Is impulse better than ion drives?

[Kamakazie Sith]

I was just wondering which of these sublight drives is faster. I mean in ST:TMP, we seee the Enterprise going from Earth to Saturn in a few minuets, but in ANH, the X-wings were going full thrust and it took them a few minuets to do the trench run. I have heard some conflicting arguments, so I require claraification.

This Is hard to say. They seem to operate on nearly the same principle. Of course Han can run all of his ship gizmos with his while the Enterprise is lucky to have enough power for a couple of Phaser shots. so it looks like the Star Wars Drive is more efficient.

What episode was that?

Last time I checked the Enterprise can run all of their "gizmos" with the impulse engines at full power. Hell, they can run all of their gizmos while at warp.......

[Admiral Johnason]

I thgink it was Balance of Terror or the one with the bitchy princess in TOS.

[Darth Servo]

Anyway, The Search for Spock clearly shows how 1/4 Impulse power in the spacedock indicates acceleration rather than speed.

It still wasn't anything to write home about.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I thgink it was Balance of Terror or the one with the bitchy princess in TOS.

IIRC they didn't have power issues in Balance of Terror, they had equipment issues due to damage but not power.....but like I said IIRC.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Well, what is the maximum speed and impluse drive has ever reached and what is the fastest an ion drive has ever gone?

Speed is irrelevant.

[Alyeska]

Well, what is the maximum speed and impluse drive has ever reached and what is the fastest an ion drive has ever gone?

Speed is irrelevant.

Yes and no. In close combat acceleration is everything. However, if one drive can move faster then another that means one side can either avoid combat or eventualy chase down the other. Kinda like how a Mac Truck accelerates slower then a VW Bug but has a higher top speed.

[Howedar]

Then why is it that whenever we actually SEE impulse against any reference point (like a planet or asteroid) the ship only moves at a few kps?

If you're within a few thousand KM of a planet or other object, you don't want to be moving at relativistic velocities relative to said body. When you're out in interstellar space, there's no reference point.

Which leaves us using dialogue.

[SPOOFE]

Its possible to move a couple thousand KM per second and have a planet in the background and not notice the speed because the camera pans with the ship.

Only if the planet is already so far away that it simply resembles a dot, anyway. At a few thousand kilometers per second, if the camera pans with the ship, you're either going to see the planet move out of the camera's view, or shrink in apparent size, 'cuz one way or the other, the camera is moving.

[Alyeska]

Its possible to move a couple thousand KM per second and have a planet in the background and not notice the speed because the camera pans with the ship.

Only if the planet is already so far away that it simply resembles a dot, anyway. At a few thousand kilometers per second, if the camera pans with the ship, you're either going to see the planet move out of the camera's view, or shrink in apparent size, 'cuz one way or the other, the camera is moving.

When only moving at a few thousand KM a second with the planet several hundred thousand KM away (small but recognizable as a planet) you will not notice it shrinking if the scene is done slow enough and the angles are right. Course I can't think of any examples of this in Trek.

[Ender]

A few numbers:

Wars:

ISD acceleration (canon): 3000 G
ISD max speed before relativity makes the engines essentially pointless: .4C

We alsso have Frigates doing .6C (Destiney's Way) and Fighters pulling near .9 C (Star by Star)

Trek:

GCS acceleration (TM): 1000 + G
GCS acceleration (canon): full impulse (whatever that means)
Observed max speed for the engines: .7 C on a shuttle in TNG (someone did calcs or something, it Involved Geordi, but beyond that I don't recall)

Oddities:
Trek: Can use "fractional warp" to hit high sublight speeds
Trek: BoBW2 they go FTL using a STL drive
Wars: Millenium Falcon going to Bespin from Hoth in 2 months on Ion Drives.

[Howedar]

ISD acceleration (canon): 3000 G

I know we have an official Acclamator acceleration. Where did the ISD figure come from?

Wars: Millenium Falcon going to Bespin from Hoth in 2 months on Ion Drives.

