The YAWCF debate (poll)

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

What is ST:TFF? I don't think I have heard of that one.

[Jedi Master Spock]

What is ST:TFF? I don't think I have heard of that one.

Star Trek V. It's the movie where the mad emotional Vulcan half-brother of Spock hijacks the Enterprise to go on a search for God; it starts off with Kirk trying to kill himself climbing El Capitan.

It was directed by William Shatner, and it's universally identified as the worst Star Trek movie ever made. It also is a strong contender among critics for the worst major sci-fi movie of all time, and is the reason why nobody talks about Shatner's career as a director.

There are very serious consistency problems regarding warp speed. Even just within TNG, there's about five orders of magnitude of variance in the "top speed" of the Enterprise D, ranging from the estimated time to return from the far end of the Barzan wormhole (about 700 c) to the apparent speed of the Enterprise in a void in "Where Silence Has Lease" (apparent speed ~12,000,000 c).

Actually, the latter is a low warp incident. The other series are a little more internally consistent (in the order TOS > DS9 > VOY > ENT, IMO), but Voyager is still hard to reconcile with most of the warp speed references found in DS9, TOS, and ENT, and about half of the major TNG ones. IMO, high warp speeds should generally fall in the 100,000-1,000,000 c range, and sustainable warp speeds decline steadily as trips get longer, mainly due to fuel supply concerns.

[Mike DiCenso]

What is ST:TFF? I don't think I have heard of that one.

To clarify a bit further, the acronym is for "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier". The rest is, as JMS, says.
-Mike

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

Ahh, I see.

[Jedi Master Spock]

The second episode is up, and with it, come your fill-in-the-blank answers. The first episode has been updated to reflect the results of the previous poll, and now:

Our second batch of questions:

• What fraction impulse power does the helmsman use? (Featured question, available in anonymous poll)
• How far away is the probe when Captain Zhet orders it tractored?
• What is the strength - in newtons of force or in watts of total power - of the Venator's tractor beam?
• Can the Rebels intercept and understand the voice transmissions passing between the two ships from their hiding place?
• When the transporter beam goes off, what do the Imperials think just happened?

Also taking submissions for the names of the helmswoman on duty at the moment on the Cheron, and the current helmsman of the Judgment. And the transporter room chief on duty on the Cheron.

[Mike DiCenso]

Our second batch of questions:

• What fraction impulse power does the helmsman use? (Featured question, available in anonymous poll)
• How far away is the probe when Captain Zhet orders it tractored?
• What is the strength - in newtons of force or in watts of total power - of the Venator's tractor beam?
• Can the Rebels intercept and understand the voice transmissions passing between the two ships from their hiding place?
• When the transporter beam goes off, what do the Imperials think just happened?

Also taking submissions for the names of the helmswoman on duty at the moment on the Cheron, and the current helmsman of the Judgment. And the transporter room chief on duty on the Cheron.

* Be a bit retro and use the ST:TMP impulse power nomenclature; "Ahead warp point one". ect. ;-) Or conversely, use some of the TNG-era references to K.P.H/S (Kilometers Per Hour/Second). It really depends on how much acceleration the Cheron has to put out to keep her distance from the Judgement.

* Given the ridiculously close ranges ISD have been shown near the Falcon and even the Tantive (e.g. mere kilometers at most) and were not able to get a tractor lock on them, you might want to have the Republic cruiser (this is a Venator SD, correct?) pass fairly close and on top of the probe. For that matter, what class starship is the Federation crew in this story using, Ambassador class?

* If you need such a thing; try newtons for the mechanical force.
Or be really inventive; both watts and newtons! ;-)

* The Rebels might have an easier time tapping into the Imperial transmissions. But it depends on how "open" all of this is between the Cheron and Judgement. It's not like they have a reason for tight-beam, super-encrypted communications. The Rebels might even be able to use their sensors passively to monitor the capture of the probe.

* On the transporting of the probe; It depends on how closely the Imps were paying attention to what was going on. They might pick up the power surge from the Cheron, and note there was some kind of directed energy beam at the TIE shuttle. They might even mistake it as a form of weapon, or they totally miss everything and mistake it for a self-destruct system. It really depends on how much credit you're willing to give to Imp sensors.

By the way, what species is the helmswoman?
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

It really depends on how much credit you're willing to give to Imp sensors.

Yeah, well, considering that the Imperial Probe Droid in TESB couldn't even detect either Han or Chewbacca who were both less then 10 meters away, I don't think the sensors would even pinpoint what was happening.
At most, I see them detecting an energy surge from the "enemy" ship, and that's it.

With nothing else happening after the surge, and fearing it's some kind of weapon might make the Imperials raise shields...

And on the subject of differing Hyperspace speeds, I found this interesting explanation, here (of course it was rapidly shot down with more or less valid answers, but the hypothesis itself is nice):
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=130771

Here's the text:

The monpolozation/control of "space lanes" in the SW galaxy, seems to counter the notion that hyperdrive allows a ship to travel magnitudes faster than Federation ships.

Likewise, when Han Solo was escaping the Star Destroyers in Ep. IV, he had to wait for his computer to plot the course to Alderaan before he could jump to hyperdrive, to avoid passing through a star, or too close to a supernova (or black hole, in the novel). Why not just jump halfway to the nearest star system--- and thus escape, giving more time in order to jump from there?

