Warp 8 engine?

[Wingsley]

The Starship Enterprise, throughout TOS, went through a slow but noticeable transformation. Sets, special effects, and sound effects on-board ship seemed to evolve, as if the ship were benefitting from technical upgrades or fine-tuning to her systems.

The transporter in "The Cage" seemed to require two people to operate, the effect seemed more dramatic, and seemed to take longer. Communicators seemed bulkier and less elegant to use than their later counterparts. As the series progressed, the transporter seeemed faster and more automated.

Warp engines seemed to improve as well. During "The Cage", Capt. Pike announces ship-wide his diversion to the Talos Star Group; he even goes to the trouble of announcing he will take the ship to Warp factor 7. Fan blueprints and literature over the years seemed to capitalize on this, giving older versions of the Constitution-class starships a top speed of Warp 7. Later on, in shows such as "Arena" and "Obsession", the tension between Kirk and Scott seemed to increase at high warp speeds; Scotty said "we'll blow up any second" after Kirk ordered Warp 8.

Then the Enterprise encountered Nomad and the Kelvans, and the Warp 8 barrier was shattered. Even the Orions got into the game, using "full power on their attacks" to achieve Warp 10. All of these alien feats seemed to lead to more improvements in a starship's performance, since Kirk ordered the ship to Warp 9 to escape the Romulans ("The Enterprise Incident") and Spock did the same to intercept an asteroid ("The Paradise Syndrome") though Kirk's escape maneuver only involved a brief sprint and Spock's resulted in the ship being crippled. So apparently, a Constitution class ship is capable of sprints in excess of Warp 8, though going beyond that point is risky unless some alien comes along and "supes up" your warp engine.

So, is it safe to assume that Constitution-class vehicles were built around a "Warp 8 Engine", to borrow from Archer-era vernacular? Keep in mind that just because a test engine might reach Warp 8 doesn't mean starships will be flying around at Warp 8 right away. The moniker may say more about the design potential than its "real world" performance.

So, would it be called a "Warp 8 Engine", or maybe a "Warp 10 engine"?

Also, how does ENT's "These Are the Voyages" square with "The Cage" and what it implies? Archer and Tucker toast to Warp 7. Note the show didn't show a ship actually achieving Warp 7, of course. Then again, the Vulcans already could go Warp 7 in ENT, couldn't they? Is that too close for comfort?

 

[Timo]

I'd tend to see warp engines as inherently capable of infinite speed if properly motivated. Once you have the warp coils in place, it becomes a matter of feeding them with enough power, and keeping the ship from falling apart when the power is fed.

A warp 5 engine would be one that is equipped with a power system that can reproducibly create the necessary energies. Insert some alien tampering, or sit on the safety valve, and the same engine achieves warp 9 - or, more probably, suffers structural failure somewhere. But the theoretical potential for high speeds is always there.

Kirk's ship would be built to produce and withstand the power needed for warp 8. She would also be capable of producing more power, but not of withstanding the application of this power, thus allowing only brief forays into warp 9 or 10. But she would have more robust warp coils than her predecessors, so if somebody figured out how to make the power chain survive a prolonged creation of high power levels, the coils could take it and do the warp 11 trick.

A 24th century engine could be even more robust: a Type 12 shuttlecraft's coils would withstand extreme warp even though its power systems were only rated for warp 2 or so. Such overengineering would perhaps make little sense in the 22nd century, when engineers would still be struggling with making the coils withstand the power levels actually achievable - much like it would make little sense to create a high-power microprosessor for a 1970s keyboard when even the mainframes would be at the edge of their envelope with such computing power. But today, keyboards may have chips a hundred times too powerful for the application, simply because such chips are dirt cheap, and a lower-performance chip would be too expensive to customize. Type 12 shuttle warp coils could be similarly cheaper to make in high-performance than in low-performance variants.

So, IMHO, Archer would have a Warp 5 engine with perhaps 10% performance margin. Kirk would have a Warp 8 engine with something like 50% performance margin. And Paris would be flying a Warp 2 engine with 50,000% margin or better...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

If I understand you correctly, you think that the notion of a "Warp X Engine" has to do with:

1: powerplant design - the design of the power source is probably the most significant component

2: nacelle design/structure - how much power the nacelles handle and how well their superconducting coils handle that power is probably the next major component

3: psychology/politics - I think that the performance of the NX-01 Enterprise speaks clearly about why her stardrive was named the "Warp 5 Engine". It was a goal. The pursuit of greater FTL speeds is paramount in the STAR TREK Universe, after all.

