What Happened to the Warp Speed Limit?
Vložit
- čas přidán 8. 06. 2024
- The warp speed limit was created in the wake of the Star Trek TNG episode "Force of Nature" and reduced all non critical travel to a factor of warp 5. But this limit was soon discarded from the shows going on without being addressed so let's take a look at the tale as technology unfolded in the shows using beta apocrypha to add details.
Star Trek Online developed by Cryptic Studios and Perfect World.
Star Trek Picard/Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks/Enterprise/Voyager/Deep Space Nine/Discovery and The Next Generation are all owned by Paramount Pictures/CBS and distributed by CBS.
This Video is for critical purposes with commentary. - Hry
They "solved" it the same way they solved gravity on ships... *hand wave with a line about a new technology*
"How does the new warp system work?" "It works very well!"
Star Trek isn't the only one guilty of hand waves lol.
@@StormsparkPegasus and I will thank you for leaving me alone and not bothering me with silly questions, Wesley...
Wasn't Voyager the prime example of said technology?
How cute an answer. Chaff5..... I'm sure you could come up with something a lot more intelligent than that.
It was a plot device that was not well thought through and proved to be inconvenient so they solved it and ignored it
One episode Troys mom is so annoying Picard tells conn to go to warp 8 to get her home faster.
Seemed Warp 5 = 55MPH speed limits? It seems to me the show used it as a metaphor for the oil crisis and improvements of how we move about Earth as much as through the galaxy :)
ST TNG had multiple writers. That didn't allows follow what others had written in prior episodes. This is why most shows have continuity issues. One writer writes it into an episode. Then another has a plot for an episode that if they followed what the first said. Would destroy their episode. So they choose to ignore it. With this episode it appears all other writers hated it so they ignored it.
Could be it was only really an issue in areas like that pass that had been heavily used for ages. Subspace likely is able to repair itself somewhat. So most areas weren't affected near as much as that one area.
@@jameswilson9348 I think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation of the situation given how it was the fact there was a ton of transit along that route which caused the tears to be problematic
I guess I interpreted that episode differently than was intended. I took it is as all ships were restricted to Warp 5 in that specific corridor rather than fleetwide anywhere in the galaxy.
The first part of the order dealt with all places like the Corridor (not just the Corridor) that are more susceptible to the rifts opening up, making them essential travel only, the second half was for _all_ Federation ships, not Starfleet, but all Federation ships being restricted to Warp 5 everywhere, not only the Corridor.
It was clearly meant to be galaxy wide due to the fact they constantly had to get permission to exceed the Warp Speed Limit in practically every episode after that one.
@@danielseelye6005 Rereading the order now I can see that. At the time though it seemed to be talking about this corridor in isolation.
@@DanielRichards644 At the time it seemed to be talking about this corridor in isolation rather than something galaxy-wide. Plus, in other episodes where it was mentioned, it more felt like to me a fuel or supply-saving measure rather than one connected to this episode.
Like I said, I must have taken the episode differently than was intended.
@@KevinTheID I also thought as you did
in fact I thought it was for that system all along and only questioned it after watching this
Certifiably Ingame episode and reading some of the comments
so you are not alone
It was said that the warp speed limit could be ignored in emergency situations. It only seems like it was an abandoned idea because the few starships we follow in the shows are usually in these crisis/emergency situations during the episode and ignore the limit.
This is far from normal though. The VAST amount of warp capable ships (civilian, merchant, commercial, Starfleet vessels on uneventful routine missions, etc.) are probably all staying under this new limit when traveling around the galaxy.
You also have to take into account that several weeks typically go by between episodes (in the case of the TNG episode _Pen Pals,_ it was stated the Enterprise was on a mostly uneventful survey mission for over *6 weeks* before the episode ended and they moved on.) So, the Enterprise-D _is_ flying around under this speed limit more often than not while doing routine stuff like charting stars, delivering supplies, transporting diplomats.
Usually only when something exciting and interesting happens is when we get an episode. That’s one of the few instances where you would see them really put the warp pedal to the metal.
Yup, we weren't watching Star Trek: The Speed Limit Generation after all
Considering that traveling at higher speeds always cost more in fuel and wear and tear, civilian, merchant, commercial would have a financial reason to travel at lower speeds all the time anyway.
@@oldtimefarmboy617 is there anything in canon to suggest that fuel cost is ever a concern?
I was about to post something similar...with a few exceptions, the episodes we see are the crisis situations, not the mundane travel and such in between.
@@thobu6576 Not to my knowledge from the series, but I think the same logic applies once more: The vessels we follow in the shows would not need to concern themselves with the economic side, the captain decides the missions priority and that´s that. But if you ran an interstellar shipping firm I think efficiency would be a factor on your resume. Money and profit might be abolished, but costs still exist.
I imagine the Romulans sent a cloaked ship to the same system where the Federation discovered the problem, prepared to come to their own conclusions and call Starfleet on its bullshit. Then their research showed the same results, so instead they went home and quietly started designing a new ship class.
and maybe loadly proclaiming that the superior Romulan Tech don't have that Problem due to *technobabble* while behind the scenes they try to change things *hopefully*
i now imagien a cloaked romulan ship going warp 9.9999 circling earth, day in day out. slowly destroying subspace around earth
@@ElysiaWhitemoonOmegathats actually a good point, why hasn't the fact that high warp speeds cause damadge been used as a weapon yet?
@@rotkappchenlp7032 The likely answer is that it requires a warp core detonation in a destabilized zone, on top of warp travel being funneled to a narrow corridor. Cloaking specifically as well still leaves you there so have a ship spend too much time around a set part of space and it will get noticed due to its gravity.
@@anvos658 true the case in the TNG episode was very specific and unlikly to happen again but it would be an interesting concept for a future episode to explore (technobabble is always an option to explain away the problems)
Honestly, if this subspace damage was the cause of The Burn, it would've been much better- like, the changes worked, but over time, they started to ignore it or figure it was something that didn't accumulate, until it hit a breaking point and then boom.
