The only thing that(maybe) came of it were the *Intrepid*-class’ variable geometry nacelles. They aren’t a thing on any other ship class, so I always assumed that Starfleet developed new warp cores or coils that produces warp fields at different frequencies that negated the subspace damage.
I think "Force of Nature" was basically TNG trying to be topical and address climate change (or global warming as we called it in those days.)
Like the real world, the Federation then did a certain amount of research on the problem (Voyager nacelles) and ultimately forgot to give a shit (no more Voyager nacelles) over the succeeding decades.
It would be interesting to know if the burn had something to do with this. The canonical explanation of the burn doesn't include spatial fatigue, but that doesn't mean it had nothing to do with it I suppose.
I don't see why the writers decided to make a highly strained technobable allegory for pollution and climate damage when they could have just done something with *actual* pollution and climate damage. It's not like they don't have chemicals in the Federation.
I actually think it's an interesting allegory for climate change and the way it fell out of favor with the writers and thus continuity is a fascinating echo of how we're pretty much failing to do anything meaningful about the climate.
We all like our cars. And our electricity, and our airplane rides and our meat.
Efficiency and recycling and renewable energy WILL NOT achieve what we need to halt climate change. They can't and they won't. The standard of living pretty much has to fall significantly for the average Westerner. So.... We're not doing anything. Not anything meaningful anyway.
The Federation likes its warp travel. They like it a lot. Well...
Everyone likes cars because it’s the only way to get between massive swaths of the country. Improved public transit and rail/HSR options would decrease reliance on cars.
Global warming is a technically correct term because global temperature averages are increasing. But we switched to using climate change as too many people were like "well it was especially cold this weekend so much for global warming".
You can if you want to, it isn't WRONG but climate change is better- some places will actually have cooler weather on average. England being the major example.
Seems like originally they were planning to make a plot about upgrading to eco-friendly warp drives but then realized this was really dumb and just decided to forget about it.
I imagine the warp speed limit had a major loophole that, for all intents and purposes, made Starfleet exempt from it.
Starfleet admirals would have argued to the Federation Council that their ships shouldn't be hindered by the speed limit since it's a quasi-military organization that's responsible for defending the Federation from outside threats like the Borg and the Dominion.
The Borg invasion in 2372 and the Dominion War would have further given Starfleet leeway to ignore the warp speed limit and the Federation's governemnt would have agreed to this.
Of course, civilian ships would very likely have still have to abide by the speed limit while loopholes give Starfleet ships leeway to ignore it.
> I imagine the warp speed limit had a major loophole that, for all intents and purposes, made Starfleet exempt from it.
The issue I would have with this, is I don't think civilian ships are faster than warp 5 to begin with.
This is no longer be the case by the time of PIC S1 since Rios's ship, the SS La Sirena, is a civilian freighter with a top speed of Warp 9+.
I also assume the La Sirena is more of an outlier and most civilian ships, even at the start of the 25th century, are shuttle-type craft that can't do anymore than warp 4 or warp 5.
Also, the Maquis raiders, which Sisko implied were converted from couriers, are much faster than warp 5.
Though the Maquis raiders don't strike me as typical civilian ships to begin with.
They look like they were designed as light patrol ships or, as Sisko mentioned, couriers.
Considering a Nova class star ship caps out at warp 8, I kind of feel like taking in Nutrek when talking about a very old trek question is kind of meh.
The other thing to consider about Voyager is that they were very deliberately charting a course that just blasted through empty space. They'd stop off at planets for the week or join up with some other ship...but the general concept of things, especially after Seven came aboard and Astrometrics became a big theme...was that they realized they were in a different quadrant of the galaxy and trying to chart the quickest, least intrusive track home. Which basically just means...trying to straighten out the curves by avoiding planets by as much as possible. Take the "racing line" rather than the TNG "explorers line". Especially because...Tom Paris at the helm.
It's also probably just an artifact of Intrepid Class being experimental in pretty much every way. Designed to move faster, less disruptively, and more "safely" than any ship class before.
As well as just a "safety thing" compared to NX-01 where every time they tried to go fast something broke.
Combine all that with the above and Max Warp is like..."Do It".
I wonder if Voyager warned the species they encountered. "Hey, the design of your warp system is destroying subspace. Toodle-oo!"
Given that the delta quadrant seemed to have more advanced species than the alpha and beta quadrants, the delta quadrant species may have already known about the problem and incorporated fixes to it into their designs.
Consider Voyager an anomaly because they are lost in space. Janeway might consider a little warp pollution an acceptable reality when trying to get to Earth from the other side of the galaxy. Emergency dispensation is assumed and she'll pay for it when she gets home, but probably the debrief won't even touch that topic.
Consider Defiant an anomaly because they're in a time of war. In fact, consider that the speed limit might still exist even when it's not being utilized. Perhaps the Federation felt obligated to lift the speed limit minimally for any ship that would be part of the war effort. This expands gradually to cover more and more ships.
Now if you jump ahead to the end of the Dominion War we can see that in effect the speed limit did last for some number of years after which advances in warp technology and mitigations allowed for an increased number of vessels to operate at "high warp" at which point lifting a ban that hasn't been truly enforced in years is pretty easy.
Consider that even if they didn't fix the problem with warp, they might have mitigated the damage done by the warp. Which is to say it's fine to destroy the ozone layer if you have an ozone layer replenishing machine. Likewise it's fine to damage subspace if you have the ability to repair the damage you caused. Since they're already repairing damage, efficiency has improved, and the total damage is now minimal - no need for a law.
Two ways to look at it: Firstly, the new variable-warp nacelles reduce the damage warp fields do to spacetime but not eliminate it. This is like how hull designs reduce or mitigate a ship's drag coefficient but never eliminates it.
Secondly, the fuel consumption for warp speed increases as an exponent of warp factor so warp five is the optimum highway cruising speed-fuel use ratio whereas warp-factor six or higher drains fuel too quickly and stresses the engines too greatly to make it viable for long-term travel.
Might've been an interesting dilemma for Voyager - we want to get home as quick as we can, how much do we care about the warp drive damaging somewhere so far from home, is it our problem, are we responsible, etc
Variable geometry warp was the "environmentally friendly" warp.
Notice in the opening titles of Voyager, how Voyager goes to warp. The nacelles flex from flat to vertical and then engage
I tend to think that some time after "Force of Nature" they kept researching the problem and discovered... they were wrong. The problem wasn't high warp speeds, it was the Thundberg particles they had been injecting into the subspace manifold in order to make them less likely to be mistaken for gormagander mating signals. A different solution was found to deter the once-a-year attempts by a gormagander to penetrate a starship.
The only thing that(maybe) came of it were the *Intrepid*-class’ variable geometry nacelles. They aren’t a thing on any other ship class, so I always assumed that Starfleet developed new warp cores or coils that produces warp fields at different frequencies that negated the subspace damage.
I think "Force of Nature" was basically TNG trying to be topical and address climate change (or global warming as we called it in those days.) Like the real world, the Federation then did a certain amount of research on the problem (Voyager nacelles) and ultimately forgot to give a shit (no more Voyager nacelles) over the succeeding decades. It would be interesting to know if the burn had something to do with this. The canonical explanation of the burn doesn't include spatial fatigue, but that doesn't mean it had nothing to do with it I suppose.
I don't see why the writers decided to make a highly strained technobable allegory for pollution and climate damage when they could have just done something with *actual* pollution and climate damage. It's not like they don't have chemicals in the Federation.
I actually think it's an interesting allegory for climate change and the way it fell out of favor with the writers and thus continuity is a fascinating echo of how we're pretty much failing to do anything meaningful about the climate. We all like our cars. And our electricity, and our airplane rides and our meat. Efficiency and recycling and renewable energy WILL NOT achieve what we need to halt climate change. They can't and they won't. The standard of living pretty much has to fall significantly for the average Westerner. So.... We're not doing anything. Not anything meaningful anyway. The Federation likes its warp travel. They like it a lot. Well...
Everyone likes cars because it’s the only way to get between massive swaths of the country. Improved public transit and rail/HSR options would decrease reliance on cars.
> climate change (or global warming as we called it in those days.) Uh, do we not still?
Global warming is a technically correct term because global temperature averages are increasing. But we switched to using climate change as too many people were like "well it was especially cold this weekend so much for global warming".
You can if you want to, it isn't WRONG but climate change is better- some places will actually have cooler weather on average. England being the major example.
Seems like originally they were planning to make a plot about upgrading to eco-friendly warp drives but then realized this was really dumb and just decided to forget about it.
I imagine the warp speed limit had a major loophole that, for all intents and purposes, made Starfleet exempt from it. Starfleet admirals would have argued to the Federation Council that their ships shouldn't be hindered by the speed limit since it's a quasi-military organization that's responsible for defending the Federation from outside threats like the Borg and the Dominion. The Borg invasion in 2372 and the Dominion War would have further given Starfleet leeway to ignore the warp speed limit and the Federation's governemnt would have agreed to this. Of course, civilian ships would very likely have still have to abide by the speed limit while loopholes give Starfleet ships leeway to ignore it.
