go past warp 9.8, they use transwarp or somesuch), so there's no real problem with it being that fast.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Top cruising speed for Voyager was supposed to be 9.975
That was acknowledged numerous times on the show, yet later on dropped for dramatic purposes.
Furthermore ... the speed in question should allow the ship to traverse the galaxy in just a few years, but they remodulated the Warp scale yet again for the purpose of making Voyager unable to traverse a distance of 75000 Ly's in just a few years in order to add gravity to the situation.,

 

[All Seeing Eye]

They couldn't maintain warp 9.7 for more than a few minutes in "Threshold".

Why not?

I just re-watched some of the episode on youtube and they easily keep up with Paris in the shuttle, it's not until Paris hits warp 9.5 that Tuvok says he's exceeding Voyagers maximum velocity. Voyager doesn't seem to suffer any ill effects at max velocity.

EDIT: OK it would seem Voyagers maximum safe velocity is 9.5. That's still only 0.4 slower than the 9.9 Paris talks about. They'd still be home in a mere 5 years at warp 9.5

 

[Timo]

I just re-watched some of the episode on youtube and they easily keep up with Paris in the shuttle, it's not until Paris hits warp 9.5 that Tuvok says he's exceeding Voyagers maximum velocity. Voyager doesn't seem to suffer any ill effects at max velocity.

It sounds to me that when they first get a lock on the shuttle, there's no speed data yet. Could be high nines, could be something like warp eightish. Then they hear the shuttle is going warp 9.9. Chuckles commands for matching speed. Almost immediately, the computer tells the ship is on the verge of being torn apart. They don't decelerate yet, but apparently accelerate further; then the shuttle exceeds their theoretical max speed and Chakotay gives up, slowing down to warp 9.5.

So the "no ill effects" was somewhere below warp 9.5, the "we can only take this for a few seconds" was somewhere above warp 9.5, but there's no good evidence of "we can maintain warp 9.5 for years". We don't even know if they maintained it for their three days of searching, or slowed down after just some hours.

If the ship is in danger of becoming toothsticks at somewhere above warp 9.5, it doesn't sound healthy to spend any length of time at speeds close to warp 9.5. We can't define sustainable speed as "just barely not becoming toothsticks", now can we?

They'd probably get home faster by spending a year at warp seven than by spending a week at warp 9.5 and then suffering the consequences...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS KG5]

EDIT: OK it would seem Voyagers maximum safe velocity is 9.5. That's still only 0.4 slower than the 9.9 Paris talks about. They'd still be home in a mere 5 years at warp 9.5

Several points:

1. You can't necessarily cruise at your maximum speed, very few modern ships can.
2. The Ent-D could only do 9.6 for 12 hours, and in "The Chase" travelling at Warp 8 and 9 etc for long periods involved causing damage to the engines, they had to stop and make repairs.
3. We usually se Voyager travelling off at Warp 5 or 6, and this seems much more likely to be its maximum cruising speed. In fact given the lack of starbases for maintenance I'd say they often could not go that fast.

It is the same as in the average car, there are very few cars on the roads in the UK today that can't make 100mph - but if you drive at that speed all the time your maintenance requirements will go through the roof and parts will wear out much more quickly.

 

[Timo]

1. You can't necessarily cruise at your maximum speed, very few modern ships can.

The big advantage of nuclear-powered ships today is that they can do exactly that. But Star Trek ships have always been portrayed as having big troubles with reliability whenever they operate above their usual speed range - yet being capable of operating significantly above that usual range for short periods of time. Warp seven was already hair-rising stuff in TOS, yet warp fourteen could be rather easily achieved if one wasn't concerned about surviving beyond the next minute.

2. The Ent-D could only do 9.6 for 12 hours, and in "The Chase" travelling at Warp 8 and 9 etc for long periods involved causing damage to the engines, they had to stop and make repairs.

Also, "Drumhead" and "Phantasms" both referred to the increased maintenance needs due to the E-D's exceptionally frequent use of high speeds. Janeway couldn't have risked anything like that: for the first two years, she had encountered no safe port where she could have reliably gotten her ship repaired.

3. We usually se Voyager travelling off at Warp 5 or 6, and this seems much more likely to be its maximum cruising speed. In fact given the lack of starbases for maintenance I'd say they often could not go that fast.

We also surprisingly often catch them at impulse. We could argue that this is mere statistical illusion, because all the interesting stuff happens at impulse - that is, we meet our heroes whenever the ship slows down because of something they have sensed ahead. Or we could argue that the ship indeed spends a lot of time at impulse, to let the engines "cool". Perhaps they do move at warp nine-plus a lot, but then pay the price, so their average speed is no better than warp six.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

...the ship indeed spends a lot of time at impulse, to let the engines "cool". Perhaps they do move at warp nine-plus a lot, but then pay the price, so their average speed is no better than warp six...

That would explain why they spend so much time at impulse, something that always bothered me about Voyager. Of course it was really done for budget reasons, since hanging the starfield curtain outside the set is a lot cheaper than matting a starfield in all the time. However, I can certainly buy your theory; thanks Timo.

