Warp Question
 

Umm...well, this is a stupid question inspired by watching ShuttlePod One at 10:15pm and having completed a successful driving lesson, and goes something like this:

"Malcolm said that at impulse speed they were not likely to run into any other species. However, if we're talking about impulse and warp as relatives of speed, wouldn't maximum impulse mean they were grazing warp speed already, or am I being stupid?"

~~Lostoyannaya :D

At high impulse you'd be experiencing pretty high time dilation effects due to that whole special relativity schtick, so I guess avoiding it would be a good idea. As far as I know you couldn't "get" to warp speed - the Treknology of warp engines goes that they fold space, so that though you are effectively going faster than c, you aren't actually, so special relativity is preserved. In impulse you're moving in real space, so it's a completely different propulsion method - you couldn't, by going fast enough, go from impulse to warp speed (because under impulse power c remains as a hard limit) therefore limiting your maximum speed to a fraction under c.

But don't quote me on that.

[NOTE: Jedi snuck in while I was typing this.]

Short answer: There's probably a gap.

Long answer: I don't think there's any canon evidence about how fast full impulse is, but Warp 1 is traditionally the speed of light. Full impulse would have to be considerably slower than that, because if you're not warping space, relativity applies to you -- in particular, you experience time dilation based on your speed. A day's travel at half the speed of light is 1.15 days to the rest of the universe. At 99% lightspeed, that day becomes a week. It would be impossible to coordinate a fleet of ships with that sort of time dilation going on, so full impulse couldn't be very close to the speed of light.

Of course, Trip and Malcolm were out of options, and skipping ahead a few years is better than dying... but that's where the other consequence of relativity comes in. The more you accelerate, the greater your inertial mass, meaning more energy is required to accelerate you further. Accelerating to the speed of light is impossible; accelerating close to it takes a prohibitive amount of energy. In conclusion, never get into Shuttlepod One.

Incidentally, there was an Andromeda episode that made clever use of this idea. Before slipstream propulsion was discovered, Earth built a ship, the Bellerophon, that could actually meet the insane energy requirements of near-lightspeed, and sent it out to explore. The crew knew the universe would change tremendously in their absence, but felt it was worth it. So they were still out there after Dylan's 300-year nap and ended up rescuing him when his slipstream drive was destroyed, which left him with a dilemma: stay where he was on the slim chance the Andromeda could find him, or let the Bellerophon take him to the nearest planet and lose another 57 years of relative time? Cool episode. Tony Todd was in it.

A very Trek episode. Sometimes extremely blatant.

Technical details:

Acoording to the plans for the drive presented in the TNG technical menu, the impulse drive uses a bunch of fusion reactors to power up a set of subspace driver coils (which seems to explain how they can go in reverse if the engines are only on the back). However, they do have to deal with the prior mentioned relativistic effects, I think, so they normally stick around .25 c.

You people make my head hurt. Just watch the show!! :P But I kid. PHJ you bring up an interesting point about warp drive thing not pushing you ahead in time and stuff because you're not actualy going past the speed of light. That was always in the back of my mind and for some reason what you said just made everything click in my brain. I love when that happens.

As far as I can tell, looking at the star trek Encyclopedia, Impulse speed is is around one-quarter the speed of light. Although this is I think the norm for around the Next Gen era, so back then, in Enterprise, Impulse might be even slower.
There's a niffy little chart in the Book to, that explains the differt speeds too.

At warp Nine, Five Light years takes - 1 Day
At warp Five it takes - 9 Days
At Impuse - 20 Years.

One point that has yet to be explained (to me at least) is the difference between the 'old' warp speeds and the 'new' warp speeds, and there relevence in Enterprise.
We know that back in Kirks time the Enterprise reached warp speeds of around warp 14. But when Next Gen started, old Gene wanted to put warp 10 at the top. So all the older speeds have been 'recalibrated' - meaning they were less than warp 10. Kirk's warp 11.8 is Janeway's warp 9.2. Ok. Heres the bit:
Enterprise has a top speed of warp 5. Would that mean they are really going around warp 2-3?

Actually, I remember running across a debate somewhere when Enterprise first came out about that. From what I remember, I think they said that this was theoretically warp 5 on the TNG scale...but someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong.

And yeah, supposedly the subspace coils on the impulse drives gets rid of the time dilation effects of travelling at impulse (the one good thing about being in a Trek RPG as an engineer is that you learn the stuff backwards and forwards, lol).

The problem with watching the show with a science degree is that you have to quell the urge to scream "WRONG!" and hurl things everytime they screw something up.

Even without a science degree...

...mashed potato blocks a hull breach? NO WAI!

:roll:

Whoa! Lots of helpful replies, sankuu!!

Oh! My mom has all the boxsets downstairs - do you know which season it was in?

That probably explains Malcolm's pessimism. Probably.

Yah wai!

To everyone: I knew there was a reason I didn't do A-Level Science...

~~Lostoyannaya :D

Too slow old man, too slow. :P

As memory serves, the TOS warp speeds were just a strict cubic function. Warp x = (x^3)*c. So Warp 1 was the speed of light. Warp 3 was 27 times the speed of light. Warp 5 was 125 times the speed of light.

I guess the problem with TNG and later was that warp speeds continued to climb, so Starfleet redid the warp scale at some point. Why they would redo the warp scale is beyond me. Why the producers of TNG felt the warp scale needed to be redone is beyond me. What's so wrong about Warp 20? Anyway, maybe once Starfleet engineers realized that there was a (ahem) threshold that couldn't be passed, they decided to rework the warp scale to make that threshold Warp 10.

If you want to see a graph of the how the two scales look, go to http://flare.solareclipse.net/ultima.../6/2585/1.html and be scared.

Whether Enterprise falls under the TOS scale or the TNG scale strikes me as being whether you see the warp scale being changed as a product of Star Trek designers in the real world, or Starfleet engineers in the Trek universe. If the former, then it would still be TNG; if the latter, then TOS. I personally have always assumed the latter. (And Burt, notice in that link above how Warp 5 TOS is not that far off of Warp 5 TNG and is definitely higher than Warp 4 TNG.)


Lostoyannaya, the episode is Season 3, episode 5, "The Lone and Level Sands"

Yeah, thinking about it, the scale does go up rather fast. So the difference between even warp 2-4 is tiny compared to warp 9.5-9.8.
I guess that means the lower warps aren't that affected.

While most of the relevant stuff has been said already, let me add two tidbits: First, Full Impulse is definately .25 c. I don't know if it's strictly fanon, but if it is, it's very widespread. There's no reason to assume it's otherwise, really.

...actually, my second point is a reason to assume otherwise: In Star Trek VI, Sulu says the fleet is heading home at full impulse. What the heck?

A) It's wrong, they meant warp.

or

B) Impulse is a viable interstellar propulsion system.

Have fun puzzling that one out.

Gatac

They've done that a few times in episodes. Said things like 'Full Impulse!' When they're going to another star system light years away.
Guess we just have to ignore it!

Sankuu both for the episode reference and using my full name :D

~~Lostoyannaya

There's one really great quote during sometime in S1 TNG ("Conspiracy"?) when the following exchange actually takes place:

Riker: Helm, Warp 6.
LaForge: Aye, sir. Full impulse.

Love to be on the bridge at that time, to hear what comes next.

Riker: Helm, Warp 6.
LaForge: Aye, sir. Full impulse.
Riker: Are you even listening to me?
Laforge: Raising shield's, sir.
Riker: Hey! Useless! Listen!
LaForge: Yep captain, of course I'm listening. la de da de la la la...

Riker: That's it, I'm sticking you in Engineering until you learn the difference between warp and impulse.
LaForge: An idiot says what.
Riker: Yes, you do.
LaForge: Do'h.

Wow...We've uncovered why Laforge went from the Helm to Engineering....Who'd have known..?

I always chalked that up to the whole "blind guy flying the ship" problem.

Could have been worse. Could have been Brains.

~~Lostoyannaya

Being Blind in the Star Trek universe (like being dead) never seems to faze anyone.
"Blind you say? Here be Chief Engineer!" and
"Can't see Mr Tuvok? Well, please be the Tatical Officer! What's that you say? You won't be able to hit any ships? My dear man this is Voyager! We don't shoot back at people! And when we do, we certainly don't aim!

Sorry to point this out, but Tuvok isn't blind.

lol. I was talking about 'Year of hell', He got blinded by a Chronoton Torpedo Explosion. Somehow he stayed on as Tatical officer. Interesting idea!

Nah.. Tuvy just learned brail really really fast. Must be a Vulcan thing. They're good with their hands. ;)

The question is: at which point does warp speed match R17?

Yeah, as Celeste said (sort of), he was using something called a "tactile interface." It's a pity his magical third eyelid didn't kick in like Spock's did....

On this whole issue of full impulse of interstellar travel, I think the creators imply that the old theory is being obeyed.

You see, going directly into warp from planetary orbit (or even within what I'd call inner stellar systems) creates a great deal of messy gravitational and subspace effects. I got the impression that impulse will be maintained at least past where we'd generally put the asteroid belt, at which point the gravtitational effects of the star start to fall off drastically. Once you start to pass the gas giants you can then kick into warp. That was sort of my impression. They don't intend to stay on impulse the whole distance, just far enough that they're not going to create subspace tidal effects throughout the system whent they warp away. That's what makes these near-warp transports so dangerous, with no margin for error. You have to know PRECISELY where you're going to land and where all the planets are relative to your warpout point as well as their tragectories. In addition, when you warp out after having stopped for only the five seconds of transport, you have to be going such that you're perpendicular to the gravitational field of the planet in question.