Given all of this, the Constitution-class of starships could've been equiped with "Warp 8 Engines" right from the get-go, even if the performance of the earliest ships of that class could not sustain that "ideal" speed. They could've just as easily been more generous with the naming and dubbed them "Warp 9 Engines".

 

[Timo]

I'd wager Starfleet would discourage "experimentation" and call the engines "Warp 8" regardless of performance margins.

And Pike could have been cautious and conservative as well. It's not as if he was in any sort of a hurry, after all. The survivors of the Columbia crash were either dead or alive; if the latter, they had found the means to survive for several years on that planet, so a few months more shouldn't be a problem for them.

In some of my personal musings, I have suggested that the breakthrough Joe Tyler speaks about is not one of top speed, but rather of cruise speed. Old Vulcan ships could already do warp 7 in ENT, but only the recent developments would allow starships to sustain high speeds for meaningful periods of time.

Comparing with the aircraft world, there have been Mach 2 and Mach 3 fighters for decades, but the ability to sustain Mach 1 on military power, i.e. "supercruise", is a radical new ability only available on a single fighter aircraft type today.

The old Spaceflight Chronology equated the pre-"The Cage" breakthrough with the ability to go faster than warp four. ENT necessarily debunks that. But the breakthrough could be one of achieving warp four cruise speed, a massive strategic advantage over ships capable of warp 7 dashes but only warp 3 cruising.

The TNG era tech fiction caters for that very nicely. When one overlays the supposed TOS formula of v=c*wf^3 on the supposed TNG one, the energetically advantageous cruise at TNG warp 4 no longer corresponds with the TOS warp 4. Instead, TOS warp 4 is the first energetically highly unoptimal TOS integer warp factor there, hitting the TNG warp 3 power consumption peak...

So cruising at TOS warp 4 is nigh-impossible, even when flying at TOS warp 8 is perfectly possible. ENT era engineers might not have understood the reasons, and even in "The Cage" and TOS they would still believe in the "wrong" warp scale even though able to work around it. Similar things have happened in real-world quantum/particle physics.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Daedalus12]

In some of my personal musings, I have suggested that the breakthrough Joe Tyler speaks about is not one of top speed, but rather of cruise speed. Old Vulcan ships could already do warp 7 in ENT, but only the recent developments would allow starships to sustain high speeds for meaningful periods of time.

Comparing with the aircraft world, there have been Mach 2 and Mach 3 fighters for decades, but the ability to sustain Mach 1 on military power, i.e. "supercruise", is a radical new ability only available on a single fighter aircraft type today.

The problem with this comparison is that both the SR-71 and the XB-70 Valkyrie were designed to cruise at Mach 3. In fact both planes were designed to be the most optimal fuel-wise at that speed.

 

[Santaman]

Timo said:


Comparing with the aircraft world, there have been Mach 2 and Mach 3 fighters for decades, but the ability to sustain Mach 1 on military power, i.e. "supercruise", is a radical new ability only available on a single fighter aircraft type today.

Ahem.. The English Electric Lightning jet from the late 60's already was capable of supercruise, also the Concorde had no problem whatsoever with doing the same at mach 2 that is...

I know the Americans like to pretend they have a "first" but most of the time its been done ages before they finally catch up.

As for the warp engines and such I think that its not so much a power issue but more a control issue, the better you can control all processes the smoother and the faster a ship will go, the higher the speed the more difficult it will be to let everything work like its supposed to do and not say kboom in yer face.

 

[Timo]

Well, essentially this means that their top speed was also their cruise speed. In contrast, the F-22 has two distinct speeds - supercruise and top speed - and thus is perhaps a better analogy for what I postulated for Pike's ship.

Edit: The Lightning would indeed be comparable to F-22. But the original claim still stands true: only one such plane today! (Or back then, for that matter. Some French hype notwithstanding.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Daedalus12]

If you want to get technical nearly all of the fighter jets designed since the 60s have limited "supercruise" capabillity. After all supercruise is another industrial buzzword for supersonic travel without afterburners. Which brings up the question would be the equivalent of the afterburner on Pike's ship?

 

[Wingsley]

Bringing things back around a bit, let's assume that, deriving from the toast "to Warp 7" between Archer and Tucker in "These Are the Voyages...", that some time shortly after the the creation of the United Federation of Planets in 2161, the new Federation Starfleet begins testing/deploying the first starships that have a top speed of Warp 7. Maybe they can't sustain it for very long, but let's assume that Warp 7 can at least be achieved in the 2161-2180 time frame.

