Quantum Slipstream Drive vs. Transwarp Drive

[AdmiralSteven]

So I got to thinking about these two forms of propulsions the other day and was wondering of the two, which is faster? I'm not sure if it's ever made clear which is faster, so I thought I'd pick the brains of my trek lovers here on the boards for information.

When I started looking around for information on this, I found on Memory Alpha that when Voyager's crew did a test run with the Quatum Slipstream drive in the Dauntless, Arturis', species 116, ship in disguise, they traveled 15 light years in 5 minutes, about 1.6 million times the speed of light. Now, Voyager eventually used a Borg's transwarp coil to get 20,000 light years closer to home before the coil burned out. I don't remember hearing or reading how long it took Voyager to go 20,000 light year, but that's pretty far, in what I would assume a short amount of time. When it comes to the Voth, I thought I remember reading somewhere that the Voth's transwarp drive doesn't utilize a conduit system. I would, however, make an undedicated guess that it's at least as fast as the Borgs... I could be wrong, but it's a guess. So, what does everyone else think? Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I don't move threads to Trek Tech often because I'm usually fine leaving them here. But that honestly sounds like a topic that the regulars over there would be best at answering.

 

[Christopher]

Which is faster depends on what the story requires. No Trek propulsion method has a consistent, quantifiable speed. It's always as fast or as slow as the story needs it to be. For instance, the slipstream in "Timeless" was far, far faster than the test run in "Hope and Fear" suggested; instead of 15 light-years in 5 minutes, they covered 10,000 light-years in a comparable time frame.

Also, there are several different versions of "transwarp" in Trek. Even accepting that "Threshold" is apocryphal and ignoring its "transwarp = Warp 10 = infinite speed" formulation, you've still got the Search for Spock version ("All speeds available"), the Borg conduit version (which is depicted inconsistently), the Voth non-conduit version, and maybe more. Basically "transwarp" seems to be a catchall label for multiple "faster-than-warp" propulsion schemes. In those terms, quantum slipstream would actually be a variety of transwarp drive, just one that has a less generic name.

 

[cwl]

didn't seven of nine say that Quantum slipstream was similar to Borg transwarp.

 

[sojourner]

You necro'd a thread to add the same reply as one you posted to a nearly identical thread that is more recent?

 

[alpinedigital]

In Distant Origin episode, Voth detected Voyager 90 lightyears away doing Warp 6.2 and had said, "take us out of transwarp, we don't want to pass them" less than 30 seconds after the sensor alerted them. Anybody who wants to do the math, consider a full 60 seconds or 1 min to cover 180+ light years, considering Voyager was moving away from them.

 

[MacLeod]

As Christopher said the actual speed of any given FTL device varies according to the plot.

You might as well say 'ahead plot speed'.

Perhaps Trans-warp is similar to Transonic, in that it the region around which a vehicle is around the threshold to a higher level.

Yes I know transonic deals with airflow surrounding and flowing past an airfoil ~0.8-1.3 Mach.

 

[R. Star]

Realy there's very little consistency regarding the technobabble behind either term. All we know is that they're faster than regular warp.

In Threshold transwarp is stated to be infinite velocity where you're everywhere at once... not quite sure what that means. Yet in future episodes where they use "transwarp coils" they're in a tunnel thing. Same with the quantium slip stream drive. Further confusing the issue is the "transwarp hubs" in Endgame.

Really, trying to disect the "how" of the things is just speculative opinion. Like all technobabble, it's just a plot device to serve the purpose of being freaking fast.

 

[Timo]

In Threshold transwarp is stated to be infinite velocity

To nitpick, the episode states that "transwarp threshold" and "maximum warp barrier" are the things that are equal to infinite velocity. Possibly everything our heroes do to reach that barrier is already transwarp.

At least Tom himself says he has engaged "transwarp drive" when he begins the slow acceleration towards the threshold or barrier, not when he breaks it.

This probably has nothing to do with what the episode writers intended, but at least we can pretend that the use of the term "transwarp" in that episode does not differ from its use elsewhere - that is, transwarp is not a speed, but refers to any technology that achieves high velocities in a "almost but not completely unlike warp" manner, as Douglas Adams would put it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[R. Star]

In Threshold transwarp is stated to be infinite velocity

To nitpick, the episode states that "transwarp threshold" and "maximum warp barrier" are the things that are equal to infinite velocity. Possibly everything our heroes do to reach that barrier is already transwarp.

