@Knixon said:

One thing original Star Trek - and the follow-up series too, mostly, except maybe for Voyager - seemed to do better than The Orville is deal with some of the time, distance, and... coincidence?... issues. They were going to a planet because they had orders to make contact. They were looking for someone or something already, or they received a distress signal... whatever.

The Orville seems to have a conceit, as shown in a couple episodes so far, that while just wandering around in open space at sub-light speed, they're going to happen upon various amazing things. But "the reality" is that space is HUUUUUGGEEE, and unless they're using "quantum drive" basically all the time, it would take decades or centuries to get ANYWHERE. So the chances of them just cruising around at sub-light speed, at least in between star systems, are pretty low. It would just be wasting time. Not like an inchworm crossing a freeway, more like an inchworm trying to circumnavigate the world. And even if they were capable of cruising at some respectable percentage of lightspeed, they still would miss just about anything they might have passed by, it would still take years to get anywhere, and time dilation would be a bitch.

A specific case with another issue too is episode 4, "If The Stars Should Appear." Near the end, Captain Mercer tells the "alien leader" that they'll be able to drive their ship themselves soon, and go anywhere they want. Sure, at sub-light speed. If I were them, the first thing I'd ask the Union tech ships when they arrive, is "how about a lift?" They're supposed to be just 6 months from "colliding with" star J2837, and they better hope that there's a nice planet there or something. Because it would take them decades or more likely centuries to get anywhere else. Meanwhile those snazzy Union ships can get from solar system to solar system in hours. (Which is actually much faster than original Star Trek. For example, in Enterprise they gave speed numbers that would mean it would take them a couple weeks just to get from Earth to Proxima Centauri, which is the closest system. Yet they were supposed to be able to reach the Klingon homeworld in just a couple days.. oh well.)

Wormholes? Like in Stargate:SG-1.

Wormholes for who? The Union ships don't need them, they have Quantum Drive. And the giant-spaceship aliens didn't know about them and probably couldn't use them if they did because their ship wasn't designed for it, if they didn't know about them when it was made. Which they didn't, because it was stated by the old captain (played by Liam Neeson) that they expected the journey to take 3 generations at sublight speed.

@Knixon said:

Wormholes for who? The Union ships don't need them, they have Quantum Drive. And the giant-spaceship aliens didn't know about them and probably couldn't use them if they did because their ship wasn't designed for it, if they didn't know about them when it was made. Which they didn't, because it was stated by the old captain (played by Liam Neeson) that they expected the journey to take 3 generations at sublight speed.

Sorry, I was referring to The Orville. What's the difference between traveling with the assistance of a wormhole or using quantum drive?

Well they don't seem to have wormholes in The Orville's story frame. (And they're only perhaps theoretical to us now, they don't necessarily exist just because Stephen Hawking says they might, or that they would be usable for travel even if they do exist.) But even if they do, and even if they can be used for travel and the Union ships just don't use them because it's too much trouble etc, I don't think the huge alien ship would be able to do it. Maybe they should ask the Union to add quantum drive to their ship.

Wow. Does this discussion still come up?

“Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen...”

No one has ever developed a way to travel through space in a sensible way. So ANYTHING you read or see is pure fantasy. So get over "warp drive" and "quantum drive". They are just words that the writers use. Generally I compare warp drive and impulse drive to the difference between driving on the freeway and looking for a parking space close to the mall.

But as far as distance is concerned, consider this. You are on Earth, a great big honkin' spaceship is three times as far away as Pluto is. OK that is a bit of a distance but do you need to go to ludicrous speed to get there?

Just my 2 cents.

well, for a great big honkin' spaceship 3 times as far as Pluto to get here in 390 days, even if they were going full speed the whole time and somehow came to "rest" (relative to Earth) instantly upon arrival, they would have to be going almost 1.5 million miles per hour. If they were going to spend some time decelerating before arrival they would have to be going much faster to start with. And even just 3 times the distance from Earth to Pluto is rather close in terms of interstellar distance. Proxima Centauri is over 5000 times the distance of Pluto.

@Tim-Buktu said:

Wow. Does this discussion still come up?

“Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen...”

