Long distance travel

[2046]

I much prefer the sensor-data approach to the warp-highways or gas-station approaches, however it is not without its flaws, as are the other two:

1. The idea that accuracy of sensor data could affect one's travel time by an order of magnitude or more is odd, to say the least. A few percentage points maybe, but not a factor of ten or more.

It's always been made pretty clear that the ships are not in some alternate dimension but are just going helluva-fast via technobabble in real space. For such vast differences of real velocity, one would have to imagine sensor data like a map . . . if they have a good one they can cruise the proverbial interstate with impugnity, but if they don't then they're stuck on back country roads going in circles.

Sounds good for a second, but of course we know they can see where they're going and wouldn't be travelling in circles.

2. Warp highways render the concept of a warp factor utterly meaningless. Of course the variable velocities do too to some extent, but not nearly as bad. You can explain the latter, but with warp highways it's like responding to "how fast are we going" with a reference to the engine RPM and you're in San Francisco. On flat terrain in highest gear 2000 RPM on my car is something like 65mph, yeah. But in San Fran you could be going uphill or downhill (where downhill is our warp highway), and you're not even telling the questioner what gear you're in anyway.

They're a workable idea in isolation, but they make Trek nonsensical.

3. The fuel idea has some promise, but it falls short too. Mainly because we don't see that many gas stations or hear of refuels every twenty minutes.

And, it implies something a lot worse than a linear fuel consumption scale. For instance, if an Intrepid Class has a 500 unit gastank, and if (for the sake of argument) each multiple of lightspeed increases the consumption rate by the same amount, then at sure they might be able to travel at lightspeed for five hundred years but only travel at 9.9 (i.e. 21,500c) for 1/21500th of that time (8.5 days). And in those 8.5 days they'll have gone the very same five hundred lightyears.

But if you're Janeway and your ship could get you home in three or four years at such a rate of speed, then why would you go slower? If it's a fuel issue then by damn you can load the corridors with extra antimatter bottles. If it's a speed issue then slow down a bit and make it 10 years or 15 or even 20 . . . but no, she acts like it's gotta be 70 save for dumb luck.

And basing it on the real velocity is a lot better than using the warp factors, 'cause if you used factors then going slow would make no sense at all. 9.9 times the fuel consumption? . . . hell, Tom, put the pedal through the floor.

So if the gas station idea were right, it would have to imply that the difference between 1c and 21500c isn't 21500 times the fuel consumption, but a helluva lot more. Let's say the ship's real range at cruising speed would be 5,000 light-years, which given the 1000ly/y Voyager thing sounds about right. For it to be non-beneficial to just race the engine and go for broke, you'd have to be shaving a huge amount off of that. Let's call it a factor of ten. That would imply that the ship would have to consume fuel at a rate 215,000 times greater at warp 9.9 than at cruising speed, suggesting energy outputs similarly variable.

Bloody hell!

There are some reasons that might work . . . Picard, for instance, said the Borg had source of power far superior to Starfleet's when he thought they'd warped to the Federation from J-25 within 18 months, and of course there's the Equinox thing.

But on the other hand, that makes no sense at all. Besides the idea of them having that kind of capacity just laying dormant, you have details like in "The Sound of Her Voice", where they eked out another fraction of warp 9 (9.4? 9.5?) via rerouting power from the phasers. How much reactor output was going to those things?

Anyway, more thought on the matter is required. But it still seems to me that the best answer (or assemblage of answers) hasn't been found yet.

[GStone]

The borg thing does bring up the question of why 7 wasn't ever seen trying to make a mini-borg reactor. Memory alpha says that the nucleogenic life-forms had a huge amount of anti-matter. If they knew this even after the Equinox situation, they could have replicated more anti-matter generators. Just transport up to the ship raw materials every so often from a generic planet around.

Edit: It's probably a combination of all three with expansions. They know how ambient energy interacts with warp fields, adjusting the fields to compensate for what they're passing through/going near. Areas more beneficial to warp field usage let you save fuel by using what's in the environment. And, since they are the only ones with Fed tech and had a large sense of isolationism for their tech, they wanted to be more self-sufficient, but they have limited resources, including generators.

[Mike DiCenso]

The issue does not seem to be one entirely of whether Voyager is capable of running at full speed speed, or if they find magical "warp highways", but simply getting a better trajectory based on navigational data. Consider:


1.) In "Year of Hell, Part I" [YOY4], the inaugration of the new Astrometrics lab allowed measurements to made of the "radiative flux of up to three billion stars simultaneously", which in turn allowed a new trajectory that definately shaved off 5 years from the journey.


2.) In "Hope and Fear" [VOY4], in the real message from Starfleet and Admiral Hanson, all data Starfleet could muster on the Delta quadrent was sent to Voyager with the hope that "a few years" could be shaved off the trip home. This happens after "Year of Hell", and after Voyager had been communicating with Starfleet via the Hirogen subspace relay network. So Starfleet should have known about the 5 years shaved off via the Astrometrics course correction.

3.) In "Q2" [VOY7] Q at the end of the episode give Janeway a datapad that will shave "a few years" more off the journey home.


If "a few years" means at least 2 years, then Voyager cut at least 4 years from the trip, in addition to the 5 years saved in YoH, Part I. So 9 years at minium. On the other hand "a few years" could also mean up to 5 years, and so the total would go to 15 years, or a 21% reduction in the travel time back to the Alpha quadrent via just simple navigational data improvements.
-Mike

[SailorSaturn13]

The issue does not seem to be one entirely of whether Voyager is capable of running at full speed speed, or if they find magical "warp highways", but simply getting a better trajectory based on navigational data. Consider:


1.) In "Year of Hell, Part I" [YOY4], the inaugration of the new Astrometrics lab allowed measurements to made of the "radiative flux of up to three billion stars simultaneously", which in turn allowed a new trajectory that definately shaved off 5 years from the journey.


2.) In "Hope and Fear" [VOY4], in the real message from Starfleet and Admiral Hanson, all data Starfleet could muster on the Delta quadrent was sent to Voyager with the hope that "a few years" could be shaved off the trip home. This happens after "Year of Hell", and after Voyager had been communicating with Starfleet via the Hirogen subspace relay network. So Starfleet should have known about the 5 years shaved off via the Astrometrics course correction.

3.) In "Q2" [VOY7] Q at the end of the episode give Janeway a datapad that will shave "a few years" more off the journey home.


If "a few years" means at least 2 years, then Voyager cut at least 4 years from the trip, in addition to the 5 years saved in YoH, Part I. So 9 years at minium. On the other hand "a few years" could also mean up to 5 years, and so the total would go to 15 years, or a 21% reduction in the travel time back to the Alpha quadrent via just simple navigational data improvements.
-Mike

Which may be the same. By having bet
ter data on stars, and gravity, you can modify the warp field to fly faster...