The Eldar still have WebWay Gates.
And I don't know if it was a retcon or whatever, but the Warp, to my knowledge, has always been the realm of the Chaos Gods.
As long I've been playing WH40k the warp has been the realm of Chaos and never really been anything else, though it was more calm before the birth of Slaanesh but the realms of Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeench did exist prior to that, well given the nature of warp as it in current lore the Realms of the Chaos gods (all 4 of them) have always existed but at same have "birthdate" since even time is fluid in the Warp.
Apparently the writer of the movie Event Horizon said he envisioned his film as a spiritual precursor to WH40K, although not a prequel in fact, and the drive used by the titular ship went through something very similar to the Warp but without shielding.
Apparently the writer of the movie Event Horizon said he envisioned his film as a spiritual precursor to WH40K, although not a prequel in fact, and the drive used by the titular ship went through something very similar to the Warp but without shielding.
Apparently the writer of the movie Event Horizon said he envisioned his film as a spiritual precursor to WH40K, although not a prequel in fact, and the drive used by the titular ship went through something very similar to the Warp but without shielding.
Heard something about that too.
You could certainly see it as "one humanities first test at travelling in the Warp" though nothing explicit is mentioned in the movie itself and this is the first time I've heard anyone saying the resemblance was intentional and not just drawing on similar themes.
Calm down, ryu. Nobody's "looking into" Star Trek warp drive because it's impossible unless we've got a lot about physics wrong, which would also require rewriting chemistry, biology, electronics, etc, etc. In the real world, "dilithium" is a relatively inert substance, being another chemical state of the similarly inert lithium. It's great for power storage, but not for channeling energy from a matter/antimatter reaction, and it definitely is not crystalline nor existing partially in subspace.
Miguel Alcubierre was inspired by the name "warp drive" to begin investigation certain implications of inflation theory and Einstein's equations, and discovered that mathematically there's the possibility to create a pseudo-drive that would place the craft in a bubble of flat space, while causing the space before the ship to contract and the space behind to expand, "surfing" the bubble along. This takes advantage of the fact that while relativity places limits on how fast an object can move through space, it does not limit how quickly space itself can grow or shrink. Of course, there are certain issues with this, the first of which is that Alcubierre's design requires an amount of what he called "exotic matter", which is matter with negative energy potential. Not only does this matter not exist, if it did he required a mass approximately equal to the planet Jupiter. Harold White, one of NASA's pet crackpots (they keep him around in case some new fringe theory actually works out), ran some numbers on a variant design and lowered that requirement, but we still need 700 kilos of something that doesn't exist (and with the discovery of the Higgs boson, may not even be within the bounds of possibility).
Then you go into the issues that the theory allows for no way to initiate such a bubble, to see out of it during transit (the bubble is causally separated from normal spacetime - the edges essentially cut it off from the external universe), or to collapse the bubble on arrival. And should that problem be solved, we then would have to find a way to deal with the wave of Hawking radiation released from the leading edge, where spacetime was compressed, because everything you met along the way from subatomic particles to interstellar hydrogen to bits of rock and dust was squished into what amounts to a very low-mass singularity which will evaporate immediately when pressure is released.
In short, nobody's working on an Alcubierre drive because an Alcubierre drive won't work. White has gone on to some guy's "reactionless drive" that requires bouncing microwaves inside a brass cone while completely disregarding the fact that microwave photons are as massless as every other photon in the universe. (The only "result" returned from that so far goes away when the device is in vacuum and insulated from Earth's magnetic field.)
Let me show you an artical about WARP DRIVE https://fanaticalfuturist.com/2022/02/worlds-first-real-warp-bubble-created-by-accident-as-scientists-mull-future-warp-drive/
and this is actually how Warp Drive Works in Star Trek too we just do not use Antimatter or Dilithum on it What you need to understand Quantum Physics is the next LEVEL of Physics and it can explain a Hole lot about the Universe and and using QP we can go Faster then light Read the Article watch the video on it The point I am making is that physics Behind Star Trek is using Sound Theories that either been proven or Still in the works or debunk by dismissing the fact what your saying is what all these septicemic are saying about Warp Drive and going Faster then Light and one of the MAIN MAIN Theory is that when you see in to the Universe you see into the Past then if so Gravity in it self plays a role in Time but I think there is More to the Universe then Meets the Eye as we are in the Present we see what we see now and what we learn in the past. Nothing is certain we must Think OUT SIDE the Box be a Tesla be a Einstein a Jobs these people helped shaped out world and by saying what its popular and kept saying whats popular even through it might be WRONG! We must Think Different Act Different and Learn to grow and Evolve and thats how we achieve Warp Drive and reach to the Stars I recommend people to watch the Why Files on YouTube as well Future Utility as well we mist look foreword and not look down at our shoes
Depends on class of engine, some go faster than others
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Well, even the Death Star (which I believe had one of the slowest hyperdrives in Star Wars) was able to keep enough pace with the Millennium Falcon that it wasn't very far behind once they arrived at Yavin - and the Falcon's trip can't have been that long since I don't believe the distance between Alderaan and Yavin is much greater than between Tatooine and Alderaan - and that trip only took about a day.
That's a significant amount of galaxy to cross in just a couple of days. So all in all, even the slowest of hyperdrives make galactic travel a very quick thing.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Well, even the Death Star (which I believe had one of the slowest hyperdrives in Star Wars) was able to keep enough pace with the Millennium Falcon that it wasn't very far behind once they arrived at Yavin - and the Falcon's trip can't have been that long since I don't believe the distance between Alderaan and Yavin is much greater than between Tatooine and Alderaan - and that trip only took about a day.
That's a significant amount of galaxy to cross in just a couple of days. So all in all, even the slowest of hyperdrives make galactic travel a very quick thing.
In Star Wars (or at least in its original canon, who knows how Disney canon will treat it), it depends on how smooth space is. For instance, the trade routes are extremely fast because of how calm the path is, but hyperdrive travel in rough areas like the Unknown Regions is much, much slower (Trek's warp drive would be faster in a lot of the Chiss territory for instance) and in some areas of it travel is nearly (or even completely) impossible via hyperspace.
There is a theory that Star Trek has the equivalent of those trade routes, paths where the Cochrane coefficient of the space makes warp drive trips far quicker than they would be otherwise. It is the only way to explain certain episodes, such as there must be a fast path between a section of the Romulan Neutral Zone and the Sol system that allowed Picard to travel from there to Earth in just a few hours when normally it is a trip of at least a day and probably more like a week or two. And then there was both an episode (in TNG) and a movie (ST:5) which had scenes near the center of the galaxy, a trip that would have taken far longer than the day or so they took in those stories without a path like that.
There is a theory that Star Trek has the equivalent of those trade routes, paths where the Cochrane coefficient of the space makes warp drive trips far quicker than they would be otherwise. It is the only way to explain certain episodes, such as there must be a fast path between a section of the Romulan Neutral Zone and the Sol system that allowed Picard to travel from there to Earth in just a few hours when normally it is a trip of at least a day and probably more like a week or two. And then there was both an episode (in TNG) and a movie (ST:5) which had scenes near the center of the galaxy, a trip that would have taken far longer than the day or so they took in those stories without a path like that.
And of course the pilot episode of Enterprise, "Broken Bow", which has NX-01 travel from Earth to Qo'noS, with some side trips, in five days at a maximum of warp 5. (It may have been merely an outpost of the Empire, but dialog implied they were headed straight for the capital world.)
As long I've been playing WH40k the warp has been the realm of Chaos and never really been anything else, though it was more calm before the birth of Slaanesh but the realms of Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeench did exist prior to that, well given the nature of warp as it in current lore the Realms of the Chaos gods (all 4 of them) have always existed but at same have "birthdate" since even time is fluid in the Warp.
Their great game, the Warp itself is a very fickle thing and warp storms will shut down travel.
You need a gellar field to keep the horrors out but the Warp may not let you out or put you somewhere you did not intend to be.
Going through the Warp without a gellar field is not advisable unless you are an Ork named Tuska who decided that going through the Warp without the gellar fields on was just more combat practice.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Who says the SW ftl is faster than ST warp? you can't judge on how fast you can get across the galaxy, the end of Episode V makes it clear that the SW galaxy is a dwarf galaxy, something akin to the messier 32 galaxy orbiting Andromeda. Solo said the falcon will make point 5 past lightspeed. even if that's a straight multiplication it falls far short of warp 9.