Let's also assume that Pike's Enterprise, during "The Cage" (2254) is the latest Constitution-class specs of the day, has a top speed of Warp 7. Let's say it has a "Warp 8 Engine", and let's say Warp 8+ has been achieved, but let's assume they cannot yet sustain Warp 8 in the mid-2250's. Pike's ship, of course, had to sustain Warp 7 for at least several hours, if not a couple days, to make it to Talos. So we can assume his ship at least has that capability in her specs of the day.

I believe it was the ENT ep "First Flight" in which it was mentioned that it took the Vulcans about 200 years to break the Warp 2.0 barrier.

http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/First_Flight

Given this, and given the notion of the NX-01 Enterprise being replaced by Federation starships equipped with a "Warp 7 Engine" that may be at least on par with Vulcan and Andorian ships of that era, is it reasonable to say that Federation technology may have taken 90+ years after "These Are the Voyages" to shatter the "Warp 7 barrier"?

 

[Saturn0660]

Santaman said:

Timo said:


Comparing with the aircraft world, there have been Mach 2 and Mach 3 fighters for decades, but the ability to sustain Mach 1 on military power, i.e. "supercruise", is a radical new ability only available on a single fighter aircraft type today.

Ahem.. The English Electric Lightning jet from the late 60's already was capable of supercruise, also the Concorde had no problem whatsoever with doing the same at mach 2 that is...

I know the Americans like to pretend they have a "first" but most of the time its been done ages before they finally catch up.

As for the warp engines and such I think that its not so much a power issue but more a control issue, the better you can control all processes the smoother and the faster a ship will go, the higher the speed the more difficult it will be to let everything work like its supposed to do and not say kboom in yer face.

'

I was about to say the lighting myself.. However, if i rememeber right it could only just barely do this.. The Concorde needs it's reheaters "i.e. afterburners" to get past mach1 but can cruise at 2 without them..

That being said.. There are a few more planes that can do it.. Heck just type supercruise in wikipedia and i think it shows all that can..

 

[Patrickivan]

It seems that the engines, though limiting to some degree, always had the potential to be manipulated to increase performance to some degree. The limiting factor more often then not was the physical structural integrity of the ship itself. And that made sense. Of course they would get around this limitation through the creation of a S.I. Field, but even that was limited. And I am fine with this- without limitations, you lose the element of suspense. Something that Voyager, and especially Enterprise lost by incorporating super advanced technologies.

 

[C.E. Evans]

IMO, the only real limitation to the Enterprise's engines was how much power the ship could generate and whether or not the ship's hull would buckle from the stress of increased speeds.

It could possibly be argued that during the course of TOS, Scotty made enough modifications with the Enterprise that it's top-rated speed kept being pushed higher and higher during Kirk's 5-year mission. It might add a little bit of weight to the remark in Star Trek III about the Enterprise's "old speed records" if the ship's performance was somewhat atypical of a standard Constitution-class cruiser (even without alien interference)...

 

[Dimension11]

Timo said:
I'd tend to see warp engines as inherently capable of infinite speed if properly motivated. Once you have the warp coils in place, it becomes a matter of feeding them with enough power, and keeping the ship from falling apart when the power is fed.

What about the whole Warp 10 theory (new scale) as purported by VOY?

 

[Anthony]

Hmmmm.

 

[Wingsley]

Dimension11 said:

Timo said:
I'd tend to see warp engines as inherently capable of infinite speed if properly motivated. Once you have the warp coils in place, it becomes a matter of feeding them with enough power, and keeping the ship from falling apart when the power is fed.

What about the whole Warp 10 theory (new scale) as purported by VOY?

The Warp 10 Infinity theory was part of the TNG creative agenda of the late 1980's and 1990's whereby Roddenberry and Berman established elaborate rules about what they considered to be "Star Trek fact" and what they did not. Roddenberry gave the green light to ignore aspects of TOS and TAS (such as double-digit warp factors) in favor of a new set of rules. Eventually, enough people asked Roddenberry, Arnold and others about instances where it was obvious those rules did not apply, so they started backing off and allowing for "TOS scale" versus "TNG scale" and all that nonsense. It was all about politics in the studio.

Ironically, Rick Sternbach was involved in the artwork for "Star Trek Maps" (Batnam, 1980) several years before. I still refer to the Warp Drive theory section of the "Introduction to Navigation, Star Fleet Command" booklet included with "Maps" as the best way to explain warp factors, warp velocity and the dangers of high warp factors and deep space exploration.

