Warp 10 barrier

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Is Warp factor 10000 intrinsically worse than 9.999... etc?

First off, in the TNG era, they just kept stacking 9's after 9.999… endlessly, never reaching infinity

But that also makes figuring out speed/velocity hard to gauge for the average viewer since they have to count the number of 9's after the decimal place.
And it doesn't make it "Naturally intuitive how much faster you're going". It's incredibly vague actually due to the fact that the TNG era Warp Factor scale has a literal "Hand Drawn Curve" to infinity after Warp Factor 9.0

On my Warp Factor Scale 3.0; I literally discard the "Hand Drawn Curve to infinity" and let the TNG era formula naturally run to infinity the old fashion way.
Just increment the integer value of Warp Factor ##.0

Wf 10,000 AKA 10k = 21,544,346,900,318.9c

What that means for the average person traveling in a FTL StarShip:
- in 1 second you would've crossed 682,699.156473208 Light Years
These are distances you cross the diameter of the Galaxy across the "Galactic Halo that surrounds our Milky Way Galaxy"

Spoiler: NOTE: 『Not to Scale』 Side Orthographic Profile of the large astronomical features our Milky Way Galaxy, & most likely most other Galaxies as well

Spoiler: Best Scientific Estimates of the size of the major features of our Galaxy

- in 1 minute you would've crossed 40,961,949.3883925 Light Years
These are distances you measure between Galaxies

Spoiler: The Local Group of Galaxies that surround our Milky Way Galaxy

The Vast Majority of times with my Warp Factor Scale 3.0
You would RARELY ever need to mention anything of significant physical size that you can see with the naked eye traveling at speeds of Warp Factor with 4 or 5 digits.
Most of the time, you would only need 1-3 digits for most existing FTL systems within Star Trek currently.

The only thing that needs to be measure with Warp Factors beyond 3-digits are SubSpace Radio Signals that travel across the Galaxy.

For reference, Hyper-SubSpace Radio that Project PathFinder used to contact Voyager across the Milky Way Galaxy would need to travel at Wf 11,214.
Wf 11,214 = 31,564,712,587,166.7c

That kind of speed is what allows Real Time Video Conferencing from the Delta Quadrant, to Earth.

So for all practical purposes within the TNG era and beyond, on my Warp Factor 3.0 scale; Warp Factors 1-1000 is all you'll ever really use for everyday discussion when it comes to moving objects of significant size that you can see. (e.g. StarShips, Torpedoes, StarFighters).

Spoiler: My Classification of Warp Speed/Factor Ranges based on my Warp Factor 3.0 scale

 

[blssdwlf]

Is Warp factor 10000 intrinsically worse than 9.999... etc?

Not worse. The decision to make Warp 10 equal to Warp Infinity just sounded like an arbitrary way of saying this series is not TOS. If someone actually thought it out it would've been called "Warp Infinity" and the scale would just allow for larger numbers greater than 10.

 

[drt]

I think the original intent was to establish reasonable limits.

The question is, was it even necessary? There were maybe 4-5 instances of exceeding Warp 10 in TOS/TAS, so the "speed limit" is ultimately a dumb fix to a problem that didn't really exist.

The decision to make Warp 10 equal to Warp Infinity just sounded like an arbitrary way of saying this series is not TOS.

I also wonder if Roddenberry wasn't also killing "transwarp drive" at the same time, since we know we wasn't really a fan of stuff Bennett did in the TOS movies.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The question is, was it even necessary? There were maybe 4-5 instances of exceeding Warp 10 in TOS/TAS, so the "speed limit" is ultimately a dumb fix to a problem that didn't really exist.

I think Roddenberry wanted to simplify the warp scale and to reign in how fast ships could go so that the Galaxy remains a very big place. "Eugene's Limit" ultimately failed at both of these, IMO.

I agree that it was probably best to leave the warp scale alone from TOS/TAS and perhaps make any limitations in warp speed strictly an issue of power generation and engine capability. He could have easily had the Enterprise-D max out at warp 12 or whatever because she still would move at the speed-of-plot anyway. To me, that would have been easier than redrawing the warp scale and would still give the sense TNG ships were generally faster than those in TOS/TAS.

