|
Post by finarvyn on Jul 8, 2011 20:58:10 GMT -5
I've been watching TOS again in production order, and this is getting me to ponder a few fundamental things. Such as warp speed.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the warp factor is related to the cube of the speed of light; e.g. warp factor 2 would be 2*2*2=8 times light speed. This was established in the ST Writer's Guide for TOS. It was reinforced in the Franz-Jospeph Technical Manual.
But does it make sense?
When I watch the TV series I see the Enterprise gradually transition from sublight to warp speed without any plot problems. I see Romulan warbirds with impulse power only play a cat-and-mouse game with a warp-speed starship. I see a number of times at the end of an episode that Kirk orders the Enterprise to cruise off at WF 2. Why go 8c when your ship can top out at 216c? That's like going onto a road where the speed limit is 55 mph and deciding to drive at 2 mph. Absurd. If the ship can max out at 216c you'd think that cruising speed would be at least 100c, which is in the WF 4-5 range. (Actually, the technical manual quotes WF 6 as "maximum safe cruising speed" WF 8 as actual top speed; WF 8 = 512c, which makes my example even more absurd.)
Simply stated, the WF in the show and the WF in the writer's guide simply don't appear to connect.
Compare Warp factor to Mach number. Mach is the number of times the speed of sound, so Mach 2 for example would be 2x the speed of sound. This seems like more of a logical progression.
ADB put out two strategic-level board games for their "trek universe" ("Federation Space", and later "Federation & Empire") and both used a system more in line with the Mach/Warp scale. A ship moving at WF 4 could move 4 hexes per turn and ship moving at WF 6 could move 6 hexes. Compare this to the "cubed" numbers where WF 4 is 64c and WF 6 is 216c so that if one defines WF 4 as 4 hexes per turn then WF 6 becomes 13.5 hexes per turn. Totally broken scale.
Anyway, since the official cubed scale has been with us for so long that I anticipate that it's fixed that way forever, but it bugs me and has bugged me for a long time.
Anyone want to weigh in on this?
|
|
|
Post by Falconer on Jul 10, 2011 23:50:36 GMT -5
Agreed 100%. Scientific realism is low on the totem pole for me. Imitating the storytelling-style of TOS is high. Space is an ocean, planets are islands. Warp speed is just “really fast”!
|
|
|
Post by aramis on Jul 11, 2011 1:22:34 GMT -5
Actually, both FS and F&E make note that the WF system doesn't work on the scale of the source they were licensed for at the time of their creation (SFTM, and the hardware only from TOS & TAS - they didn't have a genuine Trek license until the early 1990's, and were sub-licensed by FJD), and so ignore it. ADB still uses the WF scale, but allows transit at speeds MUCH faster, but above Max WF, ships are blind, and must rely upon a base or scout at the far end providing flight data. See GPD for ugly details. Note that the hexes in FS and F&E are 500pc each... That's bigger across than the entire Traveller Third Imperium... (It's 224x 200 pc, roughly)... all of Traveller's Charted Space fits inside a 3 hex triangle... I figure that, using the TOS scale, figuring a 5 year mission, and the enterprise covering 3years of cruise along the circumference... (3*2)(6^3)/π=6(216)/π=412ly = 126pc across... not even as big as an FS/F&E hex Lets call it, for simplicity, a 50pc (163LY) radius [cs=2]50 parsec times in days | WF | 50pc | 4 | 930 days | 5 | 475 days | 6 | 276 days | 7 | 174 days | 8 | 117 days | 9 | 82 days | 10 | 60 days | 11 | 45 days | 12 | 35 days |
Anything more linear, and the whole thing falls apart... forcing the federation to be too small. Anything much more steeply curved, and a single warpfactor becomes too powerful. It's much simpler to use it as written, and allow an extra 2-3 WF going base-to-base, ignoring the defined FS/F&E/SFTM map size... and making the fed exploration zone some 50pc diameter, and the FS/F&E hexes some 5pc across... (giving speed 6 30pc/6 mo a nice correspondence to WF 6 ... it's 165 days, and reacting 1 hex at WF 8 being 11 more... thus matching both FS and F&E movement mechanics pretty tightly)... but also making the "edge" the Arm edge, not the galaxy edge... Oh, and just to throw fuel on the fire, the WF^3=mulitple of C is in at least two voiceovers in TOS... in the form of a relationship between current WF and the current speed.
|
|
|
Post by finarvyn on Jul 11, 2011 6:39:41 GMT -5
Oh, and just to throw fuel on the fire, the WF^3=mulitple of C is in at least two voiceovers in TOS... in the form of a relationship between current WF and the current speed. Oh, I know that it's quoted in TOS. I've been re-reading Whitfield's MAKING OF STAR TREK and Roddenberry's STAR TREK WRITER'S GUIDE and it is in both places there, so clearly established early on. I just don't like it.
|
|
|
Post by slortar on Jul 11, 2011 19:41:52 GMT -5
Warp speed has always been the "speed of plot" to me. Also, CURSES. For drawing me back into Star Trek! :-) I just gave all my Star Trek VHS TOS tapes to a friend of mine (I don't have a VCR), so TOS has been heavily on my mind. As he watches them, I've been discussing the show pretty heavily.
|
|
|
Post by Falconer on Jul 11, 2011 22:02:25 GMT -5
Yessss!
|
|
|
Post by finarvyn on Jul 12, 2011 9:17:33 GMT -5
I just gave all my Star Trek VHS TOS tapes to a friend of mine (I don't have a VCR), so TOS has been heavily on my mind. Super! Now you have an excuse to buy the DVD sets!
