posted
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?
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posted
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
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.
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posted
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.
posted
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
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.
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posted
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.
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posted
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.
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posted
"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?
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posted
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---
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posted
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
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