History SciFiWritersHave / NoSenseOfVelocity

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus'' episode "Out of this World", the class has to stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth, specifically their school. It takes the whole episode for the asteroid to get close to Earth and that's with Dorothy Ann having tracked it for days prior to the start of the episode. They defeat it by changing its trajectory to HurlItIntoTheSun, which [[TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot it manages it hit within the span of a few seconds]]. This is {{Lampshaded}} in the producer segment ("Our show is less than thirty minutes long, what could we do?")
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* Although this doesn't involve space ships, the roleplaying site [[http://megamanmush.com Mega Man MUSH]] once had a memorable example of this in its news files for the various character stats, describing what the specific numbers for each stat would represent. In the news file for the Velocity stat, where 1 signified "less than 5 mph (8 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])", 5 meant "60-150 mph (97-241 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])", and 9 was specified as "767 mph (1235 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])" (the speed of sound), 10 was defined as "escape velocity". [[HilarityEnsues Hilarity ensued]] when someone pointed out exactly how fast [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity escape velocity]] is: 11.2 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]], or over 40,000 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]], thus leaving a drastically large gap between ratings 9 and 10.

* ''RatchetAndClank Future: A Crack In Time'' has the titular heroes caught by [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Dr. Nefarious]] and propelled off his space station on a catapult-like device to their assumed deaths. They awaken on a planet "hours later". A large catapult is not likely to propel anyone to fast enough speeds to reach a planet outside presumed detection range without turning them into paste. Also may qualify as a Distance example.

** In ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' the ''Enterprise'' has left space dock and is on its way to intercept V'Ger. It heads away from Earth and, moving at only sublight speed, manages to pass Jupiter only a ''few moments after leaving Earth orbit.''
*** ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' also started the tradition of showing [[StreamingStars stars streaming past the window]] whenever they were at warp speed. Even at the movie-''Enterprise'''s maximum safe cruising speed of warp 6 (TOS scale), they'd still only be going 216 times the speed of light, too slow for distant stars zip past in a matter of seconds as shown. Some fans explains that these aren't stars but dust particles that interact with the warp field.

** ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'': Two ships battle in warp space, one knocking the other out. At this point they are 250,000 miles from Earth, as pointed out by dialogue. This is really close to the Earth for either ship to have still been in warp, even battling the way they were. One of their computers would have been alerting the crew that they were near home. It's kind of like driving at 100 miles per hour and stopping on a dime an inch from your house.

** Might be handwaved by saying that interstellar travel in this universe works by distorting space around the travelling object such that lightyears are compressed to kilometers. Then speeds of a few [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] would be sufficient...
*** Unfortunately, at the time the ship was orbiting Jupiter, not engaging in interstellar travel. And travelling from Jupiter to Earth at speeds on the order of orbiting spacecraft (10s of kilometers per second) takes ''years''.

** Unfortunately, that isn't really ''better'' in the sense of no longer defying the expected laws of physics. A nebula is still too large to rotate visibly and still be moving at less than lightspeed, and has the additional problem of not having enough mass for gravity to hold it together as it rotates.
** Just how fast would those stars be moving? Well for reference, the galaxy seems to be rotating at a rate of 3-5 revolutions per minute. No big deal, right? For comparison the Milky Way Galaxy spins at one revolution... per 250 MILLION YEARS. That would probably correlate to 1,000 times the speed of light for the stars on the outside diameter.
*** This is a prime example of RuleOfDrama in action. The filmmakers knew perfectly well that in reality, the galaxy would seem to be utterly static. But on screen, a still image looked like a painting, and ruined the feel of the shot.

** It's possible he realised this error, because the villains of ''Skylark Three'', the Fenachrone, have found a way to make their stardrive operate simultaneously and equally on everything within the ship, thus avoiding this conundrum.

*** This fits with the ''Voyager'' example below, which has the cruising speed of the ship at about 1,000 times the speed of light.
*** This was also completely abandoned by ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'', where traveling anywhere invariably took about half a day. Runabouts (established as having a top speed of warp five) seemed to be able to reach Earth, Cardassia, and various other locations in the same short amount of time (while the distances aren't given, that would put both the Federation and Cardassian capitals within two light years of each other at most). On another occasion, a runabout travels to a planet given as five light years away in a few hours (it should take over a week).
*** On one occasion, the ''Enterprise''-D's warp drive has to be shut down for some kind of procedure, and they keep on pushing toward their destination at impulse speeds in the meantime. On an interstellar scale, you're not going to cover any meaningful distance at sublight speeds; they might as well have stopped altogether.

*** They need to get supplies, refuel, etc., and have to drop out of warp to do it.
*** They real life explanation is that the ship has lots of big windows, and warp effects were expensive. Thus they looked for ''any excuse'' to drop to impulse, even if it violated the premise of the show.

** At one point it was explicitly stated that ships had separate drives for interstellar and intergalactic travel, for whatever reason.
*** Only one particular type of Ancient ship had separate drives for interstellar and intergalactic travel. The Deadalus used an Asgard hyperdrive, and Asgard hyperdrives were shown previously to go between galaxies in a few hours. The Asgard hyerpdrive on the Daedalus was not operating anywhere near its full potential without a ZPM or an Asgard power source. Asgard ships were shown crossing this same distance in a few hours.

* {{Handwave}}d in ''{{TabletopGame/Warhammer 40000}}'', where the chaotic nature of [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace the Warp]] means that the same trip can take vastly different amounts of time. We have at least one example of a ship arriving quite some time before it left, and another of a vessel arriving at its destination millennia after it was supposed to arrive, though the crew seemed to believe it took only a couple of months. When your hyperspace is made of illogical thought, it's no wonder there's a bit of variation in travel times.
** In one case this is used for some dark humor. A crew of a ship responding to a distress signal travels through the warp ending up being attacked by demons. They proceed to send out a distress signal... which is sent back in time due to the anomalies in the warp, the very signal that they themselves responded to.

*** It was actually E.E. Doc Smith who came up with this idea for the classic Literature/{{Lensman}} series.
*** And retconned away in the 5th edition Necron codex: the Necrons use the same wormhole network as the Eldar by forcing their way in. Also, being immortal they can and do simply sail between systems at near-light speed. Slow, but infinitely more reliable.

** To put into perspective the amount of annoyance this causes, a number of mods were created whose sole purpose is to bring starship speeds to something less ridiculously slow. The result does have the occasional tendency to screw up scripted events, and activating the aforementioned time-dilater can cause entertainingly ludicrous behaviour from the AI (which was bad enough with stock speeds), but all that is still considered worth it to play a game that doesn't cause you to doze off if you happen to be controlling a glacially slow cargo ship.
** ''Videogame/XRebirth'' has ships that move roughly at the same speed as before, but a completely reworked map system makes the screwy velocities less silly. The game uses explicit solar systems, with sectors being in orbit around different planets while zones (equivalent to the sectors of previous games) connect points-of-interest. [[HyperspaceLanes Highways]] connecting the zones accelerate ships to several kilometers per second, and the Super Highways that connect planets accelerate ships past the speed of light.

** Although, the fact that FTL travel in-universe is accomplished by reducing the effective mass of the object in question (hence the title) means that an object moving faster than the speed of light would impart a significantly lower(read: possible) amount of kinetic energy. Likely still higher than the amount the fully massed ship would have imparted, moving slower than light, but that depends on how much the mass was reduced in the first place, as well as at what point the mass effect generator inevitably failed during the impact(when the electrical current stops, the eezo stops generating the mass effect field) as well as whether the ship's mass was negative, or simply proportionally reduced at the time (or, indeed, if negative mass is possible, in-universe; the codex description of FTL travel is rather limited).

* Although this doesn't involve space ships, the roleplaying site [[http://megamanmush.com Mega Man MUSH]] once had a memorable example of this in its news files for the various character stats, describing what the specific numbers for each stat would represent. In the news file for the Velocity stat, where 1 signified "less than 5 mph (8 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])", 5 meant "60-150 mph (97-241 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])", and 9 was specified as "767 mph (1235 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])" (the speed of sound), 10 was defined as "escape velocity". [[HilarityEnsues Hilarity ensued]] when someone pointed out exactly how fast [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity escape velocity]] is.
** To those who aren't into reading through the math in that link, Escape Velocity is 11.2 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]], or over 40,000 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]], thus leaving a drastically large gap between ratings 9 and 10.

