What if Voyager had been a Nebula-class?

[Mikey]

Thanks.

[Deepcrush]

I would have gone with "Beat like a frenchmen" but the Kazon fight back.

[stitch626]

Nice

[Deepcrush]

I was going for rude but oh well.

[Graham Kennedy]

Just out of curiosity GK, why did you rate the Nebula slower that the GCS?

The GCS was always described as being the latest and best in Starfleet - in Lonely Amongst Us for instance Picard calls it a "state of the art" vessel. Whilst by no means proof that it was the fastest necessarily, it seemed reasonable that it would be a little faster than a Nebula.

As for cruise speeds, the TNG TM gives three speeds for te GCS : "a normal cruising speed of Warp 6 until fuel exhaustion, a maximum cruising speed of warp 9.2 and a maximum top speed of warp 9.6 for twelve hours." I have always presumed that at speeds above normal cruise engine wear becomes significant, meaning they can only be run for a certain time before breaking down. I also presume that at very high warp the engines overheat.

Interestingly, warp 8 on the (official but not canon) TNG scale equates to 1,024 x c, which is just right for a 70,000 light year trip to last 70 years. That's the rationale behind my giving the Intrepid a normal cruise speed of warp 8, and whilst it's not canon, I always thought it was about as close as we could hope for.

At warp 6, by the way, a GCS should take 178 years to do what Voyager would have done in 70.

[Deepcrush]

It still seems that if the Neb and GCS are the same engine wise that they would have the same speed.

[Teaos]

Not really, you could slap a Nascar engine into my Ford Laser and it wouldnt go as fast as the pure Nascar would.

[Deepcrush]

If I took a small block out of a ranger XL and put it in a S10 they would travel at the same speed if not having the smaller S10 travel faster.

[Tsukiyumi]

Not really, you could slap a Nascar engine into my Ford Laser and it wouldnt go as fast as the pure Nascar would.

Actually, it would likely tear apart about a mile up the road.

[Deepcrush]

[Tsukiyumi]

Well, you can't just put any engine in any car.

Take this, for example.

[Tyyr]

The speed of the two ships is largely irrelevant. They predicted it would take Voyager 70 years to get home. Like it or not it was going to be a generational ship. Sure, some of the crew would likely survive to get home but they'd be very old, even by Trek standards. A few of the more long lived races like the Vulcans might have a decent life span after they arrive home but a lot of the crew would be dead or confined to quarters. As either an Intrepid or Nebula they'd both be looking for some lucky happenstance to get them home.

A Nebula would have had it a bit easier than an Intrepid but the journey would have been same with old Ahab in charge.

[Praeothmin]

Although having more power, more ressources, would increase the chances of finding shortcuts and use them, even if they're in enemy hands...

[Deepcrush]

Had Voy been a Neb, I doubt the resource issue would have been much of a problem. The GCS has supplies for like 5 years (IIRC) and the Neb would have similar supplies. That means that they would be able to push on for 5 years straight before having to stop. Where as the Intrepid seemed to need a resupply every 6 months or so.

Since Voy seemed to always be supplied and there would be plenty of time to find a rock somewhere to drill for resources. A Neb would just leap frog home.

[Reliant121]

besides the fact that a Nebula would be far more capable of defeating the DQ species of the week, and probably more capable of taking on borg vessels should it encounter them. Take into account that she would be better served in diplomatic functions. A statement I saw once which was a good way of putting it was "Diplomacy is basically saying nice doggie until you get a bigger stick." A Neb is a far bigger stick than an Intrepid.