Weaponized Warp Drive

[Mytran]

Except when TOS ships fire their phasers at warp

 

[Vance]

Except when TOS ships fire their phasers at warp

No. What I'm saying is that the spadis effect of phasers do not follow 'relativity' in the sense that Alpha has explained it. They travel at warp just like the ships and don't experience or deal with relativistic effects of high sub-C velocities (much less higher than C).

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Which doesn't explain your comments on how phasers working as FTL weaponry, since they clearly do not work that way, and never, ever, have.

Just telling how it would work in SR... but then, only against a warp-driven starship and another stationary target. Two warp driven starships wouldn't have this problem if their velocities are the same; the existence of the warp field becomes irrelevant since the warp field only physical demarcates a coordinate system that is in motion with respect to an outside observer. If both coordinate systems are stationary with respect to each other, then the difference between the two warp fields is mathematically null.

Though I'll say it again: half of the crap predicted by SR makes MATHEMATICAL sense while being intuitively absurd. But that's just the way the THEORY works.

 

[Saul]

I remember an Enterprise Novel where a ship warped itself into a planet causing a lot of devastation.

 

[Mytran]

I read a TOS novel once where engaging warp drive (it was an emergency) within the atmosphere effectively ravaged the planet. Kirk was flushed out of starfleet for that one!

 

[Timo]

Just telling how it would work in SR

But it wouldn't. Or, rather, it shouldn't (the "math makes internal sense" caveat noted here). SR specifically deals with a universe where FTL is forbidden. It's not just some sort of a magic realm with fairies and wizards and disenchanted forests and a rule that says "EM must leave every observer at c" and another that says "c is the fastest possible speed". It is an entire construct created for a very specific reason.

Namely, it is there to ensure that Maxwell's equations on EM radiation hold true. If they don't, well, the universe retroactively ceases to exist (nodes of infinite or negative energy everywhere, for starters), and that's that. You can protect Maxwell by establishing the c limit and the EM-always-moves-at-c rule, but that protection comes to naught if you introduce FTL starships that remain in such interaction with the universe that EM leaving them leaves them at local c. That collapses the entire structure, the entire purpose of relativity, by reintroducing infinite or negative energies.

Now, you probably can throw together some fancy tech in the future to create FTL transfer of information or objects, and you won't jeopardize the existence of the universe, but merely lesser things like causality. But trying to mix and match that with the usual rules of relativity will not produce the desired result, which is keeping the universe from being impossible.

And why bother? Lots of stuff in Trek is made to travel FTL, without the benefit of speed-matched FTL start- and endpoints. Why not phaser beams as well?

I read a TOS novel once where engaging warp drive (it was an emergency) within the atmosphere effectively ravaged the planet. Kirk was flushed out of starfleet for that one!

Yup, Prime Directive by Jud and Gar Reeves-Stevens. Doesn't really jibe with what we saw in ST3:TSfS, where warp drives appear to be relatively harmless things and the worst one gets from atmospheric warping is probably some sort of a thunderclap.

Timo Saloniemi