how fast is "ramming speed"

[JT Perfecthair]

So how effective do you think it would be if Riker's order to ram the D into the Borg cube would be?

It looks like they would start close to the cube and the damage would be from the ship exploding on the surface, not that different from auto-destructing near it. AKA, completely pointless.

You'd think they would try circling around Mars and then come back at the cube at warp 8, then you'd do some damage.

 

[Trekker4747]

So how effective do you think it would be if Riker's order to ram the D into the Borg cube would be?

It looks like they would start close to the cube and the damage would be from the ship exploding on the surface, not that different from auto-destructing near it. AKA, completely pointless.

You'd think they would try circling around Mars and then come back at the cube at warp 8, then you'd do some damage.

Keep in mind when traveling at warp the ship isn't actually moving at those speeds. It's just manipulating space in order to travel at a rate equivalent to greater-than-light speeds without the ship actually needing to move itself at those speeds. So moving at Warp 9 has no more energy in it than when the ship is moving at the fastest speed it's actually capable of moving, which may be just below c. Though, Full-Impulse is .5c.

In either case while moving at a greater speed would have the more energy in it than moving at a slower speed in either case the collision would cause a warp-core breach in at the very least the Enterprise, if not in both ships, creating a very large explosion.

And, IIRC, it was Worf in "First Contact" in a disabled Defiant that ordered for "ramming speed." In BoBW2 Riker does order Wesley at the CONN to engage at full-warp.

Which, again, carries no meaningful benefit to the actual collision but would allow the ship to move much faster than anything could react to it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I thought full impulse was .92c. Though I think I read that out of the non-canon Technical Manual a long time ago, where did you get .5c from?

 

[C.E. Evans]

I thought full impulse was .92c. Though I think I read that out of the non-canon Technical Manual a long time ago, where did you get .5c from?

The TNG Tech Manual listed full impulse as 0.25c. The Galaxy-class impulse engines were capable of 0.92c, but sustained flight at high sublight velocities generally results in time dilation effects.

It also stated that impulse engines tend to become less efficient beyond 0.5c.

 

[Melakon]

In layman's terms, it's as fast as you can go with pedal to the metal.

 

[Trekker4747]

I thought full impulse was .92c. Though I think I read that out of the non-canon Technical Manual a long time ago, where did you get .5c from?

The TNG Tech Manual listed full impulse as 0.25c. The Galaxy-class impulse engines were capable of 0.92c, but sustained flight at high sublight velocities generally results in time dilation effects.

It also stated that impulse engines tend to become less efficient beyond 0.5c.

You're right, Max Impulse is limited to .25c, I had simply mis remembered it. It can be pushed higher with the cost of efficiency and the reason the speed is limited to begin with, which according to the tech manual is to limit relativistic speed complications. (i.e. the "Twin Paradox.")

 

[BillJ]

In layman's terms, it's as fast as you can go with pedal to the metal.

 

[shivkala]

This was addressed during a discussion of the Babylon 5 episode "Endgame"

You are in a space ship, in a vacuum, heading toward target X. You understand that it takes time to transfer energy and movement toward another plane, so you go at X-speed toward that object if you want the option of applying thrusters and angling away from the object before you slam into it.

If, on the other hand, you *want* to hit the object, and you have no interest in holding back your thrusters to allow you to diverge from the target in the amount of space remaining between you and it, you proceed at Y speed, with your thrusters putting out their maximum amount of fuel.

Y = ramming speed.

I'll leave it to the experts as to what, exactly, the speed needs to be in order to hit the object.

 

[jimbotron]

This fast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXh1tW16V-8

 

[F. King Daniel]

Ramming speed = plot factor 9.

That BoBW scene never made sense to me anyway. We saw before that the Enterprise is helpless when trapped as they were. Wes would have engaged and they'd just sit there looking pathetic.

