If a starship is travelling at warp factor 6 (no matter which scale), and drops out of warp, how fast is it going in normal space? I find it hard to believe that its velocity would drop to 0 kps relative. But it obviously does not drop to just below c, because we would see the starbow effect (all stars dopplered to bright blue ahead, deep red aft).
Conjecture? Hints from shows?
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posted
Well, the question is, when at warp, does a ship have inertia w/ respect to normal space? If not, as soon as they come out of warp, they should just stop. Or at least be moving however fast they were going when they went into warp. Right?
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posted
I think in almost every onscreen instance when a ship drops out of warp it's impulse engines (when visible) were active, so the ship would still be moving at some sublight speed depending on impulse output.
posted
I think that TSN is correct on this one. If I remember how warp fields work, a starship creates a warp bubble around itself. This warp bubble is what moves around the galaxy at faster-than-light speeds, not the starship its self. Sense the starship happens to be INSIDE the bubble, it happens to take the starship along with it. As for how the bubble move across the galaxy at faster-than-light speeds, it streches the fabric of space in front of the bubble and contracts the space behind the bubble (or it might be vice versa. I'm not sure). This causes a kind of tidal wave in the fabric of space. It's this tidal wave that the warp bubble uses to surf accross the galaxy.
I could try and explain the whole thing in more detail, but I'm too lazy. All of this, believe it or not, is theoreticly possible in the REAL world! Cool huh? I might be off on how warp fields work by quite a bit. In all honesty it's been a long time sense I read any papers on how warp drive is theoreticly supposed to work. Being a 16 year old geek is hard. I'll try to do a bit of reaserch on warp fields and post what I find if you'd like.
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posted
In a nutshell, warp travel is non-Newtonian. Inertia does not factor. When the ship drops out of warp, she'll be travelling at the same speed she was before she went to warp, assuming the driver coils in the impulse engines are operating at the same capacity as prior to going to warp...
Jonah
------------------ "It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."
posted
I think we talked about this before, and I'm pretty sure we reached a similar consensus that a ship leaves warp at the same speed it entered. The speed the ship (and the bubble) was travelling at during warp shouldn't affect speeds in normal space.
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posted
Dunno if this is spoiler material, so I'll add a few warnings for good measure.
Warning! Possible spoilers ahead!
In "Equinox, Part II", there's a nifty scene that involves the Equinox and Voyager dropping out of warp. They "stretch" into normal space, sorta the reverse of entering warp. Then they continue going at impulse.
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posted
An easily understandable explanation of warp drive. Now why couldn't I think to phrase it that way? Anyway, MIB you were correct, the contraction/expansion of space in a fore to aft motion is what propels starships at warp, except I think you got it flipped. But, question, how does the impulse/warp-engage overlap work? In other words how does a starship is traveling at full impulse then engage warp? Is there some sort of transition? Was there a thread on thi already? If there was, my apologies.
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posted
One tidbit of relevance is that you can choose whether to use impulse engines at warp or not. Kirk used them in "Corbomite Maneuver" for extra oomph, but they were off-line and under repairs when the ship was at warp in "Obsession". So apparently impulse/warp interaction is up to the captain's discretion.
Another thing is that ships always seem to decelerate more violently than they accelerate, be they at warp or impulse. This makes me suspect there is a third major propulsion mode to the starships apart from the two drives. It probably doesn't require any extra hardware, but just uses the existing gear in an innovative way. Somehow, the ships are able to deploy a "subspace anchor" that is good for decelerating but no good for accelerating.
So when a ship goes to warp, it may retain a "memory" of its original inertia, for example measured against a static subspace background. When the warp engines shut down, the ship continues at this inertia wrt the subspace background of the downwarping point. It can then rapidly decelerate to zero speed by deploying this subspace anchor (and by applying the impulse engines at reverse, although this effect apparently will not be as great as that of the anchor).
Simple solutions for the subspace anchor are the subspace-manipulating devices aboard (warp coils and certain impulse engine components), or the gravity-and-inertia-manipulating ones (the aforementioned, plus the AG and IDF systems). Perhaps the warp drive can be used for "impulse" decelerations, but like a ramjet aircraft engine, is not very good at accelerations because it will only begin to operate above a certain initial speed wrt the subspace medium? Or perhaps one can simply run a special current through the warp coils to "grab" the subspace background like a grabber mechanism can slow down a falling elevator or a San Francisco cable car?
posted
In the old days, they evidently had to start at warp one and then climb to their eventual cruising speed. One of the advances of the Excelsior class (or at least the E-B) was the ability to "jump" straight to the desired velocity.
Basically, whether the ship is travelling at .99c or is at all stop, the warp coils get energized to at least 1,000 millicochranes and the ship tunnels into subspace and proceeds on its merry way. If the ship was travelling at impulse speeds prior to going to warp, the propulsive end is shut down a la a computer's "sleep" mode, with the reactors ticking over to avoid having to cold start, as well as keeping the other impulse-dependent systems going.
Also, it seems that when a ship's engines are first being aligned, it is less stressful to some aspect of the ship's well-being to run up as close to lightspeed as possible before engaging at warp one (cf. ST:TMP).
--Jonah
------------------ "It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."
posted
And we have seen ships go to warp from a standstill, like Voyager in "Scorpion", after 8472's lovetap, and the borg vessel in "BoBW", to name a few.
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posted
"So when a ship goes to warp, it may retain a "memory" of its original inertia, for example measured against a static subspace background. When the warp engines shut down, the ship continues at this inertia wrt the subspace background of the downwarping point."
Thanks Timo - I really like this explanation. Note: with the above quote - there is no need for the subspace anchor.
------------------ Faster than light - no left or right.
posted
I don't know if this is relevant or not but, Z. Cochrane's original warp engines apparently functioned much differently than those "today". Either that or there was no inertial dampening (which I think they mentioned the Phoenix had).
During the warp test flight, Cochran accellerated the Phoenix to "critical velocity". He was approaching light speed. He couldn't go to warp before this for some reason.
The TNG:TM says, though, that full impulse is only, like .5 or .75 c or something. Not .99c. And yet, ships have gone to warp from less than full impulse.
I guess one could argue that the IDF couldn't compensate for as much inertial displacement, so they had to get closer to light speed before making the jump.
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posted
So what happens if you cut the impulse engines off after going to warp? I think that once the warp field collapses the vehicle would immediately be subject to normal space and would require the impulse engines to maintain any sort of momentum. I assume the warp field decay period would be fairly short and would result in the stretching effect that is shown onscreen. We know this decay occurs because of the comments about warp sustainers and saucer sections being able to use the phenomena.
Anyway, I'd agree that the starship would move at whatever impulse speed it went into the warp jump with unless it cut the impulse engines off during warp flight. Immediately after coming out of warp, that ship would be stationary. If this isn't how it happens, some other unknown side effect of warp travel is a huge capability to conserve momentum at the moment of warp jump.
I'll try to do a bit of reaserch on warp fields and post what I find if you'd like.
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