What's so intriguing about made up numbers though?

"Let me know if I've made any mistakes." A very dangerous thing to ask Star Trek fans.

WelI, I can make myself seem younger. I just add 5 years to my actual age and BAM! Babes are intrigued that I look so much younger. When they ask what my secret is I tell them I add 10 years to my actual age.

I suppose it's useful because if we can never exceed the speed of light - it shows you how unlikely these space adventures will ever be.

I'm just barely geeky enough to find this interesting, but here goes. The first reason is that logarithmic scales show up in science all the time, and are frequently misunderstood by layman and media, they just aren't at all intuitive.

The second is that those shows were written over decades by smart science-literate people who put in all of these careful details that totally flew over my head, it's fun to look back and see it was deeper than I knew at the time.

When Sci-fi is written with a good understanding of science and physics, it makes the fantastic parts seem more plausible because the rest checks out. The alternative way to do Sci-fi is to just say "Screw it, it's all magic!". Which works for Star Wars but isn't compelling in the same way.

This I agree. ST is indisputably more science based than SW, and deservedly earned that respect. It's fun to argue whether warp drive can/can not exist and all that, but to just compare the different warp speed of different ships, across different classes is kind of pointless, as the numbers are arbitrary to begin with, no?

Say, if the video instead compares Mach speed between F-15/16/18/22 etc. and argue which fighter got the more advanced engines (accounting for weight/speed/aerodynamic profiles factors) then I see the point...