First look inside the new Stellar Cartography

[Christopher]

^No need for anachronisms like transwarp. ENT made it clear that instantaneous long-range subspace communication was possible if there were subspace relays in place. This explains the existing inconsistency between the TOS episodes where they were three weeks from getting a reply from Starfleet (presumably in regions where no relay was in range) and those where they could communicate instantaneously with Starfleet from a considerable distance.

So here you're looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Again, not me. A take-it-or-leave-it answer for those who obsess about such things. I previously said virtually the same thing you just did in this thread here.

 

[Sci]

There are other differences between Prime Trek's depiction of warp drive vs. Abramsverse Trek. In the Abramsverse, the implication seems to be that ships at warp are flying sensor-blind to what's happening in normal space -- hence the Enterprise leaving warp and flying right into the debris field in ST09, for instance. And

Spoiler: STID

Khan's

line in STID about Kirk being wrong in thinking that going to warp means the Enterprise is safe from weapons fire seems to imply that it's virtually unheard of for ships at warp to be able to fire weapons at one-another. So all of this does seem to imply that Abramsverse warp drive works on different principles than Prime Trek's.

 

[Christopher]

^Ah, but warp drive in the Prime universe has been portrayed in various different ways. In "The Cage" it was called "time warp" and was depicted as making the ship turn transparent. In TOS it didn't seem to look any different from impulse travel, but then in TMP it became something distinct from normal space, entered with a bang and characterized by multicolored streaks of light -- a precedent which later productions followed in their own varying ways.

So who's to say how warp drive worked in the late 2250s in the Prime universe? We have insufficient evidence to rule anything out.

The problem is that, even though the existing Trek canon is a hodgepodge of clashing interpretations and approaches, we learn to gloss over the discrepancies and manufacture for ourselves the illusion that there's a single consistent standard unifying it all. So when another new interpretation comes along, something we haven't yet had time to blend with the rest in our memories, we fool ourselves into thinking it's a departure from a previously uniform whole.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The problem is that ENT itself gave mixed messages about Vulcan's location.

Remember all the shouting when the Klingon Empire was shown to be only a few days travel from Earth?

I feel that the ENT writers had an intention with the "Vulcan star charts", mentioned several times in "Broken Bow", that they showed known-only-to-Vulcans shortcuts to places like the Klingon Homeworld (and later to P'jem and Andor). Thus the Klingons could be mere days from a ship leaving Earth and following Vulcan star charts, but Earth was still weeks/months away for the Klingons coming in the opposite direction.

 

[JeBuS]

The problem is that ENT itself gave mixed messages about Vulcan's location.

Remember all the shouting when the Klingon Empire was shown to be only a few days travel from Earth?

I feel that the ENT writers had an intention with the "Vulcan star charts", mentioned several times in "Broken Bow", that they showed known-only-to-Vulcans shortcuts to places like the Klingon Homeworld (and later to P'jem and Andor). Thus the Klingons could be mere days from a ship leaving Earth and following Vulcan star charts, but Earth was still weeks/months away for the Klingons coming in the opposite direction.

How would that even work? Space is space, no? Point A and Point B, fastest route is a straight line.

 

[Therin of Andor]

How would that even work? Space is space, no? Point A and Point B, fastest route is a straight line.

I seem to recall early TOS "making of..." books speculating that open space probably had wormholes, eddies, slipstreams, etc, that could provide differences in travel time.

Just found this:
http://www.ditl.org/pagscitech.php?ScitechID=34&ListID=Scitech

 

[JeBuS]

*shrug*

Warp is as fast as the plot. With nuTrek, they had a chance to fix everything up right, in a way they never could have imagined back when TOS first aired. But they didn't. Warp is still as fast as the plot. Everything else said to the subject is a waste of debate time.

 

[Therin of Andor]

With nuTrek, they had a chance to fix everything up right, in a way they never could have imagined back when TOS first aired. But they didn't.

Hahahahahaha! Imagine the furor if Bad Robot attempted to "fix everything up right"!

 

[Christopher]

Remember all the shouting when the Klingon Empire was shown to be only a few days travel from Earth?

It was actually scripted as a four-week journey, but it was changed during production.

I feel that the ENT writers had an intention with the "Vulcan star charts", mentioned several times in "Broken Bow", that they showed known-only-to-Vulcans shortcuts to places like the Klingon Homeworld (and later to P'jem and Andor). Thus the Klingons could be mere days from a ship leaving Earth and following Vulcan star charts, but Earth was still weeks/months away for the Klingons coming in the opposite direction.

I very much doubt that was their intention, since their knowledge of basic astronomy was painfully inept (they didn't even know Rigel was a real star). But it's a good rationalization. After all, we can see just about everything in space just by looking up with a good enough telescope, so in normal-space terms there's no reason why Vulcans should have much astronavigational information we wouldn't have been able to discover ourselves. Unless it's something to do with subspace, something not visible to telescopes.

How would that even work? Space is space, no? Point A and Point B, fastest route is a straight line.

It's been posited for decades, in works like Star Trek Maps and the TNG Technical Manual, that the actual speed of a ship at a given warp factor varies depending on the conditions of the space it travels through -- the distribution of mass and energy, the subspace geometry, etc. There's a longstanding concept, actually alluded to in Star Charts, that there are "high-speed lanes" where the subspace conditions make warp drive unusually fast. And as I said, this is a handy way to reconcile the otherwise implausible Trek conceit that there's a need for navigators and charts in outer space, where there are no horizons and you can just see where you're going no matter how far away it is.

