At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vessels ?

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

We certainly have no evidence that ship speeds stopped in the 2150s.

No - they stopped long before that.

We dont have any evidence of that either. We don't know when the Andorians, Trill, Denobulans, Betazoids or others attained warp, or how long it took to progress from Warps 1 through 6 for any of them.

We don't even know any of that for the Vulcans. Or if anything about the Vulcan experience, whatever it was, was typical.

For Earth, we see a staggering 100x increase in speed in only 88 years! That's staggering. And the only evidence after the 2150s, including your own examples, is of further innovation. Not stagnation.

As you rightly say, Warp has tremendous potential. And in future times, like TOS, we will see ships rated for Warp 8, not 5. And even greater speeds can be attained, as you mention. In other words, exciting new progress and advancement!

As I said earlier, could the Borg get more out of the Warp 5 engine? If Geordi and alpha team from the ENT E spent a few weeks working on the NX-01 engineering, could they get Warp 6 or 7 out of that engine without the ship blowing up?

IDK. Maybe they could. But that doesn't mean Tucker knew how. The Warp 5 engine struggles to inch past Warp 5. Dangerous and life threatening situations where greater speed is desperately needed, and yet....the old girl sputters at Warp 5.2 or so. Why doesn't Tucker hit the Ludicrous Speed button? Or Picard or Janeway for that matter?

No, there's no TOS episode that establishes that any warp engine can safely attain any warp speed and maintain it for any infinite duration at anytime the pilot or engineer feels like it.

"Threshold" doesn't either. Indeed, if it did, Voyager could just hit the Ludicrous Speed button right after blowing up the Caretakers Array and get back to Earth in a few seconds.

While there is clear progress in Warp speeds, and no evidence of any "plateau", that's not the same as saying that every warp ship comes with a Ludicrous Speed button that can accelerate the ship safely to any velocity and then maintain it safely for any indefinite time.

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

We dont have any evidence of that either. We don't know when the Andorians, Trill, Denobulans, Betazoids or others attained warp, or how long it took to progress from Warps 1 through 6 for any of them.

And that's totally irrelevant - because all of them did that at some point, yet the "point" where they all are on the same line is in 2150. And the odds of that happening are zero, unless the "point" in fact is a long plateau.

A staggering rate of reaching the plateau is no different from an embarrassingly slow climb to it, because ultimately you get up there and stuck. As you say, we don't know how long each of the players took. There are so many players involved that some probably did better than humans. The end result still was mere parity.

As you rightly say, Warp has tremendous potential. And in future times, like TOS, we will see ships rated for Warp 8, not 5. And even greater speeds can be attained, as you mention. In other words, exciting new progress and advancement!

But that's illusory progress, because it only means progress for humans. For Vulcans, close allies of humanity and members of the UFP, getting up to warp eight is ho-hum news, not "development" or "advancement" but mere living up to interstellar standards. Clearly, the skyrocketing of the pre-parity years has stalled, and open and close cooperation with the elder races is yielding quickly diminishing results.

Which is only to be expected: the elders have already been there, done that, tried to reach up from the plateau, and failed.

Why doesn't Tucker hit the Ludicrous Speed button? Or Picard or Janeway for that matter?

Kirk often did. According to his chief engineer, he was supposed to die, but did not. Did he just get lucky? Well, he often did with other types of mortal threat.

Picard did. In the very first episode, he pushed his ship well past her design limits, again against expert advice. And he always seemed to feel the need for speed, agreeing to harebrained experiments and desperate long-range missions. And then getting a dune buggy...

Janeway did, when there was no other option. Her XO did. It's just odd that the "ship rattles apart" thing kicked in long before the stated top speed specs, but if we ignore those specs, it's simply a case of Janeway not wanting to die, which sometimes means uberspeed getaway and usually cautious, not-gonna-blow-us-up cruising.

No, there's no TOS episode that establishes that any warp engine can safely attain any warp speed and maintain it for any infinite duration at anytime the pilot or engineer feels like it.

