Why don't starships automatically use maximum warp?

Actually that was one of the few things that made it to multiple episodes.. Warp restrictions.. Was kind of why the intrepid class had the movable nacelle.

 

No, no, no. I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about this!

 

Going at Faster Warp Speeds consumes more Energy, there's a finite amount of (Dilithium Crystals / Anti-Matter) to use to make "Warp Plasma" AKA "Electro Plasma". Yes modern Dilithium Crystals regenerate at a specific rate, but even with the "Theta Matrix Compositer" to help the Re-Crystallization of Dilithium while it's in the "Dilithium Articulation Frame", I'm pretty sure that slows down the overall DeCrystallization of the Dilithium. Ergo reducing the consumption of Dilithium when making "Warp Plasma". Why else would the Federation still be mining Dilithium Crystals well into the 24th century. It's because it must be valuable since Dilithium is one of those "Consumables" to produce massive amounts of power on a StarShip.

If you were to make a modern day ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) analogy, the Dilithium Crystals function as the Combustion Chamber of the Engine while the Warp Plasma / Electro Plasma is the Energy that is produced.

Going faster than necessary consumes more Anti-Matter, wears down Dilithium Crystals faster (Over the long term), and the crew would get fatigued if they were over worked.

 

I'd imagine warp six is the best trade-off between fuel efficiency, wear and tear and arriving at your destination in a reasonable amount of time.

At warp one your engines would probably last forever and a tank of deuterium would last for forty years - but you'd never get anywhere.

If you travelled at warp nine everywhere your engines would burn out after a few years.

Warp six is probably the sweet spot, like 50mph is for most cars.

Maximum warp might also lead to a 'hare and tortoise' situation where a ship that shoots off at warp 9.9 needs to stop and let the engines cool down for hours (was it twelve hours in BOBW?) but a ship travelling at warp eight may arrive at the destination earlier because warp eight can be maintained indefinitely.

 

During some episodes of Voyager, we would often initially see the ship at sublight speed, even though there didn't seen to be a reason for it. Maybe this was because the ship had to come out of warp occasionlly, even something like warp six couldn't be maintained for protracted periods.

With the prospect of a seventy year trip home, babying the engines would be more of a priority than with a typical starfleet vessel.

 

I've always looked at Warp 6 as being the normal cruising speed for most starships, particularly our hero ships. I think that's the highest speed a ship can maintain until fuel exhaustion without harming the engines. From Warp 7 onwards though, that's when the engines become more strained, fuel becomes more quickly drained, and ultimately system damage occurs over time, IMO.

When a captain orders "maximum warp," I see that as akin to an emergency speed that the ship can engage for a brief period of time--just enough to escape something or dash across a relatively short distance quickly. Definitely not something I think can be maintained for very long, though.

 

I think the "Average Cruise" will depend on the Warp Engines make & model.
Newer vessels will have have higher "Average Cruise" vs "Maximum Speed".

- Voyager's Unscheduled 70,000 ly journey from the Delta Quadrant to home -
- Based on the on-screen estimates of 75 year journey has a average cruise speed of Warp 8 assuming unlimited fuel
- Warp 8 would take 68.36 years if non-stop with unlimited fuel, but given stops, repairs, exploration, etc. They probably rounded up to 75 years
- That means I can guess that Warp 8 was their cruise speed assuming unlimited fuel (A VERY Unrealistic Scenario)
- Galaxy Class initial Average Cruise speed was Warp 6, but later on became Warp 7

NOTE: Warp 8 = 1,024c based on the TNG era Warp Factor formula.

 

Journey > Destination.

 

Dialogue in "Caretaker" says "sustainable cruise velocity of warp 9.975". They had the warp speed charts made for the TNG writers' guide and memos from their tech advisers saying it'd only be 20 years at that speed, but they chose to ignore it.

 

I suppose the "sustainable" part of that statement is somewhat open to interpretation. Sustainable for an hour, a day, a week etc?

I've always taken it to mean that Voyager (at least fresh out of the shipyard) can, on paper, sustain warp 9.975 for twelve hours before needing to stop.

 

Ever been on an airplane that's running late and the pilot says they'll be travelling faster to make up for the lost time? Presumably there's a reason that faster speed isn't always the default, and a similar reason would be why starships don't always travel at maximum warp.

Plus, from the writer's perspective, having the captain order "maximum warp" helps create drama by selling the urgency of the situation.

 

Come to think of it, I've been on a flight where the headwinds were so bad, we had to make an unscheduled stop at another airport halfway through the flight and fuel up because the engines were being pushed so hard we wouldn't have made it to our destination before running out of gas.

 

It should have been a 20 year journey for Janeway but that new-fangled warp system which somehow squeezed W9.975 out of those tiny nacelles broke on the journey to the Delta Quadrant and no-one on board could fix it

 

I'm inclined to think that newer vessels could have higher maximum speeds, but roughly the same normal cruising speeds as existing ships. Anything could happen in the future--including warp drive ultimately becoming obsolete altogether--but I think for the moment there's still a general limit to how hard warp engines can be pushed indefinitely. Even Warp 9 may be impossible for most starships to maintain forever right now.

Now if Starfleet ships were capable of ludicrous speed...

 

12 hrs might be a bit generous if that it's "Max Sustainable" speed. I'd argue for no more than 3-4 hrs because that would be like Red-Lining your Internal Combustion Engine and Red-Lining for hours on end can't be good for it in terms of "Long Term Durability".

 

I agree, during the late 24th century, Warp 9 wouldn't be "Normal Cruise Speeds" for StarFleet vessels. That's why I had to figure out how long it would take Voyager to get home using it's "Normal Cruise Speed" where it wouldn't damage the engines and could run indefinitely if it had 'Infinite Fuel', a mostly hypothetical scenario. Obvious Voyager would have to stop at various places to collect fuel and resupply.

 

I don't think it's generous, in fact I think it's reasonably accurate.

According to the Enterprise-D Technical Manual the ship can sustain maximum warp for twelve hours. So I think it follows that Voyager can also sustain maximum warp for a comparable amount of time.

 

Then they must be defining "Maximum Warp" such that they're holding back on the actual Maximum Speed to preserve Warp Nacelle long term integrity / durability.