One of the novels has a conversation with Zephram Cochrane that explains the origins of the arrowhead itself that I was quite fond of.
Cochrane is asked to explain his warp drive and he draws a quick sketch.
He explains that Einsteinian physics state that as an object’s velocity (V) approaches the speed of light, the energy (E) required to accelerate further grows infinite (marked by the star).
However, his calculations indicated that if one could accelerate beyond the speed of light, that the energy required to accelerate would diminish beyond that point (hence the steely rising and then falling line in red). The problem is that it’s impossible to expend infinite energy to reach that speed.
So what his warp drive does is warp space in such a way that that curve instead extends below the point of infinite energy (the green curve). One expends a given amount of energy to accelerate to light speed, and the warp drive allows one to continue to expend less than infinite energy to accelerate further.
I’m pretty sure this doesn’t jive with later canon explanations of how warp drive works, but I loved that Cochrane’s legacy was still being incorporated into Starfleet insignia even over a century after his death.
I am so so sorry, but is anyone else getting tremendous butthole vibes from the Merchant Marine Spacecraft Duty Insignia? How did that get past the producers?
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