Who says the SW ftl is faster than ST warp? you can't judge on how fast you can get across the galaxy, the end of Episode V makes it clear that the SW galaxy is a dwarf galaxy, something akin to the messier 32 galaxy orbiting Andromeda. Solo said the falcon will make point 5 past lightspeed. even if that's a straight multiplication it falls far short of warp 9.
The issue with Hyperdrive ratings seems to be that the lower the number, the faster it is. I think Star Destroyers are rated as a Class 1 Hyperdrive. And the claim that the Falcon's got a .5 and can outrun warships makes it sound like she's an oddball for a civilian ship having such a fast hyperdrive. Another example is the Outrider's hyperdrive rating of .75, which is apparently slower than the Falcon.
Who says the SW ftl is faster than ST warp? you can't judge on how fast you can get across the galaxy, the end of Episode V makes it clear that the SW galaxy is a dwarf galaxy, something akin to the messier 32 galaxy orbiting Andromeda. Solo said the falcon will make point 5 past lightspeed. even if that's a straight multiplication it falls far short of warp 9.
Plus, if I understand correctly FTL in SW is actually traveling through an alternate dimension rather than simply traveling normal distance like in Trek. It seems like it would be impossible to reasonably compare these 2 things.
Honestly comparing FTL travel between Star Trek and Star Wars is about as difficult as trying to say which would win in a fight because they are both vastly different.
It used to be that Star Trek and Star Wars pretty much represented the two main camps of sci-fi travel theories seen in novels back then.
Trek (at least in TOS, before the movie division tried to coattail SW) went for a field-effect drive with seamless transition between sublight and FTL which also allowed them to avoid stretching suspension of disbelief too far since it neatly sidestepped all the problems of momentum and relativity and allowed them to turn like a ship at sea rather than vector and other useful things.
TOS implied numerous times that they used warp even for sublight travel, and even came right out and stated so explicitly in the engine room tour scene in Elaan of Troyius, though they also confused the issue a bit by also using the word "impulse" as a unit of speed as well, with the "maximum impulse" speed being just under the speed of light (just listen to the dialog during accelerations, they use the terms interchangeably, and the timing and circumstances make it obvious that "full impulse" cannot be significantly slower than light).
The field-effect realspace-drive camp often quoted Einstein when he said that there was something missing or wrong about his relativity theory and used that to postulate ways of getting around it (and a few simply ignored the theory and cast it into a "totally wrong" category, like E. E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series did, though they were generally outliers). The concept itself was a little more popular in the mid 20th century too, though I think Star Wars influence has dragged the ratio in its direction a bit and the "airplanes in space" style has an edge over the field-effect drive in popularity nowadays.
Star Wars started out when George Lucas tried to pitch a Flash Gordon remake but none of the studios were interested in making it, and it plainly shows its space opera roots in many ways. First off, for sublight it simply ignores space physics altogether instead of trying to work around its limitations and assumes that things in space move exactly the same way that they do in atmosphere even though they use ordinary thrust to move the spacecraft which should be subject to those space physics.
In other words, Star Wars is typical of the space opera genre in that the focus is on the tale itself and not on examining the technology (like hard sci-fi) or the society (like soft sci-fi) in an entertaining way in a setting separated from the prejudices and assumptions of the modern day.
For FTL, travel time is (with few exceptions) always abstracted and moves at the speed of plot. In fact, in SW it is a straightforward point-to-point jump drive that happens to take some unspecified time outside of normal space (yet can be interrupted by strong gravity fluctuations) and generally functions simply as the fade-out/fade-in between-scenes break for the most part.
Trek on the other hand tried to take that speed into account (and even delineated FTL speeds and the formulae to calculate them in both scales they used), but most of the writers just couldn't get the idea of how vast space really is so it was almost as bad as SW in that respect, and later Trek spinoffs tend to treat warp more like Star Wars does its hyperdrive and less as its own setting for drama, with DSC going so far as to introduce its own jump drive system.
Which drive type is "better" depends on what kind of stories you want to tell. If you want total isolation with a rare interlude now and then while in FTL, or a Lost in Space/Doctor Who style random setting from one story to another and most of the action is outside the ship then the hyperdrive is probably the one to go for.
On the other hand, if you want to tell stories where the travel and communication is predictable (and the travel times actually mean something to the stories) and can be diverted on a moment's notice and where a lot of the plot involves drama in FTL between stars then a warp style drive is probably preferable.
Trek on the other hand tried to take that speed into account (and even delineated FTL speeds and the formulae to calculate them in both scales they used), but most of the writers just couldn't get the idea of how vast space really is so it was almost as bad as SW in that respect, and later Trek spinoffs tend to treat warp more like Star Wars does its hyperdrive and less as its own setting for drama, with DSC going so far as to introduce its own jump drive system.
I will point out though that apparently DSC did have an "accurate" Warp Travel scene in season 1, where they were on a shuttle, I believe bound for the ISS Charon, and it was the correct number of Lightyears away for how fast the shuttle was traveling after jumping to warp and for that travel time.
While Star Trek has gone into Semi-Neutonian physics for space travel, they still show the RCS thrusters on the hull that would allow for changes in course on Federation ships. Unlike in Star Wars where there is no visible indication of RCS systems of any kind on any ships.
...warp drive and hyperdrive are the same thing, guys.
Their mechanics are both products of Isaac Asimov (scientific advisor for TMP, and George Lucas used the Foundation universe as a starting template. See also. blasters, city planets at the heart of galactic empire, Correlia, mind wizards, and deflector shields mostly only applying to ships.) In both cases you're pushing a ship out of real space, thereby circumventing light speed limitations as speed becomes more tenuously defined relative to a local frame, with the difference being the implied orientation of this extra dimensional axis (hyper = above, sub = below). In Star Trek this is done through a "warp bubble", pushing a ship partially into subspace, while Hyperdrive (per Star Wars) is pushing a ship fully into hyperspace (ie. subspace). However, in execution this is only a partial shift as real travel times are still involved as a conceit to dramatic pacing. If fully in hyperspace, the transition would be a seamless point-to-point jump (see. Foundation). In Star Trek this would be "transwarp" in its original (correct) sense of point-to-point travel rather than just faster warp as it became in Voyager.
(The assumed need for which is just an error of calculation used in the post-TOS warp rescaling. Unequivocally, the wrong mathematical model was used by the production team (exponential curve with handwaved cutoff at 10) to model the intended concept as literally described in tomes like the Trek encyclopedia [s-curve: y axis is warp, x axis is speed, k=10, inflection at 1.] The difference didn't matter to the numbers used for standard cruising and high warp in TNG through Voyager, but it created odd behaviors based on the cheat used to slam an exponential curve into an s curve's limit function (ie. warp 10). There's no transwarp barrier beyond shifting from finite travel times to zero, replicating Hyperspace as it was first applied in Foundation. The inconsistencies in what transwarp meant across episodes pointed to a flaw in the revised warp scale calculations, and those weren't investigated by the teams or by legions of fans. They took word as gospel, defaulting to "canon moves in mysterious ways" to reconcile the noted disconnects. This is a point for not taking it on faith that popular consensus necessarily has its TRIBBLE together or that Trek is necessarily better informed than other IP when it comes to science. The attempt at hard scifi, coupled with flawed execution, can result in a wider disconnect as not bothering in the first place, as then ambiguity could cover gaps between worldbuilding and reality without botching a vital principle to some discipline. See also. introns in TNG.)
Anyway, various other writers working in the respective IP have spun these techs in different ways, creating points of derived distinction between the two (per their own interpretations). However, both hyperspace and subspace come from the same principle, using another dimensional axis to cheat at real-space movement, which is attributable to Asimov, who informed the mechanics of both IP (and scifi broadly.)
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
As long I've been playing WH40k the warp has been the realm of Chaos and never really been anything else, though it was more calm before the birth of Slaanesh but the realms of Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeench did exist prior to that, well given the nature of warp as it in current lore the Realms of the Chaos gods (all 4 of them) have always existed but at same have "birthdate" since even time is fluid in the Warp.
Their great game, the Warp itself is a very fickle thing and warp storms will shut down travel.
You need a gellar field to keep the horrors out but the Warp may not let you out or put you somewhere you did not intend to be.