 

[Sec31Mike]

One thing about warp nacelles is that they each contain multiple coils. These warp coils need to be synchronized by the ship's computer to maintain the warp field geometry. The field geometry needs to change based upon spatial conditions, such as gravity wells of planets,stars, nebulas, etc. Each pair (port and starboard) would need to operate together in perfect sync. Power and field control would be a big challenge in maintaining this perfect balance.

Another factor governing warp speed capability is the mass of the object being propelled, as the warp field would need to displace the mass of the ship.

The vast majority of the power output of the warp core is diverted directly to the warp nacelles while the ship is at warp. They are powered by the direct application of warp plasma. Regulating this massive amount of power can be taxing on the ship's computer (I suspect this is the primary function of the engineering computer core).

Travelling at warp speeds involves the bending of the time space continuum bordering on the entry into subspace.

All of these factors could be tweaked to increase warp field strength and stability, a la Scotty style (he was constantly reading tech journals and would have found all the goodies from other engineers in the fleet).

Needless to say in my rudimentary understanding of warp field mechanics could have omitted something. It is a rather complicated subject.

 

[Dimension11]

Wingsley said:
The Warp 10 Infinity theory was part of the TNG creative agenda of the late 1980's and 1990's whereby Roddenberry and Berman established elaborate rules about what they considered to be "Star Trek fact" and what they did not. Roddenberry gave the green light to ignore aspects of TOS and TAS (such as double-digit warp factors) in favor of a new set of rules. Eventually, enough people asked Roddenberry, Arnold and others about instances where it was obvious those rules did not apply, so they started backing off and allowing for "TOS scale" versus "TNG scale" and all that nonsense. It was all about politics in the studio.

Ironically, Rick Sternbach was involved in the artwork for "Star Trek Maps" (Batnam, 1980) several years before. I still refer to the Warp Drive theory section of the "Introduction to Navigation, Star Fleet Command" booklet included with "Maps" as the best way to explain warp factors, warp velocity and the dangers of high warp factors and deep space exploration.

I understand the history between the various Warp Factors, but I was just wondering, since they achieved Warp 10 (infinite speed), it wasnt about feeding large amounts of energy into the coils, it was about finding the right materials

 

[Praetor]

As I watched 'That Which Survives' yesterday and the Enterprise went hurtling past warp 14, it occurred to me: maybe the Enterprise's speed records were accidental and had nothing to do with Scotty's modifications or enhancements to the engines. The ship was accelerating out of control in that episode because the emergency bypass that kept the ship from accelerating uncontrollably was shorted out, and amazingly the ship still held together past warp 14 as the ship continued to accelerate. There is a time limit imposed on how long it will be before the ship explodes, but this is as the ship continues to accelerate, so who knows at what warp factor the ship would actually break apart completely? Warp 20 maybe? Think about this: How many times has the Enterprise been modified by aliens to go way faster than it should? It was commandeered by the Kalandans to go the Andromeda galaxy... and I feel certaint here were other occasions.

My point is that the Enterprise clearly could go far faster than it normally did. I'd say a 'Warp Eight' engine is too slow. The ship seems designed for much more. My bet is that the Enterprise possessed a 'Warp Nine' engine (also more consistent with the odd-number engine jumps as presented on Enterprise) and that with Scotty's coaxing the ship actually did achieve warp 9+ on an emergency basis, but usually cruised only at about Warp 7-8, and could sometimes go as high as warp 14 when something went wrong on the verge of tearing herself apart (all old warp scale of course.) Subsequent designs mounted four (or maybe even *gasp* three!) warp engines in dreadnought fashion to try to achieve higher and higher speeds, ultimately uncovering the Warp Ten barrier. The Excelsior Project was then designed to pierce the newly infinite velocity barrier, failing miserably, but ultimatley led to a revolution in warp drive design that gave us the uberfast TNG ships that went in the Warp 9 range that corresponds to the TOS Enterprise's 'destruction speeds' of Warp 15+.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Wingsley]

^ You are on the right track with many of your assumptions.

If you look at the interstellar pursuits in "Arena", and "Obsession", it becomes clear that a Constitution-class starship's specs give it a standard cruise of Warp 6 and an emergency speed of Warp 8. This is reinforced by emergency speed attempts of no more than Warp 8 in "Balance of Terror" and "Operation: Annihilate!" as of 2266-67.

