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We see on screen that when ships are traveling at full impuls they are doing only a few m/s. Where they should be araund 0.5c.

I think we TR-116's another thread into a very lengthy discussion of this. I don't want to get into it again myself, but I'll see if I can find it.

I think the only canon event that implies relativistic impulse speed is TMP, and even that could be achieved by relatively low acceleration. The conclusion we reached was that they can achieve that sort of speed, but it would take hours of constant acceleration.

Right - IIRC, the consensus was that the "speeds" mentioned during commands were actually intended to be accelerations.

So, what kind of speeds are we actualy looking at with these ships?

The original thread is here. Going by a figure of 1.8 hours to reach Jupiter in TMP, the maximum acceleration of a refitted Connie is 30km/s^2.

I tried to do some calculations based on the extimated mass and power output of the E-D, but buggered it up because a) I don't know enough physics and b) we haven't got figures for the mass or velocity of the impulse engine efflux.

Cool. Thanks.

I tried to do some calculations based on the extimated mass and power output of the E-D, but buggered it up because a) I don't know enough physics and b) we haven't got figures for the mass or velocity of the impulse engine efflux.

Isn't the impuse engine just a giant fusion reactor that throws out He.

mlsnoopy wrote:

I tried to do some calculations based on the extimated mass and power output of the E-D, but buggered it up because a) I don't know enough physics and b) we haven't got figures for the mass or velocity of the impulse engine efflux.

Isn't the impuse engine just a giant fusion reactor that throws out He.

Not quite. That's the power system. The inpulse engines are more advanced then that.

Has it ever been said exactly what the impulse engines are?

Not quite. That's the power system. The inpulse engines are more advanced then that.

I don't think so, becuse than you have subspace field generators that lower the mass of the ship like they did with DS9.

It's not quite clear where the mass-lightening field comes from - whether it's part of the impulse engines themselves or the warp nacelles. Either way, the impulse engines themselves are simple Newtonian engines - throw mass out the back to make the ship go forwards.

I'm still skeptical about acceleration of 30km/s/s. In quite a few episodes (specifically I'm thinking the one where Barclay becomes a genius after an encounter with an alien probe), it has been stated firstly, "1/4 impulse", then increase to "1/2 impulse" or similar. It seems to me that they must have at least got to 1/4 impulse before ordering an a higher speed. Which is what makes me all the more skeptical about such a low acceleration.
This also fits with the reason they don't use/say acceleration - because they could get to a certain speed (a large fraction of 'c') pretty quickly, after which they no longer want to accelerate (because of time dilation etc). So they just set a speed, and its there virtually straight away.

Regarding the mass lightening, it's possible it comes from some sort of reaction involving Higgs, which is (supposedly, as we'll find out in a few months) the cause of mass.

The whole idea of impulse power is that it reduces the mass of the ship so that what ever momentum they had while heavy will move them a lot faster while lighter. Thus if they drop the mass it should instantly bring the speed up.

Maybe when they say half impulse they mean they have reduced the mass half as much as they can but the speed is dependent on their inital speed.

If I may go off on another topic for a moment; is that mass-lightning thing anyway plausable, or just another bit of technobabble?