Warp 12

[Wingsley]

It seems just as likely that Nomad's tampering provided a major leap for the Enterprise's propulsion, and important clues for the future. Nomad stated that it had "increased engine efficiency by fifty-seven percent", and there's no reason to disbelieve that.

We seem to forget, though, that Enterprise still had limits in flight...

I disagree that TOS Year 3 suddenly showed the Enterprise bounding about under her own power at Warp 9-plus speeds all the time. Consider "That Which Survives":

SPOCK: Mister Scott, since the Enterprise is obviously functional, I suggest we return to our starting place at top warp speed.

SCOTT: Aye, sir. But even at that it'll take a while to get there.

SPOCK: In that case, Mister Scott, I suggest we start at once. Can you give me warp eight?

SCOTT: Aye, sir. And maybe a wee bit more! I'll sit on the warp engines myself and nurse them!

SPOCK: That position, Mister Scott, would not only be unavailing but also undignified. Lieutenant Rahda, plot a course.

RAHDA: Already plotted and laid in, sir.

SPOCK: Good. Then prepare to come to warp eight.

This establishes that the Enterprise's "top warp speed" is still Warp 8. And a little later...

RAHDA: We're holding warp eight point four, sir. If we can maintain it, our estimated time of arrival is eleven and one half solar hours.

SPOCK: Eleven point three three seven hours, Lieutenant. I wish you would be more precise.

So, Scotty coaxed "a wee bit more" and gave Spock Warp 8.4.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Not at all because it would still fit the scenario of the ship's engines and other systems not being reconfigured for Warp 11 back then even if its spaceframe was always structurally able to.

I think "configured" is too ambiguous in this context.

It's really very simple, really. The ship had be to structurally strong enough from the start to keep from being flown apart at Warp 11, even if its engines was rated for lower velocities. It's about the strength of the ship's spaceframe, not the power of its engines.

Is it? I don't think that's at all clear. In many cases it actually appears to be a limitation of the cooling systems of the engines themselves, which cannot operate at that level of output without destroying themselves and the ship along with them. This might be compared to a car engine with a tachometer that goes all the way to 21,000rpms but would probably blow a headgasket if you ran it past 14,000 for any length of time. If you had somebody replace the gaskets with titanium alloy and reinforce the engine block with carbon nanotubes and highly sophisticated radiator system, you could probably push and sustain 21,000rpms without destroying your engine.

OTOH, even assuming it was an issue with the spaceframe, that would most likely involve the structure of the warp field and/or their interaction with the ship's deflectors. That would be easy enough to modify if somebody had some very advanced field equations to draw from.

Again, it's about structural strength, not power generation.

But it's not clear if it's the structural design of the ENTIRE SHIP or the structural design of the engine housings. TOS tends to imply the latter far more often than the former.

This establishes that the Enterprise's "top warp speed" is still Warp 8.

But that wasn't a speed the Enterprise was ever capable of sustaining before except in an absolute "FULL POWAA, DAMN YOU!" emergency. Here they're using it to warp back to a planet that just flung them couple hundred light years across the sector and expect to be able to sustain that velocity for almost twelve hours.

So, Scotty coaxed "a wee bit more" and gave Spock Warp 8.4.

Sure, but he suggested that it was TRICKY to do so, not dangerous (as it had been before). So it's another datapoint that suggests that the Enterprise's engine performance has drastically improved, but that the modifications are so poorly integrated with the rest of the ship that it is difficult and labor-intensive to use them at their fullest potential.

That, to me, seems like a retrofit issue: Enterprise is now running with components that are wildly out of spec and not all of them play nice together. The cooling system for the warp drive is almost certainly one of them.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think "configured" is too ambiguous in this context.

It's really very simple, really. The ship had be to structurally strong enough from the start to keep from being flown apart at Warp 11, even if its engines was rated for lower velocities. It's about the strength of the ship's spaceframe, not the power of its engines.

Is it?

Yup.

I don't think that's at all clear.

It was clear.

From "That Which Survives:"

HELMSWOMAN (over intercom): Mister Spock, we're at warp eleven point two and accelerating.

SCOTT: I heard that. The ship's not structured to take that speed for any length of time.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It was clear.

From "That Which Survives:"

HELMSWOMAN (over intercom): Mister Spock, we're at warp eleven point two and accelerating.

SCOTT: I heard that. The ship's not structured to take that speed for any length of time.

Well yes, it WAS pretty clear. Spock calculates that the engines will reach "maximum overload" within a little under fifteen minutes with their present rate of acceleration, and Scotty concurs. While the stress of extremely high warp is undoubtedly bad for the ship -- as I said above, the frame isn't specked for it --neither of them actually know HOW LONG it will hold up under that stress, only that it wasn't DESIGNED to.

