Speed of the Excelsior

[Giuseppe]

This has probably been touched on before, but looking through the DITL starship articles I decided to actually use the speed calculator for a change. I was curious how the different starships measured up to each other in terms of maximum cruising speed (in c).

I was a bit surprised when I noticed that the standard Excelsior's' top cruising speed of warp 8.2 TNG of 1100c (1111.8 to be precise) is over 3 times faster than the refit Constitution's top cruising speed of warp 7 (TOS scale) which translates into 343c. The Miranda (refit) also has a top speed of warp 6 TNG, or 392.5c. This still is almost three times slower than the Excelsior.

By comparison, the Galaxy class is only about 50% faster than the standard Excelsior (1631.8c or warp 9.2 TNG), despite the 3/4 of a century that separate their initial commission dates.

What am I missing here? With these figures I can't imagine how the Excelsior's propulsion system could be dubbed a failure if it produced a ship that was 3 times faster than the previous generation of vessels. Actually now that I'm at it, the Constellation class, despite also being an old design, is still capable of 1024c at maximum cruising speed. So again it seems a bit too fast. Now I know I must be missing something.

Then again I might be taking those articles too seriously.

[Graham Kennedy]

The idea ties in to the thoughts I had on transwarp drive. It's largely speculative (though the speculation is rather more rooted in canon than many others).

My thinking was that the Excelsior transwarp worked by having really powerful warp engines that allowed the ship to approach the Warp 10 barrier as closely as possible, whereupon the transwarp system would be activated and "jump" the barrier into the transwarp realm. This is directly analogous to how the TNG TM describes ships going to warp - it says that they approach the lightspeed barrier and then "jump" over it into the warp realm.

My suggestion was that the "jump the barrier" part of the system failed, and hence the Excelsior was never the gigantic revolution in propulsion that they were aiming for. But they could then simply strip out the transwarp element and be left with a ship that was still an awful lot faster than any conventional ship of the time.

As well as fitting in with what we know of transwarp technology, this also serves as a handy explanation of how the Excelsior could go from being ready for trial runs in ST III, to then failing those trials, to then being in service in an externally unchanged form eight years later. By my suggestion the ship doesn't need any great redesign to replace the failed transwarp system with a conventional warp drive, because the transwarp system IS a really good conventional warp drive with an extra system attached. When that extra failed they're left with a ship that's still perfectly serviceable.

As for increases from then on, well there's really no reason why they have to keep getting leaps and bounds faster. My view is that they pushed the tech really hard for the Excelsior and then the Ambassador/GCS/Nebula are evolutions of that Excelsior tech, at least in propulsion terms - the Nacelle design of all three classes is largely similar, after all. Hence they get better, but not in huge jumps.

[Captain Seafort]

To add to Graham's point, it's not uncommon for ships' maximum speeds to jump a lot in a short space of time, only to stagnate. Warship top speeds increased from about 15-20 knots if they really pushed it at about 1900 to a bit over 30 knots in the late 30s. They've been stuck there ever since.

[Giuseppe]

Aha, thanks for the replies.

[Graham Kennedy]

To add to Graham's point, it's not uncommon for ships' maximum speeds to jump a lot in a short space of time, only to stagnate. Warship top speeds increased from about 15-20 knots if they really pushed it at about 1900 to a bit over 30 knots in the late 30s. They've been stuck there ever since.

Until now with the LCS's which can do 40+.

Actually it's an interesting parallel. There's no inherent reason we couldn't design a destroyer to do 40 knotts - there have been destroyers as far back as World War II that were faster than that, after all. Similarly there's no reason why we couldn't build fighters that can do Mach 4 - again, there have been aircraft that fast around for decades.

But we don't build military things to go as fast as we can make them go. Somebody somewhere sat down and worked out that 30 knotts plus or minus a few was the optimal balance between half a dozen different factors (engine power, fuel economy, hull shape, cost, whatever else), and there it sits. Just as somebody worked out that fighters rarely need to go supersonic and very rarely need to do Mach 2 or more, and so why spend the money to let them do it? it's even more prevalent when you factor in that ships often work in a fleet, so being faster than everybody else is often rather pointless as you all have to travel together more often than not.

Starfleet doesn't really seem to work that way. Every generation of ships gets faster than the generation before, always has. it's like Starfleet would think that a new class that was the same speed as the last is a personal affront or something.

[Mikey]

No, the Affront are a different SF universe altogether.

Seriously, one of the main limiting factors on ship speed which you mention isn't a factor in the 'Trek-verse. Starships very commonly operate alone for great lengths of time, so limiting speed to that of a task group or fleet isn't a concern. Fuel efficiency may be, but the yield/fuel mass ratio of starship M/AM reactors seems to be so large that fuel efficiency or reaction efficiency doesn't really need to be a pressing concern either.

[McAvoy]

To be honest warship speed stagnated pretty much before the introduction of turbines, small tube boilers and oil.

