posted
(From a tech database article I've been working on that I figured might be of interest here. Also, any and all comments are appreciated.)
The NX Class starship is limited to warp five. How fast is that? Let's take a look:
1. In "Cease Fire"[ENT2], the Enterprise demonstrated the ability to achieve a speed of 1460c. With her injectors running at 110% (though, as stated, they are rated to withstand 120%), she was able to reach Weytahn, "a dozen light-years" from her original position, in three days.��
(Incidentally, at that speed, the distance to Q'onos in "Broken Bow"[ENT1] could be estimated as 1500c for four days from Earth, or 16.44 light-years.)
2. In "Horizon"[ENT2], Enterprise is ordered to travel "almost 30 light-years" to observe a planet whose unstable orbit is carrying it between two gas giants. Starfleet believed that the planet would be covered in erupting volcanoes "by the end of the week". Enterprise sets a course, then makes a detour stated to last ten hours to drop off Travis Mayweather at the ECS Horizon. Upon arrival at the planet, Archer asks how long it will be until the show begins, and T'Pol responds that it will be approximately 30 hours. The planet is already covered in lava flows, but the actual volcanic eruptions don't begin until much later, confirming the timeline. Assuming that the mission started the very first moment of the week, Enterprise would've had exactly seven days to arrive for the volcanic eruptions, or 168 hours. Between the ten hour detour and the thirty-hours-early arrival, the ship must've made the trip in 128 hours. If "almost 30 light-years" equalled 25 light years, then the ship's speed would've been 25 light years per 128 hours, or 0.1953125 ly/hr. That is 1,710c.
3. As lower-end estimates, we all heard the warp 4.5 = "Neptune and back in six minutes" thing, and that 4.4 = 30 million km/sec, both of which suggest something on the order of 100c for Enterprise's average speed. People have used that to point out the inconsistency of the Klingon homeworld being only four days away, which is inconsistent anyway . . . but even worse when you consider that at 100c that would make it about a light-year distant.
4. "The Xindi"[ENT3] features Enterprise in the region known as the Delphic Expanse, which in the prior season's finale of the same name was described as a 2000 light-year wide area of spatial distortions, seen to be surrounded by a glowing purple cloud. In "The Xindi", the Xindi Council discusses the appearance of Enterprise within the Expanse, and the comment is made that Earth is 50 light-years away from their location. Assuming the Council is in the Delphic Expanse, this would mean that the Expanse itself is only 50 light-years distant. It is apparently somewhere past Vulcan: Enterprise was at first en route there on her three month trip to the Expanse and, after T'Pol's change of heart two days prior to arrival at Vulcan, then spent seven weeks getting to the Expanse, at a stated speed of warp five. Even assuming that the Xindi Council was at the edge of the Expanse closest to Earth, that would imply that Enterprise took about three months to travel 50 light-years at her stated maximum speed of warp five. Even at the lower limit time value of seven weeks (49 days), that implies a speed of only 372c for warp five. For three months (90 days), the value would be 202c. However, a 2,000 light-year wide barrier, opaque with glowing purple "thermobaric clouds", would be highly visible even to the simplistic sensors of today at a range of 50 light-years . . . there is no logic in the idea that 2150's Earth would be unaware of this region, even if it had appeared sometime between 2003 and 2153. (It's at least 20 years old, given the report in "The Expanse" that a Klingon ship had entered it that long ago.)
In short, the idea that the Delphic Expanse is only 50 light-years distant is inconsistent. Either the Council was meeting somewhere close to Earth for some reason, or else that statement was simply in error.
Conclusion: Enterprise's top speed is approximately 1,500-1,700c.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Seriously, though, I know there will always be oddities and inconsistencies. However, I don't want to always just chalk everything up to warp-highways-did-it and ignore the issue. It should be possible to get a decent median value.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Remember the TOS E zipping out to the "galactic barrier" (assinine nonsense in and of itself) in the course of a single episode?
FTL is a plot device only.
