Hofner,
I'm not sure where you're getting your logic but it's wrong.
If you can travel 0.73ly in one hour how far do you travel in two hours? Two times 0.73ly or 1.46ly. Going at 0.73ly per hour, how far can you travel in 24 hours? 24 times 0.73ly which equals 17.52 lightyears.
Whoops! I made a mathematical error. I was dividing by 0.73 instead of multiplying by 0.73
24 LY x 0.73 x 365.25 = 6,399.18c
T'Girl,
I keep coming back to a cruising speed of 216 times the speed of light isn't fast enough. Not for what we're seeing on screen, which is a new adventure "every week." Whether you call it 'chi', or space density, or slow inside a system - fast in interstellar space. Most of us agree that there's variable involved that isn't being mention in the 'canon'.
Warp factor six isn't just 216.
Well, the way I see it, Gene Roddenberry never really clearly explaned the warp-factor system until the 1970's, and for all I know, F.J. Schnaubelt might have done that particular job. They never told anybody what these warp factors meant because they didn't want to be tethered to a given speed.
Basically they traveled at the speed of plot.
However, Gene Roddenberry did write in his "Star Trek is..." writings that the ship at maximum speed could traverse 0.73 LY an hour, but I don't know how publicly available this document was.
If you want to be techinical about it "half speed" refers to the speed of the propulsion plant, not the speed of a ship thru water.
Specifically it an expression of shaft RPM's.
The USS Enterprise doesn't have a "shaft", it's propelled either by fusion exhaust or by spacial distortions which have a propulsive effect. RPM wouldn't be an issue, fuel consumption would be.
Ordering half speed would mean exactly what it sounds like.
Super cruise is a simple contraction of "supersonic cruise".
Technically if an airplane can fly long enough distance wise and endurance wise whether with afterburners or not sometimes they consider it able to cruise super-sonically even if it uses afterburners.
The XB-70 for example was able to fly for thousands of miles for a few hours at high supersonic speeds, however it did require continuous low-afterburner use to do it.
The engines used originally for the aborted SST program
(General Electric GE-4, Pratt & Whitney JTF-17A) were both to use low afterburner for the plane's acceleration and cruise-portions of the flight. They were considered though to be able to cruise at supersonic speed. I should note that ultimately, General Electric
(which won the engine design contract) by the late 1960's, did begin modifying the engine ultimately to the point that they could provide sufficient thrust to achieve supersonic performance without afterburners at all.
Though for the most part, planes that "cruised" on afterburners were considered to have an "extended-dash". Such aircraft included the A3J/A-5/RA-5C Vigilante, the B-58 Hustler, and possibly the A-12/YF-12/SR-71/M-21 even though both the B-58 and SR-71 had ranges of 4,000 nm or greater.
There is also a specific problem with damage to the rear most compressor blades.
You mean like back-pressure? This tends to be a bigger problem with the fan-blades than the compressor blades...
Wingsley,
By that same token, there is no reason to assume that a warp-driven starship would need to "ramp up" after starting at a low speed. If Kirk wanted the Enterprise to return to Cestus III at Warp 6, that's what he would order right from the get-go.
Correct, there would almost certainly be some acceleration time for the ship to go from sub-light to Warp factor 6 though, but that was even shown in the show.
Also, Kirk could've ordered high-warp speed to deliver the needed supplies to New Paris after rescuing "The Galileo Seven" but he instead called for Warp 1.
Also correct
EmperorTiberius,
I dont' think any of the formulas we are given are correct. The ships go much faster then the formulas would allow. If the Federation is 8000 ly across, and if Earth is somewhere in the middle, it would be almost impossible to control far flung regions that are 4000 ly away. Even in Roman Empire, you could go anywhere in the Empire in less than a year thanks to roads. Unless the Feds have some kind of "subspace highways", there is no way they can effectivelly controll the Federation.
Are you talking about the size of the Federation in Star Trek TOS or Star Trek TNG?
You raise an interesting point, however I doubt it's really all that realistic to require all ships to launch and return to Earth at the end of their deployments. It would be far more realistic to have key worlds and bases as being the location of launch and return for various ships.
The United States, for example, does not have just one naval base or one port. We have naval bases all over the world.
Longinus,
In the first movie we see Enterprise accelerating through warp factors. I'm pretty sure this happened in some TOS episodes too, usually in chase scenes.
If I recall correctly it took the USS Enteprise 22 seconds to go from Warp 0.8 to Warp 7 in TMP. In regards of the ship accelerating through the warp factors in the TV Series, I think that was shown.
My conjecture is that it was the Exelsior engines (which were not a failure) allowed skipping the acceleration process, except maybe on the speeds that were on the extreme upper edge of the engine capacity.
Well, I don't recall hearing anything about instantaneous acceleration, but I do recall hearing that the Transwarp engines allowed faster speeds, better engine-field balancing, superior acceleration and efficiency to previous warp-engines.
In TWOK Exelsior's navigator says something like: "Transwarp drive operational, all warp factors available at your command."*
Keep in mind though that could mean that the ship's engines were already fully calibrated and they could safely accelerate to all available warp-factors.
That in itself is a huge achievement as the USS Enterprise in TMP was not fully calibrated for warp flight and when they had an engine imbalance.
Cary L. Brown,
"Best speed" in the suburbs or city is going to be dramatically different from "best speed" on the freeway out in the middle, with minimal traffic on it, isn't it?
Correct. You probably would not want to go full speed in the middle of a star-system. The gravity from the planets might have an adverse effect, producing imbalances and such, but also the warp field could damage or wreck planets.
And it's well-established that starting your car and flooring it to accelerate to top speed in the shortest possible time is both bad for the car and, in large measure, pretty unsafe... and provides for pretty poor operational economy as well.
Well, it puts an excessive strain on the engine and it does consume more fuel than a somewhat more optimal acceleration curve.
So... we also know that there is a "warm-up" time for the reactor system. It can't be started "cold" without either blowing yourself up or time-traveling.
That 30-minute start-up figure was more of a plot device to add tension to the plot than any other reason as the ship was in the process of orbital decay and falling towards a planet that was coming apart at the seams.
ANY system works best when it is "eased up" to speed. There is no reason to assume that the power-generation and space/time-bending warp generators on the ship would react well to sudden "surge loading" any more than any other system does.
Well of course you accelerate more gradually in non combat situations. In combat you gun it because you have more to lose by not gunning it.
What there IS, is evidence that they start off, leaving a planet's orbit or so forth, at relatively low warp factors, even when they're in a hurry. THAT, my friend, there is plenty of evidence for.
Correct for the most part
Cid Highwind,
One would assume that the captain of a starship didn't need to take care of any "warm-up" considerations himself - that's what he has engineers and helmsmen for, after all.
However, a captain should know the capabilities of his ship and should act responsibly with that knowledge.
The captain should be free to demand any "final speed" he sees fit, and it's the job of his team to eventually get to that speed without breaking the ship apart. So, if the final speed of an urgent transport is supposed to be W6, why would he demand W1 first, then W2, then W4... let that be handled by the guys whose job it is to handle that.
As I said, a captain should know the capabilities of his ship and should act responsibly with that knowledge
CuttingEdge100
