Everyone remember when Kirk was agonizing about this dangerous decision in TMP? Well then... Why did Archer take his ship to warp less than a minute after leaving spacedock on thrusters?!
Mark
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
'Cuz Archer is one bad mothafuc...Shut your mouth! I'm only talkin bout Archer. I can dig it.
Bad writing. Personally, bad writing on the part of TMP. I'm perfectly happy ignoring the thing, and moving on with more pressing issues But then again, I've been taking a more and more liberal approach to weaving everything together.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
TMP went pretty weird there anyway, with all that artificial wormhole mumbojumbo.
Posted by mrneutron (Member # 524) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: Everyone remember when Kirk was agonizing about this dangerous decision in TMP? Well then... Why did Archer take his ship to warp less than a minute after leaving spacedock on thrusters?!
I always assumed in TMP it was because the engines were new and completely untested, and Starfleet prefers such tests to be done a wee ways out.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Could also be that noone knew of the dangers during Archer's day. Maybe it had never happened before. But, yah...I always assumed it was due to the kind of engines the Enterprise in TMP was using.
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
BUt the real reason, of course, is that TMP came out in 1977 or whatever, and "Broken Bow" premiered in 2001. All in all, almost a quarter of a century went by between the two, enough time for TPTB to totally forget (or most likely, ignore and care less about) Kirk's throwaway line.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
^ ARGH!
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Why does everybody always feel compelled to point out the fact that Enterprise is a prequel?
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
Well...because it is?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I agree that the problem was w/ TMP. Ships go to warp inside stellar systems all the time. Every time a ship leaves orbit, they only impulse for a second or so, then warp out. Not nearly enough time to get clear of the entire system first.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
Kirk took his ship to warp straight out of orbit all the time in the original series. It was The Motion Picture that ignored precedent, not Enterprise--unless, of course, the engine imbalance was reponsible. That's highly likely, since by 2286 a rickety Klingon bird of prey went to warp from inside Earth's atmosphere!
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
I can't remember the name oif the episode but, didn't a BOP go to warp very near a star during the klingon civil war?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
If I remember correctly, 'Redemption Pt. 2' ... Worf was serving aboard his brother's ship.
I was never clear if the solar flare which destroyed their two assailants was natural -- and it was just a coinidence that got them -- or if Kurn's BOP engaging the warp drive somehow triggered the flare.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
I think it was implied that the flare was caused by the BoP going to warp. That's probably why Kurn headed straight for the star and then immediately warped out.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
most likely there are different conditions in these situations.. Kirk could have been concerned about warp since 1) his engines had never been at warp before, and the most populated system in the Federation might not be the place to have something go wrong 2) he didnt feel they were clear of debris or astral bodies that could be bad for them if they hit them and 3)maybe where Kirk was in relation to gravimetric fields was dissimilar to where all the other times were
Considering that they DID have a big problem with the engines and they DID almost hit something it seemed justified. (they never addressed how much the wormhole affected other Sol System traffic.. i cant imagine theyd be happy with it)
And most of the other times there just wasnt a concern about ecological effect on the space and there werent any obstacles like asteroid belts or oort clouds that were big concerns.
Oh, and ST:IV.. warp in atmosphere? Crack smokers! WTF ??? i say we write that one off..
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Re: The BOP and the solar flare in TNG. As I recall, they did essentially the exact same thing in the DS9 episode where they get Jadzia into Sto'vo'kor by blowing up those Dominion shipyards. There was no treknical explanation in the TNG ep, but there was one in the DS9.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Also remember that before the NX-01, the only warpships went Warp 1 or 2, and probably didn't really spend much time in solar systems, so this particular rule possibly didn't exist in the 2150s.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
TMP wasn't the only instance of people being a bit nervous about engaging the warp drive within a large gravity well. There was some debate along those lines in the DS9 episode with the fake Bashir and the protomatter/trilithium bomb. (Which raises an interesting question: "Ha ha, we've destroyed Bajor and DS9 and all the starships in the system! Now let us send our fleet through the wormhole uncontested and seize the Alpha Quadrant!" "Uh, sir? Would that be through the same wormhole that's currently in the heart of an artificial supernova?")
[And yes, I suppose they could just wait it out, providing said explosion didn't collapse the thing. But then where would my joke be?]
At any rate, were I to try and tie everything together, I'd say that the closer one is to a gravity well (which is presumably creating a distortion in subspace as well), the trickier it is to get your warp drive functioning properly. Not impossible, by any means. But enough of an unknown variable to make testing new engines in deep space a good idea, and to not fly around a few hundred thousand kilometers from a star at warp 9. That is, unless you really want to.
Posted by NightWing (Member # 4) on :
In Voyager's "Dragons Teeth" they take off from the planet and Janeway asks Paris when they are high enough to go to warp. Paris answers that they need to get past the thermosphere before they could enter warp.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Which means that ST4:TVH may not have been that far off the mark, really. Certainly it's possible to warp from the immediate vicinity of a planet.
Except when it's not. Bajor seems to be a no-warp zone, save for extreme emergencies (and trying to escape a supernova explosion does not qualify as such an emergency, apparently, or else the ships in "By Inferno's Light" would not have been at risk of being caught by the explosion).
Sol seems to have even stricter criteria: going to warp to save the whales is okay, but protecting Earth from Borg assimilation is a strict no-no. Heck, even the Borg themselves slow down to impulse near Sol.
Perhaps subspace Earth's vicinity is worn so thin that any additional warping in the 24th century will tear holes in it, and even the Borg fear such holes. In Kirk's time, people were just beginning to learn that excess warping was a bad thing - but when visiting the 20th century, Kirk could naturally warp with abandon.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
So we could conclude that there are many reasons why it's not advised to warp in solar systems: - Gravity wells (presumable gravity has it's effects in subspace as well) - I would assume a higher concentration of space dust, making it a bit more dangerous / energy-expensive. - It's far busier in a solar system... freighters, interplanetary runs, starships, shuttles, tourists, etc. - Perhaps the this high number of warpships has its effects on local subspace.
I think overall it's like the speed limit in residential areas. You can go 120 kph, but I won't try it. And the 'cars' in Archers day couldn't even GO 120 kph, so the speed limit is probably not in use yet.