How far is Vulcan?

[Mytran]

Well on the plus side VOY would be back in what a month at those speeds. Whilst I have enjoyed the latest films, I'm sorry but the speeds just seem ridiculous.

The TOS Enterprise could cover a thousand light-years under its own power in roughly twelve hours in "That Which Survives".

Of course, that was immediately after the Enterprise has been put through a massive Transporter Beam across the exact same distance and route. Such an operation would have had a significant effect on subspace in that region: Enterprise simply rode the wave.

 

[BillJ]

Well on the plus side VOY would be back in what a month at those speeds. Whilst I have enjoyed the latest films, I'm sorry but the speeds just seem ridiculous.

The TOS Enterprise could cover a thousand light-years under its own power in roughly twelve hours in "That Which Survives".

Of course, that was immediately after the Enterprise has been put through a massive Transporter Beam across the exact same distance and route. Such an operation would have had a significant effect on subspace in that region: Enterprise simply rode the wave.

We can try to explain it away. But nothing seems out of the ordinary to the crew while doing the calculations for the return trip.

 

[Shawnster]

16 ly in 4 days comes out to Warp 9.something on the TNG warp scale.

http://i.imgur.com/Su1RB.jpg

http://www.anycalculator.com/warpcalculator.htm

 

[Maurice]

11.

 

[Christopher]

16 ly in 4 days comes out to Warp 9.something on the TNG warp scale.http://www.anycalculator.com/warpcalculator.htm

That scale is basically meaningless. Both it and the alleged TOS warp-factor-cubed scale give far, far lower velocities than anything actually shown onscreen. And even the TNG references that include that warp scale point out that it's approximate at best, that actual velocity varies depending on local spatial conditions (a fudge inserted to take speed-of-plot variations into account).

 

[Autistoid]

I've followed the 16 light-year distance even before Tucker said so in ENT's "Home."

"You brought me sixteen light years just to watch you get married to someone you barely know."
--Commander Tucker to Commander T'Pol while on Vulcan

I've also dismissed warp factors as being essentially technobabble. They're easier to regard as measurements of horsepower more than velocity since they can vary wildly depending on where you are, IMO.

And this is why star trek is off the air.

I couldn't imagine any other show doing this.

What it takes 8 hours to get to chicago by plane, but you walked on your lunch to china?

It's not about building some fantasy world.

It's about building a consistant story and framework.

 

[T'Girl]

Enterprise simply rode the wave.

We can try to explain it away. But nothing seems out of the ordinary to the crew while doing the calculations for the return trip.

But the ETA was after the navigator made her calculations and had (perhaps) taken the wave into account. Any astonishment could have occurred when the bridge wasn't on display. Taking advantage or into account outside phenomenon could be just another part of a navigator's job.

82.5 lightyears a hour at the very unusual warp factor of 8.4 with the (maybe) assistance of outside circumstances.

Janeway simply didn't have access to such a wave.

")

 

[Christopher]

And this is why star trek is off the air.

I couldn't imagine any other show doing this.

What it takes 8 hours to get to chicago by plane, but you walked on your lunch to china?

It's not about building some fantasy world.

It's about building a consistant story and framework.

Nonsense. The original series was every bit as inconsistent about galactic distances and travel times. Most viewers would never have known the difference, because they don't know astronomy that well. And it managed to last for decades and spawn one of the most successful SF franchises in history despite having inconsistent travel times.

Yes, consistency would be nice. But it's profoundly counterfactual to claim that lack of consistency caused the show to go off the air, when most of the examples we're talking about date from decades ago. It is, in fact, highly inconsistent.

 

[Mytran]

T'Girl; indeed! The oft quoted speeds in TWS are a one-way trip of highly unusual circumstances. Fortunately, other examples of the TOS Enterprise covering astonishing distances are quoted in Parsecs rather than Light Years and as I hoped to show in this other thread, there is good reason to think that a Star Trek Parsec is a considerably shorter distance than one of ours.

Warp Factors on the WF^3 scale were invented some time into the series run and starkly contrasted the original intent where GR postulated that the ship's speed oughtn't to exceed 0.73 LY/hour. Sound reasonable? That 6,399 times the speed of light or WF-18.6 under the cubed system! However, there is a fan based theory that Warp Factors are actually WF^5 instead, and this brings GR's 0.73 LY/hr speed down to WF-5.8 which is fairly close to Enterprise's stated maximum safe speed of Warp 6 (in Arena)
It also means that at Warp 10 a ship could cross the galaxy in about a year. The galaxy would indeed be such a craft's "back yard"!

While such a high speed, far reaching space society would be perfectly fine (and indeed meshes with much of the background dialogue in TOS) it stands in stark contrast to later incarnations of the Star Trek universe. Luckily, none of this was ever stated overtly on screen.
The TNG scale did get a bit more canon screen time (Wesley calculated the maximum radius of a Warp 3 ship in The Most Toys for instance) but as Christopher said above, that was not a hard and fast rule. However, it does stand up to scrutiny more effectively than WF^3!

As for Vulcan being 16 LY away and that being an achievable distance, even the TNG warp scale can't really handle that. It would require nearly Warp 9 on the TNG scale to cover in 4 days and while the brand new TMP-E may have been able to handle that (or at least Scotty claimed it could!), Trip's trip at Warp 4 would have taken nearly 8 weeks each way. To me, this (and numerous other instances of this ilk) strongly indicate the existence of galactic "speedways" (AKA speed of plot thingies). These would be areas where subspace permeates normal space more than usual, allowing ships to move much faster than unusual under conventional warp power.

