Upon encountering the USS Dauntless in the Delta quadrant, the crew of the USS Voyager
thought they’d found the answer to their prayers in the form of a fast way home, but
of course it turned out to be a trap set by the lone survivor of a race assimilated by
the Borg. Arturis, the owner of the vessel belonged
to Species 116 and his people exhibited some interesting technology in the form of the
Quantum Slipstream Drive and Ship-wide Particle Synthesis. The latter of these two allowed
for the molecular reconstruction of the interior and exterior of the ship to a limited extent.
It was the Slipstream Drive however that was the true treasure. Despite losing the “Dauntless”
and the final survivor of species 116 to the Borg, the crew of the Voyager had had many
opportunities to preform detailed scans of the vessel and tinker with its workings. Upon
returning to their own vessel they set about on a project to recreate the Drive and they
were successful, to an extent. The federation has always being seeking faster
and faster methods of interstellar travel but Slipstream Drive seems the most promising
by far and many books and such mark it as the new step in Starfleet propulsion. Most
of this information comes from Star Trek Online and the post Dominion stories centred around
the USS Aventine, but Starfleet, alongside managing development and improvements of conventional
warp began serious development of the Quantum Slipstream drive on Voyager’s return.
But what makes this technology stand out over other failed experiments such as the USS Excelsior’s
Transwarp drive or Transwarp coil stolen from the Borg? It seems that Borg transwarp is
yet to be replicated by Starfleet in full. Though it can be incorporated with Federation
tech to create short bursts of Transwarp before it burns out as seen in Voyger, but it should
also be noted that the USS Voyager had undergone extensive modification prior to this already.
So the integration and acquisition of Borg technology is generally a risk best avoided
except in remarkable circumstances. And as for earlier transwarpp? Well, apparently
they never found those bolts Scotty took from the Excelsior. I’m joking, but that form
of Transwarp requires its own video as there are plenty of theories around it.
But for a start, look how relatively easily it was to create a Slipstream Drive. The crew
of the USS Voyager, the only Federation ship in the Delta Quadrant with no starbase nor
port to dock at managed to overhaul their warp core to accept the modifications required
for a fully functional Slipstream Drive. This already suggests that the drive only required
and adaptation of existing technology in part and that was not too far from compatible with
Federation standards. Though it did require the use of Benamite Crystals, short lived
lattices that provided short-term access to the Quantum Slipstream. So there are limiting
factors but there are too, many similarities. For example, it was still powered by the matter-antimatter
reactions of a Federation vessel and didn’t need the support of a network of gates, like
Borg or Vadwaar Corridors. Warp speed has a limit that has been vexing Federation engineers
for generations, except Tom Paris apparently but that’s a whole different headache. In
the 24th Century warp 10 is infinite velocity but they have never been able to achieve this
speed (again shut up), no matter how many 9s they add to the end of Warp 9. So clearly,
the answer to higher speeds lies outside of Warp Drive. The Quantum Slipstream itself
is described as something that you can enter into and be carried by, the nature of a ship’s
Drive in this case is to maintain a field that lets the ship ride the slipstream like
a glider in air currents rather than a plane, or so it seems.
While Voyager’s drive was deemed too unsafe and eventually dismantled, the problems were
navigational and computational, not the hardware itself. This problem was compensated for in
the original Voyager test flights by having a smaller vessel flying in front of the ship
and calculating the phase variances to beam back to the mother ship, but the risk of error
increased with the duration of the flight. In the USS Aventine , this same work around
was applied with the use of a chroniton integrator which actually took readings from a few seconds
into the future to provide enough time for the calculations to be applied shipside.
Another issue is that micro-fractures in the Benamite can occur that begin to destabilise
the slipstream. For this reason Slipstream, for the foreseeable future is likely to be
limited to short bursts of speed to supplement Warp Drive, not replace it entirely which
is the conclusion reached in 2380s and still in the case in 2409, although by this time,
the drive is out of the experimental stages and a common integration of ships systems.
But even with these faults, Slipstream seems to be the most promising development in recent
Trek history and a true contender for the advancement of interstellar exploration.
What do you think of the Quantum Slipstream drive? Do you think its incorporation into
Starships should be canonically continued or do you think it lessens the vastness of
space? I think that it’s about time that the Federation developed some new faster-than-warp
drive to allow for further exploration, after all, if not slipstream then it would be a
plot point like a Wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant or an Iconian Gateway or something.
Slipstream, if working allows for a continuation of exploration into the unknown, even if it
does risk some new plot juggling. Until the next vid however, thanks for watching, I’ve
been Ric and I’ll see you next time, goodbye.