Starship design history in light of Discovery

[STR]

The warp scale is logarithmic. Warp 5 is a major increase above warp 4. In the unofficial TOS-era warp scale, it's about twice as fast. And just because the Franklin was the first ship to reach warp 4, that doesn't mean it was able to do so repeatedly or regularly. As a prototype, it may not have been in steady use. It may have needed to be refitted afterward to become usable as a Federation Starfleet ship as seen in Beyond.

Citation required. The warp scale is, deliberately, notoriously vague (speed of the plot). However, said plot has never depicted much of a difference between Warp 4 and Warp 4.5 (the top speed of NX-01 at launch). Even the non-canon tech manuals and writer's guides (regardless of TOS or TNG) place the difference in the area of 50%. Which sounds like a lot until you realize that, at either scale, Warp 4 is 800-1,000% faster than Warp 2. Warp 2 was roughly the top speed of the pre-NX-01 starships.

A warp 4 ship could reach Terra Nova (which as the first human colony would be *the* first target of any deep space expedition) in <4 months (assuming 20ly distance). Enterprise, at 4.5, would get there only 30 days earlier. If a conjectural Franklin can only average 3.5, then it's still <6 months.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Citation required. The warp scale is, deliberately, notoriously vague (speed of the plot). However, said plot has never depicted much of a difference between Warp 4 and Warp 4.5 (the top speed of NX-01 at launch). Even the non-canon tech manuals and writer's guides (regardless of TOS or TNG) place the difference in the area of 50%. Which sounds like a lot until you realize that, at either scale, Warp 4 is 800-1,000% faster than Warp 2. Warp 2 was roughly the top speed of the pre-NX-01 starships.

TOS Writers/Directors Guide says:

"Hyper-light speeds or space warp speeds (the latter is the terminology we prefer) are measured in WARP FACTORS. Warp factor one is the speed of light -- 186,000 miles per second (or somewhat over six hundred million miles per hour.) Note: warp factors two, three and four and so on are based upon a geometrical formula of light velocity. Warp factor two is actually eight times the speed of light; warp factor three is twenty-four times the speed of light; warp factor four is sixty-four times the speed of light, and so on.

Maximum safe speed is warp six. At warp eight the vessel begins to show considerable strain. We have established in preceding episodes that warp seven or eight are used only in emergencies, in hot pursuit and so on, and can be highly dangerous."

"First Flight" (ENT):

Of course it is always speed of plot, in reality. So there are always inconsistencies, sometimes major ones. But it's "supposed" to be the warp factor cubed times the speed of light. Warp 4 would be 64c, Warp 4.5 would be a little over 91c, and Warp 5 would be 125c. Big difference.

I would note that Franklin was the "first Earth ship capable of Warp Four" but that doesn't actually tell us when she first achieved that speed. Maybe despite being built before Enterprise, her engine was only found to be capable of that speed later. Bar one reference in "Fight Or Flight" (ENT) that should probably be interpreted as euphemistic rather than literal in context (Archer was planning out their route with T'Pol using the Vulcan star charts in the scene) the NX-01 never actually reached Warp Five until "Fallen Hero" (ENT), where Tucker makes much ado about it only being a "Warp Five engine...on paper" and is only able to gradually coax her up to that speed under intense and protracted dramatic duress.

As far as ENT is concerned, "breaking the barrier" means exceeding rather than simply reaching the upper limit. The Warp 2 barrier was broken when Robinson achieved Warp 2.1 in the NX-Alpha in 2143, but Starfleet already had "Warp 2 ships" in service by 2141, such as the Neptune-class surveyors, according to Tucker in "Singularity" (ENT). The E.C.S. Fortunate from "Fortunate Son" (ENT) topped out at Warp 1.8, but her captain was looking forward to receiving a "Warp Three engine" as his next step up. So the Franklin being the first ship capable of Warp Four doesn't even necessarily mean she was the first ship to break the Warp Four barrier at all, nor that she could ever manage any such speed more than momentarily. The devil is in the details.