That's not what I'm saying. There's no safety involved, no open-ended duration. What is there is evidence that the warp coils can and will take warp 14 when warp 8 is supposed to be the limit of non-fatal adventurism. Even in the ludicrously slow wf^3 model, that's at least five times the supposed maximum recommended speed. The end result should be the ship blowing up, but heroes are heroes because they get lucky.

The usual method for Kirk to go superfast against his will was a villain sitting on the safety valve. Basically, his powerplant could provide the juice needed for quintupling his performance, and perhaps a bit more. Archer's powerplant probably could not, as the villainy in "Divergence" only resulted in warp 5.2 or so. But overall, we get a pretty good picture of what breaks down first, and what ceases to suffice first, and what remains good to go till infinite speed.

There's nothing safe about this. It doesn't work in practice, because nine ships out of ten blow up in the attempt. But it's a feature of the technology nevertheless, and apparently somebody could have stolen Archer's or even Cochrane's warp coils from a museum and used those to travel at infinite speed. Or more probably die trying.

"Threshold" doesn't either. Indeed, if it did, Voyager could just hit the Ludicrous Speed button right after blowing up the Caretakers Array and get back to Earth in a few seconds.

If the mothership had the same modifications as the shuttle, and those worked and were controllable, she could do exactly that. All that is needed is "a new form of dilithium" and some structural reinforcement. No need to tinker with the warp coils or the antimatter power source, it seems.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

No, what I'm saying (and this is indisputable) is that everybody has made those "achievements" and then failed to get any farther. There is zero reason to think humans would do any better, as they are merely retracing old steps, demonstrating no superiority of any sort.

Timo Saloniemi

One keeps wondering that if this were true, the 24th century Federation would be quite 'maxed out' in terms of tech (having existed for 200+ years of many species sharing all knowledge), and would be quite conscious of that fact. So, why bother to keep doing research if the expected benefits would be extremely marginal at best? Yet, the impression I get is that in the 24th century, there is a significant amount of effort spent in technological development and research (whether succesful or not is another matter).


Also, it's definitely possible to go significantly further than they did in the 24th century, evidenced by some more advanced species (and even humanity itself from centuries further into the future). So then, what enables civilizations to break through that invisible 'glass ceiling' (which we know is possible) where most civilizations seem to fail, or be delayed by several centuries at least ?

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Yet, the impression I get is that in the 24th century, there is a significant amount of effort spent in technological development and research (whether succesful or not is another matter).

The UFP also keeps exploring and expanding, with diminishing results because of geometrical concerns. There's nothing wrong with slow progress!

Factually, not much new has emerged during the existence of the UFP, save for the replicator. But the bigger point is, that's an eyeblink. The local cultures are all in relative synch, which either means they all started within a few decades of each other (and we know for sure this did not happen), or were forcibly reset by a galactic war (and we have no reason to think that this happened, except in the distant past of "Slaver Weapon" that is irrelevant to the argument about humans, Vulcans and Andorians) - or that development overall is slow or else the synch would immediately be lost.

So then, what enables civilizations to break through that invisible 'glass ceiling' (which we know is possible) where most civilizations seem to fail, or be delayed by several centuries at least ?

Well, one route is seen in "Transfigurations" and "The Gift": certain species get "ascended" by biological imperative, unrelated to their technological progress or industrial might.

The other is probably mere hard work, combined with serendipity. But what we have evidence for is "punctuated equilibrium": unless progress consisted of breakthroughs that by default lead to long stagnation, space adventures of the Trek sort would be impossible, because the foes, allies and victims of mankind would be separated from us by thousands or millions of years of development and therefore simply incompatible with us. Only a staircase model with long plateaus allows UFP-level cultures (the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, Cardassian Union, Ferengi Alliance, you-name-it) to coexist.

And that's just one step in the staircase. Superbeings like Q live on a higher step, only occasionally reaching down. But it's possible to live on a lower step, too; this just usually means a single species living on a single planet, divided or united. And there must be intermediate steps between the UFP and gods, but those are invisible to the UFP: the Borg and the Voth are examples of cultures that value their privacy and anonymity until seeing the need for action.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

And that's totally irrelevant - because all of them did that at some point, yet the "point" where they all are on the same line is in 2150.

