On a side note, do we know when the TNG warp scale actually came into use in the Trek universe? For some reason, I seem to think that The Undiscovered Country was using the TNG scale, but I don't know why I would think that.
The TOS warp scale is a different beast that has its warp factors advance in a linear fashion with no upper limit (unlike the TNG scale which has an overall curvilinear shape that has no definite end but approaches factor 10). I believe the way of figuring out the TOS speed corrolation is to cube the factor number. Thus Warp 2 is 8 times the speed of light, Warp 3 is 27 times the speed of light, et cetra.
Both systems have one thing in common. Warp 1 is equal is to just a slight bit faster than the speed of light (because I believe its impossible to be at precisely the speed of light -- someone will correct me if I'm wrong).
Speed (in multiples of light speed) = Warp Factor^3
In TNG the scale was recalibrated. Beginning with Warp 1, all values for the speed are a bit higher at the same warp factors.
At Warp 10, finally, speed becomes infinite, which has been subject to a lot of confusion since several people claim (and VOY: "Threshold" even shows) that Warp 10 can be reached or even exceeded. That's bogus because all very fast speeds are simply "compressed" in a range between Warp 9 and Warp 10, and there is definitely nothing faster than infinite speed.
Er...and by that I mean TMP and refit Enterprise?
[ August 15, 2001: Message edited by: Stingray ]
Mark
[ August 15, 2001: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
Anyway, yes, the TOS scale system that uses the factor cubed is non-canon and originated in Franz Joseph's Starfleet Technical Manual (I think that part at least is correct). All we know about the TOS system is relative. In "By Any Other Name," it took Kelvan engineering to get the Enterprise up to Warp 14. Spock announced amazement in "Journey to Babel" that the Orion ship was shooting by at Warp 10.
This very slow ship would theoretically take over a year to bridge the distance to Rigel X(allegedly 15 ly, according to ENT spoilers)
I got these bits of data.
Rigel X is 15 light years from the SS Enterprise NX-01's position. The position is never given a location or a name. By inference, I assume that the ship is in deep space.
At warp four point five, the SS Enterprise NX-01 is traveling at 13,000 kph per second. Travel time to Klingon is 4 days in, 4 days out. Travel time is based on a ship traveling at warp 4.5.
Anyways, if they're going at a maximum speed of 83.33 c for "Neptune and back in 6 minutes," that means they can cover a light year in 4.38 days (365 days per year/83.3 light years per year). Therefore, if it takes 4 days to get to the Klingon homeworld, it's only about a light year away.
quote:
Quick note: the TOS scale was not invented by Franz Joseph for his Star
Fleet Technical Manual. It is found in The Making of Star Trek, circa
1968. I can't remember if it is in a Rodenberry-quoted section or in the
text proper.
The scale is in the main body of the text (page 191 in my copy). 
It gives the speeds for warp 1,3,6, and 8, and it follows the wf^3 formula, although it gets the speed wrong for warp 3 (should be 27c, not 24).
How fantastically hideous an error is this?? And is there any way I can observe this in Enterprise without having a major panic attack??!!
quote:
Originally posted by The Red Admiral:
Yes, this is horrific. It's almost as bad for me as the Akiraprise.
For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that you're being serious... even though this seems like a joke.
quote:
Obviously in this 'Enterprise' universe, there's a star just beyond the edge of the solar sytem around which a planet called Qo'Nos revolves.
Obviously in the traditional Star Trek universe, there's a galactic core just beyond the edge of the solar system within which a planet called Sha-Ka-Ree revolves. And there are stars called Rigel and Deneb that're only a few light years away. And the galactic rim is just a few light years beyond that. And the Constitution-class Enterprise was dramatically faster than the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D; remember "That Which Survives" and the Enterprise travelling 990 light years in a day?
If you honestly think that contradicting the warp scale causes a problem with "Broken Bow," then you must hate half of the existing Star Trek episodes! The number of times that the warp scale is gotten right is miniscule compared to the number of times it's wrong. Enterprise is just more of the same there... and I'm sure you'd prefer "Broken Bow" to start with the crew entering stasis for the months of travel to Kronos, right? Screw a good, exciting story, I want to see realistic warp travel-times!
quote:
How fantastically hideous an error is this??