Well also could have gone with dwindling dilithium sources led to more omega particle research by multiple factions and bam cascading subspace destruction in so many areas that warp travel is essentially destroyed between systems and thus the need for other ftl systems
I do think that the source of the Burn in DISCO was very underwhelming and it being the natural end point of subspace travel and technology oversaturation would have been a great way to add a societal and moral message that Star Trek is suited to telling.
They were too busy coming up with ways to push sjw ideology to be able to think up any coherent and actually good story.
@@TheHenschman True- but if it was the Subspace "Pollution", could've 1) tied into the Golden Age of Trek, 2) avoided the bum "literal crying baby" reason, and 3) worked with an ignoring a problem because its not an emergency now can still have consequences. (Especially since real world decades have passed, so it would work on two levels)
no because STD is not star trek just cheap imitation
I don't see it being a problem in Voyager. They had already stated that prolonged use of warp is the same area is what causes the problem. Voyager was only going one way, one time. So it was really a non issue.
Plus even if voyager was an older ship without the warp upgrades. I would say it could be argued that the whole trip once trapped in the delta quadrant was an emergency situation and could therefore disregard any warp speed guidelines.
Raised the nacelles to alter the geo.etry of the field.
voyager already mitigates the issue to the damage to subspace
Voyager had to save resources, including warp power. Probably why they usually maintained warp 5
also the issue was fixed.
Fun thing though and it's probably not intentional - but Warp 5 on the TNG scale is near the top cruising speed of the TOS Enterprise on the old scale.
Which also really might mean this is a very new issue.
Also implies the Excelsior's experimental drive is to blame given the timeline and the accepted rationale for the scale change.
I like this idea.
Bigger was not better.
Essentially the warp 5 limit was a plot device to modernise our concept of futuristic space ship design and get rid of the 1960s / 80s style of Starfleet ships. With that job done its no longer needed.
Ah, my favorite Star Trek plot device...contrive a reason to kill off a fan favorite to make a Big Boom, and get a shiny new toy to play with.
(Not bitter. About anything. At all. Really.)
So it’s like “Transformers: The Movie” but less traumatic to young children.
In Sci-Fi, most of these so called "plot devices" are subtext meant to subliminally influence the audience into a certain way of thinking to influence their political beliefs. At the time, the left was pushing the idea of reduced speed limits to reduce emissions, but when that political push was abandoned, so too was its representation in entertainment. Sadly, most entertainment tends to have a lot of propaganda built in.
Voyager traveling at top speeds vs the Federation traveling in their own space makes sense. As the Federation make frequent trips all throughout their own space. The Voyager is traveling in a relatively straight line that they wouldn't ever plan to return to in their or several other lifetimes.
It also was considered an emergency situation, so, they really weren’t breaking any rules by ignoring the limit.
It's also the cumulative effect of multiple ships, on the same route.
1 ship wouldn't do much damage overall
Voyagers nacelles tilted to solve this
In one of the books the federation started setting up warp dissipation systems that reduced all speeds within a certain area to below warp five. This wasn't perfect and only setup in extremely high trafficked areas. The next part is that they created a specific and special probe that they could launch to reinforce space along its path. There was also an improvement to warp drives after a certain point that steadily reinforce space/subspace as it travels. At one point they basically have been able to essentially go to a location that was at risk for some reason and simply leave the ship there for a few hours and repair all damage.
It is one of the brilliant things about the Federation a problem is found you then have milions if not billions of people looing into ways to mitigate, fix or any other mix of things about it
@MasterLittica Yes and the federation is a good example of a strange mix of democracy, socialism, and capitalism. I understand that sounds strange but basically the way it works is they have what is described as a post scarcity society that has both communal ownership and individual ownership. Both the ability to vote but very little need to. The existence of an economy but no need to make purchases especially for the majority of people.
Part of the interesting stuff I was seen in the series is that they have almost every need provided for and most luxury wants too but certain things are too expensive for your average person to simply be given because of resource requirements to produce them. Latinum or specialized and hard to replicate materials and structures self sealing stem bolts is a structural example.
I also understand that they are primarily motivated by self improvement and they have a kind of social credit scoring system but the scoring system is so lenient and forgiving that you could essentially be a bump on a log and still have all of your need/wants met.
Epic.
IDEA: start using the word cosmodinamic when discusing the narrow design of the ships...
I mean, it sounds like something they would have used in the show
Aetherdynamic? I mean if space is in fact made of stuff that needs to be protected from damage then why not?
I love it. Both actually Cosmodynamic and Aetherdynamic, though my vote is for Cosmo.
I was thinking spatiodynamic, from spatial. Those are good suggestions too though.
Subspatial-dynamic?
Astrodynamics.
"Astrodynamics research deals with the modelling, estimation and planning of spacecraft's orbits and attitude configurations."
- University of Surrey, UK
I thought it was a stupid idea. My thought is since the corridor was ruined ships started going around the area and people started to forget and after a year or two Starfleet quietly lifted the restriction and just kept going as it had before.
Until I saw this video, I'd assumed that it was just an eco-friendly episode that makes us think about being nice to Earth. Good video.
that's what it says on wiki (take with a grain of salt) The premise of the episode is loosely based on environmental concerns of the early 1990s, such as the measures taken to prevent Ozone layer depletion. Writers Naren Shankar and Brannon Braga discussed ideas for a Star Trek episode with an environmental watchdog group, and the result was "Force of Nature".
In reality, that's all it was. At the time the left was promoting ideas that "the sky is falling" and wanted to reduce speed limits and push the idea of holes in the ozone dooming humanity, the usual "we're all going to die aahhhhh you have to give us power and all your money fast or the world will end!" But when that proved to be a political flop and nobody was buying it or the low speed limit idea, they abandoned that propaganda in our entertainment as well.
the term is "a lower subspace drag coefficient". Subspace is treated like a fluid in how it moves around he ship therefore you can express this the same way you would talk about water moving around the hull of a warship.
Seems like you could also liken the spatial damage to shoreline damage experienced on lakes and rivers when ships sail through them too quickly. Stay under a certain speed and the shoreline is fine. Have a single boat speed through the water every once in a while, and there's also no discernible damage. But have a lot of boats all speeding through the water all the time, and the waves quickly devastate the shoreline.
Buy shortening the overall profile of a ship it's Subspace profile, has the same effect as minimizing drag surfaces on an aircraft especially in the case of flying wing type aircraft where they remove all of the conventional surfaces as well as the fuselage itself and make it all just one big wing because when you eliminate the causes of drag you also eliminate the effects of drag.
im like 90% sure DS9 mentioned the warp limit in at least one episode
Sounds familiar. Which episode?
@@Aragorn7884 Trying to find it. I thought it was "The search part 1", but the transcript doesnt support that
@@WeyounLP Could you be thinking of “If Wishes Were Horses”? They mention in that episode that elevated thoron emissions in the Denorios belt could have been an environmental byproduct of the increased traffic use of warp and impulse engines in the area since the discovery of the wormhole.
Although that episode was before “Force of Nature”.
@@mb2000 I didn't know that! But no, my brain is thinking of a line specifically regarding the speed limit
@@WeyounLP in one of the episodes they did say they are going to have to ignore the limit to reach somewhere on time. Maybe it was the episode with the Starfleet officer that crash landed on a planet and was dying from the atmosphere I don't recall
This concept could have been used as a plot point later on. Say the Enterprise is searching for a ship whose warp trail is difficult to track due to going through a heavily traversed area. Then Geordi solves the problem by looking for a specific type of subspace damage after learning that it's using an obsolete warp drive.
Or our heroes have escaped some situation using such a drive and have to play cat and mouse while trying to mitigate the signal they'd give off while traveling at the necessary speeds to get away from danger.
if you re-watch the episode Captain Picard also states that Starfleet will begin to ways to modify the warp coils in the nacelles to prevent the damage from occurring one would assume that after that change was implemented and their ships no longer cause damage to Subspace they would then resume normal speeds
The only issue i had with this from the moment I watched the episode is that after several million years of space faring civilizations its strange that the galaxy isn't filled with potholes where ships can't travel much like how out of those so many civilizations none discovered the omega molecule and blew the galaxy apart
I guess the damage repairs itself naturally over time.
It could effect be a viable explanation for WHY the Star Trek universe has so many fallen civilizations that used to be huge but disappeared. They either ascend into energy beings or tear subspace apart and die out on isolated worlds.
@@augustday9483 fair point
We have seen quite a few "subspace anomalies", "subspace distortions", etc, throughout all of the Star Trek series. Perhaps many of these are actually remnants of warp damage caused by previous civilizations, etc. It is possible that over time, a rupture can "heal itself", but various lingering effects may continue to exist in that region for much longer...
It's also possible that many of the more advanced previous warp-capable civilizations came to realize these issues too, the same way that we eventually did, and found their own ways to mitigate it, the same as we did, so they never reached the point of doing enough damage to cause those "potholes" in the first place.
(It seems strongly implied to me in the series that the damage to subspace may be a cumulative-but-not-permanent thing. That is, it can slowly heal over time, the problem is just when the damage accumulates faster than it can heal itself. Therefore, travelling at a slow enough speed, or potentially with some of the other technology changes, it might be possible to do so little damage that the overall state of things does not actually get any worse over time, and it can be done indefinitely with no long-term effects.)
That entire episode was so utterly ridiculous. Warp Drive is a fundamental technology and staple of the Star Trek universe and it would be extremely difficult to tell stories without it.
So imagine green lighting an episode where Warp Drive was destroying the fabric of reality itself and eventually all Warp travel would be impossible. Did no one behind the scenes not think about the drastic implications that this would have on the entire franchise?
Agreed. Things like the Omega Molecule make sense as a threat to warp drive, considering it's 1) violently unstable on a scale that would make Rodney McKay blush if not done exactly right with planck-length precision, and more importantly 2) NOT something that everyone is already using on a daily basis. While it does have some logic behind it if you think in terms of analogies (the more you drive on a road with heavier and faster vehicles, the more damage you do, eventually making a road unusable until resurfacing... but how do you resurface _subspace???_ and mitigating damage by limiting speeds and vehicle weights is a logical extension of that analogy), it's still a franchise-breaking premise.
Its eventual effects are centuries out in universe. It could be bad for future shows set vastly farther in the future, but it should have no real ramifications in the TNG universe at the time of this episode's release. Honestly, Star Trek has gotten so bad as a show that they will probably stop making any new Trek shows, once they get tired of losing money on it, so the long term effects will not matter. They could also just change to a different type of FTL travel entirely that does not have this issue, which Star Trek STD seemed to be working on with their ship-rotating teleportation drive, before they got sued for stealing their specific type of fast travel from another scifi work.
It’s a metaphor for fossil fuels; they are crucial to society but damaging. etc
This was actually *part of the whole point* of the episode, though: What should you do when something that is so fundamental to your way of life, which you basically cannot exist without anymore, turns out to be actually causing harm?
If it hadn't been such a fundamental element of the entire universe, and absolutely required for everything we know to be possible, then the episode would not have been able to actually bring forth the sorts of questions that people were trying to make everyone think about.
I think there were some ways it probably could have been done better, but I really do not think it would have been possible to pose the same questions or consider the same issues in the same way if it hadn't been about warp travel, but something less fundamental instead.
Sometimes, to tell a good story, you need to choose the more difficult path.
I like that you suggested that the Intrepid-class was retrofitted with the movable nacelles because of the warp limit/subspace damage. I always found it odd that in “Force of Nature”, Geordi mentions a USS Intrepid which, given this is only a year before Voyager’s launch, must be the Intrepid-class prototype. Therefore, suggestions that the Intrepid-class was build because of the events of “Force of Nature” is wrong, as the class ship already existed and was flying around, and no doubt Voyager and possibly Bellerophon would already have been under construction at the time.
I agree that the Intrepid Geordi was talking about must have been the prototype and it likely didn't have the movable engines when launched.
The USS-Intrepid name was used all the way back in TOS so it might not have been referring to the Intrepid class that came later.
@@zerrodefex True, but it’s not an issue that there have been multiple starships with that name, it’s that with the start of VOY only an in universe year later with an Intrepid-class ship (which must have been in development and the prototype already in use) it puts the whole “folding nacelles prevent damage” thing into question as it’s made to seem as though Starfleet came up with the solution before they knew about the problem!
I will admit that the whole "damage to subspace" addition to the lore feels more like it hurt more than built anything of worth. It feels like now instead of trying to achieve more speed and go further into the unknown we are now being held back and worse still it's pointless because the damage is still being done and warp travel will one day be impossible.
Its a constant dark cloud in a otherwise brighter take on scifi that takes more than a bit of joy out of the whole thing.
I completely agree, and couldn't have said it better.
That whole episode was just an allegory for pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in real life. It was never meant to be a consistent plot point.
On the contrary, I think a whole galaxy of different societies acknowledging and changing their ways in the face of new scientific data despite any number of societal or political conflicts they might have between them is a very bright depiction of the future. It's unfortunate that the idea of damage to subspace was just supposed to be a throwaway episode concept for an environmental message and the very optimistic, Star Trek-y story of everyone respecting science and their responsibilities to exercise good stewardship of technology in order to prevent that damage had to be theory crafted by fans or hand waved away.
This question has been living in my head for the past decades. Thanks for the video. Trek show canon alone is too big for me to keep track of, much less the non-show canon, and the apocrypha on top of that.
There was a _TNG_ episode where they spent time installing and testing a new warp core on the _Enterprise_ . I forget which episode, though. They had an appointment that Picard didn't really want to get to, so the drive not working and shorting out the ship's non-essential systems worked in his favour, with his regrets to the officer he was supposed to meet.
That came afterwards. Then, in Parallels, one of the first timelines Worf shifts to (where Data has blue eyes) they’re using that modified warp core. So it must’ve worked fine in that timeline!
I think that was the Data dream “cellular peptide cake with mint frosting” episode, “Phantasms”.
The narrow corridor in "Force of Nature" would focus all the warp damage to one small region of subspace. "Open" space would spread the damage out and make it much less noticeable. (If they could detect it at all) So the problem went unnoticed until "Force of Nature". And over time it would make sense for Starfleet to address the issue and make ships that were less disruptive of subspace.
Voyager didn't need to worry because it would only travel over an area only once..
Something grim to acknowledge post Dominion war, "Surviving older Starfleet Ships" were decommissioned.
I don't think too many old Excelsiors or Galaxy classes remained.
Decommissioning the Galaxy seems stupid. It's not that old during DS9. Especially when the fact Picard just made a new Excelsior 2 based on older Excelsior, but bigger.
I'm pretty sure the Miranda class was pretty wasted also.
@@TeamDoc312 Nah if they're willing to use STO game ships. They will probably do a Miranda refit to feature on screen.
They willing to use STO Ross class as a Galaxy class refit canon during S2 of Picard. I don't think they will fully decommission the Galaxy class yet.
You can only upgrade a ship so far before you have to replace it.
And Picard used about 5 or 6 Ships from star trek online that are now considered canon to replace certain classes in the fleet
With that timeline, it's kind of crazy how fast you can find solutions if you can mobilize an entire quadrant's worth (or maybe even just a fraction) of scientists. They basically fixed their version of greenhouse gas emmissions in 10-15 years. I'd also imagine that by the 2400s onward, Starfleet likely had way more legroom building bigger ships given advanced enough tech that could maybe partially repair subspace as a ship flies through it.
I thought the same thing happened to the warp speed limit was the same thing that happened to the Shore Leave planet, Venus pills, Tribbles, Kironide, and the Bluegills. The episode made its point and we never heard from them again except in Beta Canon.
I mean, seriously, after meeting Plato's stepchildren, the Federation knows about, and can synthesize, a chemical compound that can give any humanoid psychokinetic powers - and we NEVER hear about it again. I wonder what it would do to Betazoids?
I think you answered part of your own question there. Imagine the hell Picard would have gone through if Luxwanna (sp.) Troi had those powers on any of her visits.
@@PlapradIf you haven't read it already, look up Peter David's Star Trek novel Q-in-law. She don't need no Kironide.
To be fair, I think the Tribbles also got an explanation. I think Worf said the Klingons wiped them out
@@lukerabon7925 And IIRC they were brought back during the time travel episode of DS9 where they went back to TOS time.
@@LanceThumping I imagine the Klingons were pleased about that.
Love your explanation, exceptionally clear and just makes the most sense about what's going on with the speed limit. Now if only people on Earth now with cars can figure out speed limits....
Having them decommissioned the whole galaxy class line is really depressing. She was a beautiful ship line.
That is surprising. I figured they just rotated the Galaxys to support or response duty. They might not be able to push the edges of unknown space any more, but a mobile starbase is still useful. I wonder if any ended up in private hands.
@@gmradio2436 yeah but I doubt that..someone could glass a entire planet with the weapons of the galaxy class. So I don’t think Star fleet would put the line into private hands without gutting the weapons. But they could be on deep space missions… Looking on the bright side,the Enterprise D is still around so not a total loss..
@@invictus2578Probably just the torpedo launcher. Phasers appear to be legal defense weapons.
