I picked up a copy of the Nov issue of ST: The Magazine. The Star Trek Science column by Andre Bormanis is titled "The Road To Warp 5," and boy, does it open a can of worms!
He starts describing the warp speed table as being geometric, and then he drops this bombshell:
"This speed scale was established during the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and doesn't exactly conform to the warp factors referenced in the original series, but we plan to follow it on Enterprise."
So now we have a ship in 2151 cruising at 214c, when Kirk's ship in 2266 cruised at 216c! As my grandmother used to say, oy, gevalt!
Posted by IDIC (Member # 256) on :
They're preserving continuity by consistently screwing up the warptables and -speeds. Warp 5 is roughly 125c (TOS).
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
It's funny, though, that they clearly used the old scale in "Broken Bow". Bormanis could yet be overridden by Berman and Braga. It's something to ask you-know-who, but I really don't want to bother him about this.
Still, in "Broken Bow", the speeds corresponding to warp factors were definitely faster in practice. You just can't have Kronos within four days at TOS Warp 4.x. Likewise, you can't travel fifteen light-years to Rigel within the time span they're talking about. Maybe this is one way of partially fixing those problems -- use the faster TNG scale instead.
I'd prefer them, however, to stick to the TOS scale and use the characteristic huge speeds of that series to travel wherever they wanna go -- because really, if they stick to our neighborhood of stars, they'll have to mention a real star name once or twice, which would draw them into discussions of whether this or that star has habitable planets. Best to go as far as possible, where the chances of running into unknown or unnamed stars are greater.
Posted by Soundwave (Member # 138) on :
Hmm... new issue of The Magazine out. Need to go to Books-a-Million today.
Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
OY! Looks like I have to drop by Barnes and Noble today. The Nov issue is already out? I thought it won't be released untill Oct. 2. Whatever. As long as it's here.
This is Berman trying to blow away the fans as if his screw you fanboy desk plate wasn't enough.
[ September 30, 2001: Message edited by: MIB ]
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Hmm...
Has it occured to anyone that this all takes place before the "time barrier" mentioned in The Cage was broken? Maybe they mean it'll take four days ON THE SHIP, but it may well take two months to the outside world. We have no clue about the relativistic effects of early warp drives.
[ September 30, 2001: Message edited by: Omega ]
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Yipe! That may be an excellent way to explain a lot of the travel time inconsistencies that're bound to happen in "Enterprise". Unfortunately, TPTB may deem that too complicated for their audiences to handle...
Mark
Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
no. According to how warp drive is supposed to work, the ship itself is a sitting duck. The space around the ship is moving toward a certian destination taking the ship with it. Even though your going say 10,000 times the speed of light, 5 minutes that pass on the ship is still equal to 5 minutes on earth.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Yes, but that's 24th century warp drive. Some time in the early to mid 23rd century, a new technological breakthrough broke the "time barrier". There could easily be relativistic effects in early-model warp drives.
Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
hmmmmm. That is a possibility.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I think, by definition, "warp drive" is non-relativistic. You don't have relativistic effects if you aren't moving. And, in a warp drive, the term "warp" itself is a direct reference to the fact that, instead of moving, you're warping space.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
You don't have relativistic effects if you aren't moving. And, in a warp drive, the term "warp" itself is a direct reference to the fact that, instead of moving, you're warping space.
Where'd you get "instead"? In the 24th century, yeah, but perhaps in early drives, you have to be going a particular speed BEFORE you enter warp. This seems to be suported by Cochrane in First Contact, when they had to reach a critical velocity before they entered warp. So you could easily be traveling at warp, AND have some somrt of normal spatial speed that would lead to relativistic dilation.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: Yipe! That may be an excellent way to explain a lot of the travel time inconsistencies that're bound to happen in "Enterprise". Unfortunately, TPTB may deem that too complicated for their audiences to handle...
Mark
TPTB think that simple math is too complicated for their audience to handle--- or long term memory that's one none of us here have.... I forgot the rest of my rant. Go back to normal posting
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
If the rest of the audience is busily computing warp factors in their heads, I don't know if I want to be part of it.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
seeing as all that relativistic stuff made me dizzy, i just thought id help by adding that Archer said that, as they were approaching warp 5 around 4.5 or so, they were going 30,000,000 kilometers per second.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Which, amazingly enough, works out to around 100 times the speed of light, or ~4.6 cubed. So they ARE using the old scale of xc = w^3.
But you still need spacetime dilation to explain the distance changes.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Of course, that will be ruined the first time there's a line that shows that an internal time period and an external time period are the same...
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Correct me if I'm wrong here ...
Did Mayweather grow up on cargo ships? Did they have some sort of early warp device? Even if they could only reach warps one or two, if Omega's theory is right, then Mayweather could easily be 'older' then Archer. Not to mention that the time period Enterprise takes place in will get a lot faster to Kirk's time -- instead of seven seasons coming out to seven years, they could be come out to ten or even twenty years.
This of course, might not be a bad thing:
"Wow! When we were traveling at warp four for a subjective month, real-time passed four years and Earth fought a war with a bunch of aliens called the Romulans! We won! Yay!"
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Maybe that's it. Perhaps the "Romulan War" was actually a series of ships' time "months-long" random skirmishes that "really" took 4 years or so for the rest of the galaxy.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
Its going to be fun to figure out too.. did anyone notice the 'Captain's Log, Date April 16, 2151' They are going to have to exactly watch how far apart the episodes are.. Theres a chance the show could run 7 years and they just wont stick to one season = one year.. so that they can make it to Federation Day.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Well, I e-mailed Okuda, and he likes the idea. He also confirms that the next Trek is called "Nemesis", if we weren't 100% sure of that already.
Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
quote:Originally posted by J:
TPTB think that simple math is too complicated for their audience to handle---
I'm willing to go a step further. TPTB thinks the process of flushing a toilet is far too complicated for the audience to handle......
[ October 01, 2001: Message edited by: MIB ]
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
I think we're on pretty shaky ground if we try to apply sublight relativistic effects to FTL speed. Strictly speaking, at speeds above c, your ship has less than no length, its mass is greater than infinity, and all events take place in less than zero time, which would cause a few problems for the writers (to say nothing about the poor suckers on the ship!).
All of the series pretty much ignored relativity anyway. I don't remember anything ever said about mass increase or time dilation at high impulse speeds, and they sure as hell didn't deal with the reduction of length along the ship's axis of motion (would have looked pretty interesting if they had done it, though).
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
They said that Federation starships avoid high impulse because of time dilation in the TNG Tech Manual.. or something like that.. no reference anywhere to warp time dilation.. doesnt seem likely to me
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
Nor to me. The only particles that can go faster than light (theoretically, at any rate) are tachyons. They display behavior that is analagous to normal matter moving backwards through time. If that were the case, shouldn't Picard have his hair back by now? Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
I've got no problem with there being some relativistic effects at warp, at least pre-time barrier warp. Cochrane's Phoenix accelerated at sublight to the warp threshold, presumably experiencing some time dilation. We don't know exactly where that threshold is, but saying that there was a 2X dilation in effect wouldn't be unbelievable... and this could be carried into warp.
But while I don't have a problem with these effects in principle, I'd prefer to avoid it for one reason: Archer's starlog is using traditional Earth dates. I'm willing to bet that there isn't a gap of several months between entries, even if subjective time is only a few days. Odds are, Enterprise will continue the rough two weeks Earth-time per episode pattern other Star Trek has maintained.
