There was some sort of situation on TNG when Starfleet established a warp speed limit, something to do with subspace pollution or something. What was the deal with that and then did they forget it? Voyager never seemed concerned it; was DS9?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
The episode was "Force of Nature" I think and involved an alien race trying to make the Federation believe that high warp speeds damaged the fabric of spacetime. . . As a result, a speed limit of warp 5 was imposed except in emergencies; after that, the topic gradually faded from sight.
I think there was meant to be some guff that the variable-geometry nacelles on the Intrepid-class meant they didn't damage subspace. And maybe some mentions later on about how improved warp-field design for existing pre-speed limit nacelles meant high warp speeds were allowed again. . .
One aside of the above is that a USS Intrepid is mentioned in the same ep: Geordi is having a contest with her chief engineer to see who can get the higher speed out of their ship. Now, that ep is dated at only a couple of years before Voyager started, so is the Intrepid the class ship, and if so were the variable-geometry nacelles always a feature, and if so why? Or did they modify the design? Or was this Intrepid of an older class, and get replaced through age (in which case why would her chief engineer be attempting to compete with a much newer ship) or mishap (like, said chief engineer puching the engines too hard!)?
- Edit -
MMoM's page on the Intrepid is here, and assumes the one in question is the established Excelsior-class one. . .
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
And the "reality" answer is that TPTB realised that a speed limit was a very, very silly thing, so they stopped mentioning it. Because it was silly.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Well, I thought that went without saying. 8)
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I thought the competition with the Intrepid was with engine EFFICIENCY, not speed...
And the guff about the Intrepid class was mentioned mostly in the series bible, and not the actual show. It was also never mentioned that they got around it in any show, or how. The more popular fan theories were mostly that the INtrepid's VG nacelles just HAPPENED to be environmentally friendly, and were pressed into serivce with that in mind - after all, they would have been in development long before "Force fo Nature". Following this, someone eventually figured out adjustments to warp field dynamics that would counteract the pollution caused by the warp field. Problem solved.
Of course, this was all very silly in the first place. And was ignored as such.
Mark
Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
They did keep the story of "Force of Nature" in mind for some other episodes afterwards. There were a few occasions where an Admiral on screen or in a text communique mentioned that the Warp 5 Restriction was lifted for the duration of the mission. Nice bit of story continuity for TNG.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Replace 'nice' with 'about the only' and you've got it.
Posted by Sargon (Member # 1090) on :
Again, I don't remember the details from the episode, but what was the "pollution"? What or who was harmed?
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
The Hakaris (sp?) Corridor was the only navigable route through some region of space. A pair of scientists discovered that the extensive use of high warp over the same narrow strip of real estate was wearing the "barrier" between subspace and realspace dangerously thin. The more fanatical scientist proved his theory correct by flying his ship into the Corridor and blowing it up, thereby opening a subspace rift.
For several episodes after that, the Enterprise had to get Starfleet Command's permission to exceed warp 5 -- and it has to be a matter of extreme urgency.
The explanation I came up with for why the idea was dropped is that Federation scientists, alerted to the problem, studied the phenomenon and concluded that in general high warp isn't a problem. It was only due to the unusual nature of warp travel in the Corridor (all ships passing over and over the same track) that space/time got worn thin.
--Jonah
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
How do you wear space and time thin anyway?
Not to mention the fact that Starfleet'd have to have huge speed limit signs around this corridor. And speed cameras.
Posted by Brian Whisenhunt (Member # 1095) on :
Obviously the problem was not the Starfleet vessels, it was all the commercial traffic. Certainly one Hummer doesn't polute as much as 50 Hyundais..... I remember watching the original airing and thinking "What a crappy attempt at attacking a current behavioural norm of society" That would make them regress all the way back to Archer's time frame. Imagine the government saying " you have to drive Model T's" Thank GOD it was pretty much dropped.
Posted by Cartmaniac (Member # 256) on :
"How do you wear space and time thin anyway?"
Pull, thrust, stroke, pull, thrust, stroke. Repeat. The universe will burst open and its innards will come gushing out.
Imagine the government saying "you have to drive Model T's".
Imagine the government saying "you have to stop driving those gas-guzzling Hummers and switch to economic Hyundais, so we won't run out of oil within the next ten years". Crazy, huh?
