Transwarp

A propulsion system used on Star Trek. Transwarp works by tunneling through subspace to travel along a strighter path than would be possible in normal four space. A standard warp drive can be used in conjunction with a transwarp conduit to acheive even higher velocities.

There seem to be two forms of transwarp conduit, permanent and temporary, permanent conduits are like low end artificial wormholes and don't require a special drive to use (just a way to trigger the opening). Temporary conduits use a Transwarp drive and can be created anywhere, to anywhere and although the length is still partly determined by the realspace distance, it is generaly much shorter. It seems that a ship without a transwarp drive can use a temporary conduit to travel with the ship that is generating the conduit

An interesting idea would be that all conduits are permanent and if you can figure out how to open the correct one, you can travel along the path of any ship which has previously used transwarp, assuming you are at an end point. Of course detecting the opening, and further figuring out how to open it, AND making sure it's the right one, could present problems. A race/ship/whatever that went around exploring old conduits to try and find usefull ones would be quite interesting, especialy since it would present a high risk of jumping into the middle of a bunch of Borg.

In typical Voyager style, it was found that transwarp wasn't good enough, and so they came up with Quantum Slipstream, and them promptly said it was the same thing. This follows the trend of Voyager to not use an old bit of technobabble when a new and incompatable one can be used instead.

I made parts of this up to fill in gaps left by the shows. it is not in any way official and will probably be shown incorrect by future episodes (most likly the bits that I DID get from episodes will be the first to go).

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Based on the Voyager Finale, it looks like the permananent conduits are MUCH faster than the temporary ones(at least with regard to The Borg, the Voth and other transwarp capable species may be more advanced). Voyager has used temporary transwarp before and managed to shave off months or years in a a day or so of travel while a permanent transwarp conduit managed to get them home in a few minutes.

Transwarp basically creates a Wormhole.
My made-up-on-the-spot description is that you make a hole in space with plain warp drive and fall into it but with Transwarp you're creating a tunnel and you fall through it.
Used by The Borg.

Child's Play (VOY):
Star Trek: Voyager, the scourge of all Star Trek, has apparently decided that transwarp conduits are permanent, kind of like Subspace Conduits ("under-space") from Dragon's Teeth (VOY). I guess you need a transwarp drive to open them so you can traverse them. *rolls his eyes*

As Gordian cleverly points out, in Star Trek III the U.S.S Excelsior had an experimental transwarp drive. It's generally accepted, AFAIK, however, that it was a failed experiment. The Star Trek Encyclopedia, which is, I believe, officially considered canon (that's an odd phrase) too says that the experiment was a failure.

Also a series of expansion boards for the Apple //e and Apple IIgs from Applied Engineering. The Apple //e version basically replaced the onboard 6502 with a 65c02 that would run at 4 Mhz, up from 1. The Apple IIgs version shipped running at 8 Mhz, up from 2.6. Through overclocking and clock crystal replacing, certain people who wrote into A+ Magazine were able to get their GSs running at a warm 15 Mhz. Simply astounding.

Transwarp scale:

1. 20 * Warp 9
2. 30 * Warp 9
3. 40 * Warp 9
4. 50 * Warp 9
5. 60 * Warp 9
6. 70 * Warp 9
7. 80 * Warp 9
8. 90 * Warp 9
9. 95 * Warp 9

Where Warp 9 is 1516c or 1.02 trillion mph.

Transwarp propulsion was first seen in 2369, on a Borg vessel of unknown design. Seems the rest is pretty much covered in the write-ups above.

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Wonko, who probably knows more than I do, says Transwarp was first experimented with in Star Trek III with the Excelsior. So 2369 is probably when it actually worked

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*sigh*. When am I going to learn to stay away from these things?

And now for the unofficial, fanfic version of the story...(really meaning here's my version of the story)

Transwarp isn't a name for any specific technology for faster than light travel. Rather, it's a general name used to describe any advanced warp technology relative to the standards of the day. For example, in Star Trek III, the U.S.S Excelsior had a Transwarp drive since the drive system (Koeller UTI K27) was faster and more efficient than the ones used by the Enterprise and other ships of the time. By the time of TNG, the engines of the Excelsior were no longer considered to be transwarp, since most every ship class was already using them, or their variants. During TNG, things like 'Quantum Slipstream', 'Soliton Wave Drive' and 'Transwarp Conduits' could be considered 'Transwarp'.