Going through the Warp without a gellar field is not advisable unless you are an Ork named Tuska who decided that going through the Warp without the gellar fields on was just more combat practice.
...warp drive and hyperdrive are the same thing, guys.
ZoMg... false! Hyperspace doesn't turn you into a slug-fish thing!
They just haven't been trying hard enough.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
...warp drive and hyperdrive are the same thing, guys.
Their mechanics are both products of Isaac Asimov (scientific advisor for TMP, and George Lucas used the Foundation universe as a starting template. See also. blasters, city planets at the heart of galactic empire, Correlia, mind wizards, and deflector shields mostly only applying to ships.) In both cases you're pushing a ship out of real space, thereby circumventing light speed limitations as speed becomes more tenuously defined relative to a local frame, with the difference being the implied orientation of this extra dimensional axis (hyper = above, sub = below). In Star Trek this is done through a "warp bubble", pushing a ship partially into subspace, while Hyperdrive (per Star Wars) is pushing a ship fully into hyperspace (ie. subspace). However, in execution this is only a partial shift as real travel times are still involved as a conceit to dramatic pacing. If fully in hyperspace, the transition would be a seamless point-to-point jump (see. Foundation). In Star Trek this would be "transwarp" in its original (correct) sense of point-to-point travel rather than just faster warp as it became in Voyager.
(The assumed need for which is just an error of calculation used in the post-TOS warp rescaling. Unequivocally, the wrong mathematical model was used by the production team (exponential curve with handwaved cutoff at 10) to model the intended concept as literally described in tomes like the Trek encyclopedia [s-curve: y axis is warp, x axis is speed, k=10, inflection at 1.] The difference didn't matter to the numbers used for standard cruising and high warp in TNG through Voyager, but it created odd behaviors based on the cheat used to slam an exponential curve into an s curve's limit function (ie. warp 10). There's no transwarp barrier beyond shifting from finite travel times to zero, replicating Hyperspace as it was first applied in Foundation. The inconsistencies in what transwarp meant across episodes pointed to a damning flaw in the revised warp scale calculations, and those weren't investigated by the teams or by legions of fans. They took the team's word as gospel, defaulting to "canon moves in mysterious ways" to reconcile the disconnects. This is a point for not taking it on faith that popular consensus necessarily has its TRIBBLE together [see. science history for volumes on the subject] or that Trek is necessarily better informed than other IP when it comes to science. The attempt at hard scifi, coupled with flawed execution, can result in a wider disconnect as not bothering in the first place, as then ambiguity could cover gaps between worldbuilding and reality without botching a vital principle to some discipline. See also. introns in TNG.)
Anyway, various other writers working in the respective IP have spun these techs in different ways, creating points of derived distinction between the two (per their own interpretations). However, both hyperspace and subspace come from the same principle, using another dimensional axis to cheat at real-space movement, which is attributable to Asimov, who informed the mechanics of both IP (and scifi broadly.)
The only thing a warp drive and a hyperspace/subspace drive have in common is that they both enable faster than light travel, they work on completely different principles. Also, Asimov had nothing to do with conceptualizing Star Trek's warp drive, that was hashed out by Gene Roddenberry and the original show's science advisor Harvey P. Lynn, Jr. well before the Trek movies were even thought of.
A ship in warp does not get pushed out of real space, it never leaves normal space, in fact that type of drive gets its name from the distortion of realspace that it uses to circumvent relativistic limitations.
It is in some ways similar to the Alcubierre drive which uses expanding and contracting spacetime, and are even more similar to the various Inertialess drives (like E. E. "Doc" Smith's Bergenholm drive) that were very popular in science fiction in the early-to-mid 20th century sci-fi novels (which sidestep relativity by eliminating the pseudomass buildup in various ways) though the concept has mostly gone out of favor since.
A modern game that uses drive of that sort is Mass Effect, which takes advantage of Element Zero's effective-mass reduction to travel to and from star systems that lack a relay. Another game that does much the same is (albeit on-again-off-again depending on the particular edition of the game) example is the Inertialess FTL drive the Necrons (sometimes) use in WH40K.
Trek's warp drive does not make far reaching distortion of distances like the Alcubierre or directly reduce effective mass or inertia like the others, but it has much the same effect as the latter by way of distorting the time/distance relationship of travel in some way via the "warp coils" (which is why throwing it out of balance with Spock's cold quickstart and the time-light breakaway sends the ship travelling in time).
The "slug-fish" effect, silly as it is, along with Pike's "time-warp factor" statement in The Cage both hint that time is somehow involved as well.
The otherspace drives usually work by how that alternate space maps to normal space, often it is described as being smaller or otherwise having significantly shorter distances between things than their normal counterparts, though some simply lack the speed of light barrier, or have it reversed so the slower you try to go the more energy it takes to slow down more.
Also, the speed and duration of transit of the drives is irrelevant to the definition of whether a drive is realspace FTL or otherspace FTL, rather it is a question of if it leaves realspace at all; if it leaves, even for an instant, it is an otherspace drive, if it does not than it is a realspace FTL drive like Trek's warp. Of course, sometimes it is unclear, especially with teleport type drives, whether they actually leave realspace or not, and subspace drives like the superstring-layer slipstream drive in Andromeda can be tricky semantics-wise since they can be thought of as traversing a usually inaccessible sublayer of normal space.
Yeah, I wasn't sure how Asimov's jump drive even factored into this. It doesn't invoke either spatial warping or hyperspace transit; rather, a Jump ship is here, then there. This quirk of Jump drive factors strongly into assumptions of how the Galactic Empire and the Encyclopedia Foundation lost track of where Earth had been in the first place. (The robot thing came decades later.) Asimov used a couple of ways of going FTL in his various stories, because for him the important part wasn't how it was done, it was what happened in the story before and after.
(My personal favorite is from the Powell and Donovan tales, involving a pair of troubleshooters employed by US Robots & Mechanical Men to solve issues with positronic systems off Earth. This particular story involved a positronic supercomputer tasked with solving the question of FTL travel, that began giving nonsense answers whenever it got close to a solution. One of the two managed to brute-force an answer; when they tested the drive, they found out that the problem was that while it was in action they were effectively dead (and visited a very strange, not all that scary version of Hell). They were alive again at the other end, of course. The issue was that First Law mandated that the system not harm a human, nor allow a human to come to harm, even temporarily, so the poor computer was having a nervous breakdown as its human masters unwittingly tried to force it to violate First Law.)
Yeah, I wasn't sure how Asimov's jump drive even factored into this. It doesn't invoke either spatial warping or hyperspace transit; rather, a Jump ship is here, then there.
The hyperatomic drive is literally and explicitly hyperspace transit, and it was Asimov who greatly popularized the use of the term through the outsized success of his writing and subsequent inspiration of Star War's major worldbuilding elements (Lucas's galactic empire is based on Foundation's). The point to point occurs because a ship is moved into hyperspace which allows it to circumvent real space light speed limitations. It's not teleportation, which is why there was a death state involved in iRobot's short on the subject (hyperspace =/= real space, and life doesn't exactly translate into a hyperspatial framework. This also never went away, the perceptible time in hyperspace simply went down to zero with development of the tech).
Warp drive (which was referred to hyperspace in The Cage...) is pulling from the same principle but in a partial framework. A ship's local frame is moved via a distortion of subspace (ie. hyperspace) and thereby circumvents light speed limitations. Without subspace, this is bull as an FTL hack because while your local frame may not be moving in warp, every one of its immediate associations is as space (and everything that space may contain) is folded around you without a 4D shortcut between points in 3D space (ie. wormhole). As warp speed increases, a ship's warp bubble moves further into subspace. When fully in subspace, you hit transwarp, your effective speed becomes infinite, and you've replicated a hyperspatial jump. See also the mycelial network which just provides an already established conduit for hyperspace jumps. In Star Wars, a jump directly to hyperspace is used (see. more borrowed terminology from Foundation, see also the initial emphasis on jump calculations) but because it doesn't come with a fundamental change in physical laws to the occupants you can ALSO conclude a local frame is being shifted as well.
Asimov directly advised early Star Trek (he became a friend of Roddenberry's), and indirectly advised Star Wars through inspiration. His method for FTL is what both IP use. There is no difference beyond visual presentation and what subsequent writers handwaved for the particulars. This doesn't much matter for Star Wars, but in Star Trek the lack of appreciation has created inconsistencies in the tech (principally around transwarp) which informed episode plot points (see. having travel times in the Borg transwarp network, the unholy mess of the TNG warp scale and its effect on writing faster speeds than 9.99). It needs sorting out, otherwise what Trek has is nothing to write home about as its principle distinguishing features become how its botched in Voyager and All Good Things.
This quirk of Jump drive factors strongly into assumptions of how the Galactic Empire and the Encyclopedia Foundation lost track of where Earth had been in the first place. (The robot thing came decades later.)
The independence of the Periphery is also what broke contact between the Galactic Empire and the Foundation. Asimov's hyperdrive has power scaling relationships (which also increase with gravity wells, hence the difficulty of jumping around a planet.) That means that you can't jump to *any* point in the universe with equal ease. Lanes are created for convenient jumping in clear space with easy stellar landmarks (see. jump calculations in The Stars Like Dust), requiring multiple hyper space jumps to clear large galactic distances. Break points on those "lanes", lose contact with what's behind because your jump points now lie within hostile territory (which may not be a danger for the immediate ship if they jump out quickly enough, but could cause political issues through detection. The Four Kingdoms aren't going to buy a welfare check on Terminus over espionage).
Couple that to the Empire not caring about Terminus beyond its use to solve an immediate political crisis.
The only thing a warp drive and a hyperspace/subspace drive have in common is that they both enable faster than light travel, they work on completely different principles. Also, Asimov had nothing to do with conceptualizing Star Trek's warp drive, that was hashed out by Gene Roddenberry and the original show's science advisor Harvey P. Lynn, Jr. well before the Trek movies were even thought of.
One bypasses real space travel times with an extra dimensional plane implied to be above space (hyperspace), the other bypasses real space travel times with an extradimensional plane implied to be below space (subspace). They're identical in principle but for terminology and how explicit the local frame shift is framed (Star Wars also must have it).
The Cage also initially invoked hyperspace, with warp drive being an after-the-fact rationalization that still falls to the same necessary conceits to make the tech work (written within the popularized scifi framework hammered by the likes of Asimov, starting 1942 with Foundation). Hyperspace is a branch of FTL that invokes the use of a higher order dimensions without speed of light limitations. Your alternatives are 1) wormholes (using geometry to bypass travel times) and 2) teleportation (shifting the location of an object directly). Hyperspace encompasses a huge span of scifi, in part thanks to the popularization of Asimov's work and feedback between contemporary authors (direct and indirect). Star Wars and Star Trek are in the same category as Dune, Warhammer 40, Halo, Ringworld, and innumerable others, distinguished only by handwaving on the particulars of how you invoke your c-free place to make ships go fast. It's the same thing, with variation between Star Trek and Star Wars falling within the plausible realm of variation for two civilizations acting in the same IP.
A ship in warp does not get pushed out of real space, it never leaves normal space, in fact that type of drive gets its name from the distortion of realspace that it uses to circumvent relativistic limitations.
No, it doesn't. I cannot state this emphatically enough. A ship that simply moves real space around it in a "warp bubble" cannot bypass FTL limitations. Your local frame staying stationary means TRIBBLE all because motion is being applied in real space to the warp bubble itself. As a warp bubble moves at above c, the space and matter it encounters is exceeding c, in real space, as it shifts around said warp bubble. That's impossible and is impossible for similar fallacies as perpetual motion machines in that there's a lack of consideration for the whole system created. One dynamic to bypass physical laws is fixated on (shifting around a local frame) without integrating that element with thermodynamic (or Newtonian) consequences across the whole system.
It's not how Trek tech works, literally on screen or in effective explanations of the tech. This form of warp could result in a form of propulsion but at hideous energetic costs and without an FTL benefit. Newtonian motion is INFINITELY preferable as energy expended translates into localized movement vs. reconfiguring the shape of the universe to then generate localized movement. The FTL benefit only comes if you can move your local frame in a plane that does not involve shifting c-locked space around you. Ie. subspace. This is why subspace distortions are involved with warp transit and notably emphasized after Asimov's involvement with the IP, providing enough of a framework to make sense of warp drives as more than rebranded fairy magic wishing ships along and asking the universe politely not to intervene. Subspace furthermore removes the core problem of instantly accelerating space and matter in real space at the warp bubble's interface around a ship's travel, which effectively creates instant mass-energy conversion for anything encountered if it doesn't punch straight through the bubble and ship due to inertia. Ie. creates a continuously firing cosmic bomb. Main deflectors don't fix this, at all, especially with warp bubbles being permeable to things like *light*, and only imply exponentially increasing energy costs in moving space around in an effective 3D wormhole (vs. 4D, the point).
With subspace warp bubbles on the other hand, you can consider the distance between the universe and your bubble in n-dimensional axis of subspace determining your speed (with the universe providing a drag effect) until you fully emerge into subspace and achieve warp 10's infinite velocity (hence barrier in that threshold and achieving it effectively). Warp factors can then be considered a linear unit of n-dimensional subspace, with speed increasing as an exponential relationship (requiring higher energies to maintain as "elevation" in subspace.) When a warp field collapses, your frame is pulled back by natural tendency to real space without a gross momentum shift that instantly convert everything contained to free energy. Star Wars invokes this for a c-free plane where speed is high (but not infinite) which you can integrate with Star Trek as a threshhold response in their hyperdrive tech (achieving fixed levels to subspace distances vs. a continuous measure) and Foundation as simply jumping up to warp 10 without much universal drag, but all invocations of hyperdrive/c-free space work off the exact same principle of a proximal layer to the universe where c can be bypassed. What differs is how that c-free space is characterized (see. Dune's space folding to poke outside real space vs. the blind spot of Larry Niven vs. inhabiting chaos demons of Warhammer40k, though its not alone in considering hyperspatial life in scifi. Niven also touched on the subject in why ships can't jump near grav wells, and why Puppeteers prefer relativistic speeds).
In Trek, warp fields are not working with a real-space framework, and no explanation based on that cannot be held as substantive (as it excludes wide swaths of documented behaviors and necessary conceits pulling from established and contemporaneous scifi. Ie. is TRIBBLE aimed at creating distinctions between media rather than recognizing core behaviors Star Trek shares). Even if held as what warp travel meant after the cage and before TMP, it was corrected by later work better rationalizing the idea and connecting it back to its roots in the medium (the c-free hyperspace branch of FTL). The thing to do here isn't to double down on a flawed framework (down to the types of equations used to model behaviors) that's negatively impacted select writing in this IP. It's to correct the application so this IP and its fandom can talk about FTL effectively.
Don't take gospel on faith, per implied authority and dogma among the faithful, as that isn't how we improve knowledge and its application. See. scientific advancement and the ideals Trek lauds.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
A ship in warp does not get pushed out of real space, it never leaves normal space, in fact that type of drive gets its name from the distortion of realspace that it uses to circumvent relativistic limitations.
No, it doesn't. I cannot state this emphatically enough. A ship that simply moves real space around it in a "warp bubble" cannot bypass FTL limitations. Your local frame staying stationary means TRIBBLE all because motion is being applied in real space to the warp bubble itself. As a warp bubble moves at above c, the space and matter it encounters is exceeding c, in real space, as it shifts around said warp bubble. That's impossible and is impossible for similar fallacies as perpetual motion machines in that there's a lack of consideration for the whole system created. One dynamic to bypass physical laws is fixated on (shifting around a local frame) without integrating that element with thermodynamic (or Newtonian) consequences across the whole system.
It's not how Trek tech works, literally on screen or in effective explanations of the tech. This form of warp could result in a form of propulsion but at hideous energetic costs and without an FTL benefit. Newtonian motion is INFINITELY preferable as energy expended translates into localized movement vs. reconfiguring the shape of the universe to then generate localized movement. The FTL benefit only comes if you can move your local frame in a plane that does not involve shifting c-locked space around you. Ie. subspace. This is why subspace distortions are involved with warp transit and notably emphasized after Asimov's involvement with the IP, providing enough of a framework to make sense of warp drives as more than rebranded fairy magic wishing ships along and asking the universe politely not to intervene. Subspace furthermore removes the core problem of instantly accelerating space and matter in real space at the warp bubble's interface around a ship's travel, which effectively creates instant mass-energy conversion for anything encountered if it doesn't punch straight through the bubble and ship due to inertia. Ie. creates a continuously firing cosmic bomb. Main deflectors don't fix this, at all, especially with warp bubbles being permeable to things like *light*, and only imply exponentially increasing energy costs in moving space around in an effective 3D wormhole (vs. 4D, the point).
