Warp velocities ... and YOU!

[blacknblue]

A lot would depend on where Earth and Jupiter were in their orbits. If the were on opposite sides of the sun you would have more than twice the trip, since you would have to essentially circumnavigate the slar system.

[Rigil Kent]

Yeah, but how long would that take? I mean, is "maximum impulse" for a shuttlepod 10% the speed of light? 20%? 40 or 50%?

[Jedikatie]

Well, this is what it says in Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (referring to the impulse engines on Enterprise itself)--

On the aft centerline of F Deck is the impulse engineering section. This area is similar in layout to warp engineering on O Deck, but has additional parts shops and a standby engineering computer system to be used in the event of primary hull separation. The massive impulse deflection crystal dominates the upper center of the room, throwing a display of light patterns across the compartment. Energy carrier shafts connect the crystal to the impulse engines, which translate the intermix power into forward thrust for the vessel.

Five large fusion reactors are mounted between the impulse engines. Should hull separation occur, these furnaces take the place of the intermix system and drive their combined energies into the deflection crystal. In the unlikely event of a reactor failure, overload, or meltdown, the five fusion units are independently ejectable from the ship.

Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything about the maximum velocity at impulse...

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

According to my Star Trek Encyclopedia, full impulse is about equal to half the speed of light (0.5c).

[Rigil Kent]

That's set in TOS, right? Stands to reason that full impulse in ENT is a bit less (like maybe ... .35c or .4c), and a shuttlepod would have an even lower maximum capability (like maybe .25c)...

[blacknblue]

Not necessarily. Small ships are often just as fast as big ones. Small cars are just as fast as big trucks, or faster.

[Rigil Kent]

True. But the difference there, IMO, is that the larger, warp-capable ship could bring their warp field online, thus lowering their ... mass silhouette which would enable them to attain greater impulse velocities. A 'pod doesn't have that capability...

Still, it's something to think about. Of course, now I've got to do math to figure out how long a Jupiter to Earth trip at 'pod impulse speed would take...

[hth2k]

Assuming the impulse engines areanalogous to rockets where some mass flow is ejected from the exhaust to drive the vehicle forward. One has to work out how much thrust the engine creates and the mass of the vehicle. Given that one can calculate the accelloration rate in free space.

R x T =V
R= rate of accelloration
T= time
V=Velocity

A shuttlepod at Jupiter would leave the source point and accellorate either to the maximum velocity capible or half way whichever is more efficient for that trip.
At the half way point it turns and fires the engine to decellorate. Breaking is usually ignored in Trek.

Tsilkivsky's rocket equation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsk ... t_equation

Where is Rocket girl when we need her?

HtH

[blacknblue]

Braking is usually ignored in Trek.

Ain't it the truth. One of many inconvenient laws of nature that Trek ignores. But this one could be so USEFUL in storytelling if they only bothered to pay attention to it.

*sigh*

[Rigil Kent]

I think CX is going to school for this sort of thing, and Elessar too. Can one of you mathly types figure this out? If a 'pod can travel at .25c, how long would it take to get to Earth from Jupiter? I can't do it 'cause I'm mathematically challenged.

[CX]

I don't have any of the numbers I'd need to figure out. All you'd do is take .25 x c and there's your speed, and then you need the distance to Jupiter. Divide that distance by the speed and you should have time since meters/meters/second=meters*second/meters=seconds Then it's just a matter of converting from seconds into minutes and hours.

[CX]

Braking is usually ignored in Trek.

Ain't it the truth. One of many inconvenient laws of nature that Trek ignores. But this one could be so USEFUL in storytelling if they only bothered to pay attention to it.

*sigh*

I have a theory on that actually. Basically Trek science has found a way to defy Newtonian physics. The only time we've ever seen a ship obey them was when the E-D was caught in an energy-sucking trap that forced them to shut everything but thrusters down. Otherwise the only way they could stop would be to somehow vector the thrust of their impulse engines directly forward as they don't have impulse engines on the front of the ship.

[JadziaKathryn]

I don't have any of the numbers I'd need to figure out. All you'd do is take .25 x c and there's your speed, and then you need the distance to Jupiter. Divide that distance by the speed and you should have time since meters/meters/second=meters*second/meters=seconds Then it's just a matter of converting from seconds into minutes and hours.

"Just" gets me. "Just" with math. Har-de-har. It's never that easy to some of us.

Not trying to complicate things, but using a planet as a slingshot would speed things up considerably. Or at least, it does for the satellites launched now. Something about gravity... I never really knew what was going on technically with this stuff in astronomy. Mostly, I wanted to look through the telescope and get my lab science credit. But I remember that it can take a chunk off the transit time. Then again, impulse is a lot faster than whatever speeds scientists can get things to go now, so planet-slingshooting might be obsolete. (And, according to some episodes, it results in time travel. )

[CX]

Gravity can help prvided the velocity is already high enough because gravity accellerates objects by ... making them fall for lack of better description. The explantion I always hear is if you through a baseball fast enough that the projectile curve mates the curvature of the Earth, or something like that anyway. Basically if you have something moving pretty fast, it gets caught in the gravity well of the planet and accerates toward the planet, but it's going fast enough that it doesn't have a chance to fall into the planet's atmosphere because it "misses" the planet before it can.

As for the converstion factors, there are 60 seconds per minute and 60 minutes per hour, so that means to get hours from seconds, you would divide your answer by 3600. That's what I mean by "just".

[Rigil Kent]

I don't have any of the numbers I'd need to figure out. All you'd do is take .25 x c and there's your speed, and then you need the distance to Jupiter. Divide that distance by the speed and you should have time since meters/meters/second=meters*second/meters=seconds Then it's just a matter of converting from seconds into minutes and hours.

So ...
Speed: .25 x 299 792 458 m / s = 74 948 114.5 m /s
Distance: 588 000 000 km or 588 000 000 000 m.
588 000 000 000 m / 74 948 114.5 = 7845.43 / 3600 = 2.179 hours.

That's assuming, of course, they can do the maximum speed the entire trip which doesn't make sense...