 

[Ithekro]

I would image that at some point Starfleet will need to do a rescaling of warp speed due to the starships getting higher and higher qualities of warp 9.9+ speeds. This is not to remove the Warp 10 limit, but to give captains, engineers, and helm an easier way to communicate the speed one wishes one's starship to move between star systems. The "Warp 13" from "All Good Things..." future is an example of a likely possibility of an easier communications methodology in use. Another would be to rescale the warp curves to allow for each warp factor to be a higher speed than the previous scale, while still maintaining Warp 10 as an absolute.

The alternative is to use non-warp travel (QSS, Transwarp, or whatever) and give a speed scale for such a system a new or different lease on collective use in Starfleet for long distances or extreme needs for speed that go beyond the typical warp drive and movement between the inner core of the Federation, where warp 9.whatever is good enough most days to get someplace in hours or less. When warp travel from the usual edge of Federation space to Earth can be reach in less than a day at high warp, and you can probably cross all of Federation space in a day or so.

 

[blssdwlf]

The problem with "Warp 10" for being "Warp Infinity" in my opinion is that there are numbers greater than 10. So it just seems to be very arbitrary that the number 10 equals infinity. Now if the rationale was "Warp 10" was some kind of barrier like how the the speed of light is and it can be exceeded with fantastic technology that'd be cool. But as infinite speed... still doesn't work out very well IMHO.

 

[C.E. Evans]

If we go by Ye Old TNG Technical Manual, warp engine efficiency starts to drop down dramatically at some point beyond warp 9.2 or so, requiring more and more energy as engine performance becomes less and less. The closer a ship gets to warp 10, the energy requirements start shooting off the charts towards infinity (hence the infamous hand drawn curve on the TNG scale).

I'm not a proponent of the warp 10=infinity idea, but I think that might have been the thinking behind it being a barrier. Or at least it was until "Threshold" came along and made infinity something that could be easily overcome by a couple of crewmembers in their spare time...

 

[Cryogenator]

In comparison, the Quantum Slipstream v2 from VOY 'Timeless' tops out at 10,000 Lightyears per MINUTE - which translates to 5.256 BILLION x c- which is in turn 20x faster than even Asgard hyperdrives in SG (which seemingly top out at 256,675,000x c.

...which, in turn again, is negligible compared to the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Laggan, a mecha which is hundreds of billions if not trillions of lightyears tall and which effortlessly accelerates galaxies to superluminal speeds by grabbing and throwing them.

 

[at Quark's]

If warp 10 cannot be reached why then in Where No One Has Gone Before did Geordie La Forge say to Captain Picard sir we're passing warp 10?

I have the following theory about this.

'Warp 10' is a barrier, mostly in terms of energy expenditure. The closer you approach warp 10, the more energy the warp engine has to pump out to distort space even more, and the greater the stress the ship is under.

However, that's not to say there isn't a way around warp 10. 'Crossing warp 10' doesn't necessarily mean 'to go beyond infinite speed'.

In fact, I'd say the situation is quite analogous to the Einsteinian barrier there is at speed c we have in our real world. The closer you approach lightspeed, the more kinetic energy you have to pump in for an ever-decreasing additional velocity increase. At lightspeed, you'd need 'infinite' energy. And, in a sense, you'd go 'infinitely fast' when you'd attain lightspeed, in the sense that no time would elapse from your frame of reference while you're at light speed.

But warp 'goes around' that whole barrier, and around the 'infinite speed' you'd reach at c. In a similar way I'd say transwarp 'goes around' the warp 10 barrier of 'standard' warp, and around the 'infinite speed' associated with warp 10. Into a new and deeper layer of subspace where space can be folded way more efficiently for less energy expenditure. Warp 13 may very well be the same 'effective' speed as warp 9.9875, but it achieves this speed far more efficiently, with less energy expenditure and less strain on the engines.

Geordi, in the engine room, may use instruments that are more concerned with the technical aspects of the warpage of space, how deeply they are exactly immersed into subspace, and so on, and therefore note the ship is circumventing the warp 10 barrier altogether, succinctly expressing that as 'passing warp 10'.

On the other hand, on the bridge (and hotshot pilots such as Tom Paris) they may not be as interested in the things the 'nerds' in the engine room talk about, and be only interested in the effective speeds the ship reaches and therefore, in their everyday parlance (and on their instruments) 'warp 10' is synonymous with 'infinite speed'. So my hypothesis is that bridge and engine room just use their terminology slightly differently.

