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Random Star Trek calcs
guriphu
Member Posts: 494 Arc User
For no particular reason, have some calculations from Star Trek.
-Star Trek, episode 3x17, "That Which Survives"
The Enterprise is able to travel 1000 light years in about 12 hours at "warp 8.4," which is apparently slightly above her maximum rated speed, making her maximum safe cruising velocity roughly 730,000c.
-Star Trek, episode 3x09, "The Tholian Web"
A Tholian vessel begins at "range, 200 thousand kilometers, velocity 0.51c." Roughly 22 seconds later with no scene changes, "they've stopped dead [...] range 90 thousand kilometers and holding," implying a minimum acceleration of roughly
450,000m/s^2 if calculating by displacement and time, with an actual relative starting velocity of 0.033c, not 0.51c
6,950,000m/s^2 if calculating by change in velocity over time, with an actual distance traveled of 1.7 million kilometers, not 110 thousand.
If one is to take the scene at face value, rather than taking the obvious interpretation that the scriptwriters were just directed to "use big numbers, Star Trek ships are hella fast!" and didn't bother doing any math, the only realistic explanation is that Sulu doesn't mean the speed of light when he refers to c in this scene.
MY SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of this rigorous mathematical analysis, I deduce that Star Trek ships are hella fast, and use big numbers.
-Star Trek, episode 3x17, "That Which Survives"
The Enterprise is able to travel 1000 light years in about 12 hours at "warp 8.4," which is apparently slightly above her maximum rated speed, making her maximum safe cruising velocity roughly 730,000c.
-Star Trek, episode 3x09, "The Tholian Web"
A Tholian vessel begins at "range, 200 thousand kilometers, velocity 0.51c." Roughly 22 seconds later with no scene changes, "they've stopped dead [...] range 90 thousand kilometers and holding," implying a minimum acceleration of roughly
450,000m/s^2 if calculating by displacement and time, with an actual relative starting velocity of 0.033c, not 0.51c
6,950,000m/s^2 if calculating by change in velocity over time, with an actual distance traveled of 1.7 million kilometers, not 110 thousand.
If one is to take the scene at face value, rather than taking the obvious interpretation that the scriptwriters were just directed to "use big numbers, Star Trek ships are hella fast!" and didn't bother doing any math, the only realistic explanation is that Sulu doesn't mean the speed of light when he refers to c in this scene.
MY SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of this rigorous mathematical analysis, I deduce that Star Trek ships are hella fast, and use big numbers.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
And yes, if some of the speeds out there were used, Voyager could have made it back in about a week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGxMENwq1k
Enjoy.
(UFP) Ragnar
That's one reason why so many eps of BSG dealt with shortages in the fleet...
To be fair, Moore didn't write himself into a corner in BSG like with Voyager. Each shortage, while important to the plot, was always left fairly vague. If memory serves, only the water and tilium shortages where ever truly quantified with "we have X days of Y left".
Furthermore, when said shortage was resolved, it was still left pretty vague as to how much of whatever was attained.
I think you mean "Star Trek," not "TOS," there
You can't replicate antimatter. In addition, it's strongly implied that multiple starship components are either too complex to be replicated, or constructed from materials that cannot be replicated.
Kind of, however I don't think TOS had a consistently held speed limit for the Enterprise. In one episode, they were taken over by the Kelvans who wanted to take the Enterprise to the Andromeda galaxy. According to Kirk, a trip of such magnitude would take them thousands of years. If warp 8.4 allowed FTL travel at about 1000ly in 12 hours, or double that per day, then it wouldn't take that long. Which means the episode 'That Which Survives' is inconsistent with TOS as it is with the rest of the ST shows.
When TNG came out they decided to do a couple things: make the speeds more consistent, and also rework the warp scale to prevent what had happened in TOS, which had increasing escalation of warp speeds for cheesy dramatic effect (which may have been a dig at 'That Which Survives' - as a plot development in that episode resulted in the Enterprise travelling at warp 14 at one point, which we had been told many times previously was impossible for the Enterprise to achieve). In TNG warp 10 became the ceiling for the revised warp factor scale.
For my money, the most hilarious warp speed inconsistency occurs in the ENT pilot "Broken Bow" in which Warp 4.5 is somehow slower than Warp 4.4.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon