A frieghter's maximum speed

[Unicron]

Okay, I've had a chance to talk to the other mods. hellsgate, you've been making it a point to drag threads OT for the purposes of pimping your fanfic on more than one occasion. I haven't noticed here before, but I strongly recommend you not do it again. Since you've been told by other staff members not to do it in the past, I'm giving you an infraction for spamming. Comments/complaints can be PMed to me.

 

[hellsgate]

The warp scale from TOS to TNG has been re-evaluated a number of times & all I'm doing is asking you to take those possibilities into your considerations for custom & canon freighters.

 

[Marie1]

If not mentioned, the Xhosa from DS9 I think could go warp 9.8... despite having out-dated transporters...

 

[Vance]

The warp scale from TOS to TNG has been re-evaluated a number of times & all I'm doing is asking you to take those possibilities into your considerations for custom & canon freighters.

In 'canon', it's only been done once. Period.
Officially, it was done twice, within FASA. (WF^4 for Transwarp, WF^5 for TNG before the asymptote chart was out.)

And since we're talking about a timeframe that has been defined, thanks to Roddenberry signing off on V = C * WF^3, then we're back to the statements earlier.

 

[Captain Intrepid]

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?

Real ships don't have a dial with a bunch of speeds on them. Real ships generally have the engine settings full ahead, half ahead, slow ahead, dead slow ahead, dead slow astern, slow astern, half astern and full astern. Some have combi controls that offer a percentage of engine power. You set your engine and then you can figure out either speed over the ground or speed through the water.

I don't see why warp factors can't be a standardized level of power the engines can put out that are affected by environmental conditions.

 

[Vance]

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?

Real ships don't have a dial with a bunch of speeds on them. Real ships generally have the engine settings full ahead, half ahead, slow ahead, dead slow ahead, dead slow astern, slow astern, half astern and full astern. Some have combi controls that offer a percentage of engine power. You set your engine and then you can figure out either speed over the ground or speed through the water.

I don't see why warp factors can't be a standardized level of power the engines can put out that are affected by environmental conditions.

Actually, real ships DO have a 'dial with speeds on them'.. they're called 'speedometers', and are measured in knots. For submarines in particular, these are extremely important.

There's a difference between engine-settings and knot-achievement. A captain may indeed order 'full impulse', but that's a measure of POWER to the engines. 'Warp 3' is not a measure of power, but of relative velocity.

I swear, some of ya ain't content enough to mix apples and oranges, but you got to throw in a grapefruit too! :P

 

[Captain Intrepid]

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?

Real ships don't have a dial with a bunch of speeds on them. Real ships generally have the engine settings full ahead, half ahead, slow ahead, dead slow ahead, dead slow astern, slow astern, half astern and full astern. Some have combi controls that offer a percentage of engine power. You set your engine and then you can figure out either speed over the ground or speed through the water.

I don't see why warp factors can't be a standardized level of power the engines can put out that are affected by environmental conditions.

Actually, real ships DO have a 'dial with speeds on them'.. they're called 'speedometers', and are measured in knots. For submarines in particular, these are extremely important.

There's a difference between engine-settings and knot-achievement. A captain may indeed order 'full impulse', but that's a measure of POWER to the engines. 'Warp 3' is not a measure of power, but of relative velocity.

I swear, some of ya ain't content enough to mix apples and oranges, but you got to throw in a grapefruit too! :P

No ship has a speedometer. They have logs, and unless you're using a doppler log, and are in shallow enough water, all you get is the speed through the water. Any other type, an impeller log, an electrostatic log, a pilot tube log, a taffrail log, they'll all just give you the speed through the water. That depends on environmental concerned. Your true speed has to be calculated by adjusting for leeway and for current.

And when was it ever stated that warp factors were a measure of relative velocity? There's that thing with Roddenbury signing off on a formula, but that's all just bullshit at the level of things you and I make up unless it appears on screen.

 

[Vance]

I've been on several ships, they have VARIOUS speedometers. On submarines, they're a MUST. (Else the crew will, you know, die, during maneuvers). There's a slightly different technical name for them, depending on the type, but they do exist, and all ships have them.