* In ''SystemShock'' 2, it's discovered that a piece of the space station which was jettisoned by the player in the first game has crashed on a planet in the Tau Ceti system - crossing a distance of 12 light-years in a mere 30 years. This would require the ejection charges to have kicked the module loose at about half the speed of light. Even if you can accept that ''that'' happened, this would have resulted in the module slamming into a planet at half the speed of light, which is more than enough velocity to disintegrate the entire thing on impact.

* In ''DeepImpact'', the spaceship in Earth orbit maneuvers down a fissure in the asteroid to detonate at the asteroid's core. The ship starts off (to a good enough approximation compared to the other velocities) stationary relative to the Earth, so the ship/asteroid relative velocity is similar to the Earth/asteroid relative velocity. The Earth/asteroid relative velocity can't be less than the Earth escape velocity (11 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]) and is more likely on the order of the Earth's orbital velocity (30 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]). So they're navigating down that narrow fissure at something between 10 and 40 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]....

** The fastest velocity ever mentioned in any ''Star Trek'' show or supplementary materials is warp factor 9.9999, which is stated as being the speed of subspace radio signals. This is quoted in supplementary materials as being equivalent to 199,516c (199516 * the speed of light), which admittedly sounds very impressive. Indeed, in the show, subspace communications are often shown as being instantaneous, or with a minimal delay over much longer distances. However 199,516c equates to almost exactly 500AU/s (1AU = Earth-Sun distance). Put this velocity into any interactive starscape, such as for example [[www.spaceengine.org SpaceEngine]] and set a course for our nearest neighbouring star system (Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years), and how long does it take to fly there at that velocity? ''11.5 minutes''. Fast, yes, but certainly not instantaneous. And that's only for the very nearest star...

* In ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' the ''Enterprise'' has left space dock and is on its way to intercept V'Ger. It heads away from Earth and, moving at only sublight speed, manages to pass Jupiter only a ''few moments after leaving Earth orbit.''

* ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'': Two ships battle in warp space, one knocking the other out. At this point they are 250,000 miles from Earth, as pointed out by dialogue. This is really close to the Earth for either ship to have still been in warp, even battling the way they were. One of their computers would have been alerting the crew that they were near home. It's kind of like driving at 100 miles per hour and stopping on a dime an inch from your house.

* The USS ''Enterprise'' in ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' traveled to the edge of the galaxy (in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "By Any Other Name") and to the center of the galaxy (in ''Film/{{Star Trek V|The Final Frontier}}'') in the space of a single episode. The trip from one galaxy to another would take about 300 years (though the trip would be made with the modifications of extra-galactic aliens who had engines that were better than the Federation's). Yet in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', when ships were about 2-4 times faster, the estimated travel time to Earth from the opposite side of the galaxy was upwards of 70 years.
** Several episodes of original ''Trek'' have the Enterprise departing the planet-of-the-week at Warp Factor 1. This would mean they're travelling ''at'' the speed of light. At that rate, it would take them years just to get to the nearest neighboring star system. (Perhaps Kirk cranks it up to warp 6 once they're past the asteropause.)
** Many episodes of ''Voyager'' also have the ship traveling at sublight for extended periods of time. This is no particular reason for a ship that's trying to get home in under ''7 years'' to travel at sublight. In fact, they may as well be standing still (to any stellar body nearby).

* By the time of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', a Warp Speed scale was firmly established by Paramount, where a speed of Warp X (below Warp 9) meant the ship was travelling at X^3.3333... times the speed of light. This makes Warp 1 equal to light speed, Warp 2 just a hair over 10 times the speed of light, and Warp 9 a little more than 1500 times light speed. Yet in the episode "Where Silence Has Lease", the Enterprise traverses the 1.3 parsec distance to the edge of a giant space cloud at Warp 2 in about 30 seconds.
** Which fits with the ''Voyager'' example, which has the cruising speed of the ship at about 1,000 times the speed of light.
** ...and which was completely abandoned by ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'', where traveling anywhere invariably took about half a day. Runabouts (established as having a top speed of warp five) seemed to be able to reach Earth, Cardassia, and various other locations in the same short amount of time (while the distances aren't given, that would put both the Federation and Cardassian capitals within two light years of each other at most). On another occasion, a runabout travels to a planet given as five light years away in a few hours (it should take over a week).
** On one occasion, the Enterprise-D's warp drive has to be shut down for some kind of procedure, and they keep on pushing toward their destination at impulse speeds in the meantime. On an interstellar scale, you're not going to cover any meaningful distance at sublight speeds; they might as well have stopped altogether.

