Transwarp Drive really a failure?
- Thread starter NeroShrimp
- Start date
"Slow" is relative in context; a starship that can travel 1000 times the speed of light can get to Alpha Centauri in a day, or to Vulcan in four days, and can reach any of the currently known extrasolar planets in two to three weeks. Civilian traffic takes much longer, to the point that moving from one planet to another is a major time/energy investment. This constitutes a distributed society where every world is its own little island; the difference there is political and economic, not technological.
Space is BIG, Deks. No version of warp drive we've ever seen could by any stretch of the imagination be called "slow"; space is simply really really BIG, so big that no matter how fast you can go, space is still problematically big.
I think there are actually two different depictions of warp drive: the "really really fast in a straight line through space" version we see in TNG+, and the "travel through hyperspace aint like dusting crops, boy!" version where the entry into warp drive -- and TRAVEL at warp drive -- is done very carefully and is potentially dangerous every single time.
TMP/Movie warp speeds may be much faster, but they are also far less routine and far more dangerous for that very reason.
Well, the TOS version of Warp drive (under Warp 9) was able to cross almost 1000 ly's per day.
That's actually consistent with a technologically advanced culture like the Federation that shares resources and knowledge... which also takes into account at least exponential developments (especially when money does't exist as a barrier to artificially limit research - they would simply allocate the necessary resources so a given research would be done).
Yes, I know how big space is... and that doesn't really matter when you take into account that SF had Warp drive since 2063 and was continuously advancing their science and technology since then. By 2063 they would already have technologies and knowledge that far surpasses our own, never mind by 2154.
The Milky Way is actually estimated to be 150 000 Ly's from one end to the other (not 100 000 ly's)... and most people do not know how big this actually is.
A technologically advanced culture would NEED to have the means to traverse these huge distances in a relatively short span of time, so TOS figures actually are consistent with exponential technological development (especially when contrasted with their other capabilities).
Well, as I noted in one of my earlier replies, in ST V, the Enterprise-A managed to get to the centre of the galaxy pretty fast.
The actual travel time was not shown... however, it is very unlikely that the trip lasted about 25-28 days, because it seemed much shorter than that (which could have been a result of the Transwarp drive which was tested on the Excelsior years before).
The fastest way to travel between point A and point B is a straight line.
Natural obstacles would exist that would add a bit of time to the journey to bypass for instance... but even with 1000 Ly's per day, and if say the Nekrit expanse was still intact, it would still take a starship a relatively small amount of time to go 'up' or 'down' on the galactic axis and another 2 days to cross the distance from that vantage point to the end (if we go by the 1000 Ly's per day speeds in TOS).
By TNG (over 70 years later), one would expect decent increases in Warp efficiency and speeds (let's say doubling every decade... which is hardly unreasonable given automated research, sharing of science and technology between dozens of member species, massive exploration, etc.) that would allow starships to achieve sustainable speeds of 128 000 Ly's per day by the time TNG rolled out even if you discard TW on the Excelsior that allowed the Enterprise-A to traverse a distance of between 25 000 and 28 000 Ly's in a matter of what seemed like 2 or 3 days at most - which would mean an increase by a factor of 10 over TOS 1000 Ly's per day (incidentally Roddenberry wanted the Enterprise-D to explore other galaxies in the late 24th century, but the producers obviously had other ideas) - and, at speeds of 128 000 Ly's per day, the Enterprise-D would need to be in transit for 21 days to reach Andromeda galaxy.
Now, I still think that detailed exploration of the Milky Way would take a while even with very fast Warp speeds (plus with advancements in sensor technology, you'd basically be re-discovering new things all the time in the Milky Way itself) - given how meticulous SF is in detailed analysis, etc., but that wouldn't stop them from sending exploratory ships to other galaxies for exploration.
Last edited:
I start with the idea that it takes the NX-01 96 hours to travel from Earth to Kronos at about Warp 4.5. If we accept that Kronos is at least 90 light years from Earth, a travel time of 96 hours almost exactly equals Warp 4.5 on a W^6 scale. It's a nearly perfect fit. I ignore all other and contrary remarks in Enterprise and go forward with that.
On that same scale, Warp 9 would make that trip in 90 minutes. Not too far off from Nu TOS. A 1000 light years a day would a little over Warp 8.45.
I junk Warp 10 is infinite speed, as that makes no sense whatsoever.
On that same scale, Warp 9 would make that trip in 90 minutes. Not too far off from Nu TOS. A 1000 light years a day would a little over Warp 8.45.
I junk Warp 10 is infinite speed, as that makes no sense whatsoever.
No, it's consistent with SEVERAL technologically advanced cultures distributed very thinly across a massive region of space with a dizzyingly huge amount of emptiness between them. Something akin to, say, the Mass Effect universe where the Citadel Cultures are spread across systems that span the entire length of the Milky Way but 99% of the systems BETWEEN them are still unclaimed and unexplored.
That's a question of topography and astropolitics, not technology or society.
No, you really don't.
Because you're trying to tell me that the ability to travel faster than light means the "bigness" of space doesn't matter.
It continues to matter, however, because spaceships don't get any bigger just because they move faster, nor do planets get any smaller for the same reason. Texas is still the size of Texas even if a warp-driven spaceship launches from Corpus Cristi and flies to Vulcan in three and a half hours.
