Ships Traveling the Galaxy in the ST universe.
- Thread starter Tribble puncher
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ST2:TWoK is rather explicit in that "quadrant" is a subdivision of "sector" - Sulu uses the two terms in that order when wondering about the presence of the Reliant (being in the same sector is unusual, being in the same quadrant is a miracle).
Regarding galactic travel, we can rather easily dismiss the two core trips by saying that the ship only went in that direction but did not travel very far. In ST5:TFF, none of the heroes believed a trip to the center was possible, which sort of rules out the TAS episode having featured such a trip. But Sha Ka Ree could lie just behind the Great Barrier, while the peek at Shapley Center could have been obtained from a considerable distance in "Magicks of Megas-Tu".
That leaves the multiple trips to the rim, but that's a fictional rim, defined by a fictional energy barrier. We don't know anything about the distances involved, except that Earth bases are "years" away at impulse, which either suggests a gigantic Dominion of Earth or a rather proximal "rim".
Nobody really travels across the galaxy in TOS or TNG, except for uncrewed probes. We know starships are fast across short distances, but slow across long ones - a reasonable conceit. Running full throttle for extended periods of time will court disaster, but robotic probes can afford that...
As for trips performed during a commercial break, those don't give useful travel time estimates: days or weeks could well have passed. The chase from a UFP outer colony to Earth in "Best of Both Worlds" took a week despite featuring minimal screen time; there's no reason why the unseen chase in ST:FC should have been any shorter.
Timo Saloniemi
Regarding galactic travel, we can rather easily dismiss the two core trips by saying that the ship only went in that direction but did not travel very far. In ST5:TFF, none of the heroes believed a trip to the center was possible, which sort of rules out the TAS episode having featured such a trip. But Sha Ka Ree could lie just behind the Great Barrier, while the peek at Shapley Center could have been obtained from a considerable distance in "Magicks of Megas-Tu".
That leaves the multiple trips to the rim, but that's a fictional rim, defined by a fictional energy barrier. We don't know anything about the distances involved, except that Earth bases are "years" away at impulse, which either suggests a gigantic Dominion of Earth or a rather proximal "rim".
Nobody really travels across the galaxy in TOS or TNG, except for uncrewed probes. We know starships are fast across short distances, but slow across long ones - a reasonable conceit. Running full throttle for extended periods of time will court disaster, but robotic probes can afford that...
As for trips performed during a commercial break, those don't give useful travel time estimates: days or weeks could well have passed. The chase from a UFP outer colony to Earth in "Best of Both Worlds" took a week despite featuring minimal screen time; there's no reason why the unseen chase in ST:FC should have been any shorter.
Timo Saloniemi
In the TNG technical manual it's established to be something like n^3.3. By Voyager's 1000 ly/year rule of thumb that would suggest warp 8. But you also have to take into account Voyager's constant stops.
One way you could get more than just four quadrants is the original Federation with half a dozen members was divided into four, when the Federation started to grow, instead of enlarging the existing quads, they started adding new "quadrants."I believe they had 38 quadrants.
Which is of course impossible, as quadrant means "a quarter" but they confused the word with "sector".
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Dividing two-dimensional planes into quadrants is the obvious and historical way to go - the larger unit is split two ways to preserve the square shape. Three-dimensional space of course ought to be divided into octants, splitting three ways, but humans often are traditionalists and the space explorers of Earth in Star Trek would appear to come from a military organization that's really big on tradition. So we probably would get "quadrants" in the circumstances, with the third split denoted by "upper left" vs. "lower left" or somesuch.
FWIW, dialogue doesn't use "upper" AFAIK, but we do hear "southern" used in "Let That Be Your Last And Best Hope For A Title Too Long To Be Outdone Even By The Second Spinoff Show". And maps onscreen would suggest that the sector and quadrant grid is oriented alongside the galactic plane (perhaps even centered on Earth, as it lies fairly close to what is classically perceived as the centerplane as defined by the rotation and core location of the Milky Way). So "north" and "south" probably stand for up and down as relates to the galactic plane. (In current astronomy, north and south are often used in connection with the plane of Earth's rotation or the plane of ecliptic, meaning south is roughly towards the center of the Milky Way, but that's unlikely to hold for long.)
Timo Saloniemi
FWIW, dialogue doesn't use "upper" AFAIK, but we do hear "southern" used in "Let That Be Your Last And Best Hope For A Title Too Long To Be Outdone Even By The Second Spinoff Show". And maps onscreen would suggest that the sector and quadrant grid is oriented alongside the galactic plane (perhaps even centered on Earth, as it lies fairly close to what is classically perceived as the centerplane as defined by the rotation and core location of the Milky Way). So "north" and "south" probably stand for up and down as relates to the galactic plane. (In current astronomy, north and south are often used in connection with the plane of Earth's rotation or the plane of ecliptic, meaning south is roughly towards the center of the Milky Way, but that's unlikely to hold for long.)
Timo Saloniemi
Seven could have had sufficient knowlede to build a transwarp drive but on Voyager was working with the equivalent of stone knives and bearskins.
Kim and Torres built a transwarp engine before Seven came aboard, but discovered it had a tendency to turn people into horny salamanders.