* In ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', the Klingon homeworld is several days' travel from Earth, which would put the two empires right on top of each other, given the increases in cruising speed in the other incarnations of the franchise. (Though one interesting exception: in the first episode of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', Trip describes the ship's top speed in terms of how long it would take to travel to Jupiter and back, and he's exactly right, based on conventional estimates of how warp factors work). In fact if you use those same calculations, the Klingon home planet would be two and a half lightyears from Earth; the nearest star to us in RealLife is four and a half. Missed it by ''that'' much. Which is, really, still a big distance in conventional terms, but isn't that much in terms of space.
** ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' started the tradition of showing [[StreamingStars stars streaming past the window]] whenever they were at warp speed. Even at the movie-Enterprise's maximum safe cruising speed of warp 6 (TOS scale), they'd still only be going 216 times the speed of light, too slow for distant stars zip past in a matter of seconds as shown. Some fans explains that these aren't stars but dust particles that interact with the warp field.
* The fastest velocity ever mentioned in any Star Trek show or supplementary materials is warp factor 9.9999, which is stated as being the speed of subspace radio signals. This is quoted in supplementary materials as being equivalent to 199,516c (199516 * the speed of light), which admittedly sounds very impressive. Indeed, in the show, subspace communications are often shown as being instantaneous, or with a minimal delay over much longer distances. However 199516c equates to almost exactly 500AU/s (1AU = Earth-Sun distance). Put this velocity into any interactive starscape, such as for example [[www.spaceengine.org SpaceEngine]] and set a course for our nearest neighbouring star system (Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years), and how long does it take to fly there at that velocity? ''11.5 minutes''. Fast, yes, but certainly not instantaneous. And that's only for the very nearest star...

* The fastest velocity ever mentioned in any Star Trek show or supplementary materials is warp factor 9.9999, which is stated as being the speed of subspace radio signals. This is quoted in supplementary materials as being equivalent to 199,516c (199516 * the speed of light), which admittedly sounds very impressive. Indeed, in the show, subspace communications are often shown as being instantaneous, or with a minimal delay over much longer distances. However 199516c equates to almost exactly 500AU/s (1AU = Earth-Sun distance). Put this velocity into any interactive starscape, such as for example [[www.spaceengine.org SpaceEngine]] and set a course for our nearest neighbouring star system (Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years), and how long does it take to fly there at that velocity? ''11.5 minutes''. Fast, yes, but certainly not instantaneous. And that's only for the very nearest star...

** Even given the assumption that the Flash can move at an arbitrarily high velocity without any unintended side effects, most of his adventures ''still'' don't make any sense, because otherwise he would be able to defeat any villain before they had time to react. The laws of drama make him absurdly fast at some times and absurdly slow at others.

* The ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'' series has a particularly egregious example in which each individual map is at most two hundred kilometers across, and as little as ''tens'' of kilometers in the original ''Beyond the Frontier'' -- almost comically small by astronomical standards -- yet your ship requires a ''TimeDilation device'' to travel between locations on the same map in a reasonable amount of time. Unless the kilometer was redefined at some point, this suggests spaceships in the game are far, far slower than they have any right to be -- raising the interesting question of how any of the spacefaring races actually managed to ''become'' spacefaring races when they don't seem to have any ships that come anywhere near escape velocity for a planet with a mass similar to Earth. For added fun, the ships we actually see entering and exiting planetary atmospheres in the series are TL-class large transports, of which the absolute fastest in the series, tuned for maximum speed, can go about 1,000 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]], and which are more typically in the 200-400 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] range. For comparison, the Space Shuttle moves at 7,743 m/s (27,870 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] or 17,320 mph). Spaceships in the X-Universe traveling at Earth-bound speeds would take DECADES, if not, CENTURIES to move from one place to another in outer space; in other words, this is laughably sluggish by Real Life outer space standards, and if Newtonian physics were to come into play, these ships would be rendered entirely and legitimately unfit for space-worthiness (and it isn't just limited to velocity alone; see the [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfDistance other]] [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfEnergy entries]] of how the series also fall under these ludicrous contrarinesses of [[WritersCannotDoMath mathematics]]). Apparently, the developers were confused about how actual velocity works in outer space, and decided to make Earth-bound velocity work like it does on everyday vehicles.