Space is still big. Warp speed is just a means of DEALING with the bigness.
So we have two possible solutions to the bigness of space. In the TNG version, most planets and stars in the Federation are relatively close together and everything else -- call it "the frontier" or "unexplored reaches" -- is really really far away and it takes an unreasonably large amount of time to get all the way out there. In the TOS version, most planets and stars are relatively far apart, and there are vast stretches of space between them that have never been charted or explored by anyone, so most people stay on the well-mapped shipping lanes and transportation routes and venture into the wilderness only when they're curious, lost, or up to no good.
And again, neither do you. This is evident in the fact that you believe a starship traveling 1000 times the speed of light could in ANY context be described as "slow."
No. A collection of widely distributed but closely aligned cultures would need the means to traverse those distances.
A technologically advanced culture does not even need warp drive, as there's nothing inherent in "advanced technology" that necessarily implies the use of FTL spacecraft. Indeed, some of the most advanced societies in the Star Trek universe don't even have spacecraft.
It's not a matter of technology. It's a matter of LOCATION. Are the Federation worlds like-minded members gathered from all over the galaxy because they want to share economies and technology, or are they conveniently-located neighbors banded together mainly for mutual defense? TOS implies the former, TNG implies the latter.
It would take "a while" to explore over eight hundred billion different star systems?
If there was EVER an indicator that a realistic concept of the vastness of space" eludes you, this one is by far the strongest.
Crucial distinction here... the ME universe races have only explored 1% of their galaxy, whereas the Federation by TNG was stated to have explored 11%, and the Federation as a whole seemed to have colonized a much larger amount of the area that seems to fall under their control.
That's your opinion. Not fact.
I hadn't said that space isn't 'big'. I was merely illustrating that as a culture (or in this case, a collection of cultures) becomes more technologically advanced, it manages to do more with less, and accomplishes desired goals better and faster.
Space remains big, however, the Federation's ability to traverse huge distances would continue to improve on an exponential basis at least... which would mean that by the time of TNG, it would likely have the ability to traverse the Milky Way galaxy in about a day or less, and also have the capacity to send exploratory ships to other galaxies should they wish to start exploring there as well.
Whoever said that most planets in TNG are relatively close together?
We were quoted rather large relative distances of over 100 Ly's between planets on various occasions.
Risa for example (at least according to Enterprise) is 88 Ly's from Earth (or about 880 trillion km).
There could be various cultures/races spread across both relatively smaller (16 ly's) and larger (50 to 100 or more ly's) distances inside a specific area of the galaxy (which would depend entirely on the evolution of the said galaxy, etc.).
Trek actually went as far to take into consideration parts of the Drake equation as far as intelligent cultures are concerned.
Belief is irrelevant... and compared to various distances involved between Federation member planets, 1000 times the speed of light in the 24th century (Human calendar) for a collection of cultures that had Warp capability for CENTURIES would indicate something terribly wrong contrasted to TOS's ability of 365 000 times the speed of light (or basically, 365 times faster).
Starfleet started off with much higher speeds in TOS and then got progressively slower over the next 70 years?
This doesn't track... AT ALL... unless Q meddled in the situation, though according to him and some other cultures such as the Travellers, they didn't start attracting attention until the 24th century.
I used the Federation as a single culture to get the point across and because it was late, so forgive my lack of precision.
For the sake of this accuracy, a collection of widely distributed cultures would need the means to traverse those distances efficiently and in a shortest time frame as possible.
Warp speed increases were seen as a good thing in Trek from Starfleet, and emphasized even considering their desire for exploration and discovery of the unknown parts of the galaxy.
The Cytherians for instance have decided to explore the galaxy differently without use of FTL starships... but, they were a very different culture compared to most cultures in the Federation.
Comparatively speaking, the Cytherians would likely be far more advanced than the Federation and they could have been using FTL ships for galactic exploration before, but after a time found different means to bring other races in ships to them.
And besides, the context here is the Federation as a whole and how they explore the galaxy... not other races.
Interestingly, the Borg for instance still use FTL capable ships and are arguably the most advanced species in the galaxy.
Same goes for the Voth who were shown to have TW capability - though the Voth don't seem to interact with other cultures too much.
Neither TOS nor TNG differ too much from one another.
The comparative histories of cultures that formed the Federation seem to have remained the same or very similar to each other, and might be implying mutual defence as well as like mindedness to share economies, knowleedge and technology. At least, if you go by Enterprise, it is implied that the Coalition was a direct result of Romulan interference and the Federation was later conceived as an 'outgrowth' of what the Coalition was (laying the foundations and focusing Humans to try and bridge the gap between cultures like they did with Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites).
Really now?
Just what type of terminology would you like me to use that would satisfy your own concept of 'vastness of space'?
1000 times the speed of light is an accomplishment compared to the vastness of space indeed, but there is a clear difference here that Warp travel is nothing new for the Federation cultures.
They had Warp drive for hundreds of years, and certain Federation cultures were also apparently in space longer than Humans... so forgive me if I am thinking that 1000 times LS 70 years after TOS is slower than 365 000 time LS and that something doesn't look right with that picture - and also does NOT correlate with exponentially advancing science and technology (which would be progressing far faster in a society such as the Federation that incorporates 150 different species who continuously share knowledge, technology and resources freely and are not limited by 'money').
'Quite a while' can easily imply anything between decades to centuries, thousands of years, tens of thousands of years needed to explore the galaxy even with much faster engines ... and there will still be new things to discover in the same galaxy in previously explored locations with better technology (revisiting older concepts and discoveries with newest methodologies, knowledge, tools, etc. can shed light and lead to new discoveries).
I'm not sure what the basic premise of this thread is. "Transwarp failed" is a statement never made on screen. "The Excelsior was reconfigured for normal warp", ditto. And "Transwarp was supposed to be much faster than normal warp, and there isn't good evidence for 24th century ships being much faster" is a problem only for given values of "much faster"...
What happens between TOS and TNG is that the warp scales change. What also happens is that the warp contrails disappear. Both, either or neither could be related to the Great Experiment, although the Excelsior in ST6 and the Enterprise-B in ST:GEN both still draw colorful warp contrails (they actually use the same stock footage!).
What need not be seen happening is that speeds change. TOS high speed feats generally involve short hops; VOY distress hinges on long distance, long duration performance. The basic nature of warp is that the difference between low and high settings is extreme - a ship "risking it" may travel thousands of times faster than a ship "playing it safe". So crossing the galaxy might well have to be conducted at a speed lower than the ship's otherwise safe patrol cruising speed - and since this is warp, "lower" always means "much lower". It's just a feature of how this fictional propulsion technology is set up.
Beyond that, it's a matter of shooting down outliers like so many clay pigeons. If you want to ridicule VOY, you can eliminate the low outliers of TOS. If you want to play up the fictional consistency, you can eliminate the high ones.
The classic: Kirk did not travel to the center of the galaxy, either in ST5 or in "Magicks of Megas-Tu". In the movie, he just traveled in that direction despite knowing that the Great Barrier would stop him almost immediately after start, and then God was met and hijinks ensued. In the animation, he just studied the center - from afar, as shown.
The obvious: the fictional outer barrier Kirk so often visited was actually pretty close to Earth. There's nothing to say otherwise, as the phenomenon is utterly fictional down to the very concept of the galaxy having an edge.
The unnecessary: "That Which Survives" happened. That the ship survived the prolonged high speed run was a random fluke, and most ships would simply blow up when abused that way, just as Scotty so often insists.
Etc. If sustaining of the quoted high speeds really were possible in TOS, the story premise of Andromeda being out of reach would not hold. A thousand lightyears in hours would mean a million in mere thousands of hours, so Andromeda could be reached in less than a season, and the Kelvan "upgrade" would really be a downgrade.
Timo Saloniemi
What happens between TOS and TNG is that the warp scales change. What also happens is that the warp contrails disappear. Both, either or neither could be related to the Great Experiment, although the Excelsior in ST6 and the Enterprise-B in ST:GEN both still draw colorful warp contrails (they actually use the same stock footage!).
What need not be seen happening is that speeds change. TOS high speed feats generally involve short hops; VOY distress hinges on long distance, long duration performance. The basic nature of warp is that the difference between low and high settings is extreme - a ship "risking it" may travel thousands of times faster than a ship "playing it safe". So crossing the galaxy might well have to be conducted at a speed lower than the ship's otherwise safe patrol cruising speed - and since this is warp, "lower" always means "much lower". It's just a feature of how this fictional propulsion technology is set up.
Beyond that, it's a matter of shooting down outliers like so many clay pigeons. If you want to ridicule VOY, you can eliminate the low outliers of TOS. If you want to play up the fictional consistency, you can eliminate the high ones.
The classic: Kirk did not travel to the center of the galaxy, either in ST5 or in "Magicks of Megas-Tu". In the movie, he just traveled in that direction despite knowing that the Great Barrier would stop him almost immediately after start, and then God was met and hijinks ensued. In the animation, he just studied the center - from afar, as shown.
The obvious: the fictional outer barrier Kirk so often visited was actually pretty close to Earth. There's nothing to say otherwise, as the phenomenon is utterly fictional down to the very concept of the galaxy having an edge.
The unnecessary: "That Which Survives" happened. That the ship survived the prolonged high speed run was a random fluke, and most ships would simply blow up when abused that way, just as Scotty so often insists.
Etc. If sustaining of the quoted high speeds really were possible in TOS, the story premise of Andromeda being out of reach would not hold. A thousand lightyears in hours would mean a million in mere thousands of hours, so Andromeda could be reached in less than a season, and the Kelvan "upgrade" would really be a downgrade.
Timo Saloniemi
There are just failures of continuity. "That which Survives" gives us a value of over 700,000x C for Warp 8.4. IIRC the Kelvan modifications were for a sustained Warp 11. For some reason this meant 300 years to Andromeda. Thats bout 8,000 x C for Warp 11.
This isn't about how long you can maintain Warp 11, or 8.4 or 9.2. It's an inconsistency in how fast the Warp speeds are. The problem is not how did the Enterprise maintain Warp 8.4 for 11 or 12 hours in "That Which Survives". That doesn't seem too extreme. It's how did they cover 990 light years in those hours at Warp 8.4?
