Federation territory

[Mike DiCenso]

Not necessarily as it was established at least three times throughout VOY that when the ship got access to improved navigational data about the Delta quadrant, they were able each time to shave years off their journey home. In particular, in "Year of Hell, Part I", they were able to shave off 5 years with a relatively minor course trajectory change.
-Mike

[Cocytus]

And besides, Voyager is constantly veering off course to investigate things. "Why pretend we're going home at all. All we're going to do is investigate every cubic millimeter of this quadrant."--the Doc. Add to that the fact that the ship apparently seldom travels its maximum speed (which is probably for the better, since doing so probably means worse fuel efficiency) When Gagen and Veer find Voyager in "Distant Origin" it's going a paltry warp 6.2.

The E-D expected to get home from M33 in only 300 years, from a distance of 2.7 million light years. Perhaps the 70 year figure was calculated using the maximum allowable speeds under those restrictions from that silly "Force of Nature" episode. I know Voyager was supposed to have a "non-polluting" warpcore, but as the ship and much of the crew were pretty green, not to mention under a great deal of pressure, maybe they just forgot.

[Mike DiCenso]

The speeds demonstrated in "Obsession" [TOS, Season 2], "That Which Survives" [TOS, Season 3], and "The Chase" [TNG, Season 6] are all reconcilable with VOY because they take place largely within well-charted areas of space, and that matches up well with the aforementioned VOY episodes where the ship can shave signifcant time off it's trip home with good navigational data.
-Mike

[Cocytus]

I grant that it makes sense to reduce speed through uncharted areas, since it increases your reaction time. Then again, the distances involved are so enormous that even if you could manage something considerable, like a light-year per minute, or 530,000 times c you'd still have a few minutes between systems. Of course, there's the problem of running into phenomena the sensors can't see, like subspace sandbars, which obviously wasn't solved even by Seven's improvised astrometric sensors.

I suppose plowing over a sandbar at warp 25 would be worse than at warp 6.2, but since only one has ever been encoutered in the whole history of Trek, you'd run about as much chance of plowing over Abe Lincoln. Besides, Janeway's never been one for playing it safe.

[Roondar]

I always took the main limit for Voyager (or other long distance Federation travels) to be one of fuel.

It's quite obvious, since the times that Janeway et.al. order their ship to resume a course for home (esp. during season one and obviously only when they state the warp speed used) they tend to pick either warp six or seven.

As so the star charts thing clearing up a good 8-10% of their travel times that is interesting.

Look at it this way: most of space is empty (even in ST). Couple this with the large distances between systems, the fact they always had long range scanning ability (for real-space objects anyway) and the fact that they'd only really need to change course a bit as a result of whatever they find (as in the overall line will still be mostly straight when you look at the total distance traveled). This leads to a (to me anyway) odd result.

I find it more likely that there are regions of space they can travel easier (less 'dust' so less deflector usage is my theory-of-the-week) and hence with better fuel efficiency and therefore better speed. Another option would be that the better charts allowed them to find new sources of fuel, which again would speed them up.

It also explains why the E-D can use higher speeds far more often (Picard quite regularly calls for 'Maximum Warp', something which Janeway only rarely does) than Voyager, even though Voyager is the faster ship - they have ready access to new fuel and hence don't need to worry about running out.

[Mike DiCenso]

Starbases. Not just fuel being an issue here between the E-D and Voyager, but friendly bases where the ships can go after pushing their engines for an overhaul. After the events of "The Chase", the E-D had to put in at a starbase because she had been pushing her engines to the limits. Voyager, on the other hand, cannot have that done because there are so few options or none for that kind of thing.

As for the navigational data improvement issue; nothing was said about the ship being able to find fuel. The only thing that happened in "Year of Hell" was an improvement on Voyager's trajectory back to the Alpha quadrent. Every time a navigation issue comes up, it is one that is obstacle-based.
-Mike

[Cocytus]

Yes, but Voyager apparently had little trouble manufacturing new warp coils to replace the ones which were burned up by superheated plasma in "Investigations," or putting down to overhaul the nacelles in "Nightengale." They could have been constructing new facilities on the ship to expedite repairs, or it could point to increasing starship self-sufficiency as a general rule.

