I think "quantum drive" is just their way of saying "warp drive" without being sued by Star Trek.

Star Trek used "subspace radio" to get around the speed of light limit. Orville can probably make up something too if necessary.

Yes but Star Trek specified the speed in a way that makes so much of what they show, impossible, by their own standard. That's the real problem. It seems they figured "30 million miles per second" or whatever sounded fast enough, but when you figure how far apart the stars really are, it's not that great. And it certainly doesn't allow for their other claims as to how long it will take to get somewhere.

In the first episode of Orville they said that "quantum drive" would get them to "Epsilon 2" in about 19 hours. Even if "Epsilon 2" is only a planet of Proxima Centauri - which doesn't seem likely - that makes their "quantum drive" at least oh, 50 times faster than warp 4. About 9 times faster than warp 6. On the other hand, if "Epsilon 2" refers to the second planet of Epsilon Eridani, which is about 2.5 times as far as Proxima, then "quantum drive" becomes 125 times the speed of warp 4 or 22 times the speed of warp 6. NOW you're talking about getting to the Klingon homeworld in just a few days!

@Tim-Buktu said:

OK that is a bit of a distance but do you need to go to ludicrous speed to get there?

Go plaid or go home.

@CharlesTheBold said:

Star Trek used "subspace radio" to get around the speed of light limit. Orville can probably make up something too if necessary.

I'm sure it will be something about quantum entanglement (it's the prevailing theory some people believe how that could happen, but in reality the mechanics aren't possible). Also...obligatory link

@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.)

You realize they weren't able to operate that equipment because it's been thousands of years since it was used? So by driving the ship/home he means making it go in a direction they want it to that just so happens to NOT be a star.

I also think they come out of quantum drive to communicate, or work on the drives. Futuristic systems will need diagnostics and repairs just like your car so it'll be ready when needed.

An issue I have is that when they come out of quantum speed (or warp speed in Star Trek) and they are standing still as if they didn't need to slow down.

Well, the idea there is that they're not really "Traveling" faster than light. When they go into warp, their "regular" speed, whatever it was, is conserved. When they come back out of warp, they're at the same speed they were before. The "ship" doesn't actually travel faster than light, because that's "impossible." What warp drive does is create a bubble around the ship - i.e., the warp field they often mention - that isn't so constrained. But within that bubble the ship isn't moving faster than light. So when they turn the bubble off, they are back in normal space, not moving - or moving at the same speed - like before they used warp drive.

In The Orville they seem to do the same kind of thing with their "quantum drive."

For the alien bio-ship, it was designed for a hundred-year-or-more journey because they had no such technology. Which is why I said, even when they learn to drive it around themselves, it will be at sublight speed because their ship was never capable of anything more. And that's why I said, they better hope there's a good planet for them in the solar system they were going to "Crash" into, because with THEIR ship it will take them decades or centuries to get anywhere else, if they try.

Unless they get the coming Union ships to give them a lift, or something.

This is like the riding on a train going the speed of light question... if a person walks from the back to the front is he traveling faster than the speed of light?

I think we can assume they will retrofit something to allow them to quantum drive somewhere... or since they have a giant home to learn about, maybe they will call that home until they get somewhere. I'd venture a guess that the Union will point them in the right direction.

I wouldn't be surprised if the bioship is too big for quantum drive. Or at least they couldn't make a power plant big enough to power a quantum drive big enough for that ship. But that was part of the point too. The aliens only built a bioship to start with because they didn't have any kind of FTL drive. With FTL drive available on the Union ships, and since they were hoping to find planets to begin with - being on the bioship wasn't really the purpose of their existence even if they'd forgotten - I wouldn't be surprised if they were all willing to move to a much smaller ship that can get them to another planet in days rather than centuries. Even if only as passengers. And a lot of Union scientists would probably love the opportunity to study their slowboat. Probably after it was safely in orbit in the solar system they had been going to crash into.

Unless the Union has a non-interference directive that means their quantum-drive ships might be having to dodge the aliens trudging along in the slow lane, for centuries. (Although the likelihood of actually encountering them would be very small.)

And that's actually part of my original argument too. When they're not using quantum drive, the Union ships basically aren't moving at all, in terms of interstellar distances. Which means they would basically "never" NOT use quantum drive, except maybe within solar systems. Which means the chances of them discovering something like the bioship are basically zero. The only exception would be if it were close enough to a solar system that the Union ships might stumble across it by accident. And since they said in the episode that the bioship was only 6 months from hitting the star, they would already have to be well within the solar system. But it didn't seem to be shown that way in the episode. Something of a contradiction.

We haven't heard of a non-interference directive. It sounded like a noble idea, but it was constantly creating plot problems in Trek.

"since they said in the episode that the bioship was only 6 months from hitting the star, they would already have to be well within the solar system. "

Did they ever say how fast the bio-ship was going? Lacking "quantum drive", they may have accelerated to 90% of the speed of light ( they could retain that indefinitely, by inertia.) and cover a lot of space in 6 months.

"This is like the riding on a train going the speed of light question... if a person walks from the back to the front is he traveling faster than the speed of light?"

No. time stops at the speed of light and they wouldn't be walking anywhere.

If they were at 90% of the speed of light, even if the Orville could catch up with them and dock, the time dilation just in a short visit would be very problematic. Also the energy/mass expenditure required to achieve such a velocity by conventional means would require most of the mass of the ship be used for acceleration, and then how do they decelerate? Then if they end up someplace inhospitable, how could they accelerate again?

But since the late captain said their mission would last more than one generation, odds are they were at a much smaller fraction of the speed of light. As I've explained previously/elsewhere, even if they were going at up to almost 2 million miles per hour, they would still have to be within the orbit of Pluto already if they were to reach the sun within the 6 months it was said they would crash into the star they were approaching. (Although chances are they wouldn't actually collide since that would take a very deliberate course.) People just don't seem to understand the distances involved.

@Knixon said:

I wouldn't be surprised if the bioship is too big for quantum drive. Or at least they couldn't make a power plant big enough to power a quantum drive big enough for that ship. But that was part of the point too. The aliens only built a bioship to start with because they didn't have any kind of FTL drive. With FTL drive available on the Union ships, and since they were hoping to find planets to begin with - being on the bioship wasn't really the purpose of their existence even if they'd forgotten - I wouldn't be surprised if they were all willing to move to a much smaller ship that can get them to another planet in days rather than centuries. Even if only as passengers. And a lot of Union scientists would probably love the opportunity to study their slowboat. Probably after it was safely in orbit in the solar system they had been going to crash into.

Unless the Union has a non-interference directive that means their quantum-drive ships might be having to dodge the aliens trudging along in the slow lane, for centuries. (Although the likelihood of actually encountering them would be very small.)

And that's actually part of my original argument too. When they're not using quantum drive, the Union ships basically aren't moving at all, in terms of interstellar distances. Which means they would basically "never" NOT use quantum drive, except maybe within solar systems. Which means the chances of them discovering something like the bioship are basically zero. The only exception would be if it were close enough to a solar system that the Union ships might stumble across it by accident. And since they said in the episode that the bioship was only 6 months from hitting the star, they would already have to be well within the solar system. But it didn't seem to be shown that way in the episode. Something of a contradiction.

They could be moving at a much faster pace that you can imagine... They were moving in relative speed with the biosphere so it could have seemed as if they were moving slow but how many centuries has the ship been just accelerating?

If you mean the bioship, they said their engines were non-functional for what, 2000 years?

And you can't just keep accelerating even if your engines work. Relativity says that as your speed increases it takes geometrically more energy/mass expenditure to accelerate more. Even if you used up all the mass of your ship just as "fuel" you'd run out before you got close to c.

@CharlesTheBold said:

We haven't heard of a non-interference directive. It sounded like a noble idea, but it was constantly creating plot problems in Trek.

"since they said in the episode that the bioship was only 6 months from hitting the star, they would already have to be well within the solar system. "

Did they ever say how fast the bio-ship was going? Lacking "quantum drive", they may have accelerated to 90% of the speed of light ( they could retain that indefinitely, by inertia.) and cover a lot of space in 6 months.

"This is like the riding on a train going the speed of light question... if a person walks from the back to the front is he traveling faster than the speed of light?"

No. time stops at the speed of light and they wouldn't be walking anywhere.

Time doesn't stop, the photons just appear to have stopped. I don't recall reading in the theory of relativity or the special that this occurs. I think it only discusses time relative to gravity. (on to SciFi) The stretching of the light in Star Wars and Star Trek are because of the bubble concept mentioned above. Quantum drive is just a more modern term for how we theoretically see us traveling faster than light in the future. Quantum Drive Tech So using this sort of information, they just forwarded it a few hundred years and boom, here we are. I also think this is the kind of tech the bio ship is using so it can keep going forward without running out of fuel.

The non-interference thing was to plug a lot of holes in ST. I think too many people would suggest they have a moral obligation to share their advanced tech with lower forms of life. But then again they kind of explained why they thought this way with the ST NG: First contact. They explained the Vulcans saw they developed warp tech so they came to check them out... I think they adopted the same ideology since the Vulcans likely had such a big influence on them.

@Knixon said:

If you mean the bioship, they said their engines were non-functional for what, 2000 years?

And you can't just keep accelerating even if your engines work. Relativity says that as your speed increases it takes geometrically more energy/mass expenditure to accelerate more. Even if you used up all the mass of your ship just as "fuel" you'd run out before you got close to c.

That's right... I had to go back and check, he did say engines shut off. That still doesn't answer the speed question.

Since we're on the bio ship... how messed up would it be if that shell over the bio ship was compromised and everyone died?