A frieghter's maximum speed

[Timo]

"Transport" today is a military expression, which encompasses the transportation of anything ranging from oil to bulk to parceled goods to vehicles to cattle to troops to real people.

The civilian expression "freighter" in turn would probably exclude the transportation of passengers, except as the occasional "supercargo". There might be subtypes of freighter, such as the historic "packet" vs. "tramp" (meaning ships on scheduled runs vs. ships hunting for opportunities to haul stuff), and then things like "ore freighter" or "container ship" or "tanker" to specify the nature of cargo.

The Huron would clearly be a transport, as she is military through and through. The generic name would logically apply on the automated vessels, too, but Starfleet could also apply special terminology. "Carrier", as in ore carrier, might be the preferred expression for such drones.

"Tug" would be a special designation applicable to military and civilian ships alike. "Cruiser" would have a military meaning and a competing civilian one: the Aurora of "Way to Eden" would be of the latter sort. "Hospital ship" would be a clear-cut millitary designation.

The Antares could be a transport acting for a science probe organization, hence her being a "Science Probe vessel" the same way a freighter could be a "United States vessel" (A USNS transport) or a tug could serve as a "Space Administration vessel" (a NASA booster recovery vessel).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Manticore]

Presumably a captain has reviewed the charts of the region he is in, so he knows very specifically how fast "warp 2" is in a region, if Chi is a factor. A captain who doesn't pay very close attention to the rough Chi levels, if this is the case, would be a poor captain indeed.

No, it would be the job of the navigator to translate the Captain's Order for 'Warp 6' into 'real speed'. The captain cannot and should not be bothered with minutae, that's not his job.

In a Star Trek universe where Chi is a factor, it would be akin to knowing where the currents are, or the trade winds in the age of sail. Those were things that the captain bother(ed) with, and most carefully. A factor with that dramatic an effect on speed would most certainly not be minutiae.

 

[Vance]

In a Star Trek universe where Chi is a factor, it would be akin to knowing where the currents are, or the trade winds in the age of sail. Those were things that the captain bother(ed) with, and most carefully. A factor with that dramatic an effect on speed would most certainly not be minutiae.

Except that you're STILL running into the problem where the Captain orders a velocity and that's not what he's going to get. If Warp 4 can literally mean anything from .25C to 2500C, then it's pretty frackin' useless as a measurement of velocity, and the Captain would have to be an idiot to rely on it. (Nevermind the problems of interfering mass increasing velocity at superluminals...)

When a captain of a Trade Ship says "Ahead 20 knots", there's no one aboard who is thinking "Okay, so right HERE, 20 knots means 20 knots while if we shimmy to the left, 20 knots really means 40 knots.. etc.." See the problem yet?

 

[Manticore]

In a Star Trek universe where Chi is a factor, it would be akin to knowing where the currents are, or the trade winds in the age of sail. Those were things that the captain bother(ed) with, and most carefully. A factor with that dramatic an effect on speed would most certainly not be minutiae.

Except that you're STILL running into the problem where the Captain orders a velocity and that's not what he's going to get. If Warp 4 can literally mean anything from .25C to 2500C, then it's pretty frackin' useless as a measurement of velocity, and the Captain would have to be an idiot to rely on it. (Nevermind the problems of interfering mass increasing velocity at superluminals...)

When a captain of a Trade Ship says "Ahead 20 knots", there's no one aboard who is thinking "Okay, so right HERE, 20 knots means 20 knots while if we shimmy to the left, 20 knots really means 40 knots.. etc.." See the problem yet?

Hey, I never said that I was a fan of the chi idea (I personally prefer Graham Kennedy's Subspace Corridors theory). I was just pointing out that it'd be pretty important for a captain to know this.

It could be argued that most captains prefer to run their ships where the warp engines are most efficient, instead of the effective speed, and when they order warp 4, it's actually pretty fast in the area. In this case, it'd be easier just to say "warp 4." Presumably, he, the XO, the helmsman, and the navigator all know what the factor relates to in the region, and they're the only ones who really need to (well, them and their reliefs).

But, as I said, it's hardly my favorite theory.

 

[Timo]

When a captain of a Trade Ship says "Ahead 20 knots"

That would be the trick, then: the captain wouldn't specify a speed, but an engine setting. Speed would be beyond mortal means to decide, if chi factors wreaked such havoc with warp travel. It would be futile to try to go at a certain speed, so captains shouldn't even try; they certainly didn't in the age of sail. Instead, they specified the amount of canvas they felt was the best for the circumstances, and then waited to see what sort of speed that would give them, and then grunted either in satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Whether Star Trek works on these sailing ship rules, or on the rules of modern diesel-powered ships, is not immediately obvious from the episodes. It could be some sort of a happy medium, really.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Longinus]

There really is not on screen support for this variable warp factor theory, warp factors are always spoken of as absolute values.

Also, those warp speed formulas that people use are no way canon and routinely give far too low speeds for such journeys as depicted in the show.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, those "chi factors" were designed to address the problem that the then popular warp scale of v = c times wf^3 was too slow. They were supposed to be more or less fixed multipliers to increase the speeds thousandfold, not factors significantly dependent on local conditions or varying greatly.

