Spoilers What prevents that people on a ship during a slingshot maneuver become Salamanders?

One explanation that's been suggested is that gravity wells interfere with warp drive, which would also explain how, at warp factors high enough to cross the solar system in a second, ships crawl towards the sun at almost less than lightspeed when they're doing the slingshot maneuver.

 

Yep. We see this occur in TOS episodes and also in "The Voyage Home" where they go to Warp in Earth's atmosphere and don't get out of orbit for several minutes. I don't see this too much in later Trek though.

 

Well, but even in TNG they got flung across the galaxies in "Where No One Has Gone Before" so there was still some variation on the warp scale.

 

Writers with a basic grasp of science.

 

Really? Didn't the Kelvans say they were about 300 years from the Andromeda galaxy? Any one better at math have a speed estimate for that?

Maybe that's where the salamanders from Lower Decks came from...apparently not gotten to until after all of their DNA had been completely overwritten...and they all had a McCoy/Pulaski level distaste for transporters...

Which, given we're talking about travelling back in time by flying around a star fast, really highlights how bad the Voyager writers grasp was.

 

Slingshot came first. It overrides salamanders, like paper covers rock.

 

Variation yes but TNG onwards is quite clear (until they reworked the scale again in All Good Things) that Warp 10 is infinite speed. So any case where time is shown passing in transit - which even occurs when Q snaps the E-D across into the path of the Borg - is clearly not Warp 10. Warp 9.999999992 gets tedious to say though, so you can see why eventually they had to come up with a new scale.

Now does the spore drive hit Warp 10? It appears instant, but then that could just be "so quick we don't notice" which, as any speedster will tell you, is NOT the same thing.

 

That's the downside of the TNG era Warp Factor scale.
The continual need to stack 9's past the decimal seperator was a bad design / usage decision.

The hand drawn curve to infinity past Warp Factor 9.0 was bad / lazy design.

In my Head Canon for the 26th century. Warp Factor Scale 3.0 removes that hand drawn curve and lets the TNG era formula naturally run as high as you want without the need to hit infinity explicitly.

The #'s you use becomes more natural / normal for the end user.

Warp Factor 9.9 from the TNG scale, according to Tom Paris' quote in "The 37's" becomes equivalent to ~ Wf 20.

The Nuclegenic Powered Warp Drive that Captain Ransom was using was hitting ~ Wf 43

The Spore Drive has a speed of ~ Wf 635

 

I'd prefer each .9x equals a new warp factor. Warp 10 is Warp 9.9, Warp 11 is 9.99, etc.

Even at the end of VOY, Fed ships were struggling to hit 9.975 routinely, though Voyager herself was stated to be capable of such. Setting Warp 10 as something that Fed science could do but at the top end, and warp 11 as something aspirational within a decade or so seems to fit better - you don't want to immediately jump from calling it 9.9 to 20 as per your example or you'll confuse the old folk.

Remember, in AGT the E-D went Warp 13 and that was meant to indicate a progression in speed. If Warp 9.9 TNG becomes Warp 20 in your scale, Warp 13 is dawdling. But if it's 9.9999 on the TNG scale... they've gone to plaid.

 

Man, I get why TNG switched over to an exponential warp scale with 10 meaning infinite, but it really didn't work well in practice. It's very counter-intuitive for the tinest changes in the number to make the biggest differences in speed.

 

Exactly!

 

I like the idea that the movie-era transwarp eventually became the standard. Ergo, the revamped warp scale in the TNG era. Which is not to say I like the weird TNG scale. I don't.

Kor

 

Andromeda is 2,480,000 light years from the Milky Way. If the maximum sustained warp speed of the Enterprise is Warp 6, then it would take 11,481 years to reach Andromeda assuming Warp 6 is only 216 c using the standard cubed warp speed formula. If maximum is Warp 8 (512 c), then it would take 4844 years.

With the Kelvan improvements, divide the distance by 300 years, and the Enterprise would be traveling at 8266 times the speed of light (8266 c). The standard warp formula would give its speed at Warp 20.2. It could be Warp 11 the whole way if we use the Cochrane Factor adjusted formula with a favorable chi value = 6.2 for intergalactic space (probably not, see below).

With the old propulsion systems, if we use the same Cochrane Factor = 6.2, then the trip at Warp 6 would take only 1852 years (not quite "thousands of years", so, probably not the correct scenario.)

 

That would mean you would need 2x Warp Factor formulas.

One for Wf 0-9, and another one for Wf 10+

That's unnecessarily confusing / complicated for the sake of making each digit mean significantly more.

That's why you have to explain the Warp Factor Scale / System & the history to bring everybody up to date.

That can be easily taken care of in a "Short Treks" episode to show off the new Wf Scale 3.0

That just means that the AGT timeline had a new Warp Factor Scale that went past 10. That allowed higher numbers, but we didn't know where was the maximum cap or if there was a maximum cap.