Why is Warp 11 so much slower? Though even at 8,000 c, that's much faster than Warp 11 on the W^3 scale, which would be 1,331c.
The Warp W^3 Scale:
Warp 8.4 : 592 c (Over 600 days for 990 ly)
Warp 11 : 1,331 c (Over 1,800 years to Andromeda)
From TOS:
Warp 8.4 : 765,000 c
Warp 11 : 8,333 c
Hmmmmm.
This isn't about how long you can maintain Warp 11, or 8.4 or 9.2. It's an inconsistency in how fast the Warp speeds are. The problem is not how did the Enterprise maintain Warp 8.4 for 11 or 12 hours in "That Which Survives". That doesn't seem too extreme. It's how did they cover 990 light years in those hours at Warp 8.4?
Why is Warp 11 so much slower? Though even at 8,000 c, that's much faster than Warp 11 on the W^3 scale, which would be 1,331c.
The Warp W^3 Scale:
Warp 8.4 : 592 c (Over 600 days for 990 ly)
Warp 11 : 1,331 c (Over 1,800 years to Andromeda)
From TOS:
Warp 8.4 : 765,000 c
Warp 11 : 8,333 c
Hmmmmm.
Last edited:
Indeed. But we have many variables to play with here if we want to do the work of the writers for them.
First, let's get the obvious issue out of the way: warp factors might mean different speeds at different locations. But that can't result in hugely convenient "warp highways" between stars, or else there would be explicit dialogue references to those. Such things would be massively more important than "warp factors" or "headings", after all: sailing from star to star would be a Stargate type maneuver of entering a suitable highway.
What might hold true (and would be really convenient for the apologism I want to try out) is that the gravity or other property of stars makes warp factors slower in their proximity. Hence warp 10 in ST4:TVH towards and around the Sun is about as fast as lightspeed or perhaps a bit less, and similarly hours-long warp 9 in "Paradise Syndrome" past the local star only suffices for covering about two light-months. This would also allow for warp to be wf^3 in the early misunderstandings of Earth-bound warp scientists if we want to give credibility to that otherwise silly idea; for the warp engine to go to Neptune and back in the time quoted in "Broken Bow" and still be impressive; and for it being possible to choose between impulse and warp when you are in a hurry near stars.
But enough of that, and to the specifics. In "That Which Survives", we only get a few datapoints - perhaps we are missing the big picture? Scotty never claims that conventional top speed, or "a bit better than warp eight", could bring the ship to the castaways in a matter of hours. And indeed the ship doesn't reach Kirk in hours at warp eight - it does so after a jump to warp fourteen.
So we now know the exact point to attack: Rahda's ETA. There is no plot need to assume that her "our estimated time of arrival is eleven and one half solar hours" means there are still 11.5 hours to go. We could instead pretend that the ship will hit orbit at 11:30 local time, some time next month.
Really, with "That Which Survives" our only real problem with TOS speeds vs. warp factors, the effort might be worth taking. All the rest falls under the "they just performed a very short jump and we know the ship can do warp 14 on those" category.
Timo Saloniemi
First, let's get the obvious issue out of the way: warp factors might mean different speeds at different locations. But that can't result in hugely convenient "warp highways" between stars, or else there would be explicit dialogue references to those. Such things would be massively more important than "warp factors" or "headings", after all: sailing from star to star would be a Stargate type maneuver of entering a suitable highway.
What might hold true (and would be really convenient for the apologism I want to try out) is that the gravity or other property of stars makes warp factors slower in their proximity. Hence warp 10 in ST4:TVH towards and around the Sun is about as fast as lightspeed or perhaps a bit less, and similarly hours-long warp 9 in "Paradise Syndrome" past the local star only suffices for covering about two light-months. This would also allow for warp to be wf^3 in the early misunderstandings of Earth-bound warp scientists if we want to give credibility to that otherwise silly idea; for the warp engine to go to Neptune and back in the time quoted in "Broken Bow" and still be impressive; and for it being possible to choose between impulse and warp when you are in a hurry near stars.
But enough of that, and to the specifics. In "That Which Survives", we only get a few datapoints - perhaps we are missing the big picture? Scotty never claims that conventional top speed, or "a bit better than warp eight", could bring the ship to the castaways in a matter of hours. And indeed the ship doesn't reach Kirk in hours at warp eight - it does so after a jump to warp fourteen.
So we now know the exact point to attack: Rahda's ETA. There is no plot need to assume that her "our estimated time of arrival is eleven and one half solar hours" means there are still 11.5 hours to go. We could instead pretend that the ship will hit orbit at 11:30 local time, some time next month.
Really, with "That Which Survives" our only real problem with TOS speeds vs. warp factors, the effort might be worth taking. All the rest falls under the "they just performed a very short jump and we know the ship can do warp 14 on those" category.
Timo Saloniemi
Even without the outlier points, the Cochrane factor could be used to explain some of the inconsistences.
Hahaha! Good try Timo. But I think 11.337 hours at Warp 8.4 is probably not 11:337 am local time. 
