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Besides the ample amount of times it was said to increase to a higher impulse, meaning it must have first reached a lower one. It would be pointless saying increase to 'maximum impulse', if you haven't already reached 1/4 impulse (or any other significant fraction), especially if acceleration is so utterly low that you won't even reach just 1/4 impulse for another 15 minutes. Such as when coming out the nebula in Best of Both Worlds, Riker says something like 'full impulse the punch it up to warp 9'. Why would it he possibly say full impulse? He wouldn't reach full impulse for another 45 minutes if acceleration were 30 km/s/s.

That would be true if "full impulse" referred to a speed. If it refers to an acceleration then there's no problem.

Captain Seafort wrote:That would be true if "full impulse" referred to a speed. If it refers to an acceleration then there's no problem.

When would ships ever want anything other than maximum acceleration, if it's only a miniscule 30 km/s/s? I'm thinking again specifically the one where the probe makes Barclay super intelligent. Why would they accelerate at 1/4 impulse (7.5 km/s/s)?!

That's an easy one - fuel conservation. If you don't have to be somewhere five minutes ago then why burn fuel unnecessarily?

Besides, we canonically know that impulse isn't an acceleration - it's a speed (max impulse = .25c). Why isn't it an acceleration? Because acceleration is redundant as attaining any sublight velocity is near instant. It's the only explanation.

We know a) All my points addressed 2 posts ago only work if impulse is a velocity.
We know b) Impulse is not acceleration, and is a velocity.

Thorin wrote:Besides, we canonically know that impulse isn't an acceleration - it's a speed (max impulse = .25c).

Source?

Why isn't it an acceleration? Because acceleration is redundant as attaining any sublight velocity is near instant. It's the only explanation.

Then why do they spend most of their time wallowing around at a few km/s?

Captain Seafort wrote: Source?

In TMP they reached warp 0.8 purely on impulse. We don't know precisely what that is, but we must assume it's going to be a large fraction of lightspeed. The Warp drive was not involved, ergo it was the impulse engines achieving this speed near to 'c'.
It's also stated in things like the tech manual which many take canon. But I knew you wouldn't accept this so I gave the above, too.

Then why do they spend most of their time wallowing around at a few km/s?

Maybe it's slow motion?

Thorin wrote:In TMP they reached warp 0.8 purely on impulse. We don't know precisely what that is, but we must assume it's going to be a large fraction of lightspeed. The Warp drive was not involved, ergo it was the impulse engines achieving this speed near to 'c'.

Warp point five actually, according to the script. That only shows that they are capable of achieving significant fractions of lightspeed using impulse drive, not that commands such as "full impulse" refer to velocity rather than acceleration. Note that Kirk specifically ordered that speed rather than "full impulse", and the trip to Jupiter still took 1.8 hours, or 108 minutes. At half lightspeed it would only have taken 70 minutes, and at point eight lightspeed (if the number was changed prior to filming) less than 45 minutes, proving that the acceleration was not instantaneous.

The ship averaged c/3. Which is pretty close to the tech manual's (and a load of other sources) figure of 0.25c.

I may be mistaken, but I do believe that impulse has specifically been followed by 'speed' in a few episodes, but I know for definite it has never been followed by acceleration.

I want to ad best of both words where ED takes somethin like 30 min to reach Earth while clerly traveling at impuls speed.

According to the TNG tech manual, Full impulse is one quarter light speed. They can use impulse to go faster, but they tend to avoid it because of time dilation effects.

Isn't the TM non-canon, though?

Yes. Other non-canon sources, like the Star Trek Encylclipedia also stated .25c for full impulse speed.

At what speed does reletivity become a problem or become noticable? That's probably the full impulse speed under normal circumstances.

Doesn't the TNG Tech Manual calculate Impulse as 1/4 light speed?

That was already brought up.