From: mcclaine@hardy.u.washington.edu (Robert Casey)
Subject: Re: More warp/s'date babble...
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 21:10:40 GMT

In article <1992Dec13.151541.13567@abo.fi> MLINDROOS@FINABO.ABO.FI (Marcus Lindroos INF) writes:
>Yet another stab at the never-ending subject of warp velocities and stardates.
>First, has it occurred to anyone that warp factors might translate into
>different velocities for different starships?! R.a.s. warp guru Leon Myerson
>came up with the idea that the warp scale measures power rather than speed and
>I have to agree.

	Finally, another fan of Leon Myerson!  (Whoever he is...)  I happen 
to like and even agree with a lot of his theories as well.  They are well
thought out and argued and have some mathematical support to go with it!

	I did consider the idea of the argument that if warp factors refer
to power, then wouldn't starships of different masses move at different 
velocities.  Well, after some thought, I realized that this idea would have
no standing in the Star Trek universe.  For one, that argument would 
presupposed that warp travel is limited by inertial factors.  However, if
this were the case, then Einsteinian limitations would prevent the threshold
crossover into faster than light travel.  The warp fields, in the way that 
they skew the gravitic distortion of the space time continuum around the
ship creates an apparent drop in inertial density of any mass.  By the time
the threshold crossover point is reached, it would have to be said that the
starship has achieved an infinitesimally small apparent mass to the space 
outside of the ship, allowing further energy to propel it into the subspace 
realm of FTL travel.

	It is my belief that the limitations of the speed of light crossover
is a dilemma created by mathematics used to express it.  Isn't this possibly
why we first thought that the speed of sound could not be broken?  Perhaps 
there is a finite threshold to the nature of light as well, a barrier that
can be broken by an object emitting sufficient distortive energies.

	Anyway, back to the starships of different masses.  It seems that
	when two different ships are moving at the same warp factor, they
	are also moving at the same velocity  At least this is what the dialogue
        in the shows entail.  Thus, we have to maintain
	the constant link between warp power and light speed, ignoring the
	mass or inertia of the vessel.  Different mechanics such as continuum
	drag become a factor with warp fields.

	However, you still might argue that a larger mass disorts space more
	and thus requires more power to enact the same amount of skew.  Well,
	that much is probably true.  I mean a warp shuttle certainly would
	put out less power at warp 1 than the USS Enterprise!  My answer to
	that would be that the generated power in terms of warp factors is
	only that power generated by the ship that is manifested in the form
	of nested warp fields or space time distortion.  Thus there is a
	certain bit of inertial "resistance" to such distortion as seen from
	the main engines, but this is really just the engines seeing the
	load of having larger warp nacelles, the units that actually induce
	the warp field effect.  A more massive vessel requires larger 
	field coils to create a warp field covering a sufficient amount of 
	volume around the ship (even a tiny but massive ship still occupies
	a large volume of distorted space) for optimal space distortion 
	modulation.  Thus the power generated by the central source is soon 
	dissipated throughout the larger volume of the warp nacelles and
	the acutual warp power generated from any one volumetric piece of 
	that larger field coil is would be the same as compared to
	the power per volume of warp coils of the smaller warp nacelle 
	arrangement of the warp shuttle, even though its engines have a much
	smaller load to achieve the same effect. 
	

>
>According to Sternbach's/Okuda's technical manual, warp factors work like this:
>
>Warp factor 1 = 1     x the speed of light
>            2 = 10
>            3 = 39
>            4 = 102
>            5 = 214
>            6 = 392
>            7 = 656 
>            8 = 1024
>            9 = 1516
>          9.2 = 2000 (estimate from graph. on page 55)
>          9.6 = 2500 (              "                )
>
>The main problems with this scale:
>1) In "Where No Man Has Gone Before," Geordi tells Picard the Enterprise will
>   need 300 years to travel 2,7 million light-years "at maximum velocity" 
>   which is supposed to be warp 9.6. This translates into a maximum velocity of
>   9000c.

	However, if you take into account that the warp engines can only 
	maintain a warp speed of 9.6 for 12 hours before it needs maintenance,
	I think the values would translate to much higher speeds.  Perhaps
	even to the believable scale given by Leon Myerson, no?

>Does this mean that the Enterprise-D's "continuing
>mission" of six years in fact has taken place over 18 years? Yes, but only in
>Earth time. The biological clocks aboard the ship still show that the crew and
>ship have aged only six years. 

	I beg to differ on this point.  Becuase the passage to warp speeds
occurs at a point of about .763c when utilizing warp drive, the time distortion
carried with the ship during warp travel is minimal and would certainly not
span 3 times as much time in the non-warp world.  Star Trek has demonstrated
that people at home don't have to wait THAT long for a ship return from its
mission.


	As a final point on warp speeds.  I found the Okuda/Sternbach speed
	figures to be to far off to fit with what we are familiar with in 
	Star Trek.  How long do you suppose it takes a starship to get from
	Earth to the Klingon border?  A day?  A week?  3 months? 

	If all of you fans whip out your Starlog Technical Journal and do a
	little measuring, you will find that by proportion, since the galaxy
	is approximately 100,000 ly across, a straight shot to the Klingon
	border would be a trip of about 10,500 ly from Earth.  Will this 
	take three months?  No, if the Enterprise went at the new scale speed
	of Warp 9 or 1516 times c, it would take 6.9 YEARS to get there!

	What is wrong with this picture.  Sure has me confused.  I think
	maybe Okuda and Sternbach made the universe too small.  At least it
	does not fit their maps.  On the Myerson scale, however, a warp 9
	trip would take about 2 1/2 months.  I feel this is a little more 
	reasonable.   However, even on this scale, the Enterprise A would
	take about a year at it's max speed of warp 8!  

	I don't know, do you guys have any suggestions?

	Would you guys like a reposting of Myerson's paper?  It is worth 
	reading.  I will post it.

	_/_/_/_/   _/_/_/_/   _/_/_/    NEW FOR 1993: 
	_/     _/  _/       _/     _/   The Ronald Reagan Commemorative 
	_/     _/  _/       _/                    Typewriter
	_/_/_/_/   _/_/_/   _/              
	_/   _/    _/       _/          This is the one you've been waiting 
	_/    _/   _/       _/     _/   for; the only one with no memory 
	_/     _/  _/_/_/_/   _/_/_/  	and no colon!
	Robert E. Casey  (mcclaine@hardy.u.washington.edu)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.tech
From: chris@keris.demon.co.uk (Chris Croughton)