|
|
|
Post by apeloverage on Aug 26, 2011 10:52:13 GMT -5
Conventional wisdom tells us that the warp factor is related to the cube of the speed of light; e.g. warp factor 2 would be 2*2*2=8 times light speed. This was established in the ST Writer's Guide for TOS. It was reinforced in the Franz-Jospeph Technical Manual. Ah yes, but that's only the speed from the point of view of the ship itself. Because of time dilation effects its speed from the perspective of an outside observer is much lower ;D
|
|
|
Post by Falconer on Aug 26, 2011 22:02:34 GMT -5
Starships & Spacemen keeps it real simple:
|
|
|
Post by Alex on Aug 30, 2011 8:07:20 GMT -5
Oh, and just to throw fuel on the fire, the WF^3=mulitple of C is in at least two voiceovers in TOS... in the form of a relationship between current WF and the current speed. Please, what were the two voiceovers in TOS that supported this? I've always been aware of the cubic rule, but I never really agreed with it myself. The TV episodes often had Kirk tell Sulu to set course and engage at WF1 or 2, which would take years to reach most nearby stars. Just unrealistic that anyone capable of faster travel would ever request traveling at a speed that would take 0.5-8 years to reach the nearest neighbor star. Look at some numbers. If WF6 is maximum safe cruising speed and WF8 is maximum emergency speed, then a ship can go at 216c for any length of time but 512c only for short bursts (maybe a day?). At 216c a trip of 4LY would take almost 7 days. Thus the least time to reach a neighboring star is a whole week. If you push your drive at maximum, it would fail long before the 2.85 days required to reach the nearest star. And at WF2 that nearest star is 182.6 days away! Then there are Antares and Rigel featured in the TOS episodes. They are 604LY and 773LY away from Earth. At WF6, it would take 3 years 7 months to reach Rigel, the most commonly mentioned star in the series. I just can't see that given that the Enterprise hopped around several dozen worlds/stars including this one in the course of a 3 year series and a 5 year mission. That doesn't leave much time for shore leave (seems they get plenty of it in TOS), refits (remember the computer was replaced a couple times), and post-battle repairs. If you want the speeds to work, you really have to shrink the Federation from the commonly accepted sizes down to what was shown in Star Fleet Technical Manual. In that the UFP was defined as a sphere with radius 7 pc. Thus it is 23LY from Earth to the border and 45.5LY from edge to edge. Thus to cross the entire Federation it would take 11 weeks at WF6. That's a pretty good size, but not representative of TOS which was about exploration outside the Federation borders. In conclusion I think it is funny that people sometimes talk about Star Trek warp speeds as if they are mind-bogglingly, magically fast compared to other science fiction. But when you do the math you find they are positively lethargic! Comparing to Traveller which to me always felt unmanageably slow, BTB Star Trek is actually slower given the best speed to the next star over is 7 days (4LY vs Traveller's smallest interstellar drive that hops 3.25LY in 7 days, but TOS Trek doesn't have a faster sustainable speed which Traveller has Jump-2, Jump-3, and depending on the supplements even faster drives).
|
|
|
Post by aramis on Aug 30, 2011 13:36:25 GMT -5
Traveller's maximum sustained speed is (barring use of T5 sources) J6, 6 parsecs per jump, of which maximum rate (using refueling tenders at destinations) of 1 jump per 9 days on a schedule, or averaging one per 8 if not (as it takes several hours to overcome the jump variability in exit point, and several more to refuel, and an average of 7 days to jump - 6-8 days, barring mishaps, or more specifically, 168±16.8 hours per jump) For comparison to the above table J# | days per 50pc 9 day cycle | Days per 50 pc 8 day cycle | Actual maximum distance | J1 | 450 | 400 | 50 Pc | J2 | 225 | 200 | 50 Pc | J3 | 153 | 136 | 51 Pc | J4 | 117 | 104 | 52 Pc | J5 | 90 | 80 | 50 Pc | J6 | 81 | 72 | 54 Pc |
Traveller Jump is pretty slow... WF 5.5 to 8.5 or so...
|
|
|
Post by finarvyn on Aug 30, 2011 20:09:18 GMT -5
In Star Wars the FALCON can go "point five past light speed" which I suppose is 1.5c and would translate to roughly warp 1.15
|
|
|
Post by Alex on Aug 31, 2011 8:26:19 GMT -5
That's not fair, finarvyn! I'm sure you're well informed and know that it was a bad line they wrote in the dialogue. They later decided that the speed in dialog is actually a MULTIPLIER. That is canon for Star Wars as much as the WF-cubed formula is canon for Star Trek.
|
|
|
Post by finarvyn on Aug 31, 2011 17:57:38 GMT -5
That's not fair, finarvyn! I'm sure you're well informed and know that it was a bad line they wrote in the dialogue. They later decided that the speed in dialog is actually a MULTIPLIER. That is canon for Star Wars as much as the WF-cubed formula is canon for Star Trek. Actually, I'm not aware of the rule for hyperspace in Star Wars. I was making a joke. Explain it to me again, please. A multiplier? How does that work?
|
|
|
Post by aramis on Sept 1, 2011 1:25:06 GMT -5
That's not fair, finarvyn! I'm sure you're well informed and know that it was a bad line they wrote in the dialogue. They later decided that the speed in dialog is actually a MULTIPLIER. That is canon for Star Wars as much as the WF-cubed formula is canon for Star Trek. Actually, I'm not aware of the rule for hyperspace in Star Wars. I was making a joke. Explain it to me again, please. A multiplier? How does that work? It's a multiplier of the standard duration taken by a fast military hyperdrive. Big military ships tend to be x2, and fast military craft x1. The really slow ships can be as high as x20. So, if a trip is rated as a 36 hour trip, the falcon can normally do it in 18, a corvette in 36, Boba Fett's Slave 1 (x.75) in 27, the fast star destroyers in 72 hours, and a backup hyperdrive (x10) in 360 hours...
|
|