The warp drive has a natural physical or economical limit beyond which higher speeds are no longer possible. The reference work Star Trek Fact Files indicates this limit at warp factor 9.99. This is the highest conventional warp speed mentioned for a spaceship (Borg cube).
(p. 9), 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 6394.8c (approximately equivalent to TOS warp 18.56, or somewhere between warp 9.975 and 9.99 as given in the Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual (p.
Is warp speed in Star Trek faster than the speed of light?
The USS Enterprise then catapults away at warp speed, leaving behind streaks of light from the surrounding stars, because warp speed is faster than the speed of light. Throughout Star Trek and many other works of science fiction, warp-speed travel is essential for voyaging where no human has ever gone before.
Warp factor 10 was set as an unattainable maximum of a theoretical infinite speed, at which an object would occupy all points in the universe simultaneously (according to the new scale, reaching or exceeding warp 10 required an infinite amount of energy).
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, going faster than the speed of light is off-limits in the real world. For this reason, warp drives, like the one powering spaceships in Star Wars and other science fiction movies, have always been firmly in the realm of imagination — until now.
How long would it take to get to Alpha Centauri at light speed?
Imagine you want to travel to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The star is 4.2 light-years away, so it takes light from the Sun 4.2 years to reach Alpha Centauri, and vice versa.
Captain Kirk only has a warp six capable ship. This was enhanced by an alien to reach warp 14.1 in one episode, which is the highest speed ever depicted in Star Trek. All the way across Federation space at warp nine: 66 years.
The Enterprise-D made first official contact with a number of species (see below). 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 speed of about warp 9.9999999996.
A prototype designed specifically for deep space tactical missions, the USS Prometheus is the fastest ship ever operated by Starfleet. Like other Federation starships, the Prometheus obtains faster-than-light speeds by using a warp drive.
In the episode "The 37's", Tom Paris tells Amelia Earhart that Warp 9.9 is about 4 billion miles per second (using customary units for the character's benefit). That is more than 14 times the value of Warp 9 and equal to around 21,400 times speed of light.
Impulse is explicitly a sublight propulsion system. According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. 75–80), which is capable of a maximum speed of 0.92 times the speed of light (p. 2), or 617 million miles per hour.
The study of quantum mechanics shows that even empty space has energy and anything that has less energy than empty space has 'negative energy'. The problem (among many) is that no-one knows how to get negative energy in huge amounts to power the warp drives.
Certainly not, unfortunately. While a warp drive may be theoretically just barely possible (see Alcubierre drive ) it still requires exotic (negative mass) matter, which we have never seen and have plenty of reasons to believe does not exist.
So, Voyager was hurled into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's array, getting stranded at 70000 lightyears from Earth. This was supposed to be a trip of approximately 70 years (Caretaker (1.1/1.2)) at standard warp (probably Warp 5 = 125 * lightspeed).
How long would it take Voyager to reach Andromeda?
This means that even if we could build a spacecraft that travels at the speed of light (which is not even remotely possible with our current understanding of physics), it would still take more than 2.5 million years to reach Andromeda.
(TOS: "Is There in Truth No Beauty?") In actual fact, there is no purple band of 'negative energy' surrounding the rim of the Milky Way called the Galactic Barrier. However, the Milky Way is surrounded by the Galactic Halo, comprising of dark matter, star clusters, clouds of gas and a few lone old stars.
Kirk uses "Take us out," but as will become apparent from this list, Kirk doesn't have one particular catchphrase. Kirk orders his crew to initiate Warp Drive in many different ways, often specific to the situation he and his crew are in.
The warp drive has a natural physical or economical limit beyond which higher speeds are no longer possible. The reference work Star Trek Fact Files indicates this limit at warp factor 9.99. This is the highest conventional warp speed mentioned for a spaceship (Borg cube).