Star Trek as shown to us can accommodate the idea that the speed connected to a certain warp factor varies a bit depending on local conditions. Say, ten-fifteen percent either way at worst. If there is a greater local aberration than that, storytelling should really refer to it as something special, such as "wormhole" or "subspace sandbar" or whatever else has been used so far.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Actually, the Warp = C*WF^3 has some merit, when you figure that it's purpose was really to allow the Enterprise at Warp 5 to get from system to system in about a couple of weeks' time. That's really all the rational that it had.

And, so long as you're between warp 4 and warp 7, it works out pretty nicely. 64C would be sufficient, though slow, for point-to-point freighters, etc. Pretty much any rationalization, though, which has any consistancy, makes Warp 2 rediculous at the slow end.

 

[Timo]

Then again, Kirk in TOS typically got from random star to random star (not from star to neighboring star) in a matter of days. If one ups the ante on warp 6 to match that, then warp 2 suddenly starts making some sense...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Depends on if warping is an exponential function or not, Timo. Warp 2, on just about any exponential function, is still going to be painfully slow to be useful in Trek. In this case, I think the writers were really thinking "Warp 2 is 1/3 the speed of Warp 6"

As for 'random stars', I'm not so sure. "Arena" (and other episodes) has it that Kirk is operating in a pretty fixed area, albeit and extremely dangerous one (The Triangle, as FASA calls it), and not all over the galaxy (as the real world stars would indicate). Even then, you're still looking at Warp 5 and 6 getting you a week from port to port.

 

[Tyberius]

In a Star Trek universe where Chi is a factor, it would be akin to knowing where the currents are, or the trade winds in the age of sail. Those were things that the captain bother(ed) with, and most carefully. A factor with that dramatic an effect on speed would most certainly not be minutiae.

Except that you're STILL running into the problem where the Captain orders a velocity and that's not what he's going to get. If Warp 4 can literally mean anything from .25C to 2500C, then it's pretty frackin' useless as a measurement of velocity, and the Captain would have to be an idiot to rely on it. (Nevermind the problems of interfering mass increasing velocity at superluminals...)

When a captain of a Trade Ship says "Ahead 20 knots", there's no one aboard who is thinking "Okay, so right HERE, 20 knots means 20 knots while if we shimmy to the left, 20 knots really means 40 knots.. etc.." See the problem yet?

I'll have to ask my sailing buddy for some clarification, but you have three speeds on a sail boat: Speed relative to marker via GPS or shore marker, speed relative to water measured by a keel sensor, and speed relative to air measured by telltale measurement at standstill versus telltale measurement at speed (a 10 knot wind at standstill and a 1 knot wind at speed meaning traveling at 9 knots and operating a only 90% efficiency).

He doesn't attempt to set a speed (he is usually racing or just pleasure cruising - not running a business).

When we hear our captain give a specific order for speed, I generally assume it is screw speed. Warp 1 means, all things being equal, make us go faster than any natural mass (exploding star) but not so fast that we won't be able to observe it later. Warp 2-4 on a starship seems to be a low cruise speed. It seems like there is considerably less maintenance to be performed if the ship maintains that low speed. Higher warps appear to have more consequences to maintenence and shipping lanes, with partical buildup in the ship itself and damage to subspace in high traffic shipping lane.

The specific warp speed may be just reflective of a speed of work and repair that can be warranted by the current operational goal and not necessarily the external time table.

 

[Vance]

To be sure, we're putting more thought into it than the writers ever did. So getting a 'real answer' is a bit of a futile exercise. Warp 1 was light speed. Warp 2 was 'slow'. Warp 5/6 was 'cruising'. Warp 8 was 'emergency fast'. Warp 10+ was 'holy crap we're gonna die doing this!"

The point isn't really that we're ceding that the writers did that, and only had that in mind, the point is really where we're going to draw the line between 'hard canon on screen' and 'intent'.

It's a lot like knowing, due to how an episode is put together, that impulse POWER can give you warp speed (like the Romulan BOP or shuttlecrafts on several examples, or the Enterprise herself in WNMHGB). There's an assumption made that 'impulse power' is subluminal at all times, but the evidence says otherwise.

So now we've got the question of 'What does Warp 2 mean?' Within the context of the series, it means 'slow'. Within the context of the Okudachron (and guides before), it means '8C'. The conflict is that 8C is going to be really damn slow for ships moving on the frontier, since going to neigher to neighbor will still take several months of transit time, which isn't quite realistic for a manned freighter within the context of the Trek universe.

There are two simple answers here. First, the freighters Sulu mentions are for system-use only and simply DO NOT GO from star to star, but from asteroids and planets to the main colony within the system. Warp two, here, would be quite sufficient. Of course, this means that the Klingons would be attacking a Federation SYSTEM, which is an act of war (not that this seems to stop them much), but there ya go...

The second is that the writers screwed up, making an assumption about warp that wasn't actually part of the writer's bible anyway, and gave a 'slow' sounding number without knowledge of the full implications. If we can assume THAT, we can also say "if they had the warp factors in the bible, it would have been more like Warp 4" and call it game, similar to how we accept that "Balance of Terror" hadn't had Photon Torpedoes yet, and we know that, mentally, a lot of those 'phaser' attacks SHOULD have been PhoTorps.

 

[Wingsley]

I don't know if this makes anyhoo or not, but "Friday's Child" was written by D.C. Fontana (an insider; part of the show's creative staff IIRC), while "Metamorphosis" was written by Gene L. Coon, (a TOS outing featuring a low-warp shuttlecraft making an obvious interstellar journey).

"The Gamesters of Triskelion" was written by Margaret Armen, and shows the Enterprise searching for the lost landing party in an interstellar trek at Warp 2. Meanwhile, the Enterprise sprints after the Vampire Cloud Creature from Argus X to Tycho IV ("over a thousand light-years from here") in only a few days during the high-warp "Obsession", written by Art Wallace. In "The Ultimate Computer", the ships shown never exceed Warp 4 (written by D.C. Fontana).

 

[Vance]

You forget the big one, though, which is "Menagerie", which has a shuttle explicitly going warp 4 chasing the Enterprise.

 

[Timo]

Nope, no warp speed is specified there, either for the shuttle or the ship.

All we know is that Spock planned on going to Talos IV at maximum warp, as he confessed to Pike before the deed; that he warped out of SB11 orbit; and that Kirk and the fake Mendez were being left behind by the ship, but apparently only barely. One might argue that the shuttle was only slightly slower than the starship's maximum warp capacity, then. Or one might argue that Spock started out at a relatively low warp speed, perhaps even because he wanted Kirk to catch up with him. The only thing that's ruled out is that the shuttle would be limited purely to impulse speeds.

As for "Metamorphosis", the shuttle there could be moving at impulse, as nothing to the contrary is mentioned. And the trip could be interplanetary rather than interstellar, as it involves passage from a planet to the Enterprise through an asteroid belt; the ship might have been waiting just outside that belt, which (as we hear at the beginning of the episode) requires the shuttle to make frequent course corrections. However, the shuttle appears to be the same type as in "The Menagerie", thus probably warp-capable.

There are two simple answers here.

Why not the obvious third one? That is, "the warp scale is such that warp 2 is a perfectly good interstellar speed"?

The scale could still be exponential, and warp 8 could be a zillion times faster than warp 2 - as long as warp 2 remained a speed by which a ship could go from port to port within an economically viable time, say, weeks. Or then months, which is perfectly fine for much of today's shipping.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

"Mendez" told Kirk in the shuttlecraft that the Enterprise was "pulling ahead of us fast", implying that the starship was moving away much faster than the shuttlecraft could pursue.

 

[Dayton3]

It is worth noting that the S.S. Diedre was apparently supposed to be part of a convoy.

Because the fabricated distress call says "two escort vessels have already been damaged".

A convoy can only move as fast as its slowest vessels.

It is possible the Diedre as supposed to be part of a convoy that included some other intersystem freighters that could move at Warp 2 at most. Warp 2 being quite adequate for movement within a solar system.

Thus Sulu and Scotty's comments might've been made with regard to a slow moving convoy speed that they thought the Diedre was a part of.

 

[Dayton3]

Also note,

In "The Menagerie" the Enterprise is being completely piloted by computer control alone.

Yet in "The Ultimate Computer" it is stated outright that the Enterprise can't be run with a crew of only 20 if the M-5 computer malfunctions.

It is quite possible in "The Managerie" that the Enterprise computer can only pilot the ship at high impulse speed or very low warp speeds, which would account for the shuttle able to trail the Enterprise for a short period.

Note, Kirk apparently had no intention of catching the Enterprise. His entire reason for following in the shuttle was to provoke Spock into stopping (which he did) to prevent Spock from taking the ship to Talos and thus activating the death penalty for doing so.

In short, Spocks "hijacking" of the Enterprise and "kidnapping" of Captain Pike was designed both to obtain Captain Kirks inadvertent assistance as well as provide "political cover" for Kirk in case it all hit the fan.

 

[ryctor2008]

Hey everyone! I joined today just to answer this post! First time, long time lurker!

Anyways, to answer the post, in the DS9 episode, The Maquis, Part II, a Xepolite freighter was hauling away from runabouts manned by Sisko & Dukat. The quoted top speed was Warp 9.8. Dukat stopped the freighter in it's tracks with verbal manuevering. Source is here:
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Xepolite_freighter

 

[Neopeius]

I dunno, no matter WHICH version of 'warp' you're looking at, Warp 2 is dog-awful slow. Just going between two systems really would take years, which would make the journey a little pointless. (I think, in all honesty, the writer of that line of dialog didn't really think through what Warp 2 really MEANT.)

There's nothing in the aired episodes which *does* explain what "Warp 2" meant.

It's probably slower than Warp 3 and faster than Warp 1.

BTW, the Warp 2 restriction (assuming the whole Warp Factor ^3 business) was incorporated into the Freighter designs for Star Fleet Battles.