It might not even mean she was built with a Warp Four engine. Maybe she technically had a Warp Three engine that was briefly souped-up and boosted extraordinarily somehow in unusual circumstances; maybe she had a failed Warp Five engine test article that could nevertheless still manage speeds well below that, or whatever we choose to imagine.

-MMoM

 

[STR]

TOS Writers/Directors Guide says:

"Hyper-light speeds or space warp speeds (the latter is the terminology we prefer) are measured in WARP FACTORS. Warp factor one is the speed of light -- 186,000 miles per second (or somewhat over six hundred million miles per hour.) Note: warp factors two, three and four and so on are based upon a geometrical formula of light velocity. Warp factor two is actually eight times the speed of light; warp factor three is twenty-four times the speed of light; warp factor four is sixty-four times the speed of light, and so on.

1) Writer's guides are not canon.
2) I already covered those anyway, and even did you the favor of doing all of the math for you. I noticed you clipped that part out entirely. Poor form on your part. You can't claim "EXPONENTIAL SPEEDS!" and then ignore the fact it's still only the difference between a 90 and 120 day trip of 20LY.

 

[Brainsucker]

Well, yeah, theoretically CBS owns all the concepts from the movies, but Paramount still has a copyright on the films themselves and a claim to their original elements. So the makers of DSC might have to pay residuals or something if they used characters or plot points from the Kelvin films. I'm not sure if that would apply to design elements like ship classes, though.

That means Kirk, Spock, etc are belong to CBS, but if CBS want to put them on TV, they have to consult and pay to Paramount or Bad Robot?(because of the current Bad Robot Star Trek 2009 / Kelvin Era Franchise?)

For the ship design, we already know when somebody posted in here that Constitution Class will appear at the end of season 2. But they won't be the same as the Kelvin Era design. Because those design belong to Paramount or maybe even Bad Robot, we can assume that there is an intellectual property that CBS can't cross.

 

[DaveyNY]

You've got it backwards, CBS OWNS IT ALL.
Paramount pays CBS a Licensing Fee to make the movies.
Paramount has to renegotiate the contract every time they want to make a new Trek movie.
When they were negotiating for "Beyond", part of the contract stated that CBS couldn't release a new Trek TV Show until SIX Months after the release date of that movie.
The reason for this was because DISCOVERY was already in the pipeline to be made, and Paramount wanted to avoid any competition.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

1) Writer's guides are not canon.
2) I already covered those anyway, and even did you the favor of doing all of the math for you. I noticed you clipped that part out entirely. Poor form on your part. You can't claim "EXPONENTIAL SPEEDS!" and then ignore the fact it's still only the difference between a 90 and 120 day trip of 20LY.

Does that warp scale from "First Flight" not match up to the TOS writer's guide scale? I was led to believe it did by Memory Alpha, though that is certainly not always accurate. I am admittedly and ashamedly very poor at maths, probably more so than even the writers were, more often than not, so I actually have no problem ignoring anything on that score. It's easy; I just let my eyes glaze over as they naturally do! And isn't the math ultimately irrelevant if it inevitably all goes right out the window the moment the plot requires it, as you seem to agree that it does as a matter of course? It's really not an argument I'm equipped for or interested in continuing, personally. I just think of it all as made up nonsense that doesn't really matter. You asked for citations, and included writers' guides in your parameters; I merely provided them to save @Christopher the trouble.

If "Terra Nova" is inconsistent, maybe let's work on rationalizing that instead. No one discusses warp speeds at all in the episode. Maybe there was some other intervening factor or phenomenon that made it difficult to reach, which wouldn't have affected Vulcan ships with their different drives, but did Earth vessels below a certain speed threshold? Paging @Timo...