With subspace warp bubbles on the other hand, you can consider the distance between the universe and your bubble in n-dimensional axis of subspace determining your speed (with the universe providing a drag effect) until you fully emerge into subspace and achieve warp 10's infinite velocity (hence barrier in that threshold and achieving it effectively). Warp factors can then be considered a linear unit of n-dimensional subspace, with speed increasing as an exponential relationship (requiring higher energies to maintain as "elevation" in subspace.) When a warp field collapses, your frame is pulled back by natural tendency to real space without a gross momentum shift that instantly convert everything contained to free energy. Star Wars invokes this for a c-free plane where speed is high (but not infinite) which you can integrate with Star Trek as a threshhold response in their hyperdrive tech (achieving fixed levels to subspace distances vs. a continuous measure) and Foundation as simply jumping up to warp 10 without much universal drag, but all invocations of hyperdrive/c-free space work off the exact same principle of a proximal layer to the universe where c can be bypassed. What differs is how that c-free space is characterized (see. Dune's space folding to poke outside real space vs. the blind spot of Larry Niven vs. inhabiting chaos demons of Warhammer40k, though its not alone in considering hyperspatial life in scifi. Niven also touched on the subject in why ships can't jump near grav wells, and why Puppeteers prefer relativistic speeds).
In Trek, warp fields are not working with a real-space framework, and no explanation based on that cannot be held as substantive (as it excludes wide swaths of documented behaviors and necessary conceits pulling from established and contemporaneous scifi. Ie. is TRIBBLE aimed at creating distinctions between media rather than recognizing core behaviors Star Trek shares). Even if held as what warp travel meant after the cage and before TMP, it was corrected by later work better rationalizing the idea and connecting it back to its roots in the medium (the c-free hyperspace branch of FTL). The thing to do here isn't to double down on a flawed framework (down to the types of equations used to model behaviors) that's negatively impacted select writing in this IP. It's to correct the application so this IP and its fandom can talk about FTL effectively.
Don't take gospel on faith, per implied authority and dogma among the faithful, as that isn't how we improve knowledge and its application. See. scientific advancement and the ideals Trek lauds.
I am not taking "gospel on faith", rather I am simply working with what is presented in the show instead of insisting that it must be something else from some other fictional universe. And with only the occasional outlier, what is shown, referred to in dialog, and even what is said about it behind the scenes by people who worked on the original show all point to warp being some type of realspace inertialess drive.
While it is possible that Asimov was involved in the early preproduction phase there is no sign that he was in the behind-the-scenes books or the anecdotes of the people who were there, so it is more likely that any involvement was sometime after the show premiered, or at the earliest call for outside scrips at least. By that time the warp drive for the show was already defined.
As for the "the ship doesn't move, the space around it does" explanation, they do not mean that instead of the ship picking up energy (and pseudomass) it transfers it to the space around it or whatever. The space in the warp bubble does not accelerate and pick up kinetic energy (and pseudomass) like it was a physical object, according to hints in Trek lore its position is continually redefined so the bubble, ship, and whatever else is in the space inside it all change position without actually moving in an Einsteinian sense.
It seems to be more a of quantum weirdness thing than anything else and does not rely on how one dimension maps to another like most otherspace drives do to keep the ship from breaking the speed of light in its own frame of reference.
Personally, I suspect that the push for ever higher warp speed optimizations (which is actually a thing at least in Starfleet according to several episodes such as Where No One Has Gone Before) for those higher speeds causes a tradeoff degrading maneuverability a bit compared to TOS, but it is just a personal theory since they didn't technobabble (or otherwise reveal) about speed vs. maneuverability optimization tradeoffs like that. That theory would take care of the banking that the TNG and later ships do and TOS ships do not do, but it is only a theory.
If you think realspace FTL is iffy, Roddenberry's original idea for FTL in Trek was totally rubber science but he was nothing if not stubborn and the science advisor(s) had to find something that would come close enough in at least some ways to talk him into a system that would not have scientists rolling in the aisles, and the result was actually good considering what they had to work with and dodged that particular silly-bullet.
The way the rubber science spiel went was that the ship used time dilation and time travel together to travel faster than light without ever breaking relativistic limits. The ship simply pushed towards the speed of light (but never actually reached it) and time slowed down for the ship and crew (including their entropy charge in this case), and they would at very short intervals travel back in time to where the entropy matched but at the 3D location they were at in the "future" that they travelled back from, thereby appearing to an outside observer to be moving faster than light and getting to its destination faster than light travels but never exceeding that speed itself (yes, there are just sooo many things wrong with that).
Luckily, by the time the series was finally up and running it had already become the familiar "going nowhere fast" warp drive where the location of the space inside the warp bubble appears to be moving at superluminal speeds but actually only having the speed it had before going into warp (in TOS that was usually orbital speed, later spinoffs it was whatever impulse speed they were slogging around insystem-space at before going to warp).
The main deflector is actually a holdover from Roddenberry's dilation-then-time-travel idea (though I am fairly sure he stole it from someone else since I seem to recall some very old pulp sci-fi stories where the stardrives worked like that) since the ship would be travelling at relativistic speeds where even gas molecules striking the hull could be a danger, and really didn't have a use in the finalized TOS warp until TNG turned it into that scientific Swiss knife widget they used for so many different things.
And yes, they used the term "hyperdrive" exactly once in The Cage before warp drive was fully hashed out for the series but there is a caveat to that. First though, the scene where it is used is the one where Spock follows Pike's instruction and tries to get the ship to safety:
SPOCK: Address intercraft.
GARISON: Open, sir.
SPOCK: This is the acting captain speaking. We have no choice now but to consider the safety of this vessel and the remainder of the crew. We're leaving. All decks prepare for hyperdrive. Time warp factor.
TYLER: Mister Spock, the ship's controls have gone dead.
(The lights go out)
SPOCK: Engine room!
GARISON: Open.
SPOCK: Mister Spock here. Switch to rockets. We're blasting out.
PITCAIRN [OC]: All systems are out, bridge. We've got nothing.
TYLER: There's nothing. Every system aboard is fading out.
Roddenberry used the term "hyperdrive" there in the script mainly because that is what they called FTL in Forbidden Planet, which along with The Day the Earth Stood Still, were the main influences on Star Trek until Paramount Pictures decided to join the lemmings and ride the coattails of Star Wars. He thought the term was short for "hyperlight drive" and was good for any FTL drive until the science advisor pointed out that it was usually used for "hyperspace" instead and that was different from the type of drive that they had hashed out for Trek.
Another name that was not settled until the second pilot is featured in that dialog too, the rockets Spock calls for are the impulse engines, which in TOS were simple matter-antimatter rockets attached to the auxiliary power system and were meant to only be used to move the ship in emergencies when the warp drive was down (and powered the phasers and shields in battle). The science advisor (Harvey P. Lynn, Jr.) suggested that "impulse drive" had the same meaning but sounded a lot better (and did not carry the expectation of exhaust flames like some b-grade space monster movie) than the word "rockets" and Roddenberry liked the idea.
Of course, with simple matter-antimatter rockets it is no wonder they always left orbit via warp in TOS, if they used that kind of impulse drive they would cause considerable damage to the biosphere of the planet they departed from the intense gamma-ray (and possibly some kind of heavy particles if they inject anything to get more acceleration) exhaust.
Of course by the time of the Movies Impulse had evolved into the means of Sublight travel, and Warp Drive was the FTL. And it has been this way in every iteration of Trek ever since. And the Navigational Deflector became a means of deflecting space dust away from the hull, but also a useful tool for many other applications.
I am reminded of a motivator about STO science ships.
"This will void the warranty on my Deflector Dish, but the look on your face will be worth it."
Comments
And I don't know if it was a retcon or whatever, but the Warp, to my knowledge, has always been the realm of the Chaos Gods.
Heard something about that too.
You could certainly see it as "one humanities first test at travelling in the Warp" though nothing explicit is mentioned in the movie itself and this is the first time I've heard anyone saying the resemblance was intentional and not just drawing on similar themes.
