Warp Speeds List

[Praeothmin]

Well, it is detailed, and does fit in with elements from the shows, that is why I like it...

[2046]

The line from "The Visitor" was spoken by Melanie, a cute young aspiring author who stumbles through a swamp to meet her favorite author. This was not a galactographer or a Starfleet officer.

Put me on the spot to give a distance between two points in the middle of a sentence ... say, Washington DC and Guam... and I will be all over the place without looking it up. Most people probably can't even find it on a map (and a scary number can't find either).

I am not saying Federation education is as bad as ours, just that there is precedent for people not knowing geography so well that they can rattle off a distance chart.

As such, we are not limited to 200-999 light-years by that example.

[2046]

I just played a little game with myself, first guessing distance then Googling it.

With Washington to LA, I was off by 33%. With Washington to Guam I was way off and we will just leave it at that. With Washington to New Orleans I was off by almost 1/5th.

I was always within an order of magnitude but then I know the size of Earth thanks to prior discussions. And yet I invariably underestimated badly even on places I can pinpoint on a map instantly.

If I were to apply this to Melanie, she probably has a vague sense of distances between core Federation worlds but beyond that she is toast.

[Praeothmin]

I learned that my country is close to 6000 km long (actual verification is 5514, less than 10% off), and remember this from my early Geography classes in school...
I easily accept that the character isn't exactly precise, yet if she was this far off, I find it hard to believe Jake, intimately familiar with DS9 and Bajor, would not at least correct her on the terms ("HHm, no, thousands in fact)...

So while Bajor may not be at 200LY from Earth, I very much doubt it is 4000LY away...
That's an error of what, 95%?
I would guess my home city of Quebec is, say 5000 km away from Trinidad, and net research says it is 4127km, so now I have a 20% error, but even if it had been 40%, that would be the difference between 200 LY and 240 LY, not 200 and 4000...

This site does a great job of tackling the many discrepancies in the many series, IMO...

[2046]

Why would he correct her? If I am a storyteller telling you a remarkable story where distance is not relevant, am I going to stop and correct your vaguely-accurate-but-imprecise largely irrelevant mention of a distance? Not unless I am a jackass, I'm not.

I realize we're all too used to discussing distances given in briefings or strategy sessions amongst military officers engaged in life-or-death decisions, but this is a dying artist civilian telling a story to some hot crazy artist broad before his morning suicide. I rather doubt he was keen on dwelling on the minutiae.

[2046]

Also, 200 vs. 4000 is not really proper.

It is 200ish between Deep Space Nine and Deep Space Station K-7. Cardassia, however oddly, seems to border the Federation and Romulus, as well as having some border or such with the Klingons. It is not shocking to consider that two Federation "deep space" installations might be that close.

As for 4000, though, after reviewing the text I suppose that could be accurate:

"Who could even be sure the village still existed? There had been an exodus from this part of Earth over two hundred years ago; who knew what might've happened to those who stayed behind? They had probably become blended into contemporary human society, losing the ancient ways. At least, that was the fear that had driven his father's tribe to leave Earth and settle on a remote planet several thousand light-years away, hoping to find a place where they could preserve their customs and rituals."

However, the context here may give some leeway to lower the figure insofar as DS9 is concerned. I would not be opposed to an estimate of 2000 light-years for Bajor-Earth.

[2046]

This site does a great job of tackling the many discrepancies in the many series, IMO...

That site is terrible because he tosses out canon in order to keep everything in line with Tech Manual velocities, which is entirely wrong-headed.

[359]

Using 2,000 ly would put the speeds at 547,845c to 273,922c.

-----------

TNG: "Descent Part I":

LaForge: "Our current theory is that the Borg have established several transwarp conduits through subspace. A ship, when entering the conduit, is immediately accelerated to an extremely high warp velocity. It's like falling into a fast moving river and being swept away by the current."
Picard: "How fast would a ship travel through one of these conduits?"
LaForge: "We don't know. Normal subspace limitations don't apply to transwarp variables. But I'd say based on the distance we covered during our trip through the conduit, the speed would have to be at least twenty times faster than our maximum warp."
...[They travel through the conduit]...
Picard: "Report."
Riker: "Navigational sensors show that we've traveled sixty five light years from our previous position."

The Enterprise enters the transwarp conduit at 35:43 and everything settles back down at 35:50 for a travel time of 7 seconds. The distance traveled is said to be 65 ly for a transwarp speed of 293,056,807c.

Transwarp is stated to be about twenty times faster than maximum warp of the Enterprise, warp 9.6 (9.65 TNG: "Q-Who?"; 9.6 TNG: "Best of Both Worlds Part I"), which puts maximum warp at a speed of 14,652,840c

Warp: maximum, 9.6; Time: (7*20) 140 seconds; Distance: 65 ly



VOY: "Dark Frontier Part II":

Mangus: "It's been three hours and the cube hasn't found us yet. As long as we can keep masking our warp trail."
Erin: "The entire Collective knows about us by now. They'll send more ships."
Mangus: "The nebula's too dangerous. We've had close calls before. This is no different. Remember when the transporters failed?"
Erin: "And you had to spend the night in a maturation chamber, with fifty two neonatal drones. A transwarp conduit, two point three light years starboard. It's a cube heading right for us."
Magnus: "Time to intercept?"
Erin: "One hour, maybe less."

