Containment force field at Warp speed?

[KyleRaynous]

Is it possible for a ship with some hull breaches covered by containment force fields to travel at Warp speed (not necessarily high speeds nor for long periods of time)? I suppose keeping them would imply a major cost of energy, but the point is if they can withstand a faster-than-light trip without collapsing...

 

[USS Triumphant]

I know it might seem weird, but a ship travelling at warp *isn't* actually travelling faster-than-light - at least, from it's own perspective. The warp field puts the ship into domains of subspace with increasingly higher speeds-of-light in each. The effective speed for the ship's travel may be many times that of the speed of light in normal space, but it never actually reaches or exceeds c (except possibly at Warp 10 in "Threshold" - but I don't wanna talk about that ).

Also, the ship's navigational deflectors should keep the sort of debris or energy that would stress the force fields away from them altogether.

Point being, the energy required to maintain force fields on the hull while at warp really shouldn't be significantly higher than maintaining them at sublight.

They'd probably be at greater risk from having a weapon fired or a massive and dense object hurled at them from inside the ship than any of that.

Unless the navigational deflectors are down... in which case, those fields failing are probably going to be the *least* of your worries.

 

[Timo]

If we wanted to argue that starship hulls absolutely must be intact and indeed pristine physically or else everything will fall apart at warp, we only need to look at ST:Voyager. For a crew stranded on the other side of nowhere, they seemed to expend a lot of effort to having a fresh layer of putty and paint applied on the ship after every battle!

Indeed, in "Maneuvers", the Kazon ramming pod jutting out of the side of the ship is said to be disastrous to the ability of the ship to go to warp. Okay, so perhaps the pod was customized to create that special warp-ddestabilizing effect...? But if there were a destabilizing doodad aboard the pod, why do the heroes want to drag the whole thing out of the hull breach rather than just turning off the doodad?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Idran]

But then again, we've got Enterprise in the post-"Damage" episodes; I'm pretty sure there's at least one scene in the mix there with the ship at warp but the hull not patched over yet. And that's pre-forcefields, even.

 

[Ithekro]

I seem to recall that during "The Year of Hell" episodes, there were times Voyager was warping around with only forcefields over some damaged areas.

 

[Idran]

And then we've got "Divergence"; if having a perfectly pristine hull was that important for warp travel, you'd think having a cable run mid-warp between two ships would cause some issue.

Maybe it's a gross profile issue? Hull breaches or relatively minor changes in profile like trailing cables are fine, but having a big pod suddenly jutting out of a ship isn't.

 

[JasonJ]

And then we've got "Divergence"; if having a perfectly pristine hull was that important for warp travel, you'd think having a cable run mid-warp between two ships would cause some issue.

Maybe it's a gross profile issue? Hull breaches or relatively minor changes in profile like trailing cables are fine, but having a big pod suddenly jutting out of a ship isn't.

This may be onto something; as we know a warp field must be symmetrical to be stable... a large protrusion from the side of the ship may interfere with that.

 

[Ithekro]

Hull breaches might be smoothed over by the force fields.

 

[KyleRaynous]

Thanks for all the answers. I do understand how the Warp subspace bubble works and the "isolation" it generates in that within it when traveling at faster-than-light speeds, it was only a doubt about energy consumption on a ship in such situations. Although, I can't believe I forgot about "Year of Hell" when I was thinking about this, two of my favorite episodes from all ST series...

 

[Go-Captain]

Indeed, in "Maneuvers", the Kazon ramming pod jutting out of the side of the ship is said to be disastrous to the ability of the ship to go to warp. Okay, so perhaps the pod was customized to create that special warp-ddestabilizing effect...? But if there were a destabilizing doodad aboard the pod, why do the heroes want to drag the whole thing out of the hull breach rather than just turning off the doodad?

Since we have examples of screwy and damaged hulls going to warp, the pod interference could be as simple as having warp engines sticking out of the hull causing the field instabilities. I imagine Voyager's warp field interacting with the ramming pod's warp engines and causing a secondary warp field in the main bubble. That could be enough to throw the whole field off, all without power, and require a complete removal of the pod.

The only shred of supporting evidence might be how the NX-01 and -02 merge warp fields. I vaguely remember Trip saying something about the possibility of field instability or ripping both ships apart if both ships don't balance their fields to each other perfectly.

This may be onto something; as we know a warp field must be symmetrical to be stable... a large protrusion from the side of the ship may interfere with that.

Breen ships are asymmetric. There is also the one Borg ship from TNG which looks more like a space station than a ship. The fully asymmetric ships are rare but do exist.

Even Federation ships are highly asymmetric when looked at from the side.