Not very fantastically at all, given that all other Star Trek's do it, too... and many do it much worse.
quote:
And is there any way I can observe this in Enterprise without having a major panic attack??!!
Prozac.
I suppose I should add one of those greenish toothy grins right here.
The writers *could* have ignored the TNG scale and gone for a "realistic" warp scale in ENT, one that is much faster than the TNG scale. In turn, the TNG ships would then be claimed to be using a scale about ten times faster than the currently established TNG scale.
But would the fans have been any happier? TNG scale is canonically confirmed in much the same manner as the ENT scale now is - travel time and distance are given for some short trip in exact unambiguous terms, and a speed figure in rough agreement with the TNG scale is arrived at.
I think there's an easy cop-out in the ENT case. Let's simply say that while one travels at warp speeds using primitive engines, time runs more slowly for the traveler than for the stationary observer, just like in Einsteinian space. The trip to Rigel X did take eighty days, but only from the viewpoint of SF HQ. Archer experienced only a couple of days.
This means the ship will be massively out of synch with SF HQ whenever she returns from a long high-warp journey. But hopefully, the ship is not returning any time soon, so we don't have to care about SF HQ. Heck, this would more or less mean that 2161 will roll by the end of the first season, and we do get to see the founding of the Federation! 
Timo Saloniemi
Note: 30 million km/sec is about 100 c.
In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A and the IKC Qo'Nos rendezvous 1000 light years away from Earth. If we say that both ships traveled equal distance from their respective home worlds, then Qo'Nos is 2000 light years from Earth.
To answer an earlier question,
13,000 km/sec is from the script. Star Trek is not a science accurate show. They never have been.
[ August 17, 2001: Message edited by: targetemployee ]
"It's easy to get a little jumpy when you're travelling at thirty million kilometers a second."
That's pretty much in accordance with the cubed scale. I couldn't find any reference to 13,000 km/s in the script.
Timo Saloniemi
It's very unlikely that the rendez-point lies exactly on a straight line between Kronos and Earth.
And given that the shortest distance between two point is always a straight line, any 'triangular' route is longer. So, it is very likely that the distance is (much) less than 2000 ly. (though I have to admit that a 1000 ly travel for a rendez-vous is kinda long)
I think Kirk was just being poetic about that 1000 ly thing. Or perhaps that was the distance to the Romulan origin of the illegal ale or something?
Timo Saloniemi
Statistically speaking, the chance that the rendez-vouz point lies on the straight line between Homeworld and Earth is very small.
Seigfried, my supercilious friend, this is not a simple quandary of warp speed versus distance that can be comfortably overlooked, this is a serious flaw.
This Earth to Qo'Nos thing cannot be ignored like other such errors in distance and warp factor that may have happened far off in deep space, we're talking about THE major Trek protagonist for 30 years residing on a world precisely in our back yard. How the hell could either the Feds or the Klingons establish large, sprawling empires across half the qudrant when their two homeworlds are virtually touching each other. I mean, Qo'Nos's star and our sun would be virtually a binary star system, being like a quarter of the distance to our real, nearest star Alpha Centauri. Your attempts to make me look dumb just because I severely question this is laughable.
If in the second episodes of 'Enterprise' it was established that Romulus is only 3 days away at warp 4.5, would it be just as acceptable to you??
quote:
When EVER has there been such a monumentally absurd error as this one involving the distance between Earth and Qo'Nos?
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. How about the Enterprise limping to Regula One in a short amount of time on IMPULSE power? Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. How about it only taking a couple days to get from Earth to the planet Genesis? Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Earth is only about a day away from the boundry of the UFP with the Romulan and Klingon Empires. Then the planet Nimbus III at that intersection is only a few hours away from the galactic core. That's just the movies. Want to consider the TNG and DS9 episodes that show the Enterprise-D and Defiant making routine trips from "the frontier" to Earth? There's quite a few of those episodes.
quote:
This Earth to Qo'Nos thing cannot be ignored like other such errors in distance and warp factor that may have happened far off in deep space, we're talking about THE major Trek protagonist for 30 years residing on a world precisely in our back yard. How the hell could either the Feds or the Klingons establish large, sprawling empires across half the qudrant when their two homeworlds are virtually touching each other. I mean, Qo'Nos's star and our sun would be virtually a binary star system, being like a quarter of the distance to our real, nearest star Alpha Centauri. Your attempts to make me look dumb just because I severely question this is laughable.
