

(covers information from several alternate timelines Multiple realities

"They say gossip travels faster than warp speed."

Warp factor was the primary means of measuring speeds attained using warp drive. The term was often shortened to warp when followed by its value, so that saying "warp six" was the same as saying "warp factor six." An alternative term time-warp factor was also used. (TOS: "The Cage") Light speed travel began at warp one, whereas lower fractional values sometimes measured sublight speeds or sublight factors. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Star Trek; ENT: "First Flight" display graphic) Spacecraft ordinarily traveled at a higher integer warp factor.

By the mid-24th century, warp ten became infinite velocity and thus unattainable by conventional means. (VOY: "Threshold") Because of this, extremely high warp speeds mapped to decimal values between nine and ten, such as warp 9.975. (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"; VOY: "Caretaker")

According to Geoffrey Mandel's reference book Star Trek Maps, the alternative term "time-warp" used in TOS : " The Cage " [1] is so called due to the time dilation effects that occur during warp travel. The term was also used in the final draft script of " Mudd's Women ", though it isn't in the final version of that installment Subspace communication speeds have also been given high warp factors in several reference materials.

Warp factor was one of the vocabulary words listed on the chart "A Tunnel in the Sky". This chart was seen in the schoolroom aboard Deep Space 9 in 2369. (DS9: "In the Hands of the Prophets")

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Warp factor vs. average speed

The following is a list of warp factor values that have been given a relativistic speed equivalent on screen. Average speeds are typically calculated from given values for travel time and distance. Some figures were depicted in charts and others given as statements in dialogue. See: Variations in relative speed for more information.

↑ Although Tom Paris clearly articulates the distance and time, it is unclear if he was engaging in hyperbole since these parameters indicate that, at warp factor 9.9 as specified, 75,000 light years can be traversed in less than 3.5 years. ↑ The Kelvans modified the USS Enterprise to travel at warp eleven through the galactic barrier . They did not clarify whether the same warp factor would have been used for intergalactic travel also.

Warp ten and above

23rd century

In the 23rd century, warp factors of 10 and higher were known as generally unsafe velocities. (TOS: "Journey to Babel") Speeds on the order of warp 15 were called multiwarp speeds. (TOS: "The Changeling")

Warp factor 14. In 2268, the Enterprise achieved a speed of warp 14.1 when the engine of the ship was sabotaged to overload by a Kalandan planetary defense system. At that velocity the ship came within moments of destroying itself. ( TOS : " That Which Survives ")

Warp factor 15. In 2267, the Nomad probe was armed with a weapon system capable of firing energy bolts that traveled at the speed of warp 15. ( TOS : " The Changeling ")

In the comic book "A Warp in Space" set in the late-2260s, Starfleet tested the prototype Warp 15 engine on several test ships. Zefram Cochrane also devised modifications to the USS Enterprise that allowed the ship to achieve the speed, though the ship was almost torn apart at that velocity. Enterprise

Warp factor 36. In 2270, the Enterprise encountered Karla Five's vessel, that was about to enter the Beta Niobe nova. At maximum speed, the ship was traveling at approximately warp 36. ( TAS : " The Counter-Clock Incident ")

Infinite velocity

In 24th century warp theory, warp factor 10 had been redesignated to correspond with infinite velocity. A vessel traveling at warp 10 occupied all points in the universe simultaneously. Warp 10 was also known as the transwarp threshold. (VOY: "Threshold") Warp 10 had also become a slang term referring to anything extremely fast. Kathryn Janeway made the observation in 2376 that rumors traveled fast on the USS Voyager. Chakotay agreed with Janeway, quipping at "warp 10." (VOY: "The Voyager Conspiracy")

The slang term was also used in the script for DS9 : " Sons and Daughters ", where Alexander Rozhenko's adrenaline was described as "pumping at warp 10." [2] , the redesignation of warp 10 as infinite speed occurred in 2312. The warp factor specifications prior to 2312 were rated by Starfleet using the Original Cochrane Unit warp scale, abbreviated as the OCU. Warp factors after 2312 use the Modified Cochrane Unit warp scale, abbreviated as the MCU. According to Star Trek: Starship Spotter pumping at warp 10.

According to Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (p. 55), the ship didn't actually achieve warp 10 or go beyond it, but it did travel at the extreme speed of about Warp 9.9999999996. This was confirmed in "Threshold" in which Tom Paris becomes the first Human to travel at warp 10.

Warp factor 10. Although considered a theoretical impossibility at the time, Tom Paris of the USS Voyager reached the warp 10 threshold in 2372, using shuttlecraft Cochrane, which was equipped with a transwarp drive and an extraordinarily rare form of dilithium discovered earlier that year. After it was discovered that such travel induced hyper-evolution, this technology was discontinued after the initial test. ( VOY : " Threshold ")

Alternate timelines

In the original future, which was changed by Jean-Luc Picard, around the turning point of the 24th century, warp factor values beyond warp 10 were again used to describe extremely fast speeds. (TNG: "All Good Things...")

Warp factor 13. The Medical Spaceship Pasteur under Captain Beverly Crusher's command traveled at warp 13 in the incident concerning the anti-time eruption in the Devron system. ( TNG : " All Good Things... ")

In the October 1995 issue of OMNI, science advisor Andre Bormanis stated the idea of warp factors beyond 10 in the alternative future was in a recalibration of the warp scale, as ships had gotten faster. Possibly warp 15 was set to be the transwarp threshold instead, according to Bormanis, and warp 13 in that scale would have been the equivalent of warp 9.95 of the previous scale. (3rd ed., p. 555) warp 13 from "All Good Things..." may also allude to some type of implementation of the Federation transwarp drive technology from VOY : " Threshold ". According to Star Trek Encyclopedia OMNI

Appendices

Related topics

Background information

Variations in relative speed

Although formulas to calculate a relative speed from a warp factor have existed in the writer's guides, these were rarely used for reference in the episodes and films. To explain the apparent discontinuities of relative speed equivalents for warp factor speeds, reference sources have given several explanations:

Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (p. 55) states the actual speed values of a warp factor are dependent upon interstellar conditions, for example gas density, electric and magnetic fields in different regions of the galaxy, and fluctuations of the subspace domain. Also quantum drag forces and motive power oscillation cause energy penalties to a ship using warp drive.

Star Trek Maps (p. 6) introduced a similar concept as the Cochrane factor, that influences the actual speed by multiplying it. It can be as high as a multiplication of 1,500 to the relative speed within the curvature of space caused by the interstellar dust and gas of a galaxy, and as little as 1 in the empty intergalactic void. In the vicinity of massive objects it is so high that disproportionately high speeds are created when approaching them, and they tend to result in the slingshot effect. Between the galaxies there is only the empty void, so the speed follows only the basic cubic formula. (see below) Within the interstellar medium of Federation space the average value for the Cochrane factor has been calculated to be 1292.7238. This value explains, for example, the ball park of the fast relative speed equivalent for warp factor 8.4 from TOS : " That Which Survives ": 8.43 × 1,292.7238 = 766,202.57 times the speed of light.

The slowing down effect of moving away from a source of gravity to the relative speed has been well established in canon. For example in Star Trek, the Enterprise is at maximum warp but is not moving in space at all, due to the gravity of a black hole behind it. Similarly, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the HMS Bounty engages warp speed while in the atmosphere of Earth, and it takes over two minutes in the film for the ship to achieve and break out of Earth's orbit, but reaches the Sun's event horizon only a few minutes later. In TOS: "Elaan of Troyius", a D7-class starship moving away from a star system at a speed better than warp 6 is moving slower than the speed of light. In some areas of space with unstable or disrupted subspace, it is impossible to use warp drive at all, as was established in such episodes as VOY: "Bride of Chaotica!" and "The Omega Directive".

Many examples of more subtle variations exist. For example, in "By Any Other Name", the Kelvans modified the USS Enterprise to accelerate to a speed of warp 11 in order to safely cross the galactic barrier. If this was also meant to represent the velocity of travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, a travel time of three hundred years would indicate a far greater speed than can be derived from the basic cubic scale from the writer's guide. Warp 8.4 was stated to be much faster in "That Which Survives" than warp 9.9 in "The 37's". In TNG: "Allegiance", warp 7 was stated to be about 55 times faster than warp factor 2, again confirming that fluctuations in the relative speeds exist that are not covered by the basic formula.

Star Trek: The Original Series

In his initial draft proposal, Star Trek is..., Gene Roddenberry established the maximum velocity of the starship as ".73 of one light year per hour". This would translate to a top speed of approximately 6,400c (equivalent to TOS warp 18.57, or somewhere between TNG warp 9.9 and 9.99).

The original warp scale was described in the writer's guide, The Star Trek Guide, (third revision, p. 8) as a set of warp factors and multiples of light speed that can be obtained by raising a warp factor to the third power. [3] This information appeared in widespread print in The Making of Star Trek (1968, p. 191). The book also states a shift in relative time occurs while traveling at warp, an hour might equal to three hours experienced outside the ship. (p. 198) In 1975, the warp scale given a more technical gloss in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual, now extended to include warp factors below 1. In 1977 Roddenberry again adopted the scale for the aborted Star Trek: Phase II series, but abandoned it for The Next Generation series. It was not until the 2003 episode "First Flight" of Star Trek: Enterprise, that the warp factor scale made an official on screen debut. Warp factors from 1 to 5 were depicted with their corresponding relative speed values on a large computer graphic.

The scale used by Starfleet in the 22nd and 23rd century is based on a geometric progression, where the speed of a vessel (measured in multiples of c, the speed of light) is equal to the cube of the given warp factor. The warp factor was calculated as follows:

$ wf=\sqrt[3]{\frac{v}{c}} $ with v being the speed of the signal or starship

being the speed of the signal or starship c being the speed of light (3.0 × 10 8 m/s) and

being the speed of light (3.0 × 10 m/s) and wf being the resulting warp factor

Or, to calculate speed (v) in terms of c, the formula would be:

$ v=wf^{3}c $

At warp 1, a starship would reach c; at warp 6, it would reach 216 c. This is a much slower velocity than initially proposed by Roddenberry.

Using this scale:

Warp factor Calculated speed ( c ) Distance traveled in 24 hours (light years) Travel time from Earth to Alpha Centauri 0.5 0.125 0.0003 34.64 years 1 1 0.003 4.33 years 2 8 0.022 197.69 days 3 27 0.074 58.57 days 4 64 0.175 24.71 days 5 125 0.342 12.65 days 6 216 0.591 7.32 days 7 343 0.939 4.61 days 8 512 1.402 3.09 days 9 729 1.996 52.07 hours 10 1000 2.738 37.96 hours 11 1331 3.644 28.52 hours

Star Trek: The Next Generation

The show's Writers'/Directors' Guide confirmed as early as March 23, 1987 that warp 1 remained light speed, but the bible designated warp 10 "the physical limit of the universe – beyond that normal time-space relationships do not exist and a ship at that velocity may simply cease to exist ." As in the classic series, warp 6 was the highest cruising speed, though the stated equivalent of a light year per hour was more in keeping with .73 in the format of 1964 than the 41-hour light year by the cubed scale, or the 22 hours it would take to traverse the distance in the final revision. At this early version of warp 6, however, the Enterprise would need 308 years to travel the 2,700,000 light years it covered in TNG: "Where No One Has Gone Before", consistent with Geordi La Forge's "over three hundred years" in the episode.

By the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, the warp factor scale used by Starfleet in the 24th century was based on a recalibration of the scale used in the Original Series. Rather than a simple geometric progression based on relative speed, warp factors were established to be based upon the amount of power required to transition from one warp plateau to another. For example, the power to initially get to warp factor 1 was much more than the power required to maintain it; likewise warp 2, 3, 4, and so on. Those transitional power points rather than observed speed were then assigned the integer warp factors. These transitional points were established to apply to the original warp scale as well in the canonical warp chart presented in "First Flight".

According to an article in Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 6, p. 44 by André Bormanis, this scale change occurred in 2312. A term was added to the above equation that caused the speed to rise slightly at lower warp factor, but to become infinite at warp 10. The ratio v/c at a given warp factor is equal to the corresponding cochrane value that describes the subspace distortion.

Gene Roddenberry stated that he wanted to avoid the ever-increasing warp factors used in the original series to force added tension to the story, and so imposed the limit of warp 10 as infinite speed.

For warp factors up to 9, the revised formula became:

$ wf=\sqrt[{\frac{10}{3}}]{\frac{v}{c}} $ with v being the speed of the signal or starship

being the speed of the signal or starship c being the speed of light (3.0 × 10 8 m/s) and

being the speed of light (3.0 × 10 m/s) and wf being the resulting warp factor

Or, to calculate speed in terms of c (up to warp 9), the formula would be:

$ speed=wf^{\frac{10}{3}}c $

In this case, warp 1 is equivalent to c (as it was in the 23rd century scale), but above warp 9 the speed increases exponentially, approaching infinity as the warp factor approaches 10.

Using this scale:

Warp factor Calculated speed ( c ) Distance traveled in 24 hours (light years) Travel time from Earth to Alpha Centauri 0.5 0.09921256575 0.0002718152486 43.64366517 years 1 1 0.002739726027 4.33 years 2 10.0793684 0.02761470794 156.8004995 days 3 38.9407384 0.1066869545 40.58603059 days 4 101.5936673 0.2783388146 15.55657987 days 5 213.7469933 0.5856082009 7.394022135 days 6 392.4980481 1.075337118 4.026644229 days 7 656.1353957 1.797631221 2.40872541 days 8 1024 2.805479452 37.07 hours 9 1516.381107 4.154468786 25.03 hours 10 ∞ ∞ 0

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

According to DS9: "Emissary" and "Battle Lines", the Bajoran Wormhole connected the Bajoran system to a region in the Gamma Quadrant 70,000 light years away. In "Battle Lines", Sisko stated that it would take Starfleet's fastest ship over sixty-seven years to cross the distance, suggesting the fastest ship in 2369 could travel at approximately 1,044 times the speed of light on a flight of that duration. The figure was further explained in the series bible, that it is more specifically a sixty-year journey at warp 9, [4] suggesting warp 9 would be about 1,167 times the speed of light.

In "The Sound of Her Voice", the USS Defiant, traveling at warp 9, is three days away from a planet. Increasing speed to warp 9.5 took almost a full day away from the travel time. This indicates that warp 9.5 is almost 50% faster than warp 9.

Star Trek: Voyager

In Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual (pp. 12 & 13) several other speed equivalents are established: Warp 9.6 is 1,909 times the speed of light. Warp 9.99 is 7,912 times the speed of light, which in turn is nearly three times the speed of warp 9.9. Subspace communication signals travel at warp 9.9999, a hundred times faster than warp 9.6, 199,516 times the speed of light.

In the pilot episode of the series, VOY: "Caretaker", it is established that "at maximum speeds" it would take seventy-five years for Voyager to reach Earth, which was at that time approximated to be 75,000 light years away. This would mean that the maximum speeds of the Voyager were around approximately 933-1,000 times the speed of light. According to the Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual, this calculation was meant to be based on an unrealistic non-stop direct journey at the speed of warp 9.6 (p. 14) or at warp 9.99 (p. 36). A realistic estimate, according to the manual, was that the journey would last somewhere between two and four hundred years when taking into account the required engine cooling time needed on such an extended journey.

According to Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual (pp. 4 & 27), a sector (about twenty light years) took four days to cross at warp 9.6, five days at warp 9 and about nineteen days at warp 6. However, in VOY: "The Voyager Conspiracy", the ship cuts three years off its journey by crossing thirty sectors, implying that they expected to travel more than a month (or approximately 36.5 days) to cross a sector.

In the episode VOY: "Flashback", Captain Kathryn Janeway stated that the current Starfleet starships in 2373 were twice as fast to what the USS Enterprise-A and the USS Excelsior were in the 2290s. According to Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual, (p. 13) the maximum rated speed of the ship was warp 9.975 or 3,053 times the speed of light. According to the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology (p. 180) and Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (p. 14), the maximum speed of ships like the Enterprise-A was warp 12 in the old scale, or 1,728 times the speed of light.

