Star Trek (TNG): Force of Nature

[Frustration]

In reality, efficiency tends to decrease as speed increases - at least, with vehicles in an atmosphere. So it makes sense intuitively that as warp speed increases the cost increases even faster.

Also, the original episode noted that the region of space in question was heavily traveled because of obstacles - the equivalent of a strait or bottleneck. Even in general, though, the shortest routes between major locations are going to get a lot more traffic than meandering ones. If the subspace damage extends for lightyears beyond the actual path of the ships, there isn't as much space in space as you suggest.

[McAvoy]

In reality, efficiency tends to decrease as speed increases - at least, with vehicles in an atmosphere. So it makes sense intuitively that as warp speed increases the cost increases even faster.

Also, the original episode noted that the region of space in question was heavily traveled because of obstacles - the equivalent of a strait or bottleneck. Even in general, though, the shortest routes between major locations are going to get a lot more traffic than meandering ones. If the subspace damage extends for lightyears beyond the actual path of the ships, there isn't as much space in space as you suggest.

Engines always have that sweet spot where they get the most range at a given speed and power. Like a civilian single engine piston powered propeller plane that cant even go 200 MPH. It's just the physical limitations of the engine and plane itself. Also engine design matters alot. Radical engines, piston engines, turboprop, high or low bypass turbine engines. Etc.

[Frustration]

Air resistance is also a factor. A car travelling in vacuum (somehow provided with oxygen for combustion) could achieve much greater fuel efficiency than it could while moving air out of the way.

Presumably, a ship travelling at high warp expends more total energy to across a given distance than a ship travelling at low warp, assuming the same technology is used in both cases. (It's canonical that warp drive technology improved in efficiency between TOS and TNG, requiring a recalibration of how speed was measured.)

[Riedquat]

Need to be a little careful when considering concepts like efficiency in space travel. Certainly for a rocket engine there's no decrease in efficiency with speed (of course a warp drive won't be a rocket engine), although going faster still requires more fuel, so rockets generally only carry the minimum fuel they need to get to their destination (adding any more ups the costs a lot, and still probably won't make much difference to the overall journey time, considering that most of the fuel use is just setting you on an orbit that'll get you to your required destination when coasting - maybe rather different for ion drives).

[TheGreenMan]

Air resistance is also a factor. A car travelling in vacuum (somehow provided with oxygen for combustion) could achieve much greater fuel efficiency than it could while moving air out of the way.

Presumably, a ship travelling at high warp expends more total energy to across a given distance than a ship travelling at low warp, assuming the same technology is used in both cases. (It's canonical that warp drive technology improved in efficiency between TOS and TNG, requiring a recalibration of how speed was measured.)

Not relevant but: Nice avatar. Looks like the 2017 eclipse.

[McAvoy]

Air resistance is also a factor. A car travelling in vacuum (somehow provided with oxygen for combustion) could achieve much greater fuel efficiency than it could while moving air out of the way.

Presumably, a ship travelling at high warp expends more total energy to across a given distance than a ship travelling at low warp, assuming the same technology is used in both cases. (It's canonical that warp drive technology improved in efficiency between TOS and TNG, requiring a recalibration of how speed was measured.)

Car aerodynamics improving fuel range is a proven fact. 100 years of experience shows that with the car industry.

We really have no true idea of how warp really works. But presumably combination of more power to put into the warp bubble, more power into the nacelles, the more warp core requiring to 'burn' more fuel for that extra power.

Voyager needing to take 70 years to cross the galaxy to get home where her top speed of Warp 9.975 would take a fourth of the time.

The other thing about engines is that you really do not want to drive them hard all the time no matter how well built they are. I think in Trek it may not even be fuel economy that drives the limitations of high warp but reliability and durability of the engine. That going Warp 8 is less stressful to the engine than Warp 9.9.

It's kind of like the old steam reciprocating engines of the 19th century on naval vessels. Going full speed for short and required hours of maintenance before the ship could go again. And it wasn't a fuel economy thing.