How fast is impulse

There's nothing preventing any impulse engine from accelerating to nearly lightspeed, as long as it has enough fuel, enough power, and enough time. Christopher , Jun 5, Joined: Aug 26, Timo , Jun 5, Based on the known size of the Enterprise, leaving spacedock is done at somewhere between mph. Truly rediculous. Xerxes , Jun 5, Ronald Held , Jun 5, Joined: Jul 27, Location: Steelport.

Santaman , Jun 5, Joined: Apr 12, Location: Your Mom. Since impulse engines appear to work as a kind of fusion-powered thruster boosted by driver coils, theoretically "impulse power" is a unit of output, not speed. When the captain orders "one quarter impulse" he's not calling for a speed, he's calling for an engine gear level that determines how much thrust the engines will generate and how quickly the ship will respond.

Similar to a submarine where, for example, a commander may order the ship to dive to feet, but depending on how fast he needs to get there he can quote any angle from 5 to 30 degrees and newer submarines can actually dodge torpedoes by making very rapid ascents at high speeds, from deep water to shallow water in a matter of seconds. So how fast is impulse? The accelerated plasma was passed through the driver coils, thereby generating a subspace field which improved the propulsive effect.

Impulse engines should not be confused with maneuvering thrusters, which are used when pinpoint accuracy is needed, such as inside Spacedock. The impulse drive is normally used within a solar system or within regions of space such as the Badlands, which are incompatible with the warp field.

Impulse engines, like those depicted to exist on the starship Enterprise, take a slightly different approach to accelerate a spacecraft.

Instead of using chemical reactions to move through space, they use a nuclear reactor or something similar to supply electricity to the engines. That electricity supposedly powers large electromagnets that use the energy stored in the fields to propel the ship or, more likely, superheat plasma that is then collimated by strong magnetic fields and spit out the back of the craft to accelerate it forward.

It all sounds very complex, and it is. It's actually do-able, b ut not with current technology. Effectively, impulse engines represent a step forward from current chemical-powered rockets. They don't go faster than the speed of light , but they're faster than anything we have today. It's probably only a matter of time before someone figures out how to build and deploy them.

The good news about "someday", is that the basic premise of an impulse drive is scientifically sound. However, there are some issues to consider. In the films, the starships are able to use their impulse engines to accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light. In order to achieve those speeds, the power generated by the impulse engines has to be significant.

That's a huge hurdle. Currently, even with nuclear power, it seems unlikely that we could produce sufficient current to power such drives, especially for such large ships. So, that's one problem to overcome. Also, the shows often depict the impulse engines being used in planetary atmospheres and in nebulae, clouds of gas and dust.

However, every design of impulse-like drives relies on their operation in a vacuum. As soon as the starship enters a region of high particle density like an atmosphere or a cloud of gas and dust , the engines would be rendered useless.

So, unless something changes and ye canna change the laws o' physics, Captain! Impulse drives sound pretty good, right?

Well, there are a couple of problems with their use as outlined in science fiction. One is time dilation : Any time a craft travels at relativistic speeds, concerns of time dilation arise. Voyager 's one quarter impulse is 10 times faster than that of the shuttle. Memory Alpha Explore. Christopher Pike Number One. James T. Generations First Contact Insurrection Nemesis. Memory Alpha. Explore Wikis Community Central.

Register Don't have an account? Impulse engine. View source. History Talk Do you like this video? Play Sound. A close-up of the NX-class impulse drive The USS Enterprise NCC using impulse engines to maintain thrust against the space amoeba A close-up of the refit Constitution -class ship impulse engines Impulse engine on an alternate reality Constitution -class ship The three impulse engines on a Galaxy -class starship; lit orange during saucer separation.

Voyager 's impulse engines at full power An impulse engine or impulse drive was a common propulsion system used on starships used to create impulse power in order to achieve impulse speeds. T'Pol mentioned that it would take 17 minutes to reach a point within 2 million km of the black hole.