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Don’t worry! You only need to be at your best 8 to 10 hours a day, every year of your life, with maybe a week per year off! Much more manageable :(
Best? They don’t pay the best, I don’t work the best. Act your wage.
20 years ago I worked at a shitty chocolate shop in a tourist town that put up a massive banner over the front of the building, opposing the effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
These assholes would have literal temper tantrums if I wasn’t running at full speed through the back of the shop with knee-high sugar boilers cranked full bore, which I could have easily fallen face first into, to fetch whatever the customers wanted in that moment.
Like, you fuckers want maximum effort from me, while actively opposing an increase in the minimum that you are allowed to pay me? Fuck all the way off.
I would sometimes pick up lunch at the Taco Bell across the street and do my best to keep the total below the $6.75 per hour I was being paid. That wasn’t a lot of Taco Bell in 2005.
says who?
Capitalists, I guess?
This is why you move at warp 1-3 at work and never let them know you’re capable of going higher than 5.
Did they ever address why some ships have gone over warp 10, even though hitting warp 10 means you occupy all points in the universe simultaneously?
They did address it, featuring salamander babies.
The scale changed from TOS to TNG. Then in All Good Things which is the only other time we’ve seen it presumably they changed the scale again.
And then back for Picard when the max sustainable is warp 9.99.
Nah AGT and Picard don’t happen in the same timeline. AGT was some sort of alternate timeline. But the events of the Prime timeline diverge enough from the AGT timeline that it makes more sense that the new warp scale was unique to the AGT timeline and didn’t happen in the Prime.
They certainly exist separate of each other. That we all have to call into question the timelines is half the fun.
Concerning times they exceeded warp 10 in TOS:
- “By Any Other Name” - ROJAN: And we’ll go faster yet. Increase speed to warp eleven.
- “The Changeling” - ENGINEER: It just won’t stop, Mister Scott. Warp eleven!
The narrative awareness and scaling has changed over time. I imagine largely due to people like us.
The TNG Technical Manual explains the change, it went from a cubic function to a logarithmic function along with some technobabble justification for why. There’s also some interesting background info and formulas on Memory Alpha, apparently the scale change happened in 2312 according to some magazine.
To be fair, it does make sense.
“Warp 9.975” (and beyond, for newer ships than the Intrepid) is getting a bit absurd
I forget which episode used it, but there was a graph of the “warp barriers” on one of the ships. Maybe Archer’s Enterprise. It’s on Google. Anyway the graph shows the different energy thresholds that must be output when moving between different velocity levels. Presumably every warp level was at least double the previous amount (edit, it’s actually exponential!). The chat can extend beyond warp-10 but there may be a cutoff point where the energy required to push into the next threshold is no longer an effective use of resources.
It’s inconsistent. Canonically in most Trek warp 10 asymptotically approaches infinity, which is why you see a lot of nine-point-nine-something when really high speeds come up, but every now and then the writers forget and you’ll hear about exceeding warp 10.
You also have things like transwarp, quantum slipstream, or the proto-drive which operate on different principles and don’t follow the warp curve. Their equivalent warp factors would just involve stacking up ever more 9s after the decimal point, but their speeds aren’t typically expressed in terms of warp.
I get that’s a joke but the real answer is fuel efficiency.
As velocity increases, air resistance increases quadratically. The formula is:
F = ½ × ρ × v² × Cd × A
Where: ρ = air density v = velocity Cd = drag coefficient A = cross-sectional area
So as warp speed increases, the drag force skyrockets and so does the fuel usage. That’s just basic aerodynamics.
They did the math! If there is air resistance in space…
Actually, kinda. Space is not a true vacuum, the particles per cubic meter is just really low, low enough that it’s basically close enough for most stuff humans do in space. But, IIRC, when you travel at relativistic speeds and keep closing in on light speed, these particles are enough that there’s a similar effect to air resistance in terrestrial travel.
I could be wrong though, it’s hearsay and I’m not even sure where I got this from. I think it might have been SFAA though.Edit: found this:
It seems to me that with space travel, the speed of a spacecraft would be limited by the matter in space due to friction. Is this true?
The density of matter in our Galaxy is about 1 particle/cm³ (in the disk, with the halo being less dense). The density of matter in intergalactic space (between galaxies) is about 2 x 10^-31 gm/cm³, mainly hydrogen. At these densities, I don’t think one has to worry about friction.
Dr. Louis Barbier
Does friction exist in deep space?
Yes, when two surfaces rub together in outer space, there will be friction. Friction is a surface effect and doesn’t depend upon there being air. There is also a force like air resistance from the very sparse gas in space, but it will be very, very small, since space is a very good vacuum.
Dr. Eric Christian
What part of the equation takes warp and deflector shields into account?
I need a minute to recover
And here I thought it was because of The Traveler that they didn’t travel over warp 9.
