Cochranes First Flight

[dboy-2007]

I know this is probably an incredibly stupid question but i'm finding it hard to find any numbers anywhere. does anyone know the speeds of cochranes first flight.

 

[Mytran]

My impression was that it was just breaking the lightspeed barrier (plus the time to accelerate etc). Was that what you meant?

 

[Timo]

We don't have any hard data on how fast the flight might have been, because there's no dialogue to that effect (other than that they went FTL). We can't readily calculate the speed, either, because although we can make a very rough guess as to the distance covered (Earth is still visible through the windows at the end of the flight) we don't know how long the flight took, since the camera was constantly cutting to other action, and there's no dialogue help there.

We can establish a maximum speed, though, by taking the distance traveled and assuming that the flight didn't last any longer than the scenes depicting it.

There's also this "tachometer" reading from during the flight, at the beginning of the acceleration towards warp:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontact/ch28/firstcontact1438.jpg

If "kps" is taken to mean the thing that should be indicated as "km/s", that is, kilometers per second, then this speed is just about seven percent of lightspeed.

After the engines are engaged, we get this:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontact/ch28/firstcontact1451.jpg

What does "status: light speed +1" mean? The warp flash hasn't happened yet.

When finally at warp, we no longer get "tachometer" readings. But at the end of the flight, Earth is this small:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontact/ch28/firstcontact1523.jpg

Now, the problem is, we can't tell how small that is. The starfield behind is a random, fictional one, of no help in doing parallax (which would be futile at such short distances anyway). We have only a vague idea of the dimensions of the Phoenix cabin, and no idea at all about the (fictional) positioning of the camera inside the cabin (set), let alone about the optics used.

Anybody with a better grasp at image analysis willing to help? I don't think I've heard this distance really calculated before.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

I think that it was close to just breaking lightspeed, given Enterprise's story "First Flight" and the difficultlies they had sustaining warp 2+.

 

[Lazarus]

I'd imagine that the Pheonix hit light-speed - warp one or fractionally above it - I don't think there's any need to consider that the flight was anything more than that. Just a short jump at light-speed to prove the theory was sound then swing around and come back at sublight.

 

[T'Girl]

We also don't know the course, was it directly away from earth for several seconds or did the little ship move in an arc for a longer time, ending up perhaps on the farside of the earth when the ship finally returned to sublight speed.

 

[Wingsley]

Well, when it comes to the actual warp flight, there are some obvious parameters:

1: It's a safe assumption that Cochrane's first warp flight, in order to be a warp flight, must be at least Warp 1.0.

2: From ENT's "First Flight", we learned that the NX-Alpha prototype was the first Earth spacecraft to surpass the Warp 2.0 barrier.

From this, we can assume Cochrane managed to achieve at least Warp 1.0, be no more than Warp 2.0.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Though shalt achieveth Warp 1. Thou shalt not achieveth Warp 2. Nor Warp 3. Warp 5 is right out.

 

[Timo]

2: From ENT's "First Flight", we learned that the NX-Alpha prototype was the first Earth spacecraft to surpass the Warp 2.0 barrier.

Actually, we didn't.

All we learned was that the NX-Alpha prototype went to warp 2 for the first time in that flashback episode. Quite possibly, other Earth-operated (if not Earth-built) spacecraft had flown at warp 4 before that. But those wouldn't matter, because they weren't part of the project to develop the warp 5+ engine for which NX-Alpha was a prototype.

Several humans had probably traveled at warp 6 already by the time of that test flight - taking rides aboard Vulcan ships, for example. Vulcans would just love to offer such rides, say, from Earth to the Earth Embassy on Vulcan, pointing out the logic of choosing a six-day rather than six-month flight. And stopping just short of pointing out that, with such magnificient ships at their disposal, the Earthlings would do well to stop playing with building inferior ships of their own.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

The language used in "First Flight" was conclusive: NX-Alpha was the first Earth spacecraft on record to exceed Warp factor 2.0. The dialogue between the various Starfleet personnel as well as with the Vulcans make it clear that NX-Alpha was the first human-built craft to shatter the Warp 2 Barrier.

 

[Ronald Held]

That is what I thought, although humans probably rode on Vulcan ships attaining warp 6 or higher at that time.

 

[Timo]

The language used in "First Flight" was conclusive: NX-Alpha was the first Earth spacecraft on record to exceed Warp factor 2.0. The dialogue between the various Starfleet personnel as well as with the Vulcans make it clear that NX-Alpha was the first human-built craft to shatter the Warp 2 Barrier.

Except that there is no such dialogue in the episode.

All we learn is that the engine designed by Henry Archer has a long history of difficulty with exceeding warp two (although it has more or less regularly reached warp two aboard NX-Alpha before the episode starts, apparently, since there's no cheering associated with reaching that "bump"). Nobody ever suggests that Robinson was the first human to reach warp 2.2, for example. Instead, he is credited with being the first human to deploy an escape pod at warp...

The episode shows our heroes demonstrating that the Archer Engine can indeed maintain steady warp at higher than warp factor 2, but it never even remotely suggests that said heroes would be traveling at a record-breaking speed. Indeed, the concept of "speed record" is never uttered in the episode.

