Warp drive

Warp drive is a technology that allows space travel at faster-than-light speeds. It does this by generating warp fields to form a subspace bubble that envelops the starship, distorting the local spacetime continuum and moving the starship at velocities that exceed the speed of light. These velocities are referred to as warp factors.

Technology
Warp drive works by distorting the fabric of space to propel the vessel. Simply put, the drive warps space, both in front of and behind a starship, allowing it travel faster than the speed of light. Specifically, spacetime is contracted in front of the ship and expanded behind it. The starship itself rests in a warp bubble between the two spacetime distortions. This warped space, together with the region inside it, accelerates off at "warp speed" and the vessel then "surfs" the wave in spacetime created by this distortion.

Travel at velocities exceeding the speed of light is possible in this fashion because the starship is, strictly speaking, stationary (relative to the space inside the warp bubble) while space itself is moving. Since space itself is moving and the starship is not actually accelerating, it experiences no time dilation, allowing the passage of time inside the vessel to be the same as that outside the warp bubble.

24th century Federation warp engines are fuelled by the reaction of deuterium and antideuterium, mediated through an assembly of dilithium crystals, which are nonreactive with antimatter when subjected to high-frequency electromagnetic fields. This reaction produces a highly energetic plasma, called electro-plasma, which is channelled by magnetic conduits through the electro-plasma system (EPS). The warp plasma is funneled to plasma injectors into a series of field coils, usually located in remote warp nacelles, which generate the desired warp field. Other civilizations use different power sources, such as artificial quantum singularities, but the basic process is similar.

In some vessels, such as the Intrepid class, the nacelles are mounted on variable-geometry pylons to allow them to travel at greater speeds without causing damage to subspace. Further advances in technology allow the most modern starships such as the Sovereign class to feature newly redesigned warp nacelles that eliminate this need for variable-geometry nacelles while still obtaining the speed benefits.

Parts of the system

 * Antimatter containment
 * Antimatter relay
 * Deuterium cartridges
 * Electro-plasma
 * Magnetic conduit
 * Magnetic interlock
 * Nacelle
 * Nullifier core
 * Phase inducer
 * Plasma conduit
 * Plasma injector
 * Plasma intercooler
 * Plasma coolant
 * Plasma regulator
 * Power transfer conduit
 * Power transfer grid
 * Warp plasma conduit
 * Warp coil
 * Warp core

System types

 * S-2 graf unit

Development
Every culture in the galaxy discovered warp drive at their own pace and rate of development. The Vulcans (and, by extension, the Romulans) had warp drive in the 3rd century AD (Earth calendar) - although the technology was lost during that planet's civil war, and was not reacquired until several centuries later - and had reached the level of warp 7 by 2151, whilst the Klingons had a capability of warp 6 by the same year, although it is unclear when their experiments with the drive began. However, it was the rapid progress of humanity which led to the wide-scale exploration of the galaxy and the formation of the United Federation of Planets.

The development of the warp drive is recognized by the United Federation of Planets as the marker of an advanced society. It is only after a people develop warp drive that the Federation will make contact, as codified in the Prime Directive.

21st century
On Earth, warp drive was initially developed by Zefram Cochrane in the period following World War III. Despite the hardships imposed by the war's aftermath, and the lack of advanced materials, Cochrane was able to build a warp-capable vessel using a converted Titan V missile as the testbed. The successful first flight of his ship - the Phoenix - took place on April 6, 2063, and drew the attention of a Vulcan exploratory vessel, leading to the event known as First Contact.

While Cochrane's original warp engines were fission-powered, using material from the warhead(s) of the missile, the development of reliable matter-antimatter reactors was what would truly allow warp drive to realize its potential.

22nd century
However, development of warp technology proceeded slowly over the next 80 years - due in no small part to the cautious advice of the Vulcans - and it was not until the 2140s that a warp engine developed by Henry Archer at the Warp Five Complex could exceed warp factor 2. This engine was successfully flown in the second NX prototype by Commanders A.G. Robinson and Jonathan Archer to a speed of warp 2.5, breaking the so-called "warp 2 barrier."

By the year 2151, warp technology was sufficiently advanced to allow a vessel to travel at warp 5, and the first human starship Enterprise was built with this capability. Although at first, Enterprise was unable to fully realize this potential (maxing out at warp 4.7), the starship finally reached warp 5 on February 9, 2152.

By 2161, Starfleet had achieved warp 7, and was just starting to install it on the newest of Starfleet vessels.

23rd century
Development and improvement of warp drive continued apace, and by the 2240s, Starfleet vessels of the Constitution class had standard cruising speeds of warp 6 and emergency speeds as high as warp 8 (although under the right conditions the engines could reach warp 9). These ships took advantage of a major breakthrough in warp technology that took place between 2236 and 2254, the breaking of the so-called "time barrier".

Higher warp factors continued to be reached, mostly through alien intervention, or dangerous malfunction. The USS Enterprise achieved a speed of warp 14.1 in 2268, propelled by an alien force known as Losira.

At around the same time, warp engines were being redesigned, and the refit of the Constitution class saw the cylindrical shape replaced with a flattened design that allowed standard speeds of warp 8 and above.

Warp theory continued to advance with the development of the first transwarp drive engines in the mid-2280s, which would have theoretically allowed greater efficiency and higher warp speeds. However, the installation of these massive engines aboard USS Excelsior ended in failure, and the technology was abandoned. The Excelsior itself was deemed spaceworthy, retrofitted with more conventional warp engines and commissioned as NCC-2000 under the command of Captain Hikaru Sulu.

24th century
During the 24th century, Federation warp theorists rewrote the rule book and created a new warp factor scale (the Revised Cochrane Scale). While the scale was originally based on a cubic power scale, the new scale was a more advanced function, placing warp 10 at the infinite end of the scale, with factors increasing exponentially in terms of power consumption and equivalent speed.

By the time the Galaxy-class starship was being designed in the 2360s, warp technology had progressed to the point where speeds of warp 9.6 could be sustained for up to twelve hours, although warp 9.2 was considered the "red line".

In 2370, the Hekaran scientist Serova discovered that the use of conventional warp engines caused damage to the fabric of spacetime. The Federation Council temporarily imposed a speed restriction of warp factor 5 on all Federation vessels in all but extreme emergency cases.

A solution was developed less than eight months later and gradually implemented on all vessels, allowing Starfleet ships to again use maximum warp drive capacity, first through the use of variable geometry nacelles, as on Intrepid-class vessels, which also allowed a warp engine of essentially the same construction as those on the Galaxy class to achieve speeds of warp 9.975, and later through new nacelle design, as on the Sovereign class. ---