Two questions about "Approaching ______ System" at warp

[Tallguy]

Might have been an impression thing. I know it was in the writer's bible for TNG and I can think of at least one instance (Q Who? The Borg intro) where they couldn't use phasers at warp.

I certainly don't recall any warp speed dogfights such as Journey to Babel in TNG. (I have to admit I've watched very little of subsequent shows.)

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I've always liked the "fanon" explanation regarding this...

Phaser emitters have a "jacketing" element built-in... they basically fire into whatever realm of space they're inside of, and if fired from within a subspace bubble, they propagate through subspace rather than through normal space.

Now, what this MIGHT mean is that a ship in subspace can't fire on a target not also in subspace, and a ship (or base) in normal space can't fire at a target in subspace.

This is actually entirely consistent with what we've seen, and also has the benefit of fitting (largely) with what's in the TNG bible and TNG Tech manual.

Presumably, subspace is "smaller" across the same distance than "normal space" is. This means that targetting an object in real-space would be nearly impossible anyway... hitting a city-sized object in realspace from within subspace might be equivalent to hitting a dust particle from within realspace. While hitting an object in subspace from realspace would be nearly impossible for a slightly different reason... like trying to hit a sniper rifle round with a bb-gun pellet.

This, of course, assumes that there's a real interaction between objects in subspace and objects in realspace. This is consistent with Treknology as presented. Other sci-fi versions, using "hyperspace" demonstrate that their own versions of this alternate reality are not directly tied to real-space (see Star Wars, Babylon 5, etc). So I'm assuming that fire passing through "realspace" would still hit something in subspace, or vice-versa.

Basically, it would be nearly impossible to shoot from one realm to the other because you could never hit anything, unless you had a way to "transfer" your weapons fire to the other realm.

THoughts or comments?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Timo said:

As for warp in a solar system, the idea probably made sense, but by the time they decided that the "rule" had been broken so consistently it didn't matter. But what the heck, the no-combat-at-warp rule was retroactively effective.

I thought it went the exact opposite way, in both cases?

That is, the heroes in TOS always warped within star systems, and the relative lack of such instances in TNG confused people a bit, so that by DS9, even some writers thought warping close to a star might be a bad idea. And the heroes in TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT all fought at warp, but the more often, the later the spinoff...

I always assumed that when a ships course was plotted for a specific destination at warp speed that the ships computer would automatically drop the ship out of warp at the right time.

It sounds like a pretty big decision, dropping out of warp. Yes, probably the entire journey is automated. But just as probably, the Captain always tells his officers to override the automation as a matter of routine, because in the one instance where the arrival is not routine, it probably ends up being fatal unless everybody is awake and alert.

Timo Saloniemi

It was VERY common... virtually every episode... for the command to be given to warp out of orbit. But this was typically at "Warp Factor One," "Warp Factor Two," or (if they were in a hurry) "Warp Factor Three."

In other words, they'd be going pretty slow while in-system.

A great way to get a FEEL for this is to play with the free astronomy program, Celestia. I'm a HUGE fan of Celestia...

(You can get it here: Celestia Home Page

Go into Celestia and use the navigation features to set speeds. You'll want to have an idea of approximately how fast each "warp factor" is. Then, actually manuever your "starship" from a distant star... say Vega... to close Earth orbit.

There's no better way to get a real feel for the speeds (and the TIMES) we're talking about here.

Typically, when approaching the solar system (ie, when I can start to see the rendered orbit paths), I'll slow down to about 75c (that's about WF 4.2). I can then watch, slowly, as I approach.

I typically approach from above the plane of the system. Remember, don't think 2-dimensionally!

As soon as I see the moon's orbit, I decrease speed very quickly, down to between 27c and 8c (that range makes up what we call "WF2"). It then takes a pretty long time to see the Earth as a marble-sized sphere. I've been decelerating slowing the whole time, so by the time I can make out the moon as something besides a dot, I've slowed to below 8c (ie, I'm at "WF1"). As I approach the same distance as the moon's orbit from Earth, I drop to sublight.

Try it... really. This is something I WISH every Trek writer had to do. Just to get a sense of how what they're writing about would really work.

(Oh, and there are lots of Celestia Add-ons... some of which aren't actually factually-based, but rather fictionally-based. For instance, there's a planetary system around 40 Eridanae which you can download and install... though we have no REAL reason to believe such a system exists... and that system contains the planet Vulcan. )

EDIT:

One additional note... I found this just a moment ago... a rather neat plug-in for Celestia (a script, actually) that gives you TNG-style warp-factor control directly!

http://www.sfe.sitesled.com/sfe/warpdrive.html

Also, I mentioned "Epsilon Eridanae" before... that's where Babylon 5 can be found (if you install it). I corrected the above to correctly real "40 Eridanae" which is the fictional location of Vulcan.

 

[Timo]

I can think of at least one instance (Q Who? The Borg intro) where they couldn't use phasers at warp.

Where in "Q Who?"?

During the flight scene at the end, our heroes keep lobbing photon torpedoes at the Borg because they have already learned that the Borg are immune to phasers - not because it would be impossible to fire phasers at warp. Indeed, the final dialogue where Data says that the torps will probably hurt the Enterprise more than the Borg, and Riker wants to fire them nevertheless, takes place at a standstill, and has nothing to do with the availability or unavailability of phasers at warp.

On screen, nobody has ever said that it would be impossible to fire phasers at warp. It has perhaps been considered tactically unviable at times. Or there may have been a technical problem like in ENT "Fallen Hero" where we "first" learned that yes, the phase cannon are supposed to be used at warp and no, they haven't been properly tested for that yet (aboard NX-01 anyway - other Earth vessels may have used them at warp previously).

We know phaser beams have variable speed: hand phaser beams are clearly shown to be slower than yer regular bullets, while starship beams easily cross thousands of kilometers in a second. What's to say that the speed couldn't be cranked up more, possibly to FTL speeds? Either this would require the sort of "jacketing" mentioned above, or it would be an inherent capability in the nature of phaser beams.

Timo Saloniemi