Taking ONLY TOS and TNG into account, what is the fastest the original Enterprise could go?
- Thread starter Commander Kielbasa
- Start date
Well yes, but where's the fun in that, and how does it progress the conversation?
I find the great thing about trek is the internal consistency (when it's there), and trying to come up with explanations when it's not. How can we explain how a row boat can get from DS9 to Cardassia in 15 seconds, but the Enterprise takes 3 weeks to go 2 light years, etc.
I would argue that the warp speed is influenced by the surrounding energies of local space. Gravity, for instance. This would explain how the ships in a solar system travel at warp way more slowly than they do in deep space. In the influence of greater gravity, an engine has to work much harder to provide the same propulsion level. In this model, the warp factor that the captain orders is really a measurement of the power output of the engines, not the velocity they produce. The crews simply already know this and understand that warp two in a system is much slower than warp two through deep space. This would be part of the training that crews get to begin with. The idea that Warp factor=speed may well be a common misconception that people without training just assume.
--Alex
--Alex
Further possible nuances:
1) Ships may have designed top speed, but in practice it's purely up to the skipper's stiffness of upper lip. Kirk's ship could take warp 14.1 without exploding yet, even though Scotty thought exceeding warp 8 would mean fiery death.
These two figures need not be in contradiction: the odds of said fiery death could be intolerable from warp 8.1 onwards, but our heroes braved the odds and lived to tell the story. (A dozen other sets of heroes might not have, hence we never hear their story.)
2) The longer the trip, the slower the speed. As per above, warp is a weapon, aimed at the heroes themselves. If you use high warp for a long time, you die of it. But if you use high warp for X hours and then pull over for rest and repairs, and then do X hours again, you have better odds of living than if you did 2X and then took a rest.
It's just that for a trip across the galaxy, the pit stops accumulate to reduce the effective speed to a fraction of the speed actually used between the pit stops. And it grows the worse, the higher speed you use between the pit stops, because the engines suffer more. So a skipper can decide between three non-suicidal approaches: "At maximum speed" = many severe and long pit stops, "At fairly high speed" = many but shorter pit stops, and "At safe cruising speed" = fewer pit stops.
And for a short distance, the first one is fastest; for a medium distance, it's anybody's guess, depending on the exact value of that distance; and for a trip across the galaxy, it's established by VOY and TNG alike that the last one is the fastest. So Janeway dropped the "Even at maximum speed" option in her pilot episode speech already, and proceeded with the third alternative, giving the quoted average resultant speed of warp 6.2.
The bottom line: what we saw in TOS (and perhaps TNG) does not tell us how fast Kirk's old ship could go. It only tells how fast she did go, and gives us a pretty good idea of how fast it was sensible for her to go.
Timo Saloniemi
1) Ships may have designed top speed, but in practice it's purely up to the skipper's stiffness of upper lip. Kirk's ship could take warp 14.1 without exploding yet, even though Scotty thought exceeding warp 8 would mean fiery death.
These two figures need not be in contradiction: the odds of said fiery death could be intolerable from warp 8.1 onwards, but our heroes braved the odds and lived to tell the story. (A dozen other sets of heroes might not have, hence we never hear their story.)
2) The longer the trip, the slower the speed. As per above, warp is a weapon, aimed at the heroes themselves. If you use high warp for a long time, you die of it. But if you use high warp for X hours and then pull over for rest and repairs, and then do X hours again, you have better odds of living than if you did 2X and then took a rest.
It's just that for a trip across the galaxy, the pit stops accumulate to reduce the effective speed to a fraction of the speed actually used between the pit stops. And it grows the worse, the higher speed you use between the pit stops, because the engines suffer more. So a skipper can decide between three non-suicidal approaches: "At maximum speed" = many severe and long pit stops, "At fairly high speed" = many but shorter pit stops, and "At safe cruising speed" = fewer pit stops.
And for a short distance, the first one is fastest; for a medium distance, it's anybody's guess, depending on the exact value of that distance; and for a trip across the galaxy, it's established by VOY and TNG alike that the last one is the fastest. So Janeway dropped the "Even at maximum speed" option in her pilot episode speech already, and proceeded with the third alternative, giving the quoted average resultant speed of warp 6.2.
The bottom line: what we saw in TOS (and perhaps TNG) does not tell us how fast Kirk's old ship could go. It only tells how fast she did go, and gives us a pretty good idea of how fast it was sensible for her to go.
Timo Saloniemi
FWIW, I don't belive "warp 14.1" was ever stated on-screen. I think it's a deleted line from the script of "That Which Survives". In the episode, the highest speed quoted is warp 8.4.
I can't check the episode, but the high water mark in this transcript is "Warp fourteen point one" with various other values above "warp eight." It's a transcript, so I'd have to trust that it was in the aired version.
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/69.htm
Wow, in that case I stand corrected. I've seen that episode several times, no clue how I've missed it.
Turn in your fan card.Wow, in that case I stand corrected. I've seen that episode several times, no clue how I've missed it.
As to the OP, I think the Traveller sent the Enterprise to galaxy M33 and beyond by boosting the warp engines with love and trust or something. That makes them super fast.
Wow, in that case I stand corrected. I've seen that episode several times, no clue how I've missed it.
Was that several times with syndication cuts or without?
Gathered from the 'Justice' planet.
It's all due to Dark Matter. The less there is, the faster you can go. And vice versa. Some regions of space have a lot of Dark Matter; some regions have none. The resistance caused is variable. Like driving thru snow.
Or maybe it's metichlorians.
Or maybe it's metichlorians.
Cloaked Stargates sprinkled on spacelanes as a prank, is my guess.
The thing is, warp speed cannot vary from place to place in either a predictable or an unpredictable manner too much. If it did the former, then nobody would bother to command "Warp 7, now!" or "Maintain warp 12.2", and everybody would always be commanding "Look for the nearest freeway ramp!" and "How long till we hit the high speed lane?". If it did the latter, there would be no such thing as an ETA.
Rare shortcuts and anomalies are fine. Warp always being slower near (certain types of) stars than far away from them is fine. But if the significant variable in travel is route rather than set speed, then the dialogue should reflect that, and the skippers should be in constant dialogue with their navigators rather than in sporadic discussion with their helmsmen.
Timo Saloniemi
The thing is, warp speed cannot vary from place to place in either a predictable or an unpredictable manner too much. If it did the former, then nobody would bother to command "Warp 7, now!" or "Maintain warp 12.2", and everybody would always be commanding "Look for the nearest freeway ramp!" and "How long till we hit the high speed lane?". If it did the latter, there would be no such thing as an ETA.
Rare shortcuts and anomalies are fine. Warp always being slower near (certain types of) stars than far away from them is fine. But if the significant variable in travel is route rather than set speed, then the dialogue should reflect that, and the skippers should be in constant dialogue with their navigators rather than in sporadic discussion with their helmsmen.
Timo Saloniemi
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