 

[Deks]

I have the following theory about this.

'Warp 10' is a barrier, mostly in terms of energy expenditure. The closer you approach warp 10, the more energy the warp engine has to pump out to distort space even more, and the greater the stress the ship is under.

However, that's not to say there isn't a way around warp 10. 'Crossing warp 10' doesn't necessarily mean 'to go beyond infinite speed'.

In fact, I'd say the situation is quite analogous to the Einsteinian barrier there is at speed c we have in our real world. The closer you approach lightspeed, the more kinetic energy you have to pump in for an ever-decreasing additional velocity increase. At lightspeed, you'd need 'infinite' energy. And, in a sense, you'd go 'infinitely fast' when you'd attain lightspeed, in the sense that no time would elapse from your frame of reference while you're at light speed.

But warp 'goes around' that whole barrier, and around the 'infinite speed' you'd reach at c. In a similar way I'd say transwarp 'goes around' the warp 10 barrier of 'standard' warp, and around the 'infinite speed' associated with warp 10. Into a new and deeper layer of subspace where space can be folded way more efficiently for less energy expenditure. Warp 13 may very well be the same 'effective' speed as warp 9.9875, but it achieves this speed far more efficiently, with less energy expenditure and less strain on the engines.

Geordi, in the engine room, may use instruments that are more concerned with the technical aspects of the warpage of space, how deeply they are exactly immersed into subspace, and so on, and therefore note the ship is circumventing the warp 10 barrier altogether, succinctly expressing that as 'passing warp 10'.

On the other hand, on the bridge (and hotshot pilots such as Tom Paris) they may not be as interested in the things the 'nerds' in the engine room talk about, and be only interested in the effective speeds the ship reaches and therefore, in their everyday parlance (and on their instruments) 'warp 10' is synonymous with 'infinite speed'. So my hypothesis is that bridge and engine room just use their terminology slightly differently.

Could be.
But its also possible that Warp 10 threshold simply once crossed, puts a vessel (and its occupant) into a different state of being.
My own hypothesis about going around energy expenditure is that after Warp 9.9 and the closer you get to the TW threshold, energy demands do increase exponentially (as does speed) with every increment, BUT its possible that the vessel itself is using the surrounding energy of that subspace domain to give it more - and it doesn't necessarily have to do much with the ship's power output... once you pass a certain point, the energy build-up from the ship's own power source ceases to be the main contributor - but it retains a function of switching off this system.

Since we know Warp travel is achieved via manipulation of a subspace field via the Warp coils in the nacelles, its possible the field itself is being sustained by the subspace layer in question when Warp 10 threshold is achieved.
And in this particular episode, once you cross it, the speed is 'infinity' which by Paris own admission allows you to exist EVERYWHERE in the universe at the same time.

The Voth for example also used TW... the Borg do too, but the Voth is most similar to SF - they just managed to deal with exponential increase in velocity and speed past 9.9 to 'settle' at a rough velocity of 60ly's per minute or two (or thereabout) which translates to about 31,536,000 times C... or half as much (whichever). This would place it in between Warp 9.991 and Warp 9.992.

At any rate, the Borg TW is clearly different and its mostly similar to Quantum slipstream technology. Mostly operates on the principles of establishing 'conduits' for faster travel. Some will need manifolds to maintain it, others will not (but I suspect those without a manifold will be susceptible to decay and reduction in speed over time).

 

[at Quark's]

A practical consideration of the TNG-and-beyond logarithmic warp scale is that as you go faster and faster into ludicrous speeds, you will get these ridiculous warp factors with more and more decimals, like 9.999999999999999999999999999999999912. Who wants to say that out loud?

Hitler, apparently.

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

But yeah, given the writers' tendency to always come up with faster vessels, in retrospect, it would've been better if TNG had simply kept the old TOS scale.

 

[Ithekro]

I imagine that Starfleet redoes the warp scale ever century or two. Whenever the tech makes it so higher and higher speeds become more common fleet wide. So after the Ambassador/Galaxy era starships age out, for the most part, they will rescale for all those starships that are routinely going warp 9.9+ from system to system.