On the other hand, they know that the spaceframe is going to last far more than the fifteen minutes it will take for the engines to overload. Whatever their concerns for the spaceframe itself, the only certain point of catastrophic failure is the ENGINE, not the structure.

And every dialog cue in TOS related to "Engines running too hard" revolves around the same issue. They are said to be overheating, "superheating" in Corbomite Maneuver, burning out or blowing vital components. They do express concern for the ship's spaceframe and overall health, but in nearly every case it is implied that the engines will explode long before they cause any permanent damage to the hull. Sustaining that high speed may be bad for the ship, it may cause a lot of damage and require several days or weeks of replacing busted spurs and patching metal fatigue in the nacelle pylons, but that's a far cry from saying it will actually destroy the ship.

 

[C.E. Evans]

It was clear.

From "That Which Survives:"

HELMSWOMAN (over intercom): Mister Spock, we're at warp eleven point two and accelerating.

SCOTT: I heard that. The ship's not structured to take that speed for any length of time.

Well yes, it WAS pretty clear. Spock calculates that the engines will reach "maximum overload" within a little under fifteen minutes with their present rate of acceleration, and Scotty concurs. While the stress of extremely high warp is undoubtedly bad for the ship -- as I said above, the frame isn't specked for it --neither of them actually know HOW LONG it will hold up under that stress, only that it wasn't DESIGNED to.

On the other hand, they know that the spaceframe is going to last far more than the fifteen minutes it will take for the engines to overload. Whatever their concerns for the spaceframe itself, the only certain point of catastrophic failure is the ENGINE, not the structure.

It was really an issue of BOTH the spaceframe and the engines, but the engines were the more immediate concern.

From Scotty's comment we can easily take that the ship was built strong enough to take at least up to Warp 11, but it gets dicey beyond that point.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It was clear.

Well yes, it WAS pretty clear. Spock calculates that the engines will reach "maximum overload" within a little under fifteen minutes with their present rate of acceleration, and Scotty concurs. While the stress of extremely high warp is undoubtedly bad for the ship -- as I said above, the frame isn't specked for it --neither of them actually know HOW LONG it will hold up under that stress, only that it wasn't DESIGNED to.

On the other hand, they know that the spaceframe is going to last far more than the fifteen minutes it will take for the engines to overload. Whatever their concerns for the spaceframe itself, the only certain point of catastrophic failure is the ENGINE, not the structure.

It was really an issue of BOTH the spaceframe and the engines, but the engines were the more immediate concern.

FAR more immediate, to be sure. It's enough to know that the Enterprise has exceeded its maximum safe velocity multiple times and has never actually destroyed itself in the process, but it HAS burned out its engines on at least two occasions.

From Scotty's comment we can easily take that the ship was built strong enough to take at least up to Warp 11, but it gets dicey beyond that point.

That's my take as well. It seems clear that the spaceframe is pretty strong overall and can take quite alot of punishment, but that putting that much stress on the ship is a bad idea and creates a lot of extra work for the engineering team.

The engines, on the other hand, cannot normally generate enough power for this to be a problem; in the earlier years of the Enterprise's mission they ran the risk of burning out or destroying the warp drives just to push past warp eight. After the Kelvan mods, much higher speeds became possible, to the point that elevated hull stress is finally cause for concern.

 

[Wingsley]

I agree with Crazy Eddie.

His prices may be "in-sane", but his logic bears closer examination.

Consider these morsels…

In TMP, thanks to Spock’s timely arrival, the “refit” Enterprise’s warp drive is fully energized and balanced to engage the Intruder. Sulu revs the Enterprise’s engines and the ship surges to Warp 7. In THE FINAL FRONTIER, after a little persuasion from Sybok is applied, Checkov sets course for Sha Ka Ree at Warp 7. Throughout the movies, this is the fastest the “refit” Enterprise (or the Enterprise-A) is ever stated. And yet these ships are supposed to be so fast, so cutting-edge. How can this be?

Could it be that the refit technology produces faster-than-light velocities superior (per warp factor) than the previous generation?

As Crazy Eddie pointed out, there is every reason to assume that Scotty (and thus, the Federation) learned from the Enterprise’s encounter with the Kelvans. There is also reason to believe Scotty learned from Nomad’s “repairs”. And it also seems likely that Federation expeditions elsewhere picked up a great deal of scientific wisdom and alien technology to boost Federation prowess as well.