While molecular transport beams may cause such conditions (albeit short lived) I think the most common cause is our old friend the ION STORM. These curious phenomena turn up all over the place and are often associated with incidents of unusual high speed & distance; just two off the top of my head are in WNMHGB (which swept the SS Valiant to an edge of the galaxy) and Court Martial (the fallout of the storm near Starbase 11 allowed Enterprise to reach Talos in a mere 6 days, far too close a proximity to such a dangerous species otherwise!)

 

[Christopher]

I find that Star Trek makes more sense if you just ignore most of the numbers. They're usually just filler, not meant to convey any consistent meaning, but just to sound like they do. Really, 99 percent of the audience won't care enough to remember the numbers and calculate their relationships, so most writers just throw in numbers that sound good and don't worry about the math. So the numbers are bound to be wildly inconsistent from one episode/film to the next.

Heck, they're even inconsistent within films. Try to compare the passage of stardates between log entries in ST:TMP with the dialogue indications of elapsed time between them. The ratios are all over the place. The numbers are not meant to be consistent, calculable data, they're just meant to be auditory filler to convey a rough, momentary impression to the audience and then be forgotten.

 

[T'Girl]

the fallout of the storm near Starbase 11 allowed Enterprise to reach Talos in a mere 6 days, far too close a proximity to such a dangerous species otherwise!

A good explaination, unless Starbase Eleven was primarily built where it was because of Talos Four, to enforce the quarantine?

")

 

[Autistoid]

And this is why star trek is off the air.

I couldn't imagine any other show doing this.

What it takes 8 hours to get to chicago by plane, but you walked on your lunch to china?

It's not about building some fantasy world.

It's about building a consistant story and framework.

Nonsense. The original series was every bit as inconsistent about galactic distances and travel times. Most viewers would never have known the difference, because they don't know astronomy that well. And it managed to last for decades and spawn one of the most successful SF franchises in history despite having inconsistent travel times.

Yes, consistency would be nice. But it's profoundly counterfactual to claim that lack of consistency caused the show to go off the air, when most of the examples we're talking about date from decades ago. It is, in fact, highly inconsistent.

That's assuming that the original wasn't without flaws.

 

[Mytran]

Christopher, I agree entirely; the characters and plots are what make a Star Trek story good or not (and why TOS still holds up so well).

But I can't deny that it's fun to try and work out some sort of consistent model with the numbers

T'girl, that's certainly possible! But given the tridimensional nature of space (not to mention the distances involved) it would make a pretty poor guard IMO

 

[Christopher]

That's assuming that the original wasn't without flaws.

Uhh, yes, that's exactly the point. The original did have well-known flaws and inconsistencies, and yet people continued to make Star Trek for decades thereafter. Thus, it is nonsensical and self-contradictory to claim that people eventually stopped making it specifically because it wasn't consistent in its depiction of interstellar travel times. (Since, of course, they haven't stopped making it. There are still movies coming out.)

 

[Shawnster]

And this is why star trek is off the air.

I couldn't imagine any other show doing this.

What it takes 8 hours to get to chicago by plane, but you walked on your lunch to china?

It's not about building some fantasy world.

It's about building a consistant story and framework.

NCIS does it ALL THE TIME. Whenever they have an episode where the heroes have to fly overseas, or simply to a carrier in the Atlantic, time is compressed. They arrive there (or back home) within a few short hours after their plane takes off. They are wearing the same clothes and they return back to the office straight from the airport. Generally, when the team is split up, if it's daylight across the ocean, it's daylight in DC, too.

No time lag. No time zone difference. No evidence that a flight to Germany would be 16 hours or so, plus the time to and from the airport.

Or, if not violating how time works, some procedural shows violate how the government divides the work load. In Bones, the FBI investigates all these murders that would be handled by local law enforcement and the Jeffersonian Institute - An institute remarkably similar to the Smithsonian Institute - does the work of the local coroner.

Then you have the computers on these various cop shows. They are more advanced than some of the computers we see in Star Trek. Advanced holographic displays, miraculous resolution, etc...

 

[Christopher]

Not to mention Heroes, where a solar eclipse was visible from everywhere on Earth at the same time. Obviously the Earth is flat in the Heroes universe.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've followed the 16 light-year distance even before Tucker said so in ENT's "Home."

"You brought me sixteen light years just to watch you get married to someone you barely know."
--Commander Tucker to Commander T'Pol while on Vulcan

I've also dismissed warp factors as being essentially technobabble. They're easier to regard as measurements of horsepower more than velocity since they can vary wildly depending on where you are, IMO.

And this is why star trek is off the air.

No. Star Trek is off the air due to low viewership and rising production costs.

I couldn't imagine any other show doing this.

Most shows don't bother.

What it takes 8 hours to get to chicago by plane, but you walked on your lunch to china?

What series did that?

It's not about building some fantasy world.

It's definitely about building some fantasy world, since it doesn't really exist in the real world.

It's about building a consistant story and framework.

Nope, it's about trying to entertain as many people as possible. Star Trek is off the air because it failed to do that ten years ago, not because writers couldn't adhere to a non-canon warp scale.

 

[xvicente]

It's a movie

speed of the plot

they were never intended to be checked

You guys realize these things aren't the most funny posts around, right?

 

[Mytran]

Eh, they're just variations of "it's only a TV show". It's a very common response to genuine tech questions on this site.

 

[T'Girl]

NCIS does it ALL THE TIME.

My favorite is the episode where the team rescues Ziva from captivity in Africa. There's a scene where they're all in a corridor in a building in Africa, cut to the elevator opening in NCIS headquarters and they walk out, not only still dressed in the same clothes, but still covered in dust and dirt and dried blood.

")