Where's that number from?

[Connor MacLeod]

Ender: How do we know it was 2 months?

[Isolder74]

What episode was that?

Last time I checked the Enterprise can run all of their "gizmos" with the impulse engines at full power. Hell, they can run all of their gizmos while at warp.......

The Wrath of Kahn!

The first Kirk-Kahn fight

They only have Impulse power.

But I must admit that Kahn hit them pretty good.

[Chris OFarrell]

Anyway, The Search for Spock clearly shows how 1/4 Impulse power in the spacedock indicates acceleration rather than speed.

It may also vary somewhat on context. Like for example, in TSFP, the E-Ref and Excelesor took minuites to leave spacedock on 1/4 impulse. Granted the E-Ref was damaged, but the Excelesor was not, she was actualy supposed to be faster. In ST6 however when the E-A left at 1/4 impulse, she was out the spacedoors in less then ten seconds, then hundreds of klicks away a matter of seconds later. When the E-Ref as soon as she exited went to full impulse and STILL got nothing like as far away.

[Kamakazie Sith]

What episode was that?

Last time I checked the Enterprise can run all of their "gizmos" with the impulse engines at full power. Hell, they can run all of their gizmos while at warp.......

The Wrath of Kahn!

The first Kirk-Kahn fight

They only have Impulse power.

But I must admit that Kahn hit them pretty good.

Khan knew exactly where to hit them......

Besides the Enterprise was able to fight at the end, and we had no indication that impulse power could only supply enough for a couple a phaser blasts. Remember, they restored impulse power around the time that Scottys relative died in sickbay.

[NecronLord]

Technically impulse drive is an Ion drive, as it releases ionised gas (ST:VI)

In any case, as the enterprise in BoBW was not moving against a red-shifted background, we can say that it must have encountered an anomoly of the week to allow it to travel so fast. Or maybe they've changed the length of a minute. (100 seconds?)

[Chris OFarrell]

Other Trek examples:

Relics has the E-D covering 90 million kilometers from a more or less standing start in one minuite, fourty seconds (direct quote). And at 60% power (distance from their orbit above the Stars Photosphere to the hatchway on the surface of the Dyson Sphere) thanks to disruptions to the ships power systems. Note that when they reached the hatch they were moving far slower which also indicates they decelerated to orient, beam scott / La'Forge off and blow the Jenolan which was keeping the doors open.
That comes to around 600,000 G's. If we assume acceleration increases with the power of the engiens, we are getting to 1 million G's at max power on a GCS.

In Voyager, The Swarm, Voyager covered 5 million klicks in 15 seconds, thats an acceleration of around 44,000 klicks / s ^2. (or 400,000 G's give or take)

In Star Trek 9, the E-E covers a preaty impresive disatnce in a matter of around 15 seconds, high end. Roughly the distance from Earths Moon to a Geosynch orbit. Though this is just an eyeball estimate mind you. It has decererated at that point to be at a very slow speed to close with the collector and beam Picard out (probably cause its shields were still up and you had to close within 200 meters to get through the grid).

In 'In Theory', the E-D covered a million kilometers in around 5 seconds. From a standing start (not said its at a standing start by the episodes context and situation preaty much says they are at a standing start).

So the UFP ships can move like bats out of hell when the situation demands it.

And on topic, Impulse engines ARE Ion engines. At least in part. The actual propulsive engine system is an ion engine. This is stated clearly in relics. And other episodes when talking about ships leaving 'ion trails'. The core part of the impulse engiens are that they don't NEED to be massive engines to get huge sublight performance. The warp core supplies the vast balance of power with the AMRE field, meaning they don't have to build a big powerful warp field and a big powerful sublight drive.

[Chris OFarrell]

Technically impulse drive is an Ion drive, as it releases ionised gas (ST:VI)

In any case, as the enterprise in BoBW was not moving against a red-shifted background, we can say that it must have encountered an anomoly of the week to allow it to travel so fast. Or maybe they've changed the length of a minute. (100 seconds?)