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
Ah, right. Cool.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Jonah your theory doesn't take into account that even Geordi said that the evidence clearly said that even in normal space this was trouble.
What is the pollution? Well, pollution isn't a good word for it but it's what has been adopted. When you use a warp drive you essentially section off an area of the normal space-time continuum and transition it into a bubble of the subspace-time continuum. From the episode, this affect over time tears down the barrier between space and subspace. When the two intermix you get a violent phenomena like those present in the Corridor.
I think that the good ole Excelsior Intrepid was still around at the time--- and would have been retired soon when the new ship would be launched [or maybe renamed]. And the Excelsior Intrepid could have been refit up to the put of the Galaxy Class era already... it had been at least twenty years since that technology had been on the drawing boards. You also have to remember that they were just comparing engine efficiencies, not speeds--- which is possible even between generational technologies if you put into the equation something about the differences between their maximum theoretical limits.
As for the solution... I think that the Intrepid's variable geometry solved it for that class. And for the Sovereign it was those Off-Axis Field Balancers or somthing like that [I can't remember the exact name]. The technology in these two gave clues as to a retroactive solution for the other classes.
I think that covers all the different topics---
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Except that the TNG TM mentions off-axis field controllers in the Galaxy class, too. I haven't unpacked that box yet, so I can't quote what it does right now. I have a vague sense, but that's not good enough around here.
I wasn't ignoring Geordi's comment. I treat it as akin to, say, automobile exhaust is an environmental hazard everywhere, but it's much worse along major, congested freeways such as we have down here in smoggy Southern California. It would take a lot, lot longer (if ever, if subspace has a long-term self-balancing mechanism such as the Earth does) for the cars driving around in Montana to pollute the sky as much as it continually is down here...
Warp travel damages the subspace barrier everywhere, but it's a long enough time until the next starship passes through that exact same three-dimensional space (if ever) that the barrier (I need a better term here...) is able to regenerate itself.
--Jonah
Posted by djewell (Member # 1111) on :
^^^^ Its possible that the warp field does break down the barrier in between subspace and realspace, but then wouldn't the space around Earth and other major planets be seriosly affected?
Maybe the Sovereigns "Off-axis field controllers" are a modified design that helps eliminate the subspace "pollution"
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
No, because ships don't go to warp around Earth. They drop out of warp at the outside of the solar system (or at least a fair way out).
Posted by djewell (Member # 1111) on :
You have me there.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, except in those instances when they don't.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Yes, but TMP was an emergency to save the Earth, TSFS was an emergency to get away from the Excelsior, TVH was an emergency because...they were in a hurry. And "The Vengence Factor"? Picard just didn't give a flying fuck. Fortunatly, Riker knew that his job was to take the heat away from his Captain, so he decided to break the rule book even more by killing someone he didn't have to. Yay Will!
Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
This 'not going into warp in a gravity well' is Larry Niven stuff, not applicable to Trek at all.
The 'not engaging the warp in the system' from TMP is related to untested engines (that's from the novelization as I recall), not standard warp.
They warp out of orbit from planets at the end of most shows, on TOS and TNG (for the latter, you actually see the start of the warp effect some of the time, so there is visual confirmation -- in SCHIZOID MAN, they do some goofy touch & go downwarp where they are out of warp for only long enough to beam a landing party, then zap back into warp -- they sure as shit don't use impulse to get out of each system!), without any fear of creating wormholes or anything else.
I wish they'd pushed the environmental angle even further ... I didn't think the 'warp drive messing up space' was such a good idea, because it was too far-reaching and would mess up the series to follow (which is why they blew it off to the degree they did) ... it would have been better to find out replication was bad for spacetime (a pitch they turned down in 1990), since we could have given the magic box technology a rest and made things a little more relatable for real-world audiences.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
But in 1990, they'd only had replicators for 3 years. I doubt the audience were sick of them then.
In fact, I doubt the audience ever got sick of replicators. To the layman, they functioned just like TOS's magic food tunnels.
I'm sure the "we shouldn't warp inside a system" has been mentioned elsewhere on Trek, but I'm blown if I can remember where. The only instance that comes to mind is the Borg Cube and the Enterprise dropping out of warp while still at Saturn in BOBW. If the Enterprise was in such a hurry, you'd think they'd have dropped out of warp right over Earth.
Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: But in 1990, they'd only had replicators for 3 years. I doubt the audience were sick of them then.
I was sick of them; that's why I pitched the idea, as a desperate alternative to a space garbage pitch they didn't like (I think they were reminded of that Disney pilot EARTHSTAR VOYAGER, which had a throwaway bit about a ring of crap circling the Earth), since they were wanting environmental stories even back then.
I figured the BOBW Saturn shots were done just because they already had an fx shot of Saturn on hand, not out of any weird TMP continuity concern. In fact, I think they used it a couple years before, on UP A LONG LADDER, if not on the original title sequence.
Posted by djewell (Member # 1111) on :
I always thought Replicators were cool. Maybe if its urgent enough, then you're allowed to drop out of warp at Saturn instead of outside the solar system.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Everyone I knew loved replicators too. I mean, the holodeck was cool but got boring with the constant breakdowns, but replicators? Pure fun.
What has caused this anti-replicator resentment within you, alternative-to-walmart? Did you have the patent, but evil Rob Justman broke into your house and stole it? And wee-weed all over your bed?
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The "warp drive is tricky close to gravity wells" thing has long been an undercurrent in fandom, and I think a logical one. (I mean, if you're warping space, it seems only natural that you'd want as little interference as possible.)
In my own personal interpretation, warping around in a system is more dangerous than doing it outside of one, but not an incredible risk. Consider the episode of DS9 with the changeling and the supernova-inducing bomb, and Kira's reluctance to go to warp so close to the Bajoran primary. (And in this case, it was really, really close, which makes sense if its a sliding scale of difficulty.)
Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Everyone I knew loved replicators too. I mean, the holodeck was cool but got boring with the constant breakdowns, but replicators? Pure fun.
What has caused this anti-replicator resentment within you, alternative-to-walmart? Did you have the patent, but evil Rob Justman broke into your house and stole it? And wee-weed all over your bed?
24th Century is just way too far removed from reality for me, and not in a credible way. Technically, replication is not magic box/something for nothing, but it is so close that it comes off the same way.
I also think you need to limit the number of out-there aspects in any future universe, or you build up anti-credibility. That thing Sam Hamm said about fantasy stories (adapting WATCHMEN, I think) was: you can have Tom Hanks as an android, or Tom Hanks in love with a mermaid. But if Tom Hanks is an android in love with a mermaid, you've got too many leaps of fantasy to sustain. NextGen and most ModernTrek (except DS9) plays like that.
And for me, replication just makes things way too easy to solve ... problem issues that are and will remain major major issues for the forseeable future. By sidestepping all that, ModernTrek ignores a whole set of compelling dramatic scenarios that could play a lot more effectively than what they did instead (usually some masturbatory holodeck thing.)
Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: Consider the episode of DS9 with the changeling and the supernova-inducing bomb, and Kira's reluctance to go to warp so close to the Bajoran primary. (And in this case, it was really, really close, which makes sense if its a sliding scale of difficulty.)
Just as easily, you can consider the yr 5 NextGen opener that had klingon ships practically falling into the sun before engaging warp drive. Complete opposite of what you're citing. I kinda think Ron Moore snagged this bit from a Diane Duane Trek novel, but in that novel there WAS an acknowledgement of science, where going to warp so close would make the star go nova, instead of just blowing solar fart gas on pursuers, which I think is what happened on TNG.
And on TOS you have Enterprise warping TOWARD the sun in TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY and the teaser of OPERATION ANNIHILATE. And Scotty offering to have the ship warping out of orbit within a second of getting an order to do so in NAKED TIME ... the number of warp us out of orbit shows is probably in the dozens.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
That's because our crew is INDESTRUCTIBLE!!!
And regarding the opening of "Redemption, part II", the moment Worf's BOP goes to warp, a massive solar flare shoots up and engulfs the following ships. That's surely not healthy?
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
And, again, nobody has said doing that is impossible, or even uniformly risky.
Posted by blssdwlf (Member # 1024) on :
If I'm not mistaken, in BOBW, the Enterprise does exceed light speed going from Saturn (or was it Jupiter) to Earth based on the short amount of time. I think it was 45 minutes to get to Earth and that would indicate they were going at least a low warp speed from Saturn/Jupiter to Earth. The Borg on the other hand, was probably just assimilating/destroying everything for fun.