 

[Timo]

We know next to nothing about acceleration in the Trek universe, as opposed to speed. If Picard orders "full impulse", how long does it take for the ship to reach 0.25 c or 0.50 c or 0.75 c or 0.999999999 c? Seconds? Minutes? Years? With warp, it's no clearer: sometimes the helmsman responds to a warp speed order with mere "Aye, Sir!", sometimes he then follows up with "Now at warp X, Sir!" some indeterminate time later (indeterminate due to the inevitable cuts in the action).

It would not be contrary to onscreen evidence to assume that the E-D could reach her maximum warp speed within twenty yards and an attosecond. Any scenes of slow acceleration (such as in "Encounter at Farpoint") involve the crew being timid as to what speed to select, and gradually telling the helmsman to go a bit faster.

On a separate vein, "ramming speed" in the Trek universe might not be the same as maximum speed, even though in naval warfare it quite inevitably is. Scifi usually has "different rules" on pretty much everything; perhaps ramming is best attained at some speed that is slow enough to get through enemy shields - just like slow bullets go through water better than fast ones?

The jury is in any case still out on whether high warp involves lots of kinetic energy, or perhaps none. That the Voyager would slam onto a planet uncontrollably when emerging from extremely high warp in "Timeless", but in fact make a feather-soft landing, suggests the latter rather than the former...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jimbotron]

I'd love for someone to compute the force of impact of the Enterprise-D at Warp 9. Please snap to it, someone! That's a lot of newtons.

 

[MacLeod]

In layman's terms, it's as fast as you can go with pedal to the metal.

I would agree with this, is basically the maximum speed you can achieve

I thought full impulse was .92c. Though I think I read that out of the non-canon Technical Manual a long time ago, where did you get .5c from?

The TNG Tech Manual listed full impulse as 0.25c. The Galaxy-class impulse engines were capable of 0.92c, but sustained flight at high sublight velocities generally results in time dilation effects.

It also stated that impulse engines tend to become less efficient beyond 0.5c.

You're right, Max Impulse is limited to .25c, I had simply mis remembered it. It can be pushed higher with the cost of efficiency and the reason the speed is limited to begin with, which according to the tech manual is to limit relativistic speed complications. (i.e. the "Twin Paradox.")

I think the 0.5c might come from TMP. I think Kirk has a line something like

"Impulse speed Mister Sulu, ahead Warp point five."

 

[Rarewolf]

Ramming speed = plot factor 9.

That BoBW scene never made sense to me anyway. We saw before that the Enterprise is helpless when trapped as they were. Wes would have engaged and they'd just sit there looking pathetic.

Well the minimum damage it could do would be a warp core breach on the surface of the cube, but you wouldn't need to sacrifice the lives on the saucer section to get the same result.

 

[varek]

Impulse speed, at close range, would be devastating. But, obviously, a last resort.

 

[Trekker4747]

Any speed would be devastating. Any meaningful impact that significantly damages the ship would result in loss of antimatter containment which would result in a very, very large explosion. Now, granted, the faster they go the greater the collision and the more likelihood of this devastating damage but, really, any level of impulse should do the trick.

 

[Enterprise1701]

"Ramming speed" probably varies depending on the scenario. Obviously though, a Federation vessel gliding into the shielded hull of a Borg cube probably isn't enough to do major damage.

The best thing to do, I think, is to time impact with the enemy hull exactly with the explosion of a warp core.

In the ENT relaunch novels, several Romulan warships execute suicide attacks on other planets by colliding into them while at warp (somewhere above 1 and under 6 on the ENT scale), causing province or even planet-spanning extreme wildfires.

 

[Destructor]

As fast as she can take!

 

[The Old Mixer]

Hopefully it's a little faster than this:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csuZHyW-iGI[/yt]

 

[Timo]

I'd love for someone to compute the force of impact of the Enterprise-D at Warp 9. Please snap to it, someone! That's a lot of newtons.

Then again, the ship would have to expend those same newtons across the distance she travels in order to attain the ramming, which is a lot of joules, probably more than exist in the universe. Since starships can travel at warp without beggaring the universe's energy resources, somebody somewhere has found a cheat. And the same cheat that makes warp travel energetically possible will probably make warp ramming energetically low-key, too.

Timo Saloniemi