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Post by Lt Cmdr Billie Jo Spencer MD on Feb 15, 2019 9:19:25 GMT -5
I was doing a little research on the U.S.S. Pilgrim. I looked up the propulsion stats in the operations section. Some pertinent facts that are there: Warp Drive: Cruising Speed: Warp 6 Maximum Speed: 9.975 Duration at Maximum Speed: 22 hours Impulse Engines: Class 8 - Gamma Reaction Control System: Standard Slipstream: Benamyte-based Duration at Slipstream: 2.07 seconds minimum (1 LY), No tested maximum Which is all good. My curiosity led me to look up some warp drive speed tables and see just how fast that is. using this table warp speedI worked out that at the Pilgrims "cruising speed" of warp six a five light year trip (a nearby star) would be five days and a 20 light year trip (1 sector) would be 19 days. At the ships listed maximum warp of 9.975 the same trips would be around just under 6 hours and 22 hours respectively. Since the duration at maximum warp is 22 hours that means the Pilgrim could cross one sector at maximum warp before having to shut down. This all seemed simple enough to wrap my head around. Then I started wondering how the slipstream worked. Not how the stated mechanics of it but what does the "speedometer" look like? From data I looked up on the web, it seems that slipstream speed occupies that region from warp 9.9999+ up to warp 10 in terms of speed. Since there is no "tested maximum" for the Pilgrim how do we go about setting which speed we are going at when we select slipstream? I assume that there is some limiting factor that prevents infinite speeds (fuel, energy, engineering skill, etc.) The chart I looked at stated that those two trips at warp 9.9999 would take about 13 minutes and 53 minutes respectively. I imagine slipstream would be even faster, but how much faster or is it literally as fast as we want it to be?
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Post by Lieutenant JG Eleria Scarlett on Feb 15, 2019 11:06:17 GMT -5
Acording to this guy's research Quantum slipstream of the Voyager was 2629800 times the speed of light
warp 9.975 is 4354 times the speed of light
I personally am not good enough at math right now to calculate this, to me these video's just give a good indication of just how fast we are talking.
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Post by Lieutenant JG Eleria Scarlett on Feb 15, 2019 11:36:44 GMT -5
My own calculation which are likely wrong, cause I am not actually good at math, say that the 20 light year trip at Quantum Slipstream speed would take 2,185443759981748 minutes
Edit: I did the math wrong and overly complicated, by know that 20 light years take 20 years at light speed, then knowing that Slipstream is 2629800 times the speed of light, the slip time time becomes 3,997262149212868 minutes, so basically four minutes
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Post by Captain Erys Murai on Feb 15, 2019 12:01:06 GMT -5
I was doing a little research on the U.S.S. Pilgrim. I looked up the propulsion stats in the operations section. Some pertinent facts that are there: Warp Drive: Cruising Speed: Warp 6 Maximum Speed: 9.975 Duration at Maximum Speed: 22 hours Impulse Engines: Class 8 - Gamma Reaction Control System: Standard Slipstream: Benamyte-based Duration at Slipstream: 2.07 seconds minimum (1 LY), No tested maximum Before I start, I should note that "no tested maximum" refers to the amount of time that Pilgrim can remain in slipstream, not the speed it can travel. Note that the parameter is "duration at slipstream" and the values are "2.07 seconds minum" and "no tested maximum". Just noting that in case there was confusion (not saying there was, but in retrospect that may not have been clear the way I typed it). Which is all good. My curiosity led me to look up some warp drive speed tables and see just how fast that is. using this table warp speedI worked out that at the Pilgrims "cruising speed" of warp six a five light year trip (a nearby star) would be five days and a 20 light year trip (1 sector) would be 19 days. At the ships listed maximum warp of 9.975 the same trips would be around just under 6 hours and 22 hours respectively. Since the duration at maximum warp is 22 hours that means the Pilgrim could cross one sector at maximum warp before having to shut down. This all seemed simple enough to wrap my head around. Then I started wondering how the slipstream worked. Not how the stated mechanics of it but what does the "speedometer" look like? From data I looked up on the web, it seems that slipstream speed occupies that region from warp 9.9999+ up to warp 10 in terms of speed. Since there is no "tested maximum" for the Pilgrim how do we go about setting which speed we are going at when we select slipstream? I assume that there is some limiting factor that prevents infinite speeds (fuel, energy, engineering skill, etc.) The chart I looked at stated that those two trips at warp 9.9999 would take about 13 minutes and 53 minutes respectively. I imagine slipstream would be even faster, but how much faster or is it literally as fast as we want it to be? The short answer is that there is no defined speed limit for slipstream, but it is typically rated at being faster than warp 9.9999 but slower than warp 10.First, I should note that there have been previous discussions on this topic, here, and here. Some of what I'm going to post is copied from one or both of those topics. Second, the calculations I note below are performed using Warp Speed Calculator, which actually agrees with the warp chart you noted here. In terms of canon, every instance of Slipstream travel has been different. This excerpt from a previous discussion: According to the Warp Speed Calculator I found online, the speeds for the above trips are as follows: Dauntless (31 seconds): 15,269,806.45 xLS or 4,577,772,809,313.29 km/s Voyager 1 (60 minutes, or 3,600 seconds): 2,629,800 xLS or 788,394,206,048.4 km/s Voyager (2 minutes, 8 seconds or 128 seconds): 2,465,437,500 xLS or 739,119,568,170,375 km/s In considering the speeds noted above, the Dauntless traveled using a stable slipstream drive, and the speed listed could be considered a stable cruising speed. The first Voyager number comes from what was essentially coasting along the slipstream corridor originally created by Dauntless, so the speeds would be significantly lower or even decreasing over time (i.e. the number given could be an average rather than a maximum). The second Voyager speed of over 2 billion times the speed of light is probably closer to what happened to the Enterprise-D when the Traveler pushed the ship into another galaxy. The effects were obviously not as severe since Voyager only traveled 10,000 light years, but that distance is significantly longer than the 15 light years covered by Dauntless. Even if the Dauntless speed was extrapolated to the same time as what Voyager achieved in their first test, it would only be a fraction of that distance (61.94 LY to be exact). That being said, modern slipstream drives produced by Starfleet most likely fall somewhere between the stable Dauntless speed and the overdrive Voyagers speed, but I would personally lean more toward the Dauntless speed. For comparison, the chart lists Warp 9.99 as crossing 10,000 light years in 6 months. The Dauntless would cover 10,000 light years in 5.74 hours, and Voyager covered that same distance in just over 2 minutes during its runaway test. Showing that time differential in seconds, Warp 9.99: 39,885,743.17 seconds (13 years) Warp 9.999: 1,581,707.73 seconds (6 months) Dauntless: 20,666.67 seconds (5.74 hours) Voyager test: 128 seconds (2 minutes, 8 seconds) So the long answer is that there's no set speed limit, and the Pilgrim's slipstream drive is most likely capable of going much faster than it normally would. Under normal operations, I would assume the Pilgrim travels as speeds closer to what the Dauntless used. During emergencies or a malfunction, you could see much higher speeds. This range, of course, means that the Pilgrim moves at the speed of plot (or GM discretion, whichever term you prefer to use).
My own calculation which are likely wrong, cause I am not actually good at math, say that the 20 light year trip at Quantum Slipstream speed would take 2,185443759981748 minutes Edit: I did the math wrong and overly complicated, by know that 20 light years take 20 years at light speed, then knowing that Slipstream is 2629800 times the speed of light, the slip time time becomes 3,997262149212868 minutes, so basically four minutes I actually covered that speed above. 2,629,800 is actually the exact number I got for Voyager's coasting at the end of the episode "Hopes and Fears" (Voy S4, Ep 26). That number comes from the statement that they stayed in slipstream "for another hour" and traveled 300 light years. Since Voyager wasn't generating its own slipstream and was only maintaining it, it can be assumed that the speed was either decreasing over time or at best was not increasing. Thus, 2.6MLY may be an average rather than a maximum speed.
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Post by Lt Cmdr Billie Jo Spencer MD on Feb 15, 2019 12:56:56 GMT -5
Thanks, a lot this was helpful. I was under the impression that slipstream was somehow variable. That is to say, you could have different higher levels of slipstream speed. I am getting the picture now that it is just a single speed, much higher than the ship's maximum warp drive speed. What that speed is unclear, somewhere over 9.9999+. But, I don't need an exact number here. I imagine it is comparable to ludicrous speed though.
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Post by Lt Commander Marcus Aquila on Feb 15, 2019 13:10:46 GMT -5
Slipstream is very fast think of the limiter more being knowing where you are going, and what is there when you come out. The longer the jump the more chance of a problem. Erys has the numbers.
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Post by Lieutenant JG Eleria Scarlett on Feb 15, 2019 13:13:18 GMT -5
Cool, thanks for the rundown
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DGM Cygnus
Game Master Group
Assistant Admin / DGM of the USS Adagio
Posts: 2,191
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Post by DGM Cygnus on Feb 15, 2019 15:55:13 GMT -5
I general use the memory alpha chart to get me rough idea memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factorI generally use the slipstream speed measure: "2 months to reach the same distance it traveled with just one hour of quantum slipstream use" From the memory alpha page at 9.975 warp it would take 1 month for 132 light years..so 2 months would be 264 light years....so one hour of slip stream is 264 light years That is the general math I use.
