Just passing Through...

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At higher warp speeds, what keeps a starship from flying through a planet or a sun, is it possible to control your flight path at such high speeds. And what would happen if your starship did have a close encounter with such an object??

 

[James Bond]

I think it has to do with not being in normal space, but in subspace. A ship would just travel through a planet or whatever occupying the same point in normal space. At least that's how it works in the Stargate universe.

 

[DonIago]

Alternatively we could assume course corrections are made and we've just never seen them on-screen.

 

[JNG]

I think it has to do with not being in normal space, but in subspace. A ship would just travel through a planet or whatever occupying the same point in normal space. At least that's how it works in the Stargate universe.

It doesn't work like that at all in Trek. Ships at warp are not "in subspace," merely surrounded with subspace fields that are asymmetrical so they pulse and push off one another. That's why they need stuff like the big honking navigational deflector and so forth.

At higher warp speeds, what keeps a starship from flying through a planet or a sun, is it possible to control your flight path at such high speeds. And what would happen if your starship did have a close encounter with such an object??

Uh, navigation keeps you from flying through them. None of the ships we see on a regular basis are remotely capable of going so fast that they could possibly "accidentally" hit a star or whatever without some idea they were approaching it. At warp factor 9.9 on the TNG scale it still takes almost three hours to go a light year. This is just not an issue. It's like asking you why you don't accidentally hit a mountain range or inland sea while driving your car above the speed limit.

The Voyager show seemed to be trying to say that maneuverability at warp is very limited, but on TOS they said rather the opposite. It must vary by ship, maneuver and local conditions, but yes, maneuvering is somewhat possible at warp—certainly gradual changes for navigational purposes are.

As for a close encounter, I think gravitational fields make warping close to large objects like that alternately dangerous or impossible.

 

[Marie1]

You'll hear the captain say "Plot a course" which means... around the stars and other things that shouldn't be rammed, I've always assumed.

Plus, they'd have to go around Stars anyway, cuz its not recommended to go to Warp inside a solar system... I think.

 

[Hermiod]

There were plenty of instances once the Astrometrics set on Voyager was built where we saw that their courses were not straight lines.

Besides, the distances between stars is so huge it would take a dangerously incompetent helmsman to find a way to crash a ship that's only a few hundred metres wide in to one.

 

[DonIago]

"Mr. Paris, if I catch you playing Sudoku one more time!!!"