No, there's no evidence of that. Not a shred. It is relevant because you can't say any plateau or stagnation occurs unless you can show how long these civilizations have had this technology and what is their rate of progress.

So give me the canon dates for when Trill, Betazoids, Denobulans, Klingons, and Andorians each reached Warp 6. Or the Vulcans for that matter. Give the date for the first Vulcan ship to reach Warp 6. Warp 7? Oh, Warp 8 is old hat for Vulcans? Maybe you can tell the date the first Vulcan ship did that?

Oh, that's right! You made all this up!

Look, you're right to talk about 9 of 10 ships blowing up. That's the point im making. The only evidence is for increasing progress in speeds and safe, sustainable duration at those speeds. Rated Warp 8, instead 5 for instance. Zero evidence for a non-existent "plateau". The ships get faster, likely hold the same speeds for far longer. That shows progress.

Finding the "sufficient x" as you call it is what research and development are all about.

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Timo,

No, Kirk never hits the Ludicrous Speed button. Neither does Janeway, Archer, Sisco or Picard. Not a single instance in any episode. There are lots of occasions of pushing it. Or as Captain Sulu put it "Fly her apart then!". It's good drama, but a Warp 5 engine going 5.1, or an 8 doing 8.4 or a 9.3 doing 9.6 is not the Ludicrous Speed button.

In "That Which Survives" we have a 15 minute spike from Warp 8.4 to 14.1 before the ship is narrowly saved from exploding. Of course, when Warp 8.4 can cover 990.7 lys in under 12 hours, who needs Warp 14?

Even in "Threshold", the computer informs Chakotay that Voyager is seconds from structural failure at 9.9 IIRC, and he orders a slow down to 9.5.

It's hard to take the rest of "Threshold" seriously, and not just because Janeway and Tom become giant salamanders. And not just because the whole idea that Warp 10 = infinite speed/you're everywhere simultaneously is silly. But also that it never occurs to anyone on Voyager that even a tiny fraction of "infinite speed" would get the shuttle to Earth in minutes or seconds.

It's called the "transwarp threshhold", but Warp 10 is hugely faster than Borg "transwarp".

As the shuttle accelerates it will hit speeds so high that even after a fraction of a second, the Shuttle should reach the Alpha Quadrant before getting to "10". Mysteriously, the shuttle is not only in sensor range and communication range of Voyager it's still right there when "10" is reached. It's not even left the sector.

But there is a dramatic count up! Warp 9, Warp 9.5, 9.9, 9.95! Boom! 10!!

What happened to the infinite number of speeds between Warp 9.95 and 10? You know, 9.9999 or 9.9999999999999999, etc. I know that would slowed down the exciting TV countdown, but if the ship passed those speeds, it would have shot out of the Delta Quadrant in a flash. No 10 needed.

Instead it disappears, reappears "from sub space" right next to Voyager. Then Tom begins his transformation into a Salamander. Whether he was literally everywhere at once is never conclusive. The shuttle has alot of data, and Tom thinks he saw galaxies, the inside of Voyager, etc. Could be some kind of weird psychosis though.

So why not send a shuttle at a speed far, far lower than infinite speed and still get there in 10 minutes? Let the Federation know about Voyager, etc? God only knows! Maybe you become a salamander at speeds well below Warp 10 as well.

 

[Timo]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

No, there's no evidence of that. Not a shred. It is relevant because you can't say any plateau or stagnation occurs unless you can show how long these civilizations have had this technology and what is their rate of progress.

There are just two possibilities if a great many local cultures are at the same level of development at a random timepoint, in this case 2150:

1) Coincidence.
2) Spending a lot of time being at that level.

Are you really willing to plead "coincidence" here?

If not, what alternate explanation do you have to offer?

Oh, that's right! You made all this up!

I analyze the evidence that is directly available. You make up "facts" such as "there is no plateau", even when you lack access to the data that would allow you to make the claim (to wit, the dates you mention).

The plateau directly follows from the evidence. Made-up dates or Spock's eye color do not affect the conclusion.

No, Kirk never hits the Ludicrous Speed button.

That button is wholly of your making. Why fight with yourself?

