I've briefly done this topic in the past, but that was quite some time ago. So I'm wondering, which of the 2 FTL methods is the faster of the 2? In this, we will be using Borg transwarp coils which all Borg ships have, not the hubs or the conduits seen in Endgame or Descent. I had seen a hyperdrive chart once on SB, I don't know if it was canon or not, but if it is, can anyone post it?
I'll start off with a couple of my own calcs for Borg transwarp coils based on the events in VOY's Dark Frontier:
And here's another one based on the dialogue throughout the episode:In Voyagers Dark Frontier, the Delta Flyer using a stolen Borg transwarp coil travelled from Voyagers location to the primary unicomplex in an unknown amount of time (they were following the trail of a Borg sphere). When the Flyer was returning to Voyagers location, here's the series of events...
- DF enters transwarp conduit
- Borg diamond enters transwarp conduit right behind it
- cut to inside of DF, Paris notes that a ship entered the conduit right after them (so this negates the possibility of a time lapse)
- Paris notes 2.4 minutes to Voyagers location at 35 seconds into the trip... so approx 3 minutes for the DF to travel the distance from the Primary Unicomplex to Voyagers location... now we figure out how far that is...
- In Scorpion, we know Voyager had just entered the outer rim of Borg space, and had apparently managed to travel at least 40 lightyears into it.
- In the following episode, The Gift, we know they'd been continuing to travel through Borg space, but without encountering much. Then near the end of the episode, Kes throws Voyager 9,500 lightyears closer to home - Janeway notes this is beyond Borg space, and since subsequent episodes show us other alien species with little or no Borg activity, it does appear that they've left Borg space.
- There is there an entire season where Voyager continues its travels (unknown distance travelled), but we know in Hope and Fear that they got another 300 lightyears closer to home (as per Janeways log entry), the void in the episode Night (beginning of next season) spanned a distance of well over 2,500 lightyears (7 of 9 reported that she had scanned space for 2,500 lightyears and not detected any stars) - and at the end, Voyager uses an anomoly to exit the other side.... so taking that into consideration, plus the 2 dozen or so other episodes, we're looking at well over 3,000 lightyears travelled. So 9,500 + 3,000 and we're upto 12,500 lightyears travelled
- Then, in the Voyager episode Timeless, they try to use quantum slipstream technology again, they don't get home, but Janeway notes that they got another 10 years closer to home. Now we can guesstimate just how far they managed to get since in Caretaker, we know they're 70,000 lightyears away from home, and it'd take 75 years to get there at their maximum warp... or an average speed of 933.33 lightyears per year. Now take 10 years at that same average, and we get 9,333.33 lightyears. Add this to our previous figure of 12,500 lightyears and we get 21,833.33 lightyears (at bare minimum, since we don't know fully well how far they travelled in other episodes) travelled from Scorpion, which was on the outer edge of Borg space, to their current location in Dark Frontier.
OKEE, so 21,833 lightyears is our figure, and let's go by what we know to be the outer edge of Borg space (as per The Gift, which would be 9,500 lightyears from their location in Scorpion)... so somewhere between 12,333.33 lightyears and 21,833.33 lightyears (at least), is where the Borg's primary unicomplex is. So going by the 3 minute figure the Delta Flyer went, that means that at most, it would've taken them 24.32 minutes to travel the ENTIRE Star Trek galaxy (100,000 lightyears), at at minimum, 13.74 minutes to travel the ENTIRE Star Trek galaxy...
And just in case it's brought up, some have speculated that the Borgs primary unicomplex could've been closer to Voyagers new location (like somewhere in the distance they covered while in the slipstream). Well there're some major problems with this theory though. First, we know the boundaries of Borg space (from The Gift), and all Borg activity afterwards seems to lie OUTSIDE of their space (ships, hubs...) It stands to reason that the Primary Unicomplex is somewhere in the heart of Borg space which was covered in The Gift. If you think that it was in the area covered in Timeless, then that would mean there's ANOTHER major area of Borg space outside of the massive area covered in The Gift. This doesn't seem to be the case because after The Gift, we saw many other alien spcies, and less Borg... leading to Timeless, then after that we saw other alien species and their space again... no indication that somewhere in that area lies another major chunk of Borg space.
Thoughts? Has anyone else done any calcs based on other examples for Borg transwarp coils? And any info on hyperdrive for comparisons sake would be welcome.Now, in the episode when the Voyager crew are planning to steal a transwarp coil, Torres states:
TORRES: If I could equip our engines with even one coil we could shave about twenty years off this trip.
Then after the Delta Flyer returns at the end of the episode, Voyager uses the coil, and we get this dialogue from Janeway:
Captain's Log, Stardate 52619.2. We got another twenty thousand light years out of the transwarp coil before it gave out. I figure we're a good fifteen years closer to home.
Now work that out, and Voyager missed out on about 6,666.66 lightyears of what they could get from the coil when comparing Torres statement and the actual result after the Flyer used the coil.
Now the Flyer did a round trip from Voyagers location to the Unicomplex back to Voyager - and being a bit more generous and accounding for deviations in course and whatnot, let's make it an even 3,000 lightyears. So this would mean that the Flyer travelled about 3,000 lightyears in exactly 3 minutes.
So for this second calc, it means it would take 100 minutes for to cross the Milky Way at this speed, or 1 hour, 40 minutes. Overall, between the 2 calcs I think it provides a very nice low and high end for Borg transwarp coils.