The 'full astern' is a measure of power - 'put everything you have into going backwards'. That's where 'full impulse', and such, comes from, that naval tradition. But the 'warp speeds' are explicitly speeds, so they're something else entirely.

But, if you're going to throw the 'it's bullshit made up after the fact' argument, then the whole argument and discussion is pretty pointless, isn't it?

 

[Captain Intrepid]

I've been on several ships, they have VARIOUS speedometers. On submarines, they're a MUST. (Else the crew will, you know, die, during maneuvers). There's a slightly different technical name for them, depending on the type, but they do exist, and all ships have them.

The 'full astern' is a measure of power - 'put everything you have into going backwards'. That's where 'full impulse', and such, comes from, that naval tradition. But the 'warp speeds' are explicitly speeds, so they're something else entirely.

But, if you're going to throw the 'it's bullshit made up after the fact' argument, then the whole argument and discussion is pretty pointless, isn't it?

I was ribbing you. :P A speedometer on a ship is called a log. Just like the front of a ship is called the bow and such. And submarines actually use inertial guidance to figure out speed and direction of travel, backed up by satellite navigation. Proper terminology is a must! I'm thinking that warp factors may be more analogous to RPM.

I'm not saying the whole argument is moot, I'm just saying that we shouldn't be bound by anything anyone has said that hasn't been broadcast. It's just another idea.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The 'full astern' is a measure of power - 'put everything you have into going backwards'. That's where 'full impulse', and such, comes from, that naval tradition. But the 'warp speeds' are explicitly speeds, so they're something else entirely.

Not necessarily. We can describe "flank speed" in terms of "the speed the ship moves when the engines are cranked up to maximum output" but flank speed against a 20 knot headwind will be slower than flank speed with a 40 knot tailwind.

Frankly, I think "warp factor" as a unit of power output makes a lot more sense in the logic of the trekiverse. One can think that traveling at a particular warp factor can be either very fast or very slow depending on environmental conditions. So Warp 1 inside a solar system would be about the speed of light; in interstellar space it would probably be much higher, four or five times the speed of light. More to the point, this would explain references in TOS where starships are quoted as accelerating to fairly high warp speeds during combat; if warp factors are a unit of power and not an actual speed, then it stands to reason that it will take several seconds for a starship to accelerate to its terminal velocity.

So "warp factor" would be equivalent to a unit of RPMs. In fact it could be little else, as we see in--for example--Encounter at Farpoint where Tasha gives the speed of the Q-sphere thing even as Worf gives similar calls for Enterprise' velocity; since this is, in fact, a CHASE scene, the relative velocity between the ships should be quite small ("velocity now warp point three" or something) but instead the entire warp factor is given. Since velocity in space is meaningless unless you're measuring relative to an external reference point, the dialog in EoF--or really in ANY episode of Trek--makes no sense at all unless the tactical officer is actually reading a unit of warp field distortion and not an actual velocity as such. This is, of course, supported by Geordi's line in Time Squared (IIRC) "I'm having to hold the engines at warp seven just to hold position."

 

[Timo]

If not mentioned, the Xhosa from DS9 I think could go warp 9.8... despite having out-dated transporters...

The performance of the Xhosa wasn't given - but very high speeds were bandied about among the fans when it was learned in "For the Cause" that the ship could do a circuit between numerous systems, and a secret side trip to the Badlands, in a matter of mere days or even hours.

However, the Xepolite freighter of "The Circle" fame was said to be capable of warp 9.8. Which was rather silly IMHO: it would have been much nicer if the freighter had only been capable of warp 6 or so, and would still have been way faster than the substandard hardware that Sisko had at his disposal... It would really have been worth emphasizing that Sisko wasn't a top-end starship captain, but an ignored low-level administrator who didn't have the resources of a starship available.

On the "throttle setting or speed?" issue, I'd argue that all impulse commands are throttle settings without contest - but that warp drive is sufficiently exotic that we can't find a good Earthly analogy for it, so "warp five" isn't exactly a speed, or an acceleration, or a throttle setting, but something else altogether.

Timo Saloniemi