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your assumption of warp factors as a constant might get you in trouble.. i believe that we ended up calling it the 'subspace highway theory' when we figured that depending on the route you take at FTL, it can go quicker (this can add some subtext to WNMHGB and ST:5.. basically, the crew found a decent 'road' that led that far out.. one that other ships in different situations might not have been able to find) as a plot device, this also makes wars more random, and a far-flung Federation that still has a centralized government more believable)
perhaps this is why the WF^3 and later WF asymptote occur.. they could refer to their speed in multiples of c, but that wouldnt be constant, so they use a warp notation, its not just a measure of speed, but also of travel ability.
since subspace is made up science, its easy to add additional nuances to it..
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quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: I don't want to always just chalk everything up to warp-highways-did-it and ignore the issue.
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Star Trek is a TV show.
You don't say!
In a forum where we try to read the little text Okuda put on screen for details about the show, and where people heatedly debate the class name of ships, a guy tried to figure out warp speeds and you told him that?
quote:Remember the TOS E zipping out to the "galactic barrier" (assinine nonsense in and of itself) in the course of a single episode?
There's no reason to assume they were at the planar outer rim of the galaxy (and, incidentally, we don't know where the ship started from in that ep in the first place). After all, they hit that barrier in another ep on their way to Andromeda. Andromeda is "below" (or above, depending on one's perspective) the Milky Way.
quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike20X6: perhaps this is why the WF^3 and later WF asymptote occur.. they could refer to their speed in multiples of c, but that wouldnt be constant, so they use a warp notation, its not just a measure of speed, but also of travel ability.
since subspace is made up science, its easy to add additional nuances to it..
And that sort of thing is precisely what I hope to avoid. Yeah, at some point, you have to watch ST5 or "That Which Survives" and say "wow, they're going way too fast", or look at other eps and say "wow, what's taking them so long?".
However, inconsistencies do not demand that we ignore all consistency, or that we should not try to discover consistency when or if it is present.
I mean, hell, what are we doing here if that's the case?
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
I beleive the "Warp Factor" is in the same class as the "Stardate". That is, "Just make up a number, who's gonna know?". TNG and Voyager set an absolute value of Warp 10 as the fastest you can travel yet TOS had the E doing warp 15 at one point with only SOFTWARE modification to the engines. I believe it was explained that the warp factor increased exponentially...Warp1 is the speed of light, Warp2 is C x C, Warp3 is C x C x C etc.
However, what isn't stated is how does GRAVITY effect these calculations? My understanding is that gravity effects time therefore speed measurement s/b affected by Gravitational forces as well. I believe there is one theory that if you traveled at the speed of light for 10 years then returned at the same speed, you would have aged 20 years while those that remained from your point of origin would have aged over 100 (or something like that) because of gravity.
Perhaps what we really need is either the Iconians "Doors" or Col. Oneill's "Stargate" to actually have events occur in the same timeframe.
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The official explanation is that between the time of TOS and the time of TNG is that the warp scale was "redrawn" ... warp 15 of TOS era would be warp 9 of TNG, etc.
It's very possible that the same thing happens between ENT and TOS. As better warp engines are built, and faster and faster warp speeds are reached, the scale is redrawn - while the TOS scale might have gone from warp one to warp thirty (for all we know), TNG era engineers and warp theorists may have decided to keep a simple one through ten limit - with ten being an unreachable speed.
For all we know, ENT's warp five is the equivilent of TOS's warp three.
quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: For all we know, ENT's warp five is the equivilent of TOS's warp three.
That would place the klingon homeworld in Oregon somewhere.
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quote:Originally posted by Brian Whisenhunt: I believe there is one theory that if you traveled at the speed of light for 10 years then returned at the same speed, you would have aged 20 years while those that remained from your point of origin would have aged over 100 (or something like that) because of gravity.
You're referring to the Theory of Relativity, and specifically to the issue of frames of reference being different for travelers at different velocities.
If you accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light and travel away from the Earth and come back, for instance, the amount of time that passed for an observer traveling more slowly (on Earth) would be greater than for you traveling closer to the speed of light. That has everything to do with relativity and not much to do with gravity.
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posted
I thought the Theory of Relativity was about how time spent with your relatives seems far more stretched out than with your freinds....
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Actually, it's a theory, right, that you only tell to your relatives...
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