Talk:Impulse drive

message: Full Impulse is actually (according to the TNG Technical Manual) inferred (or said explicitly, I dont recall) to be 1/4 the speed of light, not lightspeed.
In Star trek next generation season 6 episode 22 "Suspicions". Alien scientist assesses that he will travel 1 million kilometers
in 3 minutes on a shuttle with 3/4 impulse. Calculation shows that full impulse will be approximately 7407 km/sec. Meaning that full impulse will take a shuttle from earth to the sun (1 AU) in 5.6 hours.
If impulse is 1/4 the speed of light (as stated in TNG and also translating to 270 million kph), it would only take 34 minutes to travel from Earth to the Sun at full impulse. I don't know where you get the 5.6 hours from, but the fact of the matter is that light travels from the surface of the Sun to Earth in 8.5 minutes. Multiply fact by 4 and you have the duration for a journey powered by impulse engines at max.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.236.240.61 (talk) 06:36, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impulse 

message: Was warp drive ever called hyperspace? I don't like the use of "or" when it is not clear if you mean one of two things or also known as.
--24.94.179.179 14:37, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hyperspace 

message: I'm curious as to where this came from, since I don't believe it's ever mentioned in any TV series. Is it from the Tech Manual, and if so is the TM still considered canonical?
:The closest mention I can think of is in The Motion Picture, where Deckard belays an order to fire phasers (when they're in the 'wormhole'), later saying that the phasers had been changed to get their power from the warp instead of impulse engines for more power.  The implication is that the two are seperate, and there were trek episodes that mentioned fusion reactors as being seperate from the warp engines for power generation. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:33, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impulse Powered by Fusion? 

message: An anon IP made the assertion that there is a strong community belief that Impulse=Ion drive.  Can a citation be produced for this?  Since we've seen Ion drives specifically mentioned in the show as seperate entities, I'm a bit skeptical about the argument itself, but if there _is_ a strong community belief, I'd agree that the entry should stay intact in the article. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:51, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ion drive 

message: I've removed the factoid 
:Interestingly enough, the inventor of the latter claimed to have based it on the Impulse Drive in Star Trek.
for lack of source.  I also took out 
:Of note, the latter description is similar to some descriptions of the warp drive, as a character in the book Enterprise notes, but another character waves that away as being an 'oversimplification'.
because I could not find a relevant book entitled "Enterprise".  -- Perfecto  04:12, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ion propulsion inventor and "Enterprise" book 

message: I've removed the following excerpt from the article because (a) it was added in the wrong place, not within the article proper but after the category list, (b) it is completely unsourced, and is phrased as opinion or original research, and (c) the writer uses improper capitalization and spelling, improper title formatting and improper wiki paragraph formatting.  If someone wants to clean this, be my guest.  It doesn't belong on the page in its current form.
The excerpt:
:In the Star trek episode "The Cage" Then captain Pike clearly calls  the impulse drive the rocket drive.  Impulse engines are rocket engines. However there appears to be a low power micro-warp version of warp drive that is used along with rocket engines during impulse powered flight in star trek.
:In Star trek the TOS. Impulse engines are actually ion rocket engines. In The next generation however they are fusion microexplosion nuclear pulse rocket engines.
--12.22.250.4 23:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving here from article 

message: Even TNG used thrusters separate from impulse. The Tech manuals certainly have a "canon" explaination for how impulse works. TheHYPO (talk) 21:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thruster? 

message: Just checked the game's definition of Impulse drive, and it does not state that it is faster than light. just that it is a faster more efficient form of transportation over combustion drive. 70.176.251.235 (talk) 06:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems to still hold today; removed. Funny; the hyperspace drive definition features the usual mistake of considering light-years to be a measure of time. 174.111.86.22 (talk) 20:36, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  OGame impulse definition 

message: They say memory is the second thing to go, but I remember (back in the 60s) that Star Trek's sublight drive was reactionless, but this article says that the impulse drive is a reaction drive, like rockets.
The Star Treks have always shown fields to create gravity, fields to hold the ship together, fields to handle objects around the ship(tractor beam),  Fields to hold in the atmo  - they are masters of field technology, yet they move the Enterprise around sublight by firing these stupid little rockets that look like cigar lighters (Into Darkness comes to mind - It pulls me right out of the plot, every time).
A reaction drive would need to have so large an output that it would be destructive to anything in the neighborhood, if you intend to get from Earth to another planet in less than a minute as shown on the original TV show.  Heck they travel Earth to Saturn distances in a minute on nearly every show (the new shows too) as they maneuver from FTL breakout point to the local destination.
No, sub-light on the Enterprise is reactionless, created by fields -just like Roddenberry and Asimov intended (see http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Isaac_Asimov).
Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 14:45, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  impulse drive = reaction drive ??? 

message: Not the Sega console, but two scientists Dr. Hal Fearn and Dr. Jim Woodward were in the news comparing their theories on a "Mach Effect Gravity Assist" or MEGA drive to the impulse drive from Star Trek. -- 109.78.204.110 (talk) 23:49, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  MEGA drive 

message: Between the ancient AfD, a long-time tag for improvement, and lack of meaningful third-party coverage on this topic ... I've redirected to the catch-all sub-FTL section of the broad space travel in sci-fi article. --EEMIV (talk) 22:38, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirect