Talk:Warp drive (Star Trek)/Archive 1

Archived discussion please do not edit, post in Talk:Warp drive instead...

Warp to Light speed conversion discrepancies. Some quick facts: Earth's nearest star Alpha/Proxi Centurai. Approx. 4 light years away. At Warp 1, it would take 4 years to reach. Now, even at Warp 9.9 ... near maximum warp, it would still take half a day to reach. My point is that the Warp speeds must be much faster then indicated.


 * Why? We know that the gamma end of the Bajoran wormhole is 67 years at max warp, we know that Voyager got tossed 70,000ly, and would take 70 years to get home. 24th century trek puts the upper cruise velocity of its fast starships (galaxy, interpid etc) at arround 1,000c - or 2 days to get to Alpha Cantauri.


 * Obviously there are problems with speed and distance in trek. Bajor is only 60ly from Earth, or 3 weeks at top warp - however they travel it in a day or two, in "Pariside Lost"


 * The scale given in TNG tech manual seems to be fine for general moving arround the universe. Perhaps there are "subspace shortcuts" which increase speeds along busy routes?


 * Paul Weaver 19:58 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please...remember that ST is a TV series, where writters not neccesarily have any idea of physics. Don't expect consistency in something like numbers...

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(a) What is the second paragraph talking about? I have no idea... is this some obscure point that makes sense to Trekkies? Can someone clarify it or shift this paragraph around? It doesn't seem to belong there.

(b) Is this bit about newts for real? What the hell? Graft 21:27, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * I don't know what the second paragraph means either, but the thing about "newts" is sort of correct (Janeway and Paris were turned into some sort of reptile things, not newts exactly). But that episode is usually considered one of the worst ever made and some people prefer not to consider it canonical :) Adam Bishop 21:38, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Transwarp What about "Threshold"?
 * The term transwarp has been used a number of times, referring both to Borg propulsion, and to a Starfleet development project in Star Trek: The Search for Spock.


 * At least five of these Borg transwarp conduits are know to exist in our galaxy (the sixth having been destroyed in "Endgame").

I thought there were 6 hubs, each had many corridors, and voyager destroyed the hub.

Paul Weaver 01:32, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The transwarp conduits appear to be natural galactic structures, and the Borg have just built bases in them for opening "doors" into realspace for Borg vessels to pass through, rather than being Borg-created.


 * Iceberg3k 02:44, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

Wasn't there a storyline about use of warp engines at certain speed 'poluting' space in some way? Should that be mentioned?207.189.98.44 21:53, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Yes, the episode in question was, I believe, "Force of Nature", which limited speeds to warp 5 until modifications were made to engines arround 12 months later.


 * No modifications were mentioned in the actual series. They just mysteriously started ignoring the warp 5 limit a few episodes after. Fan speculation about the Voyager's nacelles and stuff is just that. Morwen 20:32, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * It also might be mentioned in books (which Are of course non-canon) Paul Weaver 20:31, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Warp drive doesn't "disproove" relativity, it expands relativity just As relativity expanded newtons laws. In Warp the ship never travels faster then light Relative to its local universe. It's similar to wormholes. Paul Weaver 20:32, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Warp drive is scarcely an idea restricted, or even original, to Star Trek. Is there a way to make this article more open? --agapow 00:18, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

In the "Warp Velocities" paragraph after the warp table you say a four day journey at Warp 5 is just one light year. Put some new batteries in your calculator and redo the math. A four day journey at Warp 5 is appx. 56 light years.

A better formula than what Okuda used would be $$s = (w^3 +{9 \over {10 - w}} - 1)c$$, because the last section of the curve (warp 9-warp 10) won't need to be hand-drawn.

Warp Drive Physics
Warp drives are what makes starships go faster than light. Warp travel is a non- "propulsive" technology. It moves the ship, but it doesn't propel it in any particular direction. Impulse power" operates in the same way as twentieth-century rocket technologies and is thus propulsive with inertial effects; that is, once you turn off the rockets you keep moving forward.

Warp drive does not share propulsive effects or the additive advantages of inertia. Since it operates by creating a separate subspace field, you could instantly stop a ship under warp drive if you could kill the subspace field rapidly enough.

The "stress-energy tensor" mathematically describes each point in four dimensional spacetime it is linked to the mass and energy distribution of normal space (nonsubspace). This distribution and flow of the stress energy of matter is dependent on the surrounding stress-energy tensor, which defines the curvature of four-dimensional space-time. Matter-energy within the warp (or subspace) from the matter- energy outside of the field due to the violent change in the frame of reference produced by the plasma stream within the warp field coils in the nacelles.

