Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Ships jumping to and dropping from warp (minor $)

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Posted by TerraZ on :

This is an observation I made after I saw VOY "Equinox II". When Equinox and Voyager drop from warp at the end of the episode, we see a small and blurred shape instead of each ship. That shape slows down rapidly and then we finally see the ship normally. Now perhaps that's just a side-effect of relativity. However, at the end of DS9 "In Inferno's Light" (I think), we see the Defiant dropping out of warp to catch the Runabout and we see the usual "warp flash" just before the Defiant appears with a "trail" of light behind him.

As for going to warp, we always see a flash when it's jumping into high warp. When they jump into low warp (TNG "Where no one as gone before" and ST:Generations when escaping from Armagosa) we don't see any unless I've missed a particular episode.

Any proofs to disprove my theory or explaination on why that may be (I'm talking to you Bernd)?

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[This message has been edited by TerraZ (edited October 27, 1999).]

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Ships going into and out of warp look different in TOS, the movies, the current era... I think we can say it's just a visual representation of the ship's entering warp, rather than what would actually be seen if it were real.

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Posted by Baloo (Member # 5) on :

It may also be that each series' effects crew wants to establish a unique visual style all their own, so they fiddle around with the effects, and if the producers like it, they use it.

It's sort of like (back in "the old days") whenever we got a new commander or first sergeant, they would inspect EVERYTHING and NOTHING would be good enough the first few times. Eventually we'd get the hang of what pushed their buttons and start passing the inspections. I guess it's the military equivalent of a new alpha male going into the woods and marking his territory so everyone else knows there's a new boss in town.

They don't seem to do that sort of thing anymore unless they really do want to institute reforms. They used to do it for no apparent reason except to ensure you knew "We did it that way when So-and-So was the boss" was NOT a good answer.

--Baloo

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

It should also be noted that Voyager's deceleration was keen!

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

When the sound barrier is broken, there's a loud noise. When the light barrier is broken, why not a flash of light??

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

When a jet moves near the speed of sound, the sound waves propagating in front of it begin to "bunch up", because they aren't moving significantly faster than the plane. As it reaches/passes mach 1, it breaks through these piled up sound waves and creates the sonic boom. As a starship moves into warp, it doesn't gradually speed up until it passes c. The warp field forms and they jump straight to superluminous velocity. And, for that matter, they aren't even really moving FTL, as far as the universe around them is concerned. Therefore, it is not a valid analogy.

BTW, here's another example of how they change visual effects. In "Descent" the inside of a transwarp conduit looked completely different than in "Dark Frontier"...

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

The gradual speeding up that you say does not happen did happen for some reason with Cochrane's Phoenix. Unlike other warp-capable ships, after warp is engaged Phoenix gradually increases in speed from orbital velocity to 20,000 kps to "nearing light speed (which is about 300,000 kps) then "whooshes" to light speed in the usual way. As far as I can recall, this is the only example of a ship requiring a running start to reach warp speed. Can we attribute this difference from established practice to the primitiveness of the technology, or did Riker screw up again?

By the way, would this sub-light-speed momentum be conserved when they drop out of warp, i.e., would Phoenix come out of warp travelling just under light speed? Or would it just stop? This would also apply to other ships.

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Posted by TerraZ on :

Baloo: I guess I wasn't really precise but my original question adressed Warp speed as seen in the TNG and above era which remains pretty much consistant with itself.
My theory on this is that when the acceleration is sudden like in jump to high warp factor, there is a flash. When the acceleration isn't really fast like when jumping to warp 1 or close, there is no flash. This would account for the Defiant suddenly dropping out of warp to place itself immediately over the runabout and for the Equinox which whose warp field had simply collapsed leading to a "soft" drop to impulse. That theory is sort of contradicted by the Phoenix but since its warp drive was a lot more primitive, that's acceptable.

But you do bring an interesting point. How about warp drive from the Phoenix to TOS to the Movies to TNG and beyond? Since there is a difference on screen, then each of those warp drives must have a difference in its working principles. There's also VOY "Alice" in which we a see a very strange (but cool looking) view of stars at warp from Paris' point of view just after he went away with Alice.

