Ahead Warp Factor One....

[Warped9]

A look at one of my conjectural 22nd century starships. The Hercules-class star clipper developed in the first half of the 22nd century. Something of a linear ancestor of the 23rd century destroyers, variants of this class will last into the latter half of the 23rd century.

 

[Timo]

...That's something that would be right at home in ENT.

So, what sort of warp performance do you posit for the Herc?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

^^ I designed the Herc easily five years before ENT was even rumored--maybe even closer to ten years. I had specs for it somewhere, but I recall it being maximum Warp 2.5 I think on my scale.

 

[NCC-2725]

Alpha Carinae = 71 ly. (“The Ultimate Computer”)

One quick question. Is there more than one Alpha Carinae? When I was researching it the Aplha Carinae I found was 310-312 LY from Earth. I was trying to figure out how long it took to get there. At the FJ Warp Scales it would have taken most of Kirk's Five Year Mission just to get there and back!

 

[Timo]

The 300 ly figure is the "current correct" one for Canopus, while earlier guesstimates suggested something like 200 ly, although guesses as low as 96 ly (or as high as 1,200 ly, I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia) were also put forth. The 71 ly figure doesn't seem to conform to classic facts... But 71 parsecs would nicely match the earlier textbook ideas about the star's distance from Earth.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

According to Hipparcos, it is 96 Parsecs(~313 ly)

 

[jbake]

Warped, I have nothing of detail to add to this great thread. Your thoughts that TOS travelled further and faster than TNG are compelling to mull over

TOS certainly does appear to travel farther than TNG. TOS as the road trip, for the next wonder over the next mountaintop. TNG as like, visiting your next door neighbour.

Very interesting.

 

[Warped9]

I, too, have noticed that different sources give varying distances to known stars.

 

[Warped9]

You know I'm considering including an edited version of this little article in my TOS Shuttlecraft plans.

 

[jbake]

What do you think of this?

TNG takes place in a parallel universe where everything that happened in TOS happened. However in TNG's history, the TOS locations werent spread all over the limits of the galaxy, but were instead crammed into a parkinglot sector of it


That would allow the differential in TNG and TOS travelled-distances to be both logical and coherent.

 

[Timo]

Umm, it's not really as if TOS gives us information of vast distances covered and TNG doesn't. In both shows, targets within a thousand lightyears are seen or mentioned (which largely follows from the fact that most real-world targets of any fame are from our immediate neighborhood, while more distant ones are dim enough not to warrant fame). In both shows, distances greater than that are attributed to intervention by powerful alien forces. DS9 and VOY basically follow the same logic, even when the former involves much less travel than TOS or TNG due to its basic premise, and the latter involves much more.

It's only TAS and ST5:TFF where it explicitly seems trivially easy to zip across the galaxy in a matter of days or hours. And the former is a cartoon, the latter a dream sequence.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jbake]

Umm, umm .... I see.

In TOS "A Piece of the Action" at the start of the episode. Kirk says to the largest Boss,
"...your system is on the outerreaches of the galaxy, they didnt have subspace communication in those days." [direct quotation]

One other thing Timo, I thought you were a person of civility. I enjoy reading your posts. I hope dont have cause to review my opinion

 

[Timo]

Basically, Earth is on the outer reaches of the galaxy, too... And much of what Kirk tells the supposed ignorant natives should be treated as hyperbole anyway. (That sort of reasoning would apply to Pike's "halfway across the galaxy" in "The Cage" and Spock's "millions of lightyears away" in "All Our Yesterdays", too.)

OTOH, what's with that "civility" thing? Are you a psychopath or something? Your comment sounds rather deranged if it's supposed to be as a response to something I typed in this thread. Don't make me come over and kill you, punk.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

^^ It's true that such references are rather "off the cuff," but it's when you start considering other more specific references in regards to elapsed time and distances that underline my argument. And when Spock says something like "We're hundreds of light years beyond where any other ship has ever gone" his credibility lends weight to the perspective.

The simple fact is there's an inconsistency between TOS' portrayal of warp drive and TNG's--simply another of several other inconsistencies between the two series.

 

[Timo]

There are certainly differences in many details - but as regards speeds, the main difference is that TOS is all across the canvas, while TNG data is more clustered. TOS has the famous outliers that suggest speeds in six-digit multiples of c, but it also has outliers that suggest that extremely fast warp only covers a few light-months in a few hours. The average TOS episode still speaks of velocities corresponding to a "speed of plot" that remains constant from TOS to TNG: it takes a few days to get from star to star, at most a couple of weeks to get to an interesting place within the 1,000 ly radius, and it's not practical to really get to the other side of the galaxy in a jiffy by using Starfleet technology only.

And when Spock says something like "We're hundreds of light years beyond where any other ship has ever gone" his credibility lends weight to the perspective.

Doesn't that actually suggest that it is difficult for starships of that era to cover "hundreds of lightyears"?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

^^ But it strongly suggests that covering such distances is manageable and was done well within the timeframe of the five-year voyage.