Two questions about "Approaching ______ System" at warp

[Luckyflux]

So when a starship is approaching a star system at warp, isn't the ship moving pretty fast? The Helmsman (or helmsbeing) says "Captain, approaching the so and so system" and the Captain responds by telling him to "take us out of warp." But what if the captain had to sneeze at that moment and it took him a few seconds to respond? Would the ship fly right past the so and so system? Or would the ship automatically drop to Impulse upon entering the system?

Second Question is can a starship warp through a star system? I seem to remember in BOBW that the Enterprise-D dropped to Impulse to enter the Sol System, and that it would take 20 something minutes to get to Earth. Does that mean that starships cannot warp through star systems?

I keep thinking about a funny scene (that I made up) where the Enterprise is approaching some star system and Data says "Approaching the so and so system." But Riker is telling Picard a really funny joke at the same time. Picard holds up his finger to indicate "give me a minute", so he can hear the punchline. Then after the punchline is delivered, he laughs alittle then says "Take us out of warp, Commander". But Data is like "Sir we blew past that system a few seconds ago, we need to do a 180 to get back there."

I have always wondered about that...

 

[Deks]

To respond to the first question:
The helmsman would probably drop out of warp if he/she knew the system in question is the one they want to stop at.
Or the first officer would execute the order, or the computer itself (if programmed) could drop the ship out of warp if it was instructed to do so at a specific time.

Starships can warp inside a star system (it was showed on numerous occasions)
The thing is that for some reason it is considered dangerous due to potential proximity to gravity wells of stellar bodies (and possibly due to potential interstellar traffic in-system).

In answer to the final section of your post ... in real life if the designated star system would be their destination, then the helm officer would take the ship out of warp on their own initiative if the captain doesn't issue the said order.

 

[Wingsley]

The Borg interception issue in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" always irked me. Yes, it is possible for a starship to engage warp drive within a star system; withness the flight to the Denevan sun in "Operation: Annihilate!" when Kirk takes the ship to Warp 8, no less. The refit Enterprise also jumped to warp in TMP while still within the Solar System.

As to why both the Borg and the Enterprise-D went sublight at Saturn, that's always struck me as odd. It was obviously done to create a chase-drama effect. Maybe the Borg were being deliberately careful that they didn't want to go sublight too close to Earth and be suddenly ambushed; maybe going sublight allowed them to more thoroughly scan the system to assess potential obstacles to their goal. The Enterprise-D probably followed suit so they could enter the Solar traffic pattern and avoid collision with other Earth ships in the system.

I think the Picard-Riker scene you are referring to was "Approaching Nelvana System" in TNG's year 3 outing "The Defector". I don't see the overshooting risk you suggest as an issue there. Data would not wait till the last second to inform Picard, nor is it clear that Picard's order was instantly carried out with perfect timing involved. The juxtaposition of cuts from the bridge to showing the Enterprise in space allows for the fragmentation of fictional time there. That scene did not have to happen in the span of just a few seconds as the viewer may experience it. It could be a minute or more. If that is the scene you are referring to, then the joke was actually Picard's (sort of): Picard made an allusion to the Battle of the Little Big Horn, suggesting they may be entering a Romulan ambush. Riker then quipped "May we have better luck."

 

[Cary L. Brown]

In Trekkian terms, warp is referred to (now) any time the ship is traveling FTL. (I hold that it's possible to use a system other than what's known as "warp drive" to also travel FTL, but that's a debated point.)

The trick with "warp" is that it's, therefore, ANY speed equal to or greater than the speed of light, really.

Realize that it takes eight minutes for light to travel from Sol to Earth. It takes eight seconds for light to travel from Luna to Earth. I believe it's also eight light-minutes between the closest points between Earth's and Jupiter's orbits.

Higher warp factors would involve the ship moving much faster, obviously. But reasonably, you'd decelerate from WF6 (216c, old-scale) to, say, WF2 (8c, old-scale), gradually, as you approach a planet. Nobody says you have to stay at full speed and suddenly stop on a dime, do they? I mean, if YOU were driving, what would YOU do?

 

[Luckyflux]

Wingsley said:

I think the Picard-Riker scene you are referring to was "Approaching Nelvana System" in TNG's year 3 outing "The Defector".

I wasn't mentioning any specific scene, I just always wondered what would happen if you were traveling at warp somewhere but didn't tell the helmsman to stop in time. Would the ship just warp right past it?