Let me show you an artical about WARP DRIVE https://fanaticalfuturist.com/2022/02/worlds-first-real-warp-bubble-created-by-accident-as-scientists-mull-future-warp-drive/
and this is actually how Warp Drive Works in Star Trek too we just do not use Antimatter or Dilithum on it What you need to understand Quantum Physics is the next LEVEL of Physics and it can explain a Hole lot about the Universe and and using QP we can go Faster then light Read the Article watch the video on it The point I am making is that physics Behind Star Trek is using Sound Theories that either been proven or Still in the works or debunk by dismissing the fact what your saying is what all these septicemic are saying about Warp Drive and going Faster then Light and one of the MAIN MAIN Theory is that when you see in to the Universe you see into the Past then if so Gravity in it self plays a role in Time but I think there is More to the Universe then Meets the Eye as we are in the Present we see what we see now and what we learn in the past. Nothing is certain we must Think OUT SIDE the Box be a Tesla be a Einstein a Jobs these people helped shaped out world and by saying what its popular and kept saying whats popular even through it might be WRONG! We must Think Different Act Different and Learn to grow and Evolve and thats how we achieve Warp Drive and reach to the Stars I recommend people to watch the Why Files on YouTube as well Future Utility as well we mist look foreword and not look down at our shoes
Also, I'm aware of the claim made. It's nonsense, even less reproducible than the reactionless drive White was touting for a while.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
That's a significant amount of galaxy to cross in just a couple of days. So all in all, even the slowest of hyperdrives make galactic travel a very quick thing.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
In Star Wars (or at least in its original canon, who knows how Disney canon will treat it), it depends on how smooth space is. For instance, the trade routes are extremely fast because of how calm the path is, but hyperdrive travel in rough areas like the Unknown Regions is much, much slower (Trek's warp drive would be faster in a lot of the Chiss territory for instance) and in some areas of it travel is nearly (or even completely) impossible via hyperspace.
There is a theory that Star Trek has the equivalent of those trade routes, paths where the Cochrane coefficient of the space makes warp drive trips far quicker than they would be otherwise. It is the only way to explain certain episodes, such as there must be a fast path between a section of the Romulan Neutral Zone and the Sol system that allowed Picard to travel from there to Earth in just a few hours when normally it is a trip of at least a day and probably more like a week or two. And then there was both an episode (in TNG) and a movie (ST:5) which had scenes near the center of the galaxy, a trip that would have taken far longer than the day or so they took in those stories without a path like that.
Their great game, the Warp itself is a very fickle thing and warp storms will shut down travel.
You need a gellar field to keep the horrors out but the Warp may not let you out or put you somewhere you did not intend to be.
Going through the Warp without a gellar field is not advisable unless you are an Ork named Tuska who decided that going through the Warp without the gellar fields on was just more combat practice.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
The issue with Hyperdrive ratings seems to be that the lower the number, the faster it is. I think Star Destroyers are rated as a Class 1 Hyperdrive. And the claim that the Falcon's got a .5 and can outrun warships makes it sound like she's an oddball for a civilian ship having such a fast hyperdrive. Another example is the Outrider's hyperdrive rating of .75, which is apparently slower than the Falcon.
Plus, if I understand correctly FTL in SW is actually traveling through an alternate dimension rather than simply traveling normal distance like in Trek. It seems like it would be impossible to reasonably compare these 2 things.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Trek (at least in TOS, before the movie division tried to coattail SW) went for a field-effect drive with seamless transition between sublight and FTL which also allowed them to avoid stretching suspension of disbelief too far since it neatly sidestepped all the problems of momentum and relativity and allowed them to turn like a ship at sea rather than vector and other useful things.
TOS implied numerous times that they used warp even for sublight travel, and even came right out and stated so explicitly in the engine room tour scene in Elaan of Troyius, though they also confused the issue a bit by also using the word "impulse" as a unit of speed as well, with the "maximum impulse" speed being just under the speed of light (just listen to the dialog during accelerations, they use the terms interchangeably, and the timing and circumstances make it obvious that "full impulse" cannot be significantly slower than light).
The field-effect realspace-drive camp often quoted Einstein when he said that there was something missing or wrong about his relativity theory and used that to postulate ways of getting around it (and a few simply ignored the theory and cast it into a "totally wrong" category, like E. E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series did, though they were generally outliers). The concept itself was a little more popular in the mid 20th century too, though I think Star Wars influence has dragged the ratio in its direction a bit and the "airplanes in space" style has an edge over the field-effect drive in popularity nowadays.
Star Wars started out when George Lucas tried to pitch a Flash Gordon remake but none of the studios were interested in making it, and it plainly shows its space opera roots in many ways. First off, for sublight it simply ignores space physics altogether instead of trying to work around its limitations and assumes that things in space move exactly the same way that they do in atmosphere even though they use ordinary thrust to move the spacecraft which should be subject to those space physics.
In other words, Star Wars is typical of the space opera genre in that the focus is on the tale itself and not on examining the technology (like hard sci-fi) or the society (like soft sci-fi) in an entertaining way in a setting separated from the prejudices and assumptions of the modern day.
For FTL, travel time is (with few exceptions) always abstracted and moves at the speed of plot. In fact, in SW it is a straightforward point-to-point jump drive that happens to take some unspecified time outside of normal space (yet can be interrupted by strong gravity fluctuations) and generally functions simply as the fade-out/fade-in between-scenes break for the most part.
Trek on the other hand tried to take that speed into account (and even delineated FTL speeds and the formulae to calculate them in both scales they used), but most of the writers just couldn't get the idea of how vast space really is so it was almost as bad as SW in that respect, and later Trek spinoffs tend to treat warp more like Star Wars does its hyperdrive and less as its own setting for drama, with DSC going so far as to introduce its own jump drive system.
Which drive type is "better" depends on what kind of stories you want to tell. If you want total isolation with a rare interlude now and then while in FTL, or a Lost in Space/Doctor Who style random setting from one story to another and most of the action is outside the ship then the hyperdrive is probably the one to go for.
On the other hand, if you want to tell stories where the travel and communication is predictable (and the travel times actually mean something to the stories) and can be diverted on a moment's notice and where a lot of the plot involves drama in FTL between stars then a warp style drive is probably preferable.
I will point out though that apparently DSC did have an "accurate" Warp Travel scene in season 1, where they were on a shuttle, I believe bound for the ISS Charon, and it was the correct number of Lightyears away for how fast the shuttle was traveling after jumping to warp and for that travel time.
While Star Trek has gone into Semi-Neutonian physics for space travel, they still show the RCS thrusters on the hull that would allow for changes in course on Federation ships. Unlike in Star Wars where there is no visible indication of RCS systems of any kind on any ships.
Their mechanics are both products of Isaac Asimov (scientific advisor for TMP, and George Lucas used the Foundation universe as a starting template. See also. blasters, city planets at the heart of galactic empire, Correlia, mind wizards, and deflector shields mostly only applying to ships.) In both cases you're pushing a ship out of real space, thereby circumventing light speed limitations as speed becomes more tenuously defined relative to a local frame, with the difference being the implied orientation of this extra dimensional axis (hyper = above, sub = below). In Star Trek this is done through a "warp bubble", pushing a ship partially into subspace, while Hyperdrive (per Star Wars) is pushing a ship fully into hyperspace (ie. subspace). However, in execution this is only a partial shift as real travel times are still involved as a conceit to dramatic pacing. If fully in hyperspace, the transition would be a seamless point-to-point jump (see. Foundation). In Star Trek this would be "transwarp" in its original (correct) sense of point-to-point travel rather than just faster warp as it became in Voyager.
(The assumed need for which is just an error of calculation used in the post-TOS warp rescaling. Unequivocally, the wrong mathematical model was used by the production team (exponential curve with handwaved cutoff at 10) to model the intended concept as literally described in tomes like the Trek encyclopedia [s-curve: y axis is warp, x axis is speed, k=10, inflection at 1.] The difference didn't matter to the numbers used for standard cruising and high warp in TNG through Voyager, but it created odd behaviors based on the cheat used to slam an exponential curve into an s curve's limit function (ie. warp 10). There's no transwarp barrier beyond shifting from finite travel times to zero, replicating Hyperspace as it was first applied in Foundation. The inconsistencies in what transwarp meant across episodes pointed to a flaw in the revised warp scale calculations, and those weren't investigated by the teams or by legions of fans. They took word as gospel, defaulting to "canon moves in mysterious ways" to reconcile the noted disconnects. This is a point for not taking it on faith that popular consensus necessarily has its TRIBBLE together or that Trek is necessarily better informed than other IP when it comes to science. The attempt at hard scifi, coupled with flawed execution, can result in a wider disconnect as not bothering in the first place, as then ambiguity could cover gaps between worldbuilding and reality without botching a vital principle to some discipline. See also. introns in TNG.)