When the Enterprise encountered a Klingon cruiser in the Tellun star system (“Elaan of Troyius”), Spock was carefully keeping track of the Klingons’ course and speed. Spock never said the Klingon is at Warp 6. He said “Their speed is better than Warp 6”. Could the Klingons be using a significantly different propulsion technology than the Federation, and could this propulsion be producing velocities that may not match up with Federation drive warp factors?

The nacelle designs of the TMP era, coupled with some of the later warp-field graphics, inspired me to think of a possibility. What if the Federation learned from some of this technology acquisition, and started building warp coils that were more compact? And also observe the changes in the shapes of the newer nacelles, and also the weird four-nacelled Constellation-class starships. Could it be that the TMP-generation of warp drive take a massive leap in technology and capability, warranting the radical re-designs? I say yes.

Consider that the four-nacelle Constellation and the funny bifurcated nacelles of the “refit” Enterprise, the Enterprise-A, Miranda, Excelsior and Grissom were dual-field warp drives. With the exception of the four-nacelled Constellation, these ships probably incorporated two sets of coils into each nacelle. The two warp fields that resulted would intersect along the axis of motion, producing fourth-power warp drive. To borrow a fanon term, let’s call this fourth-power propulsion technology linear warp drive.

If the Klingons employed a crude linear warp drive, then their Warp 4 would be the same as the TOS Enterprise travelling at Warp 6.35. And if the “refit” Enterprise could cruise at linear-Warp 5 and redline at Warp 7, that would be the same as a pre-linear warp drive achieving a cruising speed of Warp 8.55 and a maximum of Warp 13.39. If linear warp drive were the Federation standard by the 24th century, then their Warp 8 would be the same as Warp 16 in TOS.

So maybe the Kelvans did give the Federation a boost after all. (And maybe Nomad, “Losira” and others did as well.)

 

[C.E. Evans]

After the Kelvan mods, much higher speeds became possible, to the point that elevated hull stress is finally cause for concern

It was probably while the Constitution-class was being developed that the structural limits of the design were established, regardless of what the engine specs were. All starship designs can probably structurally withstand much higher velocities than what their engines can normally produce--at least the well-maintained starships anyway.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ Enterprise WAS pretty well-maintained, to be sure.

But again, "structural limits" of a design don't actually mean what Trekkies usually think they mean. It's not like a nacelle designed to handle 40,000 tons of torque is going to collapse at 40,001 tons. It's that a nacelle that experiences over 40,000 tons of torque is a lot more likely to fail than one that is only subjected to 30,000; even if it doesn't fail, the structure is going to experience fatigue and distressing much sooner than the one that only experienced 30,000.

 

[Richard Baker]

I might be wrong, but I thought the big difference between the TOS-E and the Refit propulsion systems was a totally new design of the warp core- having a big intermix chamber spanning several decks instead of the 'whatever' unseen type of warp core in the original ship.

 

[Timo]

Might be. Or then that glowing pipe that was never called anything specific but looked identical to the things they in the TNG era called plasma conduits was a plasma conduit, carrying power from the same sort of unseen, belowdecks matter/antimatter reaction chamber that the TOS ship had all along (possibly looking much like the ST:ID sphere at that). Only they were in spaces not normally visited by people in shirtsleeves, and we never saw Scotty in rad-proof coveralls in TOS...

We don't know whether the TMP ship really was supposed to be faster than the TOS one. Possibly the new and untested engines were simply better rather than faster; what they achieved in terms of warp factors or distance/time did not differ much from TOS, at least not to the advantage of the movie ship. A dash speed of warp 12 might be what the TOS vessel had in the official specs towards the end of her career, too - or then it was never part of the specs of the TMP ship.

Interestingly, the Enterprise that held the speed records in ST3:TSfS was the one that had been through all the TOS adventures involving alien-induced ludicrous speeds. Might well be that nothing in Starfleet could match that, least of all the refitted NCC-1701, not until the Excelsior came along.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

^ Now, that is an interesting contrarian view!

In TMP Scott told Kirk, before departing the orbital office complex, that he and his team had "spent 18 months redesigning and refitting the Enterprise." It was made very clear that the engines in the refit Enterprise were not the same as the alien-overclocked engines that broke speed records in TOS. Decker echoed Scott's sentiments, amplifying them "This is an almost entirely new Enterprise!"

If the Federation relied strictly on alien (and other unauthorized) tampering for the TOS Enterprise to break those records, then the "refit" would have thrown those advantages away. So either the redesign incorporated reverse-engineering of those deep space discoveries into the new engines, or Starfleet threw them away.

