franchise-star-trek-tng-technical-manual1

5.0 WARP PROPULSION SYSTEMS5.0 WARP PROPULSION SYSTEMSIf one were to consider any of the ship's major componentsas its heart, the warp propulsion system would have tobe the logical choice. The WPS, the single most complex andenergetic element of the USS Enterprise, is the latest versionof the device that at last afforded humanity access to deepinterstellar space, facilitated contact with other lifeforms, andprofoundly changed all preeminent technological civilizationsin the Milky Way.5.1 WARP FIELD THEORY AND APPLICATIONLike those before him, Zefram Cochrane, the scientistgenerally credited with the development of modern warpphysics, built his work upon the shoulders of giants. Beginningin the mid-twenty-first century, Cochrane, working withhis legendary engineering team, labored to derive the basicmechanism of continuum distortion propulsion (CDP). Intellectually,he grasped the potential for higher energies andfaster-than-light travel, which signified practical operationsbeyond the Sol system. The eventual promise of rapid interstellartravel saw his team take on the added task of anintensive review of the whole of the physical sciences. It washoped that the effort would lead to better comprehension ofknown phenomena applicable to warp physics, as well as thepossibility of "left field" ideas influenced by related disciplines.Their crusade finally led to a set of complex equations,materials formulae, and operating procedures that describedthe essentials of superluminal flight. In those original warpdrive theories, single (or at most double) shaped fields,created at tremendous energy expenditure, could distort thespace/time continuum enough to drive a starship. As early as2061, Cochrane's team succeeded in producing a prototypefield device of massive proportions. Described as a fluctuationsuperimpeller, it finally allowed an unmanned flight testvehicle to straddle the speed of light (c) "wall," alternatingbetween two velocity states while remaining at neither forlonger than Planck time, 1.3 x 10~ 43 second, the smallestpossible unit of measurable time. This had the net effect ofmaintaining velocities at the previously unattainable speed oflight, while avoiding the theoretically infinite energy expenditurewhich would otherwise have been required.Early CDP engines—which were only informally dubbed"warp" engines — met with success, and were almost immediatelyincorporated into existing spacecraft designs withsurprising ease. Although slow and inefficient by today's standards,these engines yielded a substantial reduction of undesiredtime dilation effects, paving the way for round-trip flightson the order of a few years, not decades. Cochrane and histeam eventually relocated to the Alpha Centauri colonies (amove that took "only" four years because of CDP-poweredspace vehicles), and they continued to pioneer advances inwarp physics that would eventually jump the wall altogetherand explore the mysterious realm of subspace that lay on theother side.The key to the creation of subsequent non-Newtonianmethods, i.e., propulsion not dependent upon exhaustingreaction products, lay in the concept of nesting many layers ofwarp field energy, each layer exerting a controlled amount offorce against its next-outermost neighbor. The cumulativeeffect of the force applied drives the vehicle forward and isknown as asymmetrical peristaltic field manipulation (APFM).Warp field coils in the engine nacelles are energized insequential order, fore to aft. The firing frequency determinesthe number of field layers, a greater number of layers per unittime being required at higher warp factors. Each new fieldlayer expands outward from the nacelles, experiences a rapidforce coupling and decoupling at variable distances from thenacelles, simultaneously transferring energy and separatingfrom the previous layer at velocities between 0.5c and 0.9c.This is well within the bounds of traditional physics, effectivelycircumventing the limits of General, Special, and TransformationalRelativity. During force coupling the radiated energymakes the necessary transition into subspace, applying anapparent mass reduction effect to the spacecraft. Thisfacilitates the slippage of the spacecraft through the sequencinglayers of warp field energy.WARP POWER MEASUREMENTThe cochrane is the unit used to measure subspace fieldstress. Cochranes are also used to measure field distortiongenerated by other spatial manipulation devices, includingtractor beams, deflectors, and synthetic gravity fields. Fieldsbelow Warp 1 are measured in millicochranes.