AT: "xx"
The warp five engine aboard an Template:ShipClass starship
The Warp Five engine was a type of warp reactor developed by Humans in the 22nd century. The Template:ShipClass starships of the mid-22nd century were the first Earth ships to utilize the reactor. Warp Five technology allowed Humans to travel a hundred times faster than was possible with the previous generation of warp engines that were limited by the warp 2 barrier. (ENT: "First Flight", "Broken Bow")
Specifications
Warp factor chart of the Warp Five engine
The engine was officially called a gravimetric field displacement manifold. (ENT: "Cold Front") The reactor had eight major components. (ENT: "Desert Crossing") Magnetic constrictors were used to align the positron stream to the dilithium matrix. (ENT: "Cold Front") The dilithium matrix had to be aligned to within 0.3 microns. (ENT: "Affliction")
When the reactor was restarted from an off-line state, the reactor output had to be confined to within 300 and 312 millicochranes to prevent fusion of the dilithium matrix, unless the spatial compression index was greater than 5.62 percent, or the ship was within two parsecs of a class C gravimetric field distortion. (ENT: "Doctor's Orders")
A malfunction in the intermix chamber of the reactor might cause plasma pressure within the chamber to rise, threatening to destroy the ship. In order to reduce the pressure, the ship must maintain high warp until the damage is repaired. Such an event occurred in November of 2154, due to Klingon sabotage of the Enterprise NX-01. (ENT: "Affliction")
In the original configuration, warp factor 5 was the maximum speed that could be maintained by a ship using the Warp Five engine for 53 minutes only. This speed was first tested in 2152. (ENT: "Fallen Hero") By 2153, warp 5 had become a sustainable cruising velocity that could be maintained for long periods of time. The speed of warp 5 corresponded roughly to a velocity of 200 times the speed of light. (ENT: "The Expanse", "The Xindi")
Upgrades
The plasma injector assembly of the reactor was upgraded in 2154, to allow a ship to maintain the speed of warp 5.06. (ENT: "Babel One") After the upgrade, the speed of warp 5.2 could also be reached for short periods of time. (ENT: "Affliction")
The injector assembly could also be easily modified, based on Haradin schematics, to allow a ship to reach the speed of warp 6.9 for short intervals using the Warp Five engine. The structural integrity also needed to be reinforced on the NX-class ships for this to be possible. It was however determined that using the Haradin modification, the injectors might overload at speeds over warp factor 5.6. Due to the risk these speeds were not used by the Enterprise. (ENT: "E²")
Development
The first test vehicle NX-Alpha
,_late_2154.jpg){kind=link}
Columbia, the second starship to have the warp five engine
The Warp Five program was the name given to the research and development project commissioned by United Earth Space Probe Agency to develop the reactor. Doctors Zefram Cochrane, Tasaki and Henry Archer were among the main scientists involved in the project. They did much of their work at the Warp Five Complex, located on Earth just outside of Bozeman, Montana, from 2119 onward, when the complex was dedicated. (ENT: "Broken Bow", "Singularity")
The NX Project, overseen by Commodore Maxwell Forrest from its initial stages in the early 2140s, fielded several test vehicles with prototype versions of the warp five engine. These prototypes were piloted by Commanders Jonathan Archer, A.G. Robinson, Gardner, and Duvall. Captain Jefferies was an engineer on the NX Program, and Lieutenant Charles Tucker III worked on his team. (ENT: "First Flight")
Both programs were supervised by Vulcan experts. While they were helpful, the Vulcans did not share any of their advanced knowledge on warp mechanics. Due to this attitude, Henry Archer eventually made a breakthrough in finding an even more valid solution to the flux paradox than the Vulcan derivation. (ENT: "First Flight", "Broken Bow", "Singularity")
After the engine was ready for full scale use, the Enterprise NX-01 was constructed. The ship was launched in April of 2151 and became the first United Earth starship to utilize the Warp Five engine in deep space. Unfortunately, by this time, Henry Archer had died of Clarke's Disease. His son, Jonathan Archer, captained this first NX-class starship, with Charles Tucker III as his chief engineer. (ENT: "First Flight", "Broken Bow")
In the mirror universe, the Terran Empire had made similar breakthroughs. They had constructed a small fleet of NX-class battle cruisers with Warp Five engines, by 2155. Their version of the reactor was known to leak delta radiation, which caused severe disfigurement to the engineers who worked on them. It was said that for every year an engineer spent next to one, he lost a decade of his life expectancy. (ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly")
An alternate timeline, created by Daniels' taking Jonathan Archer into the future, diverged from the primary one at approximately the beginning of the Warp Five program; by the 31st century, the Earth of this timeline had long since been destroyed. (ENT: "Shockwave, Part II")