And the accelerated Warp was only for 15 minutes, before the ship blowing up was stopped with seconds to spare by Scotty. Even then it peaked at 14.1 for only a few moments. So I don't think that's any help in getting us there.
And the accelerated Warp was only for 15 minutes, before the ship blowing up was stopped with seconds to spare by Scotty. Even then it peaked at 14.1 for only a few moments. So I don't think that's any help in getting us there.
Last edited:
I always liked the idea of transwarp, and in my own personal head canon Scotty's sabotage was identified and fixed (after all, they *knew* he did it -- he is charged with it in STIV). In STVI, Sulu et al. are patrolling beta quadrant at transwarp factor 7!
It could be that Excelsior was a new design from a (competing) firm trying to make its way into Starfleet's quatloos. "Twice the ship at half the cost!" We see it all the time in the military. For example, the Steath program gave us new planes with new technology that made others obsolete, even if they had "just" been retrofitted. If it was successful, Starfleet would accept the new contract and phase out the older designs.
Also, by the time Excelsior hits the screen, it has been about 10ish years since Enterprise was refitted (note it also got the crap pounded out of it by Khan: perhaps it wasn't worth the money to keep it in service). We also don't know that technology was incorporated INTO the other ships -- perhaps it was the other way around. The "new" designs arose and were tested while Ent was on its five year mission, so it was one of the last to be refit.
The bonus bestowed on Enterprise were the new engines, which if I recall correctly, are the only things said to be "untested" in TMP. And we can imagine these designs would lead to the development of transwarp drive!
It could be that Excelsior was a new design from a (competing) firm trying to make its way into Starfleet's quatloos. "Twice the ship at half the cost!" We see it all the time in the military. For example, the Steath program gave us new planes with new technology that made others obsolete, even if they had "just" been retrofitted. If it was successful, Starfleet would accept the new contract and phase out the older designs.
Also, by the time Excelsior hits the screen, it has been about 10ish years since Enterprise was refitted (note it also got the crap pounded out of it by Khan: perhaps it wasn't worth the money to keep it in service). We also don't know that technology was incorporated INTO the other ships -- perhaps it was the other way around. The "new" designs arose and were tested while Ent was on its five year mission, so it was one of the last to be refit.
The bonus bestowed on Enterprise were the new engines, which if I recall correctly, are the only things said to be "untested" in TMP. And we can imagine these designs would lead to the development of transwarp drive!
Hahaha! Good try Timo. But I think 11.337 hours at Warp 8.4 is probably not 11:337 am local time.
Just so we're clear, here's the dialogue in question:
I suppose Spock could be giving a particular unusual form of timekeeping, but I have to agree with Tarek71 that it is very unlikely.
However, I do appreciate Timo's approach to the whole "variable warp speed" thing, since we have multiple examples of starships travelling slower when in proximity to stars. Thus, there are natural areas of space where a given Warp Factor represents a much faster speed than found elsewhere (call these subspace highways, the Cochrane factor or whatever). The "official" TNG speeds could well be an average number, based on a ship being an "average" distance between one star and another - whatever that might be.
Logically, that would mean that travel between galaxies is significantly faster than travel within them:
From BAON we know that 2 million LY takes 300 years (OK, slightly less) which 6,666c
TWS tells us that the Enterprise could travel 1,000 LY in around 12 hours, which is 730,000c (more or less)
Now, that is a problem! It's for situations like this that we can imagine that there artificial or freak incidents which (even temporarily) further bend space-time to allow ships to travel at even more ludicrously fast speeds than usual! A mega-transporter with the power to beam a ship over 990 light years would definitely fall into this category; and all Enterprise needs to do it "ride the wave" back the planet.
Let's face it - if they don't make it back within a day or so they might as well not bother - Kirk and pals will have died of dehydration
Last edited:
The contrast between the Kelvan adventure and "That Which Survives" definitely falls in the category of "long distance travel ought to be slower than short hops", so that helps some. If you have to drop one warp factor to keep your engines from overheating, this may cut your speed in half - but it would be more consistent to assume that at high warp factors, this actually cuts your speed to one hundredth or worse. A short hop at warp 14 then evenly competes with sustained warp 11...
The various "models" of warp speeds tend to be way too slow: even low factors are known to be viable speeds for getting from interesting star A to interesting star B in plot time, and that probably means hundreds rather than dozens of lightyears, even in the densely populated Trek galaxy. Yet if we add the concept of steep curves to the assumption of initial high speeds, we cover the high outliers all right but run into trouble with long distance travel.
But that's a Trek fact we have to live with: the ships are fast but long distance travel does not happen. It's just a matter of choosing:
1) Sustaining high warp is too risky (and while our heroes sometimes get lucky, they generally shouldn't).
2) Going where no man has gone before is too risky (you have to slow down for navigation, or at least for finding out whose territory you are violating).
3) High warp becomes slow warp due to local conditions (intergalactic medium may be a drag, and even the space between galactic arms may have adverse properties).
4) Sustaining a warp factor does not sustain speed (eventually the engines just dig a groove in subspace and become inefficient).
5) Distances in Trek are greater than in real life (their Andromeda lies elsewhere, or they have named a different galaxy Andromeda - see the mystery with their Rigel).
