I have notice while watching enterprise that the ship seems to be going passed warp 5 a lot,they shouldnt been able to if the engine top speed is warp 5,but they mange to go faster than warp 5.
going past warp 5
- Thread starter Mr Pointy Ears
- Start date
They only go past it after they get the injector upgrade in the season four augments arc. That's when they have to because the ship would have exploded if they'd gone below 5. I believe its the episode where Enterprise and Columbia mirror each other at warp.
Even then, it was a strain on the engines.
The TOS Enterprise was supposed to have a top speed of warp 8, but it maxed out at something ridiculous like warp 14 in one episode (which was, of course, conveniently forgotten by subsequent Treks)
Nobody ever canonically said the TOS ship had a top speed.
Few other shows or movies have ever suggested that the concept of top speed even exists in relation to warp technology. That ENT features such a concept may simply be because folks back in the 2150s didn't fully understand warp technology and didn't realize or accept that a warp engine's performance is essentially open-ended; it's not the engine that maxes out, it's the ship that falls apart when too high a speed is attempted.
Timo Saloniemi
Few other shows or movies have ever suggested that the concept of top speed even exists in relation to warp technology. That ENT features such a concept may simply be because folks back in the 2150s didn't fully understand warp technology and didn't realize or accept that a warp engine's performance is essentially open-ended; it's not the engine that maxes out, it's the ship that falls apart when too high a speed is attempted.
Timo Saloniemi
That was also because aliens made previously unknown modifications to the engines, wasn't it?
That was actually the one where an alien jammed the safety valve, so to speak - "That Which Survives". No alien pieces of machinery were added to the engines there; the alien merely broke the existing safety systems, forcing Scotty to perform risky last-second repairs while Spock calmly counted down the seconds.
The one where aliens modified the ship was "By Any Other Name", where the mods gave added range (intergalactic!) but a speed of only warp 11.
Timo Saloniemi
The one where aliens modified the ship was "By Any Other Name", where the mods gave added range (intergalactic!) but a speed of only warp 11.
Timo Saloniemi
I always liked to think of it like this. My car's "redline" is 6500. But the limiter is at 6750. If I removed it, just how high could I go? 6800,6900 maybe 7k? Same as passing Warp 5. Warp 5 is the "limiter", if you pass it you are gonna blow something up.
Not to hijack the thread, but Toyota's 1.5L VVTi engine has a 6500 redline, but someone put nitrous on one and for shits and giggles wanted to see how high it would go. It got to 12,000 before the exhaust manifold shot off the engine.
There does appear to be significant contradictions in some eps in ENT's first couple of years.
"Fallen Hero", Vulcan Ambassador V'Lar (portrayed by Fionnula Flanagan) is a fugitive from the Mazarites, who pursue the NX-01 with V'Lar aboard. Archer orders the ship to push its performance envelope ("it's called a warp five engine," Archer quips, to which Trip retorts: "On paper!") by ordering the Enterprise to her top speed of Warp 5.
In "First Flight", much of which takes place years before the construction of the NX-01, we see prototype "NX Project" warp ships, namely the NX-Alpha, first pushing the limits of Warp 2.0, as if Warp 2 were then the previous limit of human warp technology. The implication I received was that Earth-designed warp engine technology had reliability limits, and the harder you pushed the performance envelope (possibly based on either power generation or the engines' ability to focus and usefully apply that power), the more likely you were to have problems/breakdowns.
Also as I understand it, Captain Archer's father was the designer of the Warp 5 engine, working at the Warp Five Complex, taking years to design and test the technology to make human-designed warp engines capable of achieving Warp 5 possible.
So crossing the Warp 2.0 threshold was supposedly a big deal for Jonathan Archer, his father, and A.G. Robinson. So was slapping the "Warp Five Engine" moniker on the NX-01. Does this mean that Warp 2-5 were the limits of human propulsion ability in the ENT era? The viewer could be led to that impression.
This would also fall in line with the notion that "new" technology needs "a proper shakedown" before it can be relied upon in deep space; send a starship class with an experimental warp drive into deep space without a shakedown, and you could wind up with a disaster on your hands. (Witness the wormhole incident in TMP.)
"Regeneration" seemed to show Archer again pushing the Enterprise to its performance limit when in pursuit of the Borg-assimilated Arctic One vessel. Archer seems to imply that if the assimilated ship is allowed to go much further, its steady increase in velocity may make it impossible to continue pursuit.
Then in "The Expanse", once Starfleet dispatches Archer and the Enterprise to find the Xindi in the Delphic Expanse, Archer records in his log:
Previously, velocity like that seemed to shake and even imperil the NX-01 if applied for less than an hour. But suddenly the ship develops the ability to sustain Warp 5 for weeks!
It could be said that the "Warp Five Engine" moniker was a spec limit for the engine design. This is like the dilemma raised in APOLLO 13 "I don't care about what it was designed to do. I care about what it can do." So perhaps it can be said that Archer was pushing the NX-01's engines past their "ideal" design limitations.
This argument can also be made about extreme warp velocities seen in TOS. It seemed that in TOS' first year, Spock and Scotty made a big fuss whenever Kirk ordered the NCC-1701 Enterprise past Warp 6. Warp 7-8 were definitely dangerous in pursuing the Gorn vessel away from Cestus III. But after Nomad and the Kelvans stretched the Enterprise's performance envelope well beyond previously seen expectations, we began to see increasing incidents involving the Enterprise achieving Warp 9 or higher.