 

[nx1701g]

Maybe Warp in the inner solar system could be dangerous to the planets and the ship while in range of the gravity wells. I remember in TMP that the 1701 had to go out beyond Jupiter to go to warp (still failed though). Maybe while in warp the ship is more at risk to gravitational forces or could possibly damage planets during the warp jump?

 

[Christopher]

On the first question: if we assume that the published warp tables are more or less valid (which they usually aren't -- ships onscreen consistently go much faster), then a typical cruising speed of Warp 6 would be under 400 times the speed of light. Our star system (within the Kuiper Belt, say) is about 40,000 light-seconds in diameter, so it would take 100 seconds, nearly two minutes, to traverse its width at that warp factor.

On the second question: many works of SF have postulated that FTL drive is impractical or dangerous too close to a gravity well, which is usually done to create limits that make the stories more interesting, the situations more challenging for the heroes to overcome. (It also makes sense physically; the shape of a spacetime metric such as a warp field or wormhole is determined by the mass and energy distribution in the vicinity, so it stands to reason that a large nearby mass or energy source like a star could disrupt such a thing.) ST has occasionally followed this precedent but has just as often ignored it, since different people are in charge of different productions.

As for damage to the planets, a ship traveling at high sublight velocity could cause a mass extinction if it hit an inhabited planet; it's hard to say what a ship at warp might do. But certainly you don't want a ship with large amounts of antimatter aboard crashing into an inhabited planet at any speed, and it's harder to avoid that the faster the ship is moving. Of course, space is mostly empty, so the odds of hitting a planet at random are infinitesimal; but presumably starships would generally be on course toward specific planets anyway, increasing the odds. So "speeding" in-system is something to be discouraged.

Which doesn't explain the BOBW issue; we can assume that other cases of ships going to warp in-system are exemptions made for emergencies, and this was certainly an emergency.

 

[Timo]

My favorite cop-out on the inconsistencies of warping inside star systems is to blame it on the inconsistencies of subspace weather.

Yes, the presence of gravity wells would shape the spacetime metric, and perhaps thus affect warp drive. But there are other forces in Trek that do the same, causing warp vessels all sorts of interesting trouble: "magnetic storms" that can whisk ships off course by hundreds if not thousands of lightyears, "tachyon currents" that do similar things on a smaller scale, "subspace sandbars" that slow warp to a crawl, and "omega effect" and "warp pollution" that can ruin subspace so that warp becomes more or less impossible. Perhaps even the famous "ion storms" have an effect on warp speeds.

On the other hand, the speeds quoted for starships that are warping inside star systems are at odds with the speeds quoted for ships in deep space, even when the same warp factors are used. Insystem warp 9 in "Paradise Syndrome" is crawling, bringing the ship across two lightmonths at most in a couple of hours; in deep space, it would span hundreds of lightyears in the same time. Archer's Enterprise is credited with "Neptune and back in six minutes", a speed that doesn't allow for her later deep space adventures, but interestingly matches the "speed theory" postulated in the various backstage books.

Combining these two, I would like to claim that certain star systems are prone to extremities of subspace weather. On bad days, travel at high warp within them is no better than travel at high impulse; it's like trying to fly a small aeroplane against gale-force winds, as opposed to simply taxiing it to the destination.

The local star could be the usual source of this weather. In most systems, it would be but a minor annoyance, merely slightly reducing the speeds corresponding to a certain warp factor. But Earth's native star might be an especially annoying source of foul weather, explaining why even grave emergencies wouldn't prompt our heroes to warp in there on certain days.

So, why don't our heroes discuss the weather on screen, ever? I say they do, but the director generally knows how to make good drama - and cutting out idle discussions of weather is a big part of it!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Frodo Lives]

I have no basis for this little thesis, and it's obviously contradicted by several onscreen pieces of evidence, but what isn't, right?

Perhaps Starfleet or the Federation set up some sort of warp-negation field in some systems, to prevent such things as ships colliding with planets and causing mass extinction. Similar to the effect caused by the exploding Omega molecule. Except in this case it's possible to turn the effect off, thus explaining some of the giant gapping holes in my theory.

I believe the warping into a planet tactic was used by the Romulans against the planet Coridan in the Enterprise relaunch novel, The Good That Men Do, to pretty devastating effect. So perhaps by the 23th or 24th century the UFP developed a defence against it. But then again, the novels don't really have any say in a discussion on Trek tech do they, since most novelists do their damnedest to use 'real' physics and such.