The more variables we get into play, the better we can fight the underlying inconsistency, and pretend there's actually a fascinating pattern to how warp behaves...
Timo Saloniemi
The various "models" of warp speeds tend to be way too slow: even low factors are known to be viable speeds for getting from interesting star A to interesting star B in plot time, and that probably means hundreds rather than dozens of lightyears, even in the densely populated Trek galaxy. Yet if we add the concept of steep curves to the assumption of initial high speeds, we cover the high outliers all right but run into trouble with long distance travel.
But that's a Trek fact we have to live with: the ships are fast but long distance travel does not happen. It's just a matter of choosing:
1) Sustaining high warp is too risky (and while our heroes sometimes get lucky, they generally shouldn't).
2) Going where no man has gone before is too risky (you have to slow down for navigation, or at least for finding out whose territory you are violating).
3) High warp becomes slow warp due to local conditions (intergalactic medium may be a drag, and even the space between galactic arms may have adverse properties).
4) Sustaining a warp factor does not sustain speed (eventually the engines just dig a groove in subspace and become inefficient).
5) Distances in Trek are greater than in real life (their Andromeda lies elsewhere, or they have named a different galaxy Andromeda - see the mystery with their Rigel).
The more variables we get into play, the better we can fight the underlying inconsistency, and pretend there's actually a fascinating pattern to how warp behaves...
Timo Saloniemi
Miscellanea:
Well, "The new shields held!" suggests another improvement not thoroughly tested yet, but otherwise, yes.
Spock insisting on decimal points in this episode (and it's a rarer occasion than one thinks) is well justified in the case of the countdown to certain doom later on: split seconds count on whether Scotty should be allowed to continue, or be ejected to safety, or be ejected to his death along with the antimatter pod or whatnot.
Also, Spock wisely gives up the "decimal fractions of minute" notation on the second try, when Scotty challenges him on the need for accuracy overall. No harm in that, either.
But what point is there in being accurate about the ETA (and at the nonstandard notation no less)? As far as Spock knows, it won't make a difference for the stranded landing party. Even the "hostile force" theory hasn't gained support from the deadly shipboard intruder yet.
I'm tempted to point out the other nonstandard notation there - Rahda's unique "solar hours". Perhaps those are completely different from Earth hours?
In terms of perfect analogy, the sidereal "hour" of the Sun rotating is about one Earth day: an ETA of 11.5 days might indeed call for for more accuracy, especially as it's not a 24-hour day but more like a 24.5 hour day to start with. Half a day vs. a dozen days doesn't solve all our problems yet, but it's a start.
Of course, "solar hour" could be something different altogether, especially as there'd be little point of using the unit as an alternate name for "Earth day". The longer, the better, and the more justified Spock's ire at the inaccuracy!
Timo Saloniemi
Well, "The new shields held!" suggests another improvement not thoroughly tested yet, but otherwise, yes.
Spock insisting on decimal points in this episode (and it's a rarer occasion than one thinks) is well justified in the case of the countdown to certain doom later on: split seconds count on whether Scotty should be allowed to continue, or be ejected to safety, or be ejected to his death along with the antimatter pod or whatnot.
Also, Spock wisely gives up the "decimal fractions of minute" notation on the second try, when Scotty challenges him on the need for accuracy overall. No harm in that, either.
But what point is there in being accurate about the ETA (and at the nonstandard notation no less)? As far as Spock knows, it won't make a difference for the stranded landing party. Even the "hostile force" theory hasn't gained support from the deadly shipboard intruder yet.
I'm tempted to point out the other nonstandard notation there - Rahda's unique "solar hours". Perhaps those are completely different from Earth hours?
In terms of perfect analogy, the sidereal "hour" of the Sun rotating is about one Earth day: an ETA of 11.5 days might indeed call for for more accuracy, especially as it's not a 24-hour day but more like a 24.5 hour day to start with. Half a day vs. a dozen days doesn't solve all our problems yet, but it's a start.
Of course, "solar hour" could be something different altogether, especially as there'd be little point of using the unit as an alternate name for "Earth day". The longer, the better, and the more justified Spock's ire at the inaccuracy!
Timo Saloniemi
Yes, but WHICH 11%? The 11% of the galaxy in the immediate vicinity of Earth/Vulcan/Andor/Tellar and the Federation's "core worlds", or the 11% of the galaxy immediately around and/or on the best-traveled routes between far-flung worlds all over the galaxy?
Mind you, even this statistic is kind of asinine if you consider that "11% of the galaxy" would mean the Federation would have detailed charts for some 11 billion star systems. I don't think it's at all realistic for them to claim to have "explored" all of that territory so much as "Have at some point flown by/scanned/are aware of" 11% of the galaxy.
That's all well and good, but there isn't a level of technological advancement that makes the vastness of space cease to be EXTREMELY relevant to the realities of space travel. You might have a point if sensor technology and computers were scaling at a pace that was keeping track with warp drive, but in Star Trek that is FAR from the case. The computers on the Enterprise-D are not tremendously more powerful than those of the TOS ship a hundred years earlier: they work approximately the same way and have approximately the same limitations. Sensors, on the other hand, are wildly inconsistent and seem to be exactly as effective as whichever character is using them; here, too, is a lack of advancement that would make the vastness of space less problematic: starships still need to physically move around in order to search for things, and they still have to be within a certain radius in order to FIND them.