What Kirk often did was hit Ludicrous Speed. He never wanted to, because he knew it was likely to cost him his life. That was of no consequence, though. It happened: the ship went faster than her supposed top speed, simply because it malfunctioned, due to evil intervention.

And that's a really curious function, working "better" when malfunctioning. But it's a consistent property of Kirk's warp drive, as there are many different mechanisms by which it happens, and they all give the same surprising result. Some parts of the engine are massively out of synch with others as far as "safe top speed" is concerned!

As said, "Threshold" is merely the logical conclusion, the extreme case, and in fact a very helpful addition to the canon. There we learn that infinite warp speed does not require infinite energy (at least not from the powerplant of the shuttle itself - we can postulate the act tapping energies from elsewhere, or whatever), or involve infinite waste heat, or whatever. Which is perfectly plausible, as nature features various infinities without requiring everything to be infinite.

So now we can simply say that Kirk's ship leaked from multiple seams, but that patching those leaks is possible - and the same warp engine design can do warp five or warp nine or perhaps warp 14, the advances over time being in durability and thus safety.

It's hard to take the rest of "Threshold" seriously, and not just because Janeway and Tom become giant salamanders.

Well, Trek is difficult to take seriously. Which is sort of the point of watching it!

And not just because the whole idea that Warp 10 = infinite speed/you're everywhere simultaneously is silly.

Where would you be at infinite speed, then?

But also that it never occurs to anyone on Voyager that even a tiny fraction of "infinite speed" would get the shuttle to Earth in minutes or seconds.

And? The problem was that Paris couldn't navigate. The fractions he used (he did accelerate gradually) got him everywhere, meaning he got nowhere. "Timeless" shows another method where the heroes manage to go extremely fast and therefore fail, because they do not manage to go moderately fast.

It's called the "transwarp threshhold", but Warp 10 is hugely faster than Borg "transwarp".

Well, doh. But at least it's consistent with the idea that "transwarp" literally and simply means "better than ordinary warp can plausibly provide", even though this time around a conventional warp engine was used as the springboard.

What happened to the infinite number of speeds between Warp 9.95 and 10?

Well, accelerating acceleration, obviously. Which was the problem, and stopped them from getting to Earth (or any other destination of their choosing). The salamanderization didn't really matter as it could be reversed - so fans complaining that they needlessly gave up because of the salamanderization is unfair, as this was never claimed to be the case.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

Star Trek is certainly a very Earth centric story. The journey of humanity to the final frontier. And progress is extraordinary! No stagnation. Continuous improvement before and after the 2150s.

What about others? Well, we don't know the dates when these other civilizations developed Warp, or what their rate of progress was in attaining progressively higher warp speeds. You can't talk about "stagnation" or "plateaus" without that information, which you can't provide.

Warp 8 is old hat and ho-hum stuff for the Vulcans? Awesome! Tell me the date of the first Warp 8 Vulcan flight? You did make this up. If you didn't make it up, tell me when the Vulcans (or Betazoids, Trill, etc) first attained Warp 5, 6 ,7, 8 etc.

All we actually see is progress. The rest is Timo fanon. Which is fine. I have my own imaginary continuity about this imaginary world. I just don't include stagnation in mine because there's no evidence of it.

Kirk never goes Ludicrous Speed. The Kelvans get stable Warp 11 out of this engine. The Borg get 4.9 out of a 1.4 engine. We see a couple of examples of advanced species able to make some upgrades to warp engines. That's it. We don't know the Kelvans could have gotten Warp 11 from the NX-01. Maybe.

Yes I agree that, contrary to your plateau idea, that there are advances in safety, duration and stability, in addition to advances in top speeds.

Hahaha, no, I don't think anyone watches Star Trek because It's hard to take seriously. Look I take Braga at his word when it comes to his script for "Threshold". He said it was an homage to "The Fly". Except its Warp 10 instead of teleportation, and Tom becomes a giant salamander and not a Fly.

Brannon says that it was a terrible episode and I agree. Lol.

It's not a question of not taking Trek seriously. Braga, as a writer, was going for something and in his own view, it didn't quite work. I haven't had to write dozens of episodes of a TV show, so I say we cut him some slack.

