"Forces of Nature"

[Captain Picard's Hair]

This unspectacular episode has gotten quite a bit of airtime here lately because of it's remifications for warp travel. I'm wondering, though, how far can this be generalized? IIRC, the focus of the episode was in this one particular "corridor" of space in which the scientists' home planet was located. It was in this corridor that conventional warp travel caused extreme damage to the local subspace and only in this corridor that warp travel was theorized to become impossible after X years of ships passing at warp due to said damage. Unfortunately (for us), the episode did not explicitly break down the effects of warp travel through space in general.

Can we assume that in the rest of the known galaxy, the properties of space are such that damage due to warp is, at least, much less than in this particular corridor?

[Mikey]

It would seem so, because while this was treated as a universal problem, it was pretty much ignored subsequently.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

... then if that's the case, how important is it to modify warp engines (IOW, see that Voyager explanation go POOF!)

[Mikey]

Who knows? Maybe there was an across-the-board refit, or change in warp engine construction. It's just odd that the problem was brought up as the centerpiece of an ep, and then never surfaced in any form after that.

[Sionnach Glic]

I don't ever remember seeing this episode before, so did they say how much damage they were causing? If they were only causing a tiny bit of damage, they probably wouldn't bother paying the cost of refitting every ship in the fleet or re-designing the thing all over again.

[Captain Seafort]

The specific area they were talking about had suffered sufficient damage that a warp core breach (about million times the intensity of a typical warp field) was enough to open a rift a bout a trillion kilometers wide. Within it warp travel was impossible, and it produced waves of some kind which almost destroyed the E-D and a medical ship they were looking for - a nearby planet was also affected, and was starting to demonstrate climate change by the end of the episode. They also identified other areas where the cumulative effects of passage would probably create additional rifts within the next few decades.

This area was a high-traffic area because most of the surrounding area was impassable to warp-driven ships, resulting in the damage being inflicted faster, but the undrlying effect was similar across the galaxy.

[Sionnach Glic]

The specific area they were talking about had suffered sufficient damage that a warp core breach (about million times the intensity of a typical warp field) was enough to open a rift a bout a trillion kilometers wide. Within it warp travel was impossible, and it produced waves of some kind which almost destroyed the E-D and a medical ship they were looking for - a nearby planet was also affected, and was starting to demonstrate climate change by the end of the episode.

Uh, okay.
But haven't we seen dozens of warp core breaches that haven't resulted in massive rifts in the space-time continuum? I don't recall any other breach displaying this kind of effect.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

The specific area they were talking about had suffered sufficient damage that a warp core breach (about million times the intensity of a typical warp field) was enough to open a rift a bout a trillion kilometers wide. Within it warp travel was impossible, and it produced waves of some kind which almost destroyed the E-D and a medical ship they were looking for - a nearby planet was also affected, and was starting to demonstrate climate change by the end of the episode.

Uh, okay.
But haven't we seen dozens of warp core breaches that haven't resulted in massive rifts in the space-time continuum? I don't recall any other breach displaying this kind of effect.

Most areas weren't as worn down. She may have optimized the breach somehow to create the most damage to make her point.

[Sionnach Glic]

Why was this one particular area so vulnerable? And isn't it kind of pointless if the warp core breach had to be set off in a way that it doesn't naturaly go up?

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Why was this one particular area so vulnerable? And isn't it kind of pointless if the warp core breach had to be set off in a way that it doesn't naturaly go up?

Well, it was a corridor that forced ships to travel through it due to the surrounding area preventing Warp travel. That Corridor was the only way through that area. Think of it as a well traveled path. For example, my dogs go through a specific path in my backyard for some unknown reason. In the summer the grass in that path gets worn down quickly. In the winter, the snow along this path gets worn down too. Think of a warp core's explosion being a some sort of torch, melting the snow quickly. The torch may go out before it melts the untouched snow, but it has a better chance of melting to worn down snow and reaching the ground.

And setting off the breach was to show that the threat of enviromental subspace damage was real, not that warp cores breaches are dangerous.

[Sionnach Glic]

Ah, okay then.

[Mikey]

Still, it seems like an academic point if it only occurred in that one particular location.

[Sionnach Glic]

Hmm, quite true. Did they say how many more ships went through that area than other areas? Did they say whether the effects could die down over time?

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Well, I think this was accelerated by the higher level of traffic over this one area, however given enough time another area could be damaged like that. The 'Speed Limit' may have been imposed until it was determined that there wasn't as much as a threat, or until modifications could be made to the warp drives. As for the Intrepid's nacelles, Purhaps the Intrepid's nacelles made the enviromental modifications more efficiant. Most enviromentally safe technology can be less efficient at first. The nacelle design seen on newer ships like the Soverign and the Prometheus may also be more enviromentally friendly and efficient.

[Captain Seafort]

They didn't mention numbers - only that the corridor had far more than was usual. There was no indication that the damage was reparable. The impression was that all space suffered from this effect, but that the high traffic density in the corridor made it a lot more noticeable, as with Blackstar's comparison to a path being worn down. In addition to the warp 5 limit introduced across the Federation, travel through high-risk areas such as the corridor was limited to extreme emergencies, and otherwise closed.