Anyway, various other writers working in the respective IP have spun these techs in different ways, creating points of derived distinction between the two (per their own interpretations). However, both hyperspace and subspace come from the same principle, using another dimensional axis to cheat at real-space movement, which is attributable to Asimov, who informed the mechanics of both IP (and scifi broadly.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
ZoMg... false! Hyperspace doesn't turn you into a slug-fish thing!
*Laughs in Necron*
They just haven't been trying hard enough.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
The only thing a warp drive and a hyperspace/subspace drive have in common is that they both enable faster than light travel, they work on completely different principles. Also, Asimov had nothing to do with conceptualizing Star Trek's warp drive, that was hashed out by Gene Roddenberry and the original show's science advisor Harvey P. Lynn, Jr. well before the Trek movies were even thought of.
A ship in warp does not get pushed out of real space, it never leaves normal space, in fact that type of drive gets its name from the distortion of realspace that it uses to circumvent relativistic limitations.
It is in some ways similar to the Alcubierre drive which uses expanding and contracting spacetime, and are even more similar to the various Inertialess drives (like E. E. "Doc" Smith's Bergenholm drive) that were very popular in science fiction in the early-to-mid 20th century sci-fi novels (which sidestep relativity by eliminating the pseudomass buildup in various ways) though the concept has mostly gone out of favor since.
A modern game that uses drive of that sort is Mass Effect, which takes advantage of Element Zero's effective-mass reduction to travel to and from star systems that lack a relay. Another game that does much the same is (albeit on-again-off-again depending on the particular edition of the game) example is the Inertialess FTL drive the Necrons (sometimes) use in WH40K.
Trek's warp drive does not make far reaching distortion of distances like the Alcubierre or directly reduce effective mass or inertia like the others, but it has much the same effect as the latter by way of distorting the time/distance relationship of travel in some way via the "warp coils" (which is why throwing it out of balance with Spock's cold quickstart and the time-light breakaway sends the ship travelling in time).
The "slug-fish" effect, silly as it is, along with Pike's "time-warp factor" statement in The Cage both hint that time is somehow involved as well.
The otherspace drives usually work by how that alternate space maps to normal space, often it is described as being smaller or otherwise having significantly shorter distances between things than their normal counterparts, though some simply lack the speed of light barrier, or have it reversed so the slower you try to go the more energy it takes to slow down more.
Also, the speed and duration of transit of the drives is irrelevant to the definition of whether a drive is realspace FTL or otherspace FTL, rather it is a question of if it leaves realspace at all; if it leaves, even for an instant, it is an otherspace drive, if it does not than it is a realspace FTL drive like Trek's warp. Of course, sometimes it is unclear, especially with teleport type drives, whether they actually leave realspace or not, and subspace drives like the superstring-layer slipstream drive in Andromeda can be tricky semantics-wise since they can be thought of as traversing a usually inaccessible sublayer of normal space.
(My personal favorite is from the Powell and Donovan tales, involving a pair of troubleshooters employed by US Robots & Mechanical Men to solve issues with positronic systems off Earth. This particular story involved a positronic supercomputer tasked with solving the question of FTL travel, that began giving nonsense answers whenever it got close to a solution. One of the two managed to brute-force an answer; when they tested the drive, they found out that the problem was that while it was in action they were effectively dead (and visited a very strange, not all that scary version of Hell). They were alive again at the other end, of course. The issue was that First Law mandated that the system not harm a human, nor allow a human to come to harm, even temporarily, so the poor computer was having a nervous breakdown as its human masters unwittingly tried to force it to violate First Law.)
The hyperatomic drive is literally and explicitly hyperspace transit, and it was Asimov who greatly popularized the use of the term through the outsized success of his writing and subsequent inspiration of Star War's major worldbuilding elements (Lucas's galactic empire is based on Foundation's). The point to point occurs because a ship is moved into hyperspace which allows it to circumvent real space light speed limitations. It's not teleportation, which is why there was a death state involved in iRobot's short on the subject (hyperspace =/= real space, and life doesn't exactly translate into a hyperspatial framework. This also never went away, the perceptible time in hyperspace simply went down to zero with development of the tech).
Warp drive (which was referred to hyperspace in The Cage...) is pulling from the same principle but in a partial framework. A ship's local frame is moved via a distortion of subspace (ie. hyperspace) and thereby circumvents light speed limitations. Without subspace, this is bull as an FTL hack because while your local frame may not be moving in warp, every one of its immediate associations is as space (and everything that space may contain) is folded around you without a 4D shortcut between points in 3D space (ie. wormhole). As warp speed increases, a ship's warp bubble moves further into subspace. When fully in subspace, you hit transwarp, your effective speed becomes infinite, and you've replicated a hyperspatial jump. See also the mycelial network which just provides an already established conduit for hyperspace jumps. In Star Wars, a jump directly to hyperspace is used (see. more borrowed terminology from Foundation, see also the initial emphasis on jump calculations) but because it doesn't come with a fundamental change in physical laws to the occupants you can ALSO conclude a local frame is being shifted as well.
Asimov directly advised early Star Trek (he became a friend of Roddenberry's), and indirectly advised Star Wars through inspiration. His method for FTL is what both IP use. There is no difference beyond visual presentation and what subsequent writers handwaved for the particulars. This doesn't much matter for Star Wars, but in Star Trek the lack of appreciation has created inconsistencies in the tech (principally around transwarp) which informed episode plot points (see. having travel times in the Borg transwarp network, the unholy mess of the TNG warp scale and its effect on writing faster speeds than 9.99). It needs sorting out, otherwise what Trek has is nothing to write home about as its principle distinguishing features become how its botched in Voyager and All Good Things.
The independence of the Periphery is also what broke contact between the Galactic Empire and the Foundation. Asimov's hyperdrive has power scaling relationships (which also increase with gravity wells, hence the difficulty of jumping around a planet.) That means that you can't jump to *any* point in the universe with equal ease. Lanes are created for convenient jumping in clear space with easy stellar landmarks (see. jump calculations in The Stars Like Dust), requiring multiple hyper space jumps to clear large galactic distances. Break points on those "lanes", lose contact with what's behind because your jump points now lie within hostile territory (which may not be a danger for the immediate ship if they jump out quickly enough, but could cause political issues through detection. The Four Kingdoms aren't going to buy a welfare check on Terminus over espionage).
Couple that to the Empire not caring about Terminus beyond its use to solve an immediate political crisis.
One bypasses real space travel times with an extra dimensional plane implied to be above space (hyperspace), the other bypasses real space travel times with an extradimensional plane implied to be below space (subspace). They're identical in principle but for terminology and how explicit the local frame shift is framed (Star Wars also must have it).
The Cage also initially invoked hyperspace, with warp drive being an after-the-fact rationalization that still falls to the same necessary conceits to make the tech work (written within the popularized scifi framework hammered by the likes of Asimov, starting 1942 with Foundation). Hyperspace is a branch of FTL that invokes the use of a higher order dimensions without speed of light limitations. Your alternatives are 1) wormholes (using geometry to bypass travel times) and 2) teleportation (shifting the location of an object directly). Hyperspace encompasses a huge span of scifi, in part thanks to the popularization of Asimov's work and feedback between contemporary authors (direct and indirect). Star Wars and Star Trek are in the same category as Dune, Warhammer 40, Halo, Ringworld, and innumerable others, distinguished only by handwaving on the particulars of how you invoke your c-free place to make ships go fast. It's the same thing, with variation between Star Trek and Star Wars falling within the plausible realm of variation for two civilizations acting in the same IP.