As for the issue of finding fuel, deuterium should be readily available as a general rule. There was that one odd part of the galaxy where there wasn't much of it ("Demon") but it should otherwise be naturally abundant. I think the issue tends to fuel efficiency mainly, with better course plotting helping to shave off additional time. Although deuterium is pretty common, dilithium crystals are not, and the higher fuel consumption at speeds of warp 8 or 9 would exhaust the crystals much faster.

[Praeothmin]

Yes, but Voyager apparently had little trouble manufacturing new warp coils to replace the ones which were burned up by superheated plasma in "Investigations," or putting down to overhaul the nacelles in "Nightengale." They could have been constructing new facilities on the ship to expedite repairs, or it could point to increasing starship self-sufficiency as a general rule.

But every time you build or create spare parts, you use some of the ship's energy, which is in limited supply, or else they would not have limited the Replicator's use.
That energy needs to come from somewhere, and you need fuel to create energy.
You also need manpower.
So by travelling towards Earth while also maintaining engines, repairing battle damage, that takes time, manpower and energy, all of which are in limited quantity on Voyager.
Plus, add to the fact that some of those engine repairs would have needed them to stop, and sometimes we saw them travelling using impulse engines...

Delays, delays, delays... :)

[Mith]

And besides, Voyager is constantly veering off course to investigate things. "Why pretend we're going home at all. All we're going to do is investigate every cubic millimeter of this quadrant."--the Doc. Add to that the fact that the ship apparently seldom travels its maximum speed (which is probably for the better, since doing so probably means worse fuel efficiency) When Gagen and Veer find Voyager in "Distant Origin" it's going a paltry warp 6.2.

The E-D expected to get home from M33 in only 300 years, from a distance of 2.7 million light years. Perhaps the 70 year figure was calculated using the maximum allowable speeds under those restrictions from that silly "Force of Nature" episode. I know Voyager was supposed to have a "non-polluting" warpcore, but as the ship and much of the crew were pretty green, not to mention under a great deal of pressure, maybe they just forgot.

Voyager was also never meant for long-range voyages. She was supposed to be something of a scout/science ship. Her weapon systems are basically built around handling smaller threats (such as raider ships). Her top speed may be faster than the Enterprise D, but she's also not designed to go into deep space exporation missions.

[Cocytus]

But every time you build or create spare parts, you use some of the ship's energy, which is in limited supply, or else they would not have limited the Replicator's use.
That energy needs to come from somewhere, and you need fuel to create energy.
You also need manpower.
So by travelling towards Earth while also maintaining engines, repairing battle damage, that takes time, manpower and energy, all of which are in limited quantity on Voyager.
Plus, add to the fact that some of those engine repairs would have needed them to stop, and sometimes we saw them travelling using impulse engines...

Delays, delays, delays... :)

All true. So, factoring in maintenance downtime, fuel efficiency, a slower cruising speed to avoid taxing the engines/exhausting the crystals, etc. are we approaching 70 years? Just pulling some figures from DITL for a second, warp 7 is listed as 656 times C. 75,000 LY should take 115 years. Warp 8, 1,024 times C, 75,000 LY takes 73 years. Those figures are, of course, constant travel time, not factoring in stopovers, but the latter figure is well within the ballpark. It wasn't until the aforementioned "Nightingale" that Voyager had to stop to overhaul the engines, so assuming they can reasonably go 7 years at warp 8 on their coils, they can go 4.2E16 miles, or roughly one-tenth of their journey, before needing an overhaul. If an overhaul takes, say two months, that's a total of 18 months of downtime (since the last two would be performed at Starfleet) we're at 74.5 years, if they maintained warp 8. Perfect.

Here's my issue, though. In "The 37s," Paris states that warp 9.9 is 4 billion miles per second. At that speed, 21,505 times C, going 75,000 LY, or 4.43E17 miles, would take about 3.5 years. As to how quickly that would wear out the coils and other engine components, I don't know. If they can sustain that for 12 hours before needing to cool off, they could go 1.73E14 miles each time. Assuming that 12 hour figure is a safeguard to keep the warp coils from overheating or something, they'd have to do that 2560 times to cover 75,000 LY. Factoring in say, another 12 hours of letting the engines cool off, and we're up to 7 years travel time for the whole bloody thing.

