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star trek - Why is getting back to the future always such a fuss?


While getting to the past obviously requires some effort or accident, why (in-universe) are the crews going to such lengths to recreate the time-travel circumstances instead of simply travelling around at almost the speed of light for a while and exploit time dilation to get to the future without much of their own time being spent?



Answer



Ships did not seem capable of moving fast enough for meaningful time dilation to occur. For example, from https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Impulse_drive:



The 'Star Trek Voyager Technical Manual' page 13 has full impulse listed as ¼ of the speed of light which is 167,000,000 mph or 74,770 km/s.



At full impulse, they would still require about 97 hours to travel 100 hours into the future. (sqrt(1 - (0.25)**2) is approximately 0.968). Given that the typical problem is being thrown years or decades (or longer) into the past, time dilation is not a practical solution to the problem of returning to your original point in time.



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