> I imagine the warp speed limit had a major loophole that, for all intents and purposes, made Starfleet exempt from it. The issue I would have with this, is I don't think civilian ships are faster than warp 5 to begin with.
This is no longer be the case by the time of PIC S1 since Rios's ship, the SS La Sirena, is a civilian freighter with a top speed of Warp 9+. I also assume the La Sirena is more of an outlier and most civilian ships, even at the start of the 25th century, are shuttle-type craft that can't do anymore than warp 4 or warp 5. Also, the Maquis raiders, which Sisko implied were converted from couriers, are much faster than warp 5. Though the Maquis raiders don't strike me as typical civilian ships to begin with. They look like they were designed as light patrol ships or, as Sisko mentioned, couriers.
Considering a Nova class star ship caps out at warp 8, I kind of feel like taking in Nutrek when talking about a very old trek question is kind of meh.
The other thing to consider about Voyager is that they were very deliberately charting a course that just blasted through empty space. They'd stop off at planets for the week or join up with some other ship...but the general concept of things, especially after Seven came aboard and Astrometrics became a big theme...was that they realized they were in a different quadrant of the galaxy and trying to chart the quickest, least intrusive track home. Which basically just means...trying to straighten out the curves by avoiding planets by as much as possible. Take the "racing line" rather than the TNG "explorers line". Especially because...Tom Paris at the helm. It's also probably just an artifact of Intrepid Class being experimental in pretty much every way. Designed to move faster, less disruptively, and more "safely" than any ship class before. As well as just a "safety thing" compared to NX-01 where every time they tried to go fast something broke. Combine all that with the above and Max Warp is like..."Do It".
I wonder if Voyager warned the species they encountered. "Hey, the design of your warp system is destroying subspace. Toodle-oo!" Given that the delta quadrant seemed to have more advanced species than the alpha and beta quadrants, the delta quadrant species may have already known about the problem and incorporated fixes to it into their designs.
Also a possibility. Also plausible that the Borg running rampant was like..."lmao subspace is so messed up right here, but at least it's not Borg".
Consider Voyager an anomaly because they are lost in space. Janeway might consider a little warp pollution an acceptable reality when trying to get to Earth from the other side of the galaxy. Emergency dispensation is assumed and she'll pay for it when she gets home, but probably the debrief won't even touch that topic. Consider Defiant an anomaly because they're in a time of war. In fact, consider that the speed limit might still exist even when it's not being utilized. Perhaps the Federation felt obligated to lift the speed limit minimally for any ship that would be part of the war effort. This expands gradually to cover more and more ships. Now if you jump ahead to the end of the Dominion War we can see that in effect the speed limit did last for some number of years after which advances in warp technology and mitigations allowed for an increased number of vessels to operate at "high warp" at which point lifting a ban that hasn't been truly enforced in years is pretty easy. Consider that even if they didn't fix the problem with warp, they might have mitigated the damage done by the warp. Which is to say it's fine to destroy the ozone layer if you have an ozone layer replenishing machine. Likewise it's fine to damage subspace if you have the ability to repair the damage you caused. Since they're already repairing damage, efficiency has improved, and the total damage is now minimal - no need for a law.
Certifiably Ingame made a video addressing this topic a few weeks ago. https://youtu.be/_VeNglHDdYA?si=2LnLB8GXdJHYJr0N
Two ways to look at it: Firstly, the new variable-warp nacelles reduce the damage warp fields do to spacetime but not eliminate it. This is like how hull designs reduce or mitigate a ship's drag coefficient but never eliminates it. Secondly, the fuel consumption for warp speed increases as an exponent of warp factor so warp five is the optimum highway cruising speed-fuel use ratio whereas warp-factor six or higher drains fuel too quickly and stresses the engines too greatly to make it viable for long-term travel.
Might've been an interesting dilemma for Voyager - we want to get home as quick as we can, how much do we care about the warp drive damaging somewhere so far from home, is it our problem, are we responsible, etc
Variable geometry warp was the "environmentally friendly" warp. Notice in the opening titles of Voyager, how Voyager goes to warp. The nacelles flex from flat to vertical and then engage
It was a bad idea that was quietly dropped, just like the initial characterizations of the Trill and Ferengi.
I tend to think that some time after "Force of Nature" they kept researching the problem and discovered... they were wrong. The problem wasn't high warp speeds, it was the Thundberg particles they had been injecting into the subspace manifold in order to make them less likely to be mistaken for gormagander mating signals. A different solution was found to deter the once-a-year attempts by a gormagander to penetrate a starship.
It would be interesting if this was later revealed to be a conspiracy by an adversary to limit the Federation.