warp Speeds

[Mytran]

Why not do constant thrust? It's faster, and speed is survival. Or, more exactly, travel time is inversely proportional to survival.

The ship wasn't supposed to be short on fuel for impulse travel in "Where No Man"; at most, her impulse engines were two steps away from blowing up, even after Kelso's well-advised repair. It was the main drive that was out of oomph and awaiting refreshments from Delta Vega. So accelerating all the way would make the best sense.

Or accelerating halfway and then decelerating the other half. But Trek ships never do that. There instead exists some sort of a magical braking system that can perform negative acceleration a thousand times better than the impulse engines can do positive acceleration. Perhaps a drag chute you can deploy into subspace or something? Real space is symmetric as regards acceleration and deceleration; a fixed frame of reference in the form of subspace would nicely break that symmetry and make braking easier than accelerating.

Timo Saloniemi

The way that impulse speed has been depicted in Trek is that it only works when "on". In ST3 for instance, the Excelsior coasts to a stop once her engines are disabled.

However, this is consistent with some sort of mass-reduction field being in effect (such as in DS9's pilot episode) which would be entirely necessary given Enterprise's tiny engines, small fuel volume and massive speeds often achieved with the Impulse Engines. Bereft of a MRF, the Impulse Engines would be barely better than manoeuvring thrusters.

In WNMHGB the ship was severely damaged with likely numerous systems barely functioning. There might have been just enough juice in the mass-reduction tech to get the ship to the planet, after which the crew would have been entirely dependent on those dinky little Impulse Engines to blast out of orbit (which Kirk surmised would not have been enough)

 

[Noname Given]

The way that impulse speed has been depicted in Trek is that it only works when "on". In ST3 for instance, the Excelsior coasts to a stop once her engines are disabled.

But...Does she coast to a stop, OR are their station-keeping thrusters of some kind the ship auto engages after engine failure?

 

[Timo]

And if there are, why install an engine at all? Since the thrusters can do the engine's work in reverse, they can do it in reverse-reverse, too...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Noname Given]

And if there are, why install an engine at all? Since the thrusters can do the engine's work in reverse, they can do it in reverse-reverse, too...

Timo Saloniemi

You do realize all-star fleet vessels do have thrusters right? Equating a thruster to a full-blown impulse or warp engine??

 

[publiusr]

This is why I keep coming back to the idea of space lanes...though never mentioned on screen. There is this variable speed of light theory that relies on cosmic strings.

My thinking is two fold:

Slavers forged space lanes that ring ships...though slower than nacelle craft...would get caught in then lost. As time goes by...they are plotted. That is what Paris meant by no left and right.

In free space, TMOST holds..only I never liked warp factor one being light speed...but perhaps the space lines “like” that as an on ramp.

Early ringships helped “open up” disused space lane— Krasnikov tubes as per “ The Alternate View.”

Along spacelanes, warp travel is faster than in free space. My head canon anyhoo

 

[MAGolding]

This is why I keep coming back to the idea of space lanes...though never mentioned on screen. There is this variable speed of light theory that relies on cosmic strings.

My thinking is two fold:

Slavers forged space lanes that ring ships...though slower than nacelle craft...would get caught in then lost. As time goes by...they are plotted. That is what Paris meant by no left and right.

In free space, TMOST holds..only I never liked warp factor one being light speed...but perhaps the space lines “like” that as an on ramp.

Early ringships helped “open up” disused space lane— Krasnikov tubes as per “ The Alternate View.”

Along spacelanes, warp travel is faster than in free space. My head canon anyhoo

That is merely one of several theoreis to explain the w various warp speed problems.

Deciding which theory or theories work best may be a difficulat problem.

It seems to me that any form of FTL travel using cosmic strings would require highly unsual ship designs.because the effects of the cosmic strings would fall off rapidly with distance from the strings. One logical design would be a hollow cylindrical ship. The ship would have a large radius, and a very narrow thickness of the ring. The ship would be hinged, and normally travel with the cylinder opened up. When it reached a cosmic string it would move paralled to the string and then close the cylinder around the string and turn on the engines, with every part of the ring at the same distance from the string so that the effect would be equal in all parts of the ship.

Another design might be a ship which could break apart and reassemble in different configurations, somewhat like the Star Cluster in A.E. van Vogt's MIssion to the Stars. It would have many long narrow components. When the ship approached a cosimic string it would disassemble into hundreds or thousands of those components, and they would reassemble in single file parallel to the cosmic string, in a new conifuguration which was thosands of times as long as it was wide, to run parallel to the string and with every part of the ship at the same distance from the string.

 

[publiusr]

I think you just need to get near the string...or that it is a helix...for trek ships to enter...krasnikov tubes need no cosmic strings...

 

[Shawnster]

I have the idea that, since warp drive creates a subspace bubble around the ship, warp factors = layers of the bubble. Warp 1 is 1 layer, Warp 2 is 2 layers, etc... So Warp factors aren't a speed but, rather, an intensity of effect. This explains why/how the warp scale could be recalibrated between TOS and TNG. Warp 4 is still a warp bubble with 4 layers in not TOS and TNG, but in TNG's time it's more efficient.

Of course, this idea doesn't slow for fractions of Warp like Warp 8.5.

 

[Warped9]

Warp factor cubed simply doesn’t work on a galactic scale as presented in TOS. It’s just too slow for the stories to take place in the allotted time referenced onscreen.

 

[cgervasi]

The way that impulse speed has been depicted in Trek is that it only works when "on". In ST3 for instance, the Excelsior coasts to a stop once her engines are disabled.

But...Does she coast to a stop, OR are their station-keeping thrusters of some kind the ship auto engages after engine failure?

I took this to be the way they conveyed the Excelsior stopped accelerating and was now a drift in the gravitational forces of the Earth and its moon.

 

[Mytran]

I took this to be the way they conveyed the Excelsior stopped accelerating and was now a drift in the gravitational forces of the Earth and its moon.

She didn't just stop accelerating, she visibly slowed.

But...Does she coast to a stop, OR are their station-keeping thrusters of some kind the ship auto engages after engine failure?

Yes, once the engines fail and the mass-reduction field evaporates, the natural mass of the vessel is reasserted - in effect, the ship suddenly becomes a lot heavier and its previous momentum is no longer sufficient to keep it at the same velocity

 

[Ronald Held]

Use a spacially dependent Cochrane factor and the cubed formula will work.

 

[Warped9]

My solution was WF cubed x .02 = light years per hour.

 

[publiusr]

I like that.

I have this little idea of their being a rivalry between ringship designers and twin nacelle designers...

Early on, you had massive ringships made of many rings. Staged warp. Rings would be cast off like rocket stages and serve like Aridas superimpeller subspace catapault deals, for the last stage ringship to use to get back. The nacelle folks used this for greater effect, but could warp in free space too.

Sort of like the old-space/new-space arguements of today.