Is it possible to eject escape pods at warp and survive?

[Rat Boy]

Say you're on a runaway starship where the helm's not responding and you're about to ram into a planet. Can the crew abandon ship while still at warp and live through it? The closest thing I can think of is a reference from "Brothers" where the crew thinks that if they separate the saucer section carrying the errant Data it'll drop out of warp and the stardrive can swing back and pick them up.

 

[captcalhoun]

probably. the pods would remain in warp for a while before losing momentum in a high gravity field, drop out and then be left at sub-light...

 

[P0sitr0nic]

Im pretty sure once the pod left the warp field, it would slow back to real space. In fact we've seen this in Enterprise.

 

[nx1701g]

^ Yes. Doctor Soong ejected himself from the Augment captured Bird of Prey in the Augment three parter in Season Four. He slowed to sublight after ejecting.

 

[Christopher]

I think the escape pod would need artificial gravity/inertial dampers, since the tidal stresses at the edge of a warp field should be immense, a gravity differential sufficient to tear a ship apart unless it's shielded from the effect.

 

[Rat Boy]

I think the escape pod would need artificial gravity/inertial dampers, since the tidal stresses at the edge of a warp field should be immense, a gravity differential sufficient to tear a ship apart unless it's shielded from the effect.

I suppose they do if Arik Soong survived. I imagine it's a rough ride and not 100% safe; something akin to jumping out of a car. Thanks for the info.

 

[SonicRanger]

It didn't really seem like a possibility in TNG "Hollow Pursuits" when the E-D was accelerating out of control, but maybe they just weren't desperate enough yet.

 

[nx1701g]

^ Maybe they were going too fast?

 

[Plecostomus]

I think the escape pod would need artificial gravity/inertial dampers, since the tidal stresses at the edge of a warp field should be immense, a gravity differential sufficient to tear a ship apart unless it's shielded from the effect.

Never let technical reality get in the way of a story. I agree with you Christopher... this is clearly a case of "we need it to work this way for the plot to progress."

I'm having visions of the escape pod rising up, firing it's rockets relative to the ejecting ship... rapidly drifting backwards and FOOOM against the warp-field boundary.

*shrug* If you want to make it possible, maybe the pods have some kind of small field-transition facilitator device/flywheel/coil/generator that uses some sort of subspace handwavum.

 

[SonicRanger]

Never let technical reality get in the way of a story. I agree with you Christopher... this is clearly a case of "we need it to work this way for the plot to progress."

I'm having visions of the escape pod rising up, firing it's rockets relative to the ejecting ship... rapidly drifting backwards and FOOOM against the warp-field boundary.

*shrug* If you want to make it possible, maybe the pods have some kind of small field-transition facilitator device/flywheel/coil/generator that uses some sort of subspace handwavum.

If tiny probes and photon torpedos have room for "warp sustainers" inside them, I see no reason why escape pods couldn't have a similar system that allows a (relatively) smooth transition from warp to sublight.

 

[Silversmok3]

I think the escape pod would need artificial gravity/inertial dampers, since the tidal stresses at the edge of a warp field should be immense, a gravity differential sufficient to tear a ship apart unless it's shielded from the effect.

Indeed.

Its possible ,even easy to eject pods at warp.

Its surviving the trip that's hard.

Specifically, the part where the pod transitions to relatavistic space upon leaving the host ship's warp field.

Lets assume we're doing this in the 'real' world.Youd need a way to slow the pod down to sublight before leaving the host ship's warp field.This process must be done WHILE the pod is still FTL,so I cant see this working without the pod having its own warp field to compensate.
Or some protection system within the host ship that covers the pods as they slow down.

Without such fail-safes , even with intertal dampeners the passenger would breifly suffer effects of high-c travel,like time dilation.

Granted, it wouldnt be massive. Merely a few weeks of time displacement, just enough to ruin a rescue.