Now, depending on how much cooldown time you want to add in (maybe 12 hours of 9.9 needs 24 hours of cooldown, or 48 or whatever) plus regular coil replacements, (however long you expect that might take) you could easily get anywhere from 15-30 years for the trip using the maximum warp burst method. Still a far cry from 70. Obviously, the 70-year figure was the safe figure. Voyager didn't run the risk of exhausting itself in an uncharted, unpopulated, mineralogically destitute region of space. Still, for the captain who regularly risks her crew against the Borg, the Devore, Species 8472, injured nebulae, etc to play it safe seems somewhat out of character. After all, if she's intent on getting them home, she should realize that most of the crew would be either infirm or dead after 70 years anyway. Admiral McCoy was 147 years in "Farpoint," but he was, after all, a rather remarkable man.

The E-D expected to average about 9000 times C on its trip home from M33, indicating its warp coils can tolerate far higher average speeds that Voyagers. (I'm assuming Geordi was calculating a "safe" figure, factoring in downtime, etc.)

[Mith]

But every time you build or create spare parts, you use some of the ship's energy, which is in limited supply, or else they would not have limited the Replicator's use.
That energy needs to come from somewhere, and you need fuel to create energy.
You also need manpower.
So by travelling towards Earth while also maintaining engines, repairing battle damage, that takes time, manpower and energy, all of which are in limited quantity on Voyager.
Plus, add to the fact that some of those engine repairs would have needed them to stop, and sometimes we saw them travelling using impulse engines...

Delays, delays, delays... :)

All true. So, factoring in maintenance downtime, fuel efficiency, a slower cruising speed to avoid taxing the engines/exhausting the crystals, etc. are we approaching 70 years? Just pulling some figures from DITL for a second, warp 7 is listed as 656 times C. 75,000 LY should take 115 years. Warp 8, 1,024 times C, 75,000 LY takes 73 years. Those figures are, of course, constant travel time, not factoring in stopovers, but the latter figure is well within the ballpark. It wasn't until the aforementioned "Nightingale" that Voyager had to stop to overhaul the engines, so assuming they can reasonably go 7 years at warp 8 on their coils, they can go 4.2E16 miles, or roughly one-tenth of their journey, before needing an overhaul. If an overhaul takes, say two months, that's a total of 18 months of downtime (since the last two would be performed at Starfleet) we're at 74.5 years, if they maintained warp 8. Perfect.

Here's my issue, though. In "The 37s," Paris states that warp 9.9 is 4 billion miles per second. At that speed, 21,505 times C, going 75,000 LY, or 4.43E17 miles, would take about 3.5 years. As to how quickly that would wear out the coils and other engine components, I don't know. If they can sustain that for 12 hours before needing to cool off, they could go 1.73E14 miles each time. Assuming that 12 hour figure is a safeguard to keep the warp coils from overheating or something, they'd have to do that 2560 times to cover 75,000 LY. Factoring in say, another 12 hours of letting the engines cool off, and we're up to 7 years travel time for the whole bloody thing.

Now, depending on how much cooldown time you want to add in (maybe 12 hours of 9.9 needs 24 hours of cooldown, or 48 or whatever) plus regular coil replacements, (however long you expect that might take) you could easily get anywhere from 15-30 years for the trip using the maximum warp burst method. Still a far cry from 70. Obviously, the 70-year figure was the safe figure. Voyager didn't run the risk of exhausting itself in an uncharted, unpopulated, mineralogically destitute region of space. Still, for the captain who regularly risks her crew against the Borg, the Devore, Species 8472, injured nebulae, etc to play it safe seems somewhat out of character. After all, if she's intent on getting them home, she should realize that most of the crew would be either infirm or dead after 70 years anyway. Admiral McCoy was 147 years in "Farpoint," but he was, after all, a rather remarkable man.

The E-D expected to average about 9000 times C on its trip home from M33, indicating its warp coils can tolerate far higher average speeds that Voyagers. (I'm assuming Geordi was calculating a "safe" figure, factoring in downtime, etc.)

Interestingly enough, the Dominion would also be forced to obey the 70 year wiat period, probably for the very same reason, if not more so. Most of their ships are either small, and would thus hold smaller amounts of rations and parts, but their larger ships are downright massive for ST ships, and would require a great deal of attention. It would seem that after a path through said space is established, travel would be much faster.

Of course, I still think that sub-space has to do with these, possibly greatly pulling speed down, or increasing it dramtically given the various speed changes from episode to episode. There might be a constant one for your average area, but if small highways were taken advantage of, or even created throughout the UFP and similar powers, it would make travel throughout their territory fairly quick.

[Roondar]

Voyager most certainly did not average warp 8 going home.

Just about every single episode which actually states speeds for the 'home journey' either say warp six or warp seven (or something in between).