No, it doesn't. I cannot state this emphatically enough. A ship that simply moves real space around it in a "warp bubble" cannot bypass FTL limitations. Your local frame staying stationary means TRIBBLE all because motion is being applied in real space to the warp bubble itself. As a warp bubble moves at above c, the space and matter it encounters is exceeding c, in real space, as it shifts around said warp bubble. That's impossible and is impossible for similar fallacies as perpetual motion machines in that there's a lack of consideration for the whole system created. One dynamic to bypass physical laws is fixated on (shifting around a local frame) without integrating that element with thermodynamic (or Newtonian) consequences across the whole system.
It's not how Trek tech works, literally on screen or in effective explanations of the tech. This form of warp could result in a form of propulsion but at hideous energetic costs and without an FTL benefit. Newtonian motion is INFINITELY preferable as energy expended translates into localized movement vs. reconfiguring the shape of the universe to then generate localized movement. The FTL benefit only comes if you can move your local frame in a plane that does not involve shifting c-locked space around you. Ie. subspace. This is why subspace distortions are involved with warp transit and notably emphasized after Asimov's involvement with the IP, providing enough of a framework to make sense of warp drives as more than rebranded fairy magic wishing ships along and asking the universe politely not to intervene. Subspace furthermore removes the core problem of instantly accelerating space and matter in real space at the warp bubble's interface around a ship's travel, which effectively creates instant mass-energy conversion for anything encountered if it doesn't punch straight through the bubble and ship due to inertia. Ie. creates a continuously firing cosmic bomb. Main deflectors don't fix this, at all, especially with warp bubbles being permeable to things like *light*, and only imply exponentially increasing energy costs in moving space around in an effective 3D wormhole (vs. 4D, the point).
With subspace warp bubbles on the other hand, you can consider the distance between the universe and your bubble in n-dimensional axis of subspace determining your speed (with the universe providing a drag effect) until you fully emerge into subspace and achieve warp 10's infinite velocity (hence barrier in that threshold and achieving it effectively). Warp factors can then be considered a linear unit of n-dimensional subspace, with speed increasing as an exponential relationship (requiring higher energies to maintain as "elevation" in subspace.) When a warp field collapses, your frame is pulled back by natural tendency to real space without a gross momentum shift that instantly convert everything contained to free energy. Star Wars invokes this for a c-free plane where speed is high (but not infinite) which you can integrate with Star Trek as a threshhold response in their hyperdrive tech (achieving fixed levels to subspace distances vs. a continuous measure) and Foundation as simply jumping up to warp 10 without much universal drag, but all invocations of hyperdrive/c-free space work off the exact same principle of a proximal layer to the universe where c can be bypassed. What differs is how that c-free space is characterized (see. Dune's space folding to poke outside real space vs. the blind spot of Larry Niven vs. inhabiting chaos demons of Warhammer40k, though its not alone in considering hyperspatial life in scifi. Niven also touched on the subject in why ships can't jump near grav wells, and why Puppeteers prefer relativistic speeds).
In Trek, warp fields are not working with a real-space framework, and no explanation based on that cannot be held as substantive (as it excludes wide swaths of documented behaviors and necessary conceits pulling from established and contemporaneous scifi. Ie. is TRIBBLE aimed at creating distinctions between media rather than recognizing core behaviors Star Trek shares). Even if held as what warp travel meant after the cage and before TMP, it was corrected by later work better rationalizing the idea and connecting it back to its roots in the medium (the c-free hyperspace branch of FTL). The thing to do here isn't to double down on a flawed framework (down to the types of equations used to model behaviors) that's negatively impacted select writing in this IP. It's to correct the application so this IP and its fandom can talk about FTL effectively.
Don't take gospel on faith, per implied authority and dogma among the faithful, as that isn't how we improve knowledge and its application. See. scientific advancement and the ideals Trek lauds.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I am not taking "gospel on faith", rather I am simply working with what is presented in the show instead of insisting that it must be something else from some other fictional universe. And with only the occasional outlier, what is shown, referred to in dialog, and even what is said about it behind the scenes by people who worked on the original show all point to warp being some type of realspace inertialess drive.
While it is possible that Asimov was involved in the early preproduction phase there is no sign that he was in the behind-the-scenes books or the anecdotes of the people who were there, so it is more likely that any involvement was sometime after the show premiered, or at the earliest call for outside scrips at least. By that time the warp drive for the show was already defined.
As for the "the ship doesn't move, the space around it does" explanation, they do not mean that instead of the ship picking up energy (and pseudomass) it transfers it to the space around it or whatever. The space in the warp bubble does not accelerate and pick up kinetic energy (and pseudomass) like it was a physical object, according to hints in Trek lore its position is continually redefined so the bubble, ship, and whatever else is in the space inside it all change position without actually moving in an Einsteinian sense.
It seems to be more a of quantum weirdness thing than anything else and does not rely on how one dimension maps to another like most otherspace drives do to keep the ship from breaking the speed of light in its own frame of reference.
Personally, I suspect that the push for ever higher warp speed optimizations (which is actually a thing at least in Starfleet according to several episodes such as Where No One Has Gone Before) for those higher speeds causes a tradeoff degrading maneuverability a bit compared to TOS, but it is just a personal theory since they didn't technobabble (or otherwise reveal) about speed vs. maneuverability optimization tradeoffs like that. That theory would take care of the banking that the TNG and later ships do and TOS ships do not do, but it is only a theory.
If you think realspace FTL is iffy, Roddenberry's original idea for FTL in Trek was totally rubber science but he was nothing if not stubborn and the science advisor(s) had to find something that would come close enough in at least some ways to talk him into a system that would not have scientists rolling in the aisles, and the result was actually good considering what they had to work with and dodged that particular silly-bullet.
The way the rubber science spiel went was that the ship used time dilation and time travel together to travel faster than light without ever breaking relativistic limits. The ship simply pushed towards the speed of light (but never actually reached it) and time slowed down for the ship and crew (including their entropy charge in this case), and they would at very short intervals travel back in time to where the entropy matched but at the 3D location they were at in the "future" that they travelled back from, thereby appearing to an outside observer to be moving faster than light and getting to its destination faster than light travels but never exceeding that speed itself (yes, there are just sooo many things wrong with that).
Luckily, by the time the series was finally up and running it had already become the familiar "going nowhere fast" warp drive where the location of the space inside the warp bubble appears to be moving at superluminal speeds but actually only having the speed it had before going into warp (in TOS that was usually orbital speed, later spinoffs it was whatever impulse speed they were slogging around insystem-space at before going to warp).
The main deflector is actually a holdover from Roddenberry's dilation-then-time-travel idea (though I am fairly sure he stole it from someone else since I seem to recall some very old pulp sci-fi stories where the stardrives worked like that) since the ship would be travelling at relativistic speeds where even gas molecules striking the hull could be a danger, and really didn't have a use in the finalized TOS warp until TNG turned it into that scientific Swiss knife widget they used for so many different things.
And yes, they used the term "hyperdrive" exactly once in The Cage before warp drive was fully hashed out for the series but there is a caveat to that. First though, the scene where it is used is the one where Spock follows Pike's instruction and tries to get the ship to safety:
Roddenberry used the term "hyperdrive" there in the script mainly because that is what they called FTL in Forbidden Planet, which along with The Day the Earth Stood Still, were the main influences on Star Trek until Paramount Pictures decided to join the lemmings and ride the coattails of Star Wars. He thought the term was short for "hyperlight drive" and was good for any FTL drive until the science advisor pointed out that it was usually used for "hyperspace" instead and that was different from the type of drive that they had hashed out for Trek.
Another name that was not settled until the second pilot is featured in that dialog too, the rockets Spock calls for are the impulse engines, which in TOS were simple matter-antimatter rockets attached to the auxiliary power system and were meant to only be used to move the ship in emergencies when the warp drive was down (and powered the phasers and shields in battle). The science advisor (Harvey P. Lynn, Jr.) suggested that "impulse drive" had the same meaning but sounded a lot better (and did not carry the expectation of exhaust flames like some b-grade space monster movie) than the word "rockets" and Roddenberry liked the idea.
Of course, with simple matter-antimatter rockets it is no wonder they always left orbit via warp in TOS, if they used that kind of impulse drive they would cause considerable damage to the biosphere of the planet they departed from the intense gamma-ray (and possibly some kind of heavy particles if they inject anything to get more acceleration) exhaust.
I am reminded of a motivator about STO science ships.
"This will void the warranty on my Deflector Dish, but the look on your face will be worth it."