Star Trek: Enterprise

Officially and according to the large warp chart featured in "First Flight", the warp drive of Enterprise NX-01 used the TOS scale. Speeds in ENT: "Broken Bow", which were mentioned as traveling at 30,000,000 kilometers per second and going to "Neptune and back in six minutes", fit well into the ballpark of cubic warp factors between 4 and 5. In ENT: "Regeneration", Trip Tucker states that warp 4.8 (approximately 111 times the speed of light in the TOS scale) is double the speed of warp 3.9 (approximately 59), which is also a close enough margin of error considering it is an offhand comment made without navigational implications.

In the episode ENT: "The Expanse", a location was given to Jonathan Archer as to where to look for the Xindi inside the Delphic Expanse. The location was stated to be a three-month trip away from Earth at warp 5. In the next episode, ENT: "The Xindi", when Enterprise had arrived to look for the Xindi in that region, it was said they were fifty light years away from Earth. This indicates warp 5 would equal to a speed of approximately two hundred times the speed of light. This would fall closer to the TNG scale figure for warp 5 instead of the TOS scale figure of 125 times the speed of light estimated in the canonical chart.

There are, however, instances in "Broken Bow" that do not appear to be compatible with any of the basic scales. Zefram Cochrane notes in his recorded speech that the warp five engine would allow a ship to travel a hundred times faster than what they could in 2119. Warp 2 was later on established to be the maximum warp ships in the early 22nd century had achieved in ENT: "Horizon" and "First Flight". Warp 5, however, was only sixteen or twenty-one times faster than warp 2 in the scales. The journey from Earth to Qo'noS in four days was another instance. In either scale, Enterprise wouldn't even reach the closest star to Earth in four days.

In ENT: "Fortunate Son", it is stated that a warp three engine would allow a ship to travel ten times faster than warp factor 1.8. This doesn't work out in either of the basic formulas, unless we interpret the statement to indicate that a warp three engine would allow a speed of warp factor 3.9 in the TOS scale or 3.6 in the TNG scale. Warp factor 3 would be only around five times faster in either scale.

Alternate reality

In the alternate reality seen in Star Trek, the USS Enterprise traveled from Earth to Vulcan at maximum warp. According to ENT: "Daedalus", Vulcan is located slightly over sixteen light years away from Earth. According to background sources maximum warp of the ship was Warp factor 8. [5] Directly after the ship had accelerated to and attained maximum warp, Captain Christopher Pike ordered Pavel Chekov to give an announcement of the mission to the crew. At the end of the broadcast, Chekov stated that the ship would arrive within three minutes.

However, there was an unknown amount of time the ship spent accelerating to maximum velocity, so there is no accurate way to ascertain the total travel time of the Enterprise from Earth to Vulcan beyond the obvious implication that it was not an especially lengthy trip. By comparison to the prime reality, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when the crew was returning to Earth from Vulcan on board the HMS Bounty, Sulu reported they would arrive in 1.6 hours.

In Star Trek Into Darkness, the Enterprise and the three-times-faster USS Vengeance were capable of traveling from the Sol system through the Neutral Zone to the edge of Klingon space and back in less than a day. Co-writer Roberto Orci acknowledged Montgomery Scott's line about his time away from the Enterprise should have been something like "one week" rather than "one day". [6] As a comparison, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the internal clock of the USS Enterprise-A read 08:27 as the ship left Earth Spacedock and 16:12 when it arrived to the edge of Klingon space to meet up with Kronos One, for a trip of a little under eight hours.

Apocrypha

In the 25th-century timeline of the video game Star Trek Online, the warp speed scale appears to have been re-calibrated yet again to allow for the spread of new technologies such as a transwarp conduit network and quantum slipstream drive systems. Warp factors higher than 10 appear in the game, but only when a ship is using a quantum slipstream drive or exotic equipment such as Borg-enhanced "Assimilated Subtranswarp Engines". Speeds higher than warp 10 are classified as "transwarp factors", with higher numbers equating to faster speed. Borg subtranswarp engines allow ships to travel at an average speed of "warp 15", while activating quantum slipstream gives a temporary speed boost of up to warp 35.