 

[Timo]

If warping into planets were theoretically devastating, I'd think it would be seen more in practice. On the other hand, if the use of warp drive made the impact of a starship a lesser threat (say, by reducing the inertial mass), this would perfectly explain why our villains always fight their way right next to the target planet, often at sublight, in order to bombard it "conventionally" with phasers, torpedoes and whatnot.

The idea of a warp negation field is fun, tho - and IMHO dramatically more interesting than planetary shields. Dialogue to that effect would be quite familiar to the friends of good old naval fiction. "Shut down the Omega Field!"/"Lower the chain across the harbor entrance!"

A simple "on/off" field would make dramatic sense, and wouldn't tie the hands of the writers much. If the field could selectively allow in friendlies and keep out the bad guys, it would be too powerful for the needs of drama. But that sort of capability wouldn't be "realistic" in the first place...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

What i've always considered daft is the fact the captain always says drop out of warp when approaching the target starsystem, the helmsman should drop out of warp anyway since the captain told them to go to that system anyway and shouldnt need ordering out of warp. As for flying past the system, I would hazard a guess the helmsman tells the captain far in advance, at least 2 minutes before reaching the system, the only reason we dont see that 2 minutes difference is for the benefit of the viewers.

 

[Timo]

In all matters military, scientific and spatial, it's better to err on the side of caution when telling people what to do. Why, sometimes you really appreciate the Sarge informing you whether to put down your left foot or your right one...

Never assume that an underling will be doing something automatically. And when you see him or her doing something, make explicit verbal note of it, just to make sure everybody else notices it - most significantly said underling, who could well be sleepwalking right then and there.

Most of the commands given in Trek are probably redundant. Sulu could have fought all those battles without needless input from Kirk; Data could have handled the weekly adventures all by himself; and very little of what Sisko ever told his helmspeople made any practical difference anyway. But it could be disastrous not to double-check the important things, as a matter of routine.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Uhm ... there's a bit of a problem with that since captains hardly babysit their officers.
Kim made that mistake in one of the episodes in Season 7 when he was a captain of that cloaked ship and 7of9 reminded him that Janeway did help him out by giving him more responsibility for tasks that she knew he was capable of.

So it basically goes with the fact that the 'underlings' (unless they are starting out at their position) are not needed to be reminded of their orders.

 

[Christopher]

Actually Timo's right -- it's a military tradition to make sure every order is stated and repeated clearly. It's not about lacking faith in subordinates' abilities -- it's a safeguard to ensure that the orders are communicated clearly, something which is particularly important in a crisis situation where there's a lot of noise and action and orders can be misunderstood. Which is why you have exchanges like: "Ahead warp factor five, helm." "Warp five, aye." Echoing back the order verifies that it was properly heard and understood.

And this being the military, the practice is used in all situations so that the habit exists when it's really needed. Giving the order to drop out of warp is necessary, however obvious it may be, to establish for the record that the order was given according to proper protocol.

I figure it's analogous to a shift change, where the person coming on watch says "I relieve you, sir" and the person going off says "I stand relieved." Both statements are entirely obvious and unnecessary in terms of giving information; but they're required as part of the ritual and for the sake of the record.

 

[Tallguy]

^ This is why it's supposedly nerve-wracking for the inexperienced Saavik to take the Enterprise out of dock or Riker to re-dock the saucer and stardrive sections even though their hands never touch the controls. Unfortunately most audiences don't get this, so it goes over their heads. I couldn't figure out for YEARS what the big deal was. Vonda McIntyre avoided it completely in her novel of Wrath of Khan and put Saavik at the helm!

Jon "Third Doctor" Pertwee told the story of how he ran a ship into the pier (twice, he said) in similar circumstances. If you say "thirty degrees port" (or whatever) a helmsman will listen.

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.

 

[Dayton3]

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

 

[Timo]

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

 

[Christopher]

Tallguy said:
But what the heck, the no-combat-at-warp rule was retroactively effective.

What no-combat-at-warp rule? There were a number of warp-combat scenes in Enterprise, the most recent Trek production.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, I think the only parts of Trek that did not feature warp combat were the TOS movies, GEN and INS. All the television shows featured some.

It just happens that, by sheer chance, TNG had no scenes where phasers were fired at warp, which may have given rise to some misconceptions. But there was plenty of torpedo fighting at warp there, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dayton3]

In "The Gambit pt. 2", Worf suggests a phaser attack on the pirate ship while both vessels are underway at warp.

Data decides against it. If Worf suggests it assume it was possible