That our stranded heroes managed to perform such groundbreaking research and engineering might suggest that high warp is relatively easily achieved - but generally avoided due to its frequently unpredictable and invariably negative effects. There might exist a dozen tricks by which Kirk-era Starfleet could send ships or other objects careening at warp fifty-eight, and a couple of tricks for warp fifty thousand, but none useful in practice. Except perhaps for uncrewed probes.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Just scrap the "Warp 10 limit" idea. It never made the slightest bit of logical sense, and seems to have originated as just an odd preference for keeping the Warp factors in the single digits. Instead they just tacked on more and more decimal places to indicate increasing speed. (Warp 9.3, Warp 9.975, etc)
In practice, transwarp and warp seemed like two different kinds of FTL. It's not a matter of one being faster than the other, and transwarp is never depicted as exceeding or even reaching Warp 10, if by "Warp 10" we mean such absurdities as infinity or being everywhere in the Universe simultaneously, etc. When the Borg are traveling at transwarp they are obviously not exceeding infinite speed. There is no way to exceed that or any reason to. The whole idea is nonsense.
In practice, transwarp and warp seemed like two different kinds of FTL. It's not a matter of one being faster than the other, and transwarp is never depicted as exceeding or even reaching Warp 10, if by "Warp 10" we mean such absurdities as infinity or being everywhere in the Universe simultaneously, etc. When the Borg are traveling at transwarp they are obviously not exceeding infinite speed. There is no way to exceed that or any reason to. The whole idea is nonsense.
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Not something I said.One way you could get more than just four quadrants is the original Federation with half a dozen members was divided into four, when the Federation started to grow, instead of enlarging the existing quads, they started adding new "quadrants."I believe they had 38 quadrants.
Which is of course impossible, as quadrant means "a quarter" but they confused the word with "sector".
But it was also completely reversible. Even if they couldn't outfit Voyager itself with that drive, they just needed to start shipping people back to Earth on that shuttlecraft, and then unsalamander them when they got there. Series over.
I would assume the new Transwarp would become speeds over Warp 10 in new (easier to manage) alignment of warp travel seen in "All Good Things..."
While technically they still aren't going faster than the "Infinity Warp 10" they are going effectively faster than any reasonable Warp 9.99-whatever.
I mean, if starships start to travel between galaxies within people's lifetimes, or even as a regular repositioning move for long term missions, they'll need a new scale rather than 'setting course for Galaxy M31, engage at Warp 9.999995'. Warp 43 sounds better anyway.
While technically they still aren't going faster than the "Infinity Warp 10" they are going effectively faster than any reasonable Warp 9.99-whatever.
I mean, if starships start to travel between galaxies within people's lifetimes, or even as a regular repositioning move for long term missions, they'll need a new scale rather than 'setting course for Galaxy M31, engage at Warp 9.999995'. Warp 43 sounds better anyway.
They never figured out how to control where you reappeared, thus it was useless.
Unless of course you stayed just below warp 10, and thus could make it home in a day unsalamandered.
Interesting, reminds me of Vernor Vinge's concept of the "Zones of Thought".
Beyond turning into the Geico gecko, I found the most ludicrous thing about Threshold to be the idea that Tom Paris and his shuttlecraft occupied every place in the universe simultaneously and then downloaded all those new star charts into Voyager's database as if it were nothing more than a 6-part BBC mini-series in 720p.
As a complete non-sequitur, I'm re-warching Enterprise' Rajiin right now and it seems like such the ripoff of Firefly's Our Mrs. Reynolds. Just sayin.
As a complete non-sequitur, I'm re-warching Enterprise' Rajiin right now and it seems like such the ripoff of Firefly's Our Mrs. Reynolds. Just sayin.
What do you mean? That it shouldn't have been possible to occupy (nearly) every part of the universe (nearly) simultaneously, or that it shouldn't have been possible to run the recording devices in their normal fashion during the process?
I don't see why the latter part shouldn't work. The sensors and recorders don't need to know the shuttle is performing miracles. They just do what they are designed to do, apparently taking pictures of their surroundings and recording the results while also cross-comparing to merge the starscapes into parts of a 3D starmap. They will get a lot of input, yes, but the excess will be filtered by the technical limitations of the sensors, and only then will the processors start to feel the strain, and then the memory banks will fill, and the system will quit. Which is what they say did happen. So they end up with some additions to their star charts, lots of random "floating" snapshots they cannot really place on any map, and that's that. No "map of the universe" was claimed to have been collected.
Timo Saloniemi
Makes me wonder if the Excelsior Transwarp engine test failure (which we never saw on screen) resulted in the entire crew becoming salamanders.
Not something I said.One way you could get more than just four quadrants is the original Federation with half a dozen members was divided into four, when the Federation started to grow, instead of enlarging the existing quads, they started adding new "quadrants."I believe they had 38 quadrants.
Which is of course impossible, as quadrant means "a quarter" but they confused the word with "sector".
I said that, Nerys Myk replied to me, unfortunately for him.
Post quotes are easy to mix up, though.
I don't think many people would really like to be turned into salamanders to begin with. It could be even worse for non-Human crewmembers (given that it wouldn't be fatal for them to begin with, who knows what they could be transformed into).
Yeah, that form of transwarp--sorry, salamander drive--was pretty lame. The Borg method of utilizing transwarp conduits was better, IMO, but I think it had some drawbacks too (at least for Federation starships), IIRC.
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