If the Franklin was at this time a MACO ship as suggested by Dylan Highsmith, she might not have been allowed to leave the Solar system until later. The MACOs were said to have had no off-world combat experience outside of simulations when they came aboard Enterprise, per "Harbinger" (ENT). The Vulcans were iffy enough about letting our already-suspiciously-militaristic "ships of exploration" out of our corner to peek and poke around. They certainly wouldn't want our genuine military out there. The last of the four Man-Kzin wars, fought circa 2070 or so per "The Slaver Weapon" (TAS), resulted in the Kzinti being forbidden all weapons except "police" vessels by the Treaty of Sirius. Might that peace have been brokered, and enforced up to a point, by the Vulcans and their vastly superior forces, with Earth too being denied an overtly militant presence under its terms, as well? Could this be why the original Starfleet was nominally only a force of exploration initially, set up under the aegis of the civilian United Earth Space Probe Agency, with weapons ostensibly only for self-defense? The Vulcans agreed to be our protectors/guardians/nannies to further their agenda of keeping us contained, because they knew we were inclined to conflict, which could pose them problems. Makes sense to me. T'Pol says as much in "Broken Bow" (ENT):

T'POL: You humans claim to be enlightened, yet you still consume the flesh of animals.
TUCKER: Grandma taught me never to judge a species by their eating habits.
ARCHER: Enlightened may be too strong a word, but if you'd been on Earth fifty years ago, I think you'd be impressed by what we've gotten done.
T'POL: You have yet to embrace either patience or logic. You remain impulsive carnivores.
TUCKER: Yeah? How about war, disease, hunger? Pretty much wiped 'em out in less than two generations. I wouldn't call that small potatoes.
T'POL: It remains to be seen whether humanity will revert to its baser instincts.

Why do you not address the point that Franklin being "the first Earth ship capable of Warp Four" doesn't have to mean she was even operating at all, let alone at anything approaching such a speed, at the time? If she momentarily hit Warp Four in an engine trial as a fluke that couldn't be duplicated, and then broke down, only later to be donated to the MACOs to play around with, or brought out of mothballs and pressed into service for the Romulan Wars, or some similar such scenario like that, the terms of Scotty's comment in Beyond would still be satisfied. I keep throwing out ideas here, but you just want to argue about warp scales that you yourself acknowledge to be more or less wholly mutable, plot-wise.

-MMoM

 

[Ithekro]

If Franklin is being used for testing exclusively until Enterprise is finished, than she wouldn't be send too far outside of know routes and relatively short distances while testing her warp drives. Making Warp Four and being able to sustain it for a prolong period of time could be two separate things that early on. The closest solar system to Sol is Proxima Centauri, and it take several weeks at warp four to reach that system. Such a trip would be an endurance test. It is possible that Franklin could not hold Warp 4 for long, and instead could hold say Warp 3.6. It take a little over a month to reach Proxima Centauri at that speed, but it be better than anything else in the fleet until Enterprise is commissioned. Enterprise at her Warp 4.5 cruising speed can make it their in less than three weeks. Their trip to the Klingon Homeworld and out again pretty much proved that Enterprise was fine and ready for duty. Franklin may or may not have been that ready given her much smaller size.

Franklin could have finished testing and been handed over to the MACOs for evaluation and familiarization purposes. She's a bit small and has only cargo transporters, and seems to not have the proper equipment to land....so she'd not be much good for any sort of planetary assault mission without her being used as a transport that carried some sort of large dropship with her to the target. She might have been ideal for pirate interception and raiding pirate bases instead of the NX-class, which was probably better suited for exploration and space combat once fully armed.

We do know roughly how fast Enterprise can go in terms of speed of light at her higher warp speeds due to some dialog about getting to Neptune and later how far away the ship was from Earth after a certain number of days in space.

 

[Christopher]

Citation required.

1) Writer's guides are not canon.

Are you kidding me here? We're not debating a matter of scientific or historical fact. It's just a story. The whole thing is made up. So whether it fits or not is purely a matter of whether you want it to fit. You don't want it to fit, so you're making up excuses for it not to fit. But people who do want it to fit can make up rationalizations that allow it to fit. Because that's how fiction works.