Of course, the concept of a "warp two barrier" is absurd because Earthlings would perfectly well know that there is no barrier there, that others routinely travel way faster. It only makes sense as a barrier in human knowhow, a shortcoming in the available human technology - but we lack proof that the shortcoming would have concerned anything else beyond the NX test program and the Archer Engine.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Finn]

We also don't know the course, was it directly away from earth for several seconds or did the little ship move in an arc for a longer time, ending up perhaps on the farside of the earth when the ship finally returned to sublight speed.

they didn't go around the Earth. We saw Earth get smaller in the movie, suggesting they zipped away from the Earth.

 

[Timo]

We only saw Earth at the end of the flight, so in theory the flight could have taken the form of an expanding spiral away from Earth, rather than a direct radial jump. That'd foul up all our attempts at establishing the length and thus the speed of the flight.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Except we saw a POV shot for several seconds, which suggests a straight line

 

[Timo]

Hmh... The craft only had forward windows, so Earth couldn't have been visible to our heroes at any point of the flight even if they spiraled around said planet. And a shot of warp streaks doesn't really reveal whether the craft is moving in an absolute beeline, or perhaps gently curving.

Admittedly, though, a spiral around Earth at FTL speeds wouldn't be particularly tight or majorly affect the length of the trip if it only curved "gently".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

The language used in "First Flight" was conclusive: NX-Alpha was the first Earth spacecraft on record to exceed Warp factor 2.0. The dialogue between the various Starfleet personnel as well as with the Vulcans make it clear that NX-Alpha was the first human-built craft to shatter the Warp 2 Barrier.

Except that there is no such dialogue in the episode.

All we learn is that the engine designed by Henry Archer has a long history of difficulty with exceeding warp two (although it has more or less regularly reached warp two aboard NX-Alpha before the episode starts, apparently, since there's no cheering associated with reaching that "bump"). Nobody ever suggests that Robinson was the first human to reach warp 2.2, for example. Instead, he is credited with being the first human to deploy an escape pod at warp...

The episode shows our heroes demonstrating that the Archer Engine can indeed maintain steady warp at higher than warp factor 2, but it never even remotely suggests that said heroes would be traveling at a record-breaking speed. Indeed, the concept of "speed record" is never uttered in the episode.

Of course, the concept of a "warp two barrier" is absurd because Earthlings would perfectly well know that there is no barrier there, that others routinely travel way faster. It only makes sense as a barrier in human knowhow, a shortcoming in the available human technology - but we lack proof that the shortcoming would have concerned anything else beyond the NX test program and the Archer Engine.

Timo Saloniemi

I'm sorry to belabor the point, but this one doesn't sit right with me. If you look at this article at Memory Alpha, it should be clear that I'm not the only one who concluded that the NX Project was Earth's first attempt to build space vehicles that could exceed Warp 2. We can pick apart the dialogue of "First Flight" and parse over it, draw different conclusions if necessary, but it would seem that there is a legitimate point-of-view that Robinson, Archer, Tucker and the Vulcans wouldn't be talking about how tough it is to exceed Warp 2 unless it were a major milestone in spaceflight that humankind was trying to achieve.

 

[T'Girl]

1: It's a safe assumption that Cochrane's first warp flight, in order to be a warp flight, must be at least Warp 1.0.

Interesting thought: can you travel at warp speed at less than warp one? Warp travel involve a ship moving through subspace, hypothetically your ship could be in subspace and effectively standing still. Warp zero. Kind of a waste of power.

Breaking the warp two barrier could be like a Human runner breaking the four minute mile. No physical barrier, more of a benchmark.

Except we saw a POV shot for several seconds, which suggests a straight line

At approximately warp one there should have been no star streaks, what we saw may have been mirco-meteoroids briefly passing through the warp field or interacting with the deflector. Like driving at night through the falling snow.

.

 

[David cgc]

We can pick apart the dialogue of "First Flight" and parse over it, draw different conclusions if necessary, but it would seem that there is a legitimate point-of-view that Robinson, Archer, Tucker and the Vulcans wouldn't be talking about how tough it is to exceed Warp 2 unless it were a major milestone in spaceflight that humankind was trying to achieve.

The problem is, though, it doesn't fit with any of the other background in the show. Even an old crate like the Fortunate had a Warp Two engine, and her captain said she'd probably need to be fitted with a Warp Three model at least so they could stay in business. That's only something like seven or eight years after "First Flight." Not really enough time for a groundbreaking Warp Two engine to trickle down to the mid- to lower-end of the civilian market, much less be rendered obsolete in that sector.

I noticed that when I first watched "First Flight," as well, and I always mentally retconned it that it was Archer's engine, specifically, that hadn't hit warp two yet, just like Timo has. I'm sure there were proper human designed Warp Two and Warp Three engines, but they were theoretically limited to those speeds. Even though Archer's design couldn't even go that fast practically, it had a much faster theoretical capacity that made it worth investigating.

 

[Saturn0660]

1: It's a safe assumption that Cochrane's first warp flight, in order to be a warp flight, must be at least Warp 1.0.

Interesting thought: can you travel at warp speed at less than warp one? Warp travel involve a ship moving through subspace, hypothetically your ship could be in subspace and effectively standing still. Warp zero. Kind of a waste of power.


.

I've wondered that myself. I don't see why you couldn't. But why would you. However, i guess as a "warp" flight it would work. At least you could go faster without the time problems.