This violent change in the local stress-energy within the subspace coils would rip the fabric of space except that nature produces a subspace field around the event to gradually fix the tear. This in effect spreads the event over a general area in a subspace field that looks similar to a gravity field originating from a gravity well and protects the spacetime continuum. It can be manipulated into asymmetric propulsive fields.

Matter within the field is removed from normal space and anchored to the frame of reference of subspace. The effect of this is to allow matter within the field to almost completely bypass relativity's obstacles and allow phenomena such as faster-than-light travel. The limiting factor is the energy required to disassociate the matter from normal space. This energy must be continuously applied or the subspace field gradually dissipates and brings the matter back into normal space.

Subspace is a field that defines a particular frame of reference at all points in known space. It is composed of an infinite number of cells like a honeycomb. A ship entering warp uses subspace so as to keep its frame of reference regardless of speed. The asymmetrical peristaltic warp field propels a ship by pushing against each anchored reference frame of subspace. The first field coil anchors the ship to the occupied position in subspace, then passes the field along to the next coil along with its anchored position in subspace, and so on down the nacelle.

It is not necessary to add extra nacelles to increase warp speed. Once a warp field is established, it takes pure engine power to push toward warp 10. The nacelles create the warp field and sustain it. The number of nacelles is determined by the size and mission of the starship, although three nacelles is a very unstable design. Two extra nacelles made the Constellation-class starships very agile.

Before the current environmentally friendly, movable warp coils on the Intrepid-class starships, ships that went faster than warp 5 polluted space with localized "rifts." The new warp drive technology is top secret, but it has been publicly speculated that the drive could eliminate the risk of pollution because of the orientation of the warp fields (nacelle position), new materials, the configuration of the warp coils in the nacelles, or by computer manipulation of warp formula to synchronize and shape the warp fields.

Dedicated warp coils may produce a subspace distortion field around the nacelles to facilitate moving them quickly. Gravimetric force fields may also be used to move the nacelles. -- 66.2.146.195 12:04, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

original warp speed table before I converted it to scientific notation
However, this cannot possibly be the whole story, as it would make the Enterprise far too slow for the voyages depicted in the television series.

For the later series, Michael Okuda devised a formula based on the older one but with important differences. For warp 1-9, if w is the warp factor, s is the speed in km per second, and c is the speed of light, then $$s(w) = w^{10 \over 3}c$$. In the half-open interval from warp 9 to warp 10, the exponent of w increases toward infinity. Thus, in the Okuda scale, warp speeds approach warp 10 asymptotically. There is no exact formula for this interval because the quoted speeds are based on a hand-drawn curve.

Here is a table with new-style warp factors and their approximate values in kilometers per second and multiples of c:

Note: the speed in km/s for warp 14.6 old style should be 932,994,901.1, approx 9.3x108. The value 437 696932 994 901.1 seems to be a typo.


 * Hi. It had been quite a while since I last visited (and contributed to) this article.  The changes made to it were considerable.  I'm not really involved with this article, so I can't really judge whether the changes have been for the better, but one thing caught my eye: the table with the approximate velocities for the warp factors were altered from the representation in km/s to the format 1x10x.  I'm sure that there's a very good mathematical explanation for the change, but it's just not as "user friendly", so to speak, as the previous legend, since the vast majority of visitors, although probably able to realize that the speeds are huge, will not visualize all that well just how huge they are.  I mean, when you see something like "1x1025" people just don't make a precise calculation on the spot of how fast this exactly is.  I would suggest a half-way: why not have the board read something like: "1x1020 or approx. {the number that was there for any given warp factor in the previous board}"?  Wouldn't that be better?  I mean, this is an article about a fictional technology, people shouldn't have to have their calculators at hand in order to fully understand what's being said about it.  What about it?  Regards, Redux 00:31, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I thought the original version was too hard to read. There were too many digits and it it was too hard to see the groupings for thousands.  Using scientific notation made it easy to get an order of magnitude idea.  Also, the original version had too many digits of implied precision. RJFJR 01:46, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Interesting, my impression was the opposite. Although I don't really think that the new scale is hard to read, just, as I've said, it's not too user friendly. The numbers were indeed big, but then again that is the intention (what with it being interstellar travel and all), and the groupings could be resolved using comas and dots. As far as precision is concerned, it would be implied anyway, since the very technology is fictional, but this shouldn't be an issue as long as we make it clear that the numbers are not to be taken literally (hence my suggestion, in bold, to use the word "approximately", or loosely calculated, or something that would convey the message). I still believe that the best option would be to have the two formats, since it would be a loss to the article to discard either one. Perhaps we could get more opinions on this? Regards, Redux 02:43, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)