* The ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'' series has a particularly egregious example in which each individual map is at most two hundred kilometers across, and as little as ''tens'' of kilometers in the original ''Beyond the Frontier'' -- almost comically small by astronomical standards -- yet your ship requires a ''TimeDilation device'' to travel between locations on the same map in a reasonable amount of time. Unless the kilometer was redefined at some point, this suggests spaceships in the game are far, far slower than they have any right to be -- raising the interesting question of how any of the spacefaring races actually managed to ''become'' spacefaring races when they don't seem to have any ships that come anywhere near escape velocity for a planet with a mass similar to Earth. For added fun, the ships we actually see entering and exiting planetary atmospheres in the series are TL-class large transports, of which the absolute fastest in the series, tuned for maximum speed, can go about 1,000 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]], and which are more typically in the 200-400 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] range. For comparison, the Space Shuttle moves at 7,743 m/s (27,870 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] or 17,320 mph). Spaceships in the X-Universe traveling at Earth-bound speeds would take DECADES, if not, CENTURIES to move from one place to another in outer space; in other words, this is laughably sluggish by Real Life outer space standards, and if Newtonian physics were to come into play, these ships would be rendered entirely and legitimately unfit for space-worthiness (and it isn't just limited to velocity alone; see the other entries of how the series also fall under these ludicrous contrarinesses of [[WritersCannotDoMath mathematics]]). Apparently, the developers were confused about how actual velocity works in outer space, and decided to make Earth-bound velocity work like it does on everyday vehicles.

* The ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'' series has a particularly egregious example in which each individual map is at most two hundred kilometers across, and as little as ''tens'' of kilometers in the original ''Beyond the Frontier'' -- almost comically small by astronomical standards -- yet your ship requires a ''TimeDilation device'' to travel between locations on the same map in a reasonable amount of time. Unless the kilometer was redefined at some point, this suggests spaceships in the game are far, far slower than they have any right to be -- raising the interesting question of how any of the spacefaring races actually managed to ''become'' spacefaring races when they don't seem to have any ships that come anywhere near escape velocity for a planet with a mass similar to Earth. For added fun, the ships we actually see entering and exiting planetary atmospheres in the series are TL-class large transports, of which the absolute fastest in the series, tuned for maximum speed, can go about 1,000 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]], and which are more typically in the 200-400 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] range. For comparison, the Space Shuttle moves at 7,743 m/s (27,870 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] or 17,320 mph). Spaceships in the X-Universe traveling at Earth-bound speeds would take DECADES, if not, CENTURIES to move from one place to another in outer space; in other words, this is laughably sluggish by Real Life outer space standards. Apparently, the developers were confused about how actual velocity works in outer space, and decided to make Earth-bound velocity work like it does on everyday vehicles.

* In ''Series/BabylonFive'' hyperspace travel is, as per [[WordOfGod the DVD commentaries]], done [[TravellingAtTheSpeedOfPlot at the speed of plot]]. For example, it takes 3 days to get from Babylon 5 to Earth, which is about 14 light-years away. It also takes 3 days to get from Babylon 5 to Z'ha'dum, which is about 20,000 light-years away. It's explained that Hyperspace travel doesn't necessarily translate linearly. Which might explain why no one on the show ever says how far away something is, only how long it will take to get there.

* In ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', Goku learns to teleport himself in such a manner that he moves at the speed of light (In the dub, he mentions the exact speed). He states that he could have used this technique to get to Earth faster than with his ship, if he thought it was necessary. He was traveling on that ship from a planet millions of light years away. That trip took 3 years. In short, his teleport ability is millions of times slower than his ship was. This is a DubInducedPlotHole: Instant Transmission is exactly what it sounds like: instantaneous. There was none of this "speed of light" silliness in the original script.