 

[Nob Akimoto]

Interesting, although a lot of the details clearly weren't meant to stand up to close analysis -- like the part on the far right with star system names superimposed on a satellite photo of the San Francisco Bay Area, or anachronistic references to "transwarp network" and "Orgainian [sic] Peace Treaty."

I always found the anachronistic bits of "name-dropping" in pieces of NuTrek (whether in the movies or the comics) to be the most irritating part of their attempts to "cater" to fans. It all smacks of superficial attempts to satisfy fans without actually looking into whether or not they made sense in the context of the thing they were talking about.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'd pick those supposedly anachronistic references over constant anime, Buckaroo Banzai and the other stuff we got during Mike Okuda's tenure in the graphics department. At least it's Star Trek!

 

[Sci]

There are other differences between Prime Trek's depiction of warp drive vs. Abramsverse Trek. In the Abramsverse, the implication seems to be that ships at warp are flying sensor-blind to what's happening in normal space -- hence the Enterprise leaving warp and flying right into the debris field in ST09, for instance. And

Spoiler: STID

Khan's

line in STID about Kirk being wrong in thinking that going to warp means the Enterprise is safe from weapons fire seems to imply that it's virtually unheard of for ships at warp to be able to fire weapons at one-another. So all of this does seem to imply that Abramsverse warp drive works on different principles than Prime Trek's.

^Ah, but warp drive in the Prime universe has been portrayed in various different ways. In "The Cage" it was called "time warp" and was depicted as making the ship turn transparent. In TOS it didn't seem to look any different from impulse travel, but then in TMP it became something distinct from normal space, entered with a bang and characterized by multicolored streaks of light -- a precedent which later productions followed in their own varying ways.

Yeah, but those are differences in visual effects, not how the ship interacts with the outside universe.

So who's to say how warp drive worked in the late 2250s in the Prime universe? We have insufficient evidence to rule anything out.

Well, that's why I phrased it as "seems to," not, "definitely is different."

 

[Christopher]

I always found the anachronistic bits of "name-dropping" in pieces of NuTrek (whether in the movies or the comics) to be the most irritating part of their attempts to "cater" to fans. It all smacks of superficial attempts to satisfy fans without actually looking into whether or not they made sense in the context of the thing they were talking about.

Or maybe just to satisfy themselves. Don't forget, Orci and Lindelof are mega-Trekkies. They probably understand the references as well as any fan in the audience does. And John Eaves, who was a production illustrator on DS9, ENT, TFF, and all the TNG movies (and designed the E-E), is also an illustrator on the Abrams films. No idea if he had a hand in that news-wall graphic, though.

Yeah, but those are differences in visual effects, not how the ship interacts with the outside universe.

I disagree. The visual effects were just part of it; there were differences in the underlying assumptions as well. The name "time warp" suggests a different idea about how it worked, and TMP's introduction of the visual suggestion of a different "warp space" that the ship entered and existed, a precedent followed by later productions, is distinctly different from TOS's approach that seemed to treat warp drive as just going really fast.

And thanks to The Making of ST:TMP and its reproduction of Dr. Jesco von Puttkamer's technical memo on warp drive, we know for a fact that TMP's warp drive was based on different operating assumptions from TOS's, ones more firmly grounded in relativistic physics (and coming remarkably close to the theoretical warp-drive model Miguel Alcubierre proposed 16 years later). Puttkamer was the first person to codify the idea that a Trek-universe starship traveled in "subspace" -- though he defined the term to mean the spacetime pocket the ship occupied (what Alcubierre and Sternbach/Okuda both call a warp bubble), rather than a hyperspace-like dimension as it was portrayed in TNG and after. In TOS, the term "subspace" was used only for radio.

For that matter, I don't think we ever saw ships in the TOS movies engaged in combat at warp, so we don't know that it was possible with the technology they were using at that time. We assume it was because that's what we're used to, but we have no proof.

 

[Admiral_Young]

The powerwall was designed by Jorge Almedia. You can see his portfolio here:

http://www.jorgeonline.me/portfolio/star-trek-into-darkness-2/

 

[DimesDan]

The powerwall was designed by Jorge Almedia. You can see his portfolio here:

http://www.jorgeonline.me/portfolio/star-trek-into-darkness-2/

Just so you know, my avast just gave me a Trojan Horse warning from that link.

 

[Stevil2001]

For that matter, I don't think we ever saw ships in the TOS movies engaged in combat at warp, so we don't know that it was possible with the technology they were using at that time. We assume it was because that's what we're used to, but we have no proof.

I was about to declare that there is warp-speed combat in "Errand of Mercy," but rechecking the transcript, the Enterprise is attacked by the Klingons after stopping to decode a Starfleet message, before setting course for Organia. Almost as if the Klingons were waiting for them to drop out of warp!

 

[Christopher]

^On the other hand, there's "Balance of Terror," where the Enterprise retreated at "emergency warp speed" from the Romulan plasma bolt that was also traveling at warp speed somehow. That suggests that the type of warp drive used during TOS did allow direct interaction/combat. Which is why I only said that the TOS movies don't show warp combat.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I've clicked on the link several times before I posted it and several times afterwards and had no problems like that with it, and I conduct regular scans of my computer...far as I know it's clean. So not sure what happened.

Anyway. Looking forward to the book. Forgot that Geoffery Mandel was working on the maps as well.

 

[CaptainDonovin]

I can't wait for this birthday present (released the day b4 bday #41), looks like it'll be stellar.