I seem to recall getting that impression from somewhere (ie, the Enterprise chasing the Borg ship in BOBW, dropping out of warp somewhere around Saturn and spending the next half hour crawling towards Earth), but it wasn't treated consistently (blasting into warp from orbit in the Schizoid Man, Kirk's BOP kicking into warp in the *atmosphere*, etc.)

No, it's not consistent. Warp within a solar system is sometimes treated as dangerous to add a little tension, but more often it's not (how many times have we seen characters on a planet's surface watch a ship go off into warp?). However, even if full impulse is only 1/4 lightspeed, that's still pretty fast for intrasystem travel. It would get you from the Earth to the Sun and back in just over an hour. That would be more than fast enough except in emergency situations -- it's sure a lot faster than we can manage now.

If I recall correctly, the two series that made the most use of this no-warp-in-solar-systems rule are TOS and Enterprise. If that's true, then another explanation is that warp technology, like any form of transportation, is continually being improved to reduce dangers like this.

My technological pet peeve is intraship transporting, which is supposed to be more dangerous than regular transporting. Why? It should be much safer -- the computer knows the ship's precise layout already.

Well, for the shooting-star warping ship, I have no response. In theory I shouldn't think any "normal" size ship should be visible from the surface to begin with. I assume "standard orbit" would be a lot higher than the International Space Station, for example.

Of course, for that matter, maybe all of those warping ships we think we see are in fact VERY coincidental shooting stars. :wink:

It's a good point. We keep seeing this whole "full impulse=0.25c" in the official Paramount reference material, yet they keep being contradictory on what is canon or not. For example, I enjoy my copy of Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, but it's got too many holes in it. Where do we draw the line at what is canon and what isn't. I'd suggest that the true heirarchy is more along the lines of what follows. The higher sources trumps the lower sources in the case of a conflict.

1. The televised version of the episodes and the theatrical version of the movies.
2. Any other version of the episodes or the movies. (i.e. if the missing scenes from all those middle Voyager episodes have conflicting information, they lose to the televised stuff)
3. Official Paramount literature starting with the NextGen Tech Manual.
4. Older Paramount literature.
5. Semi-canon like TAS and the more recent "main-stream" novels like New Frontier and the DS9 Relaunch.
6. Anything else. Sadly this includes the Shatnerverse and the novel Star Trek Federation, both of which I greatly enjoy.

Now use the heirarchy for deciding if warping from orbit is okay. Episodes say they can, so it must be safe in theory, at least from well-known planets. "Impulse=0.25c" is in level three, but nothing in levels one or two states otherwise except "less than c," so we accept it as reality.

P.S. I'd like to add as a proviso that anything in Star Trek: Enterprise should be pushed down the heirarchy to level three at least. I hate those contiuity errors!

I was always under the impression that it isn't less safe, it's just more energy consuming, because you use the 'long range effects' of the transporter (i.e. not being directly on the pad) twice...in dematerialization and rematerialization. So it just took more energy, and in emergency situations, you might not have that to spare.

Picard: Oh, man! What's that awful smell?
Data: I believe Commander Riker just passed the gas giant.
All: WILL!

(Sorry for the juvenile humor, but it was there.)

What about people? That's another problem. Not a big one, with internal scanners, but still a problem.

Yeah, that's a valid question. Theoretically any beaming to and from planet surfaces must use a LOT more energy getting the targeting right than non-transporter pad intraship beaming. And the point is quite valid in that A. the computer should know exactly where all of the occupied volume is within the ship at all times and B. the transporter does "clear out" anything where the person is going to be landing.

I hope that when we beam to a planet all of the air in the volume we're about to occupy is moved somewhere. Maybe it's a sort of unspoken rule that entire cylinders of air/matter/etc. are exchanged within the space of less than a few seconds. That would explain the "starfleet officer inside snow globe" effect. They're actually surrounded by ships air, and the ship has just been contaminated by evil alien spores :lol: .

Of course, for that matter, we have to think about the issue Krauss raised in The Physics of Star Trek. Do transporters really move each and every atom of our bodies thousands of miles to a planets' surface, or does it "clone" us a new body with local material? Moving the complete genetic pattern without worrying about shunting billions of atoms at close to the speed of light would be a lot more cost effective, right?

Then why do they have to worry about a "matter stream"?

Something's got to kill a couple of hundred Redshirts a season.

~~Lostoyannaya :wink:

The thing is, I don't believe it does move the atoms. It turns them in to Energy, or if you like a kinda of digital signal. Yes I know that the idea of having the whole human body along with all the DNA and everything else turned in to digital format would take...just a huge amount of computer space. But they seem to be able to do it. I guess they don't use XP. But this is why they have a pattern buffer and matter stream.
Maybe thats why inter-ship beaming can be a problem. The computer has to take you apart, move you in energy form, then put you back together again. If you're sent to another ship or transporter pad, the other ship's computer does almost half the work, i.e putting you back together again. Maybe that uses less energy for us... Doesn't explain why beaming to planets never worries them, though. Cos the same ship is doing all the beaming.....