I'm not pretending to be making an argument of fact, because we're talking about an imaginary work. I'm just offering an example of an argument that could be used to reconcile the Franklin with existing Trek history if one wanted to do so. It's absurd to argue about whether the premise behind that argument is "real," because none of this is real. All of this is an exercise in imagination. If you're willing to make it fit, you can use your imagination and concoct a rationalization that justifies it. Heck, that's what I do for a living. In my 13 or 14 years writing Trek tie-ins for Pocket Books, I've reconciled plenty of inconsistencies equal to or greater than those pertaining to the Franklin.

 

[XCV330]

MACO's may not have had experience outside the solar system but clearly the solar system is patroleld by multiple starfleet ships (warp deltas, intrepid types, the Sarajevo). Also if taking TAS as cannon, at least the first Kzin war predates Enterprise, and MACOS might have been involved in the closer to home.

 

[shakham]

I'm fine with the Discovery design as far as canon/timeline/class, but don't really see the point of the partially spinning disc. Yeah yeah...it's related to the spore drive, but I didn't think they built the ship with the spore drive in mind.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Christopher]

Also if taking TAS as cannon, at least the first Kzin war predates Enterprise, and MACOS might have been involved in the closer to home.

Even if an overall show is canon, individual episodes or ideas within it can be disregarded by later canon. For instance, "The Alternative Factor"'s portrayal of antimatter has been ignored and contradicted by the rest of Trek, as has "Threshold"'s portrayal of transwarp drive. The idea that TAS as a whole is non-canonical is one that should've died two decades ago; "Unification" was making allusions to "Yesteryear" not long after the issuing of the Roddenberry memo that supposedly decanonized TAS, so that memo was never actually binding on anyone except the creators of tie-in novels and comics. But the backstory in "The Slaver Weapon" in particular is pretty much impossible to reconcile with Trek history as TNG and ENT established it. Four human-Kzin wars before 2070? Impossible, given that humans' first open contact with aliens was in 2063. That particular episode has been disregarded by later canon, just as "The Magicks of Megas-tu"'s portrayal of the ease of travel to the center of the galaxy (and ST V's too) was disregarded by TNG, DS9, and VGR. But other elements from TAS have been referenced in later canon, like much from "Yesteryear," the name Klothos for Kor's ship, etc. A canon is a collective body of work treated as a whole, but any long-running canon will retcon or ignore certain individual bits of its past.

 

[XCV330]

I'm fine with the Discovery design as far as canon/timeline/class, but don't really see the point of the partially spinning disc. Yeah yeah...it's related to the spore drive, but I didn't think they built the ship with the spore drive in mind.

They apparently did. It's a brand new ship kept off the front lines while they worked on the drive.The're an entire engineering wing dedicated to the drive, as well as a prototaxis forest (copse? i dont know what you'd call it) in a large hold in the secondary hull.

As far as the spinning stuff, why to Bussards spin? Why do some nacelles have glowing blue things and some dont? Why do some deflectors glow and others look like they're ready to get free HBO in the 80s?

 

[XCV330]

Four human-Kzin wars before 2070? Impossible, given that humans' first open contact with aliens was in 2063. That particular episode has been disregarded by later canon, just as "The Magicks of Megas-tu"'s portrayal of the ease of travel to the center of the galaxy (and ST V's too) was disregarded by TNG, DS9, and VGR. But other elements from TAS have been referenced in later canon, like much from "Yesteryear," the name Klothos for Kor's ship, etc. A canon is a collective body of work treated as a whole, but any long-running canon will retcon or ignore certain individual bits of its past.

Even with the timeline retcons, its still possible in the current understanding of Trek canon that United Earth fought the Kzin sometime between First Contact and the launch of NX-01. Since we never got the Killkenny Cats episode that just is speculation, and barring a REALLY early prequel I doubt there will ever be anything on it.