No one has ever developed a way to travel through space in a sensible way. So ANYTHING you read or see is pure fantasy. So get over "warp drive" and "quantum drive". They are just words that the writers use. Generally I compare warp drive and impulse drive to the difference between driving on the freeway and looking for a parking space close to the mall.

But as far as distance is concerned, consider this. You are on Earth, a great big honkin' spaceship is three times as far away as Pluto is. OK that is a bit of a distance but do you need to go to ludicrous speed to get there?

Just my 2 cents.

Did anybody here in this thread say anything about 'wormholes & 'quantum drive' being real? If a topic irritates you so much move on to another!

Mostly it's just about internal consistency. Like on Star Trek: Enterprise they say they're going at X speed, which means it would take them a couple weeks to get to Proxima Centauri which is the closest solar system to ours. Yet they supposedly can get to the Klingon homeworld in just a few days. That's just a careless, stupid thing to write in. And it's not my or any other viewer's fault that they screwed up or that we noticed it. All it would take to avoid the error is either say they go a lot faster, give a longer time for getting to the Klingon homeworld, or don't even mention speed at all. It may be sci-fi, but that doesn't give them an excuse for such laziness and stupidity any more than some travelogue film or an AAA brochure that said you can drive from L.A. to N.Y. at 65mph on the freeway in an afternoon.

I recall reading somewhere (I think it was "The Making of Star Trek") that warp speed is related to the cube of the speed of light such that warp 1 is the speed of light and warp 6 is 216 times the speed of light.

Yes, that happened. It has also been said to be squared not cubed. They also mentioned km/sec a couple times. But going with cubed, warp 4 - basically the common cruising speed of Enterprise NX-01 - that would be 64 times the speed of light. Proxima Centauri is about 4.25 light years away. That works out to a little over 24 days at warp 4. (1/64th of 4.25 years.) And Proxima Centauri is the closest to Earth, but they were supposedly going to get to the Klingon homeworld and back in just a few days. Impossible. And it also means that when they - or Enterprise 1701 or later - set course for somewhere at warp 2, they weren't going to get there for a good long time. Even at warp 4 or 6, it would take a lot longer to get anywhere than they ever indicated. At warp 6, Proxima Centauri is still over a week away. Space is HUUUUGGGEEE.

The problem I have with these discussions is not the science, but rather that writers don't give a rats patoot about consistency. And therefore, all discussions about science become moot. If they want to have the ship cross the galaxy in a day, then sure, why not. But they can't do that because intelligent people start doing the math (As Knixon just did) I say give us a model and stick with it. But I don't think sci-fi writers have ever thought about space in any significant way.

@Tim-Buktu said:

But I don't think sci-fi writers have ever thought about space in any significant way.

A lot of them clearly haven't. And consistency is the big thing really, at least for me. Some people just toss it off with "eh it's sci-fi, who cares?" and think I have some kind of problem for noticing the bad writing. But I've always expected better from sci-fi, both in the books I read and in the movies and TV shows that I watch. (Which is one reason I like sci-fi and not (said derisively) faaaaantasy.) Sure, the people who don't notice and don't care, won't notice or care if they get it right. But that's not a good excuse to not bother. And if they need to get Klang back to the Klingon homeworld in 4 days or whatever, then they should have made it so their ship was capable of that speed. But to make it so that their ship will need almost a month just to get to Proxima Centauri which is closer than anything else yet it can get to the Klingon world in less than a week, is just inexcusable in my book.

Easy fix would be if they'd said warp factors are 10 to the X power the speed of light. But it's too late for that now.

By the way, in the Enterprise series the Vulcan ships weren't all that much faster. Warp 6, is what they said. (Same top normal cruising speed as the Constitution class ships like Enterprise 1701, about 50 years later.) So they couldn't have taken Klang home - alive or dead - in just a few days either.

I actually don't mind fantasy as long as it's consistant.

as in:https://youtu.be/DlB1PcgkYLU

How about the old "temporal anomaly in the space-time continuum" that always used to work when trying to explain something quickly.

"It is very cold... in space."

•  Khan Noonien Singh, 2285 (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

Also regarding wormholes, there's no reason to believe they could exist within a solar system. Even if they could be used for interstellar travel. So if you have to leave a solar system to access one, and then arrive at the other end outside - possibly FAR outside - another solar system, it would still take years to actually get anywhere. Because just the normal-space parts at each end would take years.