I saw Ad Astra this past weekend, which is doing its part to make sci-fi hard like vibranium not squishy like flubber
Scientist James O’Donoghue decided to make an animation to demonstrate how “warp speeds” worked in Star Trek, its various incarnations known for loving science… while certainly not being beholden to rigidly adhering to known norms because writers.
In any case, even though vast distances can be crossed in three days or three weeks “at maximum warp” based the needs of the episode, official unofficial definitions of how faster than the speed of light Star Trek‘s warp speeds have been documented. So, Warp 9.9 –basically the point where Scotty would presumably tell Kirk in no uncertain terms that the Enterprise is about to fly apart– is 2,083 times the speed of light. That’s fast.
But space is big. Really, really big. So fast is, wait for it, relative.
So I don’t agree with the headline that warp speed is “achingly slow” –I mean I’d like to get to the next star system in the same time it take us to get to the other side of the planet– it only goes so far, so fast.