What Happened to Warp 6?

[PrimeDirective]

In the Enterprise novel Kobayashi Maru, Captain Eric Stillwell is in charge of United Earth's warp seven stardrive prototype program, but before the program is mentioned in the novel, there is no mention of it anywhere else(the fastest starship before the program is mentioned, is warp 5). I originally thought that at the end of The Good That Men Do, Commander Tucker had gotten the information for the development for a warp seven prototype from the aging Romulan scientist, who Trip met during his undercover work in the Romulan Star Empire. This assumption continued until I read Kobayashi Maru,and was made aware that Commander Tucker was still looking for the information. Can anyone help me?

 

[Count Zero]

I haven't yet read the relaunch novels but if your question is why there isn't a vessel capable of Warp 6 or a Warp 6 project, well, it seems that humans are fond of taking more than one step at a time. It's heavily implied in ENT that there's nothing between a Warp 2 engine and the new Warp 5 engine. I assume that they're jumping from there to Warp 7. There might be technical reasons for that in-universe, e.g. an engine design that would allow Warp 7 as a maximum. It seems you have to redesign the engines to reach certain velocities.

 

[Christopher]

As we were shown on ENT, the "Warp 5 engine" usually maintained warp 4 or so and only rarely pushed all the way to warp 5. As with most things in engineering, there's a difference between the recommended performance and the maximum performance, because you want a safety margin in there. So it follows that a Warp 7 engine would be one that's capable of reaching warp 7 as a maximum, rather than one that would routinely travel at that speed. And that's pretty much what we saw in TOS. The 23rd-century Enterprise had a normal cruising speed of warp 6 and an emergency speed of warp 7, with warp 8 or above exceeding safe tolerances and putting severe strain on the ship.

 

[PrimeDirective]

That makes sense. Thanks for helping me understand this topic better, guys