Still.. if someone wanted to write that novel... hint.. hint.. hint.. please.

 

[Christopher]

Even with the timeline retcons, its still possible in the current understanding of Trek canon that United Earth fought the Kzin sometime between First Contact and the launch of NX-01.

Given that humanity was supposed to have had extremely limited contact with aliens before the launch of NX-01, that's extremely unlikely. After all, the Vulcan High Command policed the space around Earth and protected Earth as a client state. That's probably the reason we weren't conquered by the Klingons if they're just four days' travel away. So they wouldn't have let the Kzinti get anywhere near us.

Still.. if someone wanted to write that novel... hint.. hint.. hint.. please.

There have been plenty of novels and novellas written about the Man-Kzin Wars... in the Known Space universe, where they belong. The Kzinti and the Slavers are Known Space elements that Niven simply loaned to TAS, and I think that if you want to see more stories about them, the only authentic way to do that is to read Niven's books, or the books he allowed other authors to write in his universe. Heck, "The Slaver Weapon" doesn't even really feel like a Star Trek episode. It's such a faithful adaptation of "The Soft Weapon" that it's really more of a Known Space episode acted out by three Trek characters.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

MACO's may not have had experience outside the solar system but clearly the solar system is patroleld by multiple starfleet ships (warp deltas, intrepid types, the Sarajevo). Also if taking TAS as cannon, at least the first Kzin war predates Enterprise, and MACOS might have been involved in the closer to home.

Well, whether those ships were proactively "patrolling" or not, initially, is up for debate. We never see them until "The Expanse" (ENT), after Starfleet has been explicitly recalling ships to Earth. And they don't arrive there until after the NX-01 does. It was the last of the Kzinti "wars"—and we don't know anything about their size/extent/location; we obviously can't rely on Niven's other works to reveal anything about them, as their Trek universe counterparts must be necessarily quite different—that was fought "two hundred years" (being a round figure, could be massaged a bit) prior to "The Slaver Weapon" (TAS), so early 2070s. The first should probably post-date the launch of Friendship One in 2067, because that happened when we still "had no idea what was out there" in terms of threat species, per her eponymous VGR episode. Whatever happened with the Kzinti happened in a brief period beginning several years after First Contact, and then was well over by the time of ENT. The cool thing there is that it's long enough ago that none of MACOs are old enough to have fought in any of them.

But the backstory in "The Slaver Weapon" in particular is pretty much impossible to reconcile with Trek history as TNG and ENT established it. Four human-Kzin wars before 2070? Impossible, given that humans' first open contact with aliens was in 2063.

Well, now who "doesn't want to make it fit"? What's "impossible" about it? Because the conflicts are nominally called "wars" doesn't mean they need be any sort of large-scale event. They could be mere raids or skirmishes on the outskirts that were easily quashed by the Vulcans before they got out of hand, but which the Kzinti nevertherless glorify, as they would even in defeat, and which the humans seldom mention because we like to think of ourselves as having moved beyond that sort of thing, and because it's a reminder of how dependent on the Vulcans' protection we are/were. That one of the first things that happened to us after we escaped horrific war on Earth by hopping into space is we got into another war out there doesn't seem odd, and would reinforce the Vulcans' obvous skepticism about our readiness to join the interstellar community, as expressed on ENT. Fits to me.

-MMoM

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

I'm fine with the Discovery design as far as canon/timeline/class, but don't really see the point of the partially spinning disc. Yeah yeah...it's related to the spore drive, but I didn't think they built the ship with the spore drive in mind.

They apparently did. It's a brand new ship kept off the front lines while they worked on the drive.The're an entire engineering wing dedicated to the drive, as well as a prototaxis forest (copse? i dont know what you'd call it) in a large hold in the secondary hull.