And Warp 13 isn't dawdling, it's still > Warp Factor 9.

If you used the TNG era formula without the hand drawn curve, 8266 c ~= Wf 14.96885634

 

The ship is doing a superman .. And circling a number of times then breaking away..

 

No, you wouldn't really.

Warp 9.9 = 10

Warp 9.99 = 10.9 = 11

Warp 9.999 = 11.9 = 12

There's less leeway on the average speed camera.

 

My head canon says transwarp doesn't turn you into a salamander---that the Voth sent a virus to keep transwarp to themselves.

 

Actually, during TNG and DS9, most SF ships couldn't really hit Warp 9.75... some like the Nebula class were modified in DS9 to hit 9.5, and the Ent-D was the only one that could hit 9.8 for a small period of time (most of the other time, it could max out 9.6).

The USS VOY was stated on a few occasions its maximum stutainable cruising speed was 9.975 (so, technically, the ship SHOULD have been able to sustain this velocity without trouble), but in actual practice, we never see it happen.

In fact, on several instances in the show, the dialogue actually mentioned that VOY could 'maintain' 9.75 for 12 hours.
Also, in VOY episode 'Threshold', Warp 9.9 was stated to be VOY 'maximum speed' (and that at that speed, the hull would collapse in 45 seconds).
Even in the episode 37's, Tom Paris stated that VOY could technically achieve Warp 9.9 (which in Earhart's terms translates to 4 billion miles per second... or 21 473 times speed of light).

So, 9.975 didn't make much sense when contrasted to TNG and DS9. In fact, the only SF ship to achieve and maintain Warp 9.9 without issues under its own power was the USS Prometheus (as seen in VOY 4th Season).

I'd imagine that VOY could realistically maintain a maximum Warp of 9.75 for about 12 hours (as was stated in the dialogue)... and that its maximum sustainable cruise velocity (one that wouldn't cause the hull to fall apart) would actually be Warp 9.5 (but VOY was mainly seen cruising at Warp 6 - which is excessively slow... at the very least, you'd expect the ship to use Warp 8 or 9.0 most of the time for cruising speed).

 

+ My estimation for Voyager's Unscheduled 70,000 ly journey from the Delta Quadrant to home
- Based on the on-screen estimates of 75 year journey has a average cruise speed of Warp 8 assuming unlimited fuel
- Warp 8 would take 68.36 years if non-stop with unlimited fuel, but given stops, repairs, exploration, etc. They probably rounded up to 75 years
- That means I can guess that Warp 8 was their Sustainable Cruise Speed assuming unlimited fuel (A VERY Unrealistic Scenario)
- Galaxy Class initial Average Cruise speed was Warp 6, but later on became Warp 7 after further field testing and re-evaluations.

Warp Factor 9.9 was probably pushing the limits of the SIF generators, ergo the countdown before hull collapse at 45 seconds.

In the span of a few years after Voyager disappears, the USS Prometheus manages WF 9.9 without issue, so there is probably a serious improvement in the SIF generators to allow sustained Wf 9.9 travel.

 

My thinking too.
The sustainable cruise velocity would be something that a ship can handle for as long as it has fuel to run the engines for without issues (aka, smooth sailing)... and according to what we saw, I'd imagine this would be in the range of Warp 9 to 9.5 at the absolute highest what VOY could withstand.
Fuel and energy consumption are of concern as well, so we don't know for how long can a ship maintain its higher sustainable speeds (where the ship won't break) before the fuel or energy run out.

Janeway mentioned that the VOY Warp core can go on for 3 years before refilling... but we also know deuterium was largely something VOY was concerning itself with (antimatter was initially of concern, but it seems they found a workaround for this either with trading with Talaxians and other species, or just finding alternative source of omicron particels).

We do know that VOY ran for nearly 4 years before its Deuterium completely ran out in episode 'Demon' and they had to replace it. So, Deuterium storage might outlast the ship's Antimatter storage it seems.
We also know that Neelix mentioned to Borg kids that VOY collected enough deuterium to power the Warp engines for another 1000 Ly's. Although the story was 'iffy' in some sections, it seemed to have been the real deal for the most part. Though, nothing was said which Warp speed would have to be maintained for 1000 Ly's... unless it was meant that the speed doesn't technically matter and the range (1000 Ly's) does.

But yes, it does seem that SIF was improved quite a lot for the USS Prometheus to be able to sustain Warp 9.9 without any kinds of turbulence... this definitely provides a more sensible indication of Warp speed improvements over what came before and is more in line with the established dialogue (rather than Warp 9.975 - although THAT would have been nice too - but for that to work, then the ship should have been thrown over 200 million Ly's away to get back in 75 years at 9.975).

The Prometheus was seen as being stolen by the Romulans in Season 4. It stands to reason SF could probably improve on Warp speed by that much... as we were given indications other technology improved as well and got miniaturized.