Warp speed and navigation

[Cesario]

A friend and I have been kicking around an idea to try to make sense of a bit in early Enterprise. Particularly the ridiculous opening bit which puts the Klingon homeworld closer to earth than Alpha Centari. (I know it's a waste of time and effort.)

The idea we're positing is that Warp Factors don't actually tie into an actual speed. Instead, it refers to engine output.

How fast a warp factor translates to in actual multiples of lightspeed would then be impacted by local conditions in subspace, with travel along some routes significantly faster than along others.

The theory comes from the fact that the vulcans were specifically mentioned to have given Enterprise navigation charts to get them to Quo'nos. If it were as simple as just telling them where the star was, that wouldn't have required navigation charts.

If true, this might explain some of the speed discrepancies between TOS and TNG. Kirk's high end speed feats (absent the interference of temporary alien upgrades) were a result of traveling through areas of space where warp is particularly effective. Meanwhile, it took until Picard's generation before Warp drive became fast enough to actually do some exploration of areas of space that, while technically within Federation space, would take too long to reach due to being off the warp-speed highway.

This would also tie in to a lot of what happened in Voyager. When Q hands over a chart that will let them shave a few years off their trip, he wasn't giving them the location of a wormhole, but rather giving them some info on where to find some of the local warp-friendly areas in the Delta Quadrant.

Of course, this still leaves the problem of what Earth was doing on an interstellar superhighway system right next door to Quo'nos on said highway, but no theory is perfect. It's possible that these routes shift faster than actual stellar drift, meaning that the Klingons used to be closer but either due to deliberate military action by one or both sides, or due to the natural shifts in subspace, that warp highway is no longer accessible in later years.

Are there any obvious holes in this theory? (Aside from the one in my head for trying to make sense of Enterprise.)

[Ted C]

It doesn't sound inherently awful. It would certainly help explain why space travel happens at "the speed of plot" so much of the time.

Perhaps subspace could be compared to the Warp Space of Warhammer 40,000, which has "currents" that flow through it. Riding the currents will speed up a trip, while fighting against a current will drastically slow the trip.

[Batman]

No problems as such, except it of course doesn't do beans to change the stupidity of the ENT opener, because we're not just given a Warp factor, for which this theory would work splendidly, they explicitly tell us how fast NX-01 is going while traveling at that Warp factor (hence Qo'noS being closer to our solar system than any real world star).

[Cesario]

No problems as such, except it of course doesn't do beans to change the stupidity of the ENT opener, because we're not just given a Warp factor, for which this theory would work splendidly, they explicitly tell us how fast NX-01 is going while traveling at that Warp factor (hence Qo'noS being closer to our solar system than any real world star).

When we were going over the script (as part of a rewrite fanfic project we were starting on that went nowhere), it looked to us like they gave a distance within the solar system, and a time, and it was from that the distance to Qo'noS was determined. Under this theory, their actual speed in the Solar System is radically different from their speed out in space.

Did I miss the lightyear or mph speed being mentioned when they were preparing for their Qo'noS trip specifically?

[Stofsk]

I am somewhat leery of any endeavour that hopes to find consistency between TOS, TNG+ and ENT. There are so many inherent contradictions between all of the shows that it just doesn't strike me as all that reasonable. The existence of warp 'highways' also don't seem like it fits in with the mechanism by which warp drive operates.

[Batman]

At one point during their trip to Qo'noS Archer explicitly says they're traveling at 30 million kps (i.e. 100c).

[Cesario]

Ah. Then there's no problem, if the part of space they're traveling through is such that they aren't yet in the part of space where the warp drive gets its best speed.

[Batman]

It's your project. Personally, I find it much easier to assume that ENT is a parallel universe (as supported by there being no NX-01 in the Big E's ancestors gallery in the otherwise unremarkable Motionless Picture) and ignore it.

[Cesario]

My actual preference was to treat Ent as one of Riker's terrible holoprograms. The man has canonically terrible taste in the things.

But my friend wanted to give a try to the challenge of rewriting Enterprise while leaving Broken Bow intact.

We've since given up on the grounds that the character personalities even as of the first episode were simply aweful to work with.

[Baffalo]

I've always chalked up some of Enterprise's stupidity to being directly tied in with Archer's insanity. Remember, this is the guy who jumped down T'Pol's throat for doing what he told her to do. I have no doubt in my mind that he misread the numbers or just made them up trying to sound impressive. After all, thirty million sounds like a lot! Especially given that once, during TNG's The Royale, Geordi said the surface was -291 oC... or -18 K. Yes, thank you, scientifically based Star Trek, for telling us there is something below absolute nothing.

Anyway, on to the theory. I like the theory and its implications. It means that navigation isn't simply a matter of drawing a straight line but rather plotting how best to get to your destination. It would mean there are strategic points where it makes more sense to place stations for better protection, as a station near a culmination of currents would have a better chance of defending itself or launching attacks. It would also give the navigators something more to do than simply sit there twiddling their thumbs all day.

[Batman]

Well we are talking about the franchise that not only needed Wesley of all people to point out that the only sensible M/AM ratio is 1:1, but actually had Starfleet Academy consider that a question potential candidates might actually answer wrong.

[Baffalo]

That's not the only sensible mixture though (at least i think so)....

The way I'd do it is probably to fire an antimatter stream at a solid matter block. This way, the odds of collision are higher; you don't have to fire perfectly at the atoms. Sure, there'd be leftover matter at the end, but that beats missing a shot and having wasted antimatter!

The Academy test might have had some context so Wesley and Mordock were still right though.


BTW also on answering wrong, that's common. They threw in shitloads of extra information - the type of ship, the fuel status, the distance, the speed - the point of the test wouldn't really be physics, but rather filtering out useless information to get quickly to the fact (note that each question was timed too).

Very similar to the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. They bombard you with questions while many have very simple answers, such as one that gives you a ton of information about a block of some material. If you work out the equations, you can find it, but you can also just glance at it and figure out what it is because the block must be floating. Or it might ask you to solve for a given current when it's pretty obvious what it is.