Borg cubes are shown to be capable of traveling around the same speed as the Enterprise-D during normal warp flight (9.65 TNG: "Q-Who?"; 9.6 TNG: "Best of Both Worlds Part I"). However we do not know what warp factor they are traveling at in this instance.

A distance of 2.3 light-years is given with the cube due to arrive in one hour or less. Assuming the Raven is stationary (it isn't), this is a minimum speed of 20,157c, even more if the Raven is traveling away from the cube.

Warp: Unknown, 9.6 max; Time: <1 hour; Distance: >2.3 ly

[Praeothmin]

The Enterprise enters the transwarp conduit at 35:43 and everything settles back down at 35:50 for a travel time of 7 seconds. The distance traveled is said to be 65 ly for a transwarp speed of 293,056,807c.

Transwarp is stated to be about twenty times faster than maximum warp of the Enterprise, warp 9.6 (9.65 TNG: "Q-Who?"; 9.6 TNG: "Best of Both Worlds Part I"), which puts maximum warp at a speed of 14,652,840c

Warp: maximum, 9.6; Time: (7*20) 140 seconds; Distance: 65 ly

Except for ST: V, such high speeds have never been seen by any Federation ship, which leads me to believe that the actual time in Transwarp was not just 7 seconds...

We have multiple instances of many hundreds c in TNG and TOS, as well as DS9, and ST: First Contact even shows us over a million c at the beginning, but 14 million c?
Then Voyager should not have lasted even more than a year, if only...

[359]

The Enterprise enters the transwarp conduit at 35:43 and everything settles back down at 35:50 for a travel time of 7 seconds. The distance traveled is said to be 65 ly for a transwarp speed of 293,056,807c.

Transwarp is stated to be about twenty times faster than maximum warp of the Enterprise, warp 9.6 (9.65 TNG: "Q-Who?"; 9.6 TNG: "Best of Both Worlds Part I"), which puts maximum warp at a speed of 14,652,840c

Warp: maximum, 9.6; Time: (7*20) 140 seconds; Distance: 65 ly

Except for ST: V, such high speeds have never been seen by any Federation ship, which leads me to believe that the actual time in Transwarp was not just 7 seconds...

We have multiple instances of many hundreds c in TNG and TOS, as well as DS9, and ST: First Contact even shows us over a million c at the beginning, but 14 million c?
Then Voyager should not have lasted even more than a year, if only...

Yes, it is the highest value I have seen, but as I said on page two: nothing requires that all of the evidance be consistent, there will be values to high and values to low, that in no way invalidates them just on their own.

As for the transit time, to was fairly clearly seven seconds, there is a margin for more, but that would not fit well with how events were described on screen

[Praeothmin]

I hate using only the highest values as a capability instead of the outlier they are because of the VOY example I used, in the case of Warp speeds...

If Federation ships were capable of 14 million c, then VOY's trip home could have been done in 9.67 hours...
Since most Fed ships can use their engines at Max for close to 12 hours, then the trip home would have been a cake walk...
Even if the transit and lack of accurate star charts would have forced VOY ten times slower, then 96 hours would have been necessary to go home...
If a thousand times slower, then 9672 hours, or 403 days would have been necessary...
A far cry from the 70 years they estimated...

[Cocytus]

Voyager was seldom shown traveling at maximum warp. "Distant Origin" has Gagen and Veer encounter Voyager going warp 6.2 as I recall. In "Pathfinder" they try to direct the MIDAS array to Voyager's assumed location based on an average speed of warp 6.2 again.

As I remember, "Caretaker" suggests the warp core had micro fractures, and the ship was only equipped for a short trip anyway. The much larger E-D, while having a lower maximum speed, had far greater endurance. Geordi expected the ship to average 9000 c on a trip back from 2.7 million light years away in "Where No One Has Gone Before.".

[359]

I hate using only the highest values as a capability instead of the outlier they are because of the VOY example I used, in the case of Warp speeds...

I realize that the values I have listed recently have been rather high ones, but that is merely a coincidence. I agree that one should not just take one set of values and use it as if it were the one and only correct set. Part of what I wanted to do with this thread was to get a large collection of most if not all of the warp speed-references in Star Trek so a valid analysis could be made that would take almost everything into account. So far it has done fairly well with a little over 40 solid episode/movie derived examples for various warp speeds, now ranging from ~800c to ~14,000,000 for high warp.