Speed of a warship is directly dictated by it's role. Battleships were traditionally slow because of the compromises designers had to deal with. That and when it comes to a large battlefleet, a fleet is as fast as it's slowest ship. So a 21 knot speed was used throughout the world which was established by the HMS Dreadnought. Even though later models definitely had the space and technology to make a ship a few knots faster. Then in WW2 the treaty battleships and later designs were averaging 27+ knots with the fastest being 32.5 knots of the Iowa.

Also speed is extremely expensive on a warship especially one with limitations whether it being physical dimensions or tonnage. Take for example, the difference between the South Dakota II class and the Iowa class. Iowa class being 10,000 tons heavier, with the same armor scheme, longer barrel and six knots of speed.

Besides is there any mention in TNG, whether or not the E-D was the fastest in the fleet? Also what Graham forgot to mention is that that data that you have used is based on current technology base. Meaning late 24th century, not 23rd technology. The Excelsior class could have been upgraded since then.

[Lighthawk]

Starfleet doesn't really seem to work that way. Every generation of ships gets faster than the generation before, always has. it's like Starfleet would think that a new class that was the same speed as the last is a personal affront or something.

Well it makes more sense on a galactic scale to keep upping the speed. A modern navy increasing its average speed will at best save a few days. For the Federation, steadily increasing their average warp speed is something that can save weeks to months worth of travel time.

[Graham Kennedy]

I wonder if it will ever plateau, so we get ships that stay at much the same speed from then on, for a century or two.

Probably not, I would guess. We know there is an awful lot further they can go, what with transwarp and all. And besides, the writers seem to have it in their heads that ships get faster with each new class.

Have to say, if we ever see any post-Voyager stuff I really hope they give up on the whole Warp 9.999 business. It's dumb and it sounds silly. Call it transwarp and start going at warp 11, 12, 13, 14 already.

[Mikey]

If we do see 'Trek continue, the numbering convention would almost have to change. It's way too unwieldy to keep saying, "Ahead, warp factor 9.99798654382..."

[McAvoy]

I wonder if it will ever plateau, so we get ships that stay at much the same speed from then on, for a century or two.

Probably not, I would guess. We know there is an awful lot further they can go, what with transwarp and all. And besides, the writers seem to have it in their heads that ships get faster with each new class.

Have to say, if we ever see any post-Voyager stuff I really hope they give up on the whole Warp 9.999 business. It's dumb and it sounds silly. Call it transwarp and start going at warp 11, 12, 13, 14 already.

I do think it would plateau at least with the conventional M/AM warp drive. No direct evidence for that but just a feeling. Slipstream, transwarp or whatever would be be the next FTL drive.

That is where the comparison ends with naval ships. There is a limit which large vessels can move through the water. CVNs on average are actually slightly slower than the conventional ones and there are other ships in the fleets which are noticeably slower than even their WW2 counterparts. We won't see a Cruiser doing 60 knots in 2050 for example, no matter how cool it would be to see a huge ship 70 MPH.

[Graham Kennedy]

I did some nosing around and discovered the Fantasque, a French destroyer in World War II that could do 45 knots! Pretty damn impressive, and they're still the fastest destroyer class ever built.

One thing I notice about Starfleet ships is that the power systems seem to take up an absolutely tiny amount of space. If they wanted more generating capacity for the drive system, it should be pretty trivial to provide it.

[Tyyr]

Well when the TNG warp scale was conceived it was a great idea. Logically such an exponential curve would make further increases in top speed more and more difficult. Ideally you'd see ships slow down their rate of speed increase until it pretty much stopped with the current tech. The problem is the writers never paid any attention to that and each new ship got another nine slapped on it's top speed.

[Graham Kennedy]

I read somewhere - don't ask me where, I've long forgotten - that one thing Gene didn't like about the original series was the use of ever higher warp factors. Examples like when the Kelvans made the E-nil go at Warp 11, Bele made it go at Warp 10 in Let That be Your Last Battlefield, Nomad made it go at Warp 11 in The Changeling, the notorious Warp 14.1 in That Which Survives - he felt that the scale encouraged writers to get into the habit of throwing big warp numbers around as a way to generate tension. So he told them to make Warp 10 a "warp barrier" that nothing could exceed, figuring that with the E-D able to do 9.6 there just wasn't much room to do a lot more.

Unfortunately the scale was drawn with Warp 10 as infinite speed rather than an actual finite barrier, so the same old pattern repeated only with strings of numbers after the decimal point.

As I say, if it were me then I'd drop the Borg version of "tunnel transwarp", and just have ships start having a top speed of warp 11, 12, etc.

[Tsukiyumi]

As I say, if it were me then I'd drop the Borg version of "tunnel transwarp", and just have ships start having a top speed of warp 11, 12, etc.

The Voth used a non-tunnel type of transwarp, IIRC.