Regarding the issue of Voyager's speed, I give you this quote from "Caretaker"

STADI: Intrepid class. Sustainable cruise velocity of warp factor nine point nine seven five...

The key word there is "sustainable". I suppose we could just say that Stadi got it wrong, or was exaggerating?

 

[Timo]

We could always argue that she was about to say something else, such as "nine point seven five" or "sustainable dash velocity", but couldn't help being telepathic about Tom Paris for a moment, and got somewhat distracted...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

EDIT: OK it would seem Voyagers maximum safe velocity is 9.5. That's still only 0.4 slower than the 9.9 Paris talks about. They'd still be home in a mere 5 years at warp 9.5

As I understand the warp scale, it's like the Richter scale. Each decimal point is a speed increase of a factor of ten. So 9.9 isn't .4 faster than 9.5, it's... umm... 10^4 faster.

 

[Vance]

Never, ever, look to Voyager as any source of authority on Star Trek's technology. You'll go mad.

 

[Squiggy]

Warp 1= Speed of the plot
Warp 2= Speed of the plot
Warp 3= Speed of the plot
Warp 4= Speed of the plot
Warp 5= Speed of the plot
Warp 6= Speed of the plot
Warp 7= Speed of the plot
Warp 8= Speed of the plot
Warp 9= Speed of the plot
Warp 9.9 = Approaching Ludicrous Speed.
Warp 10 = Ludicrous Speed

 

[Deks]

We could always argue that she was about to say something else, such as "nine point seven five" or "sustainable dash velocity", but couldn't help being telepathic about Tom Paris for a moment, and got somewhat distracted...

Timo Saloniemi

That's just taking what was said completely out of context.
The ship was able to do it, the writers on the other hand had a different plot of the week agenda.

Top cruising speed = 9.975 for Voyager.
Stadi confirmed it as being a sustainable velocity.
She was not about to say something else because her composure was quite focused when she mentioned it.

We could argue that the ship perhaps sustained structural damage during it's transition to the DQ by the Array and was at risk if attempting to approach what was previously known as it's top cruising speed.
This was of course never mentioned, but perhaps would work as a viable in-universe explanation as to why Chakotay had to reduce warp speed in Threshold to 9.5 ... or why the ship was never using it's sustainable cruising speed ... or at the very least Warp 9.
Then again, Threshold was decanonized to begin with, so the events of that episode as far as canon is concerned never happened (it was ignored in the episode 'Day of Honor' when Torres mentioned to Chakotay they knew nothing of TW technology and that playing with it could be dangerous ... Paris also told 7 in the same episode he never flew at Transwarp).

If the warp scale was not especially restructured for Voyager, the ship would have been able to get back to Federation space in less than 7 years ... or just 7 years without wasting their supplies at any large rate.

Or ... they could have explained the transition to the DQ damaged the ship (as I already mentioned) enough to lower it's warp speeds to such a degree that would allow them to get back in 75 years time.

Oh and, Voyager was flung 75 000 Ly's ... not 70 000.
The figures were thrown left and right for generalization purposes, but it was 75 000 Ly's ... especially if you take into account the fact they mentioned it would take 75 years even at maximum speeds (assuming 1 year of travel at such speeds = 1000 ly's).

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Warp 1= Speed of the plot
Warp 2= Speed of the plot
Warp 3= Speed of the plot
Warp 4= Speed of the plot
Warp 5= Speed of the plot
Warp 6= Speed of the plot
Warp 7= Speed of the plot
Warp 8= Speed of the plot
Warp 9= Speed of the plot
Warp 9.9 = Approaching Ludicrous Speed.
Warp 10 = Ludicrous Speed

Warp 11 = Plad?

 

[bigdaddy]

Yet another reason to ignore Voyager.

 

[Deks]

We can ignore all of canon Trek shows in that case because they all messed it up real good.

 

[C.E. Evans]

To me, there's a difference between cruising speed and maximum sustainable speed. I think Warp 6 is the safe speed the Voyager (and most Federation starships) can maintain indefinitely as long as there is enough fuel. But I always took the Voyager's sustainable velocity of Warp 9.975 as being the top speed the ship can hold the longest, but only for 12 hours or so before they gotta throttle back down to prevent engine damage.

Presumably, the Voyager could go even faster than Warp 9.975 if necessary, but it couldn't sustain such a speed for any appreciable length of time...

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Oh and, Voyager was flung 75 000 Ly's ... not 70 000.
The figures were thrown left and right for generalization purposes, but it was 75 000 Ly's ... especially if you take into account the fact they mentioned it would take 75 years even at maximum speeds (assuming 1 year of travel at such speeds = 1000 ly's).

No, the dialogue states clearly they were flung 70,000 lightyears and yes it would take 75 years to get home, there is absolutely no reason to believe that they travelled 1000 lightyears per year. There is absolutely no reason that the ship didn't travel only 933 lightyears per year.