Of course, it was the first script written and the whole of the history hadn’t been revealed. Since we now know the history of warp drive and have 45 years of reference material, I think that little ‘time barrier’ tidbit should be eradicated from canon.

As far as your ship’s mass; nothing says a science ship has to be small, since technically all Starfleet vessels are science ships. (Exception being the Defiant class)

The time barrier is warp factor one. The Star Fleet et el, relied upon Cochrane’s factor to go any distance. There is a cavet here thought. Speeds in access of warp factor were possible, but couldn’t sustained due to two reasons. The first is rate of fuel use. The second is the amount of energy(heat) would melt the warp coils.

In other words it wasn’t practical to go above warp factor one over any practical distance – like going from here to Alpha Centuri. This is why navigator Jose’ Tyler was so exicited.

It took a long time to get any where. So long that resuce missions were considered a joke.

Yes they could get up to warp factor seven but the engines would melt very fast, to the point of being useless for any travel.

So how was the time bariier cracked?

My answer: forcefields that could protect the warp coils and the other componants, with out interfering the operation of the warp engines. Warp this way, and not some other way? Because for all practical purposes space is a vacuum, so any effects would be confined to the ship. Yes there would be drang out there, but not that much.

As to mass, I go with the 190,000 figure.

It seems the intention was to show that the Enterprise’s “Time Warp” engines were more advanced than the one from the crashed transport. It’s tempting to connect that to the invention of warp drive, but we later learn that warp drive has been around for two centuries.

So, what is the “time barrier”? The only thing it can be is some kind of significant advance in warp drives in the last 18 years. Maybe an ENT-like incremental advance in the form of “Warp Seven” engine.

On review, you’re probably right that wf 7 is a bit high for a research ship. If you don’t mind, I will in fact sneakily edit the article for a somewhat slower ship

The mass is based on a million tonnes Enterprise, so it includes nacelle coils and other supermassive subspace-affecting oddities.

My impression was that this class of ship was pre breaking of the time barrier…

Mass – the Constitution is only 190,000 tons, so what gives?