Long distance travel

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Despite being state of the art when it was launched, Voyager is hella slow for sustained high velocity warp. 70,000 ly in 75 yrs is around 933c. In the TOS episode "By any other name" the trip to the Andromeda Galaxy is supposed to take around 300 yrs. I don't know for sure, but I think the distance between the two galaxies is around 1,000,000 ly. That would make the TOS Enterprise capable of sustaining about 3333c, or about 3.5 times better than Voyager. In the TNG episode "Where no one has gone before" the E-D ends up in galaxy M33 (I think, I don't have my ST encyclopedia at my dorm). Data says that they passed through two other (not Milkyway or M33) galaxies on their trip so that should be at least 2,000,000 ly, probably more like 3 or 4. I think they also state that is would take them 250 or so years and a transmission would take 50 something years to reach Earth. Assuming only 2,000,000 ly and 300 yrs the E-D would still be going around 7 times faster than Voyager (though that might have been refering to maximum safe warp for short travel, not extended) at about 6666c.

As I said, I'm not sure about the TNG example, but the TOS one is the expected travel time.

[Trinoya]

Many people have come to the conclusion that speed is very much linked to sensor data.

The ENTD, for example, is a dedicated fleet command ship, complete with weapons, an impressive array of sensors, so on and so forth... It would most likely have far less trouble in plotting efficent routes back to earth.

In regards to milkyway-andromeda, there isn't too much inbetween the two... as such sensors wouldn't be to important. This also helps explain the ENTDs time for not one, but TWO galaxies inbetween them and earth.

Voyager is in the only unexplored quadrent for humans. They know where earth is in relation to them, they even know which direction they must travel, but if we assume that they are keeping to an average warpspeed (as opposed to maximum), and taking proper sensor readings, a good ammount of their time will be spent just figuring out if they should make a left or a right.

Voyager even gets some improved sensor data and a path that will shave years off their trip. This lends the most credit to the theory. Voyager also spent time and resources to improve their sensor capability, and in doing so, improve their over all travel time home.

In warp, if you don't know where you're going, you're going to be going there a lot slower than if you do know where you are going, at which point you can start cruising at high warp all the way there.

Sadly, so very much of the rest of star trek contridicts voyagers speed, hell, even some speeds in Enterprise make voyager look like crap... Unfortunently an entir series is hard to ignore... because of this, we have to look for an explanation that allows all the speeds to be true. So far, sensors are the answer.

[Mike DiCenso]

The Triangulum Galaxy, otherwise known as M33, is nearly 3 million light years away from the Milky Way as of the last real-world update:

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/biguni.htm


According to Geordi, the E-D had come to a stop on the "far side" of M33, so the ship could easily be more than 3 million ly from the Milky Way. Call it an even 3 million ly for a return maximum speed of 10,000c.
-Mike

[AFT]

It gets a bit more complicated if we take into account that Voyager has about the only direct reference between a given warp factor and actual speed. In “The 37's” - Voyager Season 2, Paris says warp 9.9 is 4,000,000,000 miles per second, or 21,450c and Voyager is capable of Warp 9.975.

So, is this further inconsistency? Not really, if we also consider autonomy and endurance. Yesterday I was doing some reading at SDN and found a similar topic, there the following post:

Alyeska
Federation Ambassador
May 28, 2006 10:22 pm

When it comes down to Warp Speed, things get a little strange. The Federation is apparently very large, and yet ships like the Enterprise have been all around it without spending years to get from just one side to another. Fed ships are capable of high speeds, but to go beyond known territory takes time.

It is my opinion that high warp speeds take a lot more fuel and it makes quick exploration outside of territory a slow thing. On the other hand, when you can "filler up" every week, you can sprint across friendly space with relative ease. It would also explain why in war, you can't just completely cross an enemy’s territory. You don't have the fuel to do it. It would also explain the need to capture planets and other strategic assets. They are important in maintaining the fuel lines.

That’s pretty much the same conclusion that I draw on the issue. Voyager was simply cut off from Starbase support and during the series more than once they were looking for deuterium, dilithium crystals, etc. Not a problem in or next to your own territory where a well supplied Starbase is near by. Furthermore, Voyager most of the time was anywhere its top speed, there are quite a few instances where Voyager was shown to be traveling at impulse, when FTL and the warp factor was given, it fluctuated between 6 to 8, every time Voyager got a distress call, already traveling at warp, Janeway ordered an intercept course and maximum warp. This is similar to modern day destroyers and frigates that are rated at 30 knots or better and most of their time they are using their obviously more economical cruise speed of 10-15 knots. I don’t see why warp driven starships should be any different.

For me this is quite clear an autonomy problem. For a trip that long they cannot afford to maintain even their top cruise speed so they were forced to use a slower warp factor that they know they could maintain for that long. For multi-year exploration missions, Federation starships are quite capable of using their top speeds knowing well that upon their return a Starbase is waiting to re-supply their ship. Federation ships within their territory don’t have this problem whatsoever as shown several times during the series. If we add Trinoya sensor problems, everything makes sense, at least for me.

[Nonamer]

There's also the issue of Cruising speed and max speed. For many supersonic fighter planes, they need afterburners in order to actually reach supersonic speeds. This burns up a lot of fuel very very quickly and they can never do it for sustained periods. It's likely that a similar problem exists for Starfleet ships. It's probably the case that Voyager cannot reach home at cruising speed in less than 70 years, but they could easily reach home at max warp but they'll blow out all their fuel way before they get anywhere.

Also in Voyager we should bring up the other lost Fed ship the Equinox. It was not a "long-range" vessel and faced far more trouble than Voyager did. Yet surprisingly it was heading home at a much much faster pace than Voyager because they found a cheap source of energy.