An excellent example for this comes from Tuvix where they are on course for the A-Q. This particular bit happens just prior to Janeway ordering Mr. Tuvix to step down.

Tuvix asks Tom Paris the warp speed (remember they're traveling home at this point and have been doing that for two weeks straight since the incident. We can therefore safely assume they're at their regular cruising speed) and Tom states it to be Warp 6.5.

Since this is not nearly the only time this is mentioned, I'm thinking the ship went home around warp 6-7 (there is ample proof for that speed - my example is just one of many) and that we can extrapolate the speed of warp 6-7 from Voyagers 70 year estimation, regardless what DITL stays it should be ;)

In other words, warp 6.5 is about 1000LY/year, give or take.

[Mike DiCenso]

Another interesting comparitive example is Voyager's sister shipUSS Bellerophon (NCC-74705), which ferried a Federation delegation to Romulus for a conference in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (DS9. Season 7).

First this line of dialog from Kira to Senator Cretak during a weekly meeting:

KIRA
Then that's it for today.
(to all)
Same time next week? Oh --
sorry, senator, you'll be
attending the conference on
Romulus won't you?


This line of dialog establishes that by the next week at the latest, the Bellerophon will have arrived at Romulus. The problem is now, how far away is Romulus from Bajor...


In this thread here the starchart from "Conspiracy" [TNG, Season 1] and "The Hands of the Prophets" [DS9, Season 1] was discussed in detail as to how far away the Romulan Neutral Zone might be from Earth. The map shows Romulus and Bajor on far opposite sides of the territory the Federation and several other major powers occupy. Given the somewhat contradictory proportions and distances for some of the more well-known locations, the Federation could be hundreds of light years to several thousands of light years wide.

If we take a low-end figure of 250 ly and assume 7 days to travel from Bajor to Romulus with no stops along the way, then the average speed the Bellerophon is 13,035c. On the other hand, if the distance is 6,000 ly, then Bellerophon is making some 312,857c!

Compare that with Lt. Paris' stated warp 9.9 speed from "The 37s" [VOY, Season 2] of 21,400 c. Granted that Voyager was never stated as making her top sustainable speed of warp 9.975, we also have to bear in mind that no warp speed was ever given for Bellerophon, which was on a highly critical diplomatic mission was making nearly fifteen times faster speed than the 9.9 speed given by Paris. Clearly Voyager was not going anywhere near her top speed!
-Mike

[Cocytus]

I understand that, Roondar. My problem is this.

Say the warp coils are like tires, right? They last for a given distance and then need replacing. At warp 7, they need to be replaced after 7 years, or 4.2E16 miles. At warp 9.9, they would still need replacing after 4.2E16 miles, but they'd have gone that distance in only 121 days instead of 7 years. As long as Voyager has ready supplies of dilithium and verterium cortenide, they have what they need to service and replace the engine components. My guess is, knowing about Seska's trap, they surprised the Kazon immediately after "Investigations" and stocked up on VC at the planet, since they had the stuff on hand when they set down in "Nightingale." I know they've found sources of dilithium several times. And deuterium and hydrogen are naturally abundant.

We know from numerous episodes that Starfleet engineers factor in a substantial safety margin. "A good engineer is always a wee bit conservative, at least on paper." So they probably engineer the warp coils to stand higher speeds for a given period, but don't advise traveling said speed to extend the life of the coils. But if Janeway's primary goal is to get home, and she has everything she needs to make new coils, why would she care about wearing them out? 70 years is an absurdly conservative estimate. There's really no reason the Federation couldn't field a transgalactic mission with a window of a few years, as long as the ships were supplied with dilithium and verterium cortenide, as Voyager obviously was.

[Roondar]

I think you're looking at it the wrong way.

Compare it with a modern car - if you drive it 65MPH it's whole life you can get enormous range out of it before it's finally so broken you have to replace it. Take the same car and drive it at 120MPH and it'll break down much, much earlier - not only in time, but also in range.

See, pushing technology lowers it's lifespan. This is true today, so I see no reason why it won't be true for the Federation and it's starships. As to your tire example, this is not correct - the distance is only one factor. If you go faster your tires wear out quicker (and thus, last less miles) than when you go slowly ;)

That is what I think is the case with Voyagers warp coils, crystals, etc. Use them at higher speeds and they burn out much quicker (in distance traveled) than they do when flying slowly.