Of course, it should be noted that Nomad's tampering brought the ship to Warp 11 by "increasing reactor efficiency by 57%", to which Kirk respods that Nomad must stop because "the structural strain" will tear the starship apart. So clearly the ship was capable of double-digit warp speeds, and those speeds did not somehow approach infinity, as the Kelvans pushed the Enterprise again to Warp 11 yet the aborted journey to Andromeda was supposed to take three centuries.

The confusing thing is that Scotty complained about pushing the ship to Warp 8 in pursuit if the Cloud Creature ("Obsession") AFTER Nomad's tampering. It could be that Nomad's tampering left no lasting effects that could be reverse-engineered. (Scotty complained to Kirk during the hot pursuit of the cloud creature that "pressures are approaching the critical point", echoing Kirk's warning to Nomad and Scotty's earlier argument about the dangers of Kirk's high-speed pursuit of the Gorn. ("Arena")

Whatever the Kelvans did in their Warp 11 voyage ("By Any Other Name") must have left traces of technology that the Federation capitalized on. It was from then on that speeds in excess of Warp 8 suddenly became more common. Spock was the first Federation officer we ever heard press for Warp 9 ("The Paradise Syndrome"), an order we heard Kirk repeat ("The Enterprise Incident") but both of these attempts were emegency sprints that lasted for limited periods of time, one of which crippled the ship. Larry Marvick's insanity-induced tampering ("Is There In Truth No Beauty?") caused an out-of-control Enterprise to reach Warp 8.5 before tripping into "a time continuum" that resulted in the ship suddenly appearing "far outside our own Galaxy", which seems to reinforce Cochrane's formula ("Star Trek Maps", Bantam, 1980).

Aliens were back at it again, messing with the Enterprise's engines ("The Day of the Dove", "That Which Survives", and "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield") although in none of these later attempts was there any suggestion of these later aliens actually enhancing the engines; each adventure seems to depict tampering more in the form of simply pushing the engines too hard. The Beta XII-A energy creature pushed the engines for Warp 9 for an indeterminate period of time (hours or maybe a few days) and nearly crippled the ship. Losira's sabotage seemed designed to cause the reactor to start "running wild" to build up the engines to self-destruct, taking the ship with them. Lokai simply used telekenetic powers to cause the ship to sprint at Warp 10 for a brief time in his attempt to return to Cheron.

These instances surely were a source of concern for Mr. Roddenberry, who apparently wanted to hit the reset button on warp drive technology. At no time during TMP is the Enterprise ever depicted exceeding Warp 7. Same goes for ST5-TFF. (Of course, the later of those two voyages was not under Roddenberry's creative control.) In TNG, the Enterprise-D's top speed seems somewhere in the neighborhood of Warp 9.6 to Warp 9.8. Roddenberry's arbitrary rule about Warp 10 being infinity seems to kick in here, but does not seem to make sense in the STAR TREK genre overall.

The idea of a "TOS scale" versus a "TNG scale" is the result. The "TNG scale" never made sense to me, especially when you consider that every time a story needs the ship to go really fast they just say "Warp 9-point..." something-something, which should be unattainable as Warp 10 if you follow the logic of the whole thing being based on an asymptotic curve.

That's why I came up with the W.D.E. to explain the obvious differences in warp factors.

So, back around to where we started:

What was the engine for the Constitution-class dubbed? A "Warp 8 Engine", or maybe a "Warp 9 Engine"?

 

[Timo]

I'd still argue "warp 8 engine", both at the beginning of TOS and at its end - because that's where the ship's maximum performance remained even after she had been pushed to warps 9, 10 and 11.

Those pushes did not prove that the ship could withstand high speeds. Rather, they proved that the ship could not! Save for the Kelvan modifications, all the attempts at speeds past warp 8 were declared destructive and unsustainable. When the heroes tried to use speeds higher than warp 8 deliberately for tactical advantage, they proved to be a disastrous disadvantage - Spock cripped the ship in "Paradise Syndrome" by insisting on warp 9, thereby causing the mission to utterly fail.

In the real world, "flying her apart" is seldom sound tactical thinking. Most often the result would be one ruined ship dead in the water, and one successfully escaping enemy. There are some exceptions, of course - the sinking of the German Emden by the "overdriving" Sydney in WWI being one. But whenever I hear a scifi hero order that higher than recommended speed be "risked", I yearn to see an end result where the engines are ruined and the entire crew dies in the cold of space.

Timo Saloniemi