And by that same token, DS9 is right outside the Sol System as is Q'onos, Romulus, and the Galactic Core among others.
[Editted after anger subsided. Red Admiral, check your private messages.]
[ August 17, 2001: Message edited by: Siegfried ]
Based on my limited understanding of ancient sea history, humans first learn how to navigate the oceans close to shore. As their abilities and confidence grew, they traveled further and made land on nearby islands. Sails were invented. Humans went even further to more distant islands.
If we apply this pattern to space flight, humans in the 20th century are learning the basics of navigating the shores of a vast ocean. Overlapping the history of Star Trek onto real history in the early 21st century, humans engineered the warp drive. This drive, like the sail, gave humans the ability to travel to the nearest islands and, eventually, islands even further out.
The problem that exists is that at the beginning of the warp drive age, humans were tens of thousands of light years away at the galactic rim. This would be equivalent to saying that our ancestors had traveled from Indonesia to Easter Island within a few years of the invention of the sail. The actual time is on the order of centuries.
I don't discount the possibility of ships traveling the vastness of space to planets and stars. I just think that this will occur on the order of centuries or thousands of years. (The first mission to Mars will come after I am dead, perhaps in the mid to late 21st century. Not earlier. There are many challenges to be solved.) Looking at our history, I am not so disappointed in the space program. We are just beginning. I wonder if our earliest ancestors thought the explorations of the sea were expensive and not productive to society. This thought may have existed as far back as that. Knowing this, I am less anxious about us getting deeper into space. I know we will.
Returning to Star Trek, I believe the writers should cut out as much science and technology as they can. In their place, they should write more character exposition. They only have 45 minutes to tell a story. These minutes should be used in the telling of a story about people with technology written into the background, as on Farscape.
[ August 18, 2001: Message edited by: targetemployee ]
quote:
(The first mission to Mars will come after I am dead, perhaps in the mid to late 21st century. Not earlier. There are many challenges to be solved.) Looking at our history, I am not so disappointed in the space program. We are just beginning. I wonder if our earliest ancestors thought the explorations of the sea were expensive and not productive to society. This thought may have existed as far back as that. Knowing this, I am less anxious about us getting deeper into space. I know we will.
no no no no no No No NO NO
The first mission to Mars will happen within twenty-five years at the max. If the project was started TODAY, then we could have people walking around on the Martian surface within ten or twelve years.
And all with TODAY'S technology. No fusion drives or anything remotely future available. Chemical engines, a heavy launch vehicle (shuttle or Saturn V derived), etc. Once again, I plead with you to read The Case For Mars. You will be utterly convinced after you read it. Or visit:
Real engineers, including many who work for NASA are working today to further the cause (and many non engineers from all walks of life). Because there's no reason that we can't go, no reason that it should've taken this long, and no reason for us not to go NOW. And many many reasons why we should go; from the purely economic to the most esoteric. Do me the favor and at least check it out.
quote:
Originally posted by The Red Admiral:
Seigfried and Ryan: Are you both quite insane?
Nothing like an ad hominem attack to get things off on the right foot.
quote:
When EVER has there been such a monumentally absurd error as this one involving the distance between Earth and Qo'Nos?
Siegfried covered a few rather nicely. Most relevantly, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and the galactic core jaunt makes a four-day Kronos trip look like small potatoes.
quote:
I find it quite disturbing that you have an alarming and acerbic fervour to leap on, and to attrack and patronize ANYONE who says anything against Akiraprise, it seems - as if I, and others who share my concerns were a minority.
You are, according to most polls at popular Star Trek websites. On TrekWeb.COM, for instance, a poll of 5444 respondents yielded 84% approval of Enterprise. The fact is that most people do like what is known about Enterprise thus far. Even most fans who don't like the design of the ship itself like other aspects of the idea.
quote:
Seigfried, my supercilious friend, this is not a simple quandary of warp speed versus distance that can be comfortably overlooked, this is a serious flaw. This Earth to Qo'Nos thing cannot be ignored like other such errors in distance and warp factor that may have happened far off in deep space, we're talking about THE major Trek protagonist for 30 years residing on a world precisely in our back yard. How the hell could either the Feds or the Klingons establish large, sprawling empires across half the qudrant when their two homeworlds are virtually touching each other. I mean, Qo'Nos's star and our sun would be virtually a binary star system, being like a quarter of the distance to our real, nearest star Alpha Centauri. Your attempts to make me look dumb just because I severely question this is laughable.
