>A side note: Warp 4.5 - Earth to Neptune in back in 6 minutes. Assuming the planets were at closest proximity, that time would require a speed that is 87 times faster than light. A trip from Earth to Centuri Proxima would take 2.5 weeks. A trip to Bernard's Star would take 12 weeks. Warp 4.5 has to be faster than 1.7 light years per week. Adding 360 million miles to that trip to adjust for a far side trip wouldn't make much difference. I hope they clear up the speed problem.

Jerry,

I've been hooked on Star Trek since the Fall of 1966 and they have always had problems with speed - time calculations. On the _really_ big distances they usually get it right. Warp 9.5 is supposed to be about 1000 times the speed of light. So the original time calculations for how long Voyager would take to get home was correct. But, how often have we heard something like, "It's 12.5 light years away. It'll take us about 5 hours to get there." Wow! At 1000 times the speed of light it should take about 4.5 days to get there. Based on 87 times the speed of light, at Warp 4.5 it would take nearly nine weeks. To quote T'pol, "Space is a big place."

Which brings me to my pet peeve. At Warp 9 it takes over a day to get to Proxima Centauri, so in out neck of the galaxy we will pass 1 star a day at high warp. Yet the Enterprise zips past dozens every minute. Voyager was even worse! I'll confess, the viewscreen on a real star ship would look pretty boring, so I give them some dramatic license, but I think they take it too far.

Pet peeve aside, you know I'm looking forward to this week's episode -"Fight or Flight"- tomorrow night!