It would seem that, in the TOS era, the Enterprise was originally designed to "redline" at Warp 8. So sustaining Warp 7-8 was seen as a serious risk. But perhaps as Kirk's Enterprise, and possibly a growing fleet of Constitution-class starships, began encountering alien technologies (and alien interference), it could be argued that Connies began to exhibit heretofore unexpected leaps in performance. Perhaps it can be argued that this indirectly led to the eventual TMP "refit" and a further enhancement of technology and ability.
"Fallen Hero", Vulcan Ambassador V'Lar (portrayed by Fionnula Flanagan) is a fugitive from the Mazarites, who pursue the NX-01 with V'Lar aboard. Archer orders the ship to push its performance envelope ("it's called a warp five engine," Archer quips, to which Trip retorts: "On paper!") by ordering the Enterprise to her top speed of Warp 5.
In "First Flight", much of which takes place years before the construction of the NX-01, we see prototype "NX Project" warp ships, namely the NX-Alpha, first pushing the limits of Warp 2.0, as if Warp 2 were then the previous limit of human warp technology. The implication I received was that Earth-designed warp engine technology had reliability limits, and the harder you pushed the performance envelope (possibly based on either power generation or the engines' ability to focus and usefully apply that power), the more likely you were to have problems/breakdowns.
Also as I understand it, Captain Archer's father was the designer of the Warp 5 engine, working at the Warp Five Complex, taking years to design and test the technology to make human-designed warp engines capable of achieving Warp 5 possible.
So crossing the Warp 2.0 threshold was supposedly a big deal for Jonathan Archer, his father, and A.G. Robinson. So was slapping the "Warp Five Engine" moniker on the NX-01. Does this mean that Warp 2-5 were the limits of human propulsion ability in the ENT era? The viewer could be led to that impression.
This would also fall in line with the notion that "new" technology needs "a proper shakedown" before it can be relied upon in deep space; send a starship class with an experimental warp drive into deep space without a shakedown, and you could wind up with a disaster on your hands. (Witness the wormhole incident in TMP.)
"Regeneration" seemed to show Archer again pushing the Enterprise to its performance limit when in pursuit of the Borg-assimilated Arctic One vessel. Archer seems to imply that if the assimilated ship is allowed to go much further, its steady increase in velocity may make it impossible to continue pursuit.
Then in "The Expanse", once Starfleet dispatches Archer and the Enterprise to find the Xindi in the Delphic Expanse, Archer records in his log:
"Captain's starlog – supplemental. We've been traveling at Warp 5 for seven weeks. The crew is anxious to begin our mission."
Previously, velocity like that seemed to shake and even imperil the NX-01 if applied for less than an hour. But suddenly the ship develops the ability to sustain Warp 5 for weeks!
It could be said that the "Warp Five Engine" moniker was a spec limit for the engine design. This is like the dilemma raised in APOLLO 13 "I don't care about what it was designed to do. I care about what it can do." So perhaps it can be said that Archer was pushing the NX-01's engines past their "ideal" design limitations.
This argument can also be made about extreme warp velocities seen in TOS. It seemed that in TOS' first year, Spock and Scotty made a big fuss whenever Kirk ordered the NCC-1701 Enterprise past Warp 6. Warp 7-8 were definitely dangerous in pursuing the Gorn vessel away from Cestus III. But after Nomad and the Kelvans stretched the Enterprise's performance envelope well beyond previously seen expectations, we began to see increasing incidents involving the Enterprise achieving Warp 9 or higher.
It would seem that, in the TOS era, the Enterprise was originally designed to "redline" at Warp 8. So sustaining Warp 7-8 was seen as a serious risk. But perhaps as Kirk's Enterprise, and possibly a growing fleet of Constitution-class starships, began encountering alien technologies (and alien interference), it could be argued that Connies began to exhibit heretofore unexpected leaps in performance. Perhaps it can be argued that this indirectly led to the eventual TMP "refit" and a further enhancement of technology and ability.
Interesting that you say that.. Thats the engine in my car..
06 xB w/ 1.5L VVTi... However, i'll take your word for it going to 12k.
But I agree with you Wingsley. They do seem to be all over the place with what the ship "can" do. Course, had I written "fallen Hero" I would have made the ship exceed Warp 5.
Something along the lines Archer:"Do what you have to do Trip".
Considering they spent an undisclosed amount of time undergoing a refit on Earth. I don't find that hard to believe.
I never thought of that.. But your right. For all we know they had a whole new Warp Engine/Coils/Injectors/etc/etc installed.
Or perhaps they simply had a less extensive refit and upgrade of existing components, tuned to deliver higher performance. But since warp factors deal in geometric progressions of speed, power and stress, how much could their refit be able to deliver in terms of improvements?
Starfleet engineers are gearheads, so they're modifying the engines all the time. Especially Enterprise engineers. So what was once a redline becomes a cruising speed, and the redline goes higher.
There's also the software side of things, where the engineers and scientists are also programming the engines and subsystems. I get the impression that a lot of Starfleet ships were mobile warp propulsion labs, though perhaps some Captains disallowed it.
There's also the software side of things, where the engineers and scientists are also programming the engines and subsystems. I get the impression that a lot of Starfleet ships were mobile warp propulsion labs, though perhaps some Captains disallowed it.
Purer grades of matter and anti-matter? iWarp 10.7 perhaps? Upgraded from 10.6 of course.
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