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Post by Captain Erys Murai on Feb 15, 2019 16:59:47 GMT -5
To be fair, Trek's own canon contradicts itself on speeds, or at least appears to in some instances. In that particular case, the warp speed calculator shows that traveling at 132 light years at 9.975 would only take 9.41 days, not a whole month. In fact, parts of the chart on memory alpha contradict each other, which only serves to emphasize what I mean by contradictions. It should also be noted that any examples from TOS and TAS will have wildly different numbers involved, because the warp scale was changed for the TNG era to have a maximum of warp 10 (with exponentially-increasing speeds as the warp factor nears 10). Not that TOS values have anything to do with Voyager speed estimates...
As one example, the pilot of Voyager, it was specifically stated that at maximum speed, it would take Voyager 70 years to travel 70,000 lightyears. Subsequent calculations have shown a 70-year estimate would have been based on an average speed of 7.78, not warp 9.975. Travelling at 9.975 would instead only take about 13 years. While Voyager's maximum speed is warp 9.975, that speed is not sustainable for more than 12-14 hours, so it likely would have required them to travel at a slower speed, thus the longer estimate.
A DS9 episode also stated that the Valiant was going to take a 3-month training cruise around the Federation, which has been stated in other sources as having a circumference of around 30,000 lightyears. Given that the Valiant's maximum speed prior to Nog coming aboard was warp 3.2, we can assume that some or all of the information provided is wrong. Either Valiant wasn't intended to travel the entire Federation, or the trip was going to take longer than 3 months (about 621.25 years, in fact).
Add into this the fact that the Defiant itself traveled from DS9 to Earth in a matter of hours during "Paradise Lost" (including a lengthy battle with the Lakota). For most of the series, the Defiant topped out around Warp 9.2, and Bajor is established as being around 52 light years from Earth. At a speed of warp 9.2, travelling 52 LY should take 11.52 days. Thus we can assume the travel time was condensed for story-telling purposes, since the Defiant was able to travel most of the way from DS9 to Earth inside an hour-long segment of a two-part episode.
Looking at the chart itself, there are three mentions of warp 9.975. One mentions a distance of 40LY covered in 5 days, another mentions a distance of 10 million kilometers in ~1 second, and of course the 132 LY in 1 month and 70,000LY in 75 years numbers mentioned in previous posts. Looking at those examples internally:
- 40 Lightyears in 5 days should be equivalent to 8 lightyears in 1 day, which should be equivalent to 240 Lightyears in 30 days. That number would be almost double the 132LY/1month number. - 132 Lightyears in 1 month should be equivalent to 4.4 lightyears in 1 day, which would be equivalent to 22 lightyears in 5 days. That number is roughly half the 40LY/5d number. - 1 Lightyear is 9,450,000,000,000 kilometers, so travelling "10 million kilometers" in ~1 second would still take about 945,000 seconds (or 262.5 days) to travel 1 LY. To be fair, "~1s" is very hard to work with, so this particular calculation isn't very helpful. - At an average of 70,000 Lightyears over 75 years, that would come out to around 933.33 LY per year, or 2.56 LY per day. That's the slowest speed yet, compared to the 40LY and 132LY numbers. Even if we shorten the time to 70 years, it would still only give us 2.74 LY per day.
The obvious conclusion is that either the numbers given are wildly variable, or the Trek writers only put a minimum of thought into calculations because they were more focused on the story.
Other evidence points to warp being even more complicated and affected by outside factors like gravity and particle density, and some examples show ships at mid- to high-warp traveling below the speed of light. In fact, the more evidence added to the mixture, the more convoluted the answer will become.
All of this is why it's generally better to make a "Best guess" (like Cyg posted above) than try to make exact calculations. It's also why I tend to use the Star Trek Calculator for all Trek speed calculations, because that at least is a consistent point of comparison.
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Post by Lieutenant JG Eleria Scarlett on Feb 15, 2019 19:19:56 GMT -5
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Post by Captain Erys Murai on Feb 15, 2019 19:49:27 GMT -5
Yep. I think I linked it in my first post too, but that's the one I've been using for a while. If nothing else, it provides a baseline for RP calculations.
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Post by Lieutenant JG Eleria Scarlett on Feb 15, 2019 20:15:37 GMT -5
Ohh yeah, I failed to see the link before, I shall use such as well if I ever need it
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Post by Lt Cmdr Tiberius Asada on Feb 16, 2019 8:29:14 GMT -5
Just as in the shows and movies, travel speed is exactly as fast as the storyteller needs it to be.
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Post by Admiral Marzz Razzor on Feb 16, 2019 9:41:46 GMT -5
If the storyteller uses their head not acting like their a writer for Discovery
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Post by Lt Commander Marcus Aquila on Feb 16, 2019 14:53:22 GMT -5
Just as in the shows and movies, travel speed is exactly as fast as the storyteller needs it to be. WTB Expanse RP.
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