Transwarp drive and intergalactic travel

[Deks]

Delta1 said:
They did transwarp straight to Earth in Voyager's "Endgame." Previous attacks transwarped to the edge of Federation space then warped into the Solar system. Make of that what you will.

It could suggest the Borg cubes were not able to open their own TW conduits like smaller ships such as spheres and the likes.
Voyager shortening their trip by 15 years through using a stolen Borg Warp coil is an exception of course.
It's a smaller ship, and if you want to be able to repeat the jumping process by several times and extend the range, you must have numerous coils working in union.

Although a question remains as to why the cubes were not able to open their own TW conduits.
7 of 9 did suggest at one occasion in Season 7 how the temporal stresses on the Borg cubes hull are excessive when they enter a TW corridor (but that could mean the conduit was open remotely or the cube had to warp to a specific point and jump into the corridor) and that they use a specialized field to keep the temporal sync throughout the vessel.

 

[Delta1]

My fantheory is that the endpoints of transwarp conduits have to be prepped before use. The first two cubes to reach Earth weren't really there to assimilate it. Sure, they gave it a good try, but they weren't expected to succeed. They really just flew into the Solar system to do [TECH] allowing a future invasion force to infiltrate via transwarp conduit.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

JoeZhang said:
here's the thing I've never understood about the borg use of transwarp drive - why do they keep taking the long route to earth? Is there a reason they cannot just warp straight to Earth?

Because in previous Borg attacks the Transwarp exit point at Earth didnt exist, the Borg are creating conduits all the time but previously never built one direct to Earth, after the failure of the previous 2 attempts to assimilate Earth the Borg built one direct to the Sol System which given the chance they probably would have used in another attack, but luckily Voyager was able to callapse the Network of conduits before they had the chance.
Before the Earth exit point they more than likely Transwarped as close as possible and warped it the rest of the way.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Wingsley said:
At least Jesco von Puttkammer tried to explain how warp drive worked in Roddenberry & Sackett's "The Making of Star Trek - The Motion Picture".

Dr. von Puttkamer took the welcome liberty of addressing a few of the warp drive's more interesting operational aspects (i.e., invoking quantum field theory to inflate the spacetime "blister" containing the NCC-1701 at warp) for his German-language translation of Gene Roddenberry's ST:TMP novelization. Coincidentally, a virtually identical FTL propulsion system powered the starship Transzendor featured in his 1956 LitSF short story, Zu jung für die Ewigkeit ("Too Young for Eternity").

TGT

 

[FordSVT]

Trekker4747 said:
I've always held the belief that when it was mentioned that the Excelsior was "transwarp" that that program was huge sucsess leading to the recalibration of the Warp Scale to the TNG one, placing Warp 10 as "infinite speed" which just means another recalibration likely came between TNG and the AGT future placing a higher number as "infinite speed."

Me too, it makes sense and doesn't contradict anything. The drive failed because it was sabotaged, not because it didn't work, and SF engineers would have figured that out very quickly. The idea that the application wouldn't have been tested on some kind of warp sled or unmanned test bed before it was installed on the Excelsior is ludicrous. And they wouldn't have abandoned a promising technology. Quite simply, other than the fact that they called it "transwarp", we've got no idea what that means. Ret-conning it to assume they meant the same thing as it means in Voyager, I believe, would be in error.

 

[Timo]

The idea that the application wouldn't have been tested on some kind of warp sled or unmanned test bed before it was installed on the Excelsior is ludicrous.

Then again, full exploration of the transwarp theory might require a test rig as powerful as a full starship. So if you are going to build a full starship to test the theory, you might as well add the insignificant expenses of giving it a few phaser banks and potted plants and talking elevators.

But yeah, I'd think they knew the theory was going to work, by and large, before committing to this prototype ship. Still, she was called "the Great Experiment", implying unknown factors and the potential for failure...

Quite simply, other than the fact that they called it "transwarp", we've got no idea what that means. Ret-conning it to assume they meant the same thing as it means in Voyager, I believe, would be in error.

...Unless we decide that the VOY meaning is, as suggested above, "any technology that improves on current state of the art on warp drives". And that's a reasonably good guess, considering how the word was applied on so many diverse and dissimilar better-than-warp technologies in that show. Even when those technologies got their own brand names, like "coaxial warp" or "slipstream drive", Seven of Nine made the obligatory reference to how these resembled the Borg approach to transwarp or differed from it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FordSVT]

Timo said:

...Unless we decide that the VOY meaning is, as suggested above, "any technology that improves on current state of the art on warp drives". And that's a reasonably good guess, considering how the word was applied on so many diverse and dissimilar better-than-warp technologies in that show. Even when those technologies got their own brand names, like "coaxial warp" or "slipstream drive", Seven of Nine made the obligatory reference to how these resembled the Borg approach to transwarp or differed from it.

Timo Saloniemi

That's what I'm saying. Some people want to label anything called "transwarp" in Trek with the same definition of the technology used in Voyager. Some people argue that STIII transwarp must be the same thing as Voyager transwarp because they're both called transwarp, but I don't prescribe to that myself. In fact, as you say, I think it would be a pretty illogical conclusion to make.

 

[Captain_Amasov]

FordSVT said:

Timo said:

...Unless we decide that the VOY meaning is, as suggested above, "any technology that improves on current state of the art on warp drives". And that's a reasonably good guess, considering how the word was applied on so many diverse and dissimilar better-than-warp technologies in that show. Even when those technologies got their own brand names, like "coaxial warp" or "slipstream drive", Seven of Nine made the obligatory reference to how these resembled the Borg approach to transwarp or differed from it.

Timo Saloniemi

That's what I'm saying. Some people want to label anything called "transwarp" in Trek with the same definition of the technology used in Voyager. Some people argue that STIII transwarp must be the same thing as Voyager transwarp because they're both called transwarp, but I don't prescribe to that myself. In fact, as you say, I think it would be a pretty illogical conclusion to make.

The Voth from Voyager season three used a different kind of transwarp from the Borg as well:

Voth Transwarp

 

[Meredith]

I liked Threshold, not for what happened to Paris and Janeway, but for was was implied to have happened to Captain Styles of the Excelsior, that guy was a jerk.

Styles as a slimy salamander has some sorta cool karmic justice to it.