I apologize if my recent values have appeared to be attempts to push the high-end, but that has just been what I have stumbled across recently. For example, the TNG: "Descent" instance I learned of from my brother who watched the episode, knew I was working on this, and let me know to look in that episode. Then the VOY: "Dark Frontier" instance was from when I went looking for more transwarp values to put the 20:1 ratio to good use, but that turned up instead. Most of the values I find are by occasionally watching an episode or sometimes picking a random transcript and searching for "warp", "light" (as in light-years), "parsec", etc...

Yes, this is clearly a very large value not fitting with most others, but it is not a complete outlier, there are other values which sit near it (on the scale of millions of c). Certainly it is not in itself representative of all of Star Trek. But it is mentioned in canon within a wide range of data, so it can not be just ignored.

If Federation ships were capable of 14 million c, then VOY's trip home could have been done in 9.67 hours...
Since most Fed ships can use their engines at Max for close to 12 hours, then the trip home would have been a cake walk...
Even if the transit and lack of accurate star charts would have forced VOY ten times slower, then 96 hours would have been necessary to go home...
If a thousand times slower, then 9672 hours, or 403 days would have been necessary...
A far cry from the 70 years they estimated...

One thing that irks me is how people keep using the "But! But Voyager..." argument as to why nothing else could be correct. To be sure it is an important value as it is referenced multiple times, and others back it up. But that does not mean that other evidence cannot be entered into consideration.
And I do not intend this to be directed at you specifically, I have just seen it far to many times recently and felt the need to say this.



I sincerely hope this clears up most of our disagreement here. :)

[2046]

Indeed. This thread is basically like an initial collection of evidence at a crime scene (a 500-ish hour long crime, mind you, but still).

We all know some ready examples that have been previously popularized, but none of us knows them all. And I don't think anyone here has suggested that we have to or should use the highest values. Personally, my goal is to develop a "happy median" value for assorted warp factors, and the more trustworthy examples we have, the better those values will be.

This is good work being done by 359, and other contributors to the thread, collecting data from the primary source material. This sort of thing is entirely too uncommon these days.

And as we've already seen mentioned, velocity can have interesting results on other matters, such as in the case of Star Trek Dimension which unreasonably constrains territory size by limiting velocities to non-canon values and tossing out the rest. I think it would be much better to have canonically-correct, reasonably-medianized values for such a project.

[Praeothmin]

Voyager was seldom shown traveling at maximum warp. "Distant Origin" has Gagen and Veer encounter Voyager going warp 6.2 as I recall. In "Pathfinder" they try to direct the MIDAS array to Voyager's assumed location based on an average speed of warp 6.2 again.

As I remember, "Caretaker" suggests the warp core had micro fractures, and the ship was only equipped for a short trip anyway. The much larger E-D, while having a lower maximum speed, had far greater endurance. Geordi expected the ship to average 9000 c on a trip back from 2.7 million light years away in "Where No One Has Gone Before.".

Indeed, VOY did indeed have a Captain going slowly, exploring any nook and cranny she could, but I don't remember the micro-fracture issues, only the power shortage...
But still, if Maximum Warp for a slower ship than VOY, who could do Warp 9.975 as its maximum cruize speeds, is 14 million c, then how long would the actual trip back have taken?

Even if there were cracks forcing VOY to go 10 000 times slower, that's just a 10 year trip, not 70 years...

Yes, this is clearly a very large value not fitting with most others, but it is not a complete outlier, there are other values which sit near it (on the scale of millions of c). Certainly it is not in itself representative of all of Star Trek. But it is mentioned in canon within a wide range of data, so it can not be just ignored

Oh, I agree, just as I agree with Robert:

I think it would be much better to have canonically-correct, reasonably-medianized values for such a project.

I myself have used the higher end examples in my debates vs the hard-headed, evidence ignoring SWST (aka SciFiFan at SBC) to show that SW didn't have the speed advantage Warsies have claimed over the years, at least not in known territory...

I apologize if my recent values have appeared to be attempts to push the high-end

Ok, that's a bit how I had read this, which surprised me because you've always come across as fair and moderate in the numbers you used...

One thing that irks me is how people keep using the "But! But Voyager..." argument as to why nothing else could be correct. To be sure it is an important value as it is referenced multiple times, and others back it up. But that does not mean that other evidence cannot be entered into consideration.

But... But Voyager... ;)
I agree, and I also believe that the many explanations used over the years for why Voyager was so slow are valid, namely the lack of accurate Star Charts, energy issues, needing to prevent Warp Engine stress failures, lack of spare critical parts, and most importantly: Dumb fucking Btich as a Captain who's more interested in exploring new dangerous territories than going back home...
I think it's Robert who, on his website (or is it Mike D here?), talks about how Captain Ransom, using only a different fuel type, was able to get his small, Science ship to go up over 250 000c...

Personally, my goal is to develop a "happy median" value for assorted warp factors, and the more trustworthy examples we have, the better those values will be.

Agreed!