Why? Warp drive isn't subject to Moore's Law. You can't double the speed of a starship just by adding more transistors to it.
Kira did, for one:
"With Betazed in the hands of the Jem'Hadar, the Dominion is in a position to threaten Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, Alpha Centauri..." implying that all of those planets are within easy warp travel of Betazed. This even without considering that the semi-canon location of Vulcan is only 16 light years from Earth, which all together implies that the five "core worlds" of the Federation are all within 20 to 30 light years of Earth. When you consider the short travel times for Kronos, Romulus and Cardassia, the events in TNG basically depict the Federation and its adversaries basically competing for control of the local bubble.
TOS is vague enough on locations and distances that the Klingon Empire could be just about anywhere, and the only reason they are in conflict with the Federation is because both sides just happen to have competing claims over a cluster of highly valuable planets. Romulus may well be on the "border" of Federation space, or it might just be inconveniently close to a region that the Federation (well, United Earth) has heavily colonized and therefore has to be kept at bay by a neutral zone. Distance isn't that important in the TOS depiction, only LOCATION; the mission of the Enterprise in that case is search through all the unexplored places in the galaxy and find new resources the Federation hasn't discovered yet.
There's no better indicator of this than the fact that the Enterprise's very first mission was an expedition BEYOND THE EDGE OF THE GALAXY. It would have taken Voyager 75 years just to GET to the galactic rim, but Kirk's ship goes there for its very first mission and still has five years of exploring to do before it tuns around and heads home. And yet, TOS sensor devices are by no means the techno-omniscient scrying mirrors of TNG+; many things don't even show up on sensors, and the things that DO can only be detected, but not analyzed in detail unless the ship closes to within a few light seconds.
Only if you take TOS warp speeds literally and make no attempt to reconcile TOS with TNG. Failing to do that shows them to be two completely different universes with completely different approaches to how the Federation is distributed, administered, and most importantly, defended.
If you try to reconcile TOS with TNG, you have to do a lot of retconning, and TOS warp speeds are the first to go. Enterprise's exit of the galaxy happens through the upper or lower plane of the disk and is only a few hundred light years from Earth; the "thousand light year" warp travel in "That which survives" is a misstatement and so is the line from "Obsession." And "The center of the galaxy" is just a colorful name for a supernova remnant a couple hundred light years off the Orion Spur that Vulcan astronomers once (erroneously) believed was the actual center of the universe.
Reconciling TOS with TNG+ is Star Trek orthodoxy. We do it because canon expects us to do it and because that's just the way we've ALWAYS done it. On the other hand, NOT doing that basically solves the entire problem and only forces us to explain the VERY few places where TOS and TNG+ overlap.
The transwarp problem is just another symptom of this effect. Excelsior's transwarp drive is probably something like a teleportation system that allows a warp-driven starship to "punch" a wormhole in space and emerge at a new location some arbitrary distance away (and the engine imbalance in TMP is probably the main example for why Scotty didn't think this would work). In that sense, it's basically the same kind of drive the Borg are using in TNG+, and in that sense ESPECIALLY, TOS and TNG cannot be reconciled without a million gross tons of recton.
I know. So we either retcon it and assume TOS speeds were ALWAYS slower than they were depicted, or we say "fuck it" and split the continuities altogether.
I know what we SHOULD do. But I also know what we're GOING to do. And thus the problem remains.
Okay, I get that. But TOS' "unexplored parts of the galaxy" really WERE independent of location relative to the rest of the Federation. We even have Pike's line in "The Menagerie" where he describes his origins as "A stellar group on the other end of this galaxy."
So TOS exploration isn't a matter of "expanding the frontier" so much as "sorting the haystack to find all the needles." So it's no wonder the question of Coridan was being decided at Babel instead of, say, the Federation Council chambers on Earth. It's nothing to do with Babel being neutral territory equidistant from the competing parties; they probably picked it because it had a really nice conference room and the restaurant in the lobby agreed to cater the event free of charge.
They're actually VERY different, we have just gone out of our way to explain away the differences in order to preserve the narrative.
TOS, for example, gives us several species that are depicted as major Federation members with a lot of political or economic influence. The Andorians, the Tellarites, the Vulcans, for example. We also have appearances by the Deltans, the Medusans, the Caitians and Rigelians.
Apart from the Vulcans, NONE of those species appear in TNG, and only the Andorians get a brief mention in a handful of episodes.
Kirk and Spock discover a reliable method of time travel in "The Naked Time" and use it to travel into the past on four separate occasions (two deliberate, two accidental). TNG crews a hundred years later seem to have no knowledge whatsoever about this method, despite the fact that their computers should be fully capable of calculating time-warp jump from any nearby star of sufficient mass.
The Klingon-Federation cold war ended at Khitomer in TUC as a result of Kronos' moon exploding and the entire planet having to be evacuated within 50 years. In TNG, the Federation is STILL negotiating a peace treaty with the Klingons in the 2340s (right around the time Kronos should be running out of oxygen), and 20 years later Kronos is fully inhabited and nobody remembers what happened to Praxis... like it never even happened.
