rjnoe@ihlts.UUCP (10/14/83)
I talked with several Pocket Books representatives yesterday and have more news on the maximum (emergency) speed of the uprated U.S.S. Enterprise. Pocket publishes the blueprints which I reported as contradicting the large cutaway view poster of the starship. Both items were drawn by David Kimble. I received the poster at the premiere of ST-TMP in December, 1979 but I received a preliminary edition of the blueprints about two months earlier. What I have just learned is that Pocket revised this edition before distributing it to bookstores. It never occurred to me before that my blueprints might be different from the "official" ones. Several changes were made in the revision, including the maximum speed of the Enterprise. Apparently most involved in the project agreed that the maximum cruising speed of the uprated Enterprise should be warp 8 (previously 6), which of course was the maximum emergency speed of the first Enterprise. The maximum speed was then boosted to warp 10 (=1000c). This was changed between the printing of the preliminary edition and the released edition for reasons that aren't totally clear. Among those mentioned were that warp 10 sounded too "pat" (being 1000c) to people with an obviously decimal bias, and that Starfleet should have made more of an advance in this technology in the intervening time. So it was decided that the maximum speed of the uprated U.S.S. Enterprise was to be warp 12 (or 1728c). This is apparently the "official" figure, mentioned in all authentic Star Trek publications (if speed is mentioned at all). -- Roger Noe ...ihnp4!ihlts!rjnoe