PS: Something's serious wrong with the server. I'm getting error messages after each post.

[GStone]

PS: Something's serious wrong with the server. I'm getting error messages after each post.

I've gotten several, too.

[Mike DiCenso]

Nonamer wrote:
There's also the issue of Cruising speed and max speed. For many supersonic fighter planes, they need afterburners in order to actually reach supersonic speeds. This burns up a lot of fuel very very quickly and they can never do it for sustained periods. It's likely that a similar problem exists for Starfleet ships. It's probably the case that Voyager cannot reach home at cruising speed in less than 70 years, but they could easily reach home at max warp but they'll blow out all their fuel way before they get anywhere.

That analogy would work, if it could take into account the multiple times where Voyager had shaved off several years from the journey just by getting good navigational data about the Delta quadrent. In each case it was not about raw speed, but finding a more efficent route for the ship to travel through.

In Federation space, for instance, the routes are well understood, and therefore warp speeds in the 10,000+ range are perfectly possible, although it probably does help some to have good, reliable logistical support along the way.

Nonamer wrote:
Also in Voyager we should bring up the other lost Fed ship the Equinox. It was not a "long-range" vessel and faced far more trouble than Voyager did. Yet surprisingly it was heading home at a much much faster pace than Voyager because they found a cheap source of energy.

I consider methods like that to be "cheats". That is the crew gets ahold of transwarp, slipstream, or some other method of propulsion that lets them "go faster" by non-conventional methods.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

PS: Something's serious wrong with the server. I'm getting error messages after each post.

I've gotten several, too.

Could you guys PM, post, or e-mail me the exact error message? I haven't gotten any, and I would like to be able to figure out what's going on with that.

[GStone]

Will do, but I haven't gotten any today and I'm using this post to see if this'll give me one.

Edit: Didn't happen.

[Nonamer]

Nonamer wrote:
Also in Voyager we should bring up the other lost Fed ship the Equinox. It was not a "long-range" vessel and faced far more trouble than Voyager did. Yet surprisingly it was heading home at a much much faster pace than Voyager because they found a cheap source of energy.

I consider methods like that to be "cheats". That is the crew gets ahold of transwarp, slipstream, or some other method of propulsion that lets them "go faster" by non-conventional methods.
-Mike

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Equinox

They never got anything more than anti-matter. It seems that they only need extra fuel to go super-fast. Enough to reach the Alpha quadrant in reasonable time.

PS: The server errors are gone now.

[Jedi Master Spock]

At this point in the thread, I'm going to mention the elephant sitting in the dark room - Star Trek V, which is a particularly problematic reiteration of the theme repeated many times in Trek.

Unfortunately, in that particular instance of "Enterprise is hijacked and flown clear across/outside/around the galaxy," we can't use the drive of the week excuse plausibly. Sybok doesn't modify the engine (to our knowledge) and the Klingons keep up just fine.

[Socar]

At this point in the thread, I'm going to mention the elephant sitting in the dark room - Star Trek V, which is a particularly problematic reiteration of the theme repeated many times in Trek.

Unfortunately, in that particular instance of "Enterprise is hijacked and flown clear across/outside/around the galaxy," we can't use the drive of the week excuse plausibly. Sybok doesn't modify the engine (to our knowledge) and the Klingons keep up just fine.

Maybe there was some kind of known subspace vortex that allowed for quick passage to the galactic core.

[Mike DiCenso]

Nonamer wrote:
Also in Voyager we should bring up the other lost Fed ship the Equinox. It was not a "long-range" vessel and faced far more trouble than Voyager did. Yet surprisingly it was heading home at a much much faster pace than Voyager because they found a cheap source of energy.

I consider methods like that to be "cheats". That is the crew gets ahold of transwarp, slipstream, or some other method of propulsion that lets them "go faster" by non-conventional methods.
-Mike

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Equinox

They never got anything more than anti-matter. It seems that they only need extra fuel to go super-fast. Enough to reach the Alpha quadrant in reasonable time.

Except that the unfortunate nucleogenic creatures are what provided the cheat:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Nucleogenic_creature


The slipstream drive in "Timeless" made use of the benamite crystals in a similar manner, though with obviously none of the moral dilema.
-Mike

[Nonamer]

At this point in the thread, I'm going to mention the elephant sitting in the dark room - Star Trek V, which is a particularly problematic reiteration of the theme repeated many times in Trek.

Unfortunately, in that particular instance of "Enterprise is hijacked and flown clear across/outside/around the galaxy," we can't use the drive of the week excuse plausibly. Sybok doesn't modify the engine (to our knowledge) and the Klingons keep up just fine.

It's a similar problem to the one in Threshold, the Voyager episode where they reach Warp 10 (infinite speed). I follow the belief that this episode has been "unofficially" decanonized; both fans and producers alike agree that this episode is crap and doesn't make sense and needs to be dropped. It's also never seen or heard of again in any later episodes of Voyager either. I personally see this as an episode long errata. Not sure how it is with ST:V though.

[Socar]

It's a similar problem to the one in Threshold, the Voyager episode where they reach Warp 10 (infinite speed). I follow the belief that this episode has been "unofficially" decanonized; both fans and producers alike agree that this episode is crap and doesn't make sense and needs to be dropped. It's also never seen or heard of again in any later episodes of Voyager either. I personally see this as an episode long errata. Not sure how it is with ST:V though.

Memory Alpha has this to say about ST V: "In fact, Gene Roddenberry has stated that certain plot elements were "apocryphal," although it's not known exactly which elements he was referring to. Subsequent Star Trek writers have avoided referencing events from the movie for the most part."

I found that interesting, even if Roddenberry isn't the one that gets to decide what's canon or not.