But the way, in TOS I think I remember (not certain) about starships fighting at warp velocities. In TOS "The Ultimate Computer" (correct me if I'm wrong) the Enterprise was approching the other ships at Warp 4 or something and fired full phasers at the Excalibur (not sure). Phasers at warp this early in Trek history?

-Where were you when the brains were handed out?
*Obscure reference. Try to guess were it's from*

[This message has been edited by TerraZ (edited October 28, 1999).]

Posted by Baloo (Member # 5) on :

I would hazard a guess that the phoenix would come out of warp carrying only the velocity it had due to conventional physical forces. Any additional velocity is probably attributable to the warp drives and would fall away as the warp field collapsed.

It's always been my pet theory that warp drives took some time to activate when they were invented (as seen in FC). I would imagine that when the technology was new, you carefully eased the ship into warp drive, possibly to reduce the wear-and-tear on the machinery involved. Perhaps the plasma flow had to be carefully balanced and the rate of acceleration was limited to how fast the computer could handle the rate of change.

It does not seem unreasonable that newer ships are not only faster, but can jump to warp almost immediately. Modern cars are much the same way whan compared to older ones. I remember my dad used to start the car on a cold morning and let it idle for up to 20 minutes (depending on how cold it was) before going out to drive it to work. This was to allow the oil to warm up and fully circulate throughout the engine, but was also to allow the carburetor, intake manifold, etc, to warm up as well, so the engine would run smoothly.

Perhaps something analagous happens with older starships (certainly the earliest ones)? You have to warm them up before you jump to warp or something might break?

--Baloo

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Posted by TerraZ on :

Masao: About the Phoenix accelerating, it seems that it was the effect of the warp field. In modern starships, once the warp engine are engaged, the warp field is so strong that the ship is carried accross the "c threshold" almost immediately.

As for the Phoenix, its warp field is much less powerful, so it might have taken some time for it to reach its full strenght. So instead of being instantaneous, the jump was gradual, meaning it took more time to reach the critical point at which the ship crosses the "c threshold". Makes any sense?

-Where were you when the brains were handed out?
*Obscure reference. Try to guess were it's from*

Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

Listen, Razzychops, you sure you're not double-clicking on the "submit" button? You seem to be especially prone to doube posts. . .

Posted by Epoch (Member # 136) on :

I would state that the reason the Phoniex needed to get a running start is due to low grade inertail dampeners. This would make sense for the long speed up. With out good dampeners you are chunky salsa.

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Posted by Elim Garak (Member # 14) on :

Well, the conduit in "Dark Frontier" did look nicer and was probably easier to manipulate.

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Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :

I always assumed the lightflash was the ship breaking the speed of light, similar to the sound flash (sonic boom) you hear when the sound barrier is broken.

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Posted by Gray on :

First of all, If they are going faster than the speed of light.. How can you see the running lights on outside shots of the ship? And, how come you hear the 'Boom' of them entering warp if sound cant be heard in space? Just a little nitpicking of physics here..

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Posted by Wes (Member # 212) on :

Because in the way warp works, the ship doesn�t actually exceed light speed, the warp space in a way so their destination is closer then it actually is, the speed is measured by the scale of how much time it took to travel across that distance normally, without "warping" space. Don�t think of it as bending space, that would be Transwarp, think of it as moving space towards you, not moving towards it.

As for the flash and the sound� it would be kind of boring without sounds. Also if a ship was traveling faster then the speed of light, you wouldn�t see the stars out the window, but isn't the stars better looking then a black backdrop?

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Posted by Gray on :

Well, you have a point. But a black backdrop would sure save them ALOT of cash!

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

And sound in space is just a dramatic convention. If it bothers you, just imagine that the TV crew has their microphones on the inside of the ship.

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Posted by Striker on :

I personally always thought the streaks of light were stars the ship was passing. Of course, I've been wrong a number of issues before, so hey. Anything goes I guess.