At least Tom himself says he has engaged "transwarp drive" when he begins the slow acceleration towards the threshold or barrier, not when he breaks it.

This probably has nothing to do with what the episode writers intended, but at least we can pretend that the use of the term "transwarp" in that episode does not differ from its use elsewhere - that is, transwarp is not a speed, but refers to any technology that achieves high velocities in a "almost but not completely unlike warp" manner, as Douglas Adams would put it.

Timo Saloniemi

Then how come the tunnel transwarp things don't turn everyone to lizards with really quick gestational periods?

 

[Mytran]

I always assumed it was the infinite speed (i.e. doing something impossible) which turned them into lizards, not the Transwarp itself.

On a slight tangent - if Tom broke Warp 10 before breakfast, would he be eligible to drop by the Restauant At The End Of The Universe afterwards?

 

[matthunter]

The only real frame of reference we have in terms of comparing Borg transwarp travel times to those of warp (as we have for slipstream) is the mention in Descent that the conduit allowed the Enterprise to travel 20x faster than its usual maximum speed (this was warp 9.6 at the start of TNG but seemed to creep up a bit as they upgraded the systems, perhaps 9.8-9.9?). I never got the hang of working out how TNG warp scale deals with fractional warp velocities (obviously for whole numbers it's roughly warp factor to the power of 3.3(number of threes after decimal equal to warp factor so 2 to the power of 3.33 for warp 2 or approx 10c).

 

[Timo]

It could be argued that the Borg in "Descent" were not a representative bunch, and that their weird ideas overall might translate to weird technologies that don't work quite as well as the regular Borg ones.

Then again, VOY sort of suggests that transwarp can be faster when it's a big ship doing it, or when those hub things are boosting the going. And "Dragon's Teeth" speaks of a network of "fast lanes" that is slowly decaying; perhaps transwarp of the Borg style, with corridors, is fast in freshly formed ones but gets slower if the corridors are old? And in order to refresh a corridor, you need to hook it up to a hub, or carry a special coil aboard your ship; otherwise, the best you can do is sneak in like Picard or the Hansens and hope the corridor doesn't decay on you when you are inside.

Also, trailblazing an all-new corridor from A to B might be slow work even when you have a coil aboard, analogous to plowing a path through thick snow. The analogy would extend to all the steering problems our heroes had when using the slipstream tech on "virgin snow", as opposed to the ease of flying along the path of a Borg vessel in, say, "Dark Frontier".

...The bottom line being, transwarp Borg style is fast, but depends.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Then how come the tunnel transwarp things don't turn everyone to lizards with really quick gestational periods?

Because if Paris was occupying every point in space in existence by breaking the threshold, you have to take into account that the universe is a very big place with variety of phenomena that could easily interact with humanoids on a cellular level (as witnessed numerous times throughout Trek) and cause various changes (coupled with such velocity).

The Transwarp used by the Borg is distinctively slower/different (obviously not 'infinite speed)... as is the drive used by the Voth.
So there is an obvious difference between Threshold infinite speed TW, and TW known in the conventional sense (as used by the Borg and some other species).

 

[Lord Manitou]

I always assumed it was the infinite speed (i.e. doing something impossible) which turned them into lizards, not the Transwarp itself.

On a slight tangent - if Tom broke Warp 10 before breakfast, would he be eligible to drop by the Restauant At The End Of The Universe afterwards?

In Threshold they finally worked out the drive but couldn't work out the list of the effects because of accelerating and going that fast. No one goes at infinite speed because ( most likely) you'd buzz out of the galaxy into a neighboring galaxy cluster. Nobody would want that to happen.

 

[Timo]

In ordinary warp drive, it appears that the ship doesn't exit the regular universe and completely move over to "subspace" or whatnot - it still interacts with objects in the regular universe, and has to dodge them to avoid collision etc.

If transwarp remains the same, then being everywhere at once would mean displacing the entire universe! Every place would have what's usually there and Tom Paris, which would be pretty crowded. We might have to assume that transwarp either takes the ship "deeper into subspace" and thus makes it cease bothering the universe, or then "stretches out" the traveler so that the total mass of Tom Paris and his shuttle is distributed across the universe (perhaps with a slightly denser lump here, another there, but never enough of it anywhere to be observed let alone worried about). But the consciousness of the traveler would apparently remain "operational" or "clustered" somehow - in the mythology of Trek since "Where No One Has Gone Before", it appears to exist separately from the physical body in at least some circumstances...

Timo Saloniemi