I think ships should be just fine and dandy warping in and around star systems. The only fear really is a malfunction (due to a system failure or enemy attack) that would cause the ship to uncontrollably plow into a planet or star.
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: I'm sure the "we shouldn't warp inside a system" has been mentioned elsewhere on Trek, but I'm blown if I can remember where. The only instance that comes to mind is the Borg Cube and the Enterprise dropping out of warp while still at Saturn in BOBW. If the Enterprise was in such a hurry, you'd think they'd have dropped out of warp right over Earth.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Actually, if you go to high impulse, you supposedly get time dilation - so 45 minutes to travel the more than one light-hour distance could still count as sublight travel.
You'd have to spend most of that decelerating, though, assuming the ship cannot decelerate much faster than it can accelerate, and that the thousand-gee acceleration implied in the TNG Tech Manual is approximately correct.
Or was Riker planning on overshooting? Was Wesley basing his best-case calculations on not braking? Squeezing off a few shots as the ships whip past each other at near-lightspeed wouldn't be likely to harm the cube. But slamming into the cube at near-lightspeed might do the trick. Perhaps Riker was counting on ramming from the outset?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
One thing I liked about the Wolf 359 stuff from "Emmissary" was that it sort of addressed the question of why nobody tried ramming something big into the cube. (The answer being, as I recall, that somebody did, and nothing could even get close. Well, OK, I don't think it's ever explicitly said that that's what any of those ships are trying, but considering the fate of Controversially Named Excelsior, it seems a safe assumption.)
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
That's the sort of treknobabble-free treknology that I love. Show, not tell. Like in "A Time to Stand" where we see how a warp chase could turn into a sublight battle - it doesn't take a superweapon or special gadget to force a ship out of warp, just a phaser or torpedo hit that collapses the field without much harming the ship.
Perhaps warp fields are actually more finicky things than we realize, prone to collapsing when you least expect them to? In deep space, a sudden deceleration wouldn't matter much, but in a crowded solar system, you want to know EXACTLY where and when your ship is going to stop. Thus, a voluntary ban on warping into systems (but less of a ban on warping out of them). The warp field collapse need not *result* from being next to a planet - but it *becomes risky* when you are next to a planet.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
I prefer the idea that only untested warp drives are dangerous to be engaged in a solar system because of a calibration thing. All other mentions of "no warp in system" may be checked if they aren't special local regulations, for instance because of the amount of sublight traffic that would be endangered.
It's a bit digressing, but there's one problem with that theory. It makes the Enterprise's warp drive in TMP look as if it had been just assembled. Yet, the ship (everything else) can be made ready to launch in one day. There is clearly a discrepancy between the time to accomplish either. Not to mention the Enterprise-A and espacially the Enterprise-B, which comes with a perfectly operational warp drive, but without all the "Tuesday stuff" (okay, that was silly anyway).
Posted by blssdwlf (Member # 1024) on :
I'd have to watch it again, but I didn't get the feeling Riker planned on ramming the ship until he fired at it and i believe they both "stopped" for each other to take their shots. I think it would be safe that they went to a low warp or used impulse in its occasionally used "faster-than-light" mode.
quote:Originally posted by Timo: Actually, if you go to high impulse, you supposedly get time dilation - so 45 minutes to travel the more than one light-hour distance could still count as sublight travel.
You'd have to spend most of that decelerating, though, assuming the ship cannot decelerate much faster than it can accelerate, and that the thousand-gee acceleration implied in the TNG Tech Manual is approximately correct.
Or was Riker planning on overshooting? Was Wesley basing his best-case calculations on not braking? Squeezing off a few shots as the ships whip past each other at near-lightspeed wouldn't be likely to harm the cube. But slamming into the cube at near-lightspeed might do the trick. Perhaps Riker was counting on ramming from the outset?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I do hate to get technical, but the Enterprise couldn't have been in low warp for two reasons.
1/ The stars were not streaking. (Ooh, kinky).
2/ Riker told Wesley to drop to impulse.
I rule.
Posted by djewell (Member # 1111) on :
Maybe Wes was going into defiant mode. Posted by blssdwlf (Member # 1024) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: I do hate to get technical, but the Enterprise couldn't have been in low warp for two reasons.
1/ The stars were not streaking. (Ooh, kinky).
