Just like the tittle, what are they? Because I'm confused. And which is faster? Because as far as I know Warp 10 is already considered infinite. So what's transwarp
Last edited:
Transwarp and Warp 10, what's the different, and which is faster
- Thread starter Brainsucker
- Start date
Transwarp is basically a catchphrase for any propulsion method faster than conventional warp. Warp 10 was (originally) meant to be a totally unattainable and purely theoretical velocity equivalent to infinite speed (or maybe infinity itself).
Whatever the writers want it to be at the time. Usually it just means "faster than warp"
So, warp 10 is only a theory (impossible to achieve), while Transwarp is a speed above warp? A bit confusing.
If transwarp is a speed above the warp, then it should faster than warp 10. But Warp 10 itself is infinite, thus impossible to achieve. So what is transwarp? An Infinite speed too?
If transwarp is a speed above the warp, then it should faster than warp 10. But Warp 10 itself is infinite, thus impossible to achieve. So what is transwarp? An Infinite speed too?
The problem with Warp 10 is that it is literally suppose to be infinite speed, to the point where the ship doing it occupies all space in the universe at once.
Transwarp is just really really fast, but using either a method beyond Federation science, or some new super science to achieve speeds faster than the present warp limits....which is somewhere around Warp 9.99 or something. The warp curve climbing so steeply at that point that you are going around a speed of around 10,000 times the speed of light, and climbing. Transwarp would could be doing 100,000 times the speed of light and still not hit Warp 10.
Thus eventually Starfleet will need to redo the warp scale to skip Warp 10 so they don't have to try to get the ship up to Warp 9.99999999975 to get someplace within the next hour. They could be going Warp 13 or something instead....which would be maybe the same speed, but easier to say when giving orders. "Warp 10" would still be infinity speed and "not possible"...even though it happened....badly is a bad episode. With evolved human-newt babies and all that.
Transwarp is just really really fast, but using either a method beyond Federation science, or some new super science to achieve speeds faster than the present warp limits....which is somewhere around Warp 9.99 or something. The warp curve climbing so steeply at that point that you are going around a speed of around 10,000 times the speed of light, and climbing. Transwarp would could be doing 100,000 times the speed of light and still not hit Warp 10.
Thus eventually Starfleet will need to redo the warp scale to skip Warp 10 so they don't have to try to get the ship up to Warp 9.99999999975 to get someplace within the next hour. They could be going Warp 13 or something instead....which would be maybe the same speed, but easier to say when giving orders. "Warp 10" would still be infinity speed and "not possible"...even though it happened....badly is a bad episode. With evolved human-newt babies and all that.
Warp 10 was supposedly meant to be an absolute value in the TNG era. It was to be the ultimate velocity, essentially as fast as God, and not attainable ever. Period. In comparison, transwarp was just a shorthand way of saying "faster than normal warp." Even a transwarp engine wouldn't really reach Warp 10, but would fall into the Warp 9.9999+ range. That goes for the quantum slipstream drive too and any other propulsion system that can allow a ship to move faster than a regular warp engine. But rather than say "the ship is moving at warp factor 9.9999999974," we can just simplify things by saying "the ship is at transwarp."
Ideally, anywhere around Warp 9.9 would be fast enough for our heroes to get around the entire Galaxy pretty quickly, but some writers and producers couldn't stop themselves and we wound up with (IMO) fanboyish stuff like Warp 9.975 and eventually the VOY episode "Threshold."
Last edited:
Warp factors in the TNG era are on a weird curved scale that just assigns the value of "Warp 10" to infinite speed (ignore the future portions of "All Good Things"). The difference between Warp 10 and Warp 9 is not the same as the difference between Warp 9 and Warp 8. If you were to keep zooming in on the curve, you would probably see that it keeps getting closer and closer to Warp 10 but never actually touches it.
Let's say that a decent conventional warp drive can achieve a speed of around Warp 9.9 (for example) and sustain it for brief limited periods. It would still be an infinite jump from that speed to Warp 10. Perhaps a newfangled transwarp drive could sustain a speed of Warp 9.9999999999 (an arbitrary number just for the sake of argument). That would be well above the capabilities of conventional warp, but it would still be infinitely below Warp 10, as infinite speed is not something you can just approach and reach in conventional terms.
