Something that was sort of odd to me in the Borg episode of Star Trek was how slow the warp drive actually is. This also goes into the fact that it seems odd just how much free time the crew of the enterprise actually have and the fact that they never actually seem to be doing anything.
After Q teleports the Enterprise 7,000 light years away from the nearest Star Base captain Picard is quickly told that it will take over two years to reach. So, if we use two years to go 7,000 light years we will actually be overestimating the speed of the enterprise at its maximum sustainable warp. Two years is 730 days so if 7,000 light years takes two years then the enterprise can travel at roughly 9.58 light years per day. This means that a trip to the nearest star system over, Alpha Centauri, at just about 4 light years would take almost exactly 10 hours. A trip to NASA’s newly announced system with 7 earth sized planets, three of which are in the habitable zone, at just under 40 light years away would take 4 days and 4 hours, or let’s say that you want to visit the nearest black hole A0620-00A at a measly 2,800 light years away because that’s a 292 day long trip. Interestingly during The Next Generation they never actually visit a black hole so although their trips are longer than I would have thought they don’t seem to be going to places that are incredibly far away.
This does explain the question of free time. It’s very likely that everyone on the ship has incredible amounts of free time. The only people who wouldn’t be off during this time would be people in engineering and even they wouldn’t need to be there all the time. So in a galaxy 100,000 light years (28 years and 208 days of enterprise travel) across chances are pretty high that data would be practicing his Shakespeare plays and Picard would be reading Moby Dick.
Okay. I love the numbers. A lot. Here, I found a bunch of people on a message board lamenting this issue: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/51725/why-would-voyager-require-75-years-to-return-home (if you're curious).
ReplyDeleteNot a lot to say except: Yep. Inconsistency. Sometimes I think we forget how much fudging the numbers happens in the "fiction" part of science fiction.
I cant believe you did all this math
ReplyDeleteI rate this blog post a 2x+4ln(e)/10 where x=2
Is there more ships like the enterprise flying around, space is too big for one crew
Jackson this is Star Trek of course it's inaccurate. I'm sure Red Dwarf doesn't do any better. I'm pretty sure the crew members do sciency stuff most of the time, but they've gotta save some time from not having to make any food (or do dishes), etc.
ReplyDeleteThis math is so impressive especially because I don't really understand math at all. I really like your use of mathematical evidence to point out that there's a bunch of lazy bums chillin in warp drive.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you actually went into the science/math element of it, as we regularly make fun of the lack of actual science. I feel like more and more I realize how planned out and well developed the Star Trek universe is.
ReplyDeleteWow. Math. That's actually really cool I'd never thought to figure out how fast (or I guess sorta slow) they were going I just sort of went with it. But it does explain the free time.
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