Warp Factor Calculatons

[James Greenman]

For your viewing pleasure. GDs and COs take note, when talking about and distances, time lapses and that sort of thing then this is the Star Trek: Engage Warp Factor Table. These numbers are a combined estimate based on Star Trek Technical Manuals and also stuff that's been talked about in TNG and DS9 (Voyager is so mixed up when it comes to Treknology and Warp Speed, I don't trust it far)

It should be fairly self explanatory. Basically, we have the warp factor on the left, the relativistic speed (*c, the speed of light) and then the distance traveled at that speed. For example, if you were crossing a galactic Sector (20 lightyears) at warp 6 it would take you about 19-20 days, as at Warp 6 you can cover 1.075 light years in 24 hours, etc. After Warp 9 is when it gets tricky, as we only have a few mentions of relativistic speeds at this warp factor and it isn't sequential. So Warp 9 is 1516 times the speed of light, warp 9.6 is 1906 times the speed of light, but warp 9.99 is 7912 times the speed of light, almost 3 times more.

Not many ships can travel at these speeds, though. 9.6-9.99 is the maximum for a lot of ships, and it's only for 12 hour periods with most of them. What I've done for these is fudge the numbers a bit to bring us up to warp 9.9999 which is the speed of subspace communications, and practically impossible to reach with a vessel. This should give you a good idea of how long it's going to take to reach your destination, and how fast you need to go to get to that distress signal 3 light years away at cruising speeds of Warp 8 (25.5 hours)

For the sake of drama, i'll let some GDs off with fudging the numbers a little. Sometimes.

Edit: I grabbed the numbers and the start of the table from Memory Alpha.

[James Greenman]

So for those of you on the Rho, it's going to take you almost 4 days to reach Gemulon V at warp 9.6. As an example.

[Jack Lucas Profile]

NERD

[Aoibhe Ni Profile]

This is very cool. I'll be keeping this handy!

And everyone on the Bremen, you're looking at about 6 days til you reach that trinary star system in the Episadi Cluster.