@@invictus2578no one really discusses it but any warp capable vessel could hit a planet hard enough to cause an extinction level event if not outright destroy the planet.
@@malkeus6487It was supposed to be part of the Earth-Romulan War. The books talk about that, but we'll never know the story for sure.
The Vulcan's may have been using warp for centuries ahead of most everyone else, however, they are so logical and mathematical to the point of using the more efficient Ring, temperamental it may be, could have also avoided the damage to subspace unintentionally.
This makes a lot of sense to me. It seems quite likely that part of the "elegance" that the Vulcans prized about their ring design was that it actually moved more efficiently through subspace, which would imply producing less drag, and therefore less disruption. It may be that they completely unintentionally avoided the whole issue, without even necessarily realizing it at the time. It wasn't until the brutish humans and other races came along with their more crude designs, "smashing through" subspace by force, that it actually had the potential to cause real damage.
I could even entirely believe that maybe at some point, long before humans came along, there was maybe a Vulcan scientist somewhere who wrote up a paper on theoretical effects of repeated high-magnitude warp field disruptions on the integrity of subspace, and it got published somewhere as an interesting idea, but everybody could see that it really didn't matter in practice because of the way their engines worked, so it was just considered an interesting theoretical curiosity, eventually forgotten about, and never really brought up ever again...
Who knows, perhaps the only reason Rabal and Serova were able to figure all of this out, when nobody else did, was because one day they just happened across an obscure little Vulcan paper from centuries ago about a theoretical curiosity that everyone else had completely forgotten about, and made the connection. That is entirely the sort of thing that actually does happen in real scientific circles all the time...
Star Trek without warp isn't Star Trek. They figured that out pretty quickly.
I'm not so sure that the bulkier vessels were retired so much. After all, in Picard's second season, we see the Ross-class (which essentially looks like the love child of a Galaxy-class and a Sovereign) in active service in 2401. So it's quite possible that they solved the problem for the Galaxy-class as well.
Picard's second season kind of forgot about the lore
This is why you need a good showrunner. It insures that whatever the writer's create, it doesn't have future implications of hindering the show's storylines.
Poorly chosen plot device.
I had always wondered about the speed limit so thanks for putting this together!
One thought I had about the speed limit being a big plot hole for future episodes is that you are forgetting how rare it was for tv shows to have continuous storylines back then. It was far more normal for everything to be back to normal in the next episode, no matter what had happened.
Let's be honest, even if the speed limit, Jeanway would have said: F* it, I have a lot of dubious acts to commit and I will not get over it until S5 Ep1 Night.
And if you don't believe me, remember "silver blood" Jeanway.
Remember TUVIX. 😢
I mean, people rag on Janeway for being such a stickler for protocol. Can't have it both ways.
It's called life you absolutely can have it both ways.
Janeway be like "I have not committed enough war crimes yet, you can't stop me!"
@@BoisegangGamingcaptain wipeout
I'm a big Star Trek fan but it does make me laugh how often this comes up:
Star Trek writer/creator: makes ship design or plot point because it looks cool/rule of cool/story reason.
Star Trek fans: Go full "UM actually..." when it doesn't fit 'lore' they concocted.
Star Trek writer/creator replies: no it makes complete sense because they solved it due to "insert technobabble"
Star Trek Fans: OMG that's amazing. Thank you.
...and the cycle repeats LOL
I think there is an additional canon explanation for Voyager ignoring the speed limit. In "Equinox" they mention a Starfleet regulation allowing for extreme measures to be taken when the survival of a ship and crew are in jeopardy (it was the regulation the Equinox crew used to justify harvesting the inter-dimensional creatures as fuel). Being stranded alone on the far side of the galaxy, in the quadrant the Borg came from no less, is a pretty perilous situation.
The Romulan Star Empire is untrustworthy and duplicitous, but its not stupid.
Even if the official oublic stance of the state was to scoff at the idea of limiting warp travel speed, they would no doubt take note of the real damage it was doing to subspace and start working on solutions as well. If only to ensure they aren’t the only major power who suffers and falls behind due to subspace damage.
Exactly. They most likely rejected Star Fleet's data/proposal initially on principle, because they do not trust them, and because they were unwilling to just blindly agree to a decision imposed by someone else without their input, but they then did actually do their own research into the issue, came to the conclusion that it was actually a legitimate concern, and implemented their own methods to mitigate it based on that. Damaging their own subspace throughout the Romulan Empire is not something they would want to happen either.
In fact, given how the Romulans do things, it is quite likely that once the possibility was brought to their attention, they were able to dedicate the resources to confirm the problem and then implement mitigations much more quickly and efficiently than Star Fleet was, and probably had finished their own changes even before the Warp 5 limit was fully implemented or enforced everywhere in the Federation (because they didn't have to deal with thousands of different groups bickering about all kinds of details and time-consuming democratic processes to get everyone to ultimately go along with it).
The other thing to consider regarding the Romulan Empire is even though they would likely not comply, compliance may not even be necessary in their case based on the technology of their ships using a forced quantum singularity for FTL travel versus a warp drive it creates a superliminal fold instead of a Subspace field. Obviously the Klingons despite differences in nomenclature and terminology use the same warp drive technology as the Federation
Great episode! I didn't realize this had bothered me for quite a while after watching that episode until I saw this on my YT recommendations. One other thing I didn't realize was the time span from that episode to post-Dominion war, warp 9.9+ was only 25 years!! And the potential ship redesigns came out in just weeks with respect to Star Trek universe's time!!
If the subspace damage was only cumulative in places where lots of ships traveled at warp in a corridor where lots of ships traveled, then the only places where the "speed limit" would need to be enforced would be in those corridors. Ships traveling where traffic can be spread out over a lot bigger area where the effects had time to disperse and not cause damage would not need to adhere to that speed limit.
Then there is the effect of the surrounding radiation that caused ships to travel through that corridor in the first place that might have amplified the effect warp travel had on subspace that would not be present elsewhere.
