Columbia and Impulse?

[GalaxyClass1701]

I wasn't sure if I should have posted this here or in the literature section? In one of the Destiny Novels Columbia is stranded due to damage of their warp core. They use there impulse engines to do a sort of time warp to travel faster than light where the few months that it takes for them to get to the Calier 12 years passes????

Are they traveling faster than light this part of the novel confused me??

 

[Birdog]

I wasn't sure if I should have posted this here or in the literature section? In one of the Destiny Novels Columbia is stranded due to damage of their warp core. They use there impulse engines to do a sort of time warp to travel faster than light where the few months that it takes for them to get to the Calier 12 years passes????

Are they traveling faster than light this part of the novel confused me??

No, they were sublight but at relativistic speeds. When you approach c, time for you slows down relative to the rest of the universe.

 

[GalaxyClass1701]

I wasn't sure if I should have posted this here or in the literature section? In one of the Destiny Novels Columbia is stranded due to damage of their warp core. They use there impulse engines to do a sort of time warp to travel faster than light where the few months that it takes for them to get to the Calier 12 years passes????

Are they traveling faster than light this part of the novel confused me??

No, they were sublight but at relativistic speeds. When you approach c, time for you slows down relative to the rest of the universe.

so WHAT WAS THE POINT?

 

[Mytran]

You mean other than reducing their 12 year journey into a few months? (from the crew's POV)

 

[UssGlenn]

It was their only option. They were a few months away from safety at (just below) the speed of light, when you go that fast without warp drive more time passes for everybody else, but you only need supplies for a few months.

 

[GalaxyClass1701]

Ok I feel stupid can we break this down time moves faster outside of the ship when you push the impluse enginges to hard?

 

[sojourner]

As one approaches the speed of light aboard a ship, time passes by faster outside the ship from your point of view. Or from the other perspective, as a ship your are not on approaches the speed of light, time passes slower for the crew of that ship from your point of view outside.

It's all relative.

 

[UssGlenn]

And just so we are all clear, this is a real world phenomenon, not one that trek invented.

 

[Mytran]

Yep - in fact it's one that Trek mostly ignores!

 

[PrimeDirective]

I thought that the same amount of time passes by inside the warp bubble that a starship is in, as in normal space?

 

[DonIago]

^They weren't -in- a warp bubble, they were just traveling at abnormally high impulse speed.

I think in the book it's mentioned that impulse engines don't normally allow for relativistic travel precisely because it can lead to things like the ship seeming to be gone for 12 years while it only feels like a few months. I.e. generally nobody in the Trek universe would actually want to do this to themselves.

 

[Deks]

As I recall from the novels, Hernandez ordered the impulse engines safeties to be disabled and push the engines as close as possible to the speed of light.

The ship did not generate a warp bubble and was subject to relativistic velocities that ensued.
From external point of view, the ship spent 12 years travelling to the Caeliar world, but for the Columbia crew, they only spent a few months time in transit.
Effects of relativistic speeds.

 

[Ronald Held]

Does the NX class use a low level warp field to reduce its inertial mass under propulsion?

 

[Deks]

Does the NX class use a low level warp field to reduce its inertial mass under propulsion?

I think this is standard practice when travelling at Warp velocities in any era.
If a ship is under impulse velocity though, this technique may be implemented in certain situations to provide more manoeuvrability, but not necessarily all the time.

We only have one working example (at least to my knowledge) from DS9 when the crew created a low warp field to lower the stations mass and travel to the wormhole faster using the thrusters.

Then again, that was for a station which is usually, stationary (minus for probably having limited propulsion capability like thrusters for orbital or position adjustments).
Ships that constantly (or for the most part) move, may employ this on a regular basis though.

I do not think it's directly established they do, but it's possible ... and it may be an explanation behind why large ships behave like fighters.

Then again, SF technology is already highly advanced, so their manoeuvrability could be attributed to better thruster/impulse engine technology.

 

[PrimeDirective]

As I recall, the Columbia didn't arrive at Erigol on their own power, but were tranported there by the tunnel that was created by the Cealiar's machine, which looked for civilizations that were more advanced than they were. That's the same way that Titan arrived at New Erigol.

 

[Deks]

As I recall, the Columbia didn't arrive at Erigol on their own power, but were tranported there by the tunnel that was created by the Cealiar's machine, which looked for civilizations that were more advanced than they were. That's the same way that Titan arrived at New Erigol.

No.
The Columbia was transported via the tunnel to the Gamma Quadrant when the Caeliar 'Great Work' was sabotaged.

The ship reached Caeliar planet under it's own power though.
From Caeliar point of view, the ship travelled 12 years.
From the crew's perspective, the journey lasted a few months.

The point of making the journey in such a fashion was because Columbia's supplies for sustaining the crew lasted also a few months.
So reaching Caeliar under relativistic speeds was their viable option for survival (under the circumstances).

 

[PrimeDirective]

Thanks for setting me straight. I've read so many books since Gods of Night, that I don't remember all the details. I tend to remember the main ideas, and events that are critical to understanding the overarching story of the novel.

 

[STR]

Don't be confused by that book. That's not how relativity works. From the "stationary" observer, looking at NX-02, it would appear time on the Columbia had slowed down. From the NX-02 the outside universe looks like it sped up. However, from the perspective of the NX-02 crew, it would still have taken (if I recall) 12 years for the ship to reach its destination. Relativistic speeds don't mess up your own frame of reference.

In summation:
Part I:
*From the point of the Columbia crew, it will always take 12 years to reach Erigol at .95c, or whatever speed they were at.
*Erigol would observe that the same trip took 100 years.

Part II:
*Standing on Erigol, a day is 24 hours long.
*If Columbia was watching Erigol, they'd clock a day as taking 3 hours.

What the book was describing was indeed superluminal travel. It's the only way to make you go 12 light years in 6 months. Of course, relativistic superluminal travel results in weird situations, like people interacting with you before you arrived.

 

[Mytran]

Are you sure about that?

Part I:
*From the point of the Columbia crew, it will always take 12 years to reach Erigol at .95c, or whatever speed they were at.
*Erigol would observe that the same trip took 100 years.

If Erigol is 12 light years away from Columbia, then from a stationary viewpoint (ie Erigol) a vessel travelling at 0.95c would take 12.6 years to traverse the distance. It doesn't matter where you stand, that's the longest it could ever take!

Part II:
*Standing on Erigol, a day is 24 hours long.
*If Columbia was watching Erigol, they'd clock a day as taking 3 hours.

So Columbia would see 8 Erigol days pass per each of their own 24 hour periods. Which means they'd ratchet through the 4600 Erigol days that the trip takes at a higher rate.

Relativistic concerns aside, does the Columbia really carry enough impulse fuel to burn the engines continually for over twelve years? That's a lot of fuel!

 

[Ronald Held]

That is an item which was overlooked. The Bussards are not going to collect too well ,if at all, at speeds very close to c.