Warp speed

[Lone Browncoat]

A few more numbers to throw out for TOS speeds:

"That Which Survives" - the Enterprise was thrown 990.7 light years, set off back at warp eight, and returned in an unknown time (the only ETA given was 11.337 hours, at warp 8.4, some time after the the start of the journey), giving an (exaggerated) upper limit of 765,000c.

"Bread and Circuses" - Chekov expected to travel 1/16th of a parsec in "seconds". Even if the trip took 59 seconds (anything more would be "minutes"), this implies a speed of over 100,000c.

"Arena" - the Enterprise was thrown approximately 500 parsecs from where it was meant to be, and Kirk ordered Sulu to head back at Warp 1. Earlier in the same episode the ship travelled at least 22.3 parsecs in, at most, 0.6 stardate units, under her own power. If one stardate unit is one day, then this equates to almost 45,000c.

Well, right around the dropped 'Phase II" project and coinciding with TMP/WoK, Geoffery Mandel, Rick Sternbach, Lee Cole and a few others I can't remember ATM came out with the "Star Trek Maps" and the booklet "Introduction to Navigation" that dealt a lot on these inconsistencies.
They added the Greek <Chi> symbol, which I can't reproduce ATM. Introducing the 'Cochrane Factor' to the x^3 c mix. This factor could be as low as one, in the interstellar void or could be as high as 1500, depending on the mean density, along a given route, of matter, gravity sources and dust that exists along that route. On averaging out, according to the authors, the figure 1292.7238 was used to calculate arrival times. Interestingly enough, this pre-dated RW science buzz about "Dark Matter", unless they sought out creative consultants in the Science community, going to have to dig through boxes to pull it out to see if any credit was given to NASA etc....There is a chart, but they only went up to Warp 10, which is odd I thought, as some one had previously written that the First Federation vessels routinely travel at warp 15. So for travel times above W10, you have to calculate for yourself.

Therefore, down through the years, I've been quite "Trek Nazi" over the fact that since it was written by those that worked on the show(s)/movies, it is the only Warp Scale that matters! That anything else is the result of the Rick Bermanverse being screwed up, even he backed himself into a corner by releasing the episode "Parallels". Now in the Jar Jar Abramsverse, at first I was exited that WD seemed faster, until I got home. In the two movies JJ's crew gave us that same damn blue tunnel seen in Star Wars and Stargate! When Pike went to Vulcan[ST:2009], sensors didn't pick up the debris field at all! Totally unlike TOS! Or even TNG! On the other hand, JJ proved that a bit of hull scraping wouldn't cause the big "E" to blow up!
{Remember what Han Solo said about going into hyperspace! }

Now if anybody insists, I'll go and dig around for it and put the ISBN number back into an edited version of this post.
Which reminds me, gotta locate a new copy of "The Making of Star Trek" the glue in the spine of my old copy dried out, causing the pages to go loose.

[Lone Browncoat]

AUCK! forgot there was a time limit to edit posts!

Wanted to add the dark matter thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
"Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn in 1922.[15][16] Fellow Dutchman and radio astronomy pioneer Jan Oort also hypothesized the existence of dark matter in 1932"

I knew it was sooner than 1979-82, silly me

[Ted C]

Long ago, I took every time vs distance quote from TNG-era trek and made a graph. They lined up pretty decently with a graph of y = x ^ 4.1, where y is the ship's multiple of lightspeed and x is the warp factor.

Assuming that formula is reasonably accurate, warp 1.8 would be 11c, and warp 5 would be about 735c. That would make warp 5 about 65 times faster than warp 1.8, which is in your ballpark. Cochrane may also have been comparing to a slightly slower ship as his baseline, too.

[Lone Browncoat]

Don't forget, when all you guys were doing your SW v. ST fanfics over at the old newsgroup [& basically trashing ST in the process] The SW and Stargate hyperdrives seemed like a form of 'brute force' drive, whereas ST {time} warp drive is a gravity based system that can get out of control when near extreme sources of gravity {Tomorrow is Yesterday} and Spock's time-travel math formula, both examples needing a high mass object to amplify the effect. So technically, neither civilization shouldn't be able to detect the other's ships except at sub-light, but this 'rule' was broken umpteen times.
Transwarp {in STIII:TSFS} was supposed to be the application of what was achieved when the 'real' Enterprise broke free of the Tholian Web by 'diving' into the rift that the 'real' Defiant fell through, then emerging well away from that area in a mere second or two. Ditto the data Spock and Scotty garnered from when the Losira-computer hurled the "E" almost 1000 light years away [that figure quoted elsewhere here] plus the Excelsior wasn't really a failure, remember, it was sabotaged by Scotty while working in its' engineering section [and from the lines spoken] just the computer was frelled, in that particular section. So if Starfleet engineers in general weren't taking 'stupid pills' from that generation on, Transwarp was probably a success but kept a secret from everyone else or covered up by propaganda, with only a few privileged 'workhorses' having it installed. The 24th century Starfleet,
at least in the Bermanverse definitely did, to give up cloaking tech or was another universe entirely, witness how that Scotty {Relics} didn't notice that the sensor reader at engineering [the holodeck sim] was missing. I could go on, but it's time for bed. {23:39}

So all that still leaves W.D. quite ambiguous and all depends on what "script gods" do or your own preference on what universe you want to be in.
There was only one show I've seen that took in the reality of relativity and that was Starhunter/Starhunter 2300, two seasons 2002-2004.
Even had an episode where a couple's son grew more aged while his parents were still, physically, 20-somethings. In real space-flight, whether Warp is developed or not, you're not going to escape that effect of relativity.