My personal thinking at the moment is that she is "brand new" and "designed around" the spore drive, as stated, in much the same sense that the NCC-1701 in The Motion Picture was "an almost totally new Enterprise" that had been "redesigned" around a new engine paradigm as well. I like to think that the teaser version of the ship was the original configuration of the Crossfield class, from which only Glenn and Discovery were refitted, thus explaining why there are only two of them, but neither is the class ship.

There have been plenty of novels and novellas written about the Man-Kzin Wars... in the Known Space universe, where they belong. The Kzinti and the Slavers are Known Space elements that Niven simply loaned to TAS, and I think that if you want to see more stories about them, the only authentic way to do that is to read Niven's books, or the books he allowed other authors to write in his universe.

As I said, that's all going to be quite different from the Trek universe version of those events, both by necessity and by design. We would have found out more about how it all went here in the fifth season of ENT, in a planned episode called "Kilkenny Cats" written by Jimmy Diggs, who has long been a proponent of them returning to Star Trek, and has Niven's own personal support in that. Diggs and others have put a lot of thought into how to fit the Kzinti in with Trek history, and there's nothing unworkable about it. Something more with those fussy felines may yet happen, someday, even if it seems increasingly less likely the longer it goes without happening.

-MMoM

 

[XCV330]

Given that humanity was supposed to have had extremely limited contact with aliens before the launch of NX-01, that's extremely unlikely. After all, the Vulcan High Command policed the space around Earth and protected Earth as a client state. That's probably the reason we weren't conquered by the Klingons if they're just four days' travel away. So they wouldn't have let the Kzinti get anywhere near us.

I never got the feeling Vulcans were going that far with Earth. Clearly they had a lot of influence on United Earth but it seemed more like they used aid/advancement as strings to keep Earth in line. I don't think they were policing the borders, or the known Earth colonies. If so, why didn't they just send over a Vulcan ship to check on Nova Terra. Would have taken them what, a month? Didn't they notice Valiant going WAY off course if it was a crewed ship of a client state? I just think they were there and interested enough to maintain an embassy but I don't think they were outright running it as a de-facto client state.

Heck, "The Slaver Weapon" doesn't even really feel like a Star Trek episode. It's such a faithful adaptation of "The Soft Weapon" that it's really more of a Known Space episode acted out by three Trek characters.

I just figure the Kzin in Trek are seperate from the Known Space Kzin. They had the same writer but it's two different fictional universes, even though obviously that was an odd choice on Niven's part. But it seemed like Manny Coto thought a Kzin storyline might have been doable.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

I never got the feeling Vulcans were going that far with Earth. Clearly they had a lot of influence on United Earth but it seemed more like they used aid/advancement as strings to keep Earth in line. I don't think they were policing the borders, or the known Earth colonies.

I rather like that idea myself, actually, because it plausibly explains why our military wouldn't have had more of an active presence in space before ENT, and why Starfleet would be—again, at least officially/nominally/ostensibly—not initially conceived as a dedicated military force itself. (A pretended distinction that has clearly been dropped by the time of DSC and TOS, but which is still pined wistfully for by Picard in TNG.)

If so, why didn't they just send over a Vulcan ship to check on Nova Terra.

Per the episode:

T'POL: A Vulcan ship could have made the journey in far less time. Why didn't you ask them?
TUCKER: Asking favors of the Vulcans usually ends up carrying too high a price.

-MMoM

 

[XCV330]

Per the episode:

T'POL: A Vulcan ship could have made the journey in far less time. Why didn't you ask them?
TUCKER: Asking favors of the Vulcans usually ends up carrying too high a price.

-MMoM

My memory is shale! What a load of digger meat.
Still.. they build this gigantic colony ship, a few years after they learn how to build warp engines and most of the world's cities are destroyed and people are reduced to wearing burlap, drinking rotgut and dancing to Oobie Doobie.. they build this ship, has to be equivalent in effort at least to the Apollo Program, it goes, and for decades they don't even ask the Vulcans once about it.

Oh Enterprise First Season, you inviting but generally disappointing marvel, you.