EDIT: Ninja'd by C.E. Evans.
Kor
Last edited:
In TOS the Enterprise went over warp 10 a few times. I remember reading somewhere that with the new warp drive introduced in TMP the warp factors were recalculated with warp 10 being infinity. I always thought they recalculated it again for the future scenes of TNG "All Good Things..." I'm referring to an in universe explanation lol
Yeah.
If you look at the TNG tech manual, the integer warp factors are the places where the warp drive is suddenly more efficient (paraphrasing, don't have my manual in front of me).
So, yeah, in that possible future it seems reasonable to suppose that they found a new series of nodes that they didn't know were present before.
Oh, here's a related discussion over in this other thread:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/warp-speed-scale-change.260125/page-3#post-11888313
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/warp-speed-scale-change.260125/page-3#post-11888313
I was just going to comment this, having read all the previous ones!
C.E. Evans explained Warp 10/Transwarp well enough I thought.
Maybe during ST:III, transwarp was something totally new, akin to slipstream drive or something, but we never saw it when Scotty sabotaged the Excelsior, so it got by. By later TOS Movies, it was forgotten as it didn't serve a purpose beyond setting up the Excelsior as the Big Bad and the general public liked "warp speed" well enough. (Similarly, if they ever do a new Trek set in the 25th century, I wonder if they'll be using the logical quantum torpedoes or revert back to photon.)
By VOY, it seemed the word was being used to denote anything FTW (Faster Than Warp, hehehe). Something like slipstream for example, or whatever the Borg were using.
But given that Janeway saying that 23rd Century ships were "half as fast," and given the differences to the Warp Scale in the past (TOS) and the future (TNG's "All Good Things...") with Warp Speeds "higher" than "Warp 10", maybe the Excelsior's "transwarp" DID work after they undid Scotty's sabotaging. The term transwarp in-universe changed from the next generation of warp tech introduced on the Excelsior to other new technologies, faster still.
The stardrive section of the Excelsior is disproportionately larger than its saucer, if you consider the proportions of the E-A being the norm for the technology of the time. Maybe that's due to the new transwarp engines, before refinements got the stardrive's proportions more even with the E-C, and further refinements got them smaller still with the E-D until this time the saucer dwarfed its stardrive. (I've been thinking about proportions lately in this thread.)
No, warp 10 is not infinite speed. Warp 10 is a speed that (according to the TNG manual) requires infinite energy. From what I can tell, warp 10 probably isn't a whole lot faster than warp 9, but most speeds above warp 9 are past the point of diminishing returns where it takes 10 times as much power just to go 20% faster.
Transwarp is variously described as a way of folding/tunneling through alternate space or a form of teleportation. It's "Faster" in the sense that you can move very quickly from one place to another, but it's also kind of limiting in terms of where you can use transwarp to travel TO.
So transwarp is theoretical similar like quantum slipstream drive?
Canonically, warp ten is infinite velocity. See "Threshold." Warp ten having infinite velocity is part of the literal premise of the episode.
KIM: Nothing in the universe can go warp ten. It's a theoretical impossibility. In principle, if you were ever to reach warp ten, you'd be travelling at infinite velocity.
NEELIX: Infinite velocity. Got it. So that means very fast.
[...]
JANEWAY: It would appear that the theory of infinite velocity is correct. It may be possible to occupy every point in the universe simultaneously.
[...]
EMH: That's my theory. The only difference between natural evolution and what happened to Mister Paris is that his changes took place over a twenty four hour period. Somehow, travelling at infinite velocity accelerated the natural human evolutionary process by millions of years. It's possible that Mister Paris represents a future stage in human development, although I can't say it's very attractive.
NEELIX: Infinite velocity. Got it. So that means very fast.
[...]
JANEWAY: It would appear that the theory of infinite velocity is correct. It may be possible to occupy every point in the universe simultaneously.
[...]
EMH: That's my theory. The only difference between natural evolution and what happened to Mister Paris is that his changes took place over a twenty four hour period. Somehow, travelling at infinite velocity accelerated the natural human evolutionary process by millions of years. It's possible that Mister Paris represents a future stage in human development, although I can't say it's very attractive.
http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/212.htm
Similar threads
