I've always wondered, is there some sort of Technobabble explanation as to how they actually slow down and stop during warp drive? Especially on a dime like they usually do.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
The generally-accepted concept of warp drive is that the ship itself isn't moving, per se, but rather the engines are moving the space around the ship. Therefore, the propulsion is entirely non-Newtonian and not subject to inertia as we know it.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Really? I never accepted that. I figured the ship WAS moving & that dissipation of the warp field leads to loss of mass reduction effect, so a sort of "subspace friction" stops the ship. That would explain the stuttery effect we see from Jake & Nog's viewpoint in "The Jem'Hadar".
Posted by Sean (Member # 2010) on :
I've always thought of the warp field being analogous to the air cushion of a hovercraft. It kind of renders the ship " spatialy weightless", and then it takes minimal engine power to move the ship through warp. Going with that, I've always thought that the more powerfull the warp field is, the less the ship "weighs", and the faster warp speed the ship can travel at while using the same amount of propulsion energy ( with the propulsion system at the same "RPM", as it would at warp 1, compared to warp 5). At the same time, the warp field acts as a sort of barrier to inertia to what ever is inside of it. When a ship drops from warp, the warp field dissapates, and like Shik's theory, since the warp feield is gone spatial friction takes over and the ship slows.
Basicaly what my theory boils down to is that during warp travel, the ship is traveling at full impulse, and the warp field is like "lube" that allows it to go faster through space.
Although, the "official" theory, does make a bit more sense. Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
Haha, you said lube!
As for being able to stop on a dime. Whatever super advanced computers they have running those things are probably fully capable of plotting exactly where a ship is going to end up upon leaving warp.
Not a really technobabbly kind of answer so you can throw in an isolinear-whatsamajiggit somewhere if you want.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I always thought subspace was some sort of alternate space where the rules of physics did not apply or where altered to the extent that you could have massive vessels traveling at high speeds without any sort of consequence. Presumably there would something to "prepare" the ship for exiting warp which would slow it down to normal impulse speeds.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
"Subspace," in current usage, refers to a subset of a larger space (an abstract, mathematical space - or, used loosely, our real universe). So it might be a generic term for some kind of quantum domain, or it might be that they wanted to create a word that meant the "opposite" of hyperspace in order to sound new and chic, or maybe it was a random science-y sounding word Gene or some writer liked.
In any case I always thought subspace in-universe was something more complicated than our current brains can comprehend, since it seems responsible for, well, just about anything - and it's referred to almost as a physical place (like in Schisms) or as a bandwidth of EM radiation (a la "subspace radio" or "subspace pulse" or "subspace frequency") or just a catch-all explanation for anything outside of 'normal' physics.
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
Technically, this is a technology question. So off it goes.
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
Sorry Saltah'na.
Anyway, if you get rid of the the warp field while the ship was going FTL, wouldn't some negative thing happen to the ship since FTL speeds are "technically" impossible?
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I'd think doing something physically impossible would be, well, impossible - in other words, I don't think anything crazy would happen like time travel or turning into a sofa or anything, I think they'd just drop down to whatever speed they were at when they entered warp and that would be that. There isn't any momentum to shed, remember, because warp drive is non-Newtonian.
Posted by Treknophile (Member # 1869) on :
Isn't there an episode case of a starship losing warp power in flight?
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
We have seen several instances of ships in warp being attacked. If a ship in warp gets destroyed by a pursuing ship, shouldn't the pursuer get smashed by the ship in front, which loses warp stability and falls behind in like a femtosecond?
Otherwise, if the whole "non-Newtonian" argument is as foolproof and sturdy as people seem to think, then a ship whose warp stability gets compromised should just disappear in a blink, in the view of nearby warp travellers.
Inertia does seem to work in warp, though, judging by the Borg cube's kamikaze-ramming of that species 8472 ship that pursued Voyager.
[ September 18, 2008, 01:11 PM: Message edited by: Nim ]
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Don't clutter the plots up with logic.
Seriously, though, um...nav deflector maybe? It's a stretch, I know, to think it could be powerful enough to deflect all that but not, say, a photon torpedo. But it's all I can think of.
Posted by The Ginger Beacon (Member # 1585) on :
Perhaps the warp distortion requires a small amount of time to fully disapate, before relativisitc physics kick in.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Its Voyager, I know, but still...
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
They don't say specifically they're losing warp cohesion, he says "they're dropping out of warp" so they might be dropping out in a controlled manner, as a preventative measure.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
That was nice.
Yes, perhaps the field is self-ejecting if the warp engines stop feeding it. I really liked the whole Equinox story arc, you had a new ship design, thick and meaty moral ambiguities and plenty of battles. That's food on the plate.
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