...Or as said they move the said distance in the said time. I feal confident if they encountered a space time anomoly that let them move grossly faster then they should, we would have heard about it. And changing the length ofa minuite....can we just accept what we have heard ahd move on? Impulse engines are able to in some circemstances send the ship FTL or Starfleet has been rearanging the planets orbits to look nicer.

And the only visual we have of the E-D in this time is when it decelerates out of warp near Saturn, then when it engages the Borg near Earth at a relative stop.

[NecronLord]

No. It's a technical blooper in that case. Impulse engines are STL travel. Even with 0.00000000000001 gram mass the energy required using the stated system would be infinite, as the crew still had artificial gravity, they had mass. The only other conclusion I can think of is that somehow V-ger moved the planet Earth or Saturn. (probably Saturn)

[Chris OFarrell]

No. It's a technical blooper in that case. Impulse engines are STL travel. Even with 0.00000000000001 gram mass the energy required using the stated system would be infinite, as the crew still had artificial gravity, they had mass. The only other conclusion I can think of is that somehow V-ger moved the planet Earth or Saturn. (probably Saturn)

Err the energy would only me infinate if the ship was travling at exactly C. Its clear that UFP ships can move FTL easily. The impulse drives use subspace fields, just like a warp drive. Except a lesser level. Its possible in their extreme haste to catch the cube, they pushed into warp for a short time. Of course that doesn't make sense realy, but its the only logical explenation. I think it would have been said at some point of V'Ger or the UFP or the Borg or whoever moved a planet. Unless the Q were playing pool with the planets in Sol and neglected to put them back properly...

[Alyeska]

in BOBW they explicitly state that intercept is with Impulse only.

[Ender]

I know we have an official Acclamator acceleration. Where did the ISD figure come from?

Return of the Jedi they pull about 3000 G around Endor.

Wars: Millenium Falcon going to Bespin from Hoth in 2 months on Ion Drives.

Where's that number from?[/quote]Essential Chronology.

[Howedar]

Okay, and okay.

[SPOOFE]

When only moving at a few thousand KM a second with the planet several hundred thousand KM away (small but recognizable as a planet) you will not notice it shrinking if the scene is done slow enough and the angles are right.

That's kinda what I was referring to. However, most shots in Star Trek show the ship to be several hundred to a couple thousand kilometers above the surface... at that distance, moving at thousands of kilometers per second would be readily apparent.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Believe it or not. In principle, the impulse drive should be the same as the ion drive in principles. In practice, the Federation does not have enough real oompf to get the impulse drive working at a decent speed, so they FUSED the AMRE system into the impulse system.

When no warpage or space distortion (and presumably forms of AMRE) is available, Star Trek acceleration is very poor - limited to oh, 1.9km/s/s (Fair Haven.) max. Refer to the ASVS Thread Database.

One really doesn't have to look very far to find the most impressive cases for sublight acceleration in Star Trek or Star Wars. Every time they warp or hyperdrive, the runup (you can see the relativistic distortion) is from 0 to near C in about 3 or 4 seconds (eyeball of distortion) before they transit into FTL state. That implies that assisted, both fleets are in fact capable of MURDEROUS accelerations in the zone of 100,000km/s/s.

Using the same system that makes the run up to warp, one can easily obtain the high accelerations listed in the examples. The difference is that Trek integrates it more into the system, so not every involvement winds up being a full blown FTL trip. Maybe SW integrated it more into their systems too, which might explain why the fighting speeds increased to 0.6C and up in NJO.

It really isn't that much of an advantage for Trek. They'd fight at their usual battle speed (observed in things like STFC) and their high acceleration advantage (if they ever use it, or CAN use it in battle) will be no more useful than their already established ability to warp out of battle and back in Picard Maneuver like stuff. If only one Captain can think of the Picard Maneuver, I doubt the other captains would be fast to use the high battle speed advantage...

By the way, Chris, I thought it was only 500,000km in 15 seconds in Swarm