Encounter at Farpoint

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CmdrLanc
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Encounter at Farpoint

Post by CmdrLanc » Tue Jun 21, 2016 5:41 pm

Ok, so the family and I just watched this episode Sunday Night, and I can't shake something.

When Picard was pushing the Enterprise to "Maximum Acceleration", they were quoted as traveling at Warp 9.5

As I understand this, this would be the speed of light times 10 to the 9.5(th?) power.

When he ordered the saucer to be separated, (which as I understand only has impulse engines), why did the saucer not go flying backward at catastrophic negative acceleration as soon as it exited the warp bubble and returned to relativistic space?

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Williams
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Re: Encounter at Farpoint

Post by Williams » Fri Jun 24, 2016 3:42 pm

Real answer is they probably weren't paying as close attention to the technicalities of the Trek universe at the time. Throughout TNG they started to get more consistent with it, but I think they were perhaps a bit flimsy at the beginning.

As an IC answer, I'd guess that although the warp core provides the power to maintain a warp field (i.e. constant power is required to maintain a constant speed), there would be something within the saucer section that would allow it to maintain its already-established portion of the warp field for a short time, letting it slowly dissipate as the warp core is no longer putting power into it. That's purely me making stuff up though that sounds plausible. It could even be that they use the captain's yacht (never seen in the series, but there on the model underneath the saucer) to let them maintain a warp field around the saucer to stop it from dropping out of warp immediately.

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Re: Encounter at Farpoint

Post by Bobby » Thu Jul 14, 2016 2:56 pm

I would've thought that still being inside the warp bubble would've continued to proper the ship? It was still within the warp bubble?

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