I don't remember anyone making such an attempt. However, it is rather hypocritical to overlook equally significant errors in all other Star Trek's but Enterprise. It makes you appear as though you're searching for a reason to dislike the show, grasping at anything to hate, no matter how insignificant. When Voyager began, were you in an uproar because a seventy-year trip home contradicted the well-established warp scale from "That Which Survives" (TOS) and The Final Frontier? The original series was quite clear that warp drive was in the range of several thousand times the speed of light. By your logic, do you object to all later Star Trek's for contrdicting it?
I'm guessing the answer is no... because you don't apply the standard universally. You don't want to like Enterprise, and to hell with anything that might sound good about it; after all, the warp scale problem is crucial to enjoyment of the show. I know I watch Star Trek for technobabble, and couldn't care less about entertainment.
In reality, Star Trek always shortens travel times for dramatic neccessity. Earth is a week away from all known frontiers of a Federation spanning 8,000 light years. Did you complain when "The House of Quark" established that Kronos was roughly one day away from Deep Space 9, allegedly across the Federation?
quote:
If in the second episodes of 'Enterprise' it was established that Romulus is only 3 days away at warp 4.5, would it be just as acceptable to you??
Honestly, would you prefer the neccessity of hunkering down for a two-month trip every time the ship wants to reach a planet? It'd be great fun to watch them explore two strange new worlds a year.
--SATO: "Captain, we're receiving a distress call from a civillian transport ten light years away."
--ARCHER: "Set course, Lieutenant, maximum warp."
--MAYWEATHER: "Aye, sir, we'll be there in two months."
--ARCHER: "Thank god, we'll just make it in time."
I'll gladly accept four days to Kronos, thanks.
[ August 18, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]
I also publicly, and humbley submit a similar apology to Ryan McReynolds for unwarranted criticism and any petty remarks I may have made.
I consider Flare a friendly place, and consider myself amongst friends, and do not wish to stoop to a level of petty squabbling and cheap insults. That is not me.
Whatever we all think of 'Enterprise' (and Seigfried, you will probably fall of your chair when I tell you I am actually looking forward to it, gripes aside), I don't want any feuds with anyone. I'd like to think we are ALL intellectually beyond that. So I offer a truce to end it all now.
Respectfully, Red Admiral
quote:
Originally posted by The Red Admiral:
Yes, I may be guilty of having an unpopular opinion.
There's nothing wrong with having an unpopular opinion.
quote:
I also publicly, and humbley submit a similar apology to Ryan McReynolds for unwarranted criticism and any petty remarks I may have made.
Apology gladly accepted. And, by all means, continue to express any criticism you have of Enterprise, just try not to get offended if we disagree. Without criticism, this place would get boring really fast.
Nor do I think that the ST5 idea of having Nimbus III within a day or two from Earth is objectionable at all, even at Okudaic warp speeds. It's just the galactic core thing that sounds dubious - but then again, everybody was under the spell of a madman at that point, or humoring the said madman, so we might not get entirely truthful statements from that movie.
Bajor being less than a week away from Earth also fits the Okudaic bill - it's the earlier definitions of "frontier" that jar against Okudaic speeds and throw off our estimates.
As for TNG contradicting the TNG scale, sure. It's just that in some episodes, it also supports the scale, at least roughly. Both TNG and ENT would seem to work from the premise that there exists a scale, and that speed/distance/travel time references can be made to fit that scale unless the carrying of the plot forbids this.
And when the plot requires the scale to be ignored, then we have to start speaking warp highways or time dilation or stardate oddities or deliberately falsified logs or whatever floats our boats.
In contrast, TOS and DS9 never really made the pretense that a warp scale would exist. VOY sometimes toyed with the idea, mainly in the basic premise of a seven-decade travel time, but usually ignored it. ENT seems to care, enough to give us "Neptune and back", even though it also gives us an immediate contradiction.