I prefer to think that the "new" Enterprise did incorporate major leaps in technology, resulting in a tremendous boost in all aspects of performance.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I prefer to think that the "new" Enterprise did incorporate major leaps in technology, resulting in a tremendous boost in all aspects of performance.

I would agree. The Kelvan mods from the TOS Enterprise had a LOT of data collected from their use at the end of the ship's mission. That might also explain why the refit took as long as it did: analyzing the data from the five year mission plus finally getting a chance to take the modified engines apart and see what the Kelvans ACTUALLY DID to them (something Scotty wouldn't be in a position to do since he doesn't know for sure he can put them back together again).

I don't know about the actual reactor core being the same hardware (I kind of doubt it) since balancing the matter-antimatter reaction was considered so problematic. Actually, the entire sequence of events in TMP suggests to me that so much of the new engines were based on alien technology (much of which was still not fully understood) that the final fine-tuning of the warp drive could ONLY have been done by trial and error.

Well well... as much as I detest Voyager, I do vividly recall this little gem:

CHAKOTAY: I hate to spoil the mood, but you might want to look at this engineering report. It'll take at least two weeks to remove the Borg technology from our systems. B'Elanna did note that the power couplings on deck eight work better with the Borg improvements.
JANEWAY: Leave them.

And that's all the mention we get from Voyager, unquestionably the most grievous abuser of technobabble in television history. I figure that Kirk got a similar report from Scotty some time after "By Any Other Name" and failed to mention it because he couldn't think of a way to say it that wouldn't make him sound like a dork.

 

[Ithekro]

Having the engines being based on alien tech scanned and recorded during the Five Year Mission would also explain why Spock would be considered fully rated on the design even though he'd been on Vulcan most of this time. Something that Decker had pointed out prior to Spock's return that there was no one fully rated on the design after the death of Sonak (save for Decker himself, as Kirk pointed out). This would also be why Mr. Spock is able to track down the problem with Mr. Scott and get the engines running smoothly within a few hours.

Decker didn't even attempt to argue against Spock's qualifications.

 

[Timo]

I guess it all depends on whether there was anything to learn from the alien tampering.

This seems to fall in three categories:

1) Sitting on the safety valve. Nothing much to be learned from "That Which Survives" or "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", except that yes, you can go against manufacturer advice and will blow up your ship as the result. Basically, NOMAD may have done much the same thing, its "adjustments" amounting to inexpert tampering that altered nothing from the "Arena" standard.

2) Installing black boxes. Once those were removed after "By Any Other Name", what could be learned? The ship wouldn't work in the new fashion without those devices, and understanding or reverse engineering the devices might be well beyond the skills of the 23rd or even 24th century engineers.

3) Actually improving the ship's systems. Few visitors or hijackers would have had the manpower to do anything physical, and those with supernatural abilities for remote-physical in addition to software tampering tended to do the safety valve thing. Also, if settings were altered in an effortlessly supernatural manner, wouldn't they also be de-altered when the hijackers were thwarted, in a final act of spite? It's difficult to find a good candidate for this last type of tampering, one that might be a learning experience for our heroes.

Having the engines being based on alien tech scanned and recorded during the Five Year Mission would also explain why Spock would be considered fully rated on the design even though he'd been on Vulcan most of this time.

That is intriguing - but then again, Kirk was an expert on E-B deflector systems despite being neither a participant in the engineering effort nor much of an engineer himself.

This would also be why Mr. Spock is able to track down the problem with Mr. Scott and get the engines running smoothly within a few hours.

Or then the solution they came up with was much the same as with the "overpowered" Defiant: avoid undue strain and run the ship well below specs. "Full warp capacity" might not mean anything special, just specifying "fully capable of going to warp again".

FWIW, Spock considers the problems "engine design difficulties". Is that him accusing the design of being faulty, or rather redundantly saying that there are difficulties with this particular engine design even if not because of the design? Relating to that:

...that the final fine-tuning of the warp drive could ONLY have been done by trial and error.

Possibly because simulations were not capable of getting the job done in general. That is, it was physically impossible to numerically simulate warp engines of any sort to satisfaction, much like it's impossible to simulate aerodynamics today. NCC-1701-nil refit is the only starship we have seen through her first-ever warp run, after all: the Defiant, while a prototype, had already been put through her paces and found wanting, and we missed the Excelsior maiden run. Heck, even the Phoenix was essentially a tried and true design, thanks to the wonders of time looping!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Having the engines being based on alien tech scanned and recorded during the Five Year Mission would also explain why Spock would be considered fully rated on the design even though he'd been on Vulcan most of this time. Something that Decker had pointed out prior to Spock's return that there was no one fully rated on the design after the death of Sonak (save for Decker himself, as Kirk pointed out). This would also be why Mr. Spock is able to track down the problem with Mr. Scott and get the engines running smoothly within a few hours.

