Okay, this might be a complicated one. Strap in. Time for another Star Trek headcanon.

Ready? Zephram Cochraine didn't invent warp drive.

Wait. Of course he didn't. We all know that. The Vulcans and Klingons and Andorians and a slew of other species all had it long before humans did. It's pretty clear from context that humanity's reverence for Cochraine wasn't because he literally invented FTL, but because he worked it out for Earth specifically, allowing humans to take their place among the stars. Cochraine invented warp like Newton invented gravity. He formulated it into something useful for a particular culture, from which that culture benefited. For crying out loud, this is canon, not headcanon.

Right, but my headcanon is literally -- Zephram Cochriane didn't invent WARP DRIVE. He invented something else.

There are two things about the canonical presentation of ZC and how his work fed into warp drive that have always stood out to me as... weird. The first is pretty much what I mentioned above. At least semi-canonically, Vulcans have had warp drive for at least three millennia. Other races have had it for centuries. Yet it looks like Starfleet's ship designs all follow Earthling build patterns. Namely paired nacelles and an overall hull configuration. Sure, that could be due to the influence of humans over Starfleet, but what if it was more than that? What if that design was inherently better?

The other thing that I keep getting hooked on like the pockets of a dad's cargo shorts on a cabinet door handle while he's just trying to get breakfast made for two hungry kids is -- that initial flight of the Phoenix in Star Trek: First Contact. When the test run ends and they power down the engine, the ship flips around and we can see Earth. Now, granted, it is "so small" at that point, but how far away are they from it? It's hard to know, but eyeballing it, it doesn't look like it's much more than three or four lunar distances away. Four lunar distances is roughly 1.5 million kilometers. It would take light about five seconds to cover that distance. But if we add up the time we see the Phoenix performing that flight, we get at least 15 seconds of "warp" time.

Canonically or at least semi-canonically, warp 1 is roughly the equivalent of 1C. I don't know if they've ever come out and said that on-screen anywhere, but circumstantial evidence for it is pretty high. I mean, warp drive is presented as a form of FTL, so it makes sense that the slowest speed it can go is at least FAL. The fastest the Phoenix could be traveling is 0.3C. Warp speed this ain't! Also, during the flight, we cut away to a fairly lengthy mano-a-cyborgo-a-droido fight in the Enterprise engine room. This fight scene consumes about 45 seconds of screen time. Now I know that movies aren't always literal like this and the Phoenix scenes could be at least partially in parallel with the fight scene. I'm not saying the Phoenix's flight was one minute. But I am saying it's at least 15 seconds and could have been longer. We just can't know with precision. I'm also just roughing the distance the ship traveled. I picked four lunar distances more or less out of a hat. It could be five, it could be three.

I'm going to pick a range. The Phoenix traveled a distance between 1.2 million and 1.5 million kilometers -- just over three to just under four lunar distances -- in a timespan of 16-20 seconds, for an average speed of 0.25C. I admit I'm picking this average speed because it bolsters my headcanon, but it doesn't contradict anything we see on the screen itself. Why is 0.25C important? Some of you may know the answer.

Spoiler: Spoilers for a very old Trek novel
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Back in 1988, Diane Carey published a surely non-canonical Trek novel called Final Frontier. Not to be confused with Shatner's movie of the same title, which came out the following year (imagine Carey's frustration over that). That book deals with the creation of the Constitution class as a whole, and centers around the unnamed prototype. At one point during the story, when the ship uses its impulse engines, Carey describes the propulsion mechanism as a kind of controlled space warp pulse. The pulse creates a subspace shockwave which the ship "rides" at very fast but sublight speed. This is so similar to how most of us think of warp drive that she even tagged a character to be confused about the difference and be set straight by the engineers. Internally-Metered Pulse Drive was not warp drive, but operated using some of the same fundamental principles. Yes, sure, I know, FF is not canon. I'm not sure impulse drive has ever been canonically explained, but most modern semi-canonical sources describe it as a reaction-based system that literally shoves mass/energy out the back of the ship to move it forward. I don't think that's very plausible, personally, and I've always preferred to assign Carey's version of the system to what I'm seeing on screen. And you bet your targ I'm going to do it here!


Back to 0.25C. While the actual velocity of impulse drive also has never, to my knowledge, been stated on screen, a number of technical manuals put "full impulse" at... wait for it... 25% the speed of light. Hey, look, 0.25C! You know what this means?

Zephram Cochrain invented IMPULSE DRIVE!

Okay, but wait. ZC is known as the inventor of warp drive. While "inventor" may not be literally accurate, why is he associated with warp drive and not impulse drive. And what's the big deal with impulse drive? Why would he get so much adulation? I'll follow up on my next post.