In TNG, Gowron tells Picard "Women do not serve on the high council" and succession is determined by martial challenge and arbitration. In TUC, the Chancellor is an aging bureaucrat who walks with a limp and his rivals have to conspire with Starfleet assholes to assassinate him; when they DO kill him, rather than his killer claiming the Chancellorship, the Council elects a female Chancellor because, fuck it, she's the boss' daughter.
In TOS, Zephram Cochrane is from Alpha Centauri.
In TNG, Zephram Cochrane is from Montana.
Convoluted explanations exist for all of these contradictions, but they are just that: contradictions. The warp speed problem is that as well: TOS contradicts TNG both in its depiction of warp drive AND in its depiction of the Federation, and the limitations of starship sensors give us a very good insight as to why warp speeds work the way they do (haven't you ever wondered why Kirk sometimes orders Enterprise to leave a star system at warp two instead, of, say cruising velocity of warp five or six? Simple: because the paths BETWEEN his destinations are mostly uncharted and definitely unexplored).
Which kind of negates the "Exponential development" theory, doesn't it? Going by "Enterprise" Vulcan had warp drive at least a century before Earth did, and their ships were doing warp six when Earth vessels struggled to make warp two. The Constitution's "warp seven" should have been one of the highest attainable speeds in the known galaxy by that progression, and would scale nicely with its predecessors 100 years later being capable of warp nine...
IF AND ONLY IF we apply a retcon and make TOS warp speeds the same as TNGs (and that includes finding a way of getting rid of both transwarp drive and whatever it is the Kelvans did to the Enterprise).
But that's all besides the point. Any way you slice it, you're looking at a galaxy with over 100 billion stars and as many as 800 billion planetary bodies. Exploring that much landmass at ANY warp speed will take nothing less than a geologic age. And that's only if you limit your exploration to planets and moons, which Starfleet does not do.
Leaving aside the fact that in the time it would take for a warp-driven civilization to actually explore the entire galaxy, half the stars IN the galaxy would burn out and be replaced by new ones.
Just a thought:
Starships are fueled primarily by ramscoops, and therefore have to constantly suck in interstellar hydrogen to maintain their velocity. The interstellar medium has lots of gas, the intergalactic medium is much thinner; the warp factor may really BE a slower speed just because the engine is burning less fuel for a given output.
In that case, a warp factor is similar to a "throttle setting" and a starship traveling through a dense molecular cloud can really haul ass in ways that a starship in thinner space can't.
That's an interesting idea, and would come to play on long journeys only (as short ones would be conducted using tanks filled up at gas stations). It's too bad that there's no onscreen evidence that ramscoops provide fuel for starships!
This I can live with. Indeed, I'd like to marry this one and have three kids with it. It's only in chase scenes where the "They are doing warp X, increase speed to match" dialogue gets in the way: referring to the acceleration of the opponent as something to match would be beside the point, and not directly useful in matching speeds or gaining.
Relating to the discussion about the practical reach of the UFP, and how this tells us things about speed or doesn't... A major feature of TOS adventures is that Starfleet has a slow reaction time. Ships may go missing for ages - but more interestingly, major worlds such as Deneva may fall out of contact for ages, too. We can argue that this is because the Federation is vast and Starfleet has a lot to do with few ships, and still preserve the idea of high speeds and low travel times (since we generally can't tell where Kirk is coming from when responding to a crisis six months late)...
...But there's a deeper aspect to this. The colonies and worlds do not expect to be swiftly responded to. Indeed, sometimes wrongdoers or dissidents rely on the low odds of Starfleet paying a surprise visit; this trend continues to TNG era. But shortage of ships is not something they could count on: if the matter mattered, Starfleet would assign a ship. The immunity the outlying settlements think they enjoy thus is better explained by it being a Trek fact that Starfleet cannot respond quickly even when it wants to.
Timo Saloniemi
You're making the same mistake Deks made with the tunnel-vision focus on warp drive.
Yes, warp drive is really really fast. Subspace radio, not so much. And bureaucracy is slower still, especially in Starfleet. There are times even in TNG where it may take hours or even days for a subspace message to reach a starbase, and it make take even longer for Starfleet to route a message to a ship close enough to check it out.
I've had the theory for a very long time (and Treklit largely reflects this) that subspace signals travel exactly as fast as the transmitter is powerful. If you want to patch realtime communications from Deneva to Earth, you're going to be running your main deflector at the equivalent of maximum warp and still get a time delay of seven hours one-way. If you don't have that kind of power available because somebody shot off a piece of your deflector, or worse, because you're chasing a Romulan warbird across the neutral zone and can't afford to stop to turn the main dish, then it'll take twelve hours just for the nearest starbase.
And if you're on the civilian rig, you're out of luck. Civilian ships with warp drive aren't going to let you monopolize their hardware just to send an email to your mom. But if you and 400 other people pay a courier fee, they'll probably transmit your packets to the nearest subspace relay at the end of their monthly cargo run, and five to seven business days later your messages work their way through the network until they get back home.
And if those 400 emails all contain cryptic references to the Hypnotoad, it might take a couple more days for Starfleet to realize that something weird is going on at Deneva colony. AGAIN.
Similar threads