 

[Finn]

It didn't really seem like a possibility in TNG "Hollow Pursuits" when the E-D was accelerating out of control, but maybe they just weren't desperate enough yet.

Wasn't Barclay in control of the ship. Maybe he wouldn't have let anybody abandon ship just because they would miss out a lot if he let them go.

 

[SonicRanger]

It didn't really seem like a possibility in TNG "Hollow Pursuits" when the E-D was accelerating out of control, but maybe they just weren't desperate enough yet.

Wasn't Barclay in control of the ship. Maybe he wouldn't have let anybody abandon ship just because they would miss out a lot if he let them go.

No, no -- that's "The Nth Degree" you're thinking about.

"Hollow Pursuits" synopsis here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Pursuits_(TNG_episode)

 

[bryce]

I can only imagine to decelleration one would experience. I mean, if you dropped out of warp, how fast would you find yourself going?

 

[Colonel Midnight]

^ Yes. Doctor Soong ejected himself from the Augment captured Bird of Prey in the Augment three parter in Season Four. He slowed to sublight after ejecting.

Didn't Trip and that really annoying Princess Diva gal do the same thing in a Season 2 (or 3?) episode? The name of it escapes me -- I just remember her whinging on and on and on and on...

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Warped9]

Say you're on a runaway starship where the helm's not responding and you're about to ram into a planet. Can the crew abandon ship while still at warp and live through it? The closest thing I can think of is a reference from "Brothers" where the crew thinks that if they separate the saucer section carrying the errant Data it'll drop out of warp and the stardrive can swing back and pick them up.

If the script says so then, yes.

 

[Rat Boy]

Say you're on a runaway starship where the helm's not responding and you're about to ram into a planet. Can the crew abandon ship while still at warp and live through it? The closest thing I can think of is a reference from "Brothers" where the crew thinks that if they separate the saucer section carrying the errant Data it'll drop out of warp and the stardrive can swing back and pick them up.

If the script says so then, yes.

I like you're thinking, since I don't feel like coming up another method.

 

[Deks]

Torpedoes have the capability to travel at warp speeds for example when fired from a stationary source (such as a starbase).
It stands to reason escape pods would have the technology to generate/maintain a low powered subspace field around themselves.
Who knows, perhaps they are even capable of achieving low warp velocities for a short amount of time which would allow them to navigate to a vicinity of a star that can support life.

It's doable for Federation's 24th century level of technology.
Inertial dampers would probably exist even on escape pods which in effect would help the passengers survive the deceleration.
They exist in shuttle technology, so escape pods should be no different.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. When an object crosses the (according to ENT, suprisingly sharp and proximal) warp field perimeter, it essentially experiences a diedown of the warp effect within a tiny fraction of a second. Some sort of a "capacitor coil" could allow that effect to die down in, say, a second rather than an attosecond, negating any and all stresses.

Really, it's far from established that an object that comes from a strong warp field to a state of no warp field (be it at once, or through steps of weaker fields, or through a steady downramp, or whatever) would have any velocity or momentum in the Newtonian sense; as far as we know, there might be nothing for the inertial compensators to compensate against when such a thing happens.

The biggest threat I guess would come when an object unshielded by its own "field capacitor coil" leaves the sharp-edged field at finite speed (say, a hundred mph), and slows down one slice at a time: first your head, then your shoulders, then your chest, then you waist... The putative coil would not just slow down the process of field diedown, it would make the diedown happen homogeneously across the whole object. Not so with Tucker's unprotected, ill-fated ship-to-ship tightrope, which indeed seemed to leave the warp field one millimeter at a time...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Rat Boy,

That's actually a very good question! I'm not entirely sure I have an answer. Instinctively I would think the tidal forces would rip you apart, however photon torpedoes are routinely fired at warp.

Keep in mind photon torpedoes are self-propelled and might have a warp-drive system in them in order for them to actually accelerate away from a ship launching them at warp so I'm not sure how it all works out.

From what it would seem it all depends on the plot...


CuttingEdge100