* In ''SystemShock'' 2, it's discovered that a piece of the space station which was jettisoned by the player in the first game has crashed on a planet in the Tau Ceti system - crossing a distance of 12 light-years in a mere 30 years. This would require the ejection charges to have kicked the module loose at about half the speed of light...
** Then there's the issue about crashing the planet at half the speed of light...

* ''SpaceCruiserYamato'' has the Earth see the approach of the Comet Empire, even though it's light years away and the light from it wouldn't reach us yet. Also, the Comet Empire is the size of a small planet - big, but not big enough to be seen at that distance anyway.

* In ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'', the final battle against the Anti-Spiral and the eponymous mech takes place on a scale so huge entire galaxies are visible in single shots, and any movement is far beyond light-speed. By that point in the series, physics have been ground to a fine powder.

* In ''DragonBallZ'', Goku learns to teleport himself in such a manner that he moves at the speed of light (In the dub, he mentions the exact speed). He states that he could have used this technique to get to Earth faster than with his ship, if he thought it was necessary. He was traveling on that ship from a planet millions of light years away. That trip took 3 years. In short, his teleport ability is millions of times slower than his ship was.
** This is a DubInducedPlotHole. Instant Transmission is exactly what it sounds like: instantaneous. There was none of this "speed of light" silliness in the original script.

[[quoteright:211:[[NipAndTuck http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/NipAndTuck_Velocity_2702.JPG]]]]

* In ''NipAndTuck'', the ShowWithinAShow ''Rebel Cry'' features a RoyalBrat [[http://www.rhjunior.com/nip-and-tuck-0686/ who doesn't get it.]] Even the writer obviously does.

* In ''TheMagicSchoolBus'' episode "Out of this World", the class has to stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth, specifically their school. It takes the whole episode for the asteroid to get close to Earth and that's with Dorothy Ann having tracked it for days prior to the start of the episode. They defeat it by changing its trajectory to HurlItIntoTheSun, which [[TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot it manages it hit within the span of a few seconds]]. This is {{Lampshaded}} in the producer segment ("Our show is less than thirty minutes long, what could we do?")

* Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog has it's main protagonist running at the speed of sound (hence the name); for reference, the speed of sound is ''1,235 kilometers per hour'' (or 767 miles per hour, for those of us not metric-savvy), equivalent to Mach 1, and most aircraft need to be specially designed to handle that sort of speed. At that speed, Sonic would be ''obliterated'' without protection (which is more than just shoes, of course). Then again, Sonic could have some BizarreAlienBiology to cope with said pressure... though his lungs would need to be ''enormous'' to supply enough oxygen to keep that speed going. [[Main/MST3KMantra It's best not to get worked up these things, really.]] At least he's not depicted traveling at the speed of light, which is far, ''far'' faster than the speed of sound, and any being traveling at such speeds even when streamlined would instantly turn into paste.

*** Only one particular type of Ancient ship had separate drives for interstellar and intergalactic travel. The Deadalus used an Asgard hyperdrive, and Asgard hyperdrives were shown previously to go between galaxies in a few hours. The Asgard hyerpdrive on the Daedalus was not operating anywhere near its full potential without a ZPM or an Asgard power source.

** In the climax of ''MassEffect3'', the allied fleet arrives at the mass relay in the Sol system. The mass relay orbits Pluto. The fleet then proceeds to Earth at sublight speed and arrives in a few minutes, even though Pluto is hours from Earth at light speed.
*** It is worth noting, that starships in ''Franchise/MassEffect'' universe are well capable of FTL travel without use of gateways. Human technology, as of 2165, allows ships to travel at least 50c. They might very well make it to Earth in couple of minutes.

** Videogame/XRebirth'' has ships that move roughly at the same speed as before, but a completely reworked map system makes the screwy velocities less silly. The game uses explicit solar systems, with sectors being in orbit around different planets while zones (equivalent to the sectors of previous games) connect points-of-interest. [[HyperspaceLanes Highways]] connecting the zones accelerate ships to several kilometers per second, and the Super Highways that connect planets accelerate ships past the speed of light.