Having been immersed in the FASA RPG in the 1980’s, I understood that early Federation (or precursors to the coming Federation) starships required a great deal of “warm-up” time to get up into warp speeds. At least this is how FASA explained it. I am working on creating some Spacedock vessels for this time period. Any help in understanding the ships of this time would be greatly appreciated.
John Adams
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"Kirk to Enterprise. Cestus III has been destroyed." (Oh, like who doesn't scan a planet before they beam down?
Certainly, the old Spaceflight Chronology produced just after ST:TMP gave "acceleration times" for various warp-driven ships, showing that it could take as long as a minute or two for ships to ramp up to warp. Don't know if that held during the shows, though - think of the number of times Kirk ordered Sulu to "take us out of orbit - warp factor 1" and the ship responded immediately. Although for that matter, it means Kirk was consistently violating the "no warp within a solar system" rule! Still, with 17 violations of the Temporal Prime Directive to his name, this comes as no surprise either...
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"The more top brass briefings I attend, the more I want to take a phaser to the whole lot of them..."
I think that may depend on the definition of "immediately," Cap'n. As you know, I've been busily watching TOS episodes so that I can write an SRM: TOS Era. Kirk gives the sort of orders you describe all the time, but all we ever see is the ship pulling gently away from the planet and off into space. There doesn't seem to be any significant acceleration or change in speed, much less the sort of "vanish into a flash of light" bit we got used to from the movies and TNG. I think it would be reasonable to assume that Kirk's order was a standard thing meaning, in effect, "take us to Warp whatever *when we get out of the gravity well.*"
AFAIK, there's no canon proof either way. But that explanation certainly makes enough sense to me.
Well, isn't that what being a captain/boss is all about? (not sure, never been either of them yet ) I mean, Kirk is not supposed to tell Sulu or Chekov how to do his job. As a good captain/boss, he just tells his subordinate what end results he wants to get, and the flight officer knows enough not to take it literally and does whatever seems appropriate to achieve what he's been ordered (here: pull away from orbit, get out of the system, then only engage warp)
Question about Early Warp Drives -2250-2265
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As you know, I've been busily watching TOS episodes so that I can write an SRM: TOS Era. Kirk gives the sort of orders you describe all the time, but all we ever see is the ship pulling gently away from the planet and off into space. There doesn't seem to be any significant acceleration or change in speed, much less the sort of "vanish into a flash of light" bit we got used to from the movies and TNG. I think it would be reasonable to assume that Kirk's order was a standard thing meaning, in effect, "take us to Warp whatever *when we get out of the gravity well.*"