Decker didn't even attempt to argue against Spock's qualifications.

Good catch. In that case, most of the principle technologies in the engine redesign would be systems that Spock HIMSELF helped to discover in the first place; he'd be more familiar with the nuances of their designs than anyone else in the fleet.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Having the engines being based on alien tech scanned and recorded during the Five Year Mission would also explain why Spock would be considered fully rated on the design even though he'd been on Vulcan most of this time. Something that Decker had pointed out prior to Spock's return that there was no one fully rated on the design after the death of Sonak (save for Decker himself, as Kirk pointed out). This would also be why Mr. Spock is able to track down the problem with Mr. Scott and get the engines running smoothly within a few hours.

Decker didn't even attempt to argue against Spock's qualifications.

McCoy and Sarek were probably the only ones who ever did.

Even during the 5-year mission, few had the kind of computer skill rating (A-7) that Spock did. And Spock was something of an engineer in his own right as he was familiar with warp engine intermix formulas early on in the series.

 

[Phantom]

I wonder how SIFs work. If you just pump more power into it, does the ship become stronger? Moreover, does the system itself become stronger, so that a Galaxy warp core hooked up to a shuttlecraft SIF would make the shuttlecraft invulnerable to everything (including the strain of hauling along a Galaxy warp core)?

Yeah, let's channel the entire output of a nuclear reactor through a system designed to run off of a car battery (relatively speaking).

Not a shuttle I'd fly in. Or anyone else after about .5 seconds (or less).

^ Enterprise WAS pretty well-maintained, to be sure.

But again, "structural limits" of a design don't actually mean what Trekkies usually think they mean. It's not like a nacelle designed to handle 40,000 tons of torque is going to collapse at 40,001 tons. It's that a nacelle that experiences over 40,000 tons of torque is a lot more likely to fail than one that is only subjected to 30,000; even if it doesn't fail, the structure is going to experience fatigue and distressing much sooner than the one that only experienced 30,000.

There is a limit though. Every material has it's breaking point, beyond which it WILL fail. The "crush depth" of a submarine, for example.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yeah, let's channel the entire output of a nuclear reactor through a system designed to run off of a car battery

HELL YES!

Let's do this!!

^ Enterprise WAS pretty well-maintained, to be sure.

But again, "structural limits" of a design don't actually mean what Trekkies usually think they mean. It's not like a nacelle designed to handle 40,000 tons of torque is going to collapse at 40,001 tons. It's that a nacelle that experiences over 40,000 tons of torque is a lot more likely to fail than one that is only subjected to 30,000; even if it doesn't fail, the structure is going to experience fatigue and distressing much sooner than the one that only experienced 30,000.

There is a limit though. Every material has it's breaking point, beyond which it WILL fail. The "crush depth" of a submarine, for example.

That's actually a perfect example because various submarines in history have exceeded their estimated "crush depths" at various times, typically in emergencies or due to malfunctions. At the same time, several submarines have been lost to pressure accidents at depths nowhere near their crush depths.

The recent explosion of the Falcon 9 rocket was caused by a support strut in the upper stage's liquid oxygen tank failing during liftoff; apparently the struts had a structural defect and were rated at around ten times the amount of stress they could actually handle, so the rocket exploded under conditions it was THEORETICALLY rated for.

Scotty isn't the kind of guy who would take anyone else's engineering specs as gospel truth. If there are weak struts in the nacelle pylons, he'll reinforce them; if the cross bracing in Frame 12 looks week, he'll rip it out and replace it and probably use titanium fasteners instead of the recommended aluminum. There IS a limit to the structural tolerances of the ship, but in any case the ship is only as strong as its weakest components, and sometimes those components are a little bit stronger (or weaker) than you give them credit for.

 

[Retu]

There are structural limits and there are structural limits. In aircraft, operating limits for G-loading are set to be low enough so that the structure will remain safe to use for its entire designed service life. Exceeding these limits will result to metal fatigue and will shorten the lifetime of the aircraft. And typically makes the mechanics very unhappy, since they now have to do an extended inspection.

Then there is the ultimate structural limit, which is typically rated to be 150% of the normal operating limit. Exceeding that will result a failure of one or more of the components (crack on a wing spar or an engine mount, fuselage bending), but still it doesn't necessarily have to be catastrophic damage.

Of course both limits are calculated for an ideal, unstressed structure. Material defects and actual operation will define the actual limits. You can overstress an aircraft up to and even beyond the ultimate limit and still be fine, but you won't do it ever again with the same plane.