2/ Riker told Wesley to drop to impulse.
I rule.
Then Wes was running the impulse engines in the "Faster Than Light" mode
And to add to that, the stars never streaked at warp in TOS. They might have switched to TOS fast impulse/slow warp mode and still were FTL.
Either way, the Enterprise made the travel time to Earth from Jupiter (or was it Saturn) faster than what is possible at sublight speed.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote: And to add to that, the stars never streaked at warp in TOS. They might have switched to TOS fast impulse/slow warp mode and still were FTL.
Yes, but the stars have streaked while at warp for every single episode of Trek since Encounter At Farpoint (bar a couple of times in the first season where they fucked it up). You can't bring in a TOS SFX example in this case, because it blatantly doesn't hold for TNG and beyond.
Posted by blssdwlf (Member # 1024) on :
Hmmm -- I think in Voyager's The Swarm battle scene at the end they didn't show the streaking stars effect while they were at warp. Its been a while, so I might have misremembered it. There might be other episodes post Season 1 of TNG that have no-streak stars.
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam:
quote: And to add to that, the stars never streaked at warp in TOS. They might have switched to TOS fast impulse/slow warp mode and still were FTL.
Yes, but the stars have streaked while at warp for every single episode of Trek since Encounter At Farpoint (bar a couple of times in the first season where they fucked it up). You can't bring in a TOS SFX example in this case, because it blatantly doesn't hold for TNG and beyond.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
quote:Originally posted by blssdwlf: Hmmm -- I think in Voyager's The Swarm battle scene at the end they didn't show the streaking stars effect while they were at warp. Its been a while, so I might have misremembered it. There might be other episodes post Season 1 of TNG that have no-streak stars.
Two things to know around here: Voyager never happened, and everything else is besides the point!
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by blssdwlf: There might be other episodes post Season 1 of TNG that have no-streak stars.
Name one that isn't a mistake, and I'll shut up. Better yet, name one that has a PLANET in the same shot as the ship is at warp while the stars aren't streaking, and I'll show everyone my big pants.
Posted by Cartmaniac (Member # 256) on :
As opposed to your tight hotpants?
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I do not wear tight hotpants. It is big baggy y-fronts for me.
Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam:
quote:Originally posted by blssdwlf: There might be other episodes post Season 1 of TNG that have no-streak stars.
Name one that isn't a mistake, and I'll shut up. Better yet, name one that has a PLANET in the same shot as the ship is at warp while the stars aren't streaking, and I'll show everyone my big pants.
There are a handful of shots in the earlier seasons with the -D coming toward camera, and suddenly streaking AHEAD to fill the camera view as the last shot. I've always seen those as warp drive startup shots from a different perspective, one that doesn't show the rubberband, and I believe Legato has mentioned that they tried different perspectives on occasion to avoid using the few stock shots from ILM and that weird side view stretch from WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE.
I wish I could be more specific, but I dislike most NextGens and haven't rewatched a complete episode in a couple years.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
But they don't count because, as you say, that's the ship going to warp, not actually being at warp.
Posted by blssdwlf (Member # 1024) on :
Whoa now mr big pants
BOBW is season 3/4 and hmmmm the Enterprise goes from Point A to Point B faster than light, or some might even say at Warp Speed or I'd guess at Very Fast Impulse(TM). But it didn't have to show streaking stars if it was covered in dialogue.
OTOH, if everytime a "mistake" happens where no streaks are shown while they are suppose to be in warp then we shouldn't pay attention to the dialog. Afterall, the characters are just fictitious. Telling fictitious stories. On a fictitious TV show. Based on a older fictitious TV show. That had no streaking stars.
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam:
quote:Originally posted by blssdwlf: There might be other episodes post Season 1 of TNG that have no-streak stars.
Name one that isn't a mistake, and I'll shut up. Better yet, name one that has a PLANET in the same shot as the ship is at warp while the stars aren't streaking, and I'll show everyone my big pants.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
Go home...
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
So to prove that they are at warp even though there are no streaking stars in BOBW part 2 you are using the precedent of BOBW part 2?
You should be a lawyer, seriously.
And (again), Riker orders Wes to drop to impulse. Hence, they aren't at warp. You could argue that they are at near light speed, and time dialations are coming into effect, but you can't argue that they are at warp. Because they're not.
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