But that's all from a production POV. What in-universe sense does it make? Not alot. The ship has trouble navigating at Warp 10, since you are supposedly everywhere simultaneously. That is the navigation problem. There is no indication that the ship can't navigate at lesser speeds, or control the rate of acceleration.

Why accelerate past a trillion, trillion, zillion times the speed of light when at 1 or 10 billion x C, the shuttle could reach the Alpha Quadrant in minutes? Even the bloody TARDIS doesn't do Warp 10. Even a billion light years in 5 seconds is way, way slower than infinite.

How does this not occur to anyone on Voyager? It's like trying to figure out how to use infinite speed to get from NYC to LA, when at 12,,000 mph we could be there in 15 minutes. How about we do that instead! Infinite speed?!?

 

[at Quark's]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

^ I always implicitly assumed there was some kind of discontinuity in the 'velocity function' involved... you know, you're flying warp 9.9, warp 9.95 and then suddenly you cross a threshold (the word itself is repeatedly used in the script) after which you fly with infinite speed, without necessarily having attained any speeds in between. It would be somewhat similar to the statement made in the TNG technical manual, in which it is claimed the ship is never exactly at speed c -not even at the moment of crossing the warp barrier-, so in going to ordinary warp, there would be a discontinuity involved, too (though at a much smaller, planck like scale).

Doesn't make sense? Perhaps not, but then, the episode itself doesn't. Besides, it's not like we are dealing here with Newtonian (or even Einsteinian) physicis anyway.

 

[Tim Walker]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

So then, what enables civilizations to break through that invisible 'glass ceiling' (which we know is possible) where most civilizations seem to fail, or be delayed by several centuries at least ?

The other is probably mere hard work, combined with serendipity. But what we have evidence for is "punctuated equilibrium": unless progress consisted of breakthroughs that by default lead to long stagnation, space adventures of the Trek sort would be impossible, because the foes, allies and vre simply incompatible with us. Only a staircase model with long plateaus allows UFP-level cultures (the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, Cardassian Union, Ferengi Alliance, you-name-it) to coexist.

d. And there must be intermediate steps between the UFP and gods, but those are invisible to the UFP:

Timo Saloniemi

Conceivably the plateau phases could see refinement of existing technologies. The Dominion, for example, seemed to have a technological edge compared to the Federation. But not such an edge as having reached the threshold to a much higher level.

The Borg on the other hand, seem definitely to be at a higher level!

I suspect that reaching the threshold to a higher step/level would take a long time. It may take development over centuries to reach the threshold. In the meantime, a culture might might suffer setbacks, such as devastating wars.

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

The dramatic element means they want villains to be powerful enough to be very dangerous and threatening but not so advanced or powerful that it's too obviously implausible that the heroes can win.

This is what raises questions about technological development. If it's a very ancient civilization, how do they not have transwarp conduits or Super Warp by now? Hard to say.

We see that the Federation has time travel, and even ships that are bigger on the inside by the 29th-31st centuries. They might have had time travel as early as the 26th Century, but in that episode it's not clear that the Time pod is a Federation technology.

From an Earth POV, we go from Warp 1 in the 21st Century to TARDIS-like ships in the 31st. The timeship Voyager encounters was not only able to move Voyager thru time but also pop it back in the Delta Quadrant.

This seems to imply they might have nearly instantaneous travel across 10,000s of light years. I don't know about anyone else, but that seems like rapid, and continual progress.

 

[Tim Walker]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

On another web site it was commented that 21st century Earth may be approaching a plateau. Yes, at this point we are still seeing developments in Information Technology. But it has been commented that we may be near the end of Moore's Law.

 

[Tarek71]

Re: At what point does the Federation decide to stop to building vesse

With 3-d printing advances, AI, genetic engineering, Nano and micro technology, neural interface between machines and people, and microbiology we could be looking at an unprecedented explosion of technology in the 21st century.

Warp speed in 48 years seems too ambitious. Indeed, it may never be achieved. But in other areas, staggering advances could revolutionize or even transfigure the human condition.