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Posted by Baloo (Member # 5) on :

I have also seen theories that those streaks are actually the paths of microscopic particles as the warp fields pass through their location, temporarily dragging them along for a little while and releasing something like Cherenkov radiation. This might account for the fact that warp drive doesn't "coast" when you shut it off. Of course, I understand the warp fields collapse when you remove power anyway, so you'd drop out of warp pretty quickly in any case. The drop out of warp might not occur instantaneously, however. After all, electomagnetic fields don't collapse instantly when power is removed, but collapse slowly, depending on the characteristics of the coil that produces them (they even oscillate while collapsing).

--Baloo

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[This message has been edited by Baloo (edited November 07, 1999).]

Posted by Basill on :

I too have heard the theory of warp/particle streaks. I always assumed that the streaks were particulate matter (hydrogen atoms/interstellar dust) Heated to extremes and pushed aside by the navigational deflector and interacting with the warp fields. This is somewhat substantiated by assuming smaller ships have slightly smaller warp fields, and then comparing the warp shots from TNG's Enterprise-D, DS9's Defiant and Runabouts, and of course Voyager. You will see that the warp streaks seem a little more "claustrophobic" if you will, the smaller the ship appears to be. Check it out and tell me what you think.

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Posted by Basill on :

I thought I should add. It is easier to assume the streaks are particles than stars because of the simple fact that stars are too distant (both from each other and from the ship in question) to move that quickly in any field of view supplied by the ship.

Example: Even traveling at warp 9.975 (Voyager's top speed) starting from Earth it would take over a day to reach the nearest star Alpha Centauri at 4.3 light years distance. Even if a star was moderately closer than this to another system, it still would not facilitate stars zooming past windows at such apparent high velocities. This was not an issue during the Original Series production. Not yet streaks, the passing "lights" were clearly meant to be stars giving the illusion of speed, but that was in the days before nitpickers.

One other thing... In the latter 2 or 3 seasons of TNG, when the Enterprise-D dropped out of warp the warp streaks change color, shorten in length, and seemed to change course in relation to their previous direction at warp. It is as if someone realized they couldn't be stars and changed the effect to represent some kind of complex warp thing.

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[This message has been edited by Basill (edited November 08, 1999).]

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

A couple of observations:

In "Jem'Hadar", we seem to get the same "blurred
shape slows down and becomes a ship" effect seen on the Equinox and the Voyager.

The warp scenes aboard the Jem'Hadar ship in the war arc suggest that the Dominion warp flash is violet instead of bright white. Funny, since even the hyperadvanced Q use the white flash. I thought there was no choice on the matter. Do the Dominion ships have a camouflaging device, similar to the thingamabobs that reputedly inject chemicals into B-2 contrails to make them less visible when the bomber is forced to fly at "contrail altitude"?

Ships jumping to warp do not seem to see their own warp flash, just the stretched-stars effect. We see the stretch-effect plus a warp flash in the 3rd person view in ST:TMP, though. Perhaps eyes and cameras inside the warp field will only see the "star-stretch", while cameras outside the field will see the flash (and the "contrails" from older-style engines), and only the cameras straddling the field border will get the whole show?

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by TerraZ on :

Timo: Thanks for the observation. I never actually saw Jem'Hadar (I didn't watch much of the first 2 season of DS9. I started watching during "The Search" and I cried thinking of the death of the Odessey I had missed!) but it's good to know that they reused a nice visual effect.

As for the light flash, we saw it a couple of time in TNG although I can't remember the episodes. I do recall that there was a shot from Ten Forward where we first saw the ship alter course away from a planet and then we see the star dots moving forward, followed by a couple of stretched "light beams" (see "Where no one has gone before" to know what I mean) and finally followed by a brief flash. After that, we saw the classic stretched stars.

As for the size of the warp field affecting the view, it would make a lot of sense since in "Alice", once Paris escape in his ship, we see a really weird but cool looking warp shot where all the stars seemed to form a sort of corridor really close to the ship. However, that could also be Paris' view of the outside through the neural interface although I prefer to think it's not.

By the way, I'd like to know everyone's favorite "thingy drive" for the visual effects. Mines are the Voth transwarp and the Alice warp shot.

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[This message has been edited by TerraZ (edited November 08, 1999).]