Timo Saloniemi
http://www.calormen.com/Star_Trek/warpcalc/
Nifty things:
- Type in a Warp factor and it'll give you a velocity.
- Type in a velocity and it'll give you a Warp factor.
- There's a spiffy graph of v vs. W showing several popular equations.
Missing:
- It doesn't have input fields to let you enter a distance and a time and get a Warp factor.
- It doesn't show the velocity you typed on the graph.
- You can't zoom/pan the graph.
It was a rather strange mistake actually. Assuming they were using Okuda's warp scale then (and there's no reason to assume they weren't), there was no plot reason for them to make warp drive to fast. In fact, wouldn't the plot have worked better if it would have taken them longer to get back?
quote:
In fact, wouldn't the plot have worked better if it would have taken them longer to get back?
I believe, at the time, that the Borg were being introduced with an eye towards making them the main villain of TNG; to replace the Ferengi who had been, shall we say, less than impressive. I suspect the encounter took place in a relatively close area to aid in this development.
The most likely explanation is that they hasn't actually hammered out the warp-scale by that point.
On a related note, where'd the original idea for the Borg coming from the Delta Quadrant actually come from? It's mentioned in "Vendetta" (the novel), but I don't think it was mentioned on screen until Decent, so at what point was it deceided upon? And were they suppossed to be in the Delta Quadrant in Q Who?
And of course there would not BE a Delta quadrant until "The Prize", where it would be invented. And even there, things would be fuzzy - a shifting of the wormhole mouth by mere 200 ly would move it from Gamma quadrant to Delta, which would be an odd coincidence and wildly at odds with the idea that the Delta end would be along the homeward journey of the Voyager.
So I think the Borg being in Delta was indeed something only invented for "Descent" and even there only used as an obscure non-dialogue background detail. Okuda probably was the sole person responsible for that, typing "Delta Quadrant" in one of his 'grams without telling anybody. He then put the relevant information in the Encyclopedia, and voila, suddenly the Borg WERE in Delta. 
Timo Saloniemi
According to the most accurate formula we have:
9.6 = 3.5 years
9.8 = 2.9 years
9.9 = 2.3 years
My interpretation: either Data meant 3.5 years (and the historical records are glitched) or he meant "if we burnt out the engines and fried the crew with radiation, the hull of the ship would coast into the Federation in about 2.5 years"
Is there any ambiguity in the distance, such as 7000 LY from their previous location but 2.5 years from the Federation? That could change the distance by a few thousand LY easily.
Translation; Data would make it back peachy clean in 2.5 years. Selfish bastard.
At most, the distance can be 7,000 light years. More likely, it's smaller than that. Which just mucks up the speed value even more.
"According to the most accurate formula we have:"
What formula is this? Looking in the encyclopedia, warp 9.6 is listed as being 1,909 times the speed of light, and it says it would take 52 years to cross the Federation (10,000 light years) at that speed. If it takes 52 years to cross 10,000 light years, then it can't take 3.5 years to cross 7,000.
Although, going by that, I don't see where Voyager's 70,000 light years from home in 70 years value came from. Unless they were using warp 9.975...
The only problem with that is that Vedetta puts them in the Delta Quadrant, and that novel came out while season 4 was airing.
Maurice Hurley, who wrote the screenplay for that episode (The Neutral Zone), had intended it to be the first part of a multi-part episode introducing the Borg. The writers'strike in 88 blew that idea out of the water. If the Borg had already made it to the Neutral Zone (within spitting distance of the Alpha Quadrant), then Q could have thrown them to somewhere in the Beta Quadrant and the ship still could have met the Borg.
Of course, this doesn't alter the fact that the warp speed chart is goofy, but then again they never did work out a single formula for the modern scale, did they?
This is based on an average speed of Warp 8, or roughly 1024c - slightly more than 1000 LY per year.
Re: formula - see http://www.calormen.com/Star_Trek/warpcalc/
The formulas are off at 9.6 since the "official" dip at that point (if you plot it you end up with a plateau rather than a nice curve). In the grand scheme of things, though, it's pretty close - the Berry-Shields equation comes up with W9.6 = 2018c, but is much closer to values on either side.