The apparent answer, is that hyperdrive didn't permit controlled travel in any direction (ala warp-drive), but rather this points more to a "conduit" system, i.e. the SW galaxy's space-faring civilizations are tens of thousands of years old (compared to only hundreds for the Trek civilizations), and hence have had more time to amass data regarding exting wormholes/hyperspace conduits.

Note that the age of the civilization doesn't necessarily related to advanced technology, since the midichlorians seem to have "stagnated" the growth of civilization into a cyclical history of civil war against the Sith.

This would be similar to the Borg-conduits, considering the age of the Borg as well, giving more time to amass astrophysical data from exploration in order to find/build such conduits.

In short, what's the canon regarding the speed of SW hyperdrive, outside of these "space lanes?"

[l33telboi]

That's pretty much my theory in a nutshell. The idea that space-lanes aren't important is somewhat nonsensical though, if they aren't important, how are the Separatists capable of cutting off the Republic from their troops by seizing space lanes and mining them?

What fraction impulse power does the helmsman use? (Featured question, available in anonymous poll)

Well, if they're matching course and hoping to maintain the distance, then they should be accelerating as quickly as the Venator-class Cruiser. I'm unfamiliar with Star Trek accelerations, but generally they seem a lot faster then their Star Wars counterparts. There was this one episode in DS9 that showed two Miranda's (I think) reversing course in no time at all. Something like moving twice their own length in one second, IIRC. Given that the Ambassador is 526m in length, it'd mean around 1000m/s^2, or around 100 gravities. So if that's maximum impulse, then they need to use about a third of full impulse to match accelerations.

How far away is the probe when Captain Zhet orders it tractored?

Well, the probe was 40,000km away from the wormhole when launched. And the Venator in this case seems to not have been as close to the wormhole as the Ambassador, so... something over 100,000km?

Of course, something tells me distances like that will be rather problematic given the established accelerations (100g and 30g). Which is why I'll change my answer to ~50km.

What is the strength - in newtons of force or in watts of total power - of the Venator's tractor beam?

I'm not aware of any canonical statements on tractor-beam strength. So I'll just go ahead and throw out something that sounds good. A thousandth of the peak reactor output? With reactor output being around 1e15W, that'd mean 1e12W, or about a terawatt.

Can the Rebels intercept and understand the voice transmissions passing between the two ships from their hiding place?

Sure. The signals aren't secured, after all.

When the transporter beam goes off, what do the Imperials think just happened?

They'll think it's some weird self-destruct mechanism, though they'll wonder how exactly mass could disappear like that.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, if they're matching course and hoping to maintain the distance, then they should be accelerating as quickly as the Venator-class Cruiser. I'm unfamiliar with Star Trek accelerations, but generally they seem a lot faster then their Star Wars counterparts. There was this one episode in DS9 that showed two Miranda's (I think) reversing course in no time at all. Something like moving twice their own length in one second, IIRC. Given that the Ambassador is 526m in length, it'd mean around 1000m/s^2, or around 100 gravities. So if that's maximum impulse, then they need to use about a third of full impulse to match accelerations.

Here is the Ambassador class USS Yamaguchi alongside a Nebula class starship making a tight, high speed turn towards the Borg cube and starting an attack run at time index 0:51. The Yamaguchi is at least doing 526 meters a second, and may actually be going considerably faster than that.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

With nothing else happening after the surge, and fearing it's some kind of weapon might make the Imperials raise shields...

That brings up the age old question: Will transporters work through SW shields? ;-)
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

And on the subject of differing Hyperspace speeds, I found this interesting explanation, here (of course it was rapidly shot down with more or less valid answers, but the hypothesis itself is nice):
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=130771

I would lean towards the "less valid" side of things. Really, there is a lot of EU/T-canon evidence for actual, physical, "better than regular space" hyperspace lanes that are quite narrow.

There is very limited (and highly inconsistent) G material on hyperspace speeds that says absolutely nothing about the topic. For people who include the EU (as is the practice on that board) it seems impossible to consistently and effectively argue against hyperspace lanes.

They're being quite creative, I'll grant, but few of their counterarguments have merit.

By the way, what species is the helmswoman?

I was thinking human or at least near-human.

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

How about Zabrak? Zabrak are cool.

[Mike DiCenso]

Are you suggesting that as a name for the helmswoman?
-Mike

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

Her species. Zabrak are humanoids, but ignore that, since I was being a sloppy reader and thought that she was a helmswoman for the SD.

How about Cierra? Fairly common name spelled in a way to make it seem more exotic, maybe less modern day Earth-like.

What about the Helmsman for the Judgement being a Zabrak?

[Praeothmin]

So if that's maximum impulse, then they need to use about a third of full impulse to match accelerations.

Actually, according to the TNG tech manual, full impulse is 1/4 lightspeed, or 75 000 km/s.

That brings up the age old question: Will transporters work through SW shields? ;-)

I see no reason why they should, except that there was no mention that the Imperial shuttle had them raised at the moment of transport.

I would lean towards the "less valid" side of things.

I was actually being nice, because I did feel that their counter-arguments were foolish and illogical, but I mainly wanted the point of interest to be the hypothesis, and not the usual SDN rethorics...

I was thinking human or at least near-human.

Why not Caïtian (feline humanoids)?