Last time we looked at the Slipstream Drive and how it could be the future for Starfleet
propulsion technology but then an interesting comment popped up asking about the Coaxial
warp drive that also appeared in Voyager. Specifically in the episode Vis a Vis, where
a prototype vessel emerges testing this technology and shenanigans ensue.
The interesting thing is, that unlike Slipstream which was deigned to dangerous without further
tuning of the technology, Transwarp coils which were used but not understood enough
to replicate or the infamous Warp 10 from the Cochrane shuttle test that caused “hyper-evolution”
the Coaxial Induction Drive was fitted to a shuttle craft then used successfully with
no real disadvantages. Those weaknesses that were there were then fixed by Tom Paris and
implemented on a Class 2 shuttlecraft which was almost able to perform a stable Coaxial
Warp jump. First off. Let’s look at it as presented
in the show. A small starship plops into existence near the USS Voyager along ripples and folds
in the space around it while the ship’s drive itself is on the edge of detonating.
The crew manage to stabilise the spatial folds and core by extending a symmetric warp field
around the vessel to dissipate the drive’s effects and save the ship. From there, they
learned that particle instabilities in the drive kept on cropping up that caused the
drive to malfunction and threaten explosion. Paris test the notion of implementing a polaric
Modulator to dilute the particle stream like a carburettor would do to fuel.
This appeared to provide far more stability to the jumps that before this were reputed
to be a rather violent affair. Not only that, but after the vessel had departed the technology
was recreated on a Class 2 starfleet shuttlecraft. So how does Coaxial Warp vary from standard
warp speeds? Well, it appears that although both methods of travel warp space time to
get around that whole “no-going-faster-than-light” physics thing that is super annoying.
Standard warp creates a bubble around a vessel that compresses space in front of the ship
and extends it behind, making a sort of self-propelled “wave” of space-time that the vessel rides.
Interestingly this is represented on screen by that stretching effect that the Starships
go through when they jump. Coaxial warp however is more akin to picking
a point of space ahead of you and bending it to your location then hopping over. This
makes for a near instantaneous jump and a different approach to interstellar travel
despite both methods warping space. So the Coaxial in this methodology likely refers
to the marriage of two separate points of space for a time, sharing the same geometry,
co-habiting the same axis. So why wasn’t this continued after this
episode? The real answer is of course, as usual, dull. Because plot demanded we forget
about it. But let’s look for an in universe justification for it because that’s what
I do and how I spend my weekends. For a start, I’ve seen arguments that the
drive was deemed too risky due to its potential explosiveness but that was pretty much resolved
before the episode’s end and failing that, they had a workaround to collapse the coaxial
field if needed. Then we have the idea that it was technically the imposter Tom Paris
that created the drive, implying that the real Paris never recreated it, but again,
by the end of the episode, Paris is back in his own body and he did have plenty of time
to tinker with the original drive, even repairing it. And they recovered the shuttle that had
the imposter’s modifications so saying they still couldn’t figure it out seems ridiculous,
especially as one of the first things mentioned is that Starfleet has been toying with the
idea for some time now since at least 2368 and at least knew the theory behind it.
So perhaps it’s due to the scale of the object that is to be folded into Coaxial Warp?
Both the test ship and the class 2 shuttle are only rather small with the shuttle being
around 8.5 meters long and the Benthan test ship larger but still dwarfed by the Intrepid
class USS Voyager which was 345 meters long. It could be the bigger the object the more
energy required, more than the drive could produce.
Another factor is how efficient it is, the jumps that we see in the show are never given
direct measurements of distance but the imposter pilot “Steth” says that the ships point
of origin was Benthos, around 20 lightyears away. The presumption is that Coaxial Warp
is near instantaneous.. It is however unknown if this distance was traversed in multiple
jumps or a single jump but “Steth’s” familiarity with the drive problem suggests
the vessel as made several flights before. On average from what has been seen on screens,
a warp 9 flight of 5 days would cover around 20 lightyears and warp 9.5 would half that,
though these are fan calculated values based on what’s mentioned on screen and can vary
with the script. So it could be that Coaxial Warp simply isn’t
worth the effort to develop on a larger scale if the gain is only a fraction faster than
conventional warp speeds, plus we don’t know if there is an extended cooldown or recalculation
period for the drive. We also don’t know if it required some exotic
fuel source that the Voyager only had limited stores of but there’s nothing on screen
to suggest this one so that’s just a wild guess. All in all, we don’t get a concrete
reason why it was never developed again and we are left to assume that it remains another
Delta-Quadrant oddity acquired by the USS Voyager and examined by Starfleet on its return
to Federation space. We are just left to assume that it didn’t work out because otherwise
the series would have been over far quicker. Plus… complicating matters further is the
source of this information, an unreliable sociopath that steals identities.
In short, this method of travel may not be as effective or stable as conventional warp
and a series of short coaxial jumps performed at optimal capacity might only be marginally
faster than a constant flight of high warp, who knows but this is my head-canon for why
it was never revisited in the time of the show.
What do you think? Spot anything that could explain why Coaxial Warp was never revisited?
I’m not sure we’ll ever get an answer but, I guess thanks for watching this video
anyway on what is known. Until the next one, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you later,
goodbye!