Decomissioning the USS Samurai

QUOTE: Originally posted by maddafinga Now, I'm not a Trekkie, so forgive me if I'm wrong here. I always thought that when they were in warp drive they weren't in normal space and so dust and micro meteorites and such wouldn't be a factor. As long as they steered clear of singularities I'd think they were pretty much safe from everything. Now in normal space, all that would be a hazard, so in orbit and slow speed, in system travel would be pretty hazardous. I could be wrong, because I'm not really well grounded in the Trek universe, but that's the way I've always had it figured.

You could be right maddafinga. I do remember in the Motion Picture they had a problem with a meteorite in the warp worm hole, so by Star Trek standards there is a possiblity of objects in warp.

Hmmm, showing my lack of grounding in Star Trek I suppose. So the warp works like a worm hole and not so much by changing the ships relationship to space eh. Interesting. I love a well thought out faster than light speed travel method. Arthur Clarke and Larry Niven are the kings of that. Orson Scott Card did a very good job of it in Ender's Game as well. Sci-fi is wonderful.

Still catching up here. I know this was a while ago, but here's my ( very late )response.

Warp drive "shrinks" space immediately around the ship. Quick example:

You're driving a car down a straight stretch of road that's 50 miles long ( say in Nebraska or Kansas ). The warp drive would be a device that allows you to "compress" the road immediately around you ( but not you or the car )by a factor of, let's say, 10. With it off, you can cross the distance in 50 minutes if you're going at 60 mph. With it on, you cross it in 5 minutes with the odometer staying on 60.

Back to Trek, this is what warp drive does on a much larger scale. The ship, to an outside observer, crosses the distance at faster-than-light speeds while avoiding trouble from the Law of Relativity in its local space ( if you measured the speed of the interstellar gas and dust passing through the warp field for an "airspeed" reading, they'd be passing at far less than light speed ).

Here's the catch, and the potential cause for weathering on ships in Trek. The interstellar material's density is increased proportionate to the compression caused by the field. Even the best deflector device won't be 100% effective, so something will occasionally hit the hull. Minimizing the damage from these occasional hits is the reason for the aerodynamic shape of the ships in Trek, even if they never enter an atmosphere like the Voyager.

By the way, this is based on what Gene Roddenberry originally had in mind, and it was enough to impress Isaac Azimov, who stated that the idea of Warp was the only theory for faster-than-light travel that he'd ever encountered that used known physics to cheat Einstein. Since TNG, the franchise has changed things to make them more fantastic.

Ye gods, I need a life!

Super sharp Woozle. Good job