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Pure technobabble - we don't even know what causes mass, let alone how to alter it, even theoretically. From what Thorin says, however, someone might have figured out the root cause and is waiting for experiment results to be completed.

Doesnt matter if its technobabble its canon. It reduces weight thus increases speed.

Not weight, mass. I'm not disputing that the phenomenon exists in-universe, I'm simply answering Rochey's query whether it was a valid theory out of universe. It isn't - any more than transporters or warp drive.

Lovering the mass of the ship must be releted to the subspace.

Quite possibly, snoopy - there was a TNG ep in which the E-D was able to alter the mass of a moon or asteroid or some such by partially encasing it in a subspace field, in order to move it.

So lowering of the mass is possible and if the ship only has a relativ mass of a few kg than ipuls engines should have no problems to quickly acelarate the ships to 05c.

Supposedly, but we've never seen accelerations that high... we could ascribe that to the idea that the mass-lowering effect is limited to lesser results, due to subspace interference with the core, or what have you.

Pure technobabble

Thought so. Just checking.

we don't even know what causes mass, let alone how to alter it, even theoretically.

We don't know what causes mass? Weird.

Captain Seafort wrote:Pure technobabble - we don't even know what causes mass, let alone how to alter it, even theoretically. From what Thorin says, however, someone might have figured out the root cause and is waiting for experiment results to be completed.

Correct, the LHC at CERN should provide the answers (and many others).

Supposedly, but we've never seen accelerations that high... we could ascribe that to the idea that the mass-lowering effect is limited to lesser results, due to subspace interference with the core, or what have you.

The problem that I have is that sometimes is hard do tell the difrence if the ship is accelerating to warp or at impuls.
I'm thinking of the scene where the Dominion-Breen fleet retreats back to cardasia prime. We see a Breen ship that stops and than turns and flys away and it is not at warp.

Warp drive is difficult or dangerous to operate within a solar system, at least in the TNG era, and the Breen ship in question was IIRC engaged in close combat with the Federation Alliance fleet. It was likely withdrawing from that action at impulse before going to warp.

That is also what I figured. And if we look how fast the ships in the backgraund shrink. That gave me a feeling that the ship moved several km in matter of ms.

Mikey wrote:Supposedly, but we've never seen accelerations that high... we could ascribe that to the idea that the mass-lowering effect is limited to lesser results, due to subspace interference with the core, or what have you.

Sure we have. Take a look at the Enterprise pulling away from Earth in TMP; it clearly is accelerating at a simply vast rate.

We see the Ent pulling away like that in TOS a few times too actually... though it's not always clear there whether it is going at impulse or warp.

GrahamKennedy wrote:Sure we have. Take a look at the Enterprise pulling away from Earth in TMP; it clearly is accelerating at a simply vast rate.

About 30km/s^2, based on the figure of 1.8 hours to Jupiter. The fact remains, however, that AFAIK it's the greatest calculable acceleration witnessed in Trek, and we don't see anything like it in TNG+ Trek, which is what I think Mikey is referring to.

Captain Seafort wrote:

GrahamKennedy wrote:Sure we have. Take a look at the Enterprise pulling away from Earth in TMP; it clearly is accelerating at a simply vast rate.

About 30km/s^2, based on the figure of 1.8 hours to Jupiter.

No, don't look at the whole trip, just go watch the scene where they pull away from Earth. Kirk orders a reverse angle on the viewer and you see Earth dropping away behind them, FAST. The ship covers at *least* a light second in those first few seconds.

If we say it covered one light second in ten seconds (and that's conservative) then it was accelerating at 600,000 km/s/s.

Go check the DVD and see for yourself.