[Tribble]

Don't forget, when all you guys were doing your SW v. ST fanfics over at the old newsgroup [& basically trashing ST in the process]

We're not bashing Star Trek (well some of us aren't anyways) so much as pointing out that based on the evidence we see on screen, the Star Wars universe would win in a fight with the Federation.

The SW and Stargate hyperdrives seemed like a form of 'brute force' drive

Evidence to suggest that? And in any event, even if it is "brute force" both propulsion methods are an order of magnitude faster than anything the Federation has.

, whereas ST {time} warp drive is a gravity based system that can get out of control when near extreme sources of gravity {Tomorrow is Yesterday} and Spock's time-travel math formula, both examples needing a high mass object to amplify the effect.

Not quite right. Warp drive in STar trek is affected by gravity, but it does not appear to be a gravity based system. The Warp drive appears to send the ship into "subspace", and the destruction of subspace in an area can render it completely unusable (as seen in Voy "the Omega Directive").

So technically, neither civilization shouldn't be able to detect the other's ships except at sub-light, but this 'rule' was broken umpteen times.

Part of a "vs" debate is that both sides are able to use their tech in the other universe e.g.. subspace-based tech will work in the Star Wars universe, and hyper-space based tech will work in the Star Trek based universe. We know little about Star Wars sensor tech, apart from the fact that ships in hyperspace can be tracked. Based on what we've seen, Federation ships may be able to detect SW in hyperspace (as they seem to be able to detect ships using other methods like transwarp)... not that it matters much, since they wouldn't be able to catch up with one anyways.

Transwarp {in STIII:TSFS} was supposed to be the application of what was achieved when the 'real' Enterprise broke free of the Tholian Web by 'diving' into the rift that the 'real' Defiant fell through, then emerging well away from that area in a mere second or two

I'm not challenging you here, but I don't recall transwarp having anything to do with that. Do you have a quote somewhere?

plus the Excelsior wasn't really a failure,

The Excelsior-class wasn't a failure, it was clearly a major success given the sheer numbers of them still in service in the TNG-era. The transwarp drive was obviously a failure, since the Excelsior ended up reverting to a regular warp-drive by the time of ST6 (and no Fed ship in the TNG-era was known to have one)

remember, it was sabotaged by Scotty while working in its' engineering section [and from the lines spoken] just the computer was frelled, in that particular section.

Many people here have pointed out the flaws in Federation engineering, but I doubt even they don't think that Starfleet engineers are so stupid they would never figure out that Scotty had sabotaged the engines, then say "screw it!" and cancel the whole thing without bothering to check what went wrong. It's far more likely that the transwarp project as a whole didn't work as advertised (though I'll speculate and say that it may have led to advances in regular warp drives).

So if Starfleet engineers in general weren't taking 'stupid pills' from that generation on, Transwarp was probably a success but kept a secret from everyone else or covered up by propaganda, with only a few privileged 'workhorses' having it installed.

There is no evidence to suggest this in canon or non-canon sources, plenty of evidence to suggest it's not, given that even in dire scenarios such as a Borg Cube heading towards Earth, no starship has ever been seen using a federation built transwarp drive. In non-canon sources Starfleet managed to reverse-engineer the quantum-slipstream drive brought back by Voyager and install it on a few ships, but that's about it.

witness how that Scotty {Relics} didn't notice that the sensor reader at engineering [the holodeck sim] was missing. I could go on, but it's time for bed. {23:39}

To be specific, Scotty never mentioned there being any flaws with the holodeck simulation to Picard. Scotty was also drunk and upset about his current predicament, are you surprised that he might miss a detail or two? And in any event, what does that have to do with whether or not Starfleet ahs transwarp? It could easily be explained as being a replica of the bridge post-season 3 but before the major retrofit In ST1, and there might have been some minor-retrofitting in-between.

So all that still leaves W.D. quite ambiguous and all depends on what "script gods" do or your own preference on what universe you want to be in.There was only one show I've seen that took in the reality of relativity and that was Starhunter/Starhunter 2300, two seasons 2002-2004.
Even had an episode where a couple's son grew more aged while his parents were still, physically, 20-somethings. In real space-flight, whether Warp is developed or not, you're not going to escape that effect of relativity

[/quote]

Sorry, what exactly are you talking on about here? This thread appears to be about the relative speed of the regular warp drive. In TOS and ENT it's all over the map, but in TNG it appears to be more consistent, with warp 9+ being somewhere ~6,000c-20,000c or so.