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From: ron@wjvax.UUCP (Ron Christian)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: so THAT'S a warp.
Message-ID: <240@wjvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Nov-84 12:54:24 EST
Article-I.D.: wjvax.240
Posted: Thu Nov  1 12:54:24 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Nov-84 20:42:46 EST
References: <279@haddock.UUCP>
Organization: Watkins Johnson, San Jose, Calif.
Lines: 47

****
From: jimc@haddock.UUCP
Subject: Re: so THAT'S a warp.
Message-ID: <279@haddock.UUCP>

>I'm not sure I agree, Ron.  For example, let's look at one 
>episode where the Enterprise encountered an energy bolt which 
>drove them, and I quote, "a thousand light years across the 
>galaxy." Since Kirk and the landing party were stranded on an 
>asteroid with the man-eating Lee Meriwether, Spock and Scotty 
>went zinging along back to rescue them.  On both the Enterprise 
>and the asteroid, the whole journey took only a few days.  To 
>have done the voyage in one year they would have had to average 
>1000 times the speed of light, which would have been warp factor 
>ten.  Now I have seen the enterprise go faster, a few times at 
>warp 11.  But, that doesn't come close -- to have done the 
>journey in, say, two days, they would had to have averaged 
>somewhere around 180,000 times the speed of light.  If v=w**3,
>we're looking at something in the neighborhood of warp 56.

>Oh well.  Not even Star Trek is perfect, a fact which we all are 
>going to have to confront some time.  
****

From me:

You're right, of course.  That was a major blunder on the
part of the scriptwriters.  There were quite a few others
dealing with speed.  (Why don't they hire someone who knows
about these things to proofread the scripts???)

I was thinking of the practicality of the Star Trek universe
in general, however, not looking for consistency in the television
series.  (An oxymoron?)  A federation of planets in a volume of
space that would take a few years to cross seems likely to me,
considering the distances we have to deal with.  I think the tendancy
would be to expand until the farthest colony was an inconvienent distance
from the homeworld.  Or until they met something nasty.  As technology
advances, speed increases, and the frontiers get farther away.
The federation starships would have to patrol the fringes of 'federation
space', as timely response to trouble would be impossible otherwise.
-- 

	"Trivia is important."		Ron Christian
	    (syntax bug)		Watkins-Johnson Co.
					San Jose, Calif.
					(...ios!wjvax!ron)