I also fall into this theory that some starfleet scientist likely proved at some point that the ecoscientist's theory only worked within limits lack the corridor and even then it took intentionally detonating a warp core to open a fissure. So thus yeah, sure make the warp drives and ship profiles better, but just as a safety precaution, and as a way to justify overhauling the fleet as starfleet realized they needed actual warships.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the slip strem system Voyager brings back. And how using that information helped starfleet fix and even fill in the blanks they had in warp theory, thus no longer needing the warp speed limit.
Wesley came back in an unseen segment, he gave Picard the magic self replicating stone of serenity. Patched everything up.
You'd think that a franchise which has warp-capable civilizations for hundreds of thousands of years [or longer] wouldn't propose such a risk without showing it already plaguing the universe.
I would have thought they would use the tuned boubous bow concept used by ships to allow destructive wave interference thus cancelling the waves generated in subspace. Like Sound Cancelling Tech for Headphones but for Warp. This is what comes to mind since I worked with naval engineers in a past life lol
Great video, I never noticed how the rest of TNG actually did kinda adhere to the limit.
Lifting it for the Dominion War makes total sense, but it would have been cool to get a specific line about that in DS9.
Edit: some other comments here are saying there is a line in DS9 about it, but I guess I just don’t remember it in particular…
Watching early DS9, there's a LOT of missed opportunitys for continuity nods, even for events within their own show (the extra, temporory dax host in season 1 that's never mentioned again in any of the other Dax episodes, for instance)
Referencing a specific episode of a different show, during the days of syndication, would probably have been unimaginable.
What I don't like, was the way they tried to "prove" the whole "warp damages subspace" thing by blowing up their ship. That's adding an additional variable, which completely invalidates the findings from the initial report. All that showed was that exploding ships can damage subspace.
Yep I entirely agree here, let alone doing so sped up the damage to her planet.
It's a nice example of how a functional society reacts to learning of a looming environmental disaster: no special interests, no lack of political will, no conspiracy theories, no denial once it's proven...they just put their resources and best people on the problem and within a few years it's resolved.
It explains why lower decks has a whole new excelsior
The timeline you gave here would have been a great way to address the issue because it would parallel what’s happening in our world. There’s a big problem with fundamental transportation technology (burning fuels) and we need to move to something else (electrification). Trek could have shown that subspace damage wasn’t an end to transportation, but merely a problem that was researched and engineered out, just as the timeline shown did.
Electrification just hides the problem by shifting it on to power plants, and all the heavy toxic metals in advanced batteries, though yeah the fossil fuels parallel was clearly what they wanted to go for.
It's worth noting that the older ships seem to have gotten newer engines right before the Dominion war. Remember the Excelsior and Maranda class ships all of a sudden had engines that glowed all the time like the newer class's in Starfleet.
The dominion war variance of the Galaxy class did have additional parts on their nasals. It's possible that included in those were subspace modulators or boosters.
'But only in emergencies' ... but it's *always* an emergency of some sort or other.
Excellent video. Thank you. 👍
The one major outlier in the description of the fact that most large profile ships were retired was the introduction of the Ross-class, which we see in Picard Season 2, which is clearly the successor to the Galaxy in every way from design profile to size. Almost all Starfleet ships until that point had become narrower, smaller, or sleeker in design, which i am including the Duderstadt and Neo Constitution because they are smaller ships with a more derived streamlined profile to a certain extent, but the Ross stands out among them as being a giant step backwards almost in design profile, and it's a newer ship class. So the warp system and subspace fields would likely have to be some of the most powerful in the fleet because it's so massive in profile compared to anything else.
This is actually a nice explanation why Voyager has folding nacelles; it was a late engineering fix
It’s funny because in TOS they regularly traveled at low warp speeds for unstated reasons. “Ahead Warp Factor 1” was the usual order. Did Starfleet just start getting impatient and unconcerned with efficiency or did they think that traveling faster was safe and efficient?
I think earlier in TNG they did this too, but realized that's way too slow cause warp 1 is light speed.
I believe it was stated in various sources (tech manuals, etc), that the reason why they didn't just use full warp to go everywhere in TOS was because they were actually constrained by how much energy it actually took to do the higher warp speeds. High warp speeds could not be maintained indefinitely, and put substantially more strain on the ship's systems, so they were only used when necessary.
By the time TNG came along, there had been substantial advancements in the technology, so they could expend far more energy for far longer, thus sustained warp at higher speeds was not as much of a problem (but they still didn't push the engines at full capacity all the time, either).
(Also note that the warp scale changed between TOS and TNG, so "warp 5" in TOS is not the same speed as "warp 5" in TNG.)
7:20. The word I'd use is Aetherdynamic.
you’d think with the Galaxy Class ships they could just redesign the saucer section (since its detachable) to be more narrow. That would allow them to tweak the warp field to be more narrow as well to reduce the disturbance to subspace.
The Federation finds out about about a drastic environmental issue. Dedicates massive resources to overcoming it. Manages to overcome it within a decade even with a galactic war going on. I think there's a lesson for modern humanity here, just as Star Trek has always had.
Also I do love how most of this stuff is apocrapha but the series gives us just enough to rationalise that it happened off screen and not having it feel like the community pulled the theories out of thin air.
Characters in a TV show never had to deal with the real world economics of the thing.
7:17 The word you are looking for is "Warp field dynamics" use that.
Here's a much better Warp Speed System imo:
Warp 1: 300,000 km/s (The Speed of Light)
Warp 2: 600,000 km/s (2x the SoL)
Warp 3: 1.2 mil km/s (4x ..)
Warp 4: 2.4 mil km/s (8x ..)
Warp 5: 4.8 mil km/s (16x ..)
Warp 6: .. 32x
Warp 7: .. 64x
Warp 8: .. 128x
Warp 9: .. 256x
Warp 10: .. 512x
Warp 20: .. 524,288 x
Warp 30: .. 536,870,912 x
Warp 40 .. 549,755,813,888 x
Warp 50 .. 562,949,953,421,312 x The Speed of Light
Here we are using simple exponential doubling of the warp factor value, which means you don't need to cram all possible speeds under warp factor 10 (e.g. warp 9.99965) and the warp factor itself wont get insanely high since we aren't using simple linear scaling. By the time you reach warp 50 in this system, you can traverse the entire Milky Way galaxy in approximately 8.403 seconds, quick maffs:
Take 150,000,000 million LY (approx size of our galaxy from arm to arm)
Divided by the value given for warp 50: 5.63 x 10 ^12 (already formatted in units that are multiples of light)
= .000000266 Light Years per second (x 365)
= .000097256 Light Days per second (x 24)
= .002334133 Light Hours per second (x 60)
= .140047973 Light Minutes second (x 60)
= 8.403 Light Seconds per second (Journey Time)
Warp 100 approaches instant teleportation with travel times across the galaxy measured in the pico second range (it would take longer for you to press the warp button than it would take to complete the trip).
It’s nice to think that everyone came together to solve a problem that threatened all. It’s a lesson for us today who still deny the damage we’re doing to our biosphere.
I did wonder if the Federation would share research with much less advanced species who had just developed their warp drives or if those races crawling along at warp two were just left to their own devices. How much can you share, if it's just down to the shape of your ship the fair enough, if some pretty advanced tech is required then how much can you share.
I'm fairly sure independently inventing warp travel is one of the criteria for the Federation Ending the Prime Directive Mandate and contacting your species.
The uss venture in ds9 her nacelles are different , something that fixed the issue
Joking: "Well you see Rick it was a new episode and the universe is non-persistent so last week doesn't matter to this week or next week for that matter."
There was a re-tuning of the warp core technology in a later episode that fixed the problem they were causing with subspace. Data and Geordi were talking about it in Engineering one day. The scene was cut from the episode, but the new tech is still canon... No more warp 5 limitation needed.
I want them to undo the Warp 10 episode from Voyager and treat it like it never happened, just have them go past warp 9 and never talk about the weird frog thing.
Also Tom didn't evolve. He mutated.
Please, im trying to forget the details.@@richardarriaga6271
I like to think that they were able to keep using the galaxy class due to the knowledge that seven of nine provided about how the board cube could maintain its warp field. But that's just my head head cannon.
7:15 How about 'astrodynamic'? An 'aero'dynamic design means that something reduces or minimizes drag caused by air. While minimal, there is friction caused by dust and gas and other debris. In addition, 'astro'dynamic could indicate that the design reduces drag caused by dust, gas, or perhaps subspace itself.
Look, they either had to sweep that quickly under the rug or they needed to change the name of the show to Star Mosey.
Star Mince.
Star Waddle.
There was one mention in Voyager. They encountered a species that limited how fast vessels flew through their space because they claimed that it damaged subspace. Janeway was confused by the claim, suggesting that starfleet found out about the damage after Voyager was lost in the Badlands.
Other solutions might include either preventing ships from traveling too close, traveling in opposite directions, or traveling along common corridors. If a particular path can only be traveled once a week or once a month, it might prevent any damage. Maybe a 1000 km around a path at high warp, then automatically enter low warp near systems? These “gear changes” might be tough, requiring new models.
i think the issue was overblown. space is big. really big. and only a narrow corridor of carpet was able to wear it down. so as long as they don't have highway corridors to specific places, it's basically a non-issue. they just have to vary some flight paths and the damage is minimized and more spread out. only those places that needed corridors should need a speed limit.
It doesn't matter how you vary the flight path, if you're going from or to the same place, then you still always have to travel through _that star system's_ space to arrive there, so the obvious real danger is to the space immediately surrounding high-travel stars/planets, which you just can't avoid going through.
But it's also unclear how far the effects of warp travel on subspace actually reach beyond the path of the ship itself. It's possible that you could be doing some amount of damage to subspace in a very large radius the entire way, in which case there may not be any way to take a completely different path (which doesn't affect the same areas) without going _very_ far out of your way in the process.
The corridor was the first to show the signs, because it was a more extreme case than anywhere else, but we really have no way of knowing how close some other high-traffic areas may also have come too, before this was discovered. Who knows, Earth's own solar system might have been not too far away from a similar rupture occurring (since it must be one of the higher-traffic spots in the whole Federation), and we wouldn't even have known until it was too late...
It's also possible that that's another part of the reason the Warp 5 limit was largely forgotten about over time, because over time they were able to do more analysis of various areas of space and determine which areas were actually at serious risk and which ones weren't, and only restrict speeds in the specific areas where it was warranted, and relax it everywhere else.
@@foogod4237 but they don't usually warp within a star system's space. they often drop to impulse before entering. even the Borg respected that and started blasting things at Saturn
@@foogod4237 and space is big, really big, even if we're talking about star systems. plus, everything is always moving. star systems around the galaxy, the galaxy out into more space. so the space they tread on based on going to system to system is never exactly the same
My headcanon for that stupid episode is that the subspace damage in the area was caused by an Omega explosion in the distant past and since none of the people who actually know about Omega (like Picard and Riker) can talk about it, they just let the others come to their erroneous conclusion, 'fix' it by putting in a speed limit that is basically their regular cruising speed anyway and then ignore said speed limit for any reason needed.
And then when new, more advanced ships come online the need for the speed limit is gone since they 'don't damage subspace.'
It took them 10 years to fix the issue. I wish we were that efficient.
despite its updated drive, Voyager seems to have stuck to the speed limit fairly often as well. (especially when you calculate out the 70 year trip estimate. it works out to a speed just above warp 5. given the need for stops to refuel, resupply, and so on, warp 5 as an average fits well)
It was an interesting topic but I'm glad they eventually just dropped it. It really hampered a lot of story telling. I think by the 2400's like Picard era ships generally travel at the main cruising speed for the most part and only exceeding that when they really only need to like in battle or whatever.
I like the term Astrodynamic when describing ships of the latter 23rd century.
To me, given the Intrepid class predates TNG S7 and Starfleet had definitely begun R&D on the First Contact ships after Wolf-359 (see: Defiant), I get the feeling that Starfleet *did* know and were already undertaking efforts to fix the issue, and either the Enterprise didn't know or it was made clear that those efforts were still *Top Secret* at the time. The Warp 5 Limit was then brought in to throw the other powers off with regard to Starfleet's development.
I also get the feeling the Galaxys and other older designs had already been updated with improved drives that lessened the damage, but it was (again) top secret and probably buried in some manuals and forms that Geordi hadn't gotten around to picking through yet. Enterprise had certainly gone through at least two extensive refits by Season 7 and loads of smaller upgrades or retunings.
Also factor in what KevinTheID said, where the effects of this subspace damage was more apparent in this one sector of space and basically nonexistent elsewhere, as well as the sheer arbitrariness of Warp 5 being the limit, and it's not surprising that writers just didn't bother with it and most fans don't like to even talk about it.
You know, we could've put a speed limit into that corridor and ones similiar, but NOOOOOO, someone just had to suicide their point all over the place.
@@Sephiroth144if the intent was to represent the type of environmentalist who is incredibly loud while being incredibly wrong (eg: anti-nuclear) they definitely nailed it.
@@TimberWolf99 Only if the environmentalist in this example goes and causes a nuclear plant to meltdown
Though if you feel like it, we could get into whether nuclear power is the be all and end all or a stopgap while working on better renewable tech; also, if we're limiting it to current tech (i.e., fissile vs fusion)
@@Sephiroth144I don't feel like getting into that, actually!
@@TimberWolf99 Fair enough ;-)
I really thought that was a silly TNG episode. Anyway, the way I reasoned it is that that area of space needed that speed limit, so just go down to warp 6 when passing through there.
Given that Trek is actually talking about our real world through allegory and not the literal future, learning that they were destroying their world, making some "rule" to address it, and then completely ignoring it seems pretty spot on.
I seem to recall in the episode "All Good Things..." that Riker was now captaining his ship and orders it taken to warp 13. I take it they're solved the salamander problem with exceeding warp 10.
I was hoping that this was going to be the cause of the 29th century burn event in discovery. Instead of all dilithium going way, space itself was broken by constant Warp travel.
Oh well
Something like subspace damage from FTL travel if you go too fast would make for a very interesting element for an MMO/MMORPG or a 4x space strategy game.
If they use their blasters and target the polar base modulation of the photon Torpedoes, they’ll Access a high warp super space that’ll carry their warp shell
If I understand it correctly, because almost nobody pass through this corridor, the damage was self-repairing of sort. And with a open space the effect are less likely to happen. Also, it could be, for the vulcans, the limited warp speed at the time and open space configuration that makes them unaware of the problem
What's interesting is that, iirc, Dominion ships were generally slower at warp speed than most other civilizations (around warp 4 or 5 as I recall). This would make sense as the Founders thought in centuries rather than years, and would likely have been aware of the potential damage to subspace.
My interpretation of the Warp 5 speed limit was that it's a federation territory-wide limit.
I assumed in the case of Voyager, new warp technology aside, that if a federation vessel was outside of federation or allied territory, say trapped in the Delta Quadrant, the speed limit did not apply.
I also head canon'ed that this really only affected Starfleet/"Military" ships as well. My assumption is a majority of "civilian" travel is actually 5 or lower.
I always thought the problem was limited to that area of space and or space like it, not the galaxy at large. Since Warp travel had been around for 1,000's of years by that point for the local species and even longer for rest of the galaxy. If warp travel damaged subspace they would have seen a lot more effects of it around the galaxy. I thought the whole Warp speed limit was set for the corridor and not the galaxy itself. Since many many races used this corridor for trade like the Klingons, Romulans and Ferengi. So when it was not mentioned as problem again, it didn't seem hand wavy, since it was again for that area space.
I also would argue that by the end of the Dominion War most of the older ships are gone. We saw many times how the Excelsior and Miranda class ships didn't survivor many of the on screen battles. So by the end of the Dominion War the old classes were ether lost in war or decommissioned wrecks. To the point I would not be surprised if almost all the 23rd Century and most of early 24th Century ships never made it to moth ball fleets.
I thought they HAD talked about it at diferatn area's and times. I mean, before you mentioned the workaround for the ship or sub-space field layouts/warp-bubbles that those are things my mind jumped too. Basiaclly, they did end up solving a large portion of the problem.
I like this headcanon explanation.
✋ Dominion War
👉 Explosive Decommissioning
i feel like they should never have intruduced this issue in the first place and the fact that other powers down the line went along with it just seem strange to me
I'd argue, that older powers only made aware of the issue by 2370 is, because the katalyst of galactic warp travel basically was united Earth and consequently the rise of the united federation of planets.
I imagine that warp traffic rose immensly during the rise of the federation and significant more traffic would mean significantly more fallout because of it.
Wasn't that "Limit" set for only that one system?
I haven't seen that episode for a while now
but that was my understanding of the limit when I did see it.
Considering how the Galaxy-class was essentially a “cruise ship” in space, I’d imagine that many of the remaining ones would be used for less heavy-duty activities that still needed large storage space, such as transporting personnel & materiel to new colonies, parking a mini-starbase worth of scientists to an interesting anomaly, or maybe even going on leisurely tours across the Federation the way modern cruise liners do.
Would explain why we no longer see them working on the frontlines of exploration. They may be retired, but they’re retiring with style. 😎
“Warp 5 is a whole factor below…”
Depends on how big a factor, surely?