I recently watch that episode. The Enterprise was displaced 990.7 LY. At Warp 8.4 it would take 11.33 hours to return to the planet. I assumed a Cochrane factor was needed and computed it to be about 1332. Is that high for TOS travel? I did not try to estimate how much time passed from the time the ship accelerated past 8.4 until they orbited the planet.
Covering 990.7 light years in 11.33 hours would have gotten the USS Voyager home in a month. Just sayin'
Then again, Scotty was always adamant that sustaining anything past warp eight would kill them all. So "a month" would be a death sentence for Kirk's posse, and probably also for Janeway's. "That Which Survives" is one of the high outliers of TOS - the other is "Bread and Circuses" where Chekov says they can cover "only 1/16 parsec" in "seconds". Of course, we don't know if that's actually true, as odds are it might be a) an empty boast, of which Chekov is especially infamous, or b) a misjudging or misquoting of the distance. The second option is appealing, as 1/16 pc is supposed to be how far some debris drifted in six years - how can debris drift at ten thousand kilometers per second? I mean, the Beagle supposedly blew to bits on orbit of Pseudo-Rome, or at least that's Spock's analysis of the trajectory. If an explosion gives the remains of the ship this sort of a speed, how can it remain in the category of identifiable jetsam? Perhaps Chekov had a brain fart as regards the distance, but got the travel time right (as the heroes indeed should be able to cover in "seconds" what some debris covers in six years)? "That Which Survives" is more explicit in that the landing party can't remain stranded for more than a couple of days at most (no water!) and doesn't appear to experience more than a single sleep cycle, while the distance is quoted by two people, one of whom is Spock. The only variable we can haggle over is the warp factor that enables the quoted average speed. Perhaps "holding at warp 8.4" is what they are doing after they have completed their harebrained stunt of two hours of warp twelve? Timo Saloniemi
It shouldn't. After all, if spatial variation did play a significant role, then Star Trek should be all about hunting down those advantageous regions of space. Instead, there's exactly zero dialogue on the subject of "choosing the fastest route". Spatial variation may well play an insignificant role. But that doesn't exactly help us here... Timo Saloniemi
Has anyone talked data inat least YOS to create local CFs? I wonder if watp fast lanes existed in the past of new warp capable races, but overuse makes them "worn down"?
The closest to that is Astrometrics in Voyager coming online and instantly shaving a year off their journey, and the destruction of a star in Generations requiring course changes from passing ships. But, that can come down to nothing more than efficient orbital dynamics. A likely variable could be space dust and gas density causing drag, since we know it interacts with the ship at warp and should cause drag.
I think the sheer craziness is more than a never mentioned spatially varying Cochrane Factor can account for.
Slightly off topic, but if you go by the Star Charts book in WNMHGB the Enterprise flew "up" to the Galactic Barrier. I have always liked this explanation more than an irregularly fast Enterprise, and it could be used to account for the other journeys in TOS.
...The idea that high speeds are fine for dashes but not sustainable covers most of the bases already. All sorts of heroes say "even at maximum speed" when giving an estimate for travel time back home from the odyssey of the week - supposedly meaning "we all know doing this is flat out impossible, but even if it weren't, see how long it would take?". "That Which Survives" represents the classic "Fly her apart, then!" category of voyages, much like the chase in "Arena". Should we attribute the thousand-ly-per-half-a-day speed to warp factor 8.4 or not? There's no great harm in that when we remember that Voyager only maintaned an average warp factor of 6.2, which could easily be a hundred times slower than 8.4. It's just that we don't want warp factors 9+ to be that much higher still, so we have to rein in the steepness of the curve a bit. Timo Saloniemi
If we're talking about speed inconsistencies in ST:OS might as well mentioned "The Paradise Syndrome" without bothering with a new thread. The Enterprise intercepts the asteroid while it is about two months (full impulse) travel time away from the planet. We know this because of what happens shortly thereafter when Spock wrecks the warp drive engines while attempting to blow the asteroid apart with the phasers. He orders a return to the planet and the Enterprise stays only 4 hours ahead of the asteroid the whole way. Now to intercept the asteroid in the first place Enterprise had to dash through space at Warp 9. Apparently a sustained dash as Scott complains to Spock about the warp engines being stressed and the episode seems to imply that its this accumulating engine damage that causes both the initial effort to deflect the asteroid and the later attempt to blow it apart to both fail. So even assuming the asteroid is traveling at extremely high sublight speed (don't ask me how that would be possible), how is it possible that 59 light days translates into a distance requiring sustained Warp 9 speeds to cover?
Because warp drives within star systems are relatively slow for some reason. Remember the Klingon battlecruiser strafing them in "Elaan of Troyus" is moving at "better than warp seven" but Sulu is reading off distance indicators at a pace that suggests the ship isn't even moving at FTL velocity.
<Rummages for an off-the-shelf answer> Warping close to stars is slow as molasses, as painfully and indeed graphically demonstrated in both "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and ST4:TVH. Indeed, close to Sol, going to warp 8 or better amounts to sublight speeds only. The asteroids hitting Miramanee's little paradise seem to come from the direction of the local sun, "darkening the skies" and whatnot. Spock's shortest route then would take him past that sun at close range - and, despite the speed-degrading effect involved (meaning warp 9+ amounts to just a tad better than lightspeed), the shortest route might still be the fastest, quicker than taking a detour outside the star system. And quicker than switching to impulse engines, which might still have been an option had not McCoy irrationally stalled. <wonders about getting Ninja'ed - I didn't spend thirteen minutes typing this! Perhaps the board isn't refreshing at my current computer quite as it should?> Of course, the above references also involve time travel. Perhaps Spock went to high warp close to the star in order to literally regain the time lost with searching for Jim? Timo Saloniemi
Except Kirk refers to it as the "rim" in "By Any Other Name", ruling out it being the "top" of the galaxy.
Naturally, since the Barrier defines the rim of the galaxy that otherwise would have none, this places minimal limitations on how close the rim is to Earth... Timo Saloniemi
This discussion spurred me to try to determine what direction the Andromeda Galaxy lies in relation to Earth and the Milky Way Galaxy. My quick Google search found a simple star chart placing a lot of local galaxies in relation to the Milky Way. It looks like Andromeda is "below" the Milky Way galactic equator but also "outwards" (i.e., not directly "beneath" it). So a direct path for the Kelvans to our galaxy would lie more through the outer part of the "bottom" of the galactic disk and not really through the rim. Always wondered about that. FWIW. A factoid I'm sure was not considered at all during the making of either TOS episode. Carry on...
Placing the Galactic Barrier at a specific location risks being a fallacy from the get-go. Sure, it looks like a purple ribbon up close. But if it is a purple ribbon, then a ship capable of warp speeds should be able to go "above" or "below" it easily enough, and a) a mission to probe through it to see if it is a threat to exploration beyond is idiocy, and b) an outsider trying to enter will only crash into it if an idiot. If, OTOH, the thing does surround the Milky Way in the form of a shell everybody has to brave on his way in or out, no matter the path, then we can ignore the ribbon shape as an optical illusion - but we also lose any geometrical connection to the arbitrary rim of the galactic disk. We would do well to say that the purple haze wraps all the galactic arms, defining an "in" (with lots of bright stars) and an "out" (with dimmer even if not fewer stars). The nearest bits could be very close to Earth in that case. And getting through those wouldn't yet take you to intergalactic space, only through the first hurdle. "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" doesn't really affect this, as the ship seems to enter an alien realm rather than any specific spot in space (indeed, this is the very problem calling for Medusan intervention). One consequence of this is the likelihood of Janeway having to penetrate the Barrier a dozen times on her way home. Perhaps it's only a thing near Earth, around the Sagittarius Arm or whatnot? (Perhaps the identically colored and somewhat similarly behaving Nexus has something to do with it, too?) Timo Saloniemi
Anyone remember the description of what the "galactic energy barrier at the edge of our galaxy" is from "The Wounded Sky"? (excellent novel by Diane Duane). She describes it as turning out to be the wave front from an enormous supernova that exploded some distance outside our galaxy
...And yet other novels draw connections between its seemingly supernatural qualities and those of certain Trek superbeings. Its known in-universe qualities are interesting in themselves, though. Kirk can reach it without going old, or dedicating his whole career (or even his whole five-year mission) to the feat. Yet he's the very first Earthling skipper to brave the phenomenon, or at least he finds it "impossible" that others would have preceded him. Kirk seems to be under orders to study whether the Barrier can be pierced - that is, Starfleet seems to know about the existence of the Barrier beforehand. There's also an industrial facility at the exact spot where Kirk emerges from the Barrier after his failed attempt, perhaps part of a greater project to explore and exploit the Barrier. So, is this place near (for being well known) or far (for not having been braved before)? Kirk's frequent revisits to the place (or parts of the place at any rate) suggest high accessibility. But when Kirk goes there, nobody else seems to be there but unknowns and hostiles. Add to this our heroes so often rapidly determining their adversaries of the week to be "extragalactic". How can they tell they didn't come from just around the corner in the Milky Way? The Barrier would help there. Kirk seems to "patrol" the region in "By Any Other Name", readily responding to a distress call... Perhaps the location could be relatively near, but is so scary that Starfleet concentrates on intercepting the evils that come through the Barrier, and only slowly works up the courage to try and go through itself? Timo